Jazz in print (1856-1929): an anthology of selected early readings in jazz history 9781576470244

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
Preface (page xi)
1856-1899
1900-1909
1910-1919
1920
1921
1922
1923
1924
1925
1926
1927
1928
1929
Index of Names (page 579)
Index of Titles (page 587)

Citation preview

JAZZ IN PRINT (1856-1929) An Anthology of Selected Early Readings in Jazz History

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A Pe JAZZ IN PRINT (1856-1929)

An Anthology of Selected Early Readings in Jazz History

Edited by | Karl Koenig

PENDRAGON PRESS Hillsdale, NY

Pendragon Press Musicological Series Aesthetics in Music Annotated Reference Tools in Music Bucina: The Historic Brass Society Series The Complete Organ The Croatian Musicological Society Series Studies in Central and Eastern European Music CMS Source Readings in American Music

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The Complete Works of GB. Pergolesi | Pergolesi Studies Series The Polish Music History Series The Sociology of Music Thematic Catalogues Vox Musicz: The Voice, Vocal Pedagogy, and Song

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jazz in print (1856-1929) : an anthology of selected early readings in jazz history / edited by Karl Koenig

p.cm. Includes index. ISBN 1-57647-024-5 (hardcover)

1. Jazz--History and criticism. I. Koenig, Karl. ML3507 .J383 2002

781.65’2--dc21 2002027080

Copyright 2002 Pendragon Press IV

«i CONTENTS «

Preface M ‘July 23, 1903, Independent: The True Negro Music 71 1856-1899 January 17, 1856, Houma Ceres: Slave Funeral 1 1903, Metronome: The Musical Possibilities of Ragtime 74

or September 22, Napoleon Pioneer: Gordon TI November 15, 1856, Dwight’s Journal: 1 , Songs of the Blacks Colored Minstrels Coming

Ons October 1906, Metronome: November 22, 1856, Charleston Mercury: 2Negro a

Melodies of 77

Lilliputian Musicians (Slave Band) scot Sone cian: Lafcadio H

August 1863, Continental Monthly: Under the Palmetto 3 November 1906, Musician: caere mearn ®

; and Congo July 1869, Nation: Three Years asSources a Music Negroof Minstrel 5Songs . « ys 80 ; or November 1906, Musician: “Congo April 5, 1873, Dwight’s Journal: Negro Folk Songs 14 ; , 80 ws October 1907, Crest Musical Bulletin: The Evolution December 17, 1883, Critic: Plantation Music 15 ,

1892, Negro Music 16 ofMusical MinstrelsyBulletin: ° ; Music: January 1908, Crest

Negro 81

Old Plantation Hymns y 6 y

November 1893, New England Magazine: Ig Minstrelsy—from Its Origin to the Present Da

Music Among the Negroes 1910-1919 January 18, 1898, Shreveport Sunday Judge: 28

January 1899, New England Magazine: Hymns of 8 September 1910, Jacob’s Orchestra Monthly: 84

the Slave & the Freedman Questions & Answers

February 1899, New England Magazine: Recent ¥ June 1911, Jacob’s Orchestra Monthly: “Clarinet” or 84 Negro Melodies “Clarjonet” May 4, 1899, Shreveport Sunday Judge: Ragtime .. 47 September 1911, Jacob’s Orchestra Monthly: 85

May/October 1899, Century Magazine:of Negro Spirituals 47 . . é1899, The Selection Accessories June The Etude: SI . , , ; December 2, 1911, MusicalRagtime America: Works September 1899, Popular Science Monthly: 54 ;of, American 86

. . Composers Reveal Relation ofin Ragtime to Art-Song The Survival of African Music America , , December 23, 1911, Variety: Ragtime vs. Classical 87 Autumn 1899, Brainards Musical Journal: 9 | Svncopated Music May 25, 1912, Donaldsonville Chief: Negro Folk-Songs 88

yneop August 1912, Orchestra Monthly: The Ethics of Ragtime 89 1900—1909 September 21, 1912, Musical America: Dangers That 91 Lie in Ragtime

March 1900, Musician: Ragtime 60 February 4, 1913, Variety: “Ragtime” Speaking 92 May 30, 1900, Music Courier: Ragtime Communication 60 All Over Continent September 1900, Musical Record: Music andthe Negro 61 February, Musical Opinion & Musical Trade Review: 92

July 1901, American Musician: War on Ragtime 63 Rag-time on Parnassus July, 1901, American Musician: Suppression of “Ragtime” 63 March 1913, English Review: Ragtime: The New 94

October 1901, Cosmopolitan: From Breakdown 64 Tarantism

to Ragtime May 28, 1913, Musical Courier: Remarks on Ragtime 96

November 1901, Musician: Syncopated Rhythm 67 September 1913, The Cadenza: Something about Ragtime 97

vs. “Ragtime” August 12, 1914, The Music Courier: Cadman on “Ragtime” 98

1901, Metronome: The Origin of Ragtime 68 May 1, 1915, The Chicago Defender: William MarionCook 99 October 1902, Musician: Ethiopian Syncopation— 68 August 1915, Ragtime Review: Ragtime in New Orleans 100

The Decline of Ragtime August 1915, Ragtime Review: The Teaching of 101 Notes on Negro Music August 1915, Ragtime Review: What about Ragtime? 102

January-March 1903, Journal of American Folk- Lore: @ Ragtime vs. Classical

October 16, 1915, The New Republic: Ragtime 102 November 1, 1915, The Musician: Negro Folk Song Recital 104

| Vv

CONTENTS KARL KOENIG November 6, 1915, The New Republic: Anti-Ragtime 105 September, New Republic: “Plus De Jazz” 154 December 4, 1915, The New Republic: Extols Ragtime September, New York Times: Both Jazz Music 157

Article 106 and Jazz Dancing Barred

Fevruary 1916, Opera Magazine: Ragtime and

American Music 106 December 18, New York Times: “Jazz ‘Er Up!”: 157

May 27, 1916, Literary Digest: Canning Negro Melodies 109 Broadway’s Conquest of Europe

August 1916, Ragtime Review: About Ragtime 110 December, Ladies Home Journal: Unspeakable 160

August 1916, Ragtime Review: What has “Ragtime” 111 Jazz Must Go! to do with “American Music?”

December 1916, Choir Leader: The Origin of the 111 1922 Negro Spirituals

1916, Journal of the Folk Lore Society of Texas: The January 6, Variety: Origin of “Blues” (or Jazz) 164

“Blues” as Folk-Songs 112 January 14, Literary Digest: Jazz Played Out 166

July 1917, Seven Arts: A Modest Proposal 116 February 12, New York Times: Two-Step to Jazz 167 August 25, 1917, Literary Digest: The Appeal of the 119 Sent by Wireless

Primitive Jazz February 18, New York Times: About Books, 167

October 19, 1917, Variety: Blues are Blues | 120 More or Less: In the Matter of Jazz

March 1918, New Music Review: Concerning Ragtime 121 March 3, New York Times: Primitive Savage Animalism, 169

April 1918, New Music Review: Negro Spirituals | 124 Preacher’s Analysis of Jazz January 1919, Musical Quarterly: Negro Music at Birth §= 127 March 4, Variety: Scoffs at Fear of Jazz 169

March 1919, Musician: Capturing the Spirit of 128 March 18, Literary Digest: Students in Arms 170

the Real Negro Music Against Jazz

April 26, 1919, Literary Digest: Stale bread’s Sadness 131 March 30, Music Courier: Variationettes 171

Gave “Jazz” to the World April 6, Musical Courier: Song Echoes from 172

April 26, 1919, Literary Digest: A Negro Explains 132 the Old South

“Jazz” | April 7, New York Times: Musician is Driven to Suicide 177

August 1, 1919, Music Record: AJazz Band Concert 133 by Jazz

August 1919, Current Opinion: Delving into the 134 April 13, Music Leader: A Jazz Conference 178

Genealogy of Jazz | April 19, Melody: Bert Williams, Negro Comedian 178

August 1919, Music Review: The Doughboy Carries 136 April, Metronome: Jazz and the Motion Picture 179

His Music with Him _ ae April, Piano Trade Magazine: That “Jazz” WailAgain 180

September 1919, Current Opinion: Enigmatic 138 May 4, Musical Courier: “Jazz” the National Anthem, 181

Folksongs of the Southern Underworld Part I

September 1919, Music Student: Negro Folk Song 140 May 6, Literary Digest: “To Jazz” or “To Rag” 182 May 11, Musical Courier: “Jazz” the National 183

1920 Anthem, Part II

May 13, Musical America: Tilts at Carl Engel Over Jazz 185

June 12, Literary Digest: Classical vs. Jazzical Music 141 May 13, Music Trades: “Jazz” Waits at This Church 185 June 12, Musical America: Spreading the Gospel 142 = May, Metronome: Jazz, the Present-Day Live Issue 186

of Negro Music in the Development of American Music

June 19, Musical America: The Marche Funebre of “Jazz” 144 May, Musician: The Decline of Jazz 187 July 31, Life, Letters and the Arts: Jazz 146 June 1, Musical Courier: Jazz Music & Its Relation 188 August, Current Opinion: Jazz & Ragtime Are 147 to African Music

the Preludes to a Great American Music June 23, Variety: Reviews of Recording Discs 190 August, Musician: A Hopeful View of the Ragtime Roll 148 June 25, New York Times Book Review & Magazine: 191

December, Melody: Jazz Music andthe Modern Dance 149 Jazz Latitude

June, Metronome: Charinski Defends Jazz 194

1921 June, Metronome: An Opinion of “Jazz” 194 July 7, New York Times: Fails to Stop Jazz, 195

January 11, New York Times: VolivaBansJazzRecords 150 Is Arrested Later

February 5, New Statesman: Jazz Music 150 July 22, Musical America: Says Jazz Would Galvanize 195 May 11, New Republic: The Economic Interpretation 151 American Opera

of Jazz July 28, New York Times: Queen Mary Bars Jazz 196

August, Ladies Home Journal: Does Jazz Put the Sin 152 July, Metronome: Drum Taps 197

in Syncopation? August, Atlantic Monthly: Jazz: A Musical Discussion 198

vi

JAZZ IN PRINT (1856- CONTENTS August, Metronome: Some Further Opinions on “Jazz” 202

by Prominent Writers June, The Etude: The Jazz Fiddler 240

September, Melody: A Defense of Jazz & Ragtime 203 June, Metronome: Wolverine Blues a Big Hit 241

September, Metronome: The Boys Who Arrange 204 June, Vanity Fair: Jazz—A Brief History 241 the Tunes You Play

September, Metronome: Fixing the Blame for Jazz 205 July 5, Music Courier: Jazz Again 245 September, Metronome: The Spirit of ’76 in Jazz 206 July 12, Music Courier: Casella on Jazz 245 September, Music Lover’s Magazine: The “New” Jazz 207 July, Metronome: The Make-Up of a Modern Orchestra 246

October 11, The New York Times: Win War on Jazz 208 August 23, Dial: Toujours Jazz 246

With Better Songs August 25, Colliers: Jazz May Be Lowbrow, But— 252

October 25, Nation: Jazz 208 August 30, Music Courier: [Untitled] 255

October 26, Musical Courier: Leave “Jazz” Alone 209 August, The Etude: Yes, I Teach ’em Jazz 255

Symbolizes Quarters

October, Musical Observer: College Jazz and WhatIt 210 August, Metronome: Clarence Williams Inc. Enlarges 256

November 4, New York Times: Ban on Jazz Sacrilege 211 September, Metronome: Clarence Williams, a 256

November 16, Musical Courier: Of Interest to 211 Specialist on “Blues”

Composers September, Metronome: Meyer Davis Thinks 256

December 10, New York Times: Drawing aline forJazz 213 Jazz Symbolic4 of America December 10, New York Times: Shady Dance Steps 214 September, Metronome: Pre-Jazz, Jazz, Post Jazz 257

Barred by Police September, Metronome: Quality in “Blues” 260

December 17, New York Times: Jazz 215 October, Sheet Music News: Origin of “Blues” Numbers 260 December 29, New York Times Book Review & 215 November 4, Musical America: More Jazz for the Violin 262

Magazine: Putting the Music into the Jazz November 10, Musical America: Novelty is Spice 263 December, Metronome: Riesenfeld as the Latest 218 November 24, Musical America: Is Jazz “The 264

Defender of Jazz American Soul’?

December, New Music Review: Concerning Jazz 219 November, Musical Digest: Eva Gauthier 264 Musical Quarterly: [Untitled] . 222 December, Metronome: How’s Business withthe Dance 265 Orchestra Boys

1923 December,Orchestras Metronome: Instrumentation for Theatre Pit 268 | and Dance

December, Metronome: Jazzing the Masters 269

January 4, Musical Leader: “Nothing Great Can 223 Afford Shackles—in Youth There Is Hope” January 18, Musical Courier: Jazz 224 1924

January, American Organist: Jazz and the Organist 225

of Jazz Surely Live

January, Melody: Frank Westphal—Chicago Exponents 225 January 16, The New York Times.: Say Jazz Will 210

January, Metronome: Drawing a Line for Jazz 227 January 24, Mus ical Cour ler : Lopez on Jazz 271 January, Metronome: Song & Dances of the Southland 227 January, The Et ude: What's the Matter with Jazz . 272 February, Metronome: Detrimental Effects of Jazz 730 January, Sheet Music News: Classics in “Jazz Tempo 272

on Our Younger Generation February 7, Musical Courier: Jazz or— 273

Aad. ; . m: cture

March 10, Musical America: Ducasse Uses Ragtime 230 February I Musical Cour er Jazz or “Modern Popular = 274

in New Tone Poem vane to be Heard & Discussed at Composers League ar The Etude: The Poetic & Melodic Gifts of the Negro February 14, Musical Courier: An Afternoon of Jazz 274

March, Metronome: Town Clef Topics 733 February 14, Musical Courier: Jazz at Worst . | 275 March, Musical Observer: Jazz, Says Darius Milhaud, 235 February 21,M usical Courier: An Experimentin Music 275

Is the Most Significant Thing in Music Today February 21, Musical Courier: Jazz and Syncopated 276

April 11, Melody: Ted Lewis of Jazz Band Fame 236 Music | |

April 13, Music Leader: AJazz Conference 237 February 21, Mus ical Cour er. Jazz Band 277 April 19, Melody: Jazzing Jazz to Death 937 February 23, Musical America: Capacity House Fervent- 279 April 26, Music Leader: “High Class” Jazz 738 ly Applauds as Jazz Invades Realm of Serious Music May 31, Music Courier: Representative of 2,000,000 238 February, Aris & D ecoration : The National Music ; 280)

Women, Meeting in Atlanta Fallacy—Is American Music to Rest on a Foundation

May, Metronome: AreMusic? AmericanFebruary, Hotels Sponsoring 238 of What RagtimeJazz & Jazz? ruly National Cadenza: Has Instruments

Done to the Fretted 282 Vii

CONTENTS KARL KOENIG February, The Flutist: Jazz—Its Origin, Effect, Future 285 July 19, Musical America: Jazz Music Not Such as 324 February, Musical Digest: For Better or for Worse 287 “Enfant Terrible” After All February, Sheet Music News: Orchestra Leaders Differ 288 July, The Etude: Getting Down to the Truth about Jazz 326 February, Sheet Music News: Paul Whiteman’s 289 July, Melody: American Popular Music & Its Progress 326

Experiment July, Melody: Jazz: The Newest Musical Phenomenon 327

February, Sheet Music Review: Popular Music Recital 290 July, Metronome: France’s Ban on Jazz 330 March 5, Nation: Jazz and “The Rhapsody in Blue” 291 July, Metronome: The Origin of Ragtime 331

March 5, Outlook: Jazz 292 July, Musical Observer: Eva Gauthier Comments 332 March, Baton: An Interview with H. T. Burleigh 293 on Her Experiment in Jazz March, Metronome: The Inventor of the Saxophone 294 August 2, Musical News and Herald: The Nature and 333

and Its History Function of Jazz

March, Musical Courier: [Untitled] 295 August 16, Musical America: Twilight Descends on 334 March, Sheet Music News: Defend “Jazz Tempo” 295 the Gods of Tin Pan Alley March, Sheet Music News: Lopez in Jazz Concert 296 August, The Etude: American Dance Music Is Not Jazz 336 March, Sheet Music News: The Whiteman Concert 296 August, Ther Etude: Jazz: Lowbrow and Highbrow 336

March, Sunset Magazine: Why You Like Jazz 298 August, The Etude: What is Jazz Doing to American 339

April 24, Musical Observer: Stokowski Declares 302 Music?

in Favor of “Jazz” August, The Etude: What’s the Matter with Jazz 341 April, Arts & Decorations: Position of Jazzin American 303 August, Mercury: Jazz 342 Development August, Metronome: The Banjo Today and Yesterday 343 April, The Baton: Accursed Jazz 305 August, Music Trade News: Jazzmania, the Home of 344

April, Metronome: Negro Spirituals 305 the Sax

May 12, Independent: Jazz Worship 306 September 1, Musical Times: Ad Libitum 345 May 22, Musical Courier: First He Played the Viola 307 September 1, Musical Times: Ragtime 349

& Now He’s Paul Whiteman September, The Etude: The Etude’s Jazz Bomb 351

May 22, Musical Courier: Whitman & Whiteman 309 September, Metronome: Jazz Referred to as the 351

May, The Etude: The Musical Genius of the Inventive Spirit of America

American Negro 309 September, The Etude: What Effect is Jazz Likely to 352

May, Jacob’s Band Monthly: Is “Jazz” Constructive 314 Have Upon the Music of the Future?

or Destructive? September, The Etude: Where is Jazz Leading America? 353

May, Metronome: Column by Ed. Chenette 315 September, The Etude: Would Mozart Write Fox-Trots 357 May, Musical Observer: Vincent LopezCommentson 316 If He Lived To-day?

His Unique Experiment September, Melody: Intolerance and Jazz 357

June 7, Musical America: Paul Whiteman & His 317 October 18, Living Age: The Jazz Band & Negro Music 358

Orchestra (Critics’ Reviews) October, New Statesman: Plus Que Jazz 361

June 11, Nation: [Untitled] 318 November 20, Music Courier: Jazz vs. the Arkansaw 363

June 19, Music Leader: The Trend of the Times 318 Traveler June 21, Musical America: Eva Gauthier Would 319 November 20, Music Courier: Kahn on Jazz 364 Make Reforms in Our Concert Halls November 28, Musical News: Kahn Wants aJazz Opera 365 June, American Magazine: Paul Whiteman Made 319 to Produce on Metropolitan Stage

Jazz Contagious November, Music Trade News: Russian Conductor 365

June, The Etude: To Jazz or Not to Jazz 320 on “Jazz”

June, Metronome: Rhythmic Symphonic Syncopation 321 December 12, Music News: Our Jazz Symposium 366

vs. Modern Jazz December 27, Musical American: Jazz Takes Root in 369

June, Musical Observer: The Story of the Negro 321 Classics, Asserts Sigmund Spaeth Spiritual “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ ve Seen” December, Current Opinion: Where Jazz is Taking Us — 370

June/July, Jacob’s Band Monthly: Jazz: Is It Music or Musically

322 Something Else? 1924, Jacob's Orchestra Monthly & The Cadenza: The

July 5, Literary Digest: Putting Jazz in Its Place 323 Difference Between “Jazz” and “Popular Music” 371 July 8, Musical Digest: Towards Defining the Jazz 324 Formula

Vill

JAZZ IN PRINT (1856-1929) CONTENTS 1925 December 15, Metronome: Development of the 436

i, 9 Jazz Band & North American Negro Music

January 3, Collier's: Who Invented J aZLe 372 December 19, Musical America: Jazz as Folk Music 437 January 3, Independent: Jazz Breaks into Society 372 December 23, New Republic: Lady Jazz in the Vestibule 437 January 10, Literary Digest: {Untitled Poem on Jazz] 373 December, Radio Broadcasting: Is the Popularity of | 439 January 10, Saturday Evening Post: The Reign of 374 Jazz Music Waning?

Reeds & Rhythm M.T.N.A. Proceedings: Jazz & American Music 440 January 25, New York Times: Soulful Youths Buy 381

Saxophones January, The Etude: The Dixie Piccolo 382 1926

February 7, Living Age: The Triumph of the Jungle 382 January 13, Nation: Music—Two Parodies 443

. January 13, New Republic: The Jazz Problem 444

aired Flutist: Symphonic Jazz January 20, Nation: Music Jazz Leaves Home 445 February, Musical Courier: In the Matter of Jazz 385 January 30, Literary Digest: King Jazz and the 446 February, Scribner: Ragtime, Jazz and High Art 386 Jazz Kings March 1, The Survey: J AZZ at Home 389 February 1, Metronome: Is Jazz Coming or Going? 449 March 7, Saturday Evening Post: The Lay of the Last 391 February 3, New Republic: Blue Notes 451

Minstrels ) February 13, Musical America: Jazz as Art Music 452

March 15, New York Times: [Untitled] 398 Piles Failure on Failure March, Harvard Gr aduate Magazine. Jazz 400 March 13, Literary Digest: The Descent of Jazz 454

March, Vanity Fair: George Gershwin 401 Upon Opera

April 11, Musical America: New American Drama 403 March 13, Living Age: Franz Lehar on Jazz 456

of Redemp ton Utilizes Jazz . March, Harper's: The Anatomy of Jazz 457

April 25, Musical America: Awaiting the Great America 405 April 5, Living Age: The Immortals Object 461

Opera: How Composers Are Paving the Way April 10, Independent: Jazz in High Places 462 April, Amer tcan Mag azine. Interesting People— 407 April, American Mercury: The Anatomy of Jazz, Part I

Meyer Davis Runs Sixty Two Jazz Orchestras April 17, New Statesman: Waltz-Kings & Jazz-King 463

May, Opportunity: Jazz a 408 April 24, Literary Digest: Free Trade or War for Jazz? 465 June 5, London Evening News: Interview with 410 April, American Mercury: The Anatomy of Jazz, 466

Otto Kahn April, Musical Quarterly: “Jazz” an Educational Problem 474

June 11, Musical Courier: Philadelphia Hears First 411 May 29, Literary Digest: The Quarries for Jazz 416

Complete Jazz Symphony June, Flutist: How to Understand and Enjoy Negro 476 June, Vanity Fair: The Cult of Jazz 412 Spirituals July, Music & Letters: Jazz 414 June, Nation: The Negro Artist and the Racial 478

August, The Sackbut: Jazz 419 Mountain 478

the “Charleston” ; , .

August, Vanity Fi air: The Black Blues 420 July 1, Metronome: Never Has Popular Music Been as 480

September 19, Literary Digest: On with 423 Classical as Jazz August 19, M. IC : The Spiritual September, The Sackbut: Music in America 424 rte Theis Own curser: She Spintuals Come a

November 4, New Rep ublic: Shake Your Feet 425 September 18, Musical America: Newman Excoriates 482

November 14, Musical America: Has Jazz Hurt 426 Jazz Concert Giving? Managers Say “No!” October 1, Metronome: American JazzIs Not African 483 November 14, Musical America: Songs Learnedfrom 428 October 16, Musical America: Negro Work-Songs ASA

Negro Nurse & Folk-Works Interest C. Stratton Prove Treasure House of Race Character November, American Mercury: The Jazz Bugaboo 428 October 16, Musical America: An Anthology 487

November, The Sackbut: The Jazz Myth 430 Concerning “Blues” November/December, Modern Music: The Day After 430 October 20, New Republic: Jerome Kern 488

Tomorrow | November 23, Musical Digest: Jazz is Assuming 489

December 9, Nation: From Spirituals to Swing 432 Prominence as an American Music Idiom December 9, Nation: The P edant Looks at Jazz 433 November, Monthly Musical Record: Jazz and the 490 December 12, Musical America: Orchestras, Oscillate 434 Modern Spirit

; azz 492

Between Beethoven &J aZL _ November, The Musical Opinion: Another Word 491

December 12, Musical America: Jazz Apotheosis is 435 about Jazz

Philadelphia Event November, Musical Opinion: What’s Wrong with J December 12, Musical America: “Syncopating 435 p ae “ Symphonist”

1X

CONTENTS KARL KOENIG November/December, Modern Music: The Blues 494 March, Chesterian: The First Jazz Operaand Operetta 531

November/December, Modern Music: Jazz Structure 495 May 9, New Republic: A New York Diary 533

& Influence May, North American Review: Jazzmania 533 December 1, New Republic: Jazz and Folk Art 497 June, Bookman: “Ballads, Songs & Snatches” 535

December 4, Musical News and Herald: The Source 499 July, Forum: Jazz Is Music 537

of the Negro Spiritual July, Life and Letters: Jazz 538

December 11, Christian Science Monitor: 1900 500 August 25, Musical America: Jazz Gets a National Twist 540

Musical Quarterly: Views and Reviews 500 August, Forum: Jazz is Not Music 542

Peabody Bulletin: Broadway Jazz 503 September, British Musician: A Syncopated Apology 544

Popular Mechanics: Where Jazz Comes From 504 (Part I)

1927 (Part II) October, Forum: Jazz 547 October, British Musician: ASyncopated Apology 545

January 8, CSM: Jazz Dressed Up & Uneasy 507 December, Forum: Is Jazz Music? 548 February 2, Outlook: America’s Folk Music 508 February 2, Outlook: Gershwin & Musical Snobbery 508

February 15, Life, Letters and the Arts: Newman 510 1929 on Jazz

March 26, The Literary Digest: Debunking Jazz 511 January 26, Musical America: This Question of 549

April, Sackbut: The American Intoxicant 512 Spirituals

May, The Etude: More “Hot & Dirty” Breaks 514 January, Journal of Education: The Age of Jazz 550 May/June, Modern Music: Copland’s Jazz Concerto 515 February 13, Nation: A Note on Gershwin 550

in Boston March 10, Musical America: Hitching Jazz to a Star 552

June, The Etude: What Effects Has Jazz upon Present 516 March, Musician: Jazz Knocks in Vain at Opera’s Door 553

Day Music & Composers March, Review of Reviewing: Jazz Arrives at the Opera 555 \July, Chesterian: Jazzing up the Symphony Orchestra 517 May 18, CSM: Stravinsky, Weill and Jazz 556

August 11, Musical Courier: A Medico on Jazz 519 June, British Musician: Paul Whiteman 557 September 3, Literary Digest: The Doctor Looks at Jazz August, British Musician: Jazz 558 September 10, CSM: Musical Hopes for Musical Comedy 520 September, The Etude: The Jazz Barrage 559 September, American Mercury: Aaron Copland and 521 September, The Etude: Jazz: Whither Bound? 559

His Jazz September, Music Teacher: George Gershwin 562

September, Chesterian: The Influence of Jazz 523 “Rhapsody in Blue”

October 22, CSM: The Standardization of Jazz 524 October, Musical Quarterly: Jazz Debit & Credit 566 October, The Metronome: Some English Obvservations 524 October/March, Catholic World: Black Music 573

Upon a First Hearing of a Jazz Band Concert November, Metronome: Making the First 576 December 14, New Republic: ANew York Diary 526 Talking Picture of a Jazz Orchestra

Music Quarterly: [Untitled] December, Musical Courier: Radio Interest to 577 Suppress Jazz

1928 Index of Names Index of Titles579 587

February 22, Outlook: Gershwin and Jazz 528

March 17, Literary Digest: When Europeans 530 Compose Jazz

Xx

ai PREFACE & This anthology was compiled to help the scholar working on the An early attempt to collect black melodies into one volume was origins and evolution of jazz. Research is tedious and time-con- put together by Lucy McKin Garrison, William Francis Allen, suming work. In the past, a researcher had to plow through innu- and Charles Pickard Ware. Entitled Slave Songs of the U.S., the merable publications in an almost haphazard search for materi- collection was published in 1867 and reprinted in 1951.

als. This anthology was designed to make available hundreds of Another area of black musical life is detailed in a articles related to early jazz, well indexed and joined between lengthy article in the Nation of May 1869. Written by a black

one set of covers. man, it describes a very popular form of entertainment of this The articles are presented in chronological order and time, the black minstrel show. This very informative and lengthy comprise, in effect, a history of jazz as it evolved. Beginning diary account of the life of a black minstrel during a three-year with accounts of black music in the pre-jazz era, continuing with period sheds a good deal of light on the activities and social an exploration of spirituals, and following with a description of atmosphere of a traveling minstrel show. ragtime, these articles allow us to learn about the development National interest in black music was given further emof jazz from its practitioners and informed audiences of the time. phasis in a piece that appeared in Dwight’s Journal of Music The collection includes materials through 1929. A second vol- (April 5, 1873) in which a concert tour by a group of singing

ume is planned to deal with the decade of the 1930s. students from Fisk University is described. The first excerpts date from just before the Civil War In the Shreveport, Louisiana, newspaper Sunday Judge and concern both the music and the musical activities of the black of May 4, 1899, we find the words ragtime and syncopation. Southern slaves. The first entry, from the Houma newspaper While this might not be the very first mention of these terms, it Ceres, is dated January 17, 1856. From this short article, we can does firmly establish their existence, use, and popularity by the ascertain that the slaves accompanied their funeral processions end of the nineteenth century. The publication of the composiwith music. In it, we read of “stentorian lungs who [sic] gave out tion Mississippi Rag by Krell, provides an early example of the from memory the words of a hymn suitable for the occasion” use of the word rag in a title.

and of “that hymn, mellowed by distance, the most solemn and Further references abound. The September 1899 issue yet the sweetest music that had ever fallen upon my ear.” of Popular Science contained an article entitled, “The Survival In another article entitled “Songs of the Blacks,” from of African Music in America.” The author concerns himself with Dwight's Journal of Music, we read that the music from the North African music and American popular quasi-black music, with was “somewhat cold in comparison with the music of the South- particular reference to the “coon” song. We find other articles ern Negro.” During this period, there were very few trained Ameri- on ragtime; one in particular traces the origins of ragtime to can musicians. American musical life depended on European mu- 1330 A.D.—a highly debatable point, but one that documents sic and European artists, and the influence they exerted on Ameri- the beginnings of a school of American musicology that acknowlcan composers was inestimable. The anonymous author of the edged the importance of American popular music.

article in Dwight’s calls for the development of a nationalistic Of course, not all the articles were laudatory. In the basis for an American musical culture; as an example, he de- March 1900 issue of The Musician, F. W. Root stated: “Ragtime scribes the musical ethos of the Southern slave. The slave’s mu- bears the same relation to the great things of the musical world sic, he contends, is best viewed within a religious context. The that Mother Goose has to do with the masterpieces of the world’s music is full of fervor, both in melody and poetry. It is filled with literature.”

vividness and imagination, qualities considered as a gift from Comparisons are seldom valid, but with the popularity

God. of ragtime, it was inevitable that it would be judged by compariAn early example of instrumental slave music was re- son with music of different structure and purpose. Ragtime was ported in the Charleston Mercury (South Carolina) of 1856. not yet an art form. A more scholarly essay about the origins of Crowds were “astonished” at five black slave children playing ragtime appeared in Metronome in 1901. In the July 1901 issue instruments, a skill they were not thought capable of at that time. of American Music, the controversy over ragtime was described The fame of this “Lilliputian Band” began gathering momen- as a “war on rag-time.” In an informative article with this title, tum. Their success and the techniques they evolved may be seen ragtime’s origins were traced to the black “breakdown,” and as major influences in the later development of the jazz band. some of the entertainers who played a role it is evolution were A very informative article entitled “Under the Palmetto” listed.

(Continental Monthly, 1863) describes the plight of the freed- The November 1901 issue of The Musician included man (ex-slave) during the tumultuous period just before and just an article entitled “Syncopated Rhythms vs. Ragtime.” In it, we after the Civil War. The article not only evokes the atmosphere read, “Syncopation is not used regularly in classical music but of the plantation at this time but also explains an important ele- as a relief or contrast to the monotony of regular rhythm.” It

ment in black religious music, namely, the “shout.” may be conjectured that the regular use of syncopation, not in Gradually, interest rooted in nationalistic considerations contrast or as relief, is a basic ingredient in ragtime and jazz. was being awakened in both Native American and black music. X1

PREFACE KARL KOENIG We see, by 1902, the further use and acceptance of syn- The Folk Lore Society of Texas Journal of 1916 contains an arcopated rhythm and the gradual decline of ragtime. This is pointed ticle by musicologist Dorothy Scarborough about her research out in an article in the October issue of The Musician in which on “the blues.”

the emphasis on syncopation is criticized as reflecting unrest in Gradually, blues and jazz were emerging as major forces the nation as well as in its arts. Another controversy was aired in in music. Discussions of ragtime began to diminish. We find a the article “Bastardization of Negro Music,” which appeared in number of articles in which the origins of the word jazz are sought.

the July issue of the Independent. In it we read that “America One such article is “The Appeal of the Primitive Jazz” (Literary fails to recognize the negro songs’ spurious quality and permits Digest, August 25, 1917). attempted imitations as the true article. This imitation is just one The development of jazz is the subject of an interesting

step in the evolution of an art.” article in the Literary Digest of April 26, 1919, “Stalebread’s

Minstrel shows were still popular in 1905. Innumer- Sadness Gave ‘Jazz’ to the World.” The author suggests that able descriptions of touring minstrel shows appeared in the news- “‘Stalebread” invented the word jazz and that the music was born papers of all the parishes of Louisiana. In one account published in the Tango Belt cabarets of New Orleans. (The Tango Belt was on September 22 in the Napoleanville Pioneer, John Robichaux on the north side of the French Quarter from Rampart Street down

was mentioned as the leader of the minstrel orchestra giving a Iberville Street. This was the location of many cabarets that feaperformance. Robichaux became a very popular band leader in tured floor shows with vaudeville performers and jazz music.) New Orleans and was a contemporary of Buddy Bolden. When vaudeville tours ended in New Orleans, many of the perLeading American scholars gradually embraced the formers remained to work in these cabarets. The article also disstudy of black music in the early decades of the 20th century. cusses jazz activity in Chicago.

One such scholar, H. E. Krehbiel, whose reputation as a musi- Another interesting article in the same issue of the Litcologist was international, studied black music both in America erary Digest is entitled, “A Negro Explains ‘Jazz.’ ” The word

and in Africa. jazz was now being accepted throughout the world, and its style

In the Crest Musical Bulletin of October 1907 (origi- became the prevailing sound in popular music. Also mentioned nally in the New York Sun), we find an article on the minstrel in the article are the performances of J. Reese Europe’s Band show and it history entitled “The Evolution of Minstrelsy.” This during their European tour.

is followed by another article, “Negro Minstrelsy from its Origin Music critics and historians were beginning to underto the Present Day” (January 1908 issue of the Crest Musical stand the importance of this new jazz style in American musical Bulletin), in which the first appearance of a minstrel troupe is composition. The use of jazz is explored in an article entitled

dated January 31, 1843. “Jazz and Ragtime Are the Preludes to a Great American Music” Important vehicles for popular music in the early days (Current Opinion, August 1920)

of our century were the various theater orchestras playing ac- By 1921, jazz had gained immeasurably in popularity. companiment for musical plays and shows in the emerging field We find many articles explaining and defending jazz, and others of vaudeville. In Jacob’s Orchestra and Band Monthly Journal, condemning it and calling for its banning. In the article “Jazz we find numerous articles on the theater orchestras and their in- Music,” in the February 5 issue of the New Statesman, we read: dividual characteristics. Also, in the show business journal Vari- “Our best musicians are not very familiar with the songs of the ety, we can trace the evolution of popular music and the devel- theatre and the music-hall or with the waltzes, one-step and foxopment of jazz as the type of popular music in greatest demand. trots of the dancing clubs or restaurants, but they are making a By 1911, we begin to encounter serious acceptance of great mistake if they imagine that the music is all bad or beastly.”

jazz by classical composers. We also find comparisons between “The Economic Interpretation of Jazz,” in the May 11 ragtime and classical music as well as discussions of the use of issue of the New Republic, calls attention to the relationship bejazz in classical forms and by classical composers. In 1912, in tween dancing and jazz, a relationship that has existed since the the May 25 issue of the Donaldsonville, Louisiana, newspaper birth of jazz. We read: “The problem of modern dancing is to The Chief, the early black music is labeled as “folk songs.” Other gain the maximum of motion in the minimum of space.” Thus, articles appeared in defense of ragtime as reflecting the people’s the shimmy—’a dance with a violent agitation of the entire body taste; as Farwell stated, “If there is a demand for Ragtime it must but in an excessively confined area”—had been banned in many be created by and for the public” (Musical America, September dance halls. The restrictions in terms of space that music and the

21, 1912). dance endured during this time account for the use of the term In 1914 attnetion still focused on ragtime, and we find economic in the article.

a number of definitions and explanations of its popularity be- In 1921, jazz had been around for some time and was tween 1913 and 1917. The black newspaper The Chicago De- beginning to lose impetus. But it got a jump start from Paul fender of May 1, 1915, published an article on classical com- Whiteman and his new Symphonic Jazz. As a living art, jazz was poser William Marion Cook. Within this essay is an excellent changing and developing. In the article “Plus De Jazz” (Septem-

discussion of the evolution of black music. ber 1921 issue of the New Republic) , there is a significant quote: In an article in the Ragtime Review (August 1, 1916), “The jazz movement is a ripple on a wave; the wave—the large we read: “Ragtime is now the accepted music of the general pub- movement which began at the end of the 19th century as a reaclic.” The current fashion is “To give the people what they want.” tion against realism and scientific paganism—still goes forward.” Xil

JAZZ IN PRINT PREFACE Moral and religious concerns are addressed in an article in The Ladies Home Journal (August 1921) entitled, “Does the great arts.” A preacher expressed the opinion that “jazz must Jazz Put the Sin in Syncopation?” Just as rap lyrics are being be analyzed as a combination of nervousness, lawlessness, primicriticized today, so was jazz attacked on moral grounds. Yet, we tive and savage animalism, and lasciviousness” (New York Times, also read in this article: “Syncopation is found in its most highly March 3). Others objected to the use of “jazzed up” classical developed forms in the music of the folk who have been held for musical themes on the grounds that classical music “has always years in political subjugation. It is, therefore, an expression in been approached with respect and even with reverence” (New music of the desire for that freedom which has been denied to its York Times, December 10) These opponents even objected to

interpreter.” the use of negro spirituals in a jazz context. A group of high The December issue of The Ladies Home Journal, how- school students from Chicago were quoted as saying, “We beever, contained a piece entitled “Unspeakable Jazz Must Go,” in lieve jazz music had done much to corrupt dancing and to make which we read that “jazz is worse than the saloon because it af- it impossible for young people to learn the more refined forms of fects our young people especially.” This statement, by dance dancing, at the same time vitiating their taste for good music” master F. T. Bott, expressed the opinion of various dance asso- (“Students in Arms Against Jazz, Literary Digest, March 18).

Ciations that actively worked against jazz as dance music be- While this controversy raged, an article appeared in The cause of what their members felt was an immoral association of Music Lover’s Magazine that began with a quote from Fritz dance with jazz. They declared, in no uncertain terms, “The road Kreisler: “There is no such thing as bad music. When it begins to

to hell is too often paved with jazz steps.” be bad, it ceases to be music.” The author of this article introIn the 1920s, jazz had reached a new zenith of popular- duced jazz by saying, “It is generally considered that the “bad ity, respectability, and controversy. The era that has become music’ of today is jazz; while it may be vulgar, vulgarity is not known as the Jazz Age actually began years earlier with the im- badness.” He stated, “Jazz’s origin comes from a composite of port of Tom Brown’s Band from New Orleans in 1915 and the the Negro and Gypsy expression of racial emotion.” And further,

arrival of Joe Oliver in Chicago in 1918. “while jazz is perfectly justifiable and legitimate, when [it] beWhen a few New Orleans musicians working in Chi- comes the insincere and degraded gesture of a presumably higher cago (Paul Barbarin, B. Johnson, and J. Noone) decided to form class, then it starts the downgrade to the pernicious. Jazz is not a band, they sent for Buddy Petit, who was considered the best bad itself, but becomes bad from the company it keeps. Jazz, jazz cornetist in New Orleans. Petit refused to join them but rec- when performed by the people of whose spiritual and mental ommended one Joseph Oliver, who eventually became the leader calibre [it] is the legitimate expression, 1s perfectly all right.”

of the most famous black jazz band in Chicago. The legendary This points up the essential difference between the jazz “King” Oliver Band of 1922 included Honore Dutrey (trombone), purist and the progressives in jazz. One article expressed the Baby Dodds (drums), Bill Johnson (banjo), Lillian Hardin (pi- belief that “jazz was only a process of music evolution that in ano), and a young cornet player from New Orleans named Louis time would take care of itself and would require no concerted

Armstrong. effort on the part of musicians either to kill or give extension of The political atmosphere of 1922 somewhat resembled life. Jazz would self-exterminate in its old form or self-assert what we are experiencing today: the uncovering of the Teapot into a new and higher order of continued musical existence” Dome scandal; the appointment of the first female U.S. Senator, (Melody, July). Mrs. W. H. Felton of Georgia; and the passage of the Nineteenth Jazz was evolving into a new and commendable style. Amendment, guaranteeing women’s suffrage. In the theater, Abie’s The president of the famous Ludwig Drum Company wrote: “Jazz

Irish Rose began a record run of 2,327 performances, and the ... 1S a form of improvising and added syncopation, a developPirandello play Six Characters in Search of an Author premiered ment of ragtime and syncopation. Radical ‘jazz’ is already gone, on Broadway. The Lincoln Memorial was dedicated on May 30 never to return.”

in Washington, D.C. Variety, the show business magazine, ran An article about the stage play Jazz—Our National the headline “Radio Is Sweeping the Country.” On August 28, Anthem (Musical Courier, May 4), provides many revelatory the first commercial was broadcast over WEAF in New York, observations. One is that jazz did not evolve in Europe, as so and on October 4, the first radio play-by-play coverage of the many other genres of music did. The second 1s that jazz no longer

World Series was hosted by Grantland Rice. depended on the performer’s “making up” the music as he went There was also a great deal of activity in jazz that year. along. It was now primarily in the hands of that newly invented Miff Mole went with the Original Memphis Five, and Duke creature, the arranger. Ellington made his first trip to New York City. Coleman Hawkins One of the leading musicologists of the time, Carl Engel, was with Mamie Smith’s Jazz Hounds, and the Friar’s Society discussed jazz in an article in The Atlantic Monthly. He was in

Orchestra first recorded for Gennett Records. favor of jazz purity and against imitations or the use of various The ongoing criticism of jazz music continued. The accessories like sandpaper, gongs, etc. He said: “Like any kind people who took a stand against jazz music and dancing were of music, jazz can be bad or good. Good jazz? There exists such particularly vocal. Laurette Taylor, a well-known actress of the a thing as good jazz music—good jazz a great deal better than time, maintained that jazz music “destroys one’s appreciation of bad playing of Beethoven. Good jazz is a composite, the latest _ phase of American popular music.” Xill

PREFACE KARL KOENIG Another leading educator, Professor Dykema, wrote: Another informative article was written by the emi“Jazz has its good points. It is not the principle of the thing that is nent scholar of early black music, Robert Emmett Kennedy. In

bad; it is more often the performers. Jazz had a new rhythm, a his article we read a quotation from Booker T. Washington: new arrangement of tones, a piquancy, a verve and stimulating “You [Kennedy] have the ethical understanding of the Negro qualities which are a real contribution to music. Jazz is being people. I feel that you have made a real contribution to the wrecked by nerve-wracking devices: cowbells, rattles, and fog literature regarding my race.” Amidst a wealth of information

horns are drowning out its merits.” in this article, one sentence emerges as prophetic: “Jazz is not During this year, there was also a running controversy going then, itis only changing; It is becoming far more musiabout the difference between jazz and rag. Paul Whiteman, the cal however and the slapstick effects are giving way to real popular syncopated orchestra leader, stated his opinion: “Rag musicianship.” and jazz are different. Ragtime pests are killing American music. We see from the articles written in this year that faSyncopation no longer rules American music. Syncopation, of mous classical composers such as Darius Milhaud, Claude which ragtime is the most familiar form, is an African inherit- Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, and Maurice Ravel embraced asance, descended either from Africa or through Spain. Syncopa- pects of jazz in their own music and recognized its importion is now retained as an ornament. Few dances today depend tance. We also see that jazz was being incorporated into other on it. The fox trot is to rhythms of 1, 2, 3, 4. To rag a tune, you art forms, especially poetry. destroy its rhythm and tempo and substitute for the first beat a 2/ There is an interesting article on Clarence Williams,

4 or 4/4 time and a syncopated rhythm.” the well-known black music publisher. From the earliest Perhaps the most interesting article of 1922 was by cakewalks, so popular in 1899, black music was arranged, Nicholas Taylor of Sierra Leone. It appeared in the Musical Cou- published, and played for dancing, and was performed by the

rier and was entitled “Jazz Music and Its Relation to African legitimate dance orchestras of the United States. While the Music.” In it, Taylor agreed with a statement in the Negro Musi- people who arranged this music were not necessarily jazz mucian of June 1921 to the effect that ragtime has genuine art pos- sicians, they were capable technicians, and the role of the jazz sibilities and one should “embrace, study, improve and utilize its arranger should never be underestimated. His role was central value; teach its source, history and influence.” Taylor addressed to bringing jazz to the largest possible audience.

the question of how far jazz is traceable to the influences of Af- National interest in jazz may be seen from the inrican music: “I shall leave out of consideration the question of crease in the number of jazz-related articles in popular magaidiom which at once decides that jazz music is not African mu- zines and newspapers. It reached its zenith in 1924, called by sic. The element of rhythm is more closely related to African many the jazz year of the Jazz Age.

music, but there is much more syncopation found in American In the January 1924 issue of the Musical Courier, we music than African music. Jazz is regular in its accents and the find reference to Vincent Lopez, a musician seldom mentioned rhythmical content of its bars; it is mostly 4 and 8 bar periods. in jazz circles. His orchestra, along with Whiteman’s, was a All of these are foreign to the African and scarcely recognized. leader in adapting classics to the jazz tempo.

In African music the use of irregular musical elements (syncopa- This was also the year that saw the beginning of the tion) is conceived differently and different in its use. ... At the exportation of American jazz. “The arrival of jazz in Europe present time jazz has nothing more or less in common with Afri- is an event in the history of music,” according to the article

Can music.” “Jazz Band” in the Musical Courier of February 21, 1924. Finally, an article on the origin of the blues brings to The reactions to the concert that marked this event were varlight the influence of vaudeville on this new idiom. The brothers ied.

Frank and Burt Leighton are said to have discovered the “coon In the March issue of Outlook, we read about jazz song” (the first being “Frankie and Johnny”) and were the earli- and radio, a partnership that became a happy marriage and

est singers of “blues” known to vaudeville. was one of the reasons that jazz increased in popularity. Jazz In summary, the year 1922 saw the maturing of arranged became the pop music of its day. Another interesting observajazz. Critics and scholars were beginning to examine the origins tion is, “You can scarcely listen in on the radio, especially in of jazz, the influences of this new type of music, and the value of the evening, without hearing jazz.”

its content. Jazz continued to influence classical composers.

The year 1923 saw the increased popularity of jazz. All Arnold Schoenberg remarked that, while listening to recordpopular musicians, black and white, were expected to be able to ings of the Whiteman band, he “was simply enraptured by some play it. Controversy continued about its use of classical melo- of the counterpoint, the rhythmic sophistication, and the in-

dies. Jazz was now both a noun and a verb. strumental effect.”

An interesting article in Melody, “Chicago Exponent of Another prophet of jazz was the conductor Leopold Jazz” by Frank Westphal, discussed many performers of jazz Stokowski, who was quoted as saying, “Jazz is here to stay. It and its instrumentation. He wrote: “The brass bass has supplanted is an expression of the times . . . already its vigor, its new the string bass because it is capable of giving a sustained tone; vitality, is beginning to manifest itself.” the saxophone in many cases has taken the place of the violin.” XIV

JAZZ IN PRINT PREFACE Mandatory reading is the article in the May issue of from black folk music. Yet another aspect of controversy was Etude entitled “The Musical Genius of the American Negro.” explored in the August Pictorial Review by authors Ethel Peyser Covered in this lengthy article are the slave period, leading black and Marion Bauer, who questioned what jazz is and where the composers, negro spirituals, and famous black singers, pianists, dances like the one-step and fox trot originated.

and composers. The blues were gaining notoriety, and the subject was

By 1924, what was called jazz had changed from a crude taken up in the article “The Black Blues,” by Carl Van Vechten, style of music to asymphonic style. The chronological ordering in the August issue of Vanity Fair. Van Vechten remarked that of the articles in this anthology will foster a concept of the pro- “Negroes, especially in the South, indulge in a great deal of what gressive evolution of jazz and an understanding of the semantics they themselves call ‘window dressing’ in order to mislead their

of the era. white employers. . . . This is why the Blues bulge with such The respected and popular music magazine Etude, re- happy phrases.” The same view was held by black poet Langston alizing the impact of jazz on the American music scene, pub- Hughes: “The Blues always impressed me as being sad, sadder lished an issue on jazz in August of 1924. It is a comprehensive even than the Spirituals, because their sadness is not softened discussion of the subject that includes articles written by the lead- with tears, but hardened with laughter, the absurd, incongruous

ing experts of the day. laughter of a sadness without even a God to appeal to.”

The year 1925 was one of the most productive years in The December 9 issue of the Nation contains one of the jazz history. The popularity of jazz remained high. It was not the earliest uses of the word swing. This article reviews a history-ofsymphonic jazz that thrived, however; rather, it was the music of jazz concert that included various performers, from Sonny Terry Paul Whiteman’s and Vincent Lopez’s dance music orchestras. doing blues to Count Basie and his orchestra. Conceived and In the article “Jazz Breaks into Society” (Independent, January produced by John Hammond, it was an important event that took 3), we find a brief outline of the latest season in jazz and a re- place at Carnegie Hall on December 23, 1925.

view of the high points of 1924. We discover that jazz orchestra- The whole world, then, was jazz crazy. In “Anatomy of tion had become more important and superseded the symphonic Jazz” (Harper’s Magazine, March 1926), Don Knowlton anajazz with the creation of “swing bands.” Jazz was still being played lyzed jazz and gave an excellent account of it. He accepted the by small combos, but the emphasis was now on larger orches- place of jazz in American society and wrote, “Jazz has won and

trated groups. held universal popularity and its own intrinsic qualities: fundaIn 1925, we find a wealth of articles on the anatomy, mental rhythm, simple harmonies, and standardized form.”

nomenclature, and performance of jazz. In “The Reign of Reeds During this year, jazz increasingly became acceptable and Rhythm” (Saturday Evening Post, January 10), we read about in high places, and classical melodies were orchestrated in the the role of the drum and what is called “the root of rhythm.” This jazz idiom. The negro spiritual arrived on the concert stage, and article is a “must” read, if only for the inventory of what a trap the composer Percy Grainger said, in the July 1 issue of Metrodrummer possesses—a list that is almost unbelievable. It also nome,” There never has been popular music that was so classicontains some great material on the saxophone. The article also cal... . the instrumentation of the modern jazz orchestra is in mentions many colorful instruments being used by jazz bands, every respect significant.”

The medium for the continued exposure of black music One of the strongest critics of jazz was the writer Ernest and jazz was still the minstrel show. A very good description of Newman, whose opinions are informative and give us valuable the actual performance is given in the article “The Lay of the insight into the intelligent opposition jazz faced at this time.

Last Minstrels” in the March 7 issue of The Saturday Evening Franz Lehar, however, came out in defense of jazz. Im-

Post. provisation was introduced into the curriculum at the Peabody The Harvard Graduate Magazine of March included Conservatory. Articles abounded on the role of rhythm in jazz __ an article entitled “Jazz” in which the subject of dancing in rela- and the importance of W. C. Handy in the development of blues. tion to Jazz is discussed. “Dance has always played an important The American composer Aaron Copland expressed his ideas and role in instrumental music.” Needless to say, early jazz began as opinions in an article entitled “Jazz Structure and Influence” dance music, not music for mere listening. There was a great (Modern Music, November-December). He stated, “Modern jazz demand at this time for dance orchestras that could play jazz. begins in the fox-trot.” The important word is modern. Copland Certain impresarios, among them Meyer Davis and Roger Kahn, made a distinction between what he called early jazz and what

organized a number of orchestras for bookings. came afterwards. Discussions continued and so did the music. One controversy during this evolutionary time in jazz The year 1927 saw further diversification of jazz and music was described as follows: “Ts it not possible to write jazz its use in classical music. We can mention Eric Coates’ “Syncomusic that combines the qualities of good dance music from the pated Phantasy,” as well as George Gershwin’s Concerto in F point of view of the dancer with that of good music from the and Ernest Krenek’s Jonny Spielt Auf. The musical world, both point of view of the musician?” (Music & Letters, July, 1925). jazz and classical, was “set on its ears” with the premier of George Another issue was taken up by Anthony Clyne in the August is- Antheil’s Ballet Mecanique, a work that made the jazz/trap/ persue of Sackbut: “Rag-time is not exactly an ancestor of jazz but cussion equipment seem like a bunch of baby rattles.

an elder relative.” The author believed that America was devel- Jazz musicians had, by now, evolved a language of their oping a national music of its own from ragtime and jazz and not own, and gradually their vocabulary crept into the English lanXV

PREFACE KARL KOENIG guage. See “More ‘Hot and Dirty’ Breaks” in the May issue of Spaeth (The L:iterary Digest, August 11)commented: “ Etude. This article also gives explanations of jazz special effects: ‘Jazz’ is a verb rather than a noun.” This seems correct, but the

glisses, weird notes, mutes, etc. author called some of the syncopation of Beethoven, Schumann, Many informative articles were written in the 1920s; many _ etc., “jazz.” While syncopation is an element of jazz, it is not the

of them are required reading and are therefore included in this only one. Would one call Machaut a jazz composer because he anthology. One such article is “The Influence of Jazz,” from the _ was one of the earliest users of syncopation? Chesterian of September. In it the following point is made: “The “The Age of Jazz” (Journal of Educators CIX, January), development of music... is dependent on the freedom from arti- which begins the collection of articles from 1929, stated that “there ficial local rhythm. Nations which have their characteristic na- _is nothing new in jazz.” It includes a short but accurate outline of tional rhythms have contributed less to the literature of music than jazz development.

any others.” R. H. Wallstein wrote an article in the January 26 issue of

In the articles from 1927, we find references to some jazz Musical America entitled “This Question of Spirituals.” He stated, tunes, classics using jazz style, and books on early jazz; many of “The Negro spiritual proceeds directly from the German folk songs

these are hard to find. They should prove invaluable. and hymn tunes brought to America in the late 18th and 19th cenIn 1928, Gershwin’s Concerto in F was again pro- _ turies by non-conformist Baptist and Methodist ministers.” The grammed. Many of the critics who reviewed this performance wrote controversy over the negro spiritual continued to rage and was negative reviews. Evaluating their opinions from our current van- examined here.

tage point, we begin to question the validity of their perceptions. As we trace the evolution of jazz, we read, in the FebruMaurice Ravel remarked that he used jazzidiomsin“my ary 13 issue of the Nation, that “American popular music has suflast violin and piano sonata—from the point of view of a French- fered a dismal slump.” In the course of the article, mainly devoted man.” European composers saw the possibilities of American jazz _ to the work of Gershwin, we read of the development of pop muand did not hesitate to incorporate it into their music. Only forthe _ sic; credit is given to Jerome Kern, the inclusion of jazz on the American composers did jazz continue to be steeped in contro- Broadway stage, and the emergence of Tin Pan Alley.

versy. Yet, there persisted the conviction among American jazz The Catholic World of October/March contained the armusicians that foreign musicians could not play jazz with feeling. _ ticle “Black Music.” The author discussed black poets and the “Think of a spectacled German gentleman trying to compose _ lyrics of black music. One interesting quote from McCaulay main‘blues.’ What does he know about the half-desperate laughter of tained that “Poetry declines as civilization advances, and therethe negro torn by grief?” The argument is weak and was quoted _ fore the inspiration of the Afro-American naturally grows weaker.” and attacked in the March 17 article in Literary Digest, “When The article contains other, equally controversial statements.

Europeans Compose Jazz,” as well as in the article “The Negro Probably the most profound article is “Jazz, Debit and

Spiritual—Fad or Folk Music?” Credit” in Musical Quarterly of October. A lengthy article, it covIn an article entitled “Jazzmania,” in the May issue of _ ers both sides of the question very well. Without going into needNorth American Review, Sigmund Spaeth approached the subjectin less details, one may wonder which side of the issue is better repa very scholarly way. He stated: “Jazz is not a musical form, itis a resented.

method of treatment. It is possible to take any conventional piece of About the only medium not hitherto discussed is the music and ‘jazz it up.’ “ He further asserted that jazz is “the distor- | movies. The first talking picture in which a jazz orchestra appeared

tion of the normal or conventional in music.” The first statement was the important movie The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson. shows that he understood jazz practices. One would like to ask Mr. The reader will notice that many of the early articles inSpaeth if classical composers’ use of the variation form in contem- _ cluded in the present volume do not concern jazz directly; howporary twentieth-century music would also fit his second statement. ever, they serve to present a solid foundation for understanding Is not art a manner of life consistently at war with conservative tradi- the American music scene from which Jazz evolved. It is the editor’s

tion? This is a very interesting article and brings to light many facts hope that this anthology will serve not only as a reference but as a which one can relate to the music of today. Spaeth also remarked, history of jazz and its influences. A second volume dealing with “Monteverdi becomes perhaps the first of all jazz composers.” the music of the 1930s is planned. After 1939, the progress of jazz Paul Whiteman stated, “A jazz orchestra that people might — is well documented in print and on records. The scholar must have

hear without dancing was something new once.” This quotation, patience and imagination to collect the vast amount of material from the May 9 issue of The New Republic, appeared in a piece concerning the modern era of jazz. One day, the search will be as entitled “A New York Diary.” Jazz was no longer just dance mu- simple as turning on a computer and surfing the internet.

sic; it was evolving. Whiteman’s jazz became “Sweet Jazz.” Finally, it is important to acknowledge that some of the The July issue of Life & Letters, in a piece called “Jazz,” material in these original source articles appears quite offensive published the interesting opinions of a 1928 critic writing about by today’s standards. During the early days of our country’s hisearly jazz. He said, “The importance of the Jewish element in jazz tory, especially in the period from the Civil War to the end of the cannot be too strongly emphasized and the fact that nine-tenths of | 1920s, there was no civil rights legislation, and a great deal of the jazz tunes are written by jews.” Further along, he noted, “The _ racial prejudice and bigotry existed. The paternalistic and condeorchestration . . . is perhaps the most intrinsically pleasing instru- scending attitudes toward black people (and some other ethnic

mental sound since the Haydn orchestra.” groups) common during this period are reflected in a number of Xvi

JAZZ IN PRINT PREFACE the articles, and sound abhorrent to modern ears. The tran- In compiling this volume, it has been the editor’s wish and scriptions of black speech found in some articles would be mandate to present an accurate, authentic, historical anthology. It is judged demeaning today. Many articles in the anthology em- hoped that readers will not be offended by the reproduction of hisploy terms that are now considered racial slurs. But we must torical material that reflects the shortcomings of a less enlightened realize that the implications of words change with time. At era but will view it in historical perspective, for this anthology is one time, jazz was considered a dirty word and was used to meant to enhance and enrich the life of scholars and students throughdescribe sexual activities. We wouldn’t dream of using a term out the English-speaking world. like coon, but “coon songs” are an important part of jazz’s

background. The word negro is not in favor today and has Karl Koenig

been replaced by terms such as black and African-American, Arbita Springs, Louisiana but it was an accepted descriptive word for many of the years covered in this collection.

XVil

| BLANK PAGE

af 1856-1899 January 17,1856 ¢ Houma (La.) Ceres SLAVE FUNERAL The procession had moved, and its route led withinafew yards __ suitable for the occasion. The southern Negroes are proverbial

of the mansion. There were at least one hundred and fifty Ne- for the melody and compass of their voices and I thought that groes arranged 4 deep, and following a wagon in which was _ hymn, mellowed by distance, the most solemn and yet the sweetplaced the coffin; down in the entire length of the line, at inter- est music that had ever fallen upon my ear. The stillness of the vals of a few feet, on each side, were carried torches of the night and strength of their voices enabled us to distinguish the resinous pine, and here called light wood. About the center was _air at the distance of half a mile.

stationed the black preacher, a man of gigantic frame and sten- (From Morris & Willie’s Home Journal, 1856) torian lungs who gave out from memory the words of a hymn

November 15, 1856 ¢ Dwight’s Journal SONGS OF THE BLACKS The only musical population of this country are the Negroes of they have forgotten their music, their pianos are unopened, and the South. Here at the North we have teachers in great numbers, their harps are unstrung. who try to graft the love of music upon the tastes of our colder Compared with our taciturn race, the African nature is full race. But their success is only limited. A few good singers are of poetry and song. The Negro is a natural musician. He will produced, and some fine instrumental performers, but the thing _learn to play on an instrument more quickly than a white man. never becomes general. Music may perchance be the fashion They have magnificent voices and sing without instruction. They for a winter. But it does not grow to a popular enthusiasm. It |= may not know one note from another yet their ears catch the never becomes a passion or habit of the people. We are still strains of any floating air and they repeat it by imitation. The dependent on foreigners for our music. Italian singers fill our —_— native melody of their voices falls without art into the channel

concert rooms, and German bands parade our streets. of song. They go singing to their daily labors. The maid sings Throughout the country the same holds true. Singing mas- about the house, and the laborer sings in the field. ters itinerant from village to village, to give instruction in the Besides their splendid organs of voice, the African nature 1s tuneful art, but the most they cdn muster is a score or two of _ full of poetry. Inferior to the white race in reason and intellect, men and maidens to sing in church on Sunday. Brother Jonathan they have more imagination, more lively feelings and a more is awkward at the business, and sings only on set occasions. Let | expressive manner. In this they resemble the southern nations him be enrolled in the ranks of the choir, and placed in the front of Europe. Their joy and grief are not pent up in the heart, but of the gallery, and he will stand up like a grenadier, androll out —_ find instant expression in their eyes and voice. With their imagi-

lustily the strains of a psalm. But all his singing is done in pub- nation they clothe in rude poetry the incidents of their lowly lic. He makes little music at home or at most only on the Sab- _ life, and set them to simple melodies. Thus they sing their humble

bath day. During the week his melodies are unheard. He does _loves in strains full of tenderness. We at the North hear these not go to his labor singing to himself along the road. Nosongof songs only as burlesqued by our Negro Minstrels, with faces home or country, of love or war, escapes his lips as he works in blackened with charcoal. Yet even thus all feel that they have his shop or follows the plough. Our people work in silence, like rare sweetness and melody. convicts in a penitentiary. They go to their tasks, not with a free Mingled with these love songs are plaintive airs which seem and joyous spirit that bursts into song, but with a stern, reso- to have caught a tone of sadness and pathos from the hardships lute, determined air, as if they had a battle to fight, or great | and frequent separation of their slave life. They are the Songs

difficulties to overcome. of their Captivity, and are sung with a touching effect. No song Even the gentler sex, who ought to have most of poetry and —of aconcert room ever thrilled us like one of these simple Afrimusic, seem strangely indifferent to it. Young ladies who have __can airs, heard afar off in the stillness of a summer night. Sailspent years in learning to play on the piano, and sing Italian —_ ing down the Mississippi, the voyager on the deck of the steamer airs, drop both as soon as they are married. Enter theirhousesa may often hear these strains, wild, sad and tender, floating from few months later, and they tell you that they are out of practice; the shore. 1

1856-1899 NOVEMBER 22, 1856 © CHARLESTON MERCURY But it is in religion that the African pours out his whole —_ Rhine. The Swiss shepherds sings on the highest passes of the voice and soul. A child in intellect, he is a child in faith. All Alps, and the peasant of Tyrol fills his valleys with strains wild the revelations of the Bible have to him a startling vivid- —_as the peaks and the torrents around him. But Americans, though ness, and he will sing of the judgment and the resurrection surrounded with everything to make a people happy, do not show with a terror or a triumph which cannot be concealed. In —_ outward signs of uncommon cheerfulness and content. We are religion he finds also an element of freedom which he does —_an anxious, careworn race. Our brows are sad and gloomy. Songnot find in his hard life, and in these wild bursts of melody _less and joyless, the laborer goes to his task. This dumb silence he seems to be giving utterance to that exultant liberty of is ungrateful in those who have such cause for thankfulness. soul which no chains can bind, and no oppression subdue. |§ Americans are the most favored people on earth, and yet they As hundreds assemble at a camp meeting in the woods, and are the least expressive of their joy. So that we almost deserve join in the chorus of such a hymn as “When I canread my __ the severe comment of a foreigner, who on seeing the great outtitle clear, to mansion in the skies,” the unimpassioned hearer — ward prosperity, and yet the anxious look of the people, said is almost lifted from his feet by the volume and majesty of __ that: “in America there was less misery, and less happiness, than the sound. No voices of well trained choir in church or ca- in any other country on earth.” thedral, no pealing organ, nor mighty anthem, ever moved Let us not be ashamed to learn the art of happiness from the us like these voices of a multitude going up to God under __ poor bondsman at the South. If slaves can pour out their hearts the open canopy of heaven. Blessed power of music! that —_in melody, how ought freemen to sing! If that love of music can raise the poor and despised above their care and pov- _ which is inborn in them, could be inbred in us, it would do erty. It is a beautiful gift of God to this oppressed race to — much to lighten the anxiety and care which brood on every face

lighten their sorrows in the house of their bondage. and weigh on every heart. The spirit of music would beguile the Might not our countrymen all learn alesson from these simple —_toilsome hours, and make us cheerful and happy in our labor.

children of Africa? We are a silent and reserved people. For- Nor would this light and joyous heart make us too gay, and eigners think us taciturn and gloomy. So we are, compared with so lead to folly and frivolity. On the contrary, it would prove a the European nations. The Germans sing along the banks of the _ friend to virtue.

November 22, 1856 © Charleston Mercury THE LILLIPUTIAN MUSICIANS The South Carolina Institute Hall has been constantly crowded man just alluded to, to read a little. On his return to his master’s to witness the astonishing performances of five little Negro plantation, he took charge of another boy, Sanders, the second boys, belonging to Col. J. B. Richardson, a wealthy Carolina of the band, and gave him a fiddle and bow, taught him the planter residing in Sumter District. As soon as it was known notes, and in one month he could play very well. Sanders comthat these boys would perform, and this liberal gentleman had —=smenced learning the flute last summer. placed them in the hands of the Directors of the institution for After teaching Sanders to play upon the violin, Robin took exhibition, and that without consideration, simply witha view _ several other boys under his instruction, but could not succeed to the benefit of the Institution, and as an incentive toour slave — in teaching them. Edward and Henry were next placed in his holders to follow up and develop another resource we have at _—_ charge. Edward is nine years and Henry eight. Their progress home, the crowd poured into the Hall, and over five hundred —__ was very slow, and they were accordingly placed under the tu-

tickets more were sold the first night than upon the first ition of an experienced music master in the city; but, after a

night of last year’s fair. trial of two months, he gave them up, and said nothing could be The interest evinced by all who have heard these prodigies done with them. They returned to Robin last February. Edward has induced us to present to our readers, this morning, a short —_ now plays well upon the violin, and Robin taught him the gui-

history of the lads. Robin, the eldest, and the leader of the tar in one month. “Band,” is just 13 years old, and we should judge, of pure Afri- Henry also performs well upon the violin. Robin taught him can descent. At a very early age, he exhibited his fondness for __ the notes. music, by making corn stalk fiddles, peach and switch bows, March, the youngest of the Band, is not yet 8 years old, and and flutes of the common reed. His next step was the manufac- is now learning the violin, but does not play. His performance ture of a rude violin, using a cypress shingle, and horse hair __ with the triangle is admirable. strings; the bass string was a piece of waxed twine. At this time, Robin, the eldest and most prominent character, took up the a gentleman of Charleston, a friend of Col. Richardson, induced —_ Cornet-a-piston last summer. He is in every respect an uncomhim to send Robin to the city, to receive proper musical instruc- = mon boy, possessing certain traits of character that are very retion. In four months he performed well upon the violin, and = markable. His habits and disposition are those of the unciviunderstood his notes, had been kindly taught also, by the gentle- —_ lized African, and every action is in character. 2

AUGUST 1893 ¢ CONTINENTAL MONTHLY 1856-1899 Henry, we have just remarked, is about eight years of age. Col. Richardson will receive, as he richly deserves, not only He is a half brother of Robin. No human being can control him _ the thanks of the Directors of the Institute, for his liberality in

but his master, Col. Richardson. placing this “Lilliputian Band” at their disposition, but that of Sanders is of a mild and gentle disposition, very submissive the community at large, for thus developing another resource to his master, but never succumbs to one of his own race. Sand- of great pleasure and usefulness, which the south has so long ers picked last December, when the Cotton, as is well knownto neglected, and for which they have often to pay heavily to unall planters, is quite light, one hundred and fifty pounds aday. —_ deserving foreigners. He is considered a prime boy with the hoe.

August 1863 © Continental Monthly

UNDER THE PALMETTO |

[Only the section of the article on music is reprinted here. See of the children as a set of “ragged, dirty, and shoeless urchins, original article for further text on plantations, freedmen, reli- who came in shyly, oftentimes running away till they were

gion, etc.—KK] chased and captured, dressed into line with much difficulty, and,

then, shuffling their flat feet, clapping their hands, and drawing

Negro “Shouts” and Shout Songs out in a monotonous sort of chant something about the River

Jawdam.” Such a sketch conveys no idea of the shout as it may At the “praise meetings” on the plantations, one of the elders —_ be witnessed to day on any of the plantations among the Sea usually presides, and conducts the exercises with great solem- _Islands. You will find the children clean, and, in general, neatly nity. Passages of Scripture are quoted from memory, and the — dressed, coming into the room when asked by the superintenhymns, which constitute the principal feature of the meeting, dent, rendering of their impressive and oftentimes pleasing are deaconed off as at church. Sometimes the superintendent or |= melodies in a manner seldom surpassed in our schools at the one of the teachers attends these meetings, and is thenexpected = North, while their “shouting” reveals a suppleness of limb and to conduct the exercises and make an address. After the praise —_ peculiar grace of motion beyond the power of our dancing masmeeting is over, there usually follows the very singular and __ ters to impart. impressive performance of the “shout” or religious dance of the There are many features of the Negro shout which amuse us Negroes. Three or four, standing still, clapping theirhands and _ from their strangeness; some, also, that strike the observer as wholly beating time with their feet, commence singing in unison one absurd. Yet, viewed as a religious exercise—and in this light it is of the peculiar shout melodies, while the others walk round in a always considered by the older Negroes—I cannot help regarding ring in single file joining also in the song. Soon those in the it, in spite of many of its characteristics, as both a natural and a ring leave off their singing, the others keeping it up the while _ rational expression of devotional feeling. The Negroes never inwith increased vigor, and strike into the shout step, observing dulge in it when, for any reason, they feel downhearted or sad at most accurate time with the music. This step is something half- —_— their meetings. The shout is a simple outburst and manifestation way between a shuffle and a dance, as difficult for an uniniti- —_—of religious fervor—a “rejoicing in the Lord’”—making a “joyful

ated person to describe as to imitate. At the end of each stanza _ noise unto the God of their salvation.” : of the song the dancers stop short with a slight stamp on the last The words of the shout songs are a singular medley of things note, and then, putting the other foot forward, proceed through _ sacred and profane, and are the natural outgrowth of the imperthe next verse. They will often dance to the same song for twenty fect and fragmentary knowledge of the Scriptures which the or thirty minutes, once or twice, perhaps, varying the monotony — Negroes have picked up. The substitution for these crude proof their movement by walking for a little while and joining in ductions of appropriate hymns, would remove from the shout the singing. The physical exertion, which is really very great, — that which is now the chief objection to it in intelligent minds, as the dance calls into play nearly every muscle of the body, and would make of the dance, to which the Negroes are so much seems never to weary them in the least, and they frequently attached, a useful auxiliary in their religious culture. The tunes keep up a shout for hours, resting only for brief intervals be- to which these songs are sung, are some of them weird and tween the different songs. Yet, in trying to imitate them, I was — wild—“barbaric madrigals”—while others are sweet and imcompletely tired out in a very short time. The children are the — pressive melodies. The most striking of their barbaric airs it best dancers, and are allowed by their parents to have ashout at would be impossible to write out, but many of their more comany time, though, with the adults, the shout always follows a |= mon melodies are easily caught upon being heard a few times. religious meeting, and none but church members are expected §_ This music of the Negro shout opens a new and rich field of to join. It is to one of these shouts of the Negro children that Mr. | melody—a mine in which there is much rough quartz, but also Russell alludes in his diary when describing a visit which he — many veins of sparkling ore. paid to a plantation near Charleston in April, 1861. He speaks What, for example, could be more animated, and at the same time more expressive of the thought conveyed in the verse than 3

1856-1899 AUGUST 1863 ¢ CONTINENTAL MONTHLY the following chorus?—the introduction to which is a sort of | whatever with each other. The “Parson Fuller” referred to is the

recitative or chant: Rev. Dr. Fuller, of Baltimore, who owns a plantation on one of

yo eee eS ere eee the islands:

'da_ like to die as a Je-sus die, An’ he Dar’s a meet-in’ here to - night, Dar’s a

I SE Sy Ke Se =. a a a ee ee ce die wid a free-ly good will, he— _lay in de grabe, an’ he meet-in’ here to - night, Dar’s a meet-in’ here to -

—

at -,.0 alt, tal- be

. = a 1. Je - sus myall to heavenis gone, |

, ‘ tf ' f ¢

He gets youdownat de foat-y of de hill,

,SSS Fine. — ab:"meee in we | ,eee -i fe whom 1 fe myhopesupen, 1

D.C.

ge fey fp

Hard to rise a - gain. —~)—. 4— While the fitting together of couplets and refrains almost at random leads to some odd and incongruous combinations, upon the whole one is surprised to find with what good taste the mo-

1 Je- sus, my al} to heavenis gone, saic is made, especially when the singing is led by an old-time He whom J fix my hopes up-on, leader with a wide range of couplets to choose from. Some of

ee these men when confronted by an inquirer with note book and

tin? ——* Tote eben at pencil can hardly recall half a dozen of these stanzas; but in the all fervor of their worship they not only remember them by the Hal - m 5 - - " ° ral : i - Ae ft score, but by a sort of instinct rather than taste or judgment fit

aes at Ye vat ee together words from different sources without a second’s re-

24 |

ae=om 32 flection or hesitation. It comes to passtosometimes that the ee words of a certain hymn attach themselves a given refrain so He whom I fix my hopes up - on that one rarely hears them separately. Here is one which I do

¥ nopes Ne not remember to have heard except with Jerusalem, My DAC,

SS ———— ad ~ =. = =| Happy Home. Hard to rise a - gain,

5

NOVEMBER 1893 « NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE 1856-1899 Comfort in Heaven I Want to Go Where Jesus Is

7S SSS

REFRAIN. , REFRAIN.

WA. Sh — pane ~

{There’sa There'sgloa -comfort in And heav-en, And _ I I want to go wherejJe-sus is, To ry in heav-en, a Fine.

) | Ts eee tee «3? ‘— 2‘ Se ae eeBn ee eee ~7 ore 8 BE cee AN

| Paley See Se el ee a SR SON GS a ||

feel it im my soul, glo-ry hal-le-lu-jah! play up-on the gol - den harp, glo-ry in my soul,O glo-ry hal- le -lu-jah! °

a) ae — Tosa-lem, play uponhapthe py gol-den harp, .... rumy home,Name {Wan shallmy la - bors have an end? Thy —}-$—_}-—. — D.C. : aa ae jt To play up-on the gol- den harp. _ ev-erdearto me, O glo-ry hal-le-lu-jah! va — pep men] —

While a majority of the Negro melodies are in minor keys, z. Je chem] all, to eee up won, Te the use of the major is far from being unusual, and is often very

. .impossible . . . . . @to sat RRpSs eo sennee SeSS3ee| is imagine a moreEn appropriate musical

striking. A song called Wake Up, Children is of this character. It 8 ee oe :

awaken. }

setting for the opening words, or a clearer, heartier call to play up-on the gol - den harp.

~~ , ,a i ot Wake Up, Children A good, ringing, hortatory hymn is entitled

—— nan , ,REFRAIN. 0 »- SSS 0 watewpetildenmateep! m WP Snail OE SE © Se eee

Fee ee eee Come a - long, come a- long, I am

corN0mm miSO! wmAn"alse eee aE

wave up! AndiT willsere that thy -ing God

ame’ (02 ED OC, Ee ere

Oo the rad Seren em FINg. =~

Sa-tan tho’t hadeat me fast dl Cn AS | SAS SANT SS , : + Old {9M Stina etshetad

yop eh friends, will you go? J was but

will serve that liv - ing God. a 28 Ara | a ee... ME Jnane SR nes ee

The joys of heaven, prominent among which is its music, young when J be - gun, And afford material for several songs. at ; ee YC.

now my race is near-iy run.

25

1856-1899 NOVEMBER 1893 ¢ NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE A cheerful song, with a strong major melody, is Down by the

River, The Baptists use it at immersion; but it is not confined to ~

such occasions. x. Them Metho-dists and Baptists can't: a -

REFRAIN. ios reece aiiareninened Down by the River

d: ansvay 7 =yenrenreian ih ——aeee a SS cance meee G coos oemioees eee" as es Soe ae Som eee

Yes, we'll gain this world, Down by the riv -er,

= stop you long tongue from tell - ing = ae =aa An’| A A Tet A aA A nt

We'llgain this world,Down by the riv - er-side.

lies,And we'llall a- rise and go.

—— —— —?- I used sometimes to preach in a little church built by the col-

1. And if those mourner’s would be - lieve, ored people, the result of no small sacrifice and hard work. Besides the long Sunday services, held on stated Sundays once a

= ~S—-h>-2 -*#—*# oe month and whenever they had a preacher, they had innumerable

Se - night meetings at “early candle-lighting.” For a bell they had a Down by the riv-er, The gift of life they discarded circular saw from the saw mill, fastened to a tree before D.C. the door; and when I came tn Uncle Joe would say: “Here comes

pete pool now; I'll go outand an’brought knockthe onpeople de saw.” The saw ~ —"Mistah ~ was aBahton very good church bell, straggling in would re - ceive, Down by the riv-er-side. from all about. We would spend some time singing while they gathered. The young people wanted book hymns, and had their Many songs have a line three times repeated, with a fourth — way in part; but the older people were pleased that I liked the but little changed, and thus build a song out of meager material; others, and I got many of them in written form. One that was often but the tunes are usually distinct. A very good one of this sort, sung in those meetings was Pray On. It is a hymn with a fixed

and with a good tune, is refrain and variable stanzas, and is also a family hymn.

There was a great revival in the tobacco barn, and the meetings

The Winter Soon Be Over continued late into the night. They were late in beginning, for

a —_ those who attended were working people, and the “early candle

__ Pray On —— SS |_Rarrain.

oS lighting” proved very late for first a start. However, those who came sang, and there was something going on some nights from O the win-ter, thewin-ter, the

iELPray O hal- ly- hal-le — Oo —on,broth-ers, J, 220 SEE SR ae

-—y3- —— —_*

The win = fers theSLwin fhe A Se ten Se a Se Se os— aes [i e——0-— 0 — 4 “_— ee SSS lu - jah! Pray on,broth-ers, Is win - ter soon be oo = ver, chil-len, (x VaFine.

————

The win - ter, the win - ter, the ain't too late. late. 3.1 washed my

SSS 9

A A A aS | Le! . a | A ee ee oo win-ter soon be o - ver, chil -len, head = in. the mid - night dew;

And we'll all a - rise and go. The morn-ing stars a wit - ess, too. 26

NOVEMBER 1893 © NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE 1856-1899 dusk till nearly daylight; for on the evenings when there was a As cold weather came on, she passed away, and we sent her good bountiful of tough old “mourners” who had been there once —_ body to the Northern home whence she had come too late. We a year or so for a long time, there was a siege. The faithful called = hada simple little service in the chapel, and a company of the it “Marching Round Jericho,” when, clearing the benches away, colored people sang the clear, bell-like notes of the song, which they marched round and round the mourners’ bench singing and __ ever since has seemed to me most beautiful, with its ringing, stopping at intervals for prayer or to shout out, “Believe, mourn- —_—_ confident, hopeful and inspiring words— ers!” Thomas Hughes, the genial author of Jom Brown, was mak-

ing his last visit to this country at the time, and had never been at Lord, I’m almost home, I’m almost home!

such a meeting. He made me a brief visit, and I took Lord, ’m almost home, For to ring dem charming bells. him there. He was a reverent and interested spectator, seeing

the real spirit of worship that underlay some of the odd pro- The Negro hymns seldom make allusion to the Bible as a ceedings, and also having an eye to all that was new to him in __ source of inspiration. They prefer “heart religion” to “book re-

the situation. ligion.” In some places where an ordinary hymn would During this long revival, which lasted a good many weeks, Strengthen assurance by a promise of God in Holy Scripture, a bright young lady lay dying of consumption inthe largehouse — the Negro appeals to his own revelation from the Lord. The on the hill. As she lay at night near her open window she en- following hymn is an illustration: joyed hearing the colored people sing, and there was one hymn

that touched her heart with its sweetness and pathos. As she We're S f the Praying Peopl

felt her own time “drawing near” and began to listen for the OTE DOME OF TNE LTAYINE ECOPLE

“charming bells,” this hymn grew more dear to her; and as the , REFRAIN. colored people came to know that she cared for it, they grew accustomed to singing it each night, with all its stanzas, for her

benefit. We’resome of the pray- ing peo- ple, Night after night I heard this song—an invitation to the sin- p

SSS] Foo See a eee = 6 == SSS eS oe

ner, a glad anticipation of heaven, and a salute from the humble

but kind hearted worshippers as they closed their meeting in —— — the tobacco barn, to the dying girl in the big house on the hill, We're some of the pray -ing peo - ple, who listened nightly for this greeting.

Dem Charming Bells We're some of the pray -ing peo - ple,

s- Come a- long,-my broth-er, come 2- For my Lord told me 0,

long, For yourtimeis drawing near; Andthe “>

1, Andmust I be = to judg-ment brought,to

; REFRAIN. td ga Se ES a Se. DL. es | | an - gels say there’s nothingan-swer to do, But to | a re in that day?And must I he to

ring them charming bells-Lord,’m al- most judgment brought, to an-swerin that day?

ae TS FS OS a a we...” — nae home! I’m almost home! Lord,I’m al - most I have another Alabama hymn [Wear a Starry Crown, next page] which, like the above, is made up of a threefold repetition

Fe a es ee ee a oe || and a concluding line. The melody of this hymn starts in a way = A" ee soe een come att that reminds us of the Gospel Hymn, but when we come to the home,’?For to ring them charming bells! refrain we find the familiar swing and syncopation of the Negro.

27

1856-1899 NOVEMBER 1893 ¢ NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE These hymns are fairly representative of aonce numerous, __ fervor, and afford valuable material for a study of the social and but now vanishing class. Some are commonplace enough, both __ religious life of the Negro, besides being an important contriin words and music. But others glow with genuine religious —_ bution to American folk lore.

,TS; REFRAIN. See eS SSS 2S

Se eee Se fd SS SE? Wear a Starry Crown

Pn bch US CSAS CRG. TOO. ‘hep OG NNER oman’ ___ 1 a: .....

hy se — = eee eee 1.0 we are going to wear a crown, O wear a star-rycrown. A-way 0 - ver

(ee S| SSS SS we are go-ing to wear a crown, O Jor - dan with my bless- ed Je-sus, A-

we are go-ing to wear a crown, To way over Jordan, To wear a star-ry crown.

January 18, 1898 ¢ Shreveport Sunday Judge | MUSIC AMONG THE NEGROES by W. T. Hewetson In some instance it is of a High Order. One of the chief features struggles and sufferings in the popular ballads of the time, so of every Negro gathering of a social character is the singing. A the American slave gave vent to his afflictions and heartaches musical people they undoubtedly are. Not a few have exhibited in song. He sang of his griefs—and they were many of harda high degree of talent in this respect: as, for example, Blind _ ships and oppression, of loss of home, of separation from friends Tom, whose performances on the piano have delighted so many and relatives. In these songs one cannot fail to perceive a cercolored audiences. The darky fiddler, once so prominent a fea- tain plaintive melody that seems to breathe forth centuries of ture of social gatherings, is still sought after in some communi- patient suffering. But the songs of the Negro were not all dicties. The popularity of so-called “Jubilee” singers and Negro _ tated by the tragic muse. Even in slavery there were bright, sunminstrels seems to increase with time. Many of the most popu- _ kissed openings in the clouds of sorrow that darkened his life; lar songs in this country, such as Old Kentucky Home, The Fa- _and there is no better evidence of the natural cheerfulness and tal Wedding, and Listen to the Mocking Bird were composed by _gaiety of his character than the comic and festive songs with Negroes. For the origin of most of their songs we must go back __ which he was wont to celebrate these interspaces in his grief.

to the days of slavery. Just as the laboring classes of England From the Chautauquan during the seventeenth century found expression for their

January 1899 ¢ New England Magazine HYMNS OF THE SLAVE AND THE FREEDMAN by William E. Barton, D.D. I began my quest for quaint hymns when I was aschool teacher, —_ have written it down had I not learned it from some one who and was neither confined to a single place of worship nor pro- _—_— would patiently repeat it again and again till I mastered its won-

hibited by the responsibilities of my position from taking notes —_ derful syncopations.

during service. After I began to preach I had more opportuni- It is a peculiarity of the Negro music that it can nearly all be ties; but my field was somewhat restricted, and I was less sensi- | swayed to and timed with the patting of the foot. No matter tive to peculiarities which had impressed me in the earlier years how irregular it appears to be, one who sways backward and of my residence in the South. I partially made my opportunities | forward and pats his foot finds the rhythm perfect. A young good, however, by visiting the older people who knew old songs, lady friend of mine was trying to learn some of the melodies and writing these down as they sang them. One of my best friends _—_ from an old auntie, but found that the time as well as the tune in this regard was Aunt Dinah. It was from her I learned “Death’s _ baffled her. At length, when the old woman had turned to her goner lay his cold icy hand on me”: andI fear thatI could never __ work, the girl got to swaying and humming gently, patting her

28

JANUARY 1899 © NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE 1856-1899 foot the while. The old woman turned and, patting the girl on Motherless Child

the knee, said: “Dat’s right, honey! Dat’s de berry way! Now —p—y —f = /—~—~ you's a-gittin’ it, sho nuff! You'll nebbah larn *em in de wuld

till you sings dem in de sperrit!” ; Now and then I would go to Aunt Dinah’s cabin, and ask her 1.0 sometimes I feel like a

for more songs. She invariably began by declaring that I had f ee ee See

long since learned all the songs she knew; but I would plead

with her to cudgel her brains for some of the old ones, the ones ;

they sang before the war. After the requisite amount of protest- moth - er - less child, Sometimes I feel

ing, she would promise to think and see if she could remember 2, Se ee eee ee any, but with the declaration that it was hopeless. “I'll go to de

do’ an’ call Sistah Bemaugh,” she would say, “‘an’ we’ll see ef . we can’t find some. An’ while she’s a-comin’ ober, you se’ like a moth-er- lesschildQ my Lord. down dah, an’ I’Il finish dis shirt.”

I was fortunate to find her ironing, and wise enough not to Ser propose songs if she were at the washtub. It was near a furlong sometimes I feel like a moth-er-less child;. across the hollow to Sister Bemaugh, and there was a sawmill between; but Aunt Dinah and Sister Bemaugh had no trouble dies, sung or whistled, generally in strict tempo, kept up hour fae verted the supposed theory of its origin. These syncopated melo-

after hour a not ineffective rhythm, which we decidedly should Oh— be-be, do yo love _me?———

have missed had it been absent. Ay — — More interesting humanly were the dirges and improvisa-

tions in rhythm more or less phrased sung to an intoning more en ee

or less approaching melody. These ditties and dirges were ei- Ba - by take a look on me ther of a general application referring to manners, customs, and A _ _ events of Negro life or of special oppositeness improvised on

the spur of the moment on a topic then interesting. Improvising ee sometimes occurred in the general class, but it was more likely Oh——_ let’s get drunk and gam - - - ble. to be merely a variation of some one sentiment.

The burden of the songs of the former class were “hard luck” A few with the notes: tales (very often), love themes, suggestions anticipate and remi- Some pronunciations were noted. Murder came out plainly niscent of favorite occupations and amusements.Someexamples _—_ as “muddo” and baby as “bebe”’; the latter may be from Creole

of the words and some of the music are:— influence, but I am at a loss to explain the former. No preference other wise for “o” sounds was evinced. They had me arrested for murder and J never harmed a Coming to more apposite ditties, the cover of this quasi-music

man. was used to convey hints to us up above. One Saturday, a half

(A Negro and the law courts are not for long parted.) Other —_ holiday, a sing-song came out of the trench,

songs had a refrain of “going down the river” (possibly a sug- ; ;

gestion of the old slave =narket at New Orleans), ora continu: Mighty long half day, Capata-in, ous wail on “The time ain’t long,” or hopes for “next pay-day.” | and one evening when my companion and I were playing a game

Referring to occupations or amusements:— of mumble-the-peg, our final occupation before closing work, our choragus shouted for us to hear,

Some folks say preachers won’t steal; but I found two in

my cornfield. I’m so tired I’m most dead, sittin’ up there playing

One with a shovel and t’ other with a hoe, a-diggin’ up my mumblely-peg.

taters row by row. These are only a few. It is impossible to remember and it Old Brudder Jones setten on de log, his hand on de trig- —_ was impossible to put down all. The men were not good on

ger and his eyes on de hog. parade. Asked to sing for my wife while she was with us on a Old Dan Tucker he got drunk, fell in de fire and kicked _yisit, they suddenly found it too hot, and as a whole a request

up a chunk. performance got no further than very poor “ragtime,” Goo-goo

I don’t gamble but I don’t see how my money gets away _Eyes with any number of encores, and Nigger Bully and others

from me. quite as original probably with Miss May Irwin as with them.

When I look up over my head makes me think ofmycorn Their rhymes were not necessarily more than assonance. Con-

and bread. (Possibly meteorological.) sonants, as seen above, were of little importance. There was some jealousy among them as to leadership. A fone would complain of the heat, another would sing out:— handsome fellow named Ike Antoine had been undisputed leader

Don’t bother me. The hotter the sun shines the better] for three months and enjoyed besides a county-wide reputation

feel. as a dancer; we imported a burley jail-bird for the last few weeks; he was a capital worker with a voice comparable to the Bashan

Love ditties: — Bull and Tamagno. He out-bawled Antoine, not altogether to the improvement of the music.

70

JULY 23, 1903 ¢ INDEPENDENT 1900-1909 As regards execution, the men’s voices, with the exception of a oe ee

Antoine’s, were mediocre, but their tempo was singularly accu- Sf Hit OTF? OC rate. In their refrains ending on the tonic, they sometimes sang

the last note somewhat sharp. So frequent was this that it seemed A r_3 —_ SF - re —

. 5 7” SS SN ES RR ANS POE NO |

intentional or unavoidable, not merely a mistake in pitch. Other- 7 oe oo ee | ao wise their pitch was fairly true.

Their singing at quarters and on the march with the guitar

accompaniment was naturally mostly “ragtime” with the instru- — AN One AN ment seldom venturing beyond the inversions of the three chords

of a few major and minor keys. At their cabin the vocal exercise “

was oe Polyphonic nature, i ; using congratulations at it. triad. Some of these, picked up from various sources, including tance. nat the ep y we wou ee «i om wi the to stoi, © one or two of similar nature from the trenches, are:— suitar, but the sp ontaneity was lacking ane tne Tepenorre was The long, lonely sing-song of the fields was quite distinct

limited. They have, however, the primitive characteristic of ;in' Lae ge ; . , from anything else, though theinsinger was skillful gliding patience under repetition, and both the trench and out of it ; ; . , ; from hymn-motives to those of the native chant. The best single

kept up hours-long ululation little variety. ; ;. ;i a negress Pare ; recollection I have of this of music is one evening when As to the third division, the autochthonous music, unaccom-

Lae was baby toexact sleepaccount. in her cabin just above our panied, it issinging hard toher give anquite Our best model fortents. .; va: _ She was of notable Negro family and had a good voice. theran study of this was a diligent Negro living near called by our oe ; eo . ; , ; Her song was to me quite copy, weird in interval men Dollars” of impossible craps), andtoby us “Haman’s ,; . . ; “Five . and strange in(suggestive rhythm; peculiarly beautiful. It bore some likeMan,” from his persistent from sunrise to sunset arewas better done. I ; .; ness following to the modern Greek native singingofbut

the mule of that name. fifteen hoursbut he filled withsometimes words ,; , to ; , ; only heard herThese oncewith in aquite lullaby, she used and music. Hymns alternated fearful oaths addressed ; ar . ;the . ; ; walk the fieldsintoned at evening singing fortissimo, awakening to Haman.ere Other directions to him melted into strains ;men. ; , ; ; echoes with song extremely effective. I should not omit of apparently African music, sometimes words, ;of. Mr. ; , ; tionwithout. ofgenuine a very old Negro employed on thewith plantation sometimes Long phrases there were without apparent Serra ; John Stovall of Stovall, Mississippi. He was asked to sing to us measured rhythm, singularly hard to copy in notes. When such ; ,;as he ; one nightcould as webe satreduced on the to gallery. His voice sung by himvery anddark by others form, a few .; ow, ; sang had a timbre resembling aout bagpipe played pianissimo or a motives.were made to appear, and these copiedindistinguishable were usuae words i, Jew’s harp played legato, and to some ally quiet simple, based for the most part on the major or minor . he hummed a rhythm of no regularity and notes apparently not

A ls more than three or more in number at intervals within a semi-

SA ~ RE CS CSthatSOR e of. it.. . Japanese. I have not heard kind again| nor

4 Ft eT tone. The effect again was monotonous but weird, not far from The volume of song is seen to be large and its variety not

a ——— spare; they are in sharp contrast to the lack of music among the

NS © AE0| : AE ST AEE MANS, —,_S | . ea one . . ? with some added responsibility; they take it infinitely harder and white dwellers of the district; their life is as hard as the Negroes”

for one thing seem not to be able to throw off their sorrows in song as are the true sons of the torrid zone, the Negroes.

July 23, 1903 ¢ Independent THE TRUE NEGRO MUSIC AND ITS DECLINE by Jeannette Robinson Murphy Some day we who are so fortunate as to have been rocked to _far less [sturdy] class, and, with them, their quaint [illegible] sleep o the broad, tener posoms of old mammies will be the —_are fast disappearing and their [illegible] songs becoming obenvy of our own grandchildren. There is a danger [that] they _solete. It would seem that we of this generation owe it to poswill clamor in vain for truthful representation of those olddays _terity to see that the genuine [illegible] must be handed down in when [illegible] black tyrants ruled and reigned over their broods _all its [beauty]. of white nurslings, and claimed, with the mothers, the hearts Many people in America to-day, not [illegible] the wealth and fealty of their confiding charges. These trustworthy oldre- and beauty of the true Negro songs, not only tolerate the manutainers, but a [few] years ago so universally known and loved _factured “coon songs,” but fail to recognize their spurious qualthroughout our great Southland, are rapidly being replaced bya _ity, and permit these attempted imitations with which the coun71

1900-1909 JULY 23, 1903 « INDEPENDENT try is flooded to pass unchallenged as the true article. Even po- There is a weird, savage “shout” where the same line is reets of the colored race are adding to this great wrong, and are _ peated four times, as is evidenced in the song, Ole Ship O’ Zion. ** creating a false, flippant new song to be put into the mouths of

a gules people

There are writers whose vaporings attract attention, and who ow. ahp ow ea?

think nothing of composing so-called Negro songs and passing ee ae ne aa them off on acredulous public, confident that their careless read-

ers cannot tell the counterfeit from the genuine music. Ole ship o = Zi - gn, Ole ship 0” Ziv on, a - Hal-le-lu! The only plan which will effectually preserve the old slave

music in all its beauty, its power, its quaint and irresistibleswing “oe a tondsiw, She's» maken’ fo a tand-in’,Sho's

will be for the Negroes themselves, by the aid of skilled annotists, 1 4 , pt —————_— by phonographs and by every art available, to awaken to the

real value of this wonderful music. They alone can work in every mek- bi to! 4 Tand - If, Sue's maken’ for a dand-in, 9 - Hable tu corner of the unique and varied field, creating a new interest among their race alike in their camp meeting “spirituals,” the crooning . Bhe’s loaded down with timber, — Sho's loaded down with tim - ber, She's

lullabies of the nursery and the roustabout songs of the river. ly rnp The sporadic efforts of a few far seeing Negroes will avail

little. The Negro preachers over the entire South should be en- loaded dows with thn -Ber, She's loaded down with tn ~ Ber,’ a = Haile - i!

couraged to lead in this grand work. Our judicious praise of oo. _

their “spirituals” might do much to prolong their life, but with- The chief beauty in this song seems to lie in getting off the out united effort on our part looking to that end, andanincreased Key in each verse. The congregation, as a body, is incapable interest and desire on theirs to sing the songs, they must surely __fter the leader sings alone the first verse of getting a secure die. Their songs, which need no instrumental aid of any kind, hold of the difficult diminished seventh occurring in the note are even now, in our inconoclastic cities, being supplanted by __US€d to the first syllable of the word “Zion” in the first line, so hymns from regular English hymn books, to the accompani- the leading singers hit any note that comes easiest, and the great ment of an organ—an innovation to be deplored, since this new Chorus of worshippers gloriously join in with them, singing the singing is not to be compared in heart power to their own spon- _‘ TeMainder of the tune in a higher or a lower key, generally a

a a ne :

taneous outpourings.* higher.

es ee __. This song has no refrain, which is a rarity, for most of their [6285 Se SS |] “spirituals” have very stirring and plaintive refrains. Cy on fe Pral fe gel Sake eh homo By hime In the fascinating Sinners, Yer Walkin’ on er Slender Stran’,

geSee a et—————— the words and melody are the used fortothe of the song and Ba also for the refrain, words the body first verse being repeated

oe ee eee —= ——

_ at Ve Mba seit... Cah. de Pr a i gal Son he icft for the latter.

a A ra i a

Loum, OF de prod -isgal sen he left hee bs. . Lim -cif ESS SS SSS SS Sea

There never yet has been a song what could touch the heart aol Sinenub! ver walk in’ on er Sen ler cnn shall to

more in evangelistic meetings than their beautiful Prodigal Son, 7 8 or with its winding, appealing measures and soul-satisfying, plain- Ga. ae See] tive words, words which tell out the whole beautiful Bible story. ¥ “GeO Sin - nakY ver Woh Mn’ em cr yen: in sure In this song alone there are sometimes rendered fully one hun- o> TS 1 rr dred different verses, all used, it would seem, according to the _——

mood and the inspiration of the leading singer. Ca i ees a ver watk i oun er sen. a

This “spiritual,” like all of their others, is sung differently in i sg Pita. _

every locality, and furthermore, no Negro ever sings the same 6ae spe

song twice in just the same way. es ~~ The version of The Prodigal Son, as reproduced here, is the ven Bee Me Ne

one generally used at Georgia camp meetings.

All of their hymns lose immeasurably by being taken out of The old aunties say that these songs are so “filled wid de their original settings in the churches and sung as solos, and yet Holy Sperit” that they forget they are working if they just keep even in this form they produce a miraculous effect upon the ‘“!nging all the time. No southerner ever doubts the truth of this

emotions of both the learned and the ignorant. statement. *This song, and others that follow, have additional verses that are **This song has additional staves that are not reproduced here. See

not reproduced here. See the original article —KK the original article—KK 72

JULY 23, 1903 « INDEPENDENT 1900-1909 It is quite the fashion among learned Northern men to call —_ used ter make ’em up on de spsurn ob de moment after we this imported African music “the only folk music of America.” — wrasded wid de Spirit and come ’thoo.’ But de tunes was brung

Why should we not with equal justice call the transplanted from Africky by our own granddaddies. Dey is jis milliair Scotch, Irish and the music of other races our American music? (merely ear) songs. Dese days dey calls ’em ballotts, but in de These melodies certainly were brought by the Negroesfrom old days dey calls ’em ‘spirituals,’ honey, case de Holy Sperit the Dark continent along with the customs and traditions and —_ done teached ’em ter us. Some finks Moss’ Jesus teached ’em,

sickening voodooism which are surviving here to-day. an’ I’se seend ’em start me myself in de meetin’. We’d all be at To the majority of people the mention of aNegrosong brings —_ de ‘Prayers’ House’ on de Lawd’s Day an’ de white preacher, up instantly vistions of J Want Yer, Ma Honey, or Alabama Coon, he’d be hired ter ’splain de Word, and he read whar Moss’ Zekiel or even the lovely Suwannee River and Old Kentucky Home— __ done say ‘dry bones gwine er lib ergin,’ or ‘Daniel in de lion’s

all written by white people who are not so constructed mentally | den’ and Chile ob Grace;’ de Lawd would come a-shini’ thoo’ as to be able to write a genuine Negro song. Some of these | dem pages an’ revibe dis old nigger’s heart, an’ I’d jump up dar imitations are indeed fetching, but itis to be hoped that none of — and den and holler and shout and sing and pray, and dey would them will survive to work further havoc with the truth. all cotch de words, an’ I’d sing it ter some old shout song or war

== 104 song I’d heard ’em sing fum Africky, and dey’d all take up de ee Se ) tune an’ keep long at it, an’ each time dey sing it dey keep a-

ae os =e SS — addin’ mo’ an’ mo’ verses ter it, an’ den dar it woulf jis natchully

Dan + - (elves. Dan + = eb. A- bong! A- be a ‘spiritual.’ Dese ‘sprituals’ am de purtiest moanin’ music

Hsp - o-)Se..a..a @ oo sional ragtime composers” and to their products known as

The original ragtime of the South is something entirely dif- —

ferent and proclaims its originality and passion through means

of its fascinating effectiveness. Now it has spread over all North But at the same time his left hand, or one of his colleagues America. The resident-Negro of our cities, who is either a ser- may join him on his mandolin in this fashion: vant, waiter, driver or musician, has carried his songs and origi-

, a) ee ee ee ee

nal rhythm into every nook and corner. Usually he does not f _ _ _ play the piano, but rather an instrument of the mandolin class,

preferably the banjo. This instrument is to the Negro what the "eer "ee * zither is to the Tyrolean; it has somewhat of the tonal quality of

the mandolin, only deeper and more resonant, and like the gui- _

tar serves principally for the accompaniment of songs. But such while a third may join them with still another variety of ragtime as we hear in the variety theatres and common music —- “ythm: halls has lost considerable of its peculiar originality and just as the Negro songs, has become more vulgar, machine-like and

common-place. Small wonder that about a year ago the Ameri- SF SSO OT TOTO SOL FOOT HOT OO

can Federation of Musicians declared war against ragtime, ow- sf te ee sf oa re ing to the degrading influence it commenced to exert on our public musical taste. If we only had some substitute to put in its

place in this country, where we possess no higher class folk Therefore, to the principle of syncopation must be added music of our own, and where we only boast of a few expressive another one, which may be designated as that of willfulness. In and beautiful folks-songs! Compared to our local operatic at- this way it may be easily understood, what endless varieties tempts and Sousa marches, ragtime certainly shows more char- _ 4nd irregularities are brought about in tonal volume and char-

acter. acter through the combination of the above mentioned rhythBut on the other hand there is no magic connected with it. mic variations. A single player may also bring these about, by

As its name implies, ragtime is no special style of composition, | @Voiding the natural beats of a bar as much as possible and ac-

but merely a rhythm. Every melody can be transformed into centing in between in as eccentric a manner as he can; someragtime, providing we tear its rhythm to tatters. It is primarily What like the small drum in our military marches, but of course based upon the principle of syncopation. Similar to the Hun- not in such a monotonous style. It is more than perusable to me, garian Gypsy music—of which we find the grandest example that our nerves can hardly withstand such music. Involuntarily in the Allegro Eroico of Liszt’s Fourteenth Rhapsody—the prin- _ the body will strive to oppose and balance the weakly accented ciple beat of the bar is frequently preceded by a grace note or _— Principal beats of the bar. This may also be observed in Gerfollowed by one. Where it would be but natural for us to forma man, Hungarian and Norwegian marches as well as in many of

melody for a two-quarter beat in this fashion: the minuets, mazurkas and waltzes of the Viennese, especially

, _ — Franz Schubert, who had a special liking for syncopated notes and who was nearly always in the habit of accenting the second ++ OO quarter in three-quarter time. Therefore Schubert is really one of the great composers, in the works of whom we may find

Ragtime transforms it thus something similar to ragtime. Let us quote the second move-

/ — = ment of his sonate Op. 53 (Con moto).The constant alternation of syncopated eighths and sixteenths, can, if played mechani-

eo cally and in somewhat accelerated time, make a listener quite

; as nervous as the bona fide rendition of ragtime.

But the Negro is not content with this. A form of time as the Therefore, as already mentioned, there is no magic connected

following: with it, although a European will never succeed to produce any-

2 a ee 0 ee ee 2 ee . .

thing near to genuine ragtime. But the above quoted allusion to

‘_ a a oc Schubert proves, that ragtime is not to be condemned in every Nee ei—ig| particular. Probably unexpected will appear some day who like Liszt and an Brahms, in theprince case of Hungarian music,

will transplant this low class of folk-music from the boards of

be treated by him as shown below: the Variety stage to those of the Concert podium.

76

OCTOBER 1906 © METRONOME 1900-1909 September 22, 1905 * Napoleon Pioneer GORDON COLORED MINSTRELS COMING The theatre season will open in Napoleonville [Louisiana] on _ latest and popular songs of the day. In the olio will be seen ten Tuesday September 25th. The opening attraction will be the special acts, such as Claiborne, the great equllibrist, and the Gordon Colored Minstrels. The following press notice of this | Midnight Bell quartette. Another one of the fun makers is

company appeared in the Baton Rouge Times: Anathole Pierre, a monologist of rare wit, one of the most reAccording to the advance agent the show is featuring Lew _fined turn of the show. There is a treat, indeed, to any one who Kenner and his pickaninnies, who have pleased the public in all can see Billy Cherie in his impersonations and comicalities. the vaudeville houses of the Keith and Proctor circuit through- = Never has his equal been found who can get more laugh out of out New York, Philadelphia and Chicago the past year. The — an audience than this same Billy Cherie. John Lewis is another Gordon Minstrel claims to be one of the largest, strongest and _ one of the funsters who never fails to bring down the house or most refined and moral organizations of its kind ever put on _to be called back time and again. The Wilson Family are high tour. The company is composed of thirty artists, and carries their class musicians of note and a sure winner. Another feature is own imperial band, under the leadership of James Williams, the swells, Myles and Johnson, introducing the latest song and and presents a street parade worth coming amiletosee.Gordon’s _—_ dance hit, featuring Lazy Moon. Special scenery for the acts first part has become the talk of the town wherever this com- __ enables one to see the pickaninnies at work by the light of the pany has played, especially for its magnificent settings and spe- moon. While working they render some of the real Negro songs cial costumes; also the beautiful music rendered by the Gordon’s _and airs that have made the Southern darkies famous. Last is Symphony Orchestra, Prof. J. Robichaux, Musical director [of | Lew Kenner and his pickaninnies in the song, No Chickens Roost New Orleans fame and contemporary of Buddy Bolden—KkK] Too High for Me. This is Kenner’s own song, composed for Taking the first part as a whole, it is one of the most dazzling him specially and also featuring his new act the animated Waspectacles ever seen in modern minstrelsy, introducing all the —__termelon scene, using special scenery. Prices, 25, 50, 75 cents.

October 1906 ¢ Metronome NEGRO MELODIES OF SCOTCH ORIGIN In an article on Negro songs, the musical critic of the New York schooling he threw over the simple chant of his native Africa, Evening Post described them as “a hodge -podge of Spanish, for a more progressive American one. This latter he adapted to Portuguese, English, German, French and American tunes.” his larger life according to his capacity. A writer in Musical America (New York), Mr. Angelo M. “From the first the Negro was surrounded by a culture exRead, now declares that they are derived largely from Scotch ceeding his own. Naturally ignorant, though endowed as I have airs. He is in agreement with recent writers on the subject in said with a mimetic sense and impulsive nature, he relied upon denying that the Negro melodies are “purely African.” For gen- others for a livelihood, rather than occupy any responsible poerations, Mr. Read asserts, “the Negro, while under the ban of __ sition. In music, however, he has attained a distinction which slavery, and in contact with the enlightened white race, did not —_ will at least add much interest to the history of the colored race fail to change in nature, so much so that in life, language and _—sin America. The fact of association with the music of the whites song he eventually became American. In certain parts of the adds much to the theory that the Negro assimilated much of the southern States the early settlers were largely of Scotch descent. music of his superiors in education during his earlier days of It is natural, therefore, that the Negro should take kindly tothe slavery. Especially may this be said of the Southern districts Scotch music, both major and minor. It is also natural that —_ inhabited by the Scotch settlers. through a process of evolution these Scotch melodies should in “There is therefore reasonable truth in the assertion that the time become Negro.” How the music which now passes as char- _ airs sung by these Scotch descendants were taken up by the acteristically negro was derived from Scotch airs is explained __ slaves and transformed by them, through different generations,

in the following: into distinct Negro melodies. If we trace the source of these “Clever at imitation the Negro did not fail to appropriate this — slave-songs, we find the pentatonic scale is used for many of music to his own use, and by passing it along through genera- the major, and the minor scale with a minor seventh for many tions from parent to child the original melody lost its contour of the minor songs. This substantiates pretty clearly the assump-

entirely and became a new thing to create needs. tion that the Negro was impressed by this Scotch music, which “This fact is the more conclusive because the Negro used his _latter is also constructed upon these scales. smooth voice to transmit this music from one to the other. This “There are, however, many of the finest Negro ‘spirituals

explains ‘the change of the story in the telling.’ ” and shots’ constructed upon other scales, the result no doubt of “The Negro came from barbarism to civilization. In his local influences. There is, however, another reason which lends 77

1900-1909 NOVEMBER 1906 ¢« THE MUSICIAN force to the argument. It is in the sudden syncopations, in other | Anton Dvorak and others to designate Negro music, the nawords ‘Scotch catch or snap,’ found in both the Scotch and Negro _ tional music of America. Because the music is not national at music. This may have suggested the so-called ‘ragtime’ attrib- _ all, so long as it is restricted to a few less enlightened colored uted to the Negro, which recently reached so much exaggera- _ people and they chiefly local.” (From The Literary Digest.) tion in the ‘coon-songs’ seems to me a fallacy promulgated by

November 1906 ¢ The Musician LAFCADIO HEARN AND CONGO MUSIC by Henry E. Krehbiel To the Editor of The Musician. Dear sir: You have done me the __ them, too, and used to talk about them on all possible and im-

honor to ask me for an opinion on the value of the editorial possible occasions. Granting that he could recognize tonal difarticle which appeared in the New York Sun newspaper two or _ ferences at all, except elementally (of which I am not sure). three weeks ago, which affected to discuss the sources of “Congo — Hearn would have been more delighted by the performances of

music,” in the light of certain investigations assumed to have _a singer with an atrocious intonation than with a Patti. He frebeen made by the late Lafcadio Hearn, and certain of that la- | quently complained that when musicians had written down a mented writer’s conclusions—also assumed. From the point of | song for him and then sang it for his approval that they had view occupied by every serious investigator of folk song, the | omitted those fractional tones in which all the charm seemed to article has no value whatever; the writer of it is convicted of lie for him. I observe that he was still obsessed by the notion crass ignorance by his use of musical terms and his references _ after he had been years in Japan. But this is in the nature of to Gottschalk’s pianoforte compositions based on so-called Cre- — generalization, and I ought to be specific in criticism of the ole melodies; as a contribution to the biography of asingularly erroneous ideas of the writer of the article in the Sun newspainteresting literary personage it has the value that can be attrib- per. uted to any series of mistaken statements which provoke con- First as to the assertion that after researches in New Orleans,

tradiction and thus bring out the truth. Martinique, and the West Indies Hearn came to the conclusion Lafcadio Hearn’s interest in African and Creole music was __ that the so-called “Congo songs” were not African at all in orian outgrowth of a personal friendship and communism of intel- gin”: the writer has made the statement out of the whole cloth. lectual pursuits and enthusiasms between him and me which _He practically admits as much when he says that ‘the fact that began in Cincinnati over thirty years ago, and endured until his —_ he (Hearn) never issued any declaration in the connection would return from his second visit to the West Indies and his departure seem to prove that he had found no genuine Congo music worth for Japan. Of and for himself he had no knowledge of music of — the mention.” Hearn’s “researches” in folk song had ended long any kind, but as a folklorist he made vast researches (though before he went to Martinique. The last six weeks of his stay in almost wholly in French writings), and all that he found that ©§= New York, while he was arranging with his publishers for the was fantastical and curious about music he reported to me by work to be done in the West Indies and touching up his story of letter. For artistic music he never had the slightest concern, and — Last Island for the last time, were spent in my home as my I have a grave doubt if the name of Beethoven ever occurred to — guest. For six years we had kept up a lively correspondence his mind or was put by him upon a written page. Musical sym- _ concerning our work, ideals, and ambition, and during a period bols were a hysteria to him. There were evidences in some of — in 1883 and 1884 we wrote much to each other about Negro the melodies which he copied for me from foreign books that and Creole music. So engrossing did the subject become that he drew the lines of the stave from note to note ashe wenton, — there was some talk about a book to be written by us in comand he never felt quite sure that I would be able to read whatto —_ mon; but it was the purely literary-romantic side that Hearn him were weird hieroglyphics—magical signs to conjure with, was interested in, as will appear presently. From Martinique he like the runes of the Northland. He heard music, as he sawev- _— never wrote a word about folk song, but when he returned he erything, more with his imagination than his sense. The tales § gave me about a dozen specimens of songs and dances which which he read in strange literatures of the power exerted by __ he had got a band-master at St. Pierre to write down for him. I song fascinated him, and he would have liked to believe them —_ prepared four of the songs for the appendix of his book Two and find physiological and psychological explanations for them Years in the French West Indies, published by Harper Bros., and which would fit into the system of modern science to which he _ there they may be found. That was the end of his interest in folk was devoted. Once in the early years of our association I ex- song except from the literary side which endured in Japan; when plained to him that the scales of all peoples were not alike, and _he referred to the music which he heard it was always timidly that there were ears attuned to distinguish smaller intervals than = and with the old obsession created by our talks years before our semitone. That struck deep into his soul, and he was con-_ —_~when we were fellow reporters in Cincinnati. The notion that tinually looking for such tonal splintering. He thought he heard _ there were scales in the folk music of some peoples which con-

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NOVEMBER 1906 * THE MUSICIAN 1900-1909 , tained tones smaller than the occidental semitone fascinatedhim —acterizes nearly everything that I have read on the subject from and he seemed to make it the crux by which he tested the genu- _‘ those who hold the view of the writer in the Sun. But, as I have

ineness of all folk tunes. I think he confounded it with the already remarked, it was only the literary side of folk song of glissando effect which can be heard in slave spirituals. In one of | which he had knowledge or concerning which he spoke with his letters to me he wrote: “The other night, as I was listening to conviction based on knowledge. He made only a few efforts to a peculiarly hideous steamboat whistle, Page Baker said: “Thatis secure melodies for me from original sources. From the notation like the wail of a banshee.’ But just then the Creole musician —_ of a Mr. Grueling he sent me a voodoo song, a Creole song enstepped up and cried out ironically: ‘O happy man! There is your _ titled Belle Amerikaine, and the street cry of an itinerant vender infinitesimally shaded African music!’ ‘Verily,’ lexclaimed ‘thou of clothes-poles; from Martinique the songs and dances already art almost correct; for it is even like unto the cannibal song of the |= mentioned. From a French translation of an Arabian slave dealer’s

Marquesas Islands which my friend Krehbiel used to sing for | book on Ouaday he copied eight songs with corrupt Arabian and me!” At another time: “TI think you are right about the Negro- —_ African texts. This was the extent of his contribution to my colAmerican music, and that a southern trip will be absolutely es- _—_ lection from the musical side. Textually his help was invaluable, sential because I have never yet met a person here able torepro- —_— and the enthusiasm with which he entered into the project of colduce on paper those fractional tones we used to talk about, which —_laboration on a book on Negro music in America is attested by lent such weirdness to the songs. The naked melody robbed of __ the following letter;

these has absolutely no national characteristic. The other day a Dear K.:—Just got a letter from you. Hope my reply to your couple of darkeys from the country passed my corner, singing— — delightful suggestion was received. I fear I write too often; but I not a Creole song, but a plain Negro ditty with arecurrent burthen —— can only write in snatches—— Were I to wait for time to write a consisting of the cry: “Oh! Jee-roo-sa-le-e-e-em!” Ican’tdescribe —_ long letter the result would be either or something worse.

to you the manner in which the syllable lem was broken up into I have already in my mind a little plan. Let me suggest a long four tiny notes, the utterance of which did not occupy one sec- _ preface, and occasional picturesque notes to your learning and ond—all in a very low but very powerful key. The rest of the facts. For example, I would commence by treating the Negro’s song was in a regular descending scale, the Oh being very much __ musical patriotism—the strange history of the griots, who furprolonged and the other notes very quick and sudden. Wish I __ nish so singular an example of musical prostitution, and who, could write it, but I can’t. I think all the original Creole-Negro —_ although honored and petted in one way or otherwise, are desongs were characterized by similar eccentricities. More thanten — spised by their own people and refused the rites of burial. Then I years later, in a paper on “Japanese Popular Ballads,” read before | would relate something about the curious wanderings of these the Astatic society of Japan and reprinted in his book Kokoro,he _ griots through the yellow desert northwards into the Maghreb said: “To reproduce such melodies, with their extraordinary frac- | country—often a solitary wandering; their performances at Arab tional tones, would be no easy task, but I cannot help believing | camps on the long journey, when the black slaves come out to

that the result would fully repay the labor.” listen and weep; then their hazardous voyaging to Constantinople, So far from believing that the music of the Negroesto which —_ where they play old Congo airs for the great black population of we listened while investigating voodooism and Creole songs in Stambout, whom no laws or force can keep within doors when New Orleans (which is the only place in which he gave any heed _ the sound of griot music is heard in the street. Then I would speak to the music, and this wholly for love of me and our mutual en- _ of how the blacks carry their music with them to Persia and even thusiasms) was corrupted French and Spanish music, Hearn be- _— to mysterious Hadrament, where their voices are held in high lieved that the opposite process had taken place. It was Negro _ esteem by their Arab masters. Then I would touch upon the transmusic that had been sophisticated by French and Spanish influ- _ plantation of Negro melody to the Antilles and the two Americas, ences. In proof of this here is an extract from a letter tome bear- _ where its strangest black flowers are gathered by alchemists of ing directly on the subject: “I must tell you, however, that Creole musical science, and the perfume thereof extracted by magicians music is mostly Negro music, thought often remodeled by French _ like Gottschalk. (How is that for a beginning?) I would divide my composers. There could neither have been Creole patolanorCre- —_ work into brief sections of about a page and a half each—every ole patois melodies but for the French and Spanish-blooded slaves division separated by Roman numerals and containing one parof Louisiana and the Antilles. The melancholy, quavering beauty _ ticular group of facts. and weirdness of the Negro chant are lightened by the French I would also try to show a relation between Negro physiology influence or subdued and deepened by the Spanish.” How far and Negro music. You know the blood of the African black has this is from the Sun’s contention that Hearn grew discouraged in __ the highest human temperature known—equal to that of the swalhis musical investigations because he had found that all Negro low—although it loses that fire in America. I would like you to music was merely an imitation of the music which the Negro _ find out for me whether the Negro’s vocal cords are not differheard from his mistresses in America I need not point out. It would —_ ently formed and capable of longer vibration than ours. Some have almost broken his heart had I told him that the music which —_ expert professor in physiology might tell you; but I regret to say he heard from black singers contained no elements that I could _ the latest London works do not touch upon the Negro vocal cords, recognize as African but were only perverted Scottish songs. Little | although they do show other remarkable anatomical distinctions. as he knew of music, Hearn would never have been guilty of Here is the only Creole song I know of with an African resuch ethnological, historical, and sociological blundering as char- _frain that is still sung. (Pronounced “‘wenday,” “makkiyah.”) 719

1900-1909 OCTOBER 1907 © THE CREST MUSICAL BULLETIN November 1906 ¢ The Musician SOURCES OF “CONGO SONGS” We feel moved to say another word about a recent article in this Certainly his most attractive compositions in that line, the newspaper discussing the late Lafcadio Hearn and, incidentally, | Bamboula and the Callinda, would seem to indicate that he had making reference to the Congo folk music, of which he was in _ caught the inspiration. But Louisiana musicians, speaking in eager search for many years. In the course of the article it was _ all reverence for Gottschalk, contend that his compositions, magasserted that Hearn, after all his researches in New Orleans, __ nificent though they be, reproduce merely the Spanish and Martinique, and various West Indian districts, reached the con- _—- French melodies of a gentury or more ago, filtered through the clusion that the so-called “Congo songs” were not of African _—_ dull, bewildered medium of the Congo consciousness. Compeorigin at all. He had been fascinated by the quaint lullabies and _ tent authorities in New Orleans long ago declared that the very

crooming cradle chants, as indeed had every one who heard _ nature of the scale and measure of this music proved its Eurothem; and he conceived the idea that they were simply refined _ pean origin. and chastened evolutions of the ancient, barbaric music of the At all events, Lafcadio Hearn accepted this conclusion, for Congo. But after long investigation, enlightened as he was by _after several years in Cincinnati and New Orleans devoted to profound and varied information and previous discovery, he research and inquiry, he went to various West Indian Islands in found that nine-tenths of the supposed African melodies were pursuit of the knowledge he had failed to accumulate in the simply rude adaptations of the Spanish and French songs which — United States. Moreover, the fact that he never issued any dec-

the slaves had heard in Santo Domingo. laration in the connection would seem to prove that he had found Fifteen or twenty years ago George W. Cable, at the time no genuine Congo music worth the mention. This is the theory one of the most delightful and graceful historians of Louisiana — of the modern cognoscenti in Louisiana who recognize in all Creole life, published in the Century Magazine two or three __ the so-called Negro chants and lullabies the under throb which articles on the alleged Congo songs. He gave both the words marks the old Spanish and provencal compositions, such as La and the musical score. The result was extremely interesting and § Golondrina, A la Media Noche, and so on. There can be no attractive. Mr. Cable, however, was not a musician. He knew __ reasonable doubt that Hearn left New Orleans, and subsequently nothing of the works of Lully, Rameau, Boieldieu, Adam, __ the West Indies, in despair of satisfying the interest which for Flotow, and he jumped to the mistaken conclusion that the songs — so long had monopolized his intellectual solicitudes. exploited for his hearing were the real bequests of darkest Af- Unquestionably, Hearn was a genius, but he couldn’t make a rica to the waiting Christian world. As a matter of fact, nearly — silk purse out of a sow’s ear, and when he realized that fact, he every one of his scores was a vulgarized and dilated expression — had the grace to abandon the hopeless task. Incidentally, we

of well known French and Spanish compositions. note with interest the announcement of a forthcoming biograThe case of Gottschalk was very different. He was a musi- _ phy of Hearn by “A lady who knew him for thirty years.” Maybe cian, and more; not only a maestro at the piano, but a genius —_ we shall have some further and more brilliant light from that with initiative and divination. He spent years in New Orleans. source. Any one who has known Hearn for thirty years must No doubt he attended the Voodoo festivals and celebrations on —_ have begun the acquaintance in Cincinnati, and concluded it in “St. John Eve,” and heard the wild overtures and antiphonies of | Japan; and we await the revelation with an anxiety which it the frantic celebrants assembled on the shores of Pontchartrain. | were inadequate to describe as feverish. —New York Sun

. October 1907 © The Crest Musical Bulletin THE EVOLUTION OF MINSTRELSY Albert Carlton The man who hath not music in his soul, and is not moved bya —and music was not. One of the earliest modes of expressing concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treason, stratagem and spoils. | music was by the harp, and one of the first minstrels mentioned Man has always been more or less swayed by music, andhis _ in history is King David, who in his pastoral days as a shepherd destiny has often hung in the balance and finally been decided © composed many beautiful psalms, and was called in the Bible in an antipodal direction by asweet strain of music, orthesound __ the “sweet singer of Israel!” of a voice awakening tender memories from a lethargic slum- Again, in the days of Alfred the Great, King of West Saxony,

ber. prior to the year 1000, when Alfred was forced to flee, he disSo close is music associated with our very existence inthese — guised himself as a strolling minstrel, and was consequently latter days that it is difficult to conceive of atime when life was _ treated as such. But the genuine minstrel became prominent in

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JANUARY 1908 ¢ THE CREST MUSICAL BULLETIN 1900-1909 England after the Norman Conquest. At first they were profes- _ retainer within. sionals, and composed their ballads which they sang, to the ac- Without opera house, theatre or music hall in those days, the

companiment of their own instruments. minstrel was obliged to find his audience. As the people could The man who was gifted with the poetic spirit, anda musical —_ not go to him, he was forced to seek an outlet for his talents, voice to give expression to his thought, naturally turned towards _ and, incidentally, as soft a berth for himself as his charms could the profession of minstrelsy, even though he were of high de- |= command.

gree. In the fifteenth century, however, not alone the man of In France and Italy the minstrel was known as a troubadour, talents, but the idle vagabond, rogue or worthless fellow, es- | and was considered the originator of a kind of lyric, the subsayed to be a minstrel, and instead of original verse makers _ jects of which were love, chivalry, etc. Men of high stations,

they became ordinary story tellers and buffoons. even Knights, became troubadours, and cultivated the high arts It must be remembered that when this form of minstrelsy | of music and poetry. They were held in high esteem, but with was in its palmiest days there was little done, and what was __ them also the art declined. In Provence still ancient customs done from necessity or through an adventurous spirit was atthe and traditions prevail amid the roses and the vineyards, notrisk of life and limb. Stage coaches were unwieldy, slow and __ withstanding they are keenly alive to modern money values. cumbersome, and were subject to highwaymen and robbers, or From the troubadour descended the trouvére, an epic poet of being overturned on dark and perilous roads. Horsemen were — who flourished from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries. liable to attack and slaughter, so that the castle and the lord § Oliver Wendell Holmes declared that “it is to them we look for welcomed the daring, venturesome traveling minstrel as anen- _ the true origin of our modern literature.” tertainer, a purveyor of news, an enlivener, and one who re- In Germany, despite slow and stolid natures, the people have

lieved the tedium of weary hours. ever been open and receptive to music. In the eleventh and Traveling did for the minstrel what it has continued to do __ twelfth centuries the Minnesaenger sang in Swabian high Gerever since—broadened man’s mind and made keen his wit,so —_- man of the fickle springtime, of nature and of the lady of his that he appeared as a hero, at least to the gentler sex. The tender —_ heart. Often he was of knightly rank, and his music was comof the drawbridge never refused him entrance, nor the lord of _ plicated and difficult, while sweet and alluring. His patrons were the castle a cozy corner with an abundance of food and drink. — men of influence, including some of Austria’s dukes. With flames roaring up the fireplace, and with a generous sup- So if the profession of the minstrel declined, the desire of ply of home-brewed ale in the tankards, from the king to the __ the people for entertainment but increased the more. Gleemen lowest retainer all were ready to give ear to the utterance of the = and choristers in England have always been approved of, and man from the outside world, who was waiting to disseminate __ still go round on special occasions, notably on Advent Night, the knowledge he had gathered since last he had sat at their —_ singing their carols and receiving gifts. In our own country the

board. picturesque Negro of the South, with his overflowing spirits

Rich gifts rewarded the minstrel’s efforts, unless, perchance, _—_ and his natural love of rhythm and melody, sitting at the door of the owner of the castle or manor house was an unusually surly _his little cabin, twanging his banjo, or up at the big house where person, or who had the gout, which caused him to recall by its _ his services were called into requisition to make music for the twinges that life was not all merrymaking and song. Brighteyes, dance, may be said to have been suggestive of American mintoo, always flashed a welcome to him who could tell more en- __ strelsy. trancing tales and sing more potent love songs than any other

January 1908 ¢ The Crest Musical Bulletin NEGRO MINSTRELSY FROM ITS ORIGIN TO THE PRESENT DAY The first minstrel troupe appeared in public January 31, 1843. vious to this, individual singers of Negro songs had appeared, They appeared for the benefit of one of their number, Dick notably “Daddy” Rice, who sang Jump Jim Crow, and from Pelham. The troupe comprised just four — Dan Emmett, the | whom the sugar store figures “Jim Crow” and at present the author of Dixie; Frank Brower Bones, dancer and comedian; “Jim Crow” cars of the South got their name, and are still reBilly Whitlock, banjoist and dancer; and R. W. Pelham (Dick), —_ minders of that great and popular exponent of Negro songs and

who played the tambourine and danced also. The four had been dances. But it remained for Emmett, Brower, Whitlock and connected with circus companies — introducing dancing and _— Pelham to organize and present the very first minstrel troupe in Negro songs in the ring, and meeting in the winter of 1843, the world. I have the program of this initial performance (perthey conceived the idea of merging their talents for the benefit | haps the only one in existence), and the songs and dances it of their brother performer, Dick Pelham, who was appearing __ contains are of the plantation variety entirely, viz: Such a Gettin’ between the acts in the National Theatre, Chatham Street, near Up Stairs, My Old Aunt Sally, Gwine Over de Mountain, Old Roosevelt, afterwards known as Purdy’s National Theatre. Pre- Dan Tucker, I Wish I Was in Ole Virginia, Dance de Boatmen 81

1900-1909 JANUARY 1908 ¢ THE CREST MUSICAL BULLETIN Dance. Then a trail breakdown or a jig dance enlivened the bill, 1857, and remained there many years before going up to and a banjo solo such as the Coon Hunt, Buffalo Gals, Are You | Tammany Hall (Pastor’s Theatre). Dan Emmett wrote Dixie for Coming Out To-night? or Jordan Am a Hard Road to Trabble. —_ a walk around in 1859. During the Civil War the Confederates This made up a bill which probably lasted a half-hour. The nov- took the song as a “War Hymn.” One line in it made it dear to elty was so pronounced and so successful that the four, who __ the Southern heart, “In Dixieland I'll take my stand to live and

called themselves the “Virginia Minstrels,” appeared the night = die in Dixie.” The great singers of the Bryant’s were Tom following at the Bowery Amphi-Theatre, which was located § Penderegast, Dave Wambold, Jules Stratton, C. C. Templeton, about where the Windsor Theatre is situated, nearly opposite | S.C.Campbell, J. W. Hilton, Napoleon, W. Gould, Ainsley Scott, the old Bowery Theatre. The four went on a short tour as faras Frank Leslie, Charles Henry, W. P. Grier, Master Adams, Rollin

Boston and sailed for England, where they took London by Howard, etc.

storm. It is strange to look back over the old collection of songs and

Meanwhile other Negro performers or “Negro Singers” as__ see the evolution both in minstrelsy and the style of ballad long they were then called, formed bands, and the minstrel troupes _ before the war. Such songs as Cottage by the Sea, Rock Me to began to multiply and flourish. One of the earliest was the § Sleep, Mother, Old Dog Tray, Belle Brandon, Willie, We Have “Congo Minstrels,” organized by the Buckleys, father andthree | Missed You, Rosalie the Prairie Flower, Bonnie Eloise the Belle sons, Bishop, Fred and Swaine. They were very talented and of the Mohawk Vale, Annie Lisle, Annie of the Vale, Nellie Gray, thorough musicians. They were the first to harmonize the Ne- _—- Nellie Was a Lady, Nancy Till, etc., were great and popular songs. gro melodies and songs. Several years afterwards they traveled |§ Then came the war, with its ballads, When This Cruel War Is under the name of “Buckley’s Serenaders.” Fred Buckley wasa = Over, Mother Kissed Me in My Dream, Brother Fainting at the composer of note. He was the author of nearly all the popular § Door, Tramp, Tramp, Rally Round the Flag, Tenting To-night songs of his day. He was the first to introduce an instrument of | and Babylon Is Fallen. Then came another change, in which the great compass and sweetness. In shape it resembled a guitar, __ titles of songs were about a sweetheart’s name, and she invariwith 84 keys in its handle connecting to steel reeds inthe body —_ably died in the second verse. Then came a swarm of “Mother of the instrument. This instrument is now in my possession. Songs” all about mother. But one song was written about faAbout the time the Buckleys began to attract attention a banjo- _ ther, and that was called Come Home Father, and, as Billy Birch ist by the name of E. P. Christy organized a small troupe in _iused to say, “they had to get the old man drunk before he would Buffalo. This was about 1845 or 1846. They did not at first call = go home.” themselves the “Christy Minstrels,” but a year afterwards their Kelly and Leon’s Minstrels were at 720 Broadway for quite

bills announced “Christy’s Minstrels.” a while, beginning about 1866 or 1867. Birch, Wambold, BerA wonderful genius by the name of George Harrington was __ nard and Backus opened 585 Broadway in April, 1865, and bewith this troupe. He afterwards became famous as George — came the most popular troupe ever located in New York. They Christy. This troupe appeared about 1846 at the Society Library —_ continued popular as ever up to 1883. In this troupe were some

Rooms, New York, and next at Palmo’s Opera House, Cham- of the greatest singers and comedians in the world. Billy Birch, bers street, near Broadway. In 1847 they opened at 472 Broad- § Charley Beekins, Dave Wambold, George Thatcher, Billy

way, Mechanics Hall, and remained there until 1854. Sweatman, Bob Slavin, Johnson and Powers, Edwin French, T. Christy retired wealthy, but at the beginning of the war, 1861, = B. Dixon, J. P. Witmark, Arthur Cook, C. F. Shattuck, W. H.

he began to fear the loss of his money and securities, andina — Frillman, Frank Wilson, Harry Roe, W. S. Mullaly, Frank moment of dementia hurled himself from an upper window.He Dumont, Harry Kennedy, Harry Richmond, Stanley Grey, J. M. lived but a short time afterwards, and died, universally regret- | Woods, Beaumont Read, A. C. Moreland, and a host of talent, ted. He was the greatest actor, dancer, singer and burlesque art- —_— including Schoolcraft and Coes, Frank Cushman, the Only Leon,

ist of his time, and is ever mentioned in connection with min- __ the Big Four, and Ricardo were members. The early minstrels

strelsy. appeared in striped pants, checked shirts, and sometimes wore Ramsey and Newcomb, also the Campbells Minstrels flour- _—_— straw hats intending to represent plantation darkies. Later on ished for a decade before the war. All the minstrels of note were they appeared in evening dress and announced themselves as with these troupes. Jerry Bryant,W. W. Newcomb, Frank Brower, “Dandy Darkies of the North.” This portion is the one now reEph. Horn, Matt. Peel, Luke West, Sam Wells, Dave Wambold, _ tained as the first part in minstrelsy. Ordway’s Minstrels were Pony Moore, Fred Wilson, Tim Noron, Billy Birch, Ben Cot- _ located in Boston from 1849 to about 1860. Fred Wilson was ton, John Mulligan, Dave Reed, J. R. Thomas, the composer; __ the first to introduce a clog dance in minstrelsy. With them was Hughey Dougherty, Paul Bergen, M. Ainsley Scott, Billy Ar- | Gilmore’s Band; P. C. Gilmore playing the tambourine. Then lington, Kelly and Leon, R. M. Hooley, C. W. H. Griffin, Cool the Morris Brothers were their successors. The first to wear the

White, S. S. Sanford, Archie Hughes and others. full evening dress, swallowtail coats, white vests and black pants Wood’s Minstrels began at 444 Broadway about 1851, suc- | were Dumbolton’s Serenaders, who flourished from 1845 to ceeding Fellow’s Minstrels. Charley White had a Minstrel Hall 1850. Jerry Bryant and Matt Peel were members of this comat 53 Bowery, where all the famous minstrels appeared. Sam _— pany. When E. P. Christy went to England the name survived, it Harpley and Ben Cotton were located at 514 Broadway. The __ being applied to any and all minstrels; our English cousins callBryant’s Minstrels opened at 472 Broadway on February 23, —_ ing them “Christies.” 82

JANUARY 1908 © THE CREST MUSICAL BULLETIN 1900-1909 In later days we have had some very popular minstrel compa- —_—_ cisco Billy Emerson’s Minstrels played a long continued ennies; the progenitors of these companies have brought modern — gagement. In London a theatre that could boast of not closing minstrelsy up to a very high plane, and have yet retained all of _its doors for 28 years on this favorite form of amusement. There its original charm. Among the most notable of these are AlG the famous Moore & Burgess Minstrels held forth. In PhiladelFields Minstrels, a popular organization known from coast to —_ phia Sam Cartee leased the Eleventh Street Opera House and coast as the exponent of all that is best in minstrelsy; Haverly’s | opened it on December 4th, 1854, with the “Jilien Serenaders” Minstrels (everybody knew and loved Col. Jack Haverly, whose — or Minstrels. Then came Sandford’s Minstrels, and in 1862 famous “forty, count em,” is known wherever minstrels have | Carncross and Dixey and their minstrels opened there, and conplayed); Lew Dockstader’s Minstrels, headed by Lew __ tinued until about fifteen years ago, when the famous old home Dockstader, whose personal magnetism is wonderful, and who _ of minstrelsy passed under my control, and here “Dumont’s stands at the front in humorous monologues and coon songs; Minstrels” hold forth mightily. McNish, Johnson & Slavin’s Minstrels; Barlow, Wilson, Prim- Some of my singers and comedians have been with me ten rose & West’s, which later became Thatcher, Primrose & West’s, years or more, and from this stage graduated Chauncey Olcott, then Thatcher withdrew to give us his Minstrel novelty Tuxedo | Eddie Foy, Jack Raffael, John C. Rice, George Frothingham, of pleasant memory, and Primrose & West Minstrels continued Daly Brothers, Lew Dockstader, Carroll Johnson, Press Eldridge, together under that title; then Primrose’ Minstrels, with George | Weber & Fields, W. P. Sweatmen and many, many others, some Primrose at their head, and West’s Minstrels, New Orleans Min- — of whom have long since been “gathered unto their fathers,” strels, Gorman Bros.’ Minstrels, Vogel’s Minstrels, Gus Sun’s_ __ while others are still spreading their gospel of sunshine. Minstrels, Richards & Pringles, Kersands Minstrels and many The Institution of Minstrelsy is upon a firmer footing to-day

others have been continually before the public. than ever before, and many thousands of dollars are expended For permanent minstrels New York, Philadelphia, San Fran- _ for the scenery, costumes and electrical effects, which give it its cisco and London claim the honor of long continued runs. present grand spectacular setting and which tend to make it more In New York the San Francisco Minstrels had an uninter- —_— popular than ever. rupted course of prosperity and fun for many years. In San Fran-

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2-t 1910—1919 x September 1910 ¢ Jacobs Orchestra Monthly QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Conducted by Edith Lynwood Winn Q. Please let me know the best method of “faking” onthe piano —_—r what is coming, though he has never been taught why he plays

in playing dance music in orchestra? certain chords. A good course in harmony would cure every A. I do not know any legitimate way of “faking” an accom- “fakir,” for when he once realizes the impossibility of improvpaniment on the piano. There are many so-called “players” who —_ ing upon the modulations in the Waltz Dream, the Merry Widow

think that an excellent ear, and the possession of some ability at = Waltz, Christmas Waltz, or even the time-worm yet popular natural transposition, gives one the right to improve upon or _—_ Strauss and Waldteufel waltzes, he will be glad to go back to substitute an accompaniment for that of some composer who _legato reading. Of the thin parts, let him do so; but “faking” has spent perhaps a lifetime in study. All this is absurd, yet the | dance music presupposes some knowledge of harmony. The most pianist occasionally has to read from the bass or second violin —_ expert “faking” I have ever seen was in the Boston Theatre orpart, and, if he is reading dance music of ordinary rank like — chestra under Napier Lothian. There a man needs to actually Veritas, Yale Boola, Smokey-Mokes, The Gartland and other “fake,” when he comes to his cues and sees only two or three works, he can “fake,” inasmuch as he does not necessarily have notes and unequal number of thin chords to guide him across a to use any chords, except those based upon the tonic, subdomi- — page. The man who can “fake” well in a theatre orchestra is nant, dominant and dominant seventh. He has, by much orches- indeed clever, but he is first of all an excellent musician. tra training, succeeded in transposing easily by ear. He “feels”

June 1911 ¢ Jacobs’ Orchestra Monthly “CLARINET” OR “CLARIONET” A correspondent of the New York Sun submits an old-time dis- — Of all the lexicographers Stormonth and Smart alone authorize cussion regarding the spelling of the word “clarinet” tothe edi- _— this form. This wood instrument, the foundation of the best eftor, as follows: “S bets that ‘clarinet’ (a musical instrument) is —_ fects in military bands, was invented by Jean Christophe Denner the proper way to spell it. W bets that it is spelled incorrectly. | of Nuremberg in 1690. In its earliest state it abounded with deAlthough Webster’s gives both ways, every up-to-date dictio- fects, both in tone and fingering. Yet there were so many good

nary is expected to give the different ways of spelling and pro- qualities in the new instrument that it attracted the corrective nouncing a word. While ‘clarinet’ may be simple and conve- —_zeal of many musicians. The solution was hit upon simultanient, it has never been accepted by users of good English.Con- —_ neously by Gardon in England and in Germany by Theobald sequently, there being no authority behind it, the old way must | Boehm, the amateur who brought the flute to perfection. The be considered correct, regardless of the inclination of the indi- _ list of performers on this instrument who have given fame to

vidual. Your decision will be final.” the clarinet includes Soler, Franco Dacosta, Zavier Lefebvre, The versatile editor proceeds to discuss the matter inthe fol- | Michel Yost, Beer, Baermann, Klose and Wuilly. Karr has made lowing interesting way: “Clarionet has been admitted to the dic- this criticism of the instrument: ‘La clarinette rend sourds ceux tionaries in a second place, not as being commendable but in — qui |’ecoutent et aveugles ceux qui en jouent.’ In the gutter lan-

recognition that a popular error has succeeeded in establishing guage of France the locution ‘jouer la clarinette avec le nez’ itself in usage. The principal word, clarine, became early cor- _— defines the operation expressive of scorn which in Pickwick rupted into clarion. When the clarinet was invented the mistake Papers is designated ‘taking a grinder.’”

in clarion was carried along by analogy to the new instrument. —NMusic Trades Review

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SEPTEMBER 1911 © JACOBS’ ORCHESTRA MONTHLY 1910-1919 September 1911 ¢ Jacobs’ Orchestra Monthly THE SELECTION OF ACCESSORIES Select your accessories with the same care as you do your drums. strike too heavy a blow with the hard stick, however, as Chinese Get well-made traps that will withstand constant use andrough — cymbals are inclined to be brittle. A crescendo roll with the soft

handling without losing in quality or durability. sticks makes a tremendous climax and is extremely effective in For a pedal cymbal choose a 12 or 13 inch genuine Turk. | Oriental numbers. There is no second choice—no other cymbal that has the sharp, These cymbals are imported from China. Only once, to my vibrant tone-quality, the brilliant blending of many tones into knowledge, has an American firm ever tried to duplicate them. one—and there is no other cymbal that will balance as well with = The appearance of the imitations were perfect, but they had no your drums. Attach the cymbal to your bass drum withasliding tone, and the experiment was therefore a failure. adjustment holder so you will have no difficulty in adjusting it A strong, well-made tambourine with plenty of German sil-

to suit different pedals or another size drum. ver jingles will be needed, as will a pair or double pair of castaChoose a floor-pedal and particularly see that it has an __ nets. Get the largest size ebony castanets, mounted on a rockeasy action and a strong spring. You must have one witha maple handle. Although ebony is more brittle than boxwood direct, positive stroke without lost motion. It should also —_ and _ will not stand as hard use, it is preferable because of its have a powerful leverage. The greater the leverage, the less | superior and more characteristic tone. effort is required to play “FF” crashes or long hard galops, The tambourine and castanets are used mostly to impart a such as are used for acrobatic acts. If one of these acts runs Spanish or Mexican atmosphere, although modern writers of twenty minutes, you can easily see the necessity of havinga __ light music use them indiscriminately.

pedal with as easy an action as possible. An overhead pedal For orchestral work use a six-inch triangle, made of halfwith its necessarily small leverage and lost motion makes __inchrod. Made of the best tool steel and tempered correctly, the you work harder than you should, and will oftentimes cause _ triangle is a valuable addition to the drummer’s outfit. Choose

cramps in the leg. by tone rather than by looks, however, for unscrupulous dealers

Select sticks not only for weight and balance, but to fit your can make a triangle of the cheapest grade of steel, that after drum. The importance of this is generally underestimated, and _ being nicked, cannot be distinguished from the good one exmany a good drum has been misjudged and condemned as un- __cepting in the tone, which is as poor as is the steel. satisfactory, simply because the sticks used were not fitted to it The triangle is most handy suspended on the music rack, and could not bring out the tone properly. A stick should havea — where you can play it without taking your eyes from the music. quick taper, short neck and full head. This brings the weight A wood block of rock maple is sharper and more penetrating well up to the point, allowing a decided stroke, getting all the —_ than one of “Chinese rosewood” and will not split. It is a good tone there is in the drum. In rolling, this weight makes the re- _ all-round vaudeville trap and much used for clog and horsebound practically as strong as the stroke, enabling one to make hoofs effects. a closer and more finished roll with much less effort than is Use sand blocks for sand-dances and for vamping first strains possible with a stick of more gradual taper. Sixteen inchesisthe — of ragtime numbers. best length for a stick of any weight. When buying a drum have Economize in weight as much as possible on both drums the manufacturer fit a pair of sticks to it and always use the —_ and music stand. same model, which is doubtless numbered for convenience in Have your drum bags made of water-proof duck and have

re-ordering. the kind that fastens with cord, revving through grommets. This A Chinese crash cymbals is indispensable for crash effects style of bag will last longer and may be adjusted quicker than and climaxes. In vaudeville, especially, the crash cymbal ranks _any other. If you have ever hurried for a car after a dance you first in the line of necessary accessories. The fifteen inch size will appreciate the importance of having everything (especially will do for a small orchestra, but for a larger team or atheatre, the drum bags) easy and quick to handle.

the eighteen inch size is better. Attach it to the back hoop of The bells are a subject by themselves and I shall mention your bass drum with a suspending holder, which will allow itto them later. You will doubtless need some smaller traps, such as vibrate freely, and is adjustable to any position. Use asoft stick — siren, steamboat whistle and sleigh bells, and for motion picwhen possible. In fast work, say for a dancing act, where there __ tures, a shot cushion, water and animal imitations, which you is no time to reach the soft stick, use your drumstick. Do not —_can get a few at a time as you see the need of them.

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1910-1919 DECEMBER 2, 1911 © MUSICAL AMERICA December 2, 1911 ¢ Musical America WORKS OF AMERICAN COMPOSERS REVEAL RELATION OF RAGTIME TO ART-SONG by Arthur L. Judson My friend, Dr. Henry G. Hanchett, physician, author, theorist, (though one critic found that every melody had a larmoyant pianist, lecturer, a man of encyclopedic knowledge and the pos- _ tinge), but there was some question as to the musicianship of sessor of that rarest virtue, common sense, once said to me: “I the songs and their ultimate musical value. sometimes marvel at the inspiration shown in cheap popular Ragtime and the Art-song! Strange bedfellows, but the two songs and in trashy modern hymns. They may lack workman- extremes are really related. In America music has developed in ship, but there is melodic invention enough in one such songto _a free and untrammeled way, each composer writing as he felt

last a real musician throughout an entire symphony.” and with no previous artistic epoch to guide him. The great EuIn these few words he touched on a much-mooted question. ropean schools undoubtedly had their influence, but, after all, We have composers like Schubert, who have an apparently in- —_‘ the American environment, the life in anew world had the great

exhaustible fund of melodic inspiration, but who are weak in _ influences coloring the composer’s products. formal structure, and musicians like Brahms, whose works are They say that there is no American school of composition. perfect in form, but contain either borrowed melodies or origi- This is manifestly untrue. This Berlin audience immediately nal ideas which are unmelodic, unmusical, lacking in inspira- —_ recognized that these songs were different, that they all had cer-

tion. It is the old question of tune or form. tain racial characteristics, and if that does not indicate an AmeriA melody cannot be constructed by hard labor. True,acom- —__can school, what does? poser may get the gist of a melodic phrase and develop it, refine

it, until it presents his idea in final and perfect form, but he New Form Evolving Gradually

cannot sit down with a blank mind and construct from the notes that form the scale an inspired melody. There is more The trouble is that we, in this country, have been looking for than musicianship in the conception of a tune—there is | some tremendously new and strange form to arise suddenly.

inspiration. We have not been content to observe a gradually evolving

After the composer has been inspired with a melody his mu- form. Possibly we have not had the ability to perceive this sicianship enables him to construct an art form, perfect orim- —_ gradual evolution. At any rate, the American composer had perfect, according to his talents. Structure in music canbe stud- — caught in his songs the buoyant spirit of the popular song ied and analyzed; melody cannot. We may examine a melody and has employed a melodic inspiration typical of this counand point out its salient features to the student, but we cannot __ try and its life. inspire him to compose melodies. Formally, we can teach the The German, however, does not write songs; he writes in an student how to obtain certain effects of proportion, of perspec- —_ art form which takes precedence even of inspiration. Just like

tive, of development. the master singers of olden times, whose songs were so hedged in by rules that inspiration was stifled, so the modern German

Cannot Define Melody song composers are becoming musical Beckmessers. A com-

poser mirrors his environment and taste of his audience, and Frankly, I do not know what a melody is, neither can I define | German song writers compose in a stilted form, not because inspiration. It is easy enough to say that a melody is a tune or a inspiration dictates, but because audiences demand. succession of notes arranged in an orderly succession, or to limit This, then, is the reason why American songs failed to imthe word even more precisely, but when we get through we are __ press deeply a Berlin audience. Here was melodic invention, no nearer a definition than before. Inspiration is closely akinto | sometimes inspiration, freely working out its course in the song, genius; we know that it exists and we recognize its manifesta- — the whole tinged by a characteristic Americanism. There was

tions, but we cannot define it. the German audience with its preconceived idea of the art song, It is, therefore, dangerous to discuss a question whichclosely — of Franz, of Brahms, of Schubert, and, to its amazement, the concerns both art and inspiration, for the line where one ends __ style set by their idols was not followed. What were these Ameri-

and the other begins is very faintly marked. cans that they should venture to be different! There may be good Some time ago the house of G. Schirmer presented in Berlin —_ will on both sides, but with conceptions so far apart it is imposa concert of American songs. They were well received, but failed sible that the German should appreciate the American song, and to make the impression which their merit warranted. They were __ neither is it possible that the American will grow nearer to a applauded enthusiastically, yet the impression on the German __ form typically foreign, which stifles his freedom. Perhaps the audience was not profound. Melodic inspiration was not denied |§= American composer has not arrived yet, but he is getting nearer to the goal which he has set for himself.

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DECEMBER 23,1911 ¢ VARIETY 1910-1919 December 23, 1911 ¢ Variety RAGTIME vs. CLASSICAL Are we becoming a nation of music lovers in the legitimate sense —_ years. The popular composer of America today is turning out

of the term “music’’? more classical music than all the other nations put together.

C. H. Ditson & Co. as representative dealers in all kinds of “Then again the nation is rapidly becoming a nation of music sheet music, both “classical,” operatic and “popular,” were called lovers from the fact that sheet music is now within reach of all upon to answer the question. Their Mr. Priauix asked thatase- __ through its sale in the five and ten-cent stores. There are nowa-

ries of questions be written out for him, so that he might give days a hundred times as many places where music can be purthem careful consideration. Variety did not receive the answers — chased as there were a few years ago. Don’t worry about within a reasonable period of time. Mr. Priauix was phoned to. | America’s musical advancement. It is taking care of itself.” He declared his answers had been written out and turned over to Harry Von Tilzer, who has had annually for the past fourteen their Mr. Cragen, who was then switched on the wire. Asked _ years from two to five nation-wide successes, says of ragtime: regarding the written interview Mr. Cragen replied the firm did “Ragtime is not a type of song; it is a type of song-treatment; not care to supply any written statistics but that if Variety de- _in fact it is the distinctive American treatment of song in gensired any figures, Mr. Priauix would supply them orally. eral. It reflects the spirit of the American people, their extraorMr. Priauix was again called upon with a duplicate listofthe | dinary activity, restlessness, initiative, joyousness and capacity original questions, and again referred the interviewer to Mr. _ for work, and for play. “Ragtime” bears the same relation to Cragen, explaining he had fully answered the interrogations in | European music, that the American commercial spirit bears to detail and that the copy was in the possession of Mr. Cragen. the commercial spirit of Europe. “Ragtime” pervades all styles Mr. Cragen explained that “Mr. Ditson” had placed his vetoon —_ and classes of American music, from the coon song to the parthe written statement, but that Mr. Priauix would surely furnish _lor love song, and I think that I am safe in saying that so long as oral answers. Nothing daunted Variety’s representative again |§Americaremains the land of the brave and the free and the busy, sought out Mr. Piauix and requested the statement. At thisjunc- _ particularly the busy, so long shall we have “ragtime.” ture Mr. P. was called to the phone, listened attentively and said Edgar Selden, manager for the Shapiro Company says: “All right.” Turning to the interviewer in a changed manner, he ‘Answering your question, ‘Is the Sale of the Higher Grade declared abruptly there was nothing to say on the subject, and = of Sheet Music Increasing Proportionally With the Population

would “Variety please forget all about it!” of This Country?’ I would say that of my own observation, I am Other dealers in the “classics” were unanimous in their re- _— of the opinion that it is, despite the fact that so-called ragtime fusal to commit themselves on the subject of the inroads being songs are very much in evidence and in general demand. While made by the more popular form of sheet music, establishing _ the better class of everything may appeal only to the select few, thereby the conclusion that the sale of the “classics” is not hold- I am of the opinion that everything in general is slowly but surely ing its own with the demand for the lighter forms, and that the —_ attaining a higher plane, and that the discriminating public is dealers are averse to acquainting outsiders with this condition. proportionately increasing. The appeal of symphony recitals, The New York music publishers themselves, on being vis- __ classical concerts, oratorios, and kindred other musical enterited, made some interesting statements on the subject,eachone __ tainments, are patronized now, greatly in excess over former of course speaking from his own viewpoint and drawing his _ seasons. The ragtime song is the song of the moment. The former

own conclusions. is quickly forgotten, the latter grows stronger and in greater deJerome H. Remick (Jerome H. Remick & Co.) said: mand as time progresses. This condition is applicable to the “We are steadily advancing in the class of songs that arein _ sale of both these style of composition, giving the ballad a shade

public demand.” He was asked: the best of the proposition. It is not to be taken for granted that

“Is ragtime on the wane?” because a ragtime song is hummed or whistled on the streets, “T should say not—emphatically not,” he replied. that the party so assisting in its popularizing has purchased a

“Then how do you reconcile the statement that we are ad- copy, but the lover of the ballad is pretty sure to be the posvancing in the quality of popular demand with the fact that — sessor of some sort of musical instrument and generally with the

‘ragtime’ is not on the wane?” price to buy a copy; therefore the sale of the ballad is generally “T do not concede that ‘ragtime’ is not high grade music—in in greater proportion than that of the rag or novelty song.” fact, quite the contrary. So-called ‘ragtime’ is merely a synco- When J. Fred Helf was asked if ragtime was on the wane he pation of melody of almost any kind. The old style ‘rag’ song __ said: “Ten years ago I was asked the same question. I thought like Back, Back to Baltimore has given way to such melodies as _ then that it was practically through, but it is now more popular The Red Rose Rag, a passage of which bears a close resem- __ than ever. Ten years hence I will probably be asked the same blance to Liszt’s Rhapsody. Then take , for instance, Irving question. Ballads are not over-popular just now, but will come Berlin’s Mysterious Rag. I mention this one specifically because _ back, and the time is not far off. I find that you can place a ballad we do not publish it, and hence are totally unprejudiced in refer- with vaudeville acts that a year ago would not use anything but a ring to it. The music is as high grade as anything produced in _ novelty song. There is never any telling what the public will buy 87

1910-1919 MAY 25,1912 « DONALDSONVILLE CHIEF in the way of sheet music. They will purchase a production num- _ scores contain real music of lasting qualities.”

ber and a trashy song at the same time. A high- class hit lasts for Albert Von Tilzer (York Music Co.) said: years but a popular one last but six months at the longest.” “In looking over the popular music field of the present day, I Henry Stern (Jos. W. Stern & Co.) makes the followingcomments: find that the situation has changed somewhat from that of a “To anyone conversant with the output of the various music —_ decade ago. There is no doubt but that the demand for ragtime publishers, it must be apparent that we have been for the past few music is increasing, daily, and at the present time it has not as years favoring better-class compositions and operatic productions, yet reached its zenith. in preference to the lighter forms of American ballads and rag- “There has also been quite a demand for risqué songs. The detime numbers, our reason for this being that we have found the — mand for the rustic ballad has entirely died out, at the present time, American public is becoming more and more discriminating and _ but, like all other popular demands, which usually move in cycles,

educated in music, demanding better material all the time. itis only a question of time before that will come back again.” “The increased patronage of grand opera and the high-class Ted Snyder said: “Look at our professional rooms. You see foreign musical productions, bear witness to this fact. More- they are all filled with performers learning our ragtime songs. over, the returns from the sales of a popular song success are —‘ That should speak for itself. No, I hardly think that the ‘classics’ not commensurate with the enormous amount of plugging and _are holding their own with the enormous demand for ragtime.” expenditure required to land a hit, a popular hit being an ephem- The United States may be advancing in many directions in eral proposition, lasting nowadays about six months at the most; the matter of education. So eminent an authority as Professor and when you couple this fact with the ridiculous price of 6to7 Charles Eliot, of Harvard University, says that, in the main, it cents at which this class of music must be sold to the trade, the —_ isn’t. Judging by the popular demand for the simpler melodies

point of our argument becomes apparent. and the increasing craze for ragtime, we are not advancing as “The public has evidenced a decided preference for musical —_ lovers of the musical classics. Jolo shows written by eminent composers (mainly foreign), whose

May 25, 1912 ¢ Donaldsonville Chief NEGRO FOLK-SONGS Austin, Texas, May 15, 1912. Editor Chief: Dear Sir—As a “Twas on a Christmas morning, the hour was about ten Sholdon Fellow of Harvard University I am engaged in collect- When Stagalee shot Billy Lyons and landed in de Jefferson ing the folk-song of America my work being at present espe- pen—O Lawdy, po’ Stagalee.”

cially concerned withhis the prayer songs of re Negro: his ee his In hisaid church: spirituals, and songs. I ask your in gathering

to- 7 yaw

gether the words and music of the most distinctive Negro “bal- When my blood run chilly an col se got to go (Thrice) lets” precisely as he has sung them and in many places contin- When by blood run chilly an’ col’, I’se got to go way beues to sing them. Almost all Negroes sing. Sometimes their songs yond de sun. are versions of music hall ballads; oftener they are a crude, natural Among the reels, Alabama Bound, Frankie and Albert, The expression of his emotions, his real life. Perhaps some are ech- Blues, Big Jim's Dead an’ Gone, Railroad Bill, among the spirituoes of his primitive life in Africa. He improvises readily and _—_ als, Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray, There’s a Little Wheel a-Rollin’ rhythm is a prominent part of his emotional make-up; and his = /n My Heart, God's Goin’ t’ Ride on a whislin,’Chariot, Norah songs seem to rise spontaneously to match every emergency of — Hist de Winder, are all genuine Negro folk-songs . Many of your

his experience. In the cotton-patch he sings. readers know such songs or know where they can be had. I shall “Fus’ time I saw de voll weevil He was settin’ on de square: heartily appreci ate any help given me in getting into a permanent Nex’ time I saw de boll weevil He had all of his family form this illusive material, both the words and the music. Possibly dare,—dey was lookin’ for a home, jes a-lookin’ for a the music of the Negro will turn out to be his most important contri-

home.” bution to American culture. It can be easily caught on the phonograph. Others of your readers who have not been thrown into con-

As a teamster on the levee: tact with the Negro may know ballads equally as interesting. There (first line depleted in paper —stained) “Billy done holler are current in America many ballads of the cowboy, the gold-seeker, for its oats an’ hay— Gwine t’ harness in de mornin’ soon, the soldier, the mountaineer, the sailor, as well as interesting ver-

soon, Gwine t’ harness in de mornin’ soon.” sions of the traditional old world ballads. All are of interest to the

As agrateful Mississippi of me of eras of Soca na and I shall be , most forriverman: any helpstudent in collecting thisneshifting, fast-vanishing

Long come de Katie Adams with her headlight turned expression of the American ballad spirit. I particularly invite the down stream And her side wheel a-knockin’. Great-God— correspondence of persons who are willing to help in collecting

I been redeem’. this material. Sincerely yours, John A. Lomax, President, AmeriOf one of his desperado friends: can Folk Lore Society. 1912 —JACOBS

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AUGUST 1912 * ORCHESTRA MONTHLY 1910-1919 August 1912 ¢ Orchestra Monthly THE ETHICS OF RAGTIME Anew “Websterian” dictionary gives as adefinition ofragtime, their financial sorrow. To lead the public into an educating in“syncopated music, characteristic of Negro melodies,” whichis fluence is one thing, while to drive it to pedantic learning is about as clearly concise as to define the horse as energized pub, —_ quite another. characteristic of carts that are not pushed. Ragtime, to be sure, Under the title, “The Ethics of Ragtime,” Mr. Arthur Farwell is a form of syncopation, and one of the most beautiful of syn- _—in an article in Musical America, expresses some wholly copated passages occurs in the solo “With Verdure Clad” from = sane and common sense views of the “ragtime” and the Haydn’s Creation, but the latter is never classified as “ragtime,” “popular” as musical factors. We are inclined to question,

although it may be a sublimated example of it. however, Mr. Farwell’s statement relative to the composing Like many another newcomer that is behowled as ca- __ of ragtime. lamity, ragtime is berated, bethumped and bewailed, but, “To begin with, one must realize for and by whom popunevertheless, ragtime is become. It is here, and strongly lar music exists. Its beneficiaries, or victims, according to encamped upon the melodic reservation , where it bids fair —_ one’s point of view, will probably be allowed some considerto remain for some time to come, Perhaps one of its musi- _ation in a discussion of the matter. They are scarcely slaves

cal virtues is the rigid adherence to rhythm that is made for whom everything is to be decided by their masters. Popunecessary in order properly to “do” it, for ragtime cannot __ lar music pertains to the ‘people,’ which is to say, the mass be rag-ged and be well “ragged.” But to the ultra itis not — of the people, rich and poor, ignorant or educated (in other accredited with even one virtue and is looked upon as a _ than a musical way), in contradistinction to those who are

musical tatterdemalion. specially educated in music. Popular music is for the genus

It is difficult to imagine ragtime as making a musical dent —man, special musical predilection and knowledge left wholly in Teutonic phlegmatism, but such is the fact, and the German _aside. Its appeal is to the unenlightened instinct for melody music publishers are most gravely considering its deteriorating | and rhythm which every healthy man is supposed to have in effects upon German musical taste and culture. But, mind you, some measure. only as a sacred “duty” (imagine the average music publisher “Thus we must recognize at once that it is outside the jurismaking obeisance to duty), and not at all blind to the accruing —_ diction of musical culture, that it has nothing in common with profits from its sales, which is a mild tempering of the ethical —_ the aims of musical culture, and makes no pretensions of being, with the political. A Berlin correspondent to The New York Times _and does not desire to be, a step toward such a thing. One may

writes: have a positive passion for ragtime without evincing the slight“The German Music Publishers’ Association is out with an est interest in music, i.e., music, the art. Popular music is fixed official statement to the effect that between Americancoonsongs and complete in its altitude, at least so long as we do not figure and Viennese operettas Germany’s traditional and vaunted taste — in Darwinian cycles of evolution, and can rise no higher than its

for good music is rapidly being lost.” source, which is the primitive universal sense of rhythm implied “The association says the situation has become so flagrant __ in the dance-step, coupled with the primitive universal sense of that pieces like Alexander's Ragtime Band and By the Light of melody coexistent with such arhythmic sense. Harmony, a later the Silvery Moon and waltz melodies from The Chocolate Sol- and slower development, can never, in popular music, be aldier and The Count of Luxembourg are making the Fatherland _ lowed to rise to the point where it interferes with the main eleforget that Wagner, Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, or Liszt ever | ments on which popular song rests.” lived.

“The music publishers say that they have no complaint to NOT FOUNDED ON CULTURAL BASIS make from the standpoint of profits, as the sale of the so-called

‘popular music’ is rising by leaps and bounds but they feel that “In short, popular song rests not upon an artistic or cultural it is their duty to call the nation’s attention to the fact that the basis, but upon a universal psycho-physical fact, with the physipublic’s artistic taste is deteriorating to a corresponding degree.” — cal chiefly in evidence. Popular music is a matter of the feet Ragtime, as well as other forms of musical composition, un- _ rather than of the soul. To make out a case against popular muquestionably has its ethical side, and if there were no reasons _ sic, as was done by a teacher of singing in the New York Evening for its existence, in all probability it would follow the universal Journal recently, is something like making out a case against the law of annihilation. It is, after all, a matter largely todo withthe —_ sense of sight, or of hearing. and to proceed against popular personal equation—what I like may not please you and what —_ songs because the verses often have ‘unsavory meanings,’ is pleases you I may not like. The public, as a rule, has very pro- about the same as it would be to make a crusade against the nounced opinions as to what it likes and willhave, as producers __ senses of sight and hearing because they were often employed and managers ere not have many times found out, and muchto _ for seeing and hearing ‘unsavory things.’

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1910-1919 AUGUST 1912 «© ORCHESTRA MONTHLY “The man of ‘the people’ will no more forego the exercise of ART VS. NATURE his primitive musical sense than he will forego the exercise of

his other senses in their primitive capacities. He does not train “But what right has the man of culture to pass judgment upon this primitive musical sense to a higher musical culture, butnei- = the goodness or badness of ragtime, of popular music as a

ther does he train his eye to comprehend the principles of | whole—in short, to make out a case against the popular beauty—he merely sees what his eye falls on. In musiche merely | song? One might as well make out a case against the grass!

picks up what his rhythmic, that is his dance sense, andhisme- The cultured man’s province is that of art, and popular lodic, or tune sense, can grasp without effort or training. And ~— music, while requiring a bit of skill in the handling, is much

the broad average of these senses in any race determines and more closely related to nature. The mere fact of the high fixes the altitude of its popular music, the level of whichis there- refinement of his music does not make it any better than fore about as definitely determined as the level of the ocean. ragtime, it merely makes it more refined. There can be The same is true of the moral status of the popular song, which —s good and bad cultivated music, and there can be good and has had its Anthony Comstocks since the beginnings of musical bad popular music. Good cultivated music is faithful to

history. the subtle realities of the cultivated mind, but good rag-

“The makers of this popular music are representatives ofthis time is no less faithful to the crude realities of the uncultisame ‘people,’ but who happen to have the creative or shaping — vated mind. As to the truth of both to nature, psychologifaculty, which enables them to make music which meets sympa- _ cally considered, they are on a plant of perfect equality thetically this inexorable rhythmic-melodic average. They are —_and the difference is one of refinement, not of goodness. born to this function as certain bees are born to fulfill certain “That is good to me which I can do, and if my mind hapfunctions in a hive, or as a Beethoven is born to respond to the __ pens to be totally incapable of following a symphony, or

highest ideal music demands.” getting any pleasure from it, the symphony has no worth to me. But if I can use a popular song as a means of satisfying

THE MEN WHO COMPOSE POPULAR MUSIC such sense of rhythm and tune as I have, for me it is good, and a positive means of heightening the sense of life. “This unique ability of the popular music composer implies “And that is the case in which the millions who enjoy popuno musical culture; at least it does not necessarily doso.Many lar music find themselves. They are blind to the truth who composers of popular songs do not even take the trouble tolearn suppose that ragtime is usurping a place in the popular mind harmony, and others cannot even write down a melody, being = and soul which would otherwise be occupied by something content to whistle or sing a tune of their own composition, or — which is ‘good,’ or who imagine that popular music is re‘pick it out’ with one finger on the piano, leaving others to write — sponsible for the deterioration of taste, manners and morals. it down and put chords to it. Listen to the Mocking Bird was _—_ The masses who are enjoying ragtime, would have no music composed in that way. If popular music composers learnenough __ to enjoy if that were taken away, unless something equally harmony to serve them, it does not alter their fundamental posi- _— practical and sympathetic were given them, and this is a psytion as identical with ‘the people’ and outside of what is known chological impossibility in view of the fact that ‘the people’

as musical culture. have created their popular music precisely to their need and “The little garden of musical culture, onthe otherhand,is their taste. As to its having a deteriorating effect on them, almost microscopic in comparison with the great wild of popu- —_—rvullgarities and all, such a claim is absurd in view of the fact

lar music. The devotee of cultivated music considers popu- that it is not the music which makes the people, but the people lar music bad because it is vulgar. Compared with his highly |= who make the music to suit them. Popular music is not forced organized and subtle music, responding to thousands of the upon the people, it is created out of their own spirit. mind’s imaginings and the soul’s sensibilities, it is crude and “This is not a study in pessimism. It is only a picture of condicoarse, knowing only a few rough rhythms and a few stereo- tions at the bottom of the pit, musically speaking, and an indicatyped kinds of tune. Besides, it is always getting in his way. _ tion that, even there, that which is creative is good, because thorThere is so much of it, and it so constantly on parade. Itseems — oughit is the heightened consciousness of life. The bottom of the as it its barbaric hordes would sweep down the little shrine _ pit stays at the same level, but this is very different from saying of culture which he maintains with such difficulty and so great —_ that one music stick at the bottom of the pit. Individuals are cona devotion to his ideals. And it would, without athought ora __ stantly rising out of it to a higher level, and greater means are

regret.” being provided for their doing so today than ever before.”

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SEPTEMBER 21, 1912 © MUSICAL AMERICA 1910-1919 September 21, 1912 © Musical America DANGERS THAT LIE IN RAGTIME Herbert Sachs Hirsch

To the Editor of Musical America: cause the people demand better music. They have the same From time to time I have read with great interest vari- | “deadline’ between popular and artistic music, but the popular ous articles on the value of ragtime, written by Arthur Farwell. — music is raised to higher level because there is no non-progres-

The gist of these articles is: sive and non-elevating element like ragtime in it.

1. That the line of the psychological boundary between Ragtime certainly does not elevate the soul. what good is there

popular music and music the art is a very sharp one. in it? It gives enjoyment. How does it give that enjoyment, buy 2. That popular music, including ragtime, iscreated by — whichof its musical elements? Principally by the rhythm. Ragtime

and for the people, and is therefore creative and good. does ‘train the feet.’ But are we not aiming continually to have With the first of these points I do certainly agree. But with —_ progress in music” This progress cannot come by training the feet the second one I cannot, because it includes ragtime, and to my but by elevating the soul. Mr. Farwell tells us to ‘feed the people the

mind ragtime is not creative and good. kind of music that trains the soul, by all means’ but here we enTaking Mr. Farwell’s second statement as applied to ragtime: counter an obstacle. Here is the detrimental part of ragtime.

Is ragtime created by and for the public, and is it, therefore, It positively hinders a musically uncultured person in gaining an creative and good? Mr. Farwell thinks that, because the com- _—_ appreciation of higher music. Not only with people who, as Mr. poser and publisher manufacture ragtime in order to supply a _— Farwell to aptly expresses it, come up to one with a chip on the demand for it, it must be created by and for the public. This is shoulder, saying “You can’t learn me nothing,” but also with pertrue, but does it necessarily follow that it is creative and good? _ sons otherwise broad-minded and open to conviction, ragtime so Because there is a large demand for yellow newspapers, bur- _ fascinates them that they cannot even listen to higher music, much lesque, shows, saloons, gambling houses and other dens of the _ less enjoy it—in many cases because of the absence of the syncounderworld, could we with justice say that these things arecre- —_ pated rhythm, the so-called “rag.” Ragtime has dulled their taste ated by and for the public, and are, therefore, creative and good? —_ for pure music just as intoxicants dull a drunkard’s taste for pure There is a desire for them, and that is the reason for their exist- | water. Ragtime becomes a habit, and, like all other habits, it is very ence; but we cannot give any good arguments in their favor.I _—_ difficult if not impossible for its victim to break away from it. will try to prove that ragtime is as bad in its effects ina musical __,. Especially with young people ragtime takes up so much time

way as these other things are in a moral and social way. 1 and thought that they lose in higher musical cultivation. This is Mr. Farwell says that if there were no reason for the exist- the harm in ragtime. It does not affect the musically cultured in ence of ragtime it would follow the universal law of annihila- _. any way. Neither do I claim that ragtime in itself is bad. It is not; tion. Very true, and there certainly is areason for its existence— but its effect on the musically uncultured mass of people is cer-

the demand for it. But what if the supply of ragtime were sud- tainly deteriorating. denly cut off? Would it not then follow the universal law? How Mr. Farwell points to the Central Park concerts as giving long would the pieces of ragtime that exist at present last? Rag- = examples of musically uncultured people, people who no doubt time is something which does not appeal to the real, primitive —_—have a great deal of ragtime in their daily lives, enjoying sym-

sense for music, but, rather, it fascinates the public by sensa- — phonic music, and this phenomenon is effected, just as Mr. tionalism and “catchy’ rhythm. Because it does not appeal by —_— Farwell says, by this wonderful element of “crowd psychology”

any real sound worth but merely by sensationalism it is a fad, which, “Vivifies and sensitizes individual souls to their highest much like the fads and fashions of dress, changing continually. | potency, and makes each the possessor of the faculties of all.” Ask any publisher how long the average piece of ragtime lasts. | But Mr. Farwell forgets that this mass-application is really but a , Just until something “newer’ appears, with differentrhythm and — small portion of the musical influence in one’s life. It is in the more sensationalism. It is evident that the people quickly tireof | home and to the individual taken separately that the greatest it, and only by the continual output does ragtime hold its grip _ part of the musical influence comes. And it is here in the home

upon them and fascinate them into buying more. that ragtime works its mischief. Ragtime is a quagmire for “muDoes the public need ragtime? That it does need some primi- sical civilization.” tive form of music we all agree, but is that need best answered For these reasons I believe that ragtime ought to be supwith ragtime? No one need think that ifragtime were abolished— —_ pressed. Exactly how to go about doing this and whether we completely obliterated—there would be nothing to take its place, | would succeed or not is another question. Since ragtime is so leaving a sort of musical vacuum. No, indeed! What is the con- —_ deeply rooted in the people I think it would be as hard if not dition in other countries? They have no ragtime. Are the masses, harder to stamp out than any of the social evils. If Mr. Farwell therefore, without any music at all? No, they have ahigher stan- |= means to champion the cause of popular music, which is good dard, that is all. That is the real reason why Europe is ahead of _ both in itself and in its effect, therefore excluding ragtime, I America in music—because the popular standard is higher, be- = am with him heart and hand. But if he includes ragtime I must disagree.

9]

1910-1919 FEBRUARY 1913 « MUSICAL OPINION & MUSICAL TRADE REVIEW

February 4, 1913 ¢ Variety “RAGTIME” SPREADING ALL OVER CONTINENT (Paris, Feb.) The advance indications are that American ragtime From Berlin and Vienna are coming inquiries to Paris about will spread all over the continent, following its present big wave “ragtime.” It is said here that if Berlin takes to rag, she will

of popularity in England. gather it in more fondly than even London has done. Vienna has Parisian music hall managers are said to be going into the —_ been supplying America with music in its comedies for a long chances of putting over an American show or revue with plenty while. Now Vienna wants to hear the American music that is so of rag in it. One of the halls is about to branch out in that direc- — much talked about.

tion very shortly. While Paris is going to get into action almost right away,

The foreign agents are also taking notice. H. B. Marinelliis nothing decided will be done at the other Continental capitols reported to have decided the fad is due here and is preparing for before next season, it is expected. it by submitting to manager’s lists of available American sets Orders for American acts to be imported over here have in-

that can handle the syncopated songs or dances. creased until now the agents really have standing commissions to secure them.

February 1913 ¢ Musical Opinion & Musical Trade Review “RAG-TIME” ON PARNASSUS “There is nothing new under the sun,” said the wise man of old, _ or lyrics, which are supposed to depict Negro life in modern and the present craze for eccentric rhythm is but one more re- = America.” It may be added that the peculiar rhythm is to be minder of the fact. It is also a proof that there is something ina _ found not only in “coon” songs but in practically all religious name, despite the Shakespearean dictum. Syncopation is of songs popular among Negroes in the southern states before the course one of the oldest of musical devices, yet under its proper —_ abolition of slavery. Oliver Ditson’s published several collecname and used artistically it has so far left the public cold. Vul- tions of these under the title of “Jubilee songs.” One of the most garized however and called “ragtime,” it has sent nine-tenths of —_ interesting of the works of Coleridge-Taylor is a collection of English and American people agog. While all public crazes are “Twenty-four Negro melodies.” Of the twenty-four melodies, of interest to the student of human nature, this particular oneis _ sixteen are religious plantation songs or “spirituals,” as they were specially so to the musician, since it is surely the first time that _ called. In almost every case, ragtime rhythm is a prominent feathe public has gone mad over a mere musical artifice; though, as _ture. I have just been comparing them with an album claiming I shall show later, something of the kind happened in the eigh- _ to contain “the latest ragtime successes,” and a comparison supteenth century, and them curiously enough the craze was caused plies yet another proof—if such were needed—that the mob by a kindred rhythm. Still, the vogue was not to becomparedto _ never lays an appreciative hand on art without leaving traces of

the present rage for stuttering and hiccoughing measures. its grimy paw. One is never surprised at the public showing a strong prefer- There is the widest of distances between these pathetic songs ence for any particular musical forms, but to lose one’s head _ of slavery (which were sung with swaying bodies and with reliover a mere matter of accent! It is on a par with some of the _ gious fervor at camp revival meetings) and the vulgar tunes with ridiculous catchwords that from time to time take the town by __ their ugly titles that are just now a public obsession. As an instorm, those apparently meaningless questions that make the boy _ stance of a melody with great emotional and harmonic possiin the street a terror and reduce the most ready- witted of his _ bilities and as a good example of sustained syncopation, take victims to impotent rage. Just now, ragtime fills such a place in Oh He Raise a Poor Lazarus:

our corporate life. All, save such sobersides as you and I, are Chorus, been a familiar feature in the strains of the music hall for some re == ae z bitten. Why it has so suddenly captured us who shall say? It has 725s Set i pemaae—eeet ie

years without attracting very much attention. Indeed, it has quite On pe re slse bin (romsthedeath I ta pam ues

a respectable past history, as we shall see. There is no denying ———— “7 its appeal, though like other good things one may have too much a ee eee Perea of it. The present boom will have served a good purpose, how- While ma-ny were stand-ing 1... BY «.cecceeee Jesus. ever, if it drives home to our composers and performers—and

especially our singers—the importance of rhythm. : ——— ——_ '

modern term of American origin signifying in the first instance © Leo-sen.....de mans from un-der ..... de groun’, an’

broken rhythm in melody, especially a sort of continuous syn- pg ;

copation. ‘Ragtime tunes’ is the name given in the States to those

airs which are usually associated with the so-called ‘coon’ songs tell him: Go pwo-phe..ccerce BY vacances wesceee

92

FEBRUARY 1913 © MUSICAL OPINION & MUSICAL TRADE REVIEW 1910-1919 Here is a phrase from Wade in the water, the firstbarof which _ essary. Plenty of examples of real ragtime are to be found in the

is by no means easy to sing: Hungarian Rhapsodies of Liszt, in the dances of Brahms and in Grieg’s arrangements of Norwegian melodies. Here is a “Scotch snap” from a less familiar source:

See that band all = dress'd In white. WEST AFRICAN FOLKSONG.

while I have not so far discovered any piece of music hall rag- &e.

time with a lilt to beat the song commencing: 7 ew Ne

. . eg ~ A This liking for disturbed accent is by no means confined to the worldly-minded. There are plenty of examples to be found

Did ot my Lord de-liv-er Dan - iely Diliv-er in church music of all periods. Even plainsong had some dalliance with it, as in such passages as:

Further examples of such religious songs may be found in

Grove’s Dictionary: “Negro music of the United States.” Lu - - cis cre - a - tor. How far these songs owe their origin to Africaisadebatable = which isa commonplace of plainchant. Here is one from the old point. Probably the rhythmical peculiarities only hail from thence, German tune Es ist ein’ Ros’ entsprungen: as many of the melodies show decided traces of civilized influence. Some are curiously Scotch in idiom. The rhythms are of-

ten very difficult, but these dusky singers are credited with a a

very highly developed feeling for rhythm, due probably to their accompaniments consisting mainly of such primitive percussive While the ancient English carol tune, This Endris Nyght, has for

effects as the clapping of hands, stamping of feet and the clack- _ ts last line:

ing of bones or pieces of wood. The banjo seems to have been A very little used. (Sic. editors bold added)

As I said above, it is not easy to see why the public should go ° ad

suddenly mad over a rhythmical peculiarity that was wellknown _a rhythm often found in the early versions of some old psalm in England even before the day of the nigger minstrel. Itmustbe —_ tunes. Indeed, the original forms of many of our most popular nearly—if not quite—a half century ago that the Jubilee Singers —_ early hymn tunes present us with some interesting rhythms. The were touring Europe, singing genuine plantation songs and _— wholesale simplification to which they have been subjected is a hymns. What is still more odd is the apparently sudden discov- _Joss. They looked difficult, and for that reason they were ruthery of the fascination of ragtime. The power and width of its _Jessly made to fit the Victorian church musician’s idea of what a appeal are shown by the fact of its existing in almost all folk hymn tune should be. But the difficulty is more apparent than music. The form most familiar to us Britishers is of course that —_real; and I have heard some rhythmical curiosities taken up quite known as the “Scotch snap.” It is not without interest at the — quickly by congregations and enjoyed on fuller acquaintance. present time to recall the fact that in the time of Burney the _— After all, why should people who can pick up the latest catchy musical world was suffering from it in pretty much the same _ popular song find any difficulty with such a passage as this line way as we are now from its American cousin. The historian, from the Generan Psalter, 1551: sic] writing of the Italian opera in 1748, complains that there was

too much of the “Scots catch or cutting short of the first of two > A= 2S Se SS ee ee

notes ina melody,” blaming especially Cocchi, Perez, and Jomelli a Se S|

for being lavish with the “snap.” Later, popular song writers such as Hook made liberal use of the trick and probably not a But you may be sure that the average hymnbook editor would few songs since called Scotch were produced in this way. For _ feel it incumbent on him to turn the eighth and ninth notes into example, Within a Mile of Edinburgh Town, for all Caledonian __ crotchets. flavor imparted to it by the “sea’,” was born on the wrong side Nor should it be forgotten that to this feature in popular muof the Tweed, having been composed by this same Hook and __ sic we musicians owe much. This displaced accent, taken in sung by Mrs. Wrigthen at Vauxhall Gardens in 1780. Even _hand by the great composers, has been the basis of some of their Handel could not escape the infection, as the most cursory ex- finest effects. One can scarcely imagine classical music without

amination of his instrumental music will show. cross rhythm and syncopation, or curtailing, extension and overWhile there is considerable difference between ragtime and _ lapping of phrases, all being developments of this germ. Its charm the “snap,” they fare both alike in being manifestations of the __ lies almost entirely in its capacity for surprising; and it is this popular love of spicy rhythm. No folk music is without it. Euro- —_ quality of the unexpected and even incongruous that makes it pean examples are now so well known that quotation is unnec- _ especially suitable for humorous purposes, though it can be sin-

93

1910-1919 MARCH 1913 ¢ ENGLISH REVIEW ister enough on occasion. It is not easy to explain the difference; but it may be said that, while ragtime is syncopation, syn- | One wonders how often at rehearsal the weary players have found

copation is not always ragtime. Still, many pages of the great themselves drawing on the title for a due expression of their composers contain music that is as pure ragtime as any so la- _ feelings! beled. For example, the opening of the main theme of the second Perhaps no one composer’s works give us the germ and the and third Leonora Overture would surely answer to this de- _ fully developed result more completely than those of Bach. In

5: his numerous little dances are to be found examples of just the little catch in the rhythm that belongs to folk music, while his mastery of complexity needs no mention. I may be allowed how-

scription ever to call your attention to the Fifth Partita, the Sarabande and But would your music hall habitué be excited when later on Minuetto of which are specially interesting examples of rhythm. Beethoven uses the rhythm of the first bar for twenty-three bars Surely the scheme of the latter must have caused astonishment. in succession? Not a whit. He would know that he was listening ‘can recall nothing similar in Bach or in any other composer of

all. SS EEE to classical music and his frame of mind would be appropriately —f)-# ,,§ —______, ____, 4)

chastened. Call the same figure ragtime and let it be banged and eo eo

screamed out by before, some American comedians and he roused. So, as I said there is something in a name after

will be duly ae a [Seaaee

Se es ee es ee

Apropos the difference between ragtime and syncopation, I = that period: and so on for fifty bars.

ae The whole of it. rhythm soup, interesting volumes of could be subject written on I mustis pull lest I findthat myself in the

—= ee

should say that this figure, also from Leonora No. 3: toils of a most fascinating theme. My object in these desultory is better described by the latter than the former term, though I —_ remarks is to remind some of my brother musicians who may should be sorry to be suddenly asked why. I can only say thatI _feel inclined to curse ragtime and all its works, that the thing feel in my bones that it is so; just as surely as I feel that this, _itself is a pleasing device which has existed from the early days

3 of music and is moreover one to which composers have been indebted for many fine effects. I will give you one last strain

A RL AGN NN LEE SSN ON SS NUNN EDO

from Die Meistersinger Overture;

is ragtime, albeit very expressive, thanks largely to the bebung |

[vibrato] in the first bar. Here, however, are two extraordinary | and ask you to guess the composer: There! A piece of pure ragtime, if ever there was—naked and

sa Ss not ashamed. The composer? No, he is not American or English.

French, did you say? You are getting warm now. It is so unlike

— the composer that you are hardly likely to guess—Debussy! It rhythms of Wagner that are just as certainly not ragtime: is the opening of the last number in his Children’s Corner—a

Here is a teaser from Gotte rdammg rung: piece called Golliwog's Cake Walk—wherein you will find plenty of piquant rhythm and abundant humor. Surely, after these ex-

4 JILL, etc. amples, ragtime may be allowed to peg out a claim in some humble corner of the Parnassian slopes?

March 1913 © English Review RAGTIME: THE NEW TARANTISM by Francis Toye A large number of people, from a well-known musical critictoa | syncopated one. But not invariably. The popular Hitchy-Koo writer in Grove’s Dictionary, have tried to define ragtime. They and Dixie, for instance, are hardly syncopated, yet it were pure have agreed that it is a syncopated or broken rhythm and leave —_— pedantry not to class them as ragtime. For ragtime is essentially

it at that, generally adding that examples can be found in the —_a popular term, and to the popular mind these particular tunes classics. But I do not think that ragtime can be denied as a _are not only “rags,” but perhaps the best known examples of rhythm at all. True it has a characteristic rhythm and usually a “rags.”

94

MARCH 1913 © ENGLISH REVIEW 1910-1919 As a matter of fact, in the popular acceptance of the term, § penings among inanimate things and forces, but are a notation ragtime is rather a school than arhythm. It denotes a species of — of laws of thought-sequence.” And if an individual dancing and music almost invariably associated with particular dances of a _ singing ragtime can be expressed in a curve, as I suppose he lascivious or merely ridiculous kind, with a peculiarly hideous —_can, I am sorry for his thought-sequence! Moreover, it must not lurch of the shoulders like a ship lopping from side to side ina be forgotten that all these dynamic associations act and react on swell, and, usually, with yells or interjections of most revolting | one another. Thus Feininger, Muensterberg, Clouston, all the sound. In any case, it seems to me as useless to define ragtime authorities I chanced to light upon, agreed, from various points as the traditional camel. Everybody knows what it is, and, alas! of view, in saying much the same thing, to wit, that there are true as one of their own poets has said, “Everybody’s doing itnow.” — rhythms and true movements that are in accordance with nature, To most sane people, doubtless, the existence of ragtime is — whichis sanity, and false rhythms and false movements, which just a mild bore, a matter of ridicule rather than apprehension. are allied with hysteria, neurosis and nervous instability generThat is not my view. I believe that it is a direct encouragement ally. to hysteria, and that in a society where, as Sir Thomas Clouts Of course, it may be objected that ragtime is not rhythmiwrites in his Neuroses of Development: “The social needs and __ cally unhealthy at all, but merely a kind of “free declamation” restraints of modern civilized life unite with subtle hereditary | with the accents falling in unexpected places. This point of view nervous defects to make hysteria as common as itis,” suchen- —_ was lately put forward by a very able writer in The Times. He couragement is really dangerous. For be it noted in passing, rag- claimed to begin with, that it had at least the merit of having time, in just that technical sense of the work whichIdeclaimed dealt a fatal blow at the sloppy, rhythmless amateur. True, and above, has never taken any hold on the populace. They whistle —__ we are all grateful. Moreover, I would add that it has extermiand sing the tunes, of course; but the rhythm escapes them. They _ nated that peculiar, slow, sensual waltz which once devastated turn it, as a matter of fact, into ordinary two-four, preferring the —_ our ballrooms. But because a very bad man murders a bad man, tunes like Hitchy-Koo, which are practically in that rhythm al- ——_ we do not call the very bad man a saint. The Valse Lente might ready. Doubtless this is partly due to their inability toreproduce and doubtless did, drive people to conjugal infidelity, but raga complex rhythm, but I suggest that it is also due to the fact __ time, I verily believe, drives them to mania, and of the two alterthat, from the nature of their lives, they are not so receptive of _ natives I prefer the former—as a bachelor at any rate. Further, hysterical suggestion as the upper-classes. In any case, itis an this writer assumes that the association of the tunes with the undeniable fact that among these upper-classes ragtime appeals dances, which he admits to be disgusting and depraved, is purely especially to the more neurotic individuals and cliques. Ex hoc _ accidental. He has absolutely no right to make such an assump-

disce omnia. tion. Why should the inventors of such dances choose such It is too often forgotten nowadays that rhythm has a direct rhythms or the composers of such rhythms patronize such dances effect on the brain. The Greeks knew it well enough and thatis, | unless they had something in common? Any dance is but the largely, what Plato meant when he insisted on the kind of music —_— expression of music, imagined or heard. If the sentiments of the

proper to education. “Rhythm and Harmony,” he writes in The — dance and the music are not allied the result is inevitably a failRepublic, “find their way into the inward places of the soul,on —_ure from every point of view. and nobody could deny to ragwhich they mightily fasten.” And itis amusing tonotehow much __ time, both in music and dance, at least the quality of success. more modern is his point of view than that of his editor Jowett, | But the writer of the article finally gives himself away, I think, who is inclined to scoff at him for attaching so much impor- _ in saying that the characteristics of ragtime are absolutely identance to music. For modern educationists and scientists aremore tical with those of the hymns formerly sung by the Negroes in and more coming round to the view that a proper rhythmical _ the “white heat of religious fervor during some protracted meetsense is the basis of character. To any skeptic I would recom- __ing in church or camp.” Exactly so. They show precisely the

mend M. Jacques Dalcroze’s book on Eurhythmics. This _ kind of “vitality” associated with Revivalism, and especially the gentleman’s system of rhythmic training has, it is well known, type of Revivalism peculiar to the Negro! What need have we worked little short of wonders in musical education. An En- of further witnesses? For of all hysteria that particular semiglishman, Dr. Yorke-Trotter, has with methods somewhat simi- _ religious hysteria is nearer to madness than any other. lar, achieved no less remarkable results. And it must not be for- But, quite apart from all this theorizing, I would ask any pergotten that in the former case, at any rate, not only musical but —_ son accustomed to analyze his own and other people’s emotions

general education is aimed at. Could anything be more signifi- | whether he thinks that the effects of ragtime are beneficial. I cant of the influence of sane rhythms? For what is education but _ have, personally, taken the trouble to do so in the case of two or

the training of the motor-centers of the brainto actinharmony? three of my more intelligent, though disreputable friends who And without wishing to betray my ignorance by discussing — frequent the haunts where nothing but ragtime is played. All psycho-therapeutics or psycho-physical polemics, can assure except one are emphatically of the opinion that since the introthe curious that an afternoon at the British Museum or the Lon- _ duction of ragtime people are much more given both to excitedon Library will corroborate this point of view in the most — ment and drink—and that not only when they are dancing. The weighty (and often unintelligible) fashion. Edith Somervell, for | one says that “he doesn’t know, but it’s certainly more stimulatinstance, in her book on The Rhythmic Approach to Mathemat- __ ing.” Naturally, absinthe is more stimulating than good claret, ics, says: “Laws of curve-formation do not deal only with hap- = and methylated spirit, so I am told, is far more exciting than 95

1910-1919 MAY 28,1913 «© MUSICAL COURIER whisky. Nobody denies the rhythmical power of ragtime, and —_ of a respectable concert I suffered all the mental ills one is acrhythm is always “stimulating.” But in this case the stimulus is | customed to associate with the advertisements of patent medithat of an irritant. These “crotchety” accents, these deliberate | cines. What, then, must be the effect on those who never hear interferences with the natural logic of rhythm, this lengthening = anything else? Doubtless they are not so sensitive, because they of something here and shortening of something else there, must are not accustomed to musical and rhythmical receptivity as is a all have some influence on the brain. The behavior of the cho- musical critic. But, in a greater or lesser degree, the effects are rus during the ragtime songs of the Alhambra revue, forinstance, there all the same, working, unnoticed, to the general detriment is not without significance. Any unsophisticated visitor from of efficiency and even sanity. If it were not obvious that six Mars, who did not know of their excuse, would judge from their = months at the most would see this new Tarantism in its coffin, I looks, their movements, and their strident but pathetic yells that | might be tempted to approach the member for one of my two they were raving lunatics only fit for the Martian equivalent ofa constituencies—there are, mark you, advantages in plural votstrait-jacket. Besides, I can speak from personal experience. |§ ing—and beg him to persuade Parliament to deport Messrs. During the three weeks round Christmas I happened tohearno — Hirsch and Melville Gideon and their various satellites, both music but ragtime. I could not get them out of my head;I could — male and female, as highly undesirable aliens, before this unnot concentrate, and I could hardly think. Indeed, tillthe advent happy country should be converted into an even larger lunatic asylum than it is at present.

May 28, 1913 ¢ Musical Courier REMARKS ON RAGTIME Two letters which appeared recently in the Paris edition of The It has been implied that the music of a nation or a race is New York Herald are not without interest to musical readerson —_ symbolic of its collective character and the discrepancies of its

this side of the salty pond. The first of the communications, _ individual character. Accordingly, the American “ragtime” or

headed “Demoralizing Ragtime Music,” was this: “rag time” music is symbolic of the primitive orality and the

To the Editor of the Herald: perceptible moral limitations of the Negro type. With the latter Sirs—Can it be said that America is falling prey to the col- sexual restraint is almost unknown, and the widest latitude of

lective soul of the Negro through the influence of whatis popu- —_—s moral uncertainty is conceded. Be that as it may, it is of relative

larly known as “ragtime” music? Some sociological writers of | importance isolatedly considered. Its significance lies in whatprominence believe so; all psychologists are of the opinion.One _ ever influence it may exercise over the average American mind.

thing is infallibly certain: If there is any tendency toward sucha I hope you will find space to give publicity to a dance that is psychological amalgamation, toward such a national disaster, it | threatening the morals and the very life of America.

should be definitely pointed out and extreme measures taken to Walter Winston Kenilworth

inhibit the influence and avert the increasing danger—f it has * * * not already gone too far. From picturesque Nice, on the sunny Riviera, came a quick There is nothing more vital in the expression of the life of any answer to the Kenilworth effusion, and the writer of the reply race than its music. Its music is the symbolism for the summary of was no less a person than Alma Gluck, the operatic soprano. its emotional attainment and possibility. There is no need saying _—- Heer letter, captioned “America and Good Music,” read as folthat the “ragtime” music has its visible source in the ancestry of —_ lows: Negro music. It is Negro music more modernly adapted. It was To the Editor of the Herald: “typically” negroid in the years prior to the Civil War. It bears Sirs—I read with indignation the jejune apprehensions of radical resemblance to the fantastic waywardness of Creole song. | Walter Winston Kenilworth in your issue of April 23. I say inIt is a modulated derivation. Now, the most significant fact about | dignation—because while to a certain number his remarks are this music is that it has become typically American. It has out- —_—jejune, there are unfortunately a great many more who would grown its negroid limitations and has achieved national impor- _ take these remarks seriously.

tance. There is a popular “demand” for it. During the past season America has been visited by the greatThere is a certain sway and swing, a certain indescribable, __ est living musical artists.

sensuous something appealing and suggestive, about the ring We all know that, while these artists are lovers of natural and melody, of rhythm and versification of this music. Scruti- scenery, it is not that brought them to America. In other words, nizingly criticized, every one of the songs is insidiously per- I mean to say that it is the great demand for them and the conseverting; they are indicative of relaxative morality, of disparage- | quent remuneration (this is the best proof of their popularity) ment of the martial tie, of triviality in relationship of sex, etc.,and _ that attracts them to America. I must, in justice to Americans the entire moral code might be included. There is not even an _and in defense of their musical tastes, call attention to the fact attempt made at concealment of the thought conveyed in the _ that a country that spends millions of dollars annually for good

song. It is out and out vulgarity. music is not in imminent danger of being influenced by ragtime. 96

SEPTEMBER 1913 « THE CADENZA 1910-1919 Ragtime music, as your worthy correspondent informs us, has —_— may be that this music is spreading the mental attitude of the existed in America since before the Civil War. Classical music | few among the many. But that cannot be the case either, for it was only introduced at that time. From its colossal growth in _— requires a very strong natural leaning towards a certain form popularity it is evident what a role it plays in the present life of | of musical expression on the part of a very great majority of

the American. the people to bring about the enormous popularity of that parRagtime music is to us Americans what Mayor is to the __ ticular form of musical expression. In other words, although French. I leave it to the mind of the public to determine whichis — most of us cannot write ragtime we find our innermost senti-

the more injurious morality. ments and feelings exactly expressed by that particular rhythm. Alma Gluck There are even many among us who have been brought up in

* * * the strictly classical school and yet find pleasure in good ragAlma Gluck gives Mr. Kenilworth a good answer, but itis time, and to say that, because of this, we all have a tendency not sweeping enough, nor does it exactly take hold of the point | towards degeneracy is hardly correct. Ragtime is the expresof his letter. His claim appears to be that ragtime is the cause, sion of a strong, vigorous, healthy nature, and for this very or will be the cause, of degeneracy. He says that this danger —_ reason it is making its way all over Europe, where the healthy, “4s threatening the morals and the very life of America.” That, | normal portion of the population are welcoming this expresof course, is not true, for, even if we acknowledge the degen- sion of their own natural feelings which their native, effete eracy of ragtime, it is evident that it cannot be the cause of | musicians are unable to give them. Ragtime is the expression America’s degeneracy but can only be the effect of thatdegen- — of boisterous good humor. “It is to laugh,” and that’s all there eracy. Music, of whatever kind it may be, is the expression _is to it. Of course, some of the texts allied with ragtime music only of a certain mental attitude. Mr. Kenilworth’s argument are . .—but that is not the subject under discussion.

September 1913 ¢ The Cadenza SOMETHING ABOUT RAGTIME by Myron A. Bickford “RAGTIME,” like the term “mandolin duo,” has become amost —_ vogue during the last decade. It is not the writer’s purpose to comprehensive word in recent years, and, at least with acertain champion all the light and trashy music that has been, and is class of musicians who should know better, it means pretty nearly | being put upon the market every day, for much of it does not anything and everything not included under the head of serious —_ even deserve a first reading. But it is his wish to protest against

or classical music. the almost wholesale condemnation of everything not bearing If the rhythmic element predominates or is at all prominent, _ the stamp of so-called legitimacy; for light music certainly serves it is “ragtime,” no matter whether a single instance of syncopa- —a purpose when it gives pleasure to a multitude of people.

tion occurs in the music or not. This, as well as the stigma at- The writer, for one, is in favor of restricting the word ragtached to all syncopated and “popular” music in theeyesofmany time to its original definition, as meaning that time or rhythm in musicians, is to be deplored, for it puts matters in a false posi- |= which the dominating and characteristic feature is syncopation.

tion. Light, and so-called “popular” music, has its place in the Syncopation is almost as old as musical composition, and musical life of a people, and in this American nation of ours, the —_ was frequently used by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and

place it occupies is a very important one. For musicians who — many other great composers. It appears in their compositions, have made a deep study of the subject in its higher phases, and = however, only to produce certain occasional effects, never as a who find their enjoyment solely in music which appeals tothe —_‘ feature. It was reserved for America and the enlightened twentiintellect and higher emotions, to decry everything that appeals —_ eth century to give it predominant importance! In commenting to the senses and which can therefore be understood, appreci- —_ on this subject some fifteen years ago, the Chicago Inter-Ocean ated and enjoyed by the great mass of people who have notmade _ said: “Ragtime is not new—it was written by southern musi-

a deep study of the language of music, is foolish and sense- __ cians, and whistled, sung and danced by the Southern Negro

less—to say the least. fifty years ago. In what shape the jerky, peculiar rhythm called

Today there are probably a hundred persons who know some- ‘ragtime’ first appeared in this country is not known, but from thing about music—to the extent of singing, playing some in- __ the testimony of musical experts it was a wildly savage affair strument or operating a player-piano or phonograph, to every —_ until harmonized and made melodious by French and Spanishone of twenty years ago. And what has brought about this musi- —- Creole influences.” cal growth? What single factor is most responsible for this con- Probably the first published composition in which syncopa-

dition? tion was the characteristic feature was The Pasquinade by Louis Beyond all doubt it is due to the extreme popularity of the | Moreau Gottschalk, the famous American pianist who lived in “ragtime,” light and “popular” melodies that have had sucha §_ New Orleans. This was written in the early fifties, and was such 97

1910-1919 AUGUST 12,1914 «© THE MUSICAL COURIER a novelty and of such high musical value, that it was extensively | ragtime composition. Soon after this Kerry Mills’ Rastus on used by concert pianists, and is seen on programs even at the Parade, Georgia Camp Meeting and Whistling Rufus swept

present day. the country (England as well) and American ragtime was thorThe term “ragtime” (probably a contraction of ragged time) — oughly and irrevocably launched.

was not coined until about twenty years ago, but it has had a These compositions had no sooner been placed upon the very active existence since that time, and shows no immediate market than other composers and publishers, realizing the designs of being obliterated. The Mobile Buck, a peculiar “stop = mand for this sort of music, forthwith undertook to meet and time” Negro dance, popular about two generations ago, was _ nurture it. To attempt to chronicle the compositions that have one of the first numbers of this character to become the rage, made ragtime history would be an interminable and all but imand in its wake came The Darkey's Dream (still well liked) which __ possible task. They seem to have been hurled at the public at contains considerable syncopation, though it is not strictly a _ the rate of several a day ever since.

August 12, 1914 ¢ The Musical Courier CADMAN ON “RAGTIME?” To the Musical Courier:—Some weeks ago you brought for- Please remember that underneath all the inanity, the asiward a very interesting curiosity in that example of “ragtime” —_ninity of most of the Broadway output, the elemental emopulled from Frederick Kell’s collection of Elizabethan Love __ tional appeal, is found the germ of a national expression. It

Songs. may be quite embryonic, quite crude, quite primitive, but it The example may well keep company with its sisters and _is obviously pregnant and needs but intelligent guidance to brothers in syncopated rhythm (otherwise ragtime), since you, lead it to fruition and development. classic Musical Courier, use this term yourself, as, for instance, So far as the writer is concerned, the study of aboriginal those of Oriental, early Occidental, traditional Celtic, primitive | songs has brought with it the firm conviction that syncopa-

African, and primitive American—otherwise Indian. tion is adominant and therefore dynamic concomitant in the How can a student of comparative folksong be blind to the = development of a healthy national music. This does not in fact that the “soil-element,” for want of a better term, dominates = any way mean that in order to have an unmistakable, Ameritrue folk melodies, incidentally giving birth to aco-ordinating | can music it is necessary to insert literally Indian, Negro Cre-

syncopation? There are, of course, exceptions and I shall in- _ ole or idealized ragtime tunes, nor is it necessary to have clude in this category the old French, German and Italian —_ syncopated rhythms in every single composition turned out. folksongs, with a few English examples thrown in; but I speak = Sucha procedure would be absurd; it would make us a laughof those infant forms of folksong, those of amore primitive con- _— ing stock. There are many ways, many forms of employing tour—with regard to my contention of related “soul element” these dynamics and it remains for future composers to find and syncopation. An examination of hundreds of AmericanIn- _ them. dian songs of various tribal origin and comparison with Hindu, I am not sufficiently bold to compound a recipe for the Chinese, Moorish, Australian, early English and Celtic, Scandi- use of my brother composers, so that all we can hope to do is navian, and Slavic songs gives rise to a conviction that the un- —_—‘ to work out the problem each in our own way. derlying principle of human musical expression, regardless of The question of ethnological relationship is not argued

age or evolution, is subjectively the same. for or against. What is implied is that the beginnings of a It is the objective form which alters, and that aided by intel- —_ healthy, red-corpuscle American music may be achieved by lect and human ingenuity. One may find the soul of music in —_ employing certain idealized and dignified forms of syncopathese exotics of musical expression, as he may find it in the __ tion, coupled with a proper sense of balance and sanity in the more evolved forms culminating with the modern school, al- _— creation of such music. The restless energy and indomitable though we regret many of the moderns have lost sight of this will of America is somehow symbolized in terms of an intel-

vitalizing principle. ligent syncopation, and this statement is not made in any jinDid you ever stop to think that “soul” and “soil,” thoughety- —_—goistic spirit either.

mologically at variance, are singularly, philosophically, related? Such a musical form will of course, be merely the incepThe most vital music, the music which has come down through __ tion and not the solution. A few American composers have the past three centuries, and which is accorded a place ofhonor, _ consciously or unconsciously cast certain large orchestral and is tinged with a simple folk element, and this in turn by synco- — chamber works in this pattern and have achieved a relative pation or almost syncopation. The present Broadway ragtime is success. Why not experiment still further? dangerously near to corroborating my contention, although high- With anticipation of your own views of this question which

brow brethren will scoff at this. seem pertinent at this time, I am, Sincerely yours, Charles Wakefield Cadman

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MAY 1,1915 ¢ THE CHICAGO DEFENDER 1910-1919 May 1, 1915 ¢ The Chicago Defender WILLIAM MARION COOK by Cary B. Lewis Will Marion Cook, the greatest champion of the race infolklore —_us of a past full of shame and misery.’ (This is quoted from the songs, was in the city last week and stopped at the Wabash Y. _ protest of a prominent music teacher twenty years ago in the M.C.A. This noted genius was to have appeared at the “All Col- —_ city of Washington.) Talented Negroes sought in their musical ored Concert” at Orchestra Hall but owing to a physical break- _study to eradicate all traces of that individual character that had down had to return to his mother at Washington, D.C., the city _ attracted the attention of the world. Result, milk and water imi-

of his birth. For a number of years Mr. Cook has lived in New tations of inferior white musicians.” York City and here he has labored in the musical world. His

songs, for the most part racial, have been sung up and down Beginning of Ragtime

Broadway with wonderful success. He has put more talented members of the race on the road than any of our musicians, “About 1888. The starting and quick growth of so-called ‘ragnamely; Holland Hayes, Abbie Mitchell, Harry Burleigh, time.’ As far back as 1875, Negroes in the questionable resorts Melville Chalton, and others of this character. Mr. Cook’s forte along the Mississippi had commenced to evolve this musical is chorus directing. [He became] famous by directing the world- _ figure, but at the World’s Fair, Chicago, “ragtime” got a run-

renowned Williams and Walker Company. ning start, swept the Americas, then Europe, and today the craze His genius, however, is [expressed in]Jhis folklore composi- _ has not diminished. Cause of Success: The public was tired of tions. Musical critics here and abroad claim that Mr. Cook has the sing song, same, monotonous, mother, sister, father, sentioutclassed all other composers of this character. Some of his _ mental, songs. Ragtime offered unique rhythms, curious groupbiggest songs are Springtime, My Lady, Love’s Lane, My Love ings of words, and melodies that gave the zest of unexpectedIs in de Sky Mid de Moon, Exhortation, Rain Song, Swing Along, ness. Many Negroes, Irving Jones, Will Accoe, Bob Cole, , My Lady’s Lips. These are the numbers that stamped his indi- Johnson Brothers, Gussie L. Davis, Sid Perrin, Ernest Hogan, viduality and ranked him as the champion of racial composers. Williams and Walker and others wrote some of the most celA score of his compositions are among the incidental musicin _ebrated rag songs of the day. In other instances white actors and the shows of the race that have appeared in the past twenty-five song writers would hear in St. Louis such melodies as New Bully,

years. Hot Time, etc., would change the words (often unprintable) and All the great singers of the race who have become successful _ publish them as their own creations. At this time came Dvofyak. used compositions from Will Marion Cook. His success asa _ He saw that from this people, even though their material had director and composer of both the orchestra and the chorus and _ been debased, must come a great school of music—not necesin developing of talented individuals is widely know both in __ sarily national—but rather new and characteristic. The renaisthis country and abroad. Chicagoans greatly regretted to learn _sance in Negro music. A few earnest Negro music students felt of his serious illness last Thursday and hope he will be able —as did Dvofak. They studied the man—so broad, genial, and soon to be at his desk to carry on the work which he has so. human—carefully and thoroughly.” nobly and ably begun. Speaking of “Afro-American music and

musicians,” he said: . | Harry Burleigh’s Work “The songs of sorrow, of joy, of humor, and of sentiment,

were the natural growth of arace, musically inclined, in Africa, “Some Negroes of real musical accomplishment: Harry T. and whose melodious outpourings were intensified by the con- Burleigh, a pupil of Dvorak, is baritone soloist at St. George’s

ditions of slavery. Church, New York City, . . . George W. Walker, the late la“1850-1865—Minstrel songs full of character, but less lofty —_ mented partner of Bert Williams. His has been the greatest inof sentiment, and less true of real Negro aspiration and inspira- fluence in the development of modern Negro music. At 28 he

tion. (See songs of Jim Bland and others.) could not read a note and could hardly write his name, yet day “1870—Advent of jubilee singers—an artistic triumph. and night he talked Negro music to his people, urged and com“1875-1888—-No further development in Negro music. _pelled his writers to give something characteristic. Each year he Cause: The Afro-American had been so thoroughly taught by wanted bigger, better things. He engaged the best Negro voices the white man that his color, condition and accomplishment were _in the United States, and their success in ensemble singing was inferior, that the younger generation at once threw aside alltra- —_as great in London, Paris and Berlin as in New York, Boston and

dition. Any reference to the past became a disgrace. Exceptina Chicago. (See criticisms of In Dahomay, Bandanna Lond, few schools of the South, to sing jubilee melodies to an Afro- = Abyssinia) Dvorak would have been proud to have known such American audience would be an insult, and would lead to the = a man. In all reverence —-Dvorék—George Walker. They had dismissal of teacher urging them. The Moody and Sankey hymns __high ideals and they showed the way. Perhaps in a vast hereafwere used exclusively in our churches and schools—the glori- _ ter these two men may meet. The rough, uncouth, but genial ous old slave hymns and spirituals frowned upon as ‘reminding |§ Bohemian master; the uneducated but highly polished, ebony-

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1910-1919 AUGUST 1915 © RAGTIME REVIEW hued African, with the gleaming ivory mouth. Do youdoubt that |= European composer and teacher secured (preferably a Russian) with one impulse their hands will join, and the mastiff smile of | who, unhindered by prejudice, will understand, appreciate, and the Bohemian will match the lazy grin of the American ‘Zulu’as —_ foster the peculiar musical genius of the Afro-American child.

they both whisper one word: ‘brother.’” While giving the child the same grasp upon the science of composition as was Beethoven’s he will also show that strength of

Race Music in America character and profound knowledge of his people, as well as technical skill that made Beethoven the master.”

“Today. Developed Negro music has just begun in America.

The Afro-American is finding himself. He has thrown aside Individuality, and Then More Individuality

puerile imitation of the white man. He has learned that a thorough study of the masters gives the knowledge of whatis good “Suchaschool will require money. It will not be forthcoming if, and how to create. From the Russian, he has learned to get his — as soon as a few Negroes have learned the first principles of inspiration from within; that his inexhaustible wealth of folk- _ breathing, or being able to play the scale of G one or two oclore legends and songs furnish him with material for composi- —_ taves without serious offense to tonality, they are at once extions that will establish a great school of music andenrich musi- _ ploited in some temple of music, where, may be, the Boston

cal literature. Symphony Orchestra had just finished a concert, perfect in ev-

“The Menace. The Afro-American wants results quickly.He ery detail. does not believe in making haste slowly. He quickly turns to “The Negro composer (and there are a few in the United false white and colored friends, who wish to exploit him for States who are receiving serious consideration) should mainly ulterior motives. The political “carpet bagger” of ’68 and ’72 _find his inspiration in the imperishable melodies of his enslaved has his prototype in the musical “carpet bagger” of 1915. Dvorak, ancestors. When he shall have developed works worthy of renSafonoff, Hirsh and other great European directors and com- _ dition be will find both Negroes and Whites ready and willing posers; De Bachman, D’ Albert, Paderewski, as well as many _ to offer them. All through the South, Southwest and West there great singers, have told of the coming glory of the Negro musi- —_ are Negroes with beautiful voices. What is known, because of

cian. It is becoming a fad. the home life of these people they are gaining real culture. They “In some of the large cities of the country, New Yorkin par- — are laying aside their shame of the past, and are beginning to ticular, well meaning but ill advised white people are gathering —_—_ glory in their unmatched heritage folklore and folk songs. The

together large choruses of poorly trained singers, without edu- ‘Afro-American Folk Singers,’ Washington, D. C., the chorus cation either musical or general, and, in conjunction with un- at Howard University, and others, are ready to do justice to the schooled instrumentalists, are giving widely advertised concerts, | choral works of a Negro Beethoven, should he appear. ... To claiming to represent the accomplishment of an entirerace. They — them we look for results, by them would we be judged. New promise much—fulfill little. Let them rather show what their = York and other large cities of the North are neither seeking nor particular school is doing and, with success or failure,noharm _finding ‘the right way.’”’

is done. Continuing, he said: “I do not mention Hampton, where they “There is still an element of doubt in the mind of the cultured —_ sing the primitive slave melodies so beautifully, for this reason:

American. He says: ‘We concede the Negro’s talent for music; To sing works of development to which the composer gave

we doubt his capacity for thorough development.’ thought and culture requires thought and culture. It you, admit“The right way. What the Afro-American has thus far ac- _ ting an inferior condition, fail to give to the child opportunity complished is only a promise—an expectation; the realization for breadth, which only come from comprehensive development, belongs to the future. A school must, and will, be established, just so far you have hindered his understanding, appreciation perhaps at Washington D. C. To head this school, an eminent — and rendition of all masterpieces.”

August 1915 ¢ Ragtime Review RAGTIME IN NEW ORLEANS by Sam L. Rosenbaum A word about the New Orleans School, the largest in the South: Yet it has. And it didn’t take but a month for the people to When Mr. Wooters opened a school for teaching ragtime, the —_ take to it. Mr. Wooters is a young man, just a year out of collast of February, just after the conclusion of the famous Mardi —__lege—a graduate of the University of Illinois, by the way—and Gras Festival, savants in the music line said he was crazy. They _full of ideas for boosting business. He worked in the newspaper

said ragtime would never flourish in New Orleans inahundred __ business for two years, wrote musical comedy in college and

years. developed a lot of enthusiasm for ragtime in the meantime. But 100

AUGUST 1915 ¢ RAGTIME REVIEW 1910-1919 to return to New Orleans, the Christensen School was opened _are required to be courteous, to constantly study new ways to right in the busiest corner in the city. Advertising and plenty of _ hold the interest of pupils. If business is a little slack we find out it became the slogan. At the end of the second month Mr. Wooters __ the reason and correct it. Nothing succeeds like success. put on another teacher. At the end of the third month a music In addition to the regular follow-up system supplied by the publishing department was opened in connection with the school. —s main office, Mr. Wooters writes personal letters to all his pros_ The reason for our success? The best way toexpress itisto pects. As the last letter, after the personal letter and the four

adopt the slang expression: “plenty of pep.” follow-ups and the booklet, he mails them a coupon, good for We haven’t let the grass grow under our feet. We’ve adver- _ one free lesson. All he wants is a personal interview. I believe tised every day of the week in the two morning papers. We’ve he could convince one of the old masters that ragtime is on the put out young lady ragtime players on a house to house census calendar. to find out just who 1s interested in ragtime. We’ ve got acircular These are only a few of our methods. Mr. Wooters is confull of dozens of testimonials from our New Orleans pupils and _stantly figuring out new schemes for building up our school. graduates. We got Grunewalds—the leading music house inthe This fall he’s planning to hold a number of ragtime piano playSouth—as our reference. We’ ve placed handsome framed show- _ ing contests at the different theaters in the city. Next month he’s cards in all the sheet music counters in the city. Our “ad” is _—_—- going to furnish the music shops of the city with free ragtime

everywhere people that like music are apt to see it: incabarets, | players, who are incidentally going to demonstrate the

on excursion steamers, parks, etc. Christensen System in addition to the “hits.” Our rent is high, but we’ re maintaining a front. That’s part of Watch us grow! We’ re on the map to stay. We’ Il be tickled to our advertising theory. Our teachers—and we have threenow— death to hear from other schools and to know their methods and to answer any letters they may wish to write us.

August 1915 ¢ Ragtime Review THE TEACHING OF RAGTIME VERSUS CLASSICAL by Axel Christensen It is a fact, that very few piano students of classical music go __ the profession. For such a person; namely, one who wants to very far with their studies. Out of the great mass of pupils who _ play for home pleasure, all these scales, arpeggios, five-finger go to the conservatories few go far enough with their studies to —_ exercises, and studies without number, are as unnecessary as

accomplish any real results. the foundation of a sky scraper would be for a cozy little cot-

In most cases they do not realize the magnitude of the task _ tage. that lies before them. Their idea being simply to learn to play, Now, if pupils really prefer ragtime and popular music, why they go at it in the orthodox way and begin the long “piano _ not give it to them direct, instead of first making them go through fight” with the inevitable five-finger exercises, scales, arpeg- the regular routine prescribed for a classical course? After the gios and what not.TIhe teacher is no doubt conscientious and, __ classical course they usually have to learn ragtime from a ragbelieving that the pupil is “hungry for punishment,” takes par-_ _— time specialist anyway and are compelled to start almost at the ticular pains to see that the pupil has to go through exactly the — same point with their ragtime lessons as a person who has never

same line of work that the said teacher went through a genera- _ studied before.

tion before. All you have to do is to give the pupil who loves ragtime a In every case the routine is the same. If the pupil’s desire is _ start in the right direction and he learns almost without effort. simply to be able to play such popular pieces as /t’sa Long Way _ Allragtime is made up of certain movements, or styles of rhythm, to Tipperary or In the Hills of Old Kentucky, the pupil gets the = whichcan be easily distinguished and analyzed and as soon as a

inevitable five-finger exercises, scales, arpeggios, etc. few of these movements have been learned, the rest is easy. If the pupil aspires to be an organist in the local church, he Given a few lessons in mastering the principal ragtime movestill gets the five-finger exercises, scales, arpeggios, etc. ments, which in a course of ragtime takes the place of the usual If he wants to learn to play for dances or for moving picture _ scales and arpeggios, and the pupil has rhythm at his finger tips, shows, he may not feel that he needs them, but whetherhe needs — such rhythm and preciseness of touch that is seldom found exthem or not, he is going to get them: the five-finger exercises, | cept in persons who have spent a long time in working out the

scales, arpeggios, etc. usual routine. Even a simple major scale played with that ragThe same if he wants to study for the concert stage. time swing is beautiful. For the person who loves music with melody and rhythm and After the short time required to learn to play the principal

who is eager to learn it for the pleasure it will give him or her, its | movements upon which ragtime is based, the pupil’s entire time pretty tough to have to go through the same tedious amount of _is then devoted to transcribing melodies into that wavy, swaying preparatory work that would be necessary for one studying for __ lilt that makes you want to dance. 101

1910-1919 OCTOBER 16,1915 © THE NEW REPUBLIC I have no criticism to offer on the time-honored orthodox _ful pupils are to be found on every hand (we modestly refrain method of piano instruction. For those who aspire to greatthings, | from mentioning the name of such a school in this article) and who want to investigate the art of piano playing as far as their —_— you will have found the quickest road to the goal you desire.

ability and unceasing labor will permit them to go—for those There is nothing in ragtime, properly taught, that can possiwho want to study for the profession or to those who love clas- _ bly interfere with the study of classical music at a later date. On sical music—to such as these, the orthodox course, is the thing. the contrary, the firm legato touch and the absolute even tempo But, if you love ragtime music, study ragtime underaschool required in good ragtime will be a great help to the student who that makes a specialty of just that one thing, and whose success- _later takes up classical work.

August 1915 ¢ Ragtime Review WHAT ABOUT RAGTIME? In the following story by T. Fred Henry, the celebrated band = ing developed modern ragtime and that is something after all, master of Des Moines, La., much will be found of interesttothe for it is the most popular style of music ever written. lover of ragtime. Mr. Henry’s remarks are breezy, direct and to When I say it is popular I do not insist that its popularity is the point and coming from a man of his standing are a great _ entirely due to its merits.

boost for the “cause.” The article follows: Business methods in publication help and when you stop to ° When you stop to consider that in America and, in fact, all | consider that at least 90 per cent of the music publishers in the the civilized countries of the world ragtime is the musical craze — country publish popular music only and spend thousands of of the hour, it must be admitted that it has something very fasci- dollars annually to have their numbers featured by stars in the

nating about it. big productions and in vaudeville, by the famous bands and or-

To begin with, American ragtime is syncopated time and in chestras, by the cabaret singers in the fashionable cafes and then its original form is therefore not a new-born idea, for you find it | have them reproduced on hundreds of records for the phono-

embodied in the works of almost all the old masters. graph, their numbers are sure to become popular, especially if Of course it is then called syncopation, for none of the wor- __ they have the swing and go to catch the ear. shipers of the great Richard Wagner will admit that he ever wrote The words, too, are a great factor, generally corresponding

a bar of ragtime. to the melody in character and always humorous.

Well, maybe he did not, but he certainly missed a great chance And let me say right here that ragtime is the real comedy in to make an awful big hit with a lot of good fellows who cannot —_ music, for it is absolutely devoid of anything serious. see anything else. Still if we are indebted to those great pioneers It makes no difference how bad the weather, how hard times in the field of music for our waltz movements, barcarolles and —_ or how cold the audience, you can cheer them up and set them other ballet and dance music, we should also give them some __ going the instant you start a bit of ragtime. Everybody sits up credit for the syncopated movement which forms the very foun- and takes notice and the chances are that it will bring a burst of

dation of ragtime. applause that will warm things up for that remainder of the proBut to the American composer belongs the real glory of hav- gram. It is a guaranteed cure for the blues.

October 16, 1915 ¢ The New Republic RAGTIME by Hiram K. Moderwell It has been nearly twenty years, and American ragtime is still I can’t feel satisfied with this. I can’t help feeling that a perofficially beyond the pale. As the one original and indigenous = son who doesn’t open his heart to ragtime somehow isn’t hutype of music of the American people, as the one type of Ameri- —_ man. Nine out of ten musicians, if caught unawares, will like can popular music that has persisted and undergone constant —__ this music until they remember that they shouldn’t. What does evolution, one would think it might receive the clammy hand of — this mean? Does it mean that ragtime is “all very well in its fellowship from composers and critics. There is very little evi- place?” Rather that these musicians don’t consider that place dence that these gentlemen have changed their feeling about it theirs. But that place, remember, is in the affections of some in the last ten years. Then they asserted that it was “fortunately 10,000,000 or more Americans. Conservative estimates show that on the wane,” now they sigh that it will be always with us. That _ there are at least 50,000,000 copies of popular music sold in this

is the only difference. country yearly, and a goodly portion of it is in ragtime. 102

OCTOBER 16,1915 © THE NEW REPUBLIC 1910-1919 And these musicians prefer to regard themselves as beings But ragtime is also “good” in the more austere sense of the apart. This is a pretty serious accusation for the musician to _ professional critic. I cannot understand how a trained musician level against himself. I don’t mean that wherever 10,000,000 — can overlook its purely technical elements of interest. It has carAmericans agree on a thing they are necessarily right. Theirsen- _ ried the complexities of the rhythmic subdivision of the meatimental ballads are the mere dregs of Schubert and Franz Abt. sure to a point never before reached in the history of music. It - But ragtime is a type of music substantially new in musical his- _ has established subtle conflicting rhythms to a degree never tory. It has persisted, grown, evolved in many directions, with- _ before attempted in any popular or folk-music, and rarely enough out official recognition or aid. You may take it as certain thatif ‘in art-music. It has shown a definite and natural evolution— many millions of people persist in liking something thathas not —_ always a proof of vitality in a musical idea. It has gone far bebeen recognized by the schools, there is vitality in that thing. |§ yond most other popular music in the freedom of inner voices The attitude toward folk-music at the beginning of the nineteenth —_ (yes, I mean polyphony) and of harmonic modulation. And it century was very similar. A Russian folk-song was no less __ has proved its adaptability to the expression of many distinct scorned in the court of Catherine the Great than aragtime song moods. Only the trained musician can appreciate the signifiin our music studios to-day. Yet Russian folk song became the cance of astyle which can be turned to many distinct uses. There basis of some of the most vigorous art-music of the past cen- _is the “sentimental manner,” and the “emotional manner” and tury, and no musician speaks of it to-day except in terms of re- —_ so on: but the style includes all the manners, and there have not spect. The taste of the populace is often enough toward the — been so many styles in musical history that they couldn’t be shoddy and outworn. But when the populace creates its own art counted on a few people’s fingers.

without official encouragement, then let the artists listen. I It may be that I am deceived as to the extent of ragtime’s haven’t a notion whether ragtime is going to form the basis of | adaptability. But I think of the rollicking fun of The Internaan “American school of composition.” But am surethat many _ tional Rag, the playful delicacy of Everybody’s Doing It, the a native composer could save his soul ifhe would openhis ears _ bustling laziness of Waiting for the Robert E. Lee, the sensual

to this folk-music of the American city. poignancy of La Seduction tango, and the tender pathos of The But the schools have their reply. “Ragtime is not new,” they © Memphis Blues. Each of these pieces has its peculiar style, in say. “It is merely syncopation, which was used by Haydn and the narrower sense, deftly carried out. And I know that we are Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, and is good, like any other mu- —_ dealing here with a set of musical materials which have no more sical material, when it is used well.” But they are wrong. Ragtime — than commenced their job of expressing a generation.

is not “merely syncopation.” It is a certain sort of syncopation— We must admit that current ragtime is deficient on the menamely, a persistent syncopation in one part conflicting withex- —_lodic side. Some of the tunes are strong, but many of the best act rhythm in another. But of course this definition is notenough. _ ragtime pieces have little beyond their rhythmic energy and inRagtime has its flavor that no definition can imprison. No one _ genuity to distinguish them. If we had a folk-song tradition in would take the syncopation of a Haydn symphony to be Ameri- = America our popular melodies, doubtless, would not be so percan ragtime. “Certainly not,” replies the indignant musician. Nor —_ meated with vulgarity. The words, also, too often have the chief the syncopation of any recognized composer. But if this is so, —_ vice of vulgarity, sluggish conventionality, without its chief virthen ragtime is new. You can’t tell an American composer’s “art- _ tue, the generous warmth of everydayness. And this latter qualsong” from any mediocre art-song the world over. (Permit meto __ ity, when it exists, resides not so much in the words themselves,

pass over the few notable exceptions.) You can distinguish Ameri- as in the flavor of the songs, the uninspired but tireless high can ragtime from the popular music of any nation and any age. In spirits of the American people. the first instance the love of ragtime is a purely human matter. But ragtime words have at least one artist quality of the highYou simply can’t resist it. I remember hearing a Negro quartet _ est rank. They fit the music like a glove. These songs appeal to singing Waiting for the Robert E. Lee, in acafe, andI felt my the people who expect to sing them, a people who have no orablood thumping in tune, my muscles twitching to the rhythm.I _torio or grand opera tradition behind them, and who come quite

wanted to paraphrase Shakespeare: naturally to the ideal of wedded music and verse which Wagner “The man who hath no ragtime in his soul, had to struggle for against his whole generation. I shouldn’t be surprised, in fact, if the origin of the “rag” is to be found in the

Who is not moved by syncopated sounds” jerky quality of the English—or shall we say American—lan... and so on. If any musician does not feel in his heart the | gU¥age, which found in the Negroes its first naive singers. One rhythmic complexities of The Robert E. Lee I should not trust of the Negro “spirituals” runs thus: him to feel in his heart the rhythmic complexities of Brahms. ‘An he gave them commishun to flu, Brudder Lass’ rus! This ragtime appeals to the primitive love of the dance—a spe- An’ he gave them commishun to fly.” cial sort of dance in which the rhythm of the arms and shoul- The tune, as always in Negro songs, follows the exact accent ders conflicts with the rhythm of the feet, mm which dozens of of the spoken words. But just imagine what Messrs. Moody and little needles of energy are deftly controlled in the weaving of Sankey would have done to them! the whole. And if musicians refuse to recognize it, as they once As you walk up and down the streets of an American city refused to recognize Russian folk-music, they criticize not rag- you feel in its jerk and rattle a personality different from that of time, but themselves.

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1910-1919 NOVEMBER 1, 1915eTHE MUSICIAN any European capital. This is American. It is in our lives, andit —_ express itself if it is to know itself. No European music can or helps to form our characters and condition our mode of action. It —_ possibly could express this American personality. Ragtime I beshould have expression in art, simply because any people must _ lieve does express it. It is today the one true American music.

November 1, 1915¢The Musician Negro Folk Song Recital Mildred Bryant, Louisville, Ky. “About forty-five years ago there was being conducted, in an

Program old army barracks and hospital building in Nashville, Tenn., a school 1 Steal Away to Jesus, Swing Low Sweet Chariot for Negroes. Rev. Erastus Milo Cravath and Mr. Geo. White were 2 Live-a-humble, Going to shout all over God's heaven. among the leading spirits of the teaching force. Rev. Cravath was a 3 Were you there?, African Folk Song “Loko-ku-tiga” (At — former chaplain in the army and Mr. White was one of the first

the dawn of day.) graduates of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. The pupils in4 Listen to the lambs, I couldn't hear nobody pray creased so rapidly that they outgrew the buildings and it was found

5 (a)-The Coppah Moon—Shelley that either they had to be greatly enlarged and repaired or replaced. (b)-I would that my love—Mendelssohn. The American Missionary Association (under whose auspices the 6 Lord, I want to be a Christian, Roll on. school was conducted) had no funds for this purpose and consequently decided that the school must be abandoned. Rev. Cravath

Negro music is essentially spontaneous. In Africaitspranginto | and Mr. White prayed over the matter and decided that the school life at the war dance, at funerals and at marriage festivals. Upon —__ must not be abandoned. Mr. White conceived the idea of taking a this African foundation, the plantation songs of the South were _ band of singers north to try to sing the money out of the pockets of

built. According to the testimony of African students at Fisk _ the people. Everywhere this was looked on as a wild goose chase. University, Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes, there are strains § Nevertheless, he called for volunteers from his choir and singing in the African melodies that reveal the close relationship be- _ class and chose eleven voices whom he trained daily.

tween the music of America and Africa. “At last, taking every cent of money he had, all the school The late lamented Samuel Coleridge Taylor, inthe prefaceto treasury could spare and all that he could borrow, Mr. White

24 Negro Melodies Transcribed for the Piano, said: started out with his little company. They sang in the churches of “There is a distinction between the African Negroand Ameri- — many cities. At first their programs were composed entirely of can Negro Melodies. The African seem to be more martial and _ the white man’s music but circumstances and the demand of the free in character, whereas the American are more personal and _ public soon changed this and two or three slave songs were added tender, though notable exceptions to this rule may be found on _ to the program and, finally, the programs were chiefly composed either side. The sentiments to which the folk song ofthe Ameri- — of the Negro melodies and only two or three numbers of the

can Negro give expression are the outgrowth of the trying con- white man’s music used. Their first campaign ended at ditions under which the transported children of Africa lived. | Poughkeepsie, N. Y. and besides having raised the fifteen hunWherever companies of Negroes were working together, incot- dred dollars, necessary to repair the old school buildings, they ton fields, in the tobacco factories, on the levees and steam- carried home with them twenty thousand dollars, with which boats, these melodies sprang into life and oft-times in slavery,as was bought the present site of Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn. in certain parts of the south today, some man or woman withan Mr. White decided to call his little band ‘The Jubilee Singers’ exceptional voice was paid to lead the singing, the ideabeingto —_ for that had indeed been their year of jubilee. increase the amount of labor by such singing. It is said that the “They were invited to sing at the second World’s Peace Jubi-

Negro works best when he sings. lee and were to lead the audience in singing The Battle Hymn of “The Negro folk song has for the Negrorace the same value _ the Republic. Generally it is sung in the key of C, but Mr. White that the folk song of any race has for that people. It should fos- _ reasoned that it would probably be sung in E, the key in which

ter race pride as in the days of slavery it furnished an outlet for the instruments of the orchestra would harmonize. So day by the anguish of smitten hearts. The music of these songs comes _ day using his violin, he trained them a little higher and higher direct from the heart. Some colored people do not encourage __until their voices were clear and true in E. On the morning of the singing of these songs because they bring to mind the dark _ the opening of the Peace Jubilee, when excited and eager to | days of slavery, but the race as a whole is beginning to realize _ reflect credit on their beloved instructor, they sang as one voice that, aside from the music of the red man, the Negro folk song is ‘He hath sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat,’ the only distinctively American music, and that thoughthe songs _ the vast audience of over forty thousand persons arose with wild

were the outgrowth of bondage and oppression, they contain _ cheering. Strauss, the great composer, waved his violin excitsurprisingly few references to slavery. Instead, they breathe — edly and threw his bow into the air. forth an abiding faith and trust in the Father of us all who makes “Through the kindness of friends, they were invited to go no discrimination in the bestowal of His love and mercy. abroad and in 1873,while the guests of the Duke and Duchess 104

NOVEMBER 6, 1915 © THE NEW REPUBLIC 1910-1919 of Argyle, they gave their first concert in Great Britain. The — tin Luther’s room in the old monastery at Wittenburg. At newspapers gave favorable criticisms and Lord Shaftsbury se- | Brunswick they met Franz Abt and received a warm greeting. cured for them official invitations to Edinburgh and all of the |= At Darmstadt the court theatre was placed at their disposal. leading cities of England, Ireland and Wales. Queen Victoria “At last, after having sung before almost every crowned head drove to the home of the Duchess of Argyle and asked them to __ of Europe and having had undreamed-of financial success, they sing for her. She wept over the sadness of their songs but de- sailed for America in July, 1878. Jubilee Hall at Fisk University clared that they comforted her. The Queen of the Netherlands —_ was built with part of the proceeds of their foreign tour. The had their songs translated into her language in order that her = Negro folk songs (or Jubilee songs as they are often called) form subjects might correctly understand the songs as they were be- _—_a part of the daily program at Fisk University and are sung from ing sung. The Crown Prince of Germany had them singin Mar- __ the hearts as well as the voices of the entire student body.”

November 6, 1915 © The New Republic ANTI-RAGTIME Sir: Once I asked a rather famous artist to express in music the that America has produced Greeley and Bryant, Emerson and most immoral feeling possible. He threw up his hand with a —- Hawthorne, Phillips Brooks, MacDonald, Damrosch, and Muck,

quick snap of his finger, and I had his answer forthwith ina _ shall they find their souls when they see whistled snatch of ragtime. In your issue of October 16th Hiram

K. Moderwell attempts to dignify this delectable sister of folly “this fair mountain leave to feed, and batten on this moor?” under the disguise “folk-music.” His exact words are, “I am sure

that many a native composer could save his soul if he would Would it not be better in these perilous times of the movie open his ears to this folk-music of the American city.” and the tango to remember what was said a good many centuThe confusion of thought in this article is exasperating be- _— ries ago by Socrates, I believe: “A principle which has any soundcause nowadays one hears so much of its kind. The fundamental __ ness should stand firm not only now and then, but always and

idea seems to be that if you can pervert the taste of ten million forever.” James Cloyd Dowman persons in these United States—no matter how inferior they are

as a class—into liking a thing, you may then, with the fervor of | (Ragtime is American, exactly as skyscrapers are American, a religious zealot, call the thing American and insist that itis | having been invented, developed and chiefly used in America. necessarily the fullest expression of the life of the people. This | On that point there can be no dispute. How much you like it is sort of reasoning everywhere infests our national life. The edi- | another matter. The correspondent feels that the taste for ragtor with his dozen reports of murder and sexual laxity flashing __ time is a depraved taste and that the class which entertains it is from the front page of his morning paper; the novelist and dra- an inferior class. Of course he is assuming that he is the supematist with their liberal laxative of filth and their crass sugaring _ rior. Now, if I may be allowed the liberties of controversy for a of sentiment; the minister with his startling vulgarity and his = moment, the man who argues in this fashion is technically known hypnotism; the music-master with his ragtime—all these bow as a snob. A snob, of course, may be right. But just suppose in the knee to Baal. These men, however, insist that they are ex- _ this case that the taste for ragtime were not depraved; the correpressing the true American feeling by giving the epole what they —_—s spondent could never know that fact because, being superior, he

want. The concrete product of such reasoning is found in men __ could not share the tastes of the inferior. The weakness of the of the type of William R. Hearst, Harold Bell Wright, Billy Sun- —_ snob is his helpless imprisonment in this vicious circle. If he

day, and George M. Cohan. should happen to be wrong he could never know it.

The harm lies in the delusion that these are the true Ameri- I certainly do not suppose that “ragtime is the” fullest cans. If one has heard, “Hark! hark! the lark at heaven’s gate —_ expression of the life of the people. And I freely admit that bad sings,” how could he save his soul by opening his earsto“When __ ragtime is written in about as great proportion as bad lieder and the frost is on the pumpkin and the fodder’s in the shock?” Orif | bad symphonies. The important point is that ragtime, whether it one has comprehended “What a piece of work is aman,” why —_ be adjudged good or bad, is original with Americans—it is their should he imagine that he is expressing the real American spirit | owncreation. Anda people must do its own art-creation, for the when he spurts through a quid of tobacco, “Lord! we all know same reason that an individual must do his own lovemaking.

we’re as common as sin!” So long as some people remember H.K.M.)

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1910-1919 FEBRUARY 1916 «© OPERA MAGAZINE December 4, 1915 ¢ The New Republic EXTOLS RAGTIME ARTICLE A. Walter Kramer Sir: On reading Mr. Hiram K Moderwell’s excellent article on —_can prove that it is not. It expresses something that we feel; to “ragtime” in your journal a few weeks ago] immediately thought —_ be sure, it isn’t lofty in its theme. It may be, for all I know, “music

that some person would address you in your columns and at- of the feet.” But what of that? It surely has a greater justification tempt to take Mr. Moderwell to task for claiming thatragtimeis for existing than have turgid symphonies by some of our pedan-

a typical American expression. tic musicians, symphonies which have in them nothing of the I see that my thought was correct. Mr. James Cloyd Bow- __ breath of life, but are purely calculated affairs, brought into beman, in your issue of November 6th, finds “confusion of thought” _ ing to satisfy their perpetrator, who feels that he must write a in Mr. Moderwell’s article. I should be happy to have him point symphony.

out just where this “confusion” lies, as I have read the article I would also like to correct Mr. Bowman when he says that very carefully and am unable to find it. The fact that Mr. Bow- _— “so long as some people remember that America has produced man, at some time in his career, asked “a famous artist to ex- |= men like Greeley and Bryant, Emerson and Hawthorne, Phillips press in music the most immoral feeling possible” and that “the | Brooks, MacDonald, Damrosch and Muck.” Mr. Damrosch was famous artist” in response whistled a bit of ragtime, seemstome — born in Germany—I take it that he refers to Mr. Walter Damrosch, to be poor proof that ragtime is not typical of America’s bustling | conductor of the symphony society—so was his brother, Mr. life. Mr. Moderwell treated his subject in the article under dis- Frank Damrosch, and Dr. Muck, conductor of the Boston symcussion with veritable mastery and I have heard many persons __ phony, also first saw the light of day in that land which our who are vitally interested in this country’s music speak of the —_ especially neutral citizens enjoy calling “Barbaria,” the land which article in terms of high praise. Ragtime is American and noone _ in music has given the world Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner.

February 1916 © Opera Magazine RAGTIME AND AMERICAN MUSIC by Charles L.Buchanan The national music fallacy has been more rife than usual during _us put this point aside and admit that the rhythmic complexities

the last couple of months. It has been proclaimed through the of the Robert E. Lee are very probably as sincere, as vital, as medium of several excellent publications. We are told that the —_—ingratiating as the rhythmic complexities of a Chopin mazurka. soul of the native composer is to be saved through the invigorat- | But come to think of it, who disputes the point? We know of no ing influence of ragtime, “the one true American music.” And __ one. A few dull, impossible academicians might raise an issue, furthermore, “there are critics who go so far as to say that our _— but such people are of no account one way or the other. Let us

future American symphonies and opera will be written in rag- go even farther than this; we quote as follows: “It (ragtime) has

time.” carried the complexities of the rhythmic subdivision of the meaNow let us purge our minds in so far as itis humanly possible _ sure to a point never before reached in the history of music. It of prejudice and preconceived points of view; let us approach _has established subtle conflicting rhythms to a degree never this matter in an absolutely unbiased state of mind, andsee what __ before attempted in any popular or folk-music and rarely enough

kind of a case these advocates of ragtime make out for them- _in art-music. It has gone far beyond most other popular music in selves. From arecent article on the subject we quote as follows: the freedom of inner voices (yes, I mean polyphony) and of “If any musician does not feel in his heart the rhythmic com- —_ harmonic modulation.” Now although we are some-what taken plexities of the Robert E. Lee should not trust him to feelinhis — aback by the “harmonic modulation” we are nevertheless willheart the rhythmic complexities of Brahms.” The writer here —_ ing to admit the writer’s point. We admit that ragtime is not only strikes twelve. We credit him with a hit, a palpable hit. It is a fascinating phase of music from the standpoint of a mere senundeniably true that a discriminating attitude appraises athing | suous enjoyableness, but, as well, a technical influence of inesfor the inherent perfection of the thing itself. Chevalier suc- __ timable significance. ceeds as impeccably in what he sets out to do as Duse succeeds So far so good. Now if our writers on this rather facile subin what she sets out to do. One is as genuine an artist as the — ject of popular music were content to drop the matter here, to other. The relative importance of the thing accomplished is, of __ tell us what rattling good fun ragtime is and now much inherent, course, an entirely different matter. For the moment, however, let —_ irresistible charm it possesses, we should heartily agree with 106

FEBRUARY 1916 © OPERA MAGAZINE 1910-1919 them. But no. They are not content to allow ragtime to remain —_ we are skeptical on the question of public taste. However, that is

one of the influences from which a future American music may another matter. For the present let us consider the following:

find its inspiration; they urge it upon us as the only influence “The attitude toward folk-music at the beginning of the capable of creating a genuine American utterance. In other words, nineteenth century was very similar. A Russian folk-song was they are prescribing a formula to which so occult, so indefin- _ no less scorned in the court of Catherine the Great than a ragtime able a thing as music must adhere if it is to qualify in their esti- | song in our studios today. Yet Russian folk-song became the mation as a genuine American utterance. We quote as follows: _ basis of some of the most vigorous art-music of the past century, “The important point is that ragtime whether it is to be judged = and no musician speaks of it today except in terms of respect.”

good or bad is original with Americans—it is their own cre- _ Let us sit down quietly and think this over. First, are we not ation. And a people must do its own art-creation for the same _ struck with a sense of the incongruous in this coupling of Russian reason that an individual must do his own love-making.” Now __ folk-song with American ragtime? Without for a moment we can find no particular importance of aconstructive naturein presuming to possess anything other than a merely superficial the statement that ragtime “is original with Americans—it is | knowledge of the historical aspects of Russian folk music, we their own creation.” It seems to us that we may have as good _are yet nevertheless tempted to think of it as a thing come down reason to deplore this fact as we have to support it. And further- _ out of the fantastic superstitions, the homely, frugal hopes and more, a “people” does not create its own art; artis created forit | fears of a primitive people who had not lost touch with the by a unique thing called genius. From a poetic standpoint itis | purifying influences of Earth. It seems to us that there is an all very pretty to think of a people winding their common Joys, __ irreconcilable difference between a people’s song which has fears, hopes and sorrows into beautiful verse and song, but,asa = grown out of an unsophisticated soil, and a people’s song which matter of cold fact, if art had to depend upon this sort of thing = has grown out of pavements, vaudevilles and cabarets. But let there would be precious little art in the world today. Artis ninety- —_—‘ that pass. What we are really interested in is the statement that

nine times out of a hundred the record of one man’s emotions, _ this Russian folk-song “became the basis of some of the most nothing more, nothing less. Wagner loved, Wagner wrote Tristan, vigorous art-music.” [What does this ] amount to? Coming right

and the world is richer for a supreme piece of autobiography. down to the gist of the matter, what does Russia’s contribution However, let us follow the advocate of the idiomatic speech to the world’s music consist of? Glinka? Moussorgsky? Borodin? to greater length. Take the following for example: “Conserva- —_ Balakirev? Cui? etc. In other words does it consist of the tive estimates show that there are at least 50,000,000 copies of — contributions made to it by those men who, repudiating alien popular music sold in this country yearly and a goodly portion _ influences, set themselves to the task of exploiting a music of of it is in ragtime. You may take it as certain that if many mil- __ the people for the people? At first glance you may answer lions of people persist in liking something that has not been _ affirmatively. You may advance Boris Godunow as an instance recognized by the schools, there is vitality in that thing.” Now _ of a triumphant expression of nationalism in music. Your point what is the inevitable answer to this—an answer that springs § may be well taken. Personally, we do not agree with you. We automatically into our consciousness? As we see it—we may may be absolutely wrong in the matter, but for our part we are be absolutely wrong; it is not easy to see clearly—the answeris skeptical of the present prestige of this interesting work. We so trite, so shiny at the elbows from much wear and tear that we _ believe its appeal is made to one’s sense of, to one’s temporary hesitate to use it. We should say, however, that we cannot ac- _ interest in the curious and the unique. Quite frankly, is it not cept as significant the tastes of the majority in so far as arthas __ rather an interesting spectacle than that thing which an enduring had to contend from time immemorial against precisely this art must be, a valid and a satisfying emotional appeal? Is it not, demoralizing and disheartening handicap. Human nature instinc- —_in the last analysis, a work of a potential greatness rather than a

tively responds to the tawdry, the fictitious, the cheap and the — work of an actual greatness? We think it is. So far as we can easily comprehended. It is almost entirely deficient in discrimi- see, Russia has given the world one musician and one musician nation. Nine hundred and ninety-nine people out of every thou- — only who is, in the last analysis, worthy to be ranked with the sand will invariably select the very worst picture in an exhibi- — great composers of all time, Tchaikovsky: he who was censured tion for their approval. Nine hundred and ninety-nine people _his whole life long for his cosmopolitan tendencies; he whose out of every thousand will prefer the Winter Garden to __ sterling intelligence rebelled at the petty dilettantism exhibited Hauptmann’s Weavers. And you musicians who may seek to _ by the dabblers in national color, (the Borodins, Moussorgskys hobnob with democracy over this matter, do not forget that if | etc. who could theorize to perfection, but who could not comwe carry the vote of the majority into active service, we must __ plete unaided ten bars of correct counterpoint); he who is great be prepared to acknowledge Butterfly a greater work than _ because his temperament was great and because an impeccable Tristan. There is, of course, the interesting possibility thatifthe | scholarliness allowed him to express that temperament with 10,000,000 Americans who buy the 50,000,000 copies of ragtime |= consummate accuracy; he who, to sum up, is Russia’s pre-emia year had as good an opportunity to hear the TannhduserOver- _—s nent composer not because of Russia but because of Self. And ture or the “Ride of the Valkyries” as they have to hear the — when we are told that “you cannot tell an American composer’s Robert E. Lee, they might grow to like it very nearly if not quite _ art-song from any mediocre art-song the world over,” it occurs as well. Personally we do not think that they would. Personally, to us to wonder if one of the great songs of all time, Tchaikovsky’s Nur wer die Sensucht Kennt, is any the less great because it is a 107

1910-1919 FEBRUARY 1916 © OPERA MAGAZINE mood and a kind of musical language common to the whole _lands that Mr. J. Francis Murphy paints with so exquisite an

world and not peculiar to a locality. artistry. Will ragtime express these things? We hardly think so. There is another aspect of the matter very little dwelt upon, Nor would we rely exclusively upon ragtime to furnish us with but, we think, holding a considerable significance. What shall a musical delineation of that man who is, in the estimation of we say is the particular status of the musician who persistently = most of us, the typical American of all time—Abraham Linrelies upon material other than his? With all the best intentions —_coln. Personally, we can think of a few bars of Beethoven which

in the world we cannot count Mr. Percy Grainger, forexample, § might not inappropriately convey something to us of the cora great creative musician on the strength of his Jrish Tune from __ dial, frank supremacy, the earth-bigness of the man’s soul, but County Derry. He is not in this particular instance the creatorof | somehow we do not hear this personality represented by, let us a new beauty, he has merely rearranged a beauty that already _ say, the music of Mr. Irving Berlin.

existed. Nor is it possible to contend that a Chopin mazurka The fundamental error committed by these writers on nabears the unimpeachable testimony to the genius of Chopin that __ tionality in art is the assumption that art expresses and must is borne by a Chopin prelude, etude, or ballade. The mazurkais express nationality. Will they never learn that art is a personal a clever and often a very beautiful putting together of certain _—not a national matter, that art is only incidentally concerned clearly defined national characteristics of amelodic and rhyth- —_ with nationality, and is in no way, shape or form under obligamic nature; the prelude, the etude, the ballade areacominginto __ tion to represent the characteristics of a nation? From a psycho_ the world of a something that had not been there before, a new logical standpoint it may be possible to argue that the artist comes loveliness self-conceived, an emanation from that indefinable into the world with a prenatal accumulation of native influences essence in man we call the spiritual. To compare fora moment — and reactions back of his work; but to say that the supreme music the relative merits of a composition such as the D-minor Pre- of the world owes anything to or is representative in the slightlude, the G-minor Ballade, the B-minor and C-sharp-minor _ est degree of nationality is to say something that is absolutely, Scherzos, the F-minor, C-minor and A-minor Etudes fromopus __ ridiculously and demonstrably incorrect. One may—as the writer 25 (compositions absolutely lacking in the faintest trace of na- —_ does, for example—treasure certain instances in music of a national color) with a Chopin mazurka is sheer, unadulterated _ tional expression. For our part we know no music more wistful, nonsense. From the standpoint of a mere loveliness, perhaps — endearing and inexpressibly, tenderly sad than certain moments you cannot prove the mazurka any the less worthy. But it is in the second and last movements of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symfairly obvious that the amount of imagination, concentration, | phony. As a matter of fact, there are a few bars in this Syminventive genius, constructive ability, etc. displayed in the D- — phony which we sometimes think come closer to us than any minor Prelude, the G minor Ballade, etc. is incomparably supe- other music in all Tchaikovsky. But that is not the point. Aside rior to the amount of these qualities that is displayed in the from your preferences or our preferences the indisputable fact mazurka. After all, the man who conceives his own theme, his —_ remains that you will not find a trace of national color in any own manner, and his own musical architecture, must be cred- — music that the world calls a pre-eminently great music. Furited a more valuable contributor to the progress of his art than —_ thermore the claim is made here that if you or ninety-nine people the man who, however felicitous his methods, contents himself —_ out of a hundred entered a concert hall and heard nine-tenths of with a mere co-ordinating and amplifying of what others have the music of the world without a previous knowledge of the

suggested. identity of the composer, you would be unable to tell whether

One other point occurs to us; we jot it down for what it may the music was German, French, Russian or Esquimaux. Take be worth. Our writer from whom we quote makes the interest- | any theme you choose from Tristan and say if you can that it is ing observation that when you walk up and down the street of | representatively German or that it owes anything to the influan American city you feel in its jerk and rattle a personality | ence of German folk-music. Tristan is no more representatively different from that of any European capital. “This is American. | German than Shakespeare’s Hamlet is representatively English. It is in our life and it helps to form our characters and condition —_ Both are great works of art solely and simply because both are our mode of action. It should have expression in art, simply | consummate summing up of emotions which the world retains a because any people must express itself if itis to know itself. No —_— perpetual curiosity about and a large propensity for feeling. An European music can or possibly could express this American _ interest in nationalism in music mostly consists in a perfunctory personality. Ragtime, I believe, does express it. It is today the _ rising to one’s feet when the national anthem is played. The one true American music.” Setting aside the fallacy to which — music that is applauded in the concert halls of the world, the we have previously alluded—the fallacy that a people expresses —_ music that the world treasures in its memory is music that speaks itself in art—let us ask ourselves when and where music began _ of and is inspired by those two predominant incentives back of to express the personality of peoples and of cities? Furthermore, all art-love and grief. is “jerk and rattle” all we have to offer in the way of a national If our symphonies and our opera of the future will be written personality? Does ragtime conclusively sum up our American —__in ragtime what shall we do for a Tristan or a sixth symphony? temperament? Take, for example, that chilly, sweet, reticent, If our future symphonies and opera are to be written in ragtime, grave New England spirit that Mr. Dwight W. Tryon places so _ our future poetry and prose will, we presume, be written in the consummately upon canvas; take, forexample, the bucolic spirit | colloquialisms of Mr. George M. Cohan. Is America so defiof those benign golden uplands, those broken, forsaken autumn cient emotionally and intellectually that rhythm and slang alone 108

MAY 27,1916 ¢ LITERARY DIGEST 1910-1919 may express it? Or are we, perchance, on the threshold of a __in art we shall rank Synge’s Playboy of the Western World a great upheaval in esthetic values? Must we abjure our belief in —_ greater conception than Hamlet or Lear, we shall cross Byron, what we had previously supposed to be an essential character- Shelley, Keats and Swinburne from the list of English poets, istic of great art, that is shall represent a universal rather thana because they are not characteristically English, and repudiate local emotion? If we are to heed these advocates of nationalism —_ Poe as a eligible factor in our literature because of his lack of national expression. We shall enthrone Mr. Ade in his place.

May 27, 1916 ¢ Literary Digest CANNING NEGRO MELODIES “Canned Music” may be scorned by the ultra-critical, but it has Trouble gwine ter war’y me down. one advantage that no criticism can assail: the actual preservation Jes so de tree fall, jes so it lie; of folk-songs. The phonograph, with its power of bringing back Jes so de sinner live, jes so he die-den dumb and forgotten voices in something very near their original Trouble gwine ter war’y me down, I believe it. freshness, performs an invaluable service for us in keeping alive Trouble gwine ter war’ y me down, In der mornin’. and in our memories the songs of past generations. Efforts are Trouble gwine ter war’y me down, God knows it. being made in this country at present to secure and record the Trouble gwine ter war’y me down. tribal chants of the North American Indians, just as their dances

are being recorded by the cinematographer. Hardly less valuable Mandy, Tilly, and Louvinia were fieldhands, and as they is the service rendered by those who have helped to preserve the |= went up and down the long cotton rows, these are the words melodies of the “befo’ de wah” Negroes. The Musical Courier __ they used to chant in unison, keeping time with their hoes: tells us of the labors of George A. Miller, brother of Reed Miller,

the tenor, along this line. Thirty and more years ago Mr. Miller Somebody buried in the graveyard, heard many of the old songs sung by the Negroes on his father’s Somebody buried in de sea; plantation in northwestern South Carolina, and, as he says: Gwine ter git up in de mournin’ shoutin’. “For one reason or another I have been interested in the Ne- Gwine ter sound de jubilee. gro, and particularly in Negro melody, for a good many years. If you git dare befo’ I do. About twenty-two years ago I began writing and speaking in pub- You run an’ tell de Lord, I’m er comin’ on too oh! lic on this question in a more or less serious fashion when the so- Somebody dyin’ in de mount’ in. called Negro question was being much agitated, particularly by Somebody dyin’ in de bald. Senator Benjamin R. Tillman. It was a subject at that time of very Gwine ter git up in de mornin’ shoutin’. considerable interest to the people of the entire country, an inter- Gwine ter rise up from de daid, est that soon subsided. But as to Negro melody pure and simple, If you git dare info’ I do. it, as a subject, is of never-ending interest to those who have stud- You Hunan’ tell de Lord I’m er comin’ on too. ied it from the point of view of its elementary and original value

as any natural art subject, the several songs here recorded being a The next was sung by George Sadler. George was a ditcher. few of hundreds that I remember and have often sung. They arein He was a tremendously tall man with arms so long he could reality what might be called trade, or occupation songs, the char- scratch the calf of his leg without bending. They called him the acter of the words and music of most of them being determined “Monk,” for he looked, talked, and sang like an ape. Notwithby the trade or occupation of the Negro who sings them. The __ standing his size, George was often hidden in big ditches ten music is so elusive in character that it would be almost impos- _ feet deep and, as the mud and dirt flew up from his spade, out of sible to reduce it to notation. Only the talking-machinecanrecord the depths came this peculiar refrain, the shovel accompanying

its elusive and peculiar characteristics. its rhythmic pulse with exactness: A few of the songs recorded are given with Mr. Miller’s comments on the conditions of the singing as he remembers them. Goalman, Goalman, Goalman day, The first one used to be sung by Aunt Sarah Warren, as she An er one two-er duncum die. stood at the hotpot stirring her wash for the “battlingboard.”

From morning to night, as long as Aunt Sarah kept at her work, On the word “Goalman he gave a sort of bellow which

she sang it with unflagging zeal: sounded like the croaking of a bullfrog magnified a hundred times. Isham Moore was a young fellow with very high tenor

Trouble gwine ter war’y me down in der mornin’. and this was Isham’s favorite song: Trouble gwine ter war’ y me down, I believe it.

Trouble gwine ter war’y me down, God knows it. Old Massa bought a yallow gal, 109

1910-1919 AUGUST 1916 © RAGTIME REVIEW He fotch her fum de south, Then there was a dance-song called Walking on de Green Hair grow’d so tight on de Nigger’s haid, Grass: She could not shet her mouth.

Den haughen, haughen, my darlin’ Chile, Walkin’ on de green grass, Dusky, dusky, dark;

Haughen, haughen, I say, Walkin’ on de green grass, dusky, dusky, dark.

Haughen, Haughen, my darlin’ chile, So fair and pretty, I chose you as a lily.

Got no whare to stay. Oh, han’ me down yer pretty lit’le han’, Old Massa built a fine house, An’ take a walk wid me—Oh! Sixteen stories high; Dogs in de woods tree in up squirrel, Ev’ry story in dat house My true love is de beauty of de worl’. filled wid chicken pie, Miss Dinah she love sugar and tea, Den ha, ha, mi darlin’ chile, Miss Dinah she love candy. Ha,ha, I say. Miss Dinah she can steal all around an’ kiss dem pretty

Ha, Ha, my darlin’ chile, boys nadhy.

Got no whare to stay.

August 1916 ¢ Ragtime Review ABOUT RAGTIME A short time ago the question of “Who originated ragtime?” —_ strumming in his own cajoling way, likes to throw in a note at was brought up again, this ttme by Ben Harney and McIntyre random and his thumb ranges over for this effect. When he and Heath, both claiming [the] honor of introducing “ragtime” _ takes up the piano the desire for the same effect dominates him,

to American vaudeville. being almost second nature, and he reaches for the open banjo Some time recently Jim McIntyre stated in an interview he __ string note with his little finger.

had done a buck dance accompanied by the clapping of hands “Meanwhile he is keeping mechanically perfect time with to the tune of an old “Rabbit” song which he had learned from _his left hand. The hurdle with the right hand little finger throws southern Negroes and brought it into New York at Tony Pastor’s _ the tune off its stride, resulting in syncopation. He is playing theater in 1879. two different tunes at once.

According to an article in Variety, Ben Harney, who claims “This explanation, unsupported, is logical. Moreover, it was to be the originator of ragtime, came to the fore immediately —— given to the writer by Ben Harney, who was the first to play and offered $100, besides bowing out of the profession if he can Negro ragtime on the piano before polite audiences. Harney was be shown a piece of ragtime music antedating the two songshe _ frankly an expositor of Negro themes and acquired them from first used, Mr. Johnson Turn Me Loose, and You’ve BeenaGood _ that part of the country whence came May Irwin’s song about

Old Wagon, but You’ve Done Broke Down. The New Bully. He introduced Mr. Johnson, Turn me Loose, Against that Jim McIntyre stated ragtime was never origi- —_ along with his ragtime and a perfect illustration of flat-footed nated by a white man and that it was originally taughttohimin _ buck dancing through the medium of a Negro named Strap Hill.

the South while he was working with Billy Carroll in a circus, “All of this can be traced to the New Orleans levee, where it and that an old Negro was his teacher. He sang an old song _ originated, doubtless. It spread up the river and The New Bully taught to him in turn by his grandfather, who had come from __was acquired by Miss Irwin in St. Louis. Still, the man with the Africa, and he sang the song in the form of areal Africanchant memory will recall the first line of the refrain which ran: in syncopated time and through this medium Mr. McIntyre ‘When I walk dat levee roun’, roun’, roun’.’

learned that ragtime originated in Africa, he says. “The sentiments of several like songs showed the life on the On this same subject Drury Underwood in the Chicago docks and in the neighboring saloon-dance halls.

Record Herald states: “The real buck dance, rarely seen now, is a matter of anatomy “The origin of ragtime is referred to periodically by musi- _apart from flat feet. As a development of footwork, white men cians as something probably African, but beyond analysis. _ with arched feet imitate it and, curiously enough, the Negro Wherein they are partly right and wholly wrong. Ragtime is —_ dancer who dresses like a cake walker, copies the white man in African—no probably about it—and the analysis is simple, lead- doing it as smartly as he can. In that event the buck dance is a

ing facts considered. show of agility with a touch of something nearly acrobatic. “Real ragtime on the piano, played in such a manner that it = Johnny Ford used to add what is called ‘nerve dancing,’ which cannot be put in notes, is the contribution of the graduated Ne- _is acultivation of the main leg muscle controlling the foot. His

gro banjo player who cannot read music. repetition of a tap into a series was like an immature roll on the “On the banjo there is a short string which is not fretted and drum which, consequently, is played open with the thumb It is fre- “But in the original buck dance, like the ‘essence’ dance, the quently referred to as “the thumb string,” The colored performer, —_ body played a considerable part with the grotesque movements

110

DECEMBER 1916 ¢« CHOIR LEADER 1910-1919 of loose joints. These, as well as flat feet, are a peculiar heritage of tion it became an amateurish exhibition, because its participants, the Negro. The consipuous white man who can do a Negro buck _ if they had genuine tango anatomies, were restrained by their

dance is Fred Stone, a marvelously built athlete who can loosen own and the public’s notion of conventionality his joints at will and did so invincibly as the Scarecrow in The Now that the tango has departed, it may be said that while it

Wizard of Oz. is credited to the Argentine Republic, a variation of it, closely

The tango, of recent favor, is a dance of the body withelemen- edited for Northern adoption, was known as “the loving twotary footwork as first contrived. As diluted for proper presenta- step” on the New Orleans levee, which is thuis shown to have figured largely in inspiring popular forms of our entertainment.

August 1916 ¢ Ragtime Review WHAT HAS “RAGTIME” TO DO WITH “AMERICAN MUSIC?” by Harry Davidson When Henry F. Gilbert’s vigorous and poetic Comedy Overture The conclusion that Negro music is not American music beon Negro Themes was performed in New York recently, certain _— cause it is of Negro origin is not necessarily a sound one. The reviewers felt it their duty to warn the immediate public that characteristic rhythm of Negro music, in the first place, has been they must not accept this music as true “national expression.” — eagerly adapted by this public as a medium of popular musical | One even lamented bitterly the false impression of the Ameri- —_ expression, and in that light has found favor for about 25 years can character, which, he felt, such music, if heard on the other in America.

side, would be apt to make on the supercilious European. Musical history offers many examples of the tonal art of one Mr. Gilbert is now well-known on account of the originality | people superimposed upon that of another, as the music of the Moors and imagination of music based chiefly on folk tunes of the | became the music of Spain, in the natural course of events. When a American soil. Perhaps the public has to acertainextenta wrong = musical manner, however exotic it may seem at first, is whole-heatimpression of his talent, for he has composed other music as far _ edly adopted by a people, even for the comparatively short space apart from his “ragtime” compositions as the poles, and ascore __ of time as that in which “ragtime” has flourished here, it is somejust completed, a prelude to Synge’s Riders of the Sea, for full thing more than a dictate of passing fancy. It is nearer the heart of modern orchestra, must be mentioned as one of the most inter- _ the people than that. and it may be said that for most of us who esting which have fallen under the writer’s eyes in many months. listen with unprejudiced ears Mr. Gilbert has not only conducted But we are now concerned with the artistic significance of Mr. some entertainingly successful experiments with “ragtime” rhythms,

Gilbert’s resourceful employment of Negro themes in those of he has caught the note of nervousness of the race and, using a his compositions which have so far found their way to the pub- _ prevalent idiom, has expressed happily and artistically various

lic. phases of American atmosphere and American character. December 1916 ¢ Choir Leader THE ORIGIN OF THE NEGRO SPIRITUALS

While there is less popular interest in the Negro spirituals than —_ jubilee songs. These choruses were largely pentatonal in scale there was thirty or so years ago, there is, we believe, a greater as are the Negro melodies. They had a nerve-exciting rhythmiinterest among artistic musicians. Mr. H. E. Krehbiel, the emi- —_cal swing that led the congregation to self-hypnotize themselves nent musical critic, has written a book on the subject which he —_—and often produced cataleptic trances. Here are the essential has discussed with characteristically German thoroughness. If | elements of the Negro spiritual. The susceptible African took he has laid too much stress on the bibliographical sources of — these white “spirituals” and gave them a racial twist and so information instead of making first hand investigations, well, | evolved the Negro “spiritual.” The white and Negro “spiritu-

that is characteristically German, too. als” shade into each other in such a way that it is often difficult Mr. Krehbiel argues that these songs, racially Africanthough —_ toclassify them. The tune of The Battle Hymn of the Republic is they be, are an American product, but gives no clue tothe im- |= a camp-meeting chorus born among the Methodists of Maine pulse that confined itself exclusively to American Negroes. That _ but is often referred to as ajubilee song. The Old Time Religion is the more surprising, as he was the son of aGerman Methodist _is another white spiritual often classified as a Negro “spiritual. “ preacher, and in his boyhood must have heard the German ver- _ So the Negroes have been credited with individual songs as well sions of the campmeeting choruses that were then so prevalent _as the origin of the character of the “spiritual” music. among the Methodists. Here was the clue to the origin of the 111

1910-1919 1916 «© JOURNAL OF THE FOLKLORE SOCIETY OF TEXAS These white “spirituals” again are not exclusively American the West Chanteys Coast of Africa, assured me that the natives in origin. They are closely related in scale, form of stanza and __ had no songs of this character, but that in the Freetown colored rhythmical character to sailors’ chanteys, and other popular En- —_ churches they were in constant use. On further inquiry he stated glish choruses. The result is that where the Negroes have heard __ that these had been introduced from the United States via Liberia.

these English folk melodies, they have evolved Negro melodies This seems to justify our position that the Negro “spiritual” of the same character, as the Negro “spiritual.” In Jamaica, they — isnot of racially African origin, but is simply an African variation have been largely secular in character, the impulse coming from __ of the American evolution of the folk choruses of England and

sailors. A missionary from Sierra Leone, an English colony on Scotland.

1916 © Journal of the Folklore Society of Texas THE “BLUES” AS FOLK-SONGS by Dorothy Scarborough There are fashions in music as in anything else, and folk-song “T mean that and more,” he responded. “‘That is true, of course, presents no exception to the rule. For the last several years the of the blues, as I'll illustrate a little later. But blues are folkmost popular type of Negro song has been that peculiar, bar- = songs in more ways than that. They are essentially racial—the baric sort of melody called “blues,” with its irregular rhythm, its ones that are genuine (though since they became the fashion lagging briskness, its mournful liveliness of tone. It has a jerky many blues have been written that are not Negro in character)— tempo, as of a cripple dancing because of some irresistible im- —_ and they have a basis in older folk-song.” pulse. A “blues” (or does one say a “blue?’”’ What is the gram- ‘A general or a specific basis?” I wished to know. mar of the thing?) likes to end its stanza abruptly, leaving the Specific,” he answered. “Each one of my blues is based on listener expectant for more, though, of course, there is no fixed | some old Negro song of the South, some folk-song that I heard law about it. One could scarcely imagine a convention of any from my mammy when I was a child. Something that sticks in kind in connection with the Negroid free music. It is partial to |= my mind, that [hum to myself when I’m thinking about it. Some the three-line stanza instead of the customary one of four or old song that is a part of the memories of my childhood and of more, and it ends with a high note that has the effect of incom- —_— my race. I can tell you the exact song I used as a basis for any pleteness. The close of a stanza comes with a shock like the —_ one of my blues. Yes, the blues that are genuine are really folkwhip-crack surprise at the end of an O. Henry story, forinstance, —_ songs.” a cheap trick, but effective as a novelty. Blues sing of themes I expressed an interest to know of some definite instance of remote from those of the old spirituals, and their incomplete- | what he meant, and for answer he picked up a sheaf of music ness of stanza makes the listener gasp, and perhaps fancy that —_ from his desk.

the censor has deleted the other line. “Here’s a thing called Joe Turner Blues,” he said. “That is Blues, being widely published as sheet music inthe Northas written around an old Negro song [ used to hear and play thirty well as the South, and sung in vaudeville everywhere, would — or more years ago. In some sections it was called Going Down seem to have little relation to authentic folk-music of the Ne- the River for Long, but in Tennessee it was always Joe Turner. groes. But in studying the question, I had a feeling that it was §_ Joe Turner, the inspiration of the song, was a brother of Pete more or less connected with Negro folk-song, andItriedtotrace | Turner, once governor of Tennessee. He was an officer and he

it back to its origin. used to come to Memphis and get prisoners to carry them to Negroes and white people in the South referred me toW.C. —— Nashville after a kangaroo court. When the Negroes said of any Handy as the man who had put the bluing in the blues. Buthow _ one, ‘Joe Turner’s been to town’, they meant that the person in to locate him was a problem. He had started this indigo musicin —_ question had been carried off hand-cuffed to be gone no telling Memphis, it appeared, but was there no longer. Iheardofhimas — how long.”

having been in Chicago, and in Philadelphia, and at last as be- I recalled a fragment of folk-song from the South which I ing in New York. Inquiries from musicians brought out the fact had never before understood, but the meaning of which was now that Handy is now manager of a music publishing company, of clear enough: which he is part owner, Page and Handy, and so my collabora-

tor, I.A.Gulledge, and I went to see him at his place. “Dey tell me Joe Turner’s come to town. To my question, “Have blues any relation to Negro folk- He’s brought along one thousand links of chain, song?” Handy replied instantly, “Yes, they are folk-music.” He’s gwine to have one nigger for each link. “Do you mean in the sense that a song is taken up by many He’s gwine to have dis nigger for one link!” singers who change and adapt it and add to it in accordance with their own mood?” I asked. “That constitutes communal Handy said that in writing the Joe Turner Blues he did away

singing in part, at least.” with the prison theme and played up a love element, for in the 112

1916 «© JOURNAL OF THE FOLKLORE SOCIETY OF TEXAS 1910-1919 song Joe Turner became not the dreaded sheriff but the absent The St. Louis Blues, according to its author, is a composite,

lover. made up of racial sayings in dialect. For instance, the second Loveless Love, a blues which Handy calls a blues ballad, was, _ stanza has its origin in a Negro’s saying, “I’ve got to go to see he said, based on an old song called Careless Love, which nar- = Aunt Ca’line Dye,” meaning to get his fortune told, for at Newrated the death of the son of a governor of Kentucky. Ithad the _ port there was a well-known fortune teller by that name. “Got to mythical “hundred stanzas” and was widely current inthe South, |= go to Newport to see aunt Ca’line Dye” means to consult the

especially in Kentucky, a number of years ago. Handy in his _ colored oracle. composition gives a general philosophy of love instead of tell-

ing a tragic story as the old song did. Been to de Gypsy to get mah fortune tole, Long Gone has its foundation in another old Kentucky song, To de Gypsy done got mah fortune tole, which tells of the efforts a certain Negro made to escape a Joe “Cause I’se wile about mah Jelly Roll. Turner who was pursuing him. Bloodhounds were on his trail Gypsy done tole me, ‘Don’t you wear no black’ and were coming perilously close, while he was dodging and Yas, she done tole me, ‘Don’t you wear no black. doubling on his tracks in a desperate effort to elude them. At Go to St. Louis, you can win him back.’ last he ran into an empty barrel that chanced to be lying on its side in his path. He sprang out and away again. When the blood- I asked Handy if the blues were a new musical invention, and hounds a few seconds later trailed him into the barrel, they were _he said, “No. They are essentially of our race and our people nonplused for a while, and by the time they had picked up the _—ihave been singing like that for many years. But they have been

scent again, the darkey had escaped. publicly developed and exploited in the last few years. I was the The song was printed as broadside. Ireproduce the words by _first to publish any of them or to develop this special type by permission. It is interesting to note that the chorus varies with name,” He brought out his Memphis Blues, his first “blues” song,

some verses, while it remains the same for others. in 1910, he said. The fact that the blues were a form of folk-singing before

LONG GONE Handy published his, is corroborated by various persons who have discussed the matter with me, and in Texas the Negroes

First Verse: have been fond of them for a long time. Early Busby, now a Did you ever hear the story of Long John Dean, musician in New York, says that the shifts of Negroes working

A bold bank robber from Bowling Green, at his father’s brickyard in East Texas years ago, used to sing

Sent to the jailhouse yesterday, constantly at their tasks and were particularly fond of the blues. Late last night he made his getaway. Handy commented on several points in connection with the blues—for instance, the fact that they are, he says, all in one

CHORUS tone, but with different movements according to the time in which

He’s long gone from Kentucky, they are written. The theme of this modern folk-music is, acLong gone, ain’t he lucky, cording to Handy, the Negro’s emotional feeling apart from the Long gone and what I mean, religious. As is well recognized, the Negro normally is a person He’s long gone from bowling Green. etc. of strong religious moods, but they do not reveal all his nature.

The Negro has longings, regrets, despondencies and hopes that Handy said that his blues were folk-songs also in that they affect him strongly, but are not connected with religion. The are based on folk-sayings and express the racial life of the Ne- blues, therefore, may be said to voice his secular interests and groes. “For example,” he said, “the Yellow Dog Blues takes its | emotions as sincerely as the spirituals do the religious. Handy name from the term the Negroes give the Yazoo Delta Railroad. said that the blues express the Negro’s two-fold nature, the grave Clarksville colored people speak of the Yellow Dog because _and the gay, reveal his ability to appear the opposite of what he one day when some one asked a darkey what the initials Y.D. _is. on a freight train stood for, he scratched his head reflectively “Most white people think that the Negro is always cheerful and answered: ‘I dunno, less’n it’s for Yellow Dog.’” Another _and lively,” he explained. “But he isn’t, though he can be that one of his blues came from an old mammy’s mournful com- — way sometimes when he is most troubled in mind. The Negro plaint, “I wonder whar my good ole used to be is!” knows the blues as a state of mind, and that’s why this music has He says that presently he will write a blues on the ideacon- _ that name,” tained in a monologue he overheard a Negro address to his mule Handy said that the blues were unlike conventional, comon a Southern street not long ago. The animal was balky, and _ posed music, but like primitive folk-music in that they have only

the driver expostulated with him after this fashion: five tones, like the folk-songs of slavery times, using the “G’wan dere, you mule! You ack lack you ain’ want to pentatonic scale, omitting the fourth and seventh tones. He added wuck. Wel, you is a mule, an’ you got to wuck. Dat’s whut that while most blues are racial expressions of Negro life, the you git fo’ bein’ a mule. Ef you was a’ooman, now, I’d be form has been imitated nowadays in songs that are not racial.

wuckin’ fo’ you!” The blues, Handy pointed out, represent a certain stage in Negro music.

113

1910-1919 1916 ¢ JOURNAL OF THE FOLKLORE SOCIETY OF TEXAS ‘About forty years ago such songs as Golden Slippers Morton Adams Marshall sends an admirable specimen from were sung. That was written by a colored man but is nota Little Rock, Arkansas, which, however, was taken down in south-

real folk-song. At about that time all the songs of the ern Louisiana, reflecting one black man’s bewilderment over Negro liked to speak of golden streets and give bright the problems of love. pictures of heaven. Then about twenty years ago the de-

sire was all for coon songs. Now the tendency is toward DON’CHER LOOK AT ME, CA’LINE! blues. They are not, as I have said, a new thing among the Don’ cher look at me, Ca’ line, Don’ cher look at me. Negroes, for they were sung in the south before the piano You done busted up many a po’ niggah’s heart, was accessible to the Negroes, though they were not so But you ain’t a-goin’ to bust up mine!

well known as now.” Oh, it’s hahd to love, an’ it’s might hahd to leave, It is not often that a student of folk-songs can have such au- But it’s hahder to make up yo’ mind!

thentic information given as to the music in the making, for most of the songs are studied and their value and interest realized . A fragment sent by Mrs. Cammilla Breazeale, of Loui-

only long after the ones who started them have died or been ‘814M, expresses an extreme case of depression, without assignforgotten. Rarely can one trace a movement in folk-song so ‘98 any cause for it. clearly, and so I am grateful for the chance of talking with the

man most responsible for the blues. Ah got de blues, Ah got de blues, Even though specific blues may start indeed as sheet music, Ah got de blues so doggoned bad, composed by identifiable authors, they are quickly caught up by But Ah’m too damn mean—I can’t cry!

popular fancy and so changed by oral transmission that one would .

scarcely recognize the relation between the originals and the A good many of these fugitive songs have to do with love,

final results—if any results ever could be considered final. Each 4! Ways excuse enough for metrical melancholy when it is unresinger adds something of his own mood or emotion or philoso- _-Juited or misplaced. Mrs. Tom K. Bartlett, of Marlin, Texas, phy, till the composite is truly a communal composition. It will 8&8ds two specimens having to do with romance of a perilous be noted in this connection that the song called Long Gone an- __—“ature. The first one is brief, expressing the unhappiness felt by nounces of itself that while it is first published in seven verses, 2 Creeper,” as the colored man who intrudes into another’s home people will soon be sing it “with one hundred verses.” (Negroes _18 called.

ordinarily speak of a stanza as a verse.) The colored man appro-

priates his music as the white person rarely does. Baby, I can’t sleep, neither can I eat. Blues also may spring up spontaneously, with no known ori- Round your bedside I’m goin to creep. gin in print, so far as an investigator can tell. They are found Four o'clock, baby, four o’clock. everywhere in the South, expressing Negro reactions to every Pil make it in about four o'clock.

concept of elemental life. Each town has its local blues, no as-

pect of life being without its expression in song. Here, as in Mrs. Bartlett says of the next: “You will brand me as a shamemuch of the Negro’s folk-song, there is sometimes little con- less woman when you read this. I wrote it without a blush, hownection between the stanzas. The colored mind is not essen- ©V¢r, and say that I have read as bad or worse is classic verse tially logical, and the folk-song shows considerable lack of co- 2d fiction.”

herence in thought. Unrelated ideas are likely to be brought to-

gether, and stanzas from one song or from several may be put in Late last night when the moon shone bright, with what the singer starts with, if they chance to have approxi- Felt'dizzy about my head, Rapped on my door mately the same number of syllables to the line. Even that re- Heard my baby roar, “Honey, I’se gone to bed!” quirement isn’t held to, for a Negro in his singing can crowd “Get up and let me in, ’case you know itis a sin. several syllables into one note, or expand one syllable to cover Honey, you haven't treated me right. half a dozen notes. The exigencies of scansion worry him but I paid your big house-rent

slightly. When you didn’t have a cent.” The Texas Negroes are especially fond of blues, and, as I “Got to hunt a new home tonight!”

have said, were singing them for years before Handy made them CHORUS popular in print. W. P. Webb published, in an article in the Jour- Baby, if you ‘low me one more chance! nal of American Folk-Lore, some years ago what he called a I've always treated you right. Baby, if you "low me sort of epic of the Negro, which the singer called Railroad Blues. One more chance! I’ goin’ to stay with you tonight! It didn’t stick to one subject, even so popular a one as a railroad, Baby, if you ‘low me one more chance but left the track to discuss many phases of life. Fragments of Pil take you to a ball in France. blues float in from every side, expressive of all conceivable as- One kind favor I ask of you, pects of the Negro’s existence, economic, social, domestic, ro- ‘Low me one more chance!”

mantic, and so forth. Then this coon begin to grin,

Hand in his pocket, pulls out a ten

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1916 © JOURNAL OF THE FOLKLORE SOCIETY OF TEXAS 1910-1919 Then her eyes begin to dance, sits in her kitchen with her feet in the hall! “Baby, Ill "low you one more chance!” Oh, tell me how long I’Il have to wait! Oh, tell me honey, don’t hesitate! The central character in a ditty sent by Louise Garwood, of

Houston, advocates adoption of more bellicose methods in deal- A brief song from Texas uses rather vigorous metaphors in ing with the fair dark sex. No wheedling or bribing on his part! addressing some one.

Ef yore gal gits mad an’ tries to bully you-u-u, You keep a-talkin’ till you make me think. Ef yore gal gits mad an’ tries to bully you, Your daddy was a bull-dog,your mammy was a mink. Jes’ take yore automatic an’ shoot her through an’ Oh, ho, Baby, take a one on me!

through, You keep a-talkin’ till you make me mad,

Jes’ take yore automatic an’ shoot her through an’ I talk about yore mammy mighty scandalous bad.

through! Oh, ho, Baby, take a one on me!

A similar situation of a domestic nature is expressed in a A Negro lover does not sonnet his sweetheart’s eyebrows, song given by Gladys Torregano, of Straight College, New Or- _— but he addresses other hymns to her charms, as in the blues

leans, through the courtesy of Worth Tuttle Hedden. reported by Professor W. H. Thomas, of College Station. A burly coon you know who took his clothes an’ go, A brown-skinned woman and she’s chocolate to the bone Come back las’ night But his wife said, “Honey, A brown-skinned woman and she smells like a toilet soap. I’s done wid coon. I’se gwine to pass for white.” A black-skinned woman and she smells like a billy-goat. This coon he look sad, He was afraid to look mad, A brown-skinned woman makes a freight train slip and slide. but his wife said, “Honey, I can’t take you back. A brown-skinned woman makes an engine stop and blow. You wouldn’t work, so now you lost your home.” A brown-skinned woman makes a bull-dog break his chain.

CHORUS A brown-skinned woman makes a preacher lay his Bible Oh, my little baby, Do you make me go! down.

Ill try an’ get me a job, ef you’ll low me a show. I married a woman; she was even tailor-made. All crap-shooters I will shun.

When you buy chicken, all I want is the bone; The colored man in a song sent by Mrs. Buie of Marlin, When you buy beerI’II be satisfy with the foam. obviously had reason for his lowness of spirits. Po’ Li’l Ella is

I work both night and day, a favorite in East Texas saw-mill districts. Pll be careful of what I say,

Oh,Baby, let me bring my clothes back home! I'll tell you something that bothers my mind,

Oh, Baby, ’low me a chance! Po’ Li’l Ella laid down and died. (twice) You can even wear my pants. I wouldn’t ’a’ minded little Ella dyin’ Don’t you give me the sack. I’ll be quiet as a mouse. but she left three chillun.(twice)

All round the house. If you’ll take me back, Judge, you done me wrong,— Tell the world I ain’t shook, [Il even be the cook ninety-nine years is sho’ too long!(twice) I won’t refuse to go out in the snow,”

“Don’t you tell, my little ink-stand, Howard Snyder heard one of the workers on his plantation

Life’s dreaming is over. in Mississippi singing the following song, which could not be So there’s the door, and don’t youcome back nomore!” _ called entirely a paean of praise for life.

Mrs. Bartlett contributes another that describes the woes of 1 WISH I HAD SOME ONE TO CALL MY OWN unrequited love, which she says was sung by a colored maid I’m tired of workin’, but I can’t fly.

she had some years ago. I wish I had some one to take my care I wish I had someone to call my own,

Ships in de oceans, Rocks in de sea, I’m tired of livin’ an’ I don’t want to die; Blond-headed woman made a fool out of me! I’m tired of coffee and I’m tired of tea,

Oh, tell me how long [ll have to wait! I’m tired of you, an’ you’re tired of me. Oh, tell me, honey, Don’t hesitate! I’m so tired of livin, I don’t know what to do; I ain’t no doctor, nor no doctor’s son, You’ re tired of me an’ I’m tired of you. but I can cool your fever till the doctor comes. I’m tired of eatin’ an’ I’m tired of sleepin’

Oh, tell me how long Pll have to wait! I,mtired of yore beatin’ an’ I’m tired of yore creepin’.

Oh, tell me, honey, Don’t hesitate! I’m so tired of livin’ I don’t know what to do; I got a woman, She’s long and tall, I’m so tired of givin’ an’ I’ve done done my do. 115

ee

1910-1919 JULY 1917 «© SEVEN ARTS I done done my do, an’ [can’t do no mo’; , (Chorus)

I’m so tired of livin’ I don’t know what to do; a You’re tired of me an’ I’m tired of you. creep. Four. o’ clock, _Ba- by, Four o’ clock. I’ve got no money an’ I’ve got no hoe.

Other interests of the colored man’s life beside love are shown

in another song from Professor Thomas’ monograph. Note the rll make it , in a-bout four o’ clock naive confusion of figures in the first stanza, “a hard card to roll.”

Jack o’ Diamonds, Jack o’ Diamonds, Jack o’ Dia-monds, Jack 0’ Dia-monds, Jack o’ Jack o” Diamonds is a hard card to roll.

Says, whenever I get in jail, Jack o’ Diamonds goes my bail; SS et

And I never, Lord, I never, Lord, Dia-monds is a hard card to roll. I never was so hard up before. (Three additional verses) |

The music for A Brown-skinned Woman, Baby, I Can't Sleep, And so the blues go on, singing of all conceivable interests

and Jack o’ Diamonds is here reproduced. of the Negro, apart from his religion, which is adequately taken care of in his spirituals and other religious songs. These fleeting

, we mn informal stanzas, rhymed or in free verse that might fit in with the most liberate of verse—libertine schools of poetry, these

A

. tunes that are haunting and yet elusive within brown -skinned wo - man And she’s ar . bars— or . have a robust vitality lacking in more sophisticated metrical movements.

—————_— One specimen of blues speaks of its own tune, saying “the devil brought it but the Lord sent it.” At least, it is here and has its

choc’ - late to da bone__ own interest, both as music and as a sociological manifestation. Politicians and statesmen and students of political economy who discuss the Negro problems in perplexed, authoritative fashion,

Se would do well to study the folk-music of the colored race as Ba-by, 1 can’t sleep, and nei-thercan | expressing its feelings and desires, not revealed in direct mes-

A — po sage to the whites. Folk-poetry and folk-song express the heart of any people, and the friends of the Negro see in his various

cat. Round your bed-side I'm gwine to types of racial song both the best and the worst of his life.

July 1917 ¢ Seven Arts A MODEST PROPOSAL by Kelly Moderwell There is a large professional class in this country devoted to the Some time ago a singer (she was not of the class mentioned) business of complaining that American music is givennorecog- asked me to suggest some typical American songs for her nition. It has been estimated that the food which this class con- —_ programmes. She had done valuable service in introducing to sumes would support a whole arm corps in the trenches andthat |= American audiences the folk-music and the newer songs of Rusits hats, if placed end to end, would reach from the Battery tothe — sia, and was going abroad to perform a reciprocal service for Bronx. How accurate these estimates are I cannot say, but itis | America. She was to appear before audiences quite ignorant of certain that the complaint, which was articulate ten years ago, American music and eager for new and vivid impressions. I sug-

has diminished not a bit up to the present day. gested a group of the best ragtime songs. She thought I was It is astonishing how little imagination, how little courage, —_—_ trying to be funny.

this class can show. They have neither a sense of advertising To the professional American musicians, ragtime simply does values nor an appreciation of musical history. They beg apatri- _—s not exist. They give it no more recognition than if it were the Otic recognition for works quite lacking in distinction, andig- beating of tom-toms outside a side-show. Not recognizing its

nore all the original music that exists in this country. existence they cannot distinguish the better from the worse. 116

JULY 1917 «© SEVEN ARTS 1910-1919 Because most of the ragtime pieces they hear are feeble (As — much as a judgment unless a great number of other persons, Heaven knows most American music is feeble) they lump the similarly educated on Haydn, Beethoven and Mendelssohn, whole art in one and call it “vicious” or “vulgar.” What an argu- agree. But how shall they agree, except they hear? How shall ment they use against themselves in that word “vulgar” they — they feel the musical vitality of ragtime unless the musician never guess. It is an old thought to most of us that the art of the | separates the art from the bluster and noise that surrounds it? If vulgus, the people, is the material for national expression. Dante, —_—‘I am at all right in my judgment, ragtime will stand the test of

creating his “Divine Comedy” from the vulgar language, the concert hall. And this is just what I am proposing—a ragBalakireff creating a national school of music from the vulgar _ time song recital. It is not enough to admit that ragtime is “good songs, are classic instances. The despised and rejected of today _in its place.” Ragtime should stand being brought out of the becomes the accepted of another generation. Buteven this anal- _—_— cafe just as well as folk-music stands being brought out from ogy does not tempt the patriotic American musician toopenhis “behind the cows.” I firmly believe that a ragtime programme, ears to the vulgar music of his land and age. Such distinguished — well organized and well sung, would be delightful and stimuvisitors as Ernest Bloch and Percy Grainger are delighted and _lating to the best audience the community could muster. But is impressed by American ragtime; foreign peoples accorditajolly | there enough courage in the whole singing profession to make respect. Only the native-born, foreign-educated musician scorns __ the experiment? I doubt it.

and deplores it. The very idea strikes terror in the average singer. To face an Admittedly the greater part of ragtime music is pretty bad. audience with an evening of trash! The average singer’s mind

But this is only to say that the greater part of current production —_is pigeon-holed more than that of the most rigid theologian. in any art is weak and inferior. The prevailing snap judgment The whole of musical literature is for him divided into classificoncerning ragtime is false not only because it judges the whole —_ cations, and what is not in them does not exist. The genius to from the average, but also (and more particularly) because it —_ trace music to its lair, to find and reveal, is not taught in the overlooks the peculiar qualities of the thing it judges. Any re- _ schools. The singer has learned how Mozart should be sung, or viewer of music (commonly called a “critic’”) knows that not Schubert, or Strauss. He knows that ragtime sung this way would more than one-third of his business is to appraise or “criticize.” _ be vanity, futility. Therefore he cannot sing ragtime. At the most The other two-thirds is to report and describe. Ifhe hearsacon- —_ he supposes that ragtime must be sung with the “vaudeville techcert in which certain new and significant music is badly played, —_—nique.”’ But no particular technique is needed. There are only he does not dismiss it by saying that “yesterday’s concert wasa — twokinds of singing: good and bad. Ragtime must be well sung, bad one.” His “story” is in the fact that new and important mu- _ that is all. By this I mean merely that the notes must be sung as sic has had its first performance; the quality of the performance _ they are written, with pure tones and natural phrasing. The singer is of secondary importance. If he misses the real “story” he has _— who has the technique to do this, and the courage to attempt “fallen down on his assignment.” And I charge that the profes- ragtime in public, will hardly fail to catch the special features sional American musician has fallen down on his assignmentin of the music. But first of all he must treat his music with comfailing to recognize where the story lies in American popular __ plete respect. He must accord it at least as much respect as he music. He has failed to recognize that ragtime is acertain sort | would give to any of those dreary “art-songs” that proceed by of music; he has failed to perceive what in ragtime is new, dis- — the dozen from the imitative pens of our recognized American tinctive, expressive, possibly creative. He has judged without | composers. With a reasonable amount of technical equipment, knowing what he is judging. Being unable to report, in good —_ courage, and seriousness, I feel that I can guarantee him a sucnewspaper fashion, the elements of news in his story, he is quite —_cess.

unable to separate the better from the worse, the significant from The musician will reply, with some justice, that ragtime is the imitative. There is, of course, plenty of room for difference — distinctive only in its rhythm, and that the melody, where it is of opinion as to the musical value of ragtime; itmay be as feeble —_— not conventional, is banal. Certainly the average ragtime tune

as its enemies charge. But we shall not accept the judgment of _is not a thing to be heard a second time, and the best falls short

one who does not know properly what he is judging. of the rhythm in originality. But exactly the same charge could To me ragtime brings a type of musical experience whichI __ be leveled at the impressionistic “art songs” of the last fifteen can find in no other music. I find something Nietzschean in its —_—years. Their originality has resided in the harmony of their ac-

implicit philosophy that all the world’s dance. I love the delicacy companiments; as melody they were nearly always undistinof its inner rhythms and the largeness of its rhythmic sweeps.I —_ guished. This was not essential to the style any more than in the like to think that it is the perfect expression of the American city, case of ragtime; the voice part might well be better, and preferwith its restless bustle and motion, its multitude of unrelated de- = ably would be. But the songs as units were beautiful and distails, and its underlying rhythmic progress toward a vague Some- __ tinctive and as such were justified. The same can be said for the where. Its technical resourcefulness continually surprisesme,and __ best of ragtime. Then, too, by a careful process of selection, the its melodies, at their best, delight me. The whole emotion isone —_ singer can discover many charming melodies. (Personally, | of keen and carefree enjoyment of the present. In ragtime’s own __ consider Irving Berlin the most creative melodist in America

language, I find ragtime “simply grand.” today.) Moreover, it is not true that ragtime is distinguished This is the feeling of one individual—one who was educated __ only by its rhythm. No mere rhythmic formula is capable of creon Haydn, Beethoven and Mendelssohn. It doesn’t count for —_ ating a tradition in music. No technical definition can enclose

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1910-1919 JULY 1917 «© SEVEN ARTS the ragtime tradition, or even its rhythmic formula. For about __ nous effect from a on a program composed solely of the Broadthis tradition there have grown accretions of formulae, melodic, way rags, let him add a group of various “recital songs” in ragharmonic and rhythmic, which have made American ragtime __ time, and another of Negro spirituals representing the origin of distinct from any other popular music in the world. All these, the rhythm, and the American folk-song at its purest. With these taken together with the animating spirit (how shall we describe — groups he would have a programme of the utmost variety of

that spirit except to call it the Rag?) make ragtime mood and manner, representing in a single evening almost the But the singer may reply that though the music be worth the _ sole germinal originality in America’s contribution to the musiexperiment, the “lyrics” are impossible; to offer songs sung in cal literature of the world. the slang of the streets would be too much. Here I simply can’t Here is a specimen programme for such a recital. It has been agree. Since when has the dialect song been ruled out of the —_ selected almost at random. Better ones can doubtless be made, concert hall? What futuristic critic has decreed that nonsense —_ and many others equally good could be formed without dupliwords are improper to folk-song and popular poetry? These lyr- _—_— cating a single song. Probably some re-arrangement would be

ics are good just in so far as they are characteristic andeloquent needed in the accompaniment, since our popular songs are inof the people whom they express, and I am sure that the singer variably designed for a moderate technical ability in the pianeed not go far to discover verses that are aglow with the life nist. The piano parts could be amplified, varied and enriched and imagery of the Mississippi Negro or the Sixth Avenue clerk. —_ without falsifying the song. Needless to say, the pianist, as well He will find characteristic verse of a high order in The Mem- __as the singer, would need to be an artist.

phis Blues or Roll dem Cotton Bales. But take the poetry of This programme I hereby offer to any singer who has the Sixth Avenue at its baldest; then take the poetry of the Ameri- —_— courage to use it:

can “art-song” as it appears in hundreds of forms: and ask your- I

self which one a supposedly healthy people must prefer: Roll dem Cotton Bales Johnson Waiting for the Robert E. Lee Muir

“How many times do I love thee, dear? The Tennessee Blues Warner

Tell me how many thoughts there be The Memphis Blues Handy In the atmosphere of a new-fallen year,

Whose white and sable hours appear II

The latest flake of Eternity; You May Bury Me in the East Traditional

So many times do I love thee, dear.” These Dead Bones Shall Rise Again Traditional Play on Your Harp, Little David Traditional

ing, in praise of the grand piano: Il With this lyric in praise of love, contrast the follow-

Nobody’s Lookin’ But the Owl

“When a green Tetrazine starts to warble; and the Moon Johnson

I grow cold as an old piece of marble, Exhortation Cook I allude to the crude little party singer Rain Song Cook Who don’t know when to pause.” IV

Why should the self-respecting singer be ashamed to sing

the dialect of Sixth Avenue any more than the dialect of Kipling’s Everybody’s Doing It Berlin

English Tommy? Is a dialect “literature” when its home is across I Love a Piano Berlin

the ocean, and “vulgarity” when its home is around the corner? When I Get Back to the U. S. A. Berlin

The professional singer might, however, mistrust a ragtime On the Beach at Wa-ki-ki Kern programme on the score of monotony. Ragtime is, after all, but Ragtime Cowboy Joe Muir a single rhythm and expresses, in general, but a single mood— that of care-free happiness. But the monotony resides more on The first group comprises four characteristic songs of Negro the surface, and in the conventional methods of playing rag- _ life as picturesque and as beautiful as any group of Kipling time, than in the literature of ragtime as the singer has itspread | Tommy songs that could be devised. It ends with a song which out before him. From the most furious allegro, down tothe gen- _is nothing short of a masterpiece. In sheer melodic beauty, in tlest allegretto, its rhythms include all nuances oftempo.Among _ the vividness of its characterization, in the deftness of its pothe various “blues” there are even andante movements, in which __lyphony and structure, this song deserves to rank among the the rag is no more than the ripple on the surface of the placid _ best of our time. In the second group are four songs, apparently water. The rag of Broadway ranges from boisterous merrymak- _ of purely traditional origin, which are well-nigh equal in beauty ing to insinuating sensuality, but the Negro has extended the _and intensity of feeling to any similar group that could be put rhythm to express moods of pathos and homesickness. Musi- _ together. From the folk-songs of the third group, two are well cians have generally failed to recognize how flexible and adapt- | known on the concert stage and the third must be regarded as able the rag rhythm is. But if the singer is afraid of amonoto- _ one of the most artistic “popular songs” of the last fifteen years. 118

AUGUST 25,1917 © LITERARY DIGEST 1910-1919 All three offer abundant opportunity to the capable singer. The I feel quite convinced that a European audience would wellast group is “pure Broadway.” From the strictly musical point come this programme with enthusiasm. Whether Americans of view I should not say a great deal in their favor, though the —_~ would take to it kindly is perhaps a matter for doubt. The Amerifirst and the fourth are certainly better, less “vulgar,” in melody cans are incurable nouveaux and are perhaps ashamed to recog-

than most of the current songs which appear on Aeolian Hall __ nize their humble beginnings. But here and nowhere else are programmes. The third suggests an interesting side-current: the beginnings of American music, if American music is to be ragtime counterpoint. The last is nothing but a trick song, musi- — anything but a pleasing reflection of Europe. Here is the only cally quite negligible, but so filled with the energy of the Ameri- _ original and characteristic music America has produced thus

can street that it fully deserves a place on an American _ far. Whether it can be made the basis for a national school of programme. All the songs of the last group, I imagine, would = composition as great as the Russian I do not know. But I know be sung with a broad grin on the singer’s face. There wasa grin _ that there will be no great American music so long as American in the souls of the city folk who first gave them currency, and —s musicians despise our ragtime. The very frame of mind which there is a grin in the spirit of this one American art which, thank _ scorns it is sterile. When as Aeolian Hall public applauds this

Heaven, does not take itself to seriously. programme of ragtime, then I shall expect to hear of great American symphonies.

August 25, 1917 ¢ Literary Digest THE APPEAL OF THE PRIMITIVE JAZZ A strange word has gained wide-spread use in the ranks of our Contribution is drawn from Prof. Wm. Morton Patterson’s producers of popular music. It is “jazz,” used mainly as an adjec- “pioneering experimental investigation of the individual differ-

tive descriptive of a band. The group that play for dancing, ence in the sense of rhythm.” Thus: when colored, seem infected with the virus that they try to instill “The music of contemporary savages taunts us with an ....art as a stimulus in others. They shake and jump and writhe in ways — of rhythm. Modern sophistication has inhibited many native in-

to suggest a return of the medieval jumping mania. The word, _stincts, and the mere fact that our conventional dignity usually according to Walter Kingsley, famous in the ranks of vaude- _— forbids us to sway our bodies or to tap our feet when we hear ville, is variously spelled jaz, jazz, jas, and jascz; andis African —_ effective music has deprived us of unsuspected pleasures.” in origin. Lafcadio Hearn, we are told, found the word in the Professor Patterson goes on to say that the ear keenly sensCreole patois and idiom of New Orleans and reported that it —_ ing of these wild rhythms has “rhythmic aggressiveness.” Theremeant “speeding up things.” The Creoles had taken it fromthe fore of all moderns the jazz musicians and their auditors have blacks, and “applied it to music of a rudimentary syncopated — the most rhythmic aggressiveness, for jazz is based on the savtype.” In the New York Sun, Mr. Kingsley rehearses many ofthe age musician’s wonderful gift for progressive retarding and ac-

curious facts and customs associated with the word: celeration guided by his sense of “sings.” He finds syncopation “In the old plantation days, when the slaves were having one __ easy and pleasant. He plays to an inner series of time-beats joyof their rare holidays and the fun languished, some West-Coast _ fully “elastic” because not necessarily grouped in succession of African would cry out, ‘Jaz her up,’ and this would be the cue _ twos and threes. The highly gifted jazz artist can get away with for fast and furious fun. No doubt the witch-doctor and medi- _ five beats where there were but two before. Of course besides cine-men on the Kongo used the same term at those jungle ‘par- _ the thirty-seconds scored for the tympani in some of the modern ties’ when the tom-toms throbbed and the sturdy warriors gave —_ Russian music, this doesn’t seem so intricate, but just try to beat their pep an added kick with rich brews of Yohimbin beer, that —_ in between beats on your kettle-drum and make rhythm and you precious product of the Kameruns. Curiously enoughthe phrase —_ will think better of it. To be highbrow and quote Professor ‘Jaz her up’ is a common one to-day in vaudeville and onthe —_- Patterson once more:

circus lot. When a vaudeville act needs ginger, the cry from the “With these elastic unitary pulses any haphazard series by advisers in the wings is ‘put in jaz,’ meaning add low comedy, — means of syncopation can be readily, because instinctively, cogo to high speed and accelerate the comedy spark. ‘Jasbo’ isa — ordinated. The result is that a rhythmic tune compounded of form of the word common in the varieties, meaning the same as __ time and stress and pitch relations is created, the chief charac-

‘hokum,’ or low comedy verging on vulgarity. teristic of which is likely to be complicated syncopation. An “Jazz music is the delirium tremens of syncopation. Itis strict | arabesque of accentual differences, group-forming in their narhythm without melody. To-day the jazz bands take populartunes _ture, is superimposed upon the fundamental time divisions,’ and rag them to death to make jazz. Beats are added as often as “There is jazz precisely defined as a result of months of labothe delicacy of the player’s ear will permit. In one-two time a _ ratory experiment in drum-beating and syncopation. The laws third beat is interpolated. There are many half notes orless and _ that govern jazz rule in the rhythms of great original prose, verse many long-drawn, wavering tones, Itis an attempttoreproduce _ that sings itself, and opera of ultra modernity. Imagine Walter

the marvelous syncopation of the African jungle.” Peter, Swinburne, and Borodin swaying to the same pulses that 119

1910-1919 OCTOBER 19,1917 © VARIETY rule the moonlit music on the banks of African rivers.” and their fingers to snapping. Composers were called in; not For years, we are told, jazz has ruled in the underworld re- = one knew what the girls were talking about; some laughed at sorts of New Orleans. It has emancipated itself in part from its _ this “daffy-dingo music.” Flo Ziegfeld, being a man of resource

original surroundings: and direct action, sent to Cuba, had one of the bands rounded “There in those wonderful refuges of basic folk-lore and pri- up, got the Victor people to make records for him, and the Frolic meval passion wild men and wild women have danced to jazz = opened with the Dollys dancing to a phonograph record. Do for gladsome generations. Ragtime and the new dances came —_ you remember? Of course you do. That was canned jazz, but from there, and long after, jazz crept slowly up the Mississippi — you didn’t know it then. First time on Broadway, my dear. My from resort to resort until it landed in South Chicago at Freiburg’s, | own personal idea of jazz and its origin is told in this stanza by whither it had been preceded by the various stanzas of Must I —_Vachel Lindsay: Hesitate?, The Blues, Frankie and Johnny, and other classics of

the levee underworld that stir the savage in us with a pleasant Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room, tickle. Freiburg’s is an institution in Chicago. If you ‘go South’ Barrel house kings with feet unstable.

you must visit that resort. Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table, “Now let me tell you when jazz music was first heard on the Pounded on the table; Great White Way. I forgot to tell you that it has flourished for Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom, hundreds of years in Cuba and Haiti, and, of course, New Or- Hard as they were able— boom, boom, BOOM, leans derived it from there. Now when the Dollys danced their With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom, way across Cuba some years ago they now and again struck a Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM. band which played a teasing, forte strain that spurred their lithe

young limbs into an ecstasy of action and stimulated the paprika “Lindsay is then transported to the Kongo and its feats and Strain in their blood until they danced like maenads of the deca- _ revels and he hears, as I have actually heard, a “thigh-bone beat-

dence. They returned to New York, and a long time later they ing on a tin-pan gong. were booked on the New Amsterdam roof for the Midnight “Mumbo Jumbo is the god of jazz; be careful how you write

Frolic. Flo said: of jazz, else he will hoodoo you. I add to this the opinion of a ““Haven’t you something new? My kingdom for a novelty.’ highbrow composer on jazz. He is a great technical master of And Rosie and Jenny piped up and said thatin Cubathere wasa —_ music and does not want his name used. He hates jazz:.

funny music that they weren’t musicians enough to describe for ‘Jazz differs from other music, as it wants to appeal to the orchestration, but that it put little dancing devils in their legs, | eye as muchas to the ear. (Picture given)’” made their bodies swing and sway, set their lips to humming

October 19, 1917 © Variety “BLUES ARE BLUES, THEY ARE” SAYS EXPERT IN “BLUES” CASE Chicago, Oct. 17. Roger Graham, Chicago music publisher, and _ that the Feist blues are identical with the Livery Stable Blues, as Leo Feist, New York ditto, went to the judicial mat here last week. —_ played on phonographs under the latter title, Graham will instiGraham won. The decision and the case itself, while of consider- _— tute a counter action to compel Feist to do this.

able importance in the profession, occasioned a lot of horse- Aside from the legal victory the case is in the nature of a play during the proceedings, and was made much of by the daily — moral triumph for Graham’s number over the Feist blues, Liv-

papers as a comic feature story. ery Stable Blues has been the better seller of the two. This was Feist attempted to get a permanent injunction torestrainGra- | demonstrated when, after the case had been dismissed, Harry ham from publishing Livery Stable Blues by Ray Lopez and Munns, Graham’s lawyer, was approached by Feist’s attorney Alcide Nunez. The temporary injunction was issued against — witha proposition to publish Livery Stable Blues.

Graham. A most colorful trial it was from the point of view of the lay The supplementary suit, fought out in Judge Carpenter’s court- | audience. Among the experts called was one Professor “Slaps”

room in the Federal building, brought large crowds. The testi- | White. Professor White, a black man, testified, in backing up mony of a number of “experts,” who admitted on the standthey _his claim as an expert, that he had written blues for Brown’s could not read notes, was utilized. After a full hearing of the band, which played in a red cafe. It was Professor White who facts the bill of complaint was dismissed for want of equity and _ established the origin of the “blues” melody. Judge Carpenter,

the injunction automatically dismissed. a musician himself went into the spirit of the trial, and interpoUnless Leo Feist, Inc., remove from the front cover of their lated dry rejoiners and permitted the various witnesses to tell Barnyard Blues the reference to Graham’s number, which states _ their stories in their own way.

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MARCH 1918 « THE NEW MUSIC REVIEW 1910-1919 The most interesting testimony was the story of how the All the instruments followed with various animal cries. It had various cries and calls, imitative of various fowls and animals, — such an effect on the people in the cafe that Nunez suggested came to be used in the number. It appeared that at the Schiller __ their use in the “blues” number. cafe, where the Dixieland band was playing (ed. the ODJB), a Professor White accomplished during his testimony what young woman who had imbibed generously began to cut in- | numberless others have failed to do. He defined “blues.” The discreet capers on the dance floor. One of the members of the | answer came when White told the judge he was the author of band ripped out the shrill neigh of a horse on his clarinet. It | several hundred compositions, including several “blues.”

encouraged the young woman, and the cornet came through “Just what are blues?” Asked Judge Carpenter

with the call of a rooster. “Blues are blues, that’s what blues are,” replied the professor. The answer was written into the records and will stand as the statement of an expert.

March 1918 ¢ The New Music Review CONCERNING RAGTIME by Daniel Gregory Mason In the discussions of “American music” that go on perennially _ poses that artistic excellence can be decided by vote of the main our newspapers and journals, now waxing in a burst of patri- —_ jority. The second is that which identifies racial character with otic enthusiasm, now waning as popular attention is turned to _local idioms and tricks of speech rather than with a certain emosomething else, in war time much stimulated by an enhanced _ tional and spiritual temper. Both lead straight to the oft-repeated consciousness of nationality (unless indeed they are totally el- | conclusion that “ragtime” is the necessary basis of our native bowed aside to make room for more “practical” subjects), asharp musical art. cleavage will usually be observed between those whose interest Listen, for example, to one of the most persistent, courageous, is primarily in the music for itself, wherever itcomes from, and _and often interesting advocates of ragtime, Mr. H. K. Moderwell. those in whom artistic considerations give way before patriotic “T can’t help feeling that a person who doesn’t open his heart ardor, and propaganda usurp the place of discrimination. One _to ragtime somehow isn’t human. Nine out of ten musicians, if group, in uttering the challenging phrase. “American music,” | caught unawares, will like this music until they remember that places the stress instinctively on the noun and regards the adjec- —_— they shouldn’t. What does this mean? Does it mean that ragtime

tive as only a qualification; the other, in its preoccupation with _ is ‘all very well in its place?’ Rather that these musicians don’t “American,” seems to take “music” rather for granted. Unfortu- —_ consider that place theirs. But that place, remember, is in the nately the former group constitutes so small a minority, andex- —_ affections of some 10,000,000 or more Americans. Conservapresses itself so soberly, that its wholesome insistence on the __ tive estimates show that there are at least 50,000,000 copies of quality of the article itself is likely to be quite drowned out by _ popular music sold in this country yearly and a goodly portion the bawling of the advertisers, with their insistent slogan “Made _ of it is in ragtime.”

in America.” All the advantages of numbers, organization, and You may take it as certain that if many millions of people easy appeal to the man in the street are theirs. Evenif weignore __ persist in liking something that has not been recognized by the those venal music journals which make a system of exploiting —_ schools, there is vitality in chewing gum and the comic supplethe patriotism of the undiscriminating for purely pecuniary pur- = ments. The question is, of course, what sort of vitality? Yet if poses, there remain enough enthusiasts and propagandists, in- _—_—- you raise this question of quality, you are immediately charged

disposed or unable to appraise quality for themselves, to create | with being a “highbrow,” “a person,” in Professor Brander by their “booming” methods a formidable confusion in our stan- = Matthews’s already classic definition, “educated beyond his indards of taste. Inasmuch, therefore, as we are condemned, for _telligence,” acharge from which any sane man naturally shrinks. our sins, to be not only producers but consumers of this “Ameri- | Hence the syllogism, “The best American music is that which can music,” it behooves us to make careful inspection of the the greatest number of Americans like; the greatest number of claims for it so extravagantly put forth, and to assure ourselves § Americans like ragtime; therefore ragtime is the best American that we are getting something besides labels for our money. music,” is a strong one, which you may oppose only at the risk What, then, is the precise value we ought justly to ascribe to —_ of being thought a highbrow and a snob.

that word “American” as applied to music, and wherein have Suppose, for instance, that you really do not happen to care those we may call champions of the adjective been inclined to —_ for chewing gum, that just as a matter of fact, of personal taste, exaggerate it? If we analyze their attitude, we shall find them —_and not through any principles or sense of superiority to your the prey of two fallacies which constantly falsify their conclu- _— fellows you prefer other forms of nutriment or exercise. You sions, and make them dangerous guides for those who have at __ confess this peculiarity. Can you not hear the reproachful reply? heart the real interests of music in America. The first of these “I can’t help feeling that a person who doesn’t open his heart to fallacies is that which confuses quantity with quality, and sup- | chewing gum somehow isn’t human. Nine out of ten travelers 121

1910-1919 MARCH 1918 «© THE NEW MUSIC REVIEW on the subway, if caught unawares (with gum, let us say, dis- _it is acertain sort of syncopation,” adds “But of course this defiguised as bonbons) will like it until they remember that they _ nition is not enough. Ragtime has its flavor that no definition shouldn’t. What does this mean? Does it mean that chewing can imprison.” Our ultimate question is, then, not how many gum is ‘all very well in its place?’ Rather that these punctilious —_— people like ragtime, or how few like it, or how easily can its people don’t consider that place theirs. But that place, remem- —_ idiom he told from other idioms, but how expressive is it of the ber, is in the affections of some 10,000,000 or more Americans. | American temper, how full an artistic utterance can it give of The annual output of the chief chewing-gum manufacturers” etc., the best and widest American natures? This is a question not of etc. Thus are you voted down if you happen to be inthe minor- — quantity but of quality: of the quality of ragtime, the quality of ity. It does you no good to protest that you are really quite sin- | America, and the adequacy of the one to the other. Suppose, cere and without desire to épater le bourgeois; that you can’t —_ bearing in mind Mr. Moderwell’s warning against snobbery, that

help preferring Mr. Howell’s novels to Mr. Robert W. “A Russian folk-song was no less scorned in the court of Chambers’s, Mr. Ben Foster’s landscapes to Mr. Christy’s maga- Catherine the Great than a ragtime song in our music studios zine girls, Mr. Irwin’s Nautical of a Landsman to the comic __ to-day.” We examine in some detail a typical example of ragsupplements, and MacDowell’s Joa Wild Rose to Everybody’s _ time such as “The Memphis Blues,” of which he assures us that Doing It. If you stray from the herd you must be sick. If you “In sheer melodic beauty, in the vividness of its characteriza-

vote for the losers you must be a snob. tion , in the deftness of its polyphony and structure, this song Such charges are the more dangerous in that they sometimes —_ deserves to rank among the best of our time.” Here are the open-

contain a half-truth. There is a kind of person, the simon-pure _ing strains of it: snob, who casts his vote for the loser just because he is a loser,

because he is unpopular, who prides himself on his “exclusive- Slowly.

ness,” “excluding himself,” as Thoreau penetratively says, “from Se ee al ee ee all that is worth while.” His is a sort of inverted numericalism, Ss Se oe ee ee based on quantity just as essentially as the crude gospel of the Folks. I've just been dowa, down to Mem- phis town,

“10,000,000 or more Americans,” but on quantity negative and [Seen mekere kind that are recruited the faddists, those who “dote on Debussy,” SSS —— — vanishing towards the zero of perfect distinction. Itis from his \\(@§ == ———————— ro

the devotees of folk-sings not for their human beauty but as cu- LL te

rious specimens, those who invent all sorts of queer connec- _, — eo _—— tions between music and painting or poetry, and indeed seem to eres eee ee oe ae find in it anything and everything but simple human feeling. It is t _* wv sO) =

. oe . . . . . \\) quan = > RUN —") « 1) La

not from them that we shall get any help towards the truth about That's where the peo - plesmile.smileonyou all — the while

ragtime. Indeed, they seem because of their unsympathetic atti- Just like a mountain stream rip pl-ing on it seemed

tudepreoccupation toward thewith spirit music—its emotional expression—and their the of letter of it, to be especially suscepSS ae ere ———

~ oor |

tible to the second fallacy of which we spoke—that of identifying racial quality with mere idiom rather than with fundamental Approaching them with the eager expectation that such praise

temper. naturally arouses, can we, as candid lovers of music, find anyMr. Moderwell shall be spokesman of this view also. “You _ thing but bitter disappointment in their trivial, poverty-stricken, can’t tell an American composer’s ‘art-song,’” he says, “from threadbare conventionality? How many thousand times have any mediocre art-song the world over. You can distinguish — weheard that speciously cajoling descent of the first three notes, American ragtime from the popular music of any nation and _ that originally piquant but now indescribably boresome oscilany age.” Let us agree heartily that the mediocre “art-song” _lation from the tonic chord in the third measure? These are the (horrid name for a desolating thing) is probably no better and = common snippets and tag-ends of harmony, kicked about the no worse in our own than in other countries. Does this not seem —_ very gutters, ground out by every hurdy-gurdy, familiarity with

an insufficient warrant for the excellence of types of art that which breeds not affection but contempt. Their very surface can be more easily told apart? For purposes of labeling cleverness, as of meaningless ornament, is a part of their ofspecimens, ear-marks are an advantage, but hardly for appraising _ fense. Russian folk-song indeed! Compare them with the simple modes of expression. If the important matter in American mu- _ but noble tonic, dominant, and sub-dominant of the Volga Boat sic is not its expression of the American temper, but the pecu- _—s Song and their shoddiness stands self-revealed. And the melody? liar technical feature, the special kind of syncopation we call _—_ Bits and snippets again, quite without character if it were not the “rag rhythm,” then the important matter in Hungarian mu- _for the rhythm, and acquiring no momentum save in the lines “I

Sic is not its fire but its “sharp fourth step.” Beethoven ceasesto | went out a-dancin’,” etc., where they build up well but to a be Teutonic when he uses Irish cadences in his Seventh Sym- _ climax in the return of the obvious opening strain. phony, and Chopin is Polish only in his mazurkas and polonaises. As for the rag rhythm itself, the sole distinctive feature of this Of course this will not do; and Mr. Moderwell, to do him jus- —_—s music, it has undoubtedly something of real piquancy. The trick,

tice, after remarking that “Ragtime is not merely syncopation— _it will be noted, is a syncopation of half-beats, arranged so as to

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MARCH 1918 ¢ THE NEW MUSIC REVIEW 1910-1919 pull bodily forward certain comparatively strong accents, those Reference to another well-known theme of Schumann will reveal at the middle of the measures, a scheme to which words as wellas —_a further weakness of ragtime. The second theme of the finale of his melody conform. The left hand meanwhile gives the regular met- —_ concerto for piano runs as follows;

rical division of the measure, and a writer in the London Times, — __ defining ragtime as “a strongly syncopated melody superimposed (ES Pass —— = S| on a strictly regular accompaniment,” points out that “it is the my 5 | | e-3 = _ 7 combination of these two rhythms that gives ‘ragtime’ its charac- ~ o hanes . — ter.” This is perhaps not strictly true, since in some of the most ff sate a ———— = effective bits of ragtime the metrical pulsation may give way Set eS te momentarily to the syncopation, and everyone remembers those } = “eamenaw” —

delightful times of complete silence in which the pulse is kept , .

going mentally, to be finally confirmed by a crashing cadence. —==s =o: — Tame : i *We'll &. € Fs eee ee see see Seed) lord's in this boat, it won’t be long,, We'll Hoethecorn,Oh, ob, Allday long, Oh oh Ob, wrest -ling Jacob, it won't be long, We'll

Watch the snake.Uh\. uh, Buck may break,Ob, ob.

. - - , », sta th

For the greater part, his songs have to do with salvation. g hor b ” b Oh ° There are a few love songs—and a number of ribald ones—but an ° chor by . ‘a by. Loan and this boat” t no songs of heroism; and that is where the Ethiopian differs an-chor by -‘'n by, Oh, wrestling Jacob, it from the Caucasian; for the white man in his early days was ,

wont to sing of his mighty deeds of valor and his amorous —} conquests: to wit, the Troubadours and Minnesingers. : , | ;

One reason the Negro folk-song is religious is because it dates won't be Ion weil an . chor by . ‘a by back chiefly to the ante-bellum period, when he was a slave and won't be long, We'llan - chor by - ‘n by.

longed for freedom and religion was his great comfort. To be , ,

sure, he is emotional, hysterical, superstitious, and in the days , The only thing these songs have in common with the Venewhen he made most of his songs, quite ignorant; but the underly- tian gondoliers is to while away the time. Travelers from the ing motive is really ‘gettin’ religion,” as he expresses it. upper Nile claim that the Negro boat-song, in rhythm and charm,

The Negro can sing, and the white man knows it and has has a marked resemblance to the Egyptian. , , commercialized his ability. Below the Mason and Dixon line, , There are many types of spirituals. The chief theme Is salvasometimes North, almost all laboring gangs have their vocal tion, and the secondary one P enitence. In their p enitent songs leaders. The leader or precentor, like the leader of the orchestra, ney nee their manifold sins and wickedness, with quite a

receives extra pay for directing. Through his vocal efforts, he “Th eltect. h , val n which th stimulates his gang into working. The leader may stimulate work, en ok ex Search OF My, va bore nw i Th ° h PIES but he is never known to overdo it. The holding of a loose rope SIONS, SEEKE, care “fs . ember, are used. 1 hen there 1s

or the final push on a wheelbarrow is enough for him. another style, the “Good-bye” songs, sung at the end of camp meetings. It is a sort of religious Auld Lang Syne, in which they

(a) __ — wish each other well until the next “meeting.”

= Ss Sa = Last, there is the “Shout,” and it is all the word implies. It is

Sanne more of a frenzied dynamic spiritual than the others, and is surPull, pull, pull a-long, Pull, pull, make me strong. — charged with hallelujahs (sometimes abbreviated to “Hallelu!”)

vk and plentifully sprinkled with Glory!

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1910-1919 APRIL 1918 « THE NEW MUSIC REVIEW The “Shout,” in its unadulterated form, is used at revivals |§ melodies. Syncopation was probably discovered by the first and love feats, where emotions are unrestricted and spontane- aborigine who beat on a hollow gourd with a thigh bone, and ous. The “Shout” is passing, as the Negro rarely getsreligionin —_ has been used ever since by “all nations that do dwell upon the

-5-—— or. . . ;

the violent form his fathers did. face of the earth.”

As in all folk-songs, the spirituals are sung in unison. Unlike

aS a 4 respect the Russian, is a verse and chorus in almostOccasionally every one. In 7 I=athat theythere resemble the British folk-song. Good -hye, breth-ren, good-bye, sis-ters, If some one will try to harmonize, in which they will “base it” = (supplying elementary chord roots). The Fisk Jubilee Singers

tap:teearett = =e papas, ae Be ai have harmonized many four of thetospirituals with in splendid peste aS Ronee The spirituals are from sixteen bars length;results. some I don’t see you an-y more I'll meet youin Heaven. are longer. They are constructed of one or two simple themes, and these repeated according to the word phrases. In delivery

- ( ay a they are sometimes sung in straightforward fashion, sometimes DOO of anticipation. Often they are as invertebrate as recitations. As

==: ope) — ig Tew: with a marked portamento, sometimes with roulades and notes Do youthink that she is a - ble For to the Negro sings them, they are usually wistful, unless they are

“Shouts.” The timbre of the Negro voice and the minor cadences

a +1 - pep give them the triste, yearning quality. Many German, Italian and iene oe ed “5:28. Ff Scotch folk-songs are in 3/4 time. There is hardly a spiritual ) arry us all home. O lo-rv. hal-le «lu! that is written in 3/4 or its derivatives. They are in 2/4 or 4/4.

carry vs Msn Bloctys Almost all have the accent falling on the after beat. The reason

(bi ff the spirituals are in 2/4 time is because they were probably

F Sebibtasen sekaacnonys uate jets aes a ee improvised to the swaying of the body and the clapping of hands,

eee eetww which the march rhythm.pulse. SomeThe music historians . . QS thisisisalmost the primitive or original stress of the barclaim line T come this night for to sing andpray,O yes, O yes,To js strongly felt, many are pitched at Adagio, though some are Allegro. The scale employed is that of the early Greeks. It is

aa theElo onets with in which oftones the omitted. ScotchItfolk-songs are written, —, |=also ox pony the 4thmost and 7th is not uncommon to begin . drive ol’ Sa-tan far a- way, O yes, O yes. in a minor key and end ina major. | .

Folk-songs, and the Negro spirituals in particular, upset all the laws of melody writing, as advocated by text-book compos-

Remarkable as is his love of Christ’s doctrine, there is never ers. They go up when they should go down, and they close in a any mention of the Nativity. There is occasional reference tothe = minor when they should finish in a major; and yet when they Resurrection and Ascension. For the greater part, he sings of are heard they are satisfying to cultivated ears. Possibly that faith, hope and charity, and a great and everlasting wish for _justifies a melody.

redemption. While the spirituals are common to all the South, particuThe structure of the spiritual is more of anemotional sequence _farly the rural districts, they are not all known in every State. In than a logical one. Very often it is not sequential at all, but only —_ some States there was little migration. In the North, where there

an association of ideas. The words are taken—improvised is __ was ebb and flow, songs were added from other States. That is nearer the sense—from the Scriptures and fragments ofhymns, _ why there are often two or three variants of the same song. Roll and there is a plenitude of personal pronouns, all mixed in to- —_- Jorda is peculiar to Virginia; Wrestle on Jacob belongs to South gether. There is little attempt at versification, unless itcomes —_ Carolina. It is curious to note that the songs from the seaboard under the caption of Vers Libre. There is aslightdesiretorhyme _ States often refer to boats and water, while the inland States or make near rhymes; and there are many unintelligible phrases, hardly ever mention things maritime. such as “Why don’t you move go slow?” Whatever they lack in These spirituals were not composed or designed, but are the rhyme, they make up in rhythm. The same sense of liltthat has —_ spontaneous expression, both of words and music. The unsomade the Negro dancing world-famous has gone into his folk- _ phisticated black could no more have composed a song in the

song. academic sense than he could have invented an automobile; but Syncopation, that offshoot of rhythm, is employed exten- _ by letting his mind and voice go untrammeled, he was able to sively; ignorant people claim that the Negro invented syncopa- _— improvise songs that have enriched the world invaluably.

tion. He neither invented syncopation, nor was he the first to Folk-songs such as these are the pure fruits of inspiration. use it. It existed long before he was brought in shackles to this —_As was said of the Russian peasantry, they are a “natural procountry, examples may be found in the old Greek and Hebrew _ duction of a race of remarkable musical capacity.”

126

JANUARY 1919 ¢ MUSICAL QUARTERLY 1910-1919

SSBesse pS Aaogood Negro the for slums of thegown, town [qa = Ce old Preached at ainsister her velvet Deep....riv-er, my homeis o- ver Jor -dan, Howled at a brother for his low down ways, His prowling, puzzling, sneak thief days,

=_—— SS > Beat on the bible till he wore it out,

SSS Started Jubilee revival ; cad Andthe some had visions as they shout. stood on chairs Deep... riv-er, Lord, | want to cress o- ver in- te camp grand. and sang of Jacob and the golden stairs:

And they all repented, a thousand strong,

Vachel Lindsay, in his poem, The Congo, has epitomized the from their stupor and savagery and sin and wrong, Negro and his religious zeal in the following lines, and from And slammed with their hymn books till they shook

these lines you can see the spiritual arising: the room

With ‘Glory, glory, glory!’ and “Boom, boom, boom!’

January 1919 ¢ Musical Quarterly NEGRO MUSIC AT BIRTH

by Natalie Curtis Burlin , In the South, a white musician stumbles upon experiences that _ins, and they assembled long before the hour. To them this gathmay be counted as among the most awakening of his life, for ering had almost the significance of a religious service, a “Campthere the spirit of the Negro is often loosed in music that makes —_ meet’n” of the olden time. Seated in rows, reverent and silent, one wonder at the possibilities of the race. Far down in Ala- _ they waited for something to happen. and as they sat, patient in bama where the “Black Belt” is broad and the Negroes outnum- _ the early warmth of the April sun, suddenly a rhythmic tremor ber the whites, I touched upon something that class-rooms and — seemed to sway over the group as a sweep of wind stirs grasses; concert-halls rarely hold, nothing less than the primitiveessence __ there arose a vibration, an almost inaudible hum—was it from

of untaught and unteachable creative art. the fine trees or from this mass of humanity?—and then the It was at the Calhoun Industrial School (whose existence was — sound seemed to mold itself into form, rhythmic and melodic, inspired by the example of Hampton Institute) that a great meet- —_— taking shape in the air. Out from this floating embryo of music

ing of colored people was held one year to listen to discussions — came the refrain of a song quavered by one voice, instantly by Northern white scholars concerning the advancement of their caught up by another, till soon the entire gathering was rocking race. Over tawny roads that stretched beneath tall pine treescame __ in time to one of the old plantation melodies! Men, women and the people of the “Black Belt” in wagons and astride of plod- —_ children sang, and the whole group swung to and fro and from ding mules; brown mules, black mules, lemon-colored mules, side to side with the rhythm of the song, while many of the older they came with their dusky riders from all directions in anend- —_ people snapped their fingers in emphasis like the sharp click of less stream, and I particularly remember the flash of a red petti- an African gourd rattle. coat across a white mule glinting through the green. Such shin- It was spirited singing and it was devout; but the inspiraing good-natured faces, pure Negroes these with little admix- _ tional quality of the group-feeling made this music seem a lamture of white blood, representing different types of the many _ bent, living thing, a bit of “divine fire” that descended upon tribes brought from all parts of Africa by the slave-trade, through _ these black people like the gift of tongues. It was as though the which captives from the far interior and from the opposite coasts —_ song had first hovered in the trees above their swaying forms, of the Dark Continent were finally landed in America.Some of _ intangible, till one of them had reached up and seized it, and the men were tall, and their aquiline noses and pointed beards then it had spread like flame. And as usual with Negroes, this told of the strain of Arab and other Semitic blood that runs — was extemporaneous part-singing, women making up alto, men through many a native of Africa’s East Coast; others were swart improvising tenor or bass, the music as a whole possessed so or thickset, with flat noses and heavy lips. Many were soebony — completely by them all (or so utterly possessing them!) that they black that the shadows in their smooth skins seemed a soft gray- were free to abandon themselves to the inspiration of their own purple, like deep ripe grapes. No European peasantry couldhave __creative instinct. offered to the painter more striking material than these dark- Often in the South I heard this same strange breathless effect skinned sinewy people in their blue jeans and bright calicoes = of a song being born among a group simultaneously, descend-

amid the deep tones of the pines. ing, as it were, from the air. On a suffocatingly hot July Sunday They hitched their animals in the woods and gathered ina _in Virginia, in a little ramshackle meeting-house that we had cleared space under the trees. These colored folk had come _—_ approached over a blinding road nearly a foot deep in dust, a many miles over mountain and valley from their crude log-cab- number of rural Negroes had gathered from an outlying farm, 127

1910-1919 MARCH 1919 ¢ THE MUSICIAN dressed all in their dust-stained Sunday best for the never-to-be of song: intuition, which is in turn the well-spring of all genius. omitted Sabbath service. Their intense and genuine piety with So often does education deaden and even utterly destroy intuiits almost barbaric wealth of emotion could not but touchavisi- _ tive art in individuals as in races, that one might affirm that the tor from the cold North. The poverty of the little church was in _ genius is he who can survive the attrition of scholastic training! itself a mute appeal for sympathy. A gaudy and somewhatragged —_ Certainly no sophisticated part-singing sounds in my memory with

red table cloth covered the crude pulpit on which rested ahuge __ the poignant charm of the unconscious music which I heard one and very battered Bible—it had probably sustained many vigor- _ day ina big tobacco factory in the South where a group of utterly ous thumps during the high-flown exhortations of the gilt-spec- _ illiterate and ignorant black laborers were sorting tobacco leaves tacled preacher. A crazy lamp, tilted side-ways, hung from the —_—in adusty, barren room. Rough sons and daughters of toil, ragged middle of the ceiling. Through the broken window-shutters (pow- = and unkempt, no one could accuse them of ever having come erless to keep out the diamond glare of the morning sun) came _ under the smooth influence of “refined white environment.” Crude slits of light that slanted in syncopated angles over the swarthy —_ and primitive they were in looks as in speech. Yet I never heard people, motes dancing in the beams. No breeze; the sticky heat _ collective voices that were sweeter or that appealed more immeawas motionless; from afar came a faint sound of chickens cluck- _surably to the imagination with their penetrating, reed-like beauty ing in the dust. Service had already begun before we came and _ of quality. The fields, the hot sun, the open sky sang through them. the congregation, silent and devout, sat in rows onrough backless = And the harmonies with which these workers adorned their half benches. The preacher now exhorted his flock to prayer andthe —_ barbaric melodies seemed prismatic in their brilliant unmodulated people with one movement surged forward from the benches __ grouping of diatonic chords, their sudden interlocking of unreand down onto their knees, every black head deep-bowed in an _lated majors and minors, and their unconscious defiance of all abandonment of devotion. Then the preacher began in a qua- man-made laws of “voice progressions.” Such rich, colorful muvering voice a long supplication. Here and there came an un- ___ sic, (and in my memory I cannot separate the sound of it from the controllable cough from some kneeling penitent or the sudden _ picture of the tobacco leaves in the brown hands), it seemed as squall of a restless child; and now and again an ejaculation, warm though these singers painted with their voices that barren room. with entreaty, “O Lord!” or a muttered “Amen, amen,” allagainst | And I thought “yes, that is the Negro. So he has done always.

the background of the praying, endless praying. With song he has colored his shadowed life, evoking hope, joy, Minutes passed, long minutes of strange intensity. The beauty even, from within himself.” mutterings, the ejaculations, grew louder, more dramatic, till Yet in the voices of these toilers lingered an indescribable suddenly I felt the creative thrill dart through the people like an —_— pathos, something both child-like and touching. For with all his

electric vibration, that same half-audible hum arose—emotion brawn, his good-humor, and his wide, ready smile, the Negro, was gathering atmospherically as clouds gather—and then, up __ when he sings, tells something of that shadow that only a song from the depths of some “sinner’s” remorse andimploringcame can lighten. Probably no blacks in the country were more backa pitiful little plea, a real Negro “moan,” sobbed in musical ca- _— ward than these factory-hands, laboring so monotonously in the dence. From somewhere in that bowed gathering another voice _lazy haze of southern heat, a heat that puts one’s brain to sleep. improvised a response: the plea sounded again, louder thistime = That they could sing extemporaneously in harmonies that not and more impassioned; then other voices joined in the answer, _—_ only approached real art but that touched one’s very soul, seemed

shaping it into a musical phrase; and so, before our ears,asone —_a proof that though this is still a child-race, the long path of might say, from this molten metal of music a new song was _— human evolution and advance stretches before it in endless promsmithied out, composed then and there by no one in particular _ise. Is it not in the song of the Negro that we glimpse the spirit of

and by everyone in general. , the race reaching forward toward development and eventual With the Negro, it would seem that the further back onetraces —_ unfolding’? And when we see that song illumining with an inner

the current of musical inspiration that runs through the race, _ light multitudes otherwise darkly inarticulate and groping, we (that is, the more primitive the people and thus the more in- __ think of Emerson and ponder: “The Negro ‘Over-Soul’—it is stinctive the gift) the nearer does one come to the divine source = music?”

March 1919 © The Musician CAPTURING THE SPIRIT OF THE REAL NEGRO MUSIC by John Tasker Howard, Jr. The Hampton Series of Negro Folk Song by Natalie Curtis Burlin, | To the singing teacher this collection will be invaluable, for it just issued by G. Schirmer, is one of the most interesting and — would be a very difficult task to find better material for exercise valuable of recent contributions to the literature of folk music. —_in part singing and sight reading. The unusual leading of the The importance of Mrs. Burlin’s work lies in the fact that she —_—- voices will ever be a delight to singing pupils and they will reap has recorded the actual singing of the Negroes, and has written more benefit from these songs than they could from many of the on paper a faithful record of their own spontaneous harmonies. | compositions and exercises they are now using. They will also 128

MARCH 1919 ¢ THE MUSICIAN 1910-1919 be of great value to choral societies and will make most attrac- _ the basses modulating from A-flat major to B-flat major and then tive numbers for their programs. The ScholaCantorum of New _to D-flat major characterize the text and how clearly they convey

York was the first choral society to use a song from this collec- to our minds the “wailing” of the “lambs.” . tion, when at their concert last Spring they sang God’s a-gwine ter move all de troubles away. To accomplish her purpose Mrs.

Burlin, after extensive travels in the South, made her headquar- Figure I. ters at Hampton, Va., the home of the Negro Industrial School,

where she studied the Negro and his song. She also visited the eS Negroes are still very primitive and their songs are very old. Oh, ev-"ry

island St. Helena off the South She found of the people much interested in hercoast work andof they were Carolina, where the } Baw foe EE

anxious to help her in any way they could. In making her records Pe

Mrs. Burlin made use of the phonograph and this combined with et her own musical ear enabled her to write out the parts as she n ~ heard them. The harmonies she has set down are the Negroes’ 5 ee they No one ableto to sing his part Spithe - rit various mov - in’ inparts my heart, verywould ownimprovise. and it was nosinger easywas task distinguish ae Ne

alone (except, of course the “lead,” the singer who carries the ee he ee melody), but she finally solved the problem by grouping all the Se a es ee es ee singers close to the one whose part she was recording, and they would hum their parts very softly, while he sang his part so that el it would register on the phonograph. But even the phonograph (—— pelled to absolutely use her owndependable; ear as a corrective these imperfecpray.oo Lk | was not and so for Mrs. Burlin was com-

tions. The Negroes have a decided polyphonic instinct and that eye -e eS et |

they have inherited this from their African ancestors is undeni- a et able. This harmonic sense is found only among the Africans, a p

few groups of Russian peasantry, and the Polynesians. The in-

stinct is absolutely spontaneous and the Negro has no more idea Figure II.

whatday chords is helping to make than an have.= a. One whenheMrs. Burlin was recording theinfant singingwould of a quar—— oo? og tet she stopped one of the singers and asked him if he went “up” tS ee or “down” in a certain passage. “LLawdy ma’m,” was the reply, A | way down yon-der | by— my - self “Ah doan know what ah does do; come on boys, sing it again —, J. al tj]... J. so’s she can find out.” It is just because of this total ignorance of a ee a ee eS

musical notation that the spontaneity of their polyphony is so A task indeed for a trained musician to improve the natural beauty ws a

ure I. Notice particularly the part of the first tenor, especially

his apparent delight in Take, embellishments and thein suspension on _ of their harmonic coloring. for example, the bars Fig- ) SS

the final beat. Notice also the bass in the measure “in ma heart” So ee SS and you will find a rather unusual leading into the relative mi- ee Oe i nor, for the B flat is not to be considered as the dominant in this wy case but merely as a passing tone.

In Figure II we find an almost contrapuntal passage in the Figure III. measure “by myself,” and the melody passing through the rela-

tive minor, the tonic and back to the relative minor gives the vn wt

listener a feeling of melodic warmth and harmonic richness that et So St

cannot fail to touch his emotions. In Figure III we find discords Isr * c= | . z

that would be worthy of our most modern composers, and the et faite Le | modulations in Figure IV are well worth our consideration. In

the measures “All a cryin; “ notice now well the bare fifths in ee

129

1910-1919 MARCH 1919 ¢ THE MUSICIAN which they sing of the captive children of Israel and their final

Figure IV. deliverance, thereby voicing their own hope of freedom.

A When America entered the great war the Negroes were, of t+ — ~ «@ © o—_—17 course, expected to do their share, and while they answered their

ae a a eo) country’s call with never a murmur, the aims of the conflict were the South, the Island of St. Helena, for instance, secwhere 8 ten to te amis not always clear to manytions ofofthe blacks in the more primitive

2 | i) the Negroes vastly outnumber the white population. eee Inasmuch as song was the natural expression of the Negroes and since so many of their own songs voiced their love of free-

oP Re, dom, Mrs. Burlin sought to teach them by means of these very

SS ——— ——— songs the ideals and aims for which our country fought, for, to

Py s/h ees use her own words, “Through song will come an interpretation

eee ee of the war: through repetition ofTophrases the Negro understand.” accomplish this she took a song shecan had heard on St. Se Helena Island, O ride on, Jesus, and made of it a Hymn of Free-

SES DARE) San Rn ke dom. She wrote new words to the music, which begin: O March on, Freedom, March on, Freedom,

; :. _ rs - March on conquering hosts! Liberty is calling.

oy martyred Belgium Freedom! gplTo I pe ee ———

oo J} pe{ __| ” °

pee *Tis God who summons our advance! Liberty is calling!

a a a In her preface to the published version of the Hymn of Freedom, Mrs. Burlin says: “TI have closely followed the original Negro song, even in the simple and somewhat crude harmonies and progressions of the different voices. For this music sprang from

men who best know how to value freedom, and I feel that their The African races are inherently musical, and those that were songs, as well as their lives, are their immortal gifts to Freedom’s brought to this country carried with them the songs of their various = Gace.” Under the auspices of the War Camp Community Serpeoples. Of course the influence of the white man’s song hastem- vice. J, E. Blanton, the head of the Penn Industrial School on St. pered their primitive music to a certain extent but the markedrhyth- —_tretena’s Island, carried this song to the Negroes in eighteen army

mic and modal characteristics still remain. Take, for instance, the camps and there can be no doubt that it accomplished its purpose rhythmic “snap” or syncopation which is the parent of ourown ss; teaching the Negro what he was to fight for. “ragtime.” This is very African and so is the use of the five tone or The importance of the Negro music is shown by just such pentatonic scale which is predominant in the Scotch folk songsand —_ examples as this. The value of folk music lies in the fact that it is

the music of oriental races as well. Being, then, such a musical the expression of a people, an outpouring of their emotions and race, they used their songs as the most natural expression of their —_ 4 denicting of their various occupations. Mrs. Burlin feels very emotions during the days of their captivity and through song they stony that the musical instinct of the Negroes shows the posexpressed their longing for freedom and their hope of ultimate de- —_initities of their development as a race, and in an article in liverance. To the melodies of their ancestors they sang what they —_ schirmer’s Musical Quarterly for J anuary, she says, “That they learned of our religion and it is interesting and oftentimes very —_ can sing extemporaneously in harmonies that not only approach amusing to hear their version of the stories of the Bible. For the ea) art but that touch one’s very soul seems a proof that though Negroes are a very religious people, and while some claim that hig ig still a child-race, the long path of human evolution and their religion is merely superstition and in some cases almost bar- — qyance stretches before it in endless promise.” baric none can deny that it is a real and vital part of their lives. The As for the music of the Negro being the ultimate deliverance masters of the slaves seldom allowed the Negroes to sing of their of the American composer. Mrs. Burlin feels that only time and the own desire for freedom and so they sang of other captive people in orkings of the melting pot will tell. And, as she says, who can tell a position analogous of their own. Mrs. Burlin’s collection contains pt one of the great American composers may be a Negro! a very interesting example of this type of song, Go down Moses in

130

APRIL 26,1919 LITERARY DIGEST 1910-1919 April 26, 1919 Literary Digest STALE BREAD’S SADNESS GAVE “JAZZ” TO THE WORLD Some years ago there was a blind newsboy onastreet cornerin _and the restaurants of the fashionable. New Orleans, and there were times when misery and melancholy Mr. Gorham, the man who introduced “jazz” to Chicago, overwhelmed him, for he had a little of the soul of an artist, whence it spread to New York and the East, came to New Orwhich is generally supposed to be sad, as well as misfortunes _leans five years ago to direct the Grunewald winter amusement beyond the average. He could play the violin, and hiscommon __features. Not long after his arrival he was halted as he was walkor street name was “Stale Bread.” One day he hit upon anew _ing along Canal Street by the discordant, yet strangely harmonikind of music, a music so wild, and swinging, and ear-catching, | ous and amazing efforts of a group of performers operating inand nerve-twisting that it was able to drive away his sadness,as _ __ struments identified by their appearance more than their meloonce the harp of David drove away the “blue devils” from King dies as a trombone, a clarinet, a cornet, and a drum. Such results Saul. To the music that “Stale Bread” invented the name of “jazz” —_—on those instruments Mr. Gorham, who is a theatrical man of was ultimately applied, and anyone who doesn’t care for “jazz” = wide experience, had never heard. is privileged to remember that “Stale Bread: was suffering a great The perspiring, rapid-fire musicians were most energetically deal when he invented it. Says a writer in The New Orleans Item, and successfully advertising a prize-fight, the announcement of dealing with the syncopated harmonies and other features of | which was borne by the wagon which carried the players from

“azz”: corner to corner.

“Tt’s called “jazz,” that synchronizing super syncopation that Mr. Gorham, observing the grinning faces, the snapping finoriginating in New Orleans, has aggravated the feet and fingers of gers, and the patting feet of the crowd that gathered around the America into a shimmying, tickle-toeing, snapping delirium and —_ wagon, was soon himself swaying to the barbaric tune. now is upsetting the swaying equilibrium of the European dance.” It was then he scented that ever-eagerly sought “something The dictionary of culture contains no such teasing monosyl- _ new.” To the prize-fight and on the streets he followed his hunch lable. The nearest it comes to it is “jazey,” which means akind _—_and soon he was convinced. The players were then known, he

of worsted sweater. found out, as “Brown’s Orchestra.”

But, says Joseph K. Gorham, “Daddy of the Jazz,” the word, Last week Mr. Gorham dug out from his trunk a four-yearcommon to the knowledge and frequent in the vocabulary of the | old notebook, in which he displayed the memorandum: “Brown’s Barbary coast and the Southern darky for years, means simply _ band, good rag orchestra, can’t read music, 1108 Camp Street.”

enough, and without any explanation or definition, the only thing |§ That was before the connecting of the word “jazz” with the it’s possible for four such letters in such order, when pronounced, wild harmony. The leader of the players was Raymond Lopez, to convey, and that is just “to mess ’em up and slap it on thick.” —_—‘ the cornetist. The others were Tom Brown, trombone; Gus

That’s the verb “to jazz.” Mueller, clarinet, and William Lambert.

The noun means just the same as the verb, except that the In the season of 1915-1916, Mr. Gorham arranged for the

noun implies the process and the verb the action. band to play in Lamb’s Cafe in Chicago. They appeared there Musically and technically speaking, jazz is correctly defined; —_as “Brown’s Band from Dixieland.”

but the writer admits his inadequacy, and Mr. Gorham, ponder- Soon afterward “jazz” came into its own, and has remained

ing deeply for five minutes, gave it up and observed: there ever since. The account continues, quoting Mr. Gorham: “Why ask such an unnecessary question, anyway?” The account continues, quoting Mr. Gorham: However, “jazz” which, in the opinion of Mr. Gorham, has “The boys had been there hardly a week before I got a wire delighted the soul and excited the Terpsichorean tendencies of | from the management of Lamb’s asking me to take them off their the Negro of the levee and cotton-fields these many years, drifted hands. It explained that their music was too noisy and wasn’t takout of the shanties and the tango belt of New Orleans back in _ing at all. I wired back, as Lamb’s is rather a small place, for them 1915 to begin its triumphant, blaring, screeching ascent intothe to tone down a little and try again. Lopez wrote me, much dis-

ball-room and restaurants of the cultured. couraged over his first efforts. All of his boys were nice young And there is the story that as far back as twenty years agoa _ fellows, who never before had been away from New Orleans. I blind newsboy, known to his particular gang here as “Stale Bread” —_ wrote him in reply just to ease up a bit and keep going.

felt the creep of the “blues” coming on him and translated them “They did. And soon Lamb’s was turning people away from its on a diffle acquired from a minstrel show passing thoroughtown. —_ doors in droves. Lopez and his band stayed there thirty-three weeks.

With his moaning, soothing melodies he was soon threatening to “Then, under the direction of Harry Fitzgerald, they went to corner the trade, playing as he sold his papers. Then one by one — New York. For a while, they played there in vaudeville, and later other denizens of the street, picking up the strain and whatever — went to Reisenweber’s, where I understand they are still playing. instruments they could lay their hands on, joined him until there “Lopez was the cornetist who first muted his instrument with were five christened by their leader as “Stale Bread’s Spasm —_ a derby hat and Tom Brown used the same idea on his trombone. Band.” But theirs was the music of the street and the underworld, “It was not long before all over the North and East imitators and the years passed before it penetrated into the homes, the clubs, | of the New Orleans boys were springing up. Largely they were 131

1910-1919 APRIL 26, 1919 ¢ LITERARY DIGEST educated musicians, and while they imitated, to my mind they — with Blossom Seeley); Gus Mueller, clarinet, United States Army; have never been able to achieve the effects obtained by players | William Lambert, drums, United States Army.

who can’t read a note of music. “This was the first and by far the best band that ever came “Now plans are under way to take the ‘jazz’ bands to the — from New Orleans. Gus Mueller, clarinet player, joined Kelly in Alhambra Theater in London, and it will be a sure enough ‘jazz’ the spring of 1916 and was placed at White City, Chicago, with

band from Dixie, not one of the imitations. the following combination: Gus Mueller, clarinet; C. O. Brush, “Those boys, who were making around $15 and $20aweek banjo; Fred Miller, saxophone; Jack O’Neill, piano, and Fred on the streets of New Orleans, are now earning $50, $75, and §Oxenius, drums. At this time Harry James’ meteoric career as a

$100 in various places over the country. cafe manager was starting, and he was in charge of the Boost“I’ve got two of them here now under my notice and am ar- _ ers’ Club in the Hotel Morrison, Chicago, and had a ladies’ orranging to send one to the Vernon Country club in Los Angeles.” —_chestra playing for his dancing.

So heated has become the controversy among the pioneers “Kelly approached him with a proposition to furnish him with of “jazz,” we read, that in Harlem recently it was necessary for _ better music. James agreed, raised his prices, and printed cards the police to take a hand when two rival bands met outside the _for his tables reading: ‘On account of the big expense of hiring Alhambra Theater in New York. This is one side of the argu- — Bert Kelly’s Jazz Band for the entertainment of our patrons, it ment, as attributed to Bert Kelly, who claims the distinction of has been necessary to raise the prices as follows,’ etc.

having coined the expression “jazz band”: “This was in the fall of 1916, and the band from White City “The phrase “jazz band” was first used by Bert Kelly inChi- _ was the first band ever to be advertised as a ‘jazz’ band. It was cago in the fall of 1915, and was unknown in New Orleans.In _a big success, and in the spring of 1917 James sent to New OrMarch, 1916, the first New Orleans band of cornet, clarinet, leans for the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and insisted upon trombone, drums and piano arrived in Chicago to playinLamb’s _ their using the words ‘Jazz Band.’ Cafe; it was called ‘Brown’s Band from Dixieland.’ The band was “This was in 1917, and the Original Dixieland Jazz Band was brought from New Orleans on recommendation of Frisco, who _ the first New Orleans band to use the term, while Bert Kelly used was then dancing in Lamb’s Cafe. (Note they did not use the itin 1915. Bert Kelly had about twenty orchestras known as Bert term ‘jazz band.’) The band consisted of Tom Brown, trombone ___ Kelly’s Jazz Band, and when the Dixieland arrived they adopted (now with Bert Kelly’s Jazz Band); Raymond Lopez, cornet(now _ their name of ‘Original Dixieland Jazz Band.’”’

April 26, 1919 ¢ Literary Digest A NEGRO EXPLAINS “JAZZ” The latest international word seems to be “jazz.” It is used al- —_ they went along, but such was their innate sense of rhythm that most exclusively in British papers to describe the kind of music _ they produced something which was very taking. From the small

and dancing—particularly dancing—imported from America, cafes of New Orleans they graduated to the St. Charles Hotel, thereby arousing discussions, in which bishops do not disdain _and after a time to the Winter Garden, in New York, where they to participate, to fill all the papers. While society once “ragged,” | appeared, however, only a few days, the individual musicians they now “jazz.” In this country, tho we have been tolerably —_ being grabbed up by various orchestras in the city. Somehow in familiar with the word for two years or more, we still try to _ the passage of time Razz’s Band got changed into ‘Jazz Band,’ pursue its mysterious origins. Lieut. James Reese Europe, late and from this corruption arose the term ‘jazz.’

of the Machine-Gun Battalion of the 15th Regiment, tells Mr. “The Negro loves anything that is peculiar in music, and this Grenville Vernon, of the New York Tribune, that the word comes ‘jazzing’ appeals to him strongly. It is accomplished in several ways.

from Mr. Razz, who led a band in New Orleans some fifteen | With the brass instruments we put in mutes and make a whirling years ago and whose fame is perpetuated in a somewhat modi- — motion with the tongue, at the same time blowing full pressure.

fied form. .. . Lieutenant Europe says: With wind instruments we pinch the mouthpiece and blow hard. “T believe that the term ‘jazz’ originated witha band of four —_ This produces the peculiar sound which you all know. To us it is not pieces which was found about fifteen years ago in New Orleans, _ discordant, as we play the music as it is written, only that we accent and which was known as ‘Razz’s Band.’ This band was of truly _ strongly in this manner the notes which originally would be without

extraordinary composition. It consisted of a barytone horn, a _accent. It is natural for us to do this; it is, indeed, a racial musical trombone, a cornet, and an instrument made out of the chinab- _ characteristic. I have to call a daily rehearsal of my band to prevent erry-tree. This instrument is something like a clarinet, and is _ the musicians from adding to their music more than I wish them to. made by the southern Negroes themselves. Strange to say, itcan | Whenever possible they all embroider their parts in order to probe used only while the sap is in the wood, and after a few weeks’ duce new, peculiar sounds. Some of these effects are excellent and use has to be thrown away. It produces a beautiful sound andis —_ some are not, and I have to be continually on the lookout to cut our worthy of inclusion in any band or orchestra. I myself intendto the results of my musicians’ originality.”

employ it soon in my band. The four musicians of Razz’s Band The news from Paris is so filled with weightier matters and had no idea at all of what they were playing; they improvised as the French papers are so much less loquacious than our Anglo132

AUGUST 1, 1919 ¢ MUSIC RECORD 1910-1919 Saxon ones on the lighter sides of life that, until the lieutenant —_ cians felt sure that my band had used special instruments. Inspeaks, we haven’t heard of the impression jazz has made on _ deed, some of them, afterward attending one of my rehearsals,

the French: did not believe what I had said until after they had examined the “T recall one incident in particular. From last February to instruments used by my men.” last August 1 had been in the trenches, in command of my ma- It is the feeling of this musician, who, indeed, before the war chine-gun squad. I had been through the terrific general attack supplied most of the music in New York dancing circles, that a in Champagne when General Gouraud annihilated the enemy _ higher plane in music may be attained by Negroes if they stick by his strategy and finally put an end to their hopes of victory, _ to their own form. He concludes: and I had been through many a smaller engagement. I can tell “T have come back from France more firmly convinced than you that music was one of the things furthest from my mind ever that Negroes should write Negro music. We have our own when one day, just before the Allied Conference in Paris, on __ racial feeling and if we try to copy whites we will make bad

August 18, Colonel Hayward came to me and said: copies. I noticed that the Morocco Negro bands played music “*T ieutenant Europe, I want you to go back to yourbandand —_ which had an affinity to ours. One piece, In Zanzibar, I took for

give a single concert in Paris.’ my band, and the white audiences seem to find it too discordant. “I protested, telling him that I hadn’t led the band since Feb- _I found it most sympathetic. We won France by playing music ruary, but he insisted. Well, I went back to my band, and with it — which was ours and not a pale imitation of others, and if we are

I went to Paris. What was to be our only concert was in the — to develop in America we must develop along our own lines. Theatre des Champs-Elysees. Before we had played two num- = Our musicians do their best work when using Negro material. bers the audience went wild. We had conquered Paris. General Will Marion Cook, William Tires, even Harry Burleigh and Bliss and French high officers who had heard us insisted thatwe Coleridge-Taylor are not truly themselves in the music which should stay in Paris, and there we stayed for eight weeks. Ev- _ expresses their race. [sic] Mr. Tires, for instance, writes charmerywhere we gave a concert it was ariot, but the supreme mo- _ing waltzes, but the best of these have in them Negro influences. ment came in the Tuileries Gardens when we gave aconcertin The music of our race springs from the soil, and this is true toconjunction with the greatest bands in the world, the British | day with no other race, except possibly the Russians, and it is Grenadiers’ Band, the band of the Garde Republicain, and the —_ because of this that I and all my musicians have come to love Royal Italian Band. My band, of course, could notcompare with = Russian music. Indeed, as far as I am concerned, it is the only any of these, yet the crowd, and it was such acrowd asI never music I care for outside of Negro.” saw anywhere else in the world, deserted them for us. We played The Lieutenant then tells how he formed his band:

to 50,000 people at least, and, had we wished it, we might be “When war broke out I enlisted as a private in Colonel

playing yet. Hayward’s regiment, and I had just passed my officer’s exami“After the concert was over the leader of the band of the —_—s nation when the Colonel asked me to form a band. I told him

Garde Republicain came over and asked me forthe score ofone that it would be impossible, as the Negro musicians of New of the jazz compositions we had played. He said he wanted his ——- York were paid too well to have them give up their jobs to go to band to play it. I gave it to him, and the next day he againcame —_ war. However, Colonel Hayward raised $10,000 and told me to to see me. He explained that he couldn’t seem to get the effects get the musicians wherever I could get them. The reed-players I I got, and asked me to go to a rehearsal. I went with him. The __ got in Porto Rico, the rest from all over the country. I had only

great band played the composition superbly, but he was right; | one New York Negro in the band—my solo cornetist. These are the jazz effects were missing. I took an instrument and showed — the men who now compose the band, and they are all fighters as

him how it could be done, and he told me that his own musi- well as musicians, for all have seen service tn the trenches. ”

August 1, 1919 ¢ Music Record A JAZZ BAND CONCERT by Francesco Berger Not many weeks ago I had my first experience of a Jazz band, __ cal, or inartistic. I shall confine myself to putting into words while taking afternoon-tea in a well-known West End tea-room. _ what I. thought and felt at the time, and what I think and feel I had not gone there in quest of the band, so that when its stri- _ since. dent noise burst upon my unprepared ears, it fell on virgin soil, It was one of the strongest and strangest experiences I have

and was a complete surprise to me. undergone in an extended life, during which I have listened to In describing its effect (not much modified by subsequent much that was good, to more that was bad, and to most that was hearings) I need scarcely affirm that Iam not an agent, paid to —_ indifferent. It produced an impression that was not quite pleas“boom” this class of entertainment. It is already fartoo popular _—_ant, but not entirely unpleasant, a sort of comical mixture of to need advertising at my hands. Neither have I any desire to —_ both. Not being a frequenter of American drinking-bars, and exclaim against it, on the ground of its being coarse, or unmusi- —_ never having tasted areal American drink, I can only guess what 133

1910-1919 AUGUST 1919 © CURRENT OPINION a copious draught of one of their cunningly concocted iced __ ine one that could excel it in precision of ensemble, in extravadrinks would taste like on a swelteringly hot day. ButI imagine —_ gant coloring, or in noisy exuberance. When, on other occasions, that it would produce on the palate sensations akin to those —__ I have had cherished ideals shattered by novel experiences, it was

produced on the ear by a Jazz band. Pleasurable though stag- the music or the performer that thrilled and overpowered. But gering, making it difficult to recover one’s breath, defying analy- _ this Jazz business is quite foreign to anything else, quite unique.

sis, repellent at the outset, but magnetically fascinating. The piano and violin music is full of prominent accents and plainThis Jazz band played remarkably well, with exaggerated _ tive syncopations, the banjos give to it a penetrating buzzing accoloring, it must be owned, but with tremendous spirit and “go,” | companiment, and the eruptions from the “utility man” are so accompanied by a perfectly incongruous row, produced froma _— unexpected, that the ensemble becomes a medley of recognizable number of noise-emitting articles which cannot be called musical = and unrecognizable rhythm, a blend of uncongenial elements, instruments. Its members comprised a very clever pianist,aclever bewildering, exasperating, and yet appealing. Your sensations are violinist, two excellent banjoists, a concertina-player, a cornet- _ being “brushed by machinery.” Your familiar codes and laws are player, and a “utility man” who performed on a side drum, abig —_ defied and upset. Your terra ferma is withdrawn. You are adrift on

drum, cymbals, triangle, a tinkling hand-bell, a deep-toned large an unexplored ocean. The anchor of your traditions, but which one, a dinner gong, a rattle, a railway whistle, a motor hooter,and —_—- you held so reliantly, has failed you. Whether you will ever reach

a few more deafening things. sunlit meadows and shady groves, whether you will ever again They play a tune which may or may not be trans-Atlantic, but _ safely tread the highroads which your forefathers trod before you, is always of a popular type, and they play it two or three times —_is a question which only Time, the inscrutable, can solve.

over, varying it occasionally by ingenious fioriture on piano or Having occasion to speak of a Jazz band to an American friend, violin. And aremarkable feature of their performance isthe abrupt I thought I was flattering his nationality when I described it as “‘an transition from noisiest fortissimo to softest pianissimo, or vice | admirable performance of profaned art.” He promptly replied: “I versa, with very little, if any, intermediate crescendo or diminu- —_ do not claim for it that it is what has hitherto passed for high art. endo. During the soft parts the “utility man” is silent, and you But you must admit that it has one quality in which much oldbegin to hope he has gone home; but, with the first recurrence of | world music is sadly wanting, and that is ‘character.’ It is thora tutti he is back again, and, like a giant refreshed by rest, resumes oughly representative of Americanism; as free from conventionhis labours with redoubled energy. He appears to have little re- ality and from ‘schools’ as my country is free from ancient hisspect for rhythm, but strikes, hits, blows, bumps, rings, and bangs _ tory and slavery. Better stuff would probably be tamer. It is out of whenever “he darned chooses.” Yet, whatever his vagaries may material such as this, brimful of spontaneous national manner, have been during a piece, however much he may appear tohave __ that your refined methods and artificial mannerisms have been “set up business on his own,” he is never behind-hand nor before —_ evolved. If you take from it what is so obviously its own, includ-

at the finish. And I noticed that the tea-drinking audience ap- _ing its crudity, you rob it of its distinctive quality; it becomes plauded all the more when the Finale was the maddest of allmad __ ordinary, often-told, undesirable.” And he was not far wrong.

orgies of row. They would not feel they had been sufficiently The pianist in this particular Jazz band is so accomplished “jazzed” if a piece ended without a hurricane and a thunderbolt. an artist that I remarked to him: “But you are far too good a The unanimity of accord which, in spite of ear-splitting noise, musician to be doing this sort of thing. How is it you are here?” this band is able to maintain, is one of the marvels of it all. Not “T suppose,” he replied, “you mean that I ought to be doing one of the players loses his head, not one of them is careless of his ‘the legitimate.’ Well, I tried that when I first married. I played part, each is as conscientious a performer as though playing a ___in public, I accompanied singers, and I gave a lesson when I Concerto in Queen’s Hall. And when, after the final crash of a — found a pupil who would come and take it. And I earned thirty Piece, you look round for the debris, and are preparing to count _ shillings a week. Then I took to this. When my afternoon’s work the dead and wounded on the ground, you find the players men- _is finished at six o’clock, I have a similar engagement sometally, if not physically, as cool as cucumbers, tuning their instru- — where else from nine to eleven. and I earn twenty pounds a week. ments for their next encounter, or exchanging with one another __I have a wife and two children to support. Do you blame me? critical remarks on Puccini or Debussy. I fancy, by their smiles, When I shall have saved enough to afford myself the luxury, I that they occasionally indulge in delicate stories from club-land. shall go back to ‘the legitimate’ and to—starvation.” I am not certain whether this particular band is better than, or I could not answer him, for there is no answer. O tempora, O inferior to, others now before the public, but I can scarcely imag- — mores.

August 1919 ¢ Current Opinion DELVING INTO THE GENEALOGY OF JAZZ Good or bad, fad or institution, Jazz was born in Chicago, devel- | conquered a place in the Western world. Howard Brockway, the oped in New Orleans, exploited in New York, and glorified in | American composer, attempts to explain, in the N.Y. Review, the

Paris. So writes one of the many authorities who have recently characteristics and origins of Jazz, but its origin still remains delved into this latest manifestation of American music thathas obscure. Chicago claims it, and according to E. M. King, Chi134

AUGUST 1919 ¢ CURRENT OPINION 1910-1919 cago still holds the strongest title. But Jazz, clams Mr. Brockway, — band. Sharp rhythmic ejaculations arise from out the welter of tho it is new to us in the United States and through us to both —_— sound, and over the whole tumult the traps-player spreads his

Europe and France, is not absolutely new to the world. He at- array of dazzling accents, brought forth with absolute virtuosity

tempts an analysis of this newest musical phenomenon: from his motley army of noise producers. it almost seems, at “Just what is Jazz? In striving to answer this query, cannot __ times, like acase of each for himself and the devil take the hindhope to imitate the admirable brevity of the word. Jazz is or- —_ most.’ But it is not so, and here is definite purpose and ordered dered and calculated noise. It is a compound of qualities, both = means in it all.”

rhythmic and melodic. It seeks, and with absolute success be it In support of his contention that Jazz is not new to the world, said, to sweep from our minds all simultaneous considerationof |= Mr. Brockway tells of a Chinese festival held at Paderewski’s other things, and to focus our attention upon its own mad, whirl- —s chateau in Switzerland, in honor of the great pianist’s birthday. ing, involved self. Herein lies a large part of its compelling force At that time Mr. Brockway discovered phonograph records of a and appeal. It may well be that General Gouraud could find the —_ native Siamese orchestra:

hideous load of responsibility lightened, perhaps even put aside ‘When I first heard them played, I was astounded, for there for the moment, as he Isitened to Europe’s Jazz and that he felt —_ in this Siamese music, in spite of the strange Oriental idioms, his pulse responding to the virile rhythm, and his emotions join- —_—‘ from an Occidental’s harmonic standpoint, was the very essence

ing in the rush of the humorous and carefree mood. Certain itis | of Jazz! The music was like nothing that my ears had ever heard, that our doughboys, fresh from the trenches, with days and —_and uncouth to the point of absolute unintelligibility. But there weeks of grim endeavor and physical strain behind them, turned —_ were the insistent rhythm, the demoniac energy, the fantastic to the Jazz furnished by their bands and found in it relaxation _ riot of accents from the drums and other percussion instruments, and solace and cheer, which enabled them to forget what was —_ and a humorous mood which made me laugh long and loud. It past and to abandon themselves wholeheartedly to the joyous | seemed humorous to me. I have often wondered what that mood

hilarity of the present moment. really was in Siamese. There is no room for doubt when we hear “There is not the slightest doubt that in this maelstrom of | our own Jazz! Wholehearted, boisterous, rough, but the very rhythm there abides a powerful tonic effect. Through the me- —_ soul of kindly good humor and care-free merriment.”

dium of the physical, it reaches and influences the psychologi- Other less erudite musical authorities are satisfied that Jazz is cal attitude. I have been convinced of the truth of this fact by — purely of American origin. We find The New York Telegraph, personal experience, undergone not once but many times.” Broadway’s own gazette, for instance, giving the credit to Chicago: Jazz is composed of rhythm, melody, and a certain modicum of “At last we have the genesis of Jazz. Chicago disputes the contrapuntal inner voices, continues Mr. Brockway. But the great- ‘honor’ of having first stuffed cotton in its ear, with New Orest of these is rhythm. The Jazz band starts out to “get you” and _ leans, where so many idiosyncrasies of Senegambian flavor origileaves nothing to chance. “It is fairly well established that only an nated. We are convinced that Chicago has made out a good case.

oyster can resist the appeal of syncopated rhythm when it is per- ‘Good or bad, fad or institution,’ says the brief for Chicago, formed with masterful abandon which absolutely controls dynamic ‘Jazz was born in this city, developed in New Orleans, exploited

gradations and vital accents.” Here is the real secret of Jazz: in New York and glorified in Paris.” And Chicago presents as “The howitzers of the Jazz band’s artillery are stationed inthe | Exhibit A, Jasbo Brown, a Negro musician, who doubled with ‘traps.’ Under this heading we find all the instruments of percus- _ the cornet and piccolo. ‘When he was sober,’ continues the brief, sion, such as the big drum, the snare drum, cymbals, triangle, ‘he played orthodox music, but when he imbibed freely of gin, wooden blocks played upon with drum sticks, xylophone cowbells, | which was his favorite pastime, he had a way of screaming above

rattles, whistles for the production of various weird noises, anda the melody witha strange barbaric abandon. One evening a young host of other implements, often the personal conceptions of indi- | woman frequenter of the cafe where he held forth, tired of the vidual players of the traps. the trombones may represent field | conventional manner in which the music was played, called out, guns, while the clarinets, oboes, saxophones, alto horns andcor- —_ “A little more Jasbo in that piece!’ The cry was taken up, ‘Jazz! nets furnish the rapid-fire batteries. the range being point blank, it | Jazz!” and Jazz music was christened.’

is easy to see why the effect of the ‘drum-fire’ is complete! “Is Jazz one of the spiritual results of our attempt at assimila“The melody will always be borne by sufficient instruments _ tion of some thirty-nine different races?” questions E. M. King to ensure its “getting over.’ Then, in the inner voices of the band, in The N. Y. Evening Post. Or have all the itinerant musicianswill take place a combination of effects which adds enormously = masters and monkeys, German bands and hurdy-gurdies, ferryto the total drive of the number. Here are certain of the contra- _ boats fellows and those who jangle the tambourines, combined puntal features which are mentioned above. They consist of a —_ in ascheme for self-preservation? A certain professor remarked

variety of hilarious effects, produced by trombones or saxo- _last winter that Jazz bands were merely outbreaks of irrepressphones, attained by a curious sliding from note to note. This _ ible spontaneity, which would express itself momentarily and creates an extremely comical result. This characteristic and droll then disappear. But they are becoming epidemic, international. portamento has become so well known and so popular that it Mr. King thinks that Jazz is a ragged combination of letters that has achieved a specific name, ‘blues,’ a humorously apt desig- | suggests bumping and snorting wind and bandling blinds, bronation. A striking contrast is made by the mournful soughing of __ ken glass and the devil-may-care back of it all. Chicago, therethe trombones in the midst of the joyous riot of the rest of the fore, he asserts, is its evitable origin: 135

1910-1919 AUGUST 1919 ¢ MUSIC REVIEW “The traditional place of wind and broken glass, and the —_ duction would be meticulously true to Jazz form: the wheezes of geographical center of the Jazz bands in Chicago. Notonceina __ the scorching horns; the popping of the overheated drumheads; long journey did a traveler hear more manifestations, morning, the groans and pleadings of the musician with now and then a noon and night, of what Jazz bands can do under pressure than _ pure silvery note from a thorobred piper who cared not a rap that smote the ear in Chicago. Up and down Michigan Avenue the __he was to be roasted for his art; the ravings of the crowd looking bands rent the air with their tonal curses and during the height _ on, dervishes and holy-rollers expressing themselves; the chuckof the loan [sic] nothing less than “My Country “Tis of Thee” _les of a few cannibals; and over all the raucous imperturbability was subjected to irresponsible syncopation, jumping and throb- _ of old horse fiddles. That would be a Chicago Jazz band. bing, “Sweet Land of Liberty” was pitiful lése-majesté. Certainly “So far many parts of the East have been spared. Washingthere ascended on Chicago’s famous Broadway by the lake ac- __ ton is almost free; New York is rent in spots; Boston is only tual cosmic vacuums, holes and slashes in space, if you please, _—_ slightly Jazz. But the Middle West is in the throes and it may pierced by instruments lifted in ethereal massacre. To all appear- —_— never know it until consciousness returns.”

ances Chicago not only does not mind, but likes it. O Chicago, Henri Duvernois contributes to Paris Femina an amusing couldst thou but sit on the parapet once removed and hear! skit on the Jazz craze in the French capital. The Blanditeurs are Surely, if the general air in Chicago is preeminently Jazz, ifitis | giving a party for their recently affianced daughter. The contrue that the good people naturally pitch and roll tothe liltofthe | cierge Jazz band is engaged. The concierge is persuaded to put many bands, why should the country allow the lake city tocon- —_ cotton in his ears; the band is given strict orders to play so that stitute itself a propagating choir of Jazz immortal? If one munici- he can hear it. All the other tenants of the apartment building pality has lost its esthetic sense, has it no respect for the feel- _ are invited to the party, since if they were not they would cerings of others? Shall the popcorn of Chicago blow over all the —_ tainly complain of the noise to the landlord. The musicians them-

lot? selves would prefer to play classical selections, but they realize “This is a fair metaphor, too. Put a whole band in a giant _ that their clients all demand Jazz with its miscellaneous assortpopper, hold it over the glowing coals of an ample crater, and —s ment of noise makers, the “Klaxon” in particular since each one

shaking well, command it to make some jolly music; the pro- _ of the jazzers explains, “that reminds them that they have an automobile.”

August 1919 ¢« Music Review THE DOUGHBOY CARRIES HIS MUSIC WITH HIM by Gilbert Elliott, Jr. Cher, as any doughboy will tell you, is related to “Chérie,” a polite | almost forgotten air as she grazed her cows on the rich grass by term to be used in addressing young French ladies to whom one _ theriverside, there came the American rags, shouted from lusty has not been formally introduced. It is also, howler, the name ofa __ throats along the riverbank, or pounded out on one of those river, a quiet, lazy, winding river, which lingers awhile amongthe — untuneable French provincial pianos in a nearby Red Cross hut.

green Touraine valleys and empties softly into the Loire near ‘A sacrilege,” remarks some old timer. Ah yes, but the war Chinon. It is visible from the old Roman towers of Tours, and was _has changed all that. The doughboy among these old scenes may

doubtless accustomed to martial sights and scenes before the have been a sacrilege, but he was certainly a very necessary times of Charlemagne, but certainly the summer of 1918 brought — one. And wherever he went, there went his jazz songs, for they with it events which mightily stirred the sleepy old villages along = were as much part and parcel of his property as his O. D. shirt; its banks and disturbed the wonted peacefulness of the little stream | and when he rolled his pack for the last time at Hoboken he

in a manner it will not forget for many a year. must have put his music right in, somewhere along with the raFirst it took to its bosom the lithe white bodies of American zor and the extra suit of underwear; and although he may have youth, billeted nearby or camped in pup tents, who speedily lost his soap overboard in Brest Harbor, and never seen his towel sought out its ancient swimming holes and woke its echoes with again after he left La Mans, he managed to stick to his music their shouts. On the roads along its banks there were dignified thorough think and thin. No hardship was severe enough, no American colonels gliding past in official brown limousines and experience terrible enough to make him forget it. It did not apdispatch riders tearing along on their motor cyclesin greatclouds —_ pear on any Quartermaster list, nor among the numerous articles of dust. Its bridges groaned under the weight of roaring caterpil- | furnished by the ordnance Department, but it put their choicest lar tractors, while nearby could be heard the deep voice of great offerings to shame as far as comfort and cheer are concerned, American locomotives straining through the night with their —_and certainly the most hard-boiled old leatherneck would not heavy trains of supplies. In short it found itself in the midst of | have traded his music for a full new equipment of all of them. all the panoply of the lines of communication of a great modern If we had wandered into one of those Y huts last summer in army. And amongst other strange things, in place of the voice of — the evening when the weary K. P.’s had finished and the day’s Jacques, singing at his plowing some fragment of a Parisian ditty details had been dismissed, we might have caught the doughboy learned on his last visit to Tours, or old Margot, crooning an _at his music and learned some interesting things. The building 136

AUGUST 1919 «© MUSIC REVIEW 1910-1919 would be a long low wooden affair divided into two rooms of __ ceased reading and writing and is listening to the music. Outunequal size by a board partition. The larger room is fitted up as__ side the French kiddies are still grouped about the window, they a rough hall with rows of wooden benches, and at one end isa _ _ have stuck it out through thick and thin. The Americans will be stage with a battered piano. Round this we might find gathereda — there but a short time, and when they leave there will be no typical group of doughboys. One of their number with hefty fist more music, jazz or otherwise, in the little village, so they make and beaucoup rags in his repertoire is seated at the piano, pound- _— the most of opportunities while they may. ing them out to the delight of his audience, not excluding a group These scenes bring up some interesting surmises. The of French village kiddies gathered just outside the window. He — doughboy, I suppose, is instrument bred, particularly piano bred. passes rapidly from one to another, and finally hits one, the cho- It is a far cry from him back to ancestors who sang at their work rus of which is evidently very familiar to one buddy forhe makes —_and whose only acquaintance with instruments was with the church bold to shout it out with a terrific voice. At first this is receivedin | organ ona Sunday. He sings well en masse, when the psychologi-

silence, but not for long. After a series of fancy catcalls have cal enthusiasm of the crowd touches him, but he does not care to produced no effect a thunderous, “Hey, where do you get that _ sing alone very much, or to have others do it in his hearing unless stuff?” from the rear of the hall effectively puts an end to him. __ the singer has a really good voice. I shall never forget a certain Strangely enough, however, when an enthusiastic comrade de- _—_ dark hold in a ship full of soldiers. Night after night it was clear cides to assist the jazzer by doubling the melody for him in the the deck and close the portholes at five P.M., and we lay there for upper octave, and even when another raps out the rhythm witha _ hours in the darkness with only a few blue electric lights along the stick against the side of the chair there is not the slightest objec- floor. Our only means for passing the time and keeping up our tion, the additions being apparently considered improvements.In _ spirits was by singing. And oh, how we did sing, Good Morning, fact everyone keeps time to the music in one way or another, Mr Zip, Zip, Zip, and Over There, and all the war songs that had

movements of the hand and foot being the favorites. come out up to that time. But we would only sing together. If An interruption presents itself at this merry juncture inthe anyone started a little solo he was immediately howled down by shape of a pretty youth, with sheet music in his hand. He is _ the others. Now on the deck below us was a labor battalion, largely followed by two lady war workers; evidently he is going tosing | composed of newly arrived Italian immigrants. With them it was

for their delectation. The doughboys, always courteous to very different. One of them had a guitar and his friends sang Neawomen, make way for this trio, while the leather-fingered jazzer _ politan folk songs to its accompaniment with the greatest gusto. at the instrument resigns his place without a murmur. Our youth —‘ They had no hesitancy about singing alone, but we on the upper

turns out to be none other than Jones, late of the church choirin deck soon got so that we knew the melodies of many of their his home town, more recently of the Pioneers, who has loyally solos by heart and would drown the soloist out by shouting the answered his country’s call and is employed in guarding most —__ melody in chorus. Perhaps another reason why the doughboy is valuable government stores in that warehouse just beyond the —_— not so much of a soloist is that the voice does not lend itself to Hotel Gerbe d’Or. Is he going to sing something good and jazzy —jazz as does an instrument, or the lowly whistle, of which he is which will make his comrades forget the marsh-mellow fudge — very fond and which is so nimble in getting away with syncopaunderfoot thereabouts when it rains? Not he, he scorns all that. _ tions. And as it is the rhythm on which the doughboy specializes No, he is going to sing some of those touching ballads whichhe _he prefers to get his rags from an instrument, or, if need be, whistle

sang at the Sunday School sociable last winter. them rather than to sing. To do him justice his voice is not half bad, and the two ladies When the A. E. F first arrived in France it received a certain are evidently delighted. But where are the doughboys, who _heritage of soldier songs from the British and Canadians such crowded so eagerly about the instrument while the jazz was at = as Tipperary, Pack up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag, its height? They waited until he had begun to sing, and seeing “There's a Long, Long Trail, etc. All these songs are well adapted that the music had no interest for them they vanished. And out- —_—‘ to singing en masse because they have rhythms free from side in the writing room, where everyone looked up so eagerly — syncopation. For this reason they had quite a vogue for a time. when the jazz began, they are all busy reading and writing once —_ But lacking the real “kick” which is the sine qua non of doughboy

more. In fact over in the corner, old Top Smith of ?th Company, _ favor, they gradually lost ground and were replaced by the good surrounded by a little group of willful sympathizers, has started |= old home grown variety such as How Yer Gonner Keep ’em the phonograph with There’s a Lump of Sugar down in Dixie | downon the Farm, You'll Find Old Dixieland in France, etc. In

and is having a little rival jazz concert allhisown.Anendcomes _fact the only European song which seemed to greatly attract to all trials, however, and just so the pretty youth at length fin- | him and to permanently hold his attention was Madelon with ishes his eye moisteners and departs with his music andhistwo _ which he fell in love, probably because of its martial rhythm. lady admirers. His departure is the signal for a magical change. At that, however, the doughboy did not altogether lack cathoAnother jazzer is found almost instantly, a doughboy audience _licity of taste. Although a man of strong likes and dislikes, he reappears from nowhere in particular, and as we leave the — knew how to bite immediately he saw what he wanted, no matDarktown Strutter’s Ball is going full blast with the melody _ ter what the nationality of the bait. Thus he would sit for hours doubled in the upper octave and the rhythm being pounded out _—_and applaud politely thorough one of the long concerts which with a stick. And as we pass through the outer room we note _- French artists frequently gave for him, although obviously horthat Top Smith has shut off his phonograph and everyone has __ribly bored. But let the violinist play some little Hungarian or 137

1910-1919 SEPTEMBER 1919 ¢ CURRENT OPINION Spanish piece, full of rhythmic interest and he would “Snap out _ that jazz sometimes contained two simultaneous syncopations, of it” like magic, whistle, stamp, and demand an instant repeti- — one in the right hand and the other in the left, and that when tion, much to the astonishment of artists not familiar with his _ these two were cleverly commingled it was generally at its best, manners. To be sure these were not the only things he liked. He — which is perhaps a decidedly shrewd observation after all. liked well-sung operatic arias; who doesn’t? He had a liking for Such were some of the experiences of our jazzes “over there.”

good part singing, and as is not unnatural for a nation with Of course, no one would be foolish enough to pretend that the “canned” music in every home, he had a certain traditional in- —_— war has laid the ghost of the vexed problem—the melting pot— terest in florid and dramatic singing even if the rhythmical in- or that it has definitely determined just what we have left in the terest was small. But is was easy to see where his real affec- —_— pot after the melting. It did do one thing, however, in this retions lay. The music that would set a French audience afire, left —_ spect. It took a portion of this melting pot product, chosen inhim merely an amused spectator, outside the pale, the fire was _ discriminately, transported it to Europe and there threw it into a in his blood, but it took a different kind of music to arouse it. clear relief against a strange foreign background, something Not only did the doughboy substitute his own music for that never before done on a large scale. And in this way we were which was, so to speak, “wished on him” on his arrival, buthe — able to observe some of its qualities very much more difficult to served also as a mighty good propaganda for his own brand. = determine accurately at home. Musically at any rate, our Soon no French “revue” was complete minus a jazz band to —doughboys in France exhibited unanimity of tastes and liking play between acts, and no French piano up to date without a_ —_ which were very striking and would indicate that in this respect sprinkling of jazz songs on the top. I well remember being, one —_—_—~we are as much a whole as any other nation, theories and theo-

afternoon, in a tiny music shop in Paris behind the Madeleine, _rists to the contrary notwithstanding. And as their music echoed one of the few places where American rags could be procured. —_ over the wheat fields of that Cher Valley, red with poppies in the A number of French, mostly girls, came into the shop to buy ___ spring, and was not of them, nor of their world, and over the ragtime while I was there. Most of them either didnotknowthe __ tiny wine barges stealing down the Cher with their huge wine name of the piece they wanted, or could not pronounce itifthey casks in the soft twilight, and was not of them nor of their world,

did know it, but they could invariably hum the tune, and this _it seemed as if the music the doughboy rolled in this pack at

generally produced the desired piece. Hoboken, so strange sounding in these strange surroundings was The British, not handicapped by the language difficulty, were a thing American, somehow characteristically bound up with even more interested. I remember a tiny incident behind the _ our national life. Traces of Negro in it—certainly Mr. Analizer— British front when a slightly inebriated Tommy, in a cockney a bit of the wild free breath of the Indian too, here and there a accent that was perfectly “affreuse,” sang of the beauties of My __ splotch of Spanish coloring and occasionally a reminiscence of Home in Tennessee cheered to the echo by his fellow _Irish and Scottish forbears. But in the main its principal element Tennessseeans. Another, a particularly bright fellow, who had _is just plain American and its rhythms are the rhythms of our evidently been taking his ragtime very seriously and thoroughly |§ American life. France brought that out if it did nothing else. in the British manner, analyzing it much as achemist woulda ___ Perhaps ina general way we have known this all along about our suspicious new brand of breakfast food, said that he had noted rags; if we have taken the time to think about it, but it was certainly not until the doughboy taught it to us that we could realize it so clearly.

September 1919 © Current Opinion ENIGMATIC FOLKSONGS OF THE SOUTHERN UNDERWORLD A young woman appeared for no more than five minutes ina cussion of the origin of the “blues,” a type of folksong of the Broadway revue and crooned a ditty ina minor key. Few of the — underworld, upon which Miss Gray bases her singing and dancwords of the text were comprehensible. The singer made no __ ing. The archeology of these communal chants is worthy of as effort to point their meaning, but mechanically kept on staring —_ serious study as Cecil Sharp and others have given to the balahead of her. A reference to the graveyard, writes the critic of lads of the Appalachians. The N. Y. Herald declares:

the N. Y. Sun, added to the decadent, macabre impression of as “Tt is a form of art new to Broadway, that which Miss Gray much of the song as the audience could hear. “High cheek-bones, _ has introduced, for as the carvings of Dahomey and the totem short, rather kinky hair of an ashy blond, and her unaccustomed poles of Alaska are art, crude, even repulsive tho it is at times, rich attire gave her the look of a Nubian page in a Veronese __ so the ‘blues’ are a form of art, an expression of the moods of a drawing. Then she suggested a Beardsley drawing forSalome’s __ certain class of individuals. Indigenous to sections of Southern head. She drawled out her song. looking straight into the audi- —_— cities which men frequent only after night has cast her pall over ence without the least expression in her odd face.” The young _ their doings—ask any one who knows Memphis what Beal Street woman was Gilda Grey, the song was The Beal Street Blues. Her | is—they have been transplanted on the stage in New York. And

sensational triumph in the Gaieties of 1919 led to a lawsuit Miss Gray’s art is that she treats the illegitimate so deftly that between claimants for her services, and aroused widespread dis- _ her success 1s legitimate.” 138

SEPTEMBER 1919 * CURRENT OPINION 1910-1919 In an interview in the Herald, Miss Gray, who might be de- _ forts to change the ways of life that maintained there. Perhaps scribed as a sort of Yvette Guilbert of the “blues” confessed this was not accomplished so often as the good men and women familiarity with no less than 200 of these anonymous, nameless _ hoped. But the hymn made its effect. It remained in the know]-

and yet often strangely expressive songs: edge of the Negroes who had heard it shot at their ears in the “There’s The Yellow Dog Rag, The Dirty Dozen, The Regret- _ attempt to make them better.

ful Blues, The Memphis Blues, The Beal Street, which lam now “So the ‘blue’ is the song of their aspirations and desires,

doing, The St. Louis, The Doggone. good or evil, and it assumes the form and sometimes the tune of “The Dirty Dozen has a wayward sound. I don’t suppose __ the hymn, since that appears to Beale Street the only spiritual

there’d be room enough to give all twelve verses. form of expression that ever came into its knowledge. The blue “The chorus runs like this: ‘Oh, the old dirty dozen, The old —s may be about an altogether unmentionable aspiration. It may on

dirty dozen; Brothers and cousins, Livin’ like a hive of bees. the other hand be expressive of a temporary piety. Sometimes They keep a buzzin’, fussin’ and muzzin’. There wasn’ta good __ the words of the missionaries and the desires of the singer beone in the bunch. (Believe me, boy, that ain’t no bluff.) Ah-h, | come most incongruously blended, as in Miss Gray’s song. As

daddy, that’s enough. Git over dirty!’ the ‘blue,’ which must inevitably be syncopated in tune and more “The lyrics were incomprehensible enough, yet the singer _ or less affected by the rubato of jazz, comes to the public now, it fairly froze in atmosphere of red lights. While her minor notes = mingles the voice of the dweller in the depths of Beale Street tore at the auditory nerves she had a peculiar quality of impas- —_ with the hoarse calls of the missionary to higher things. siveness which showed her complete control over the swaying “Mr. Walter Kingsley, who has taken the time to investigate

muscles in what now is called ‘the shimmy.’ the origins of most of our distinctly popular American forms It would require no less a person than Nicholas Vachel Lind- — and methods in music, writes with some authority to the Sun on say to explain the composition of the song which has created _ the origin of the songs of the underworld: such widespread discussion. As reprinted by the dramatic edi- “*Blues’ are not for the expression of religious aspiration or

tor of the Sun, it runs as follows: the normalities of home and wife and mother. ‘Blues’ are not I have seen all the lights of gay Broadway, written to relieve the soul of church wardens, commuters, disOf Market Street down to ’Frisco Bay. ciples of Dr. Crane, and the pure in heart of the theater. They are Ihave strolled the Prado, Ihave gambled onthe Bourse. _ the little songs of the wayward, the impenitent sinners, of the

I have seen pretty browns, beautiful gowns, men and women who have lost their way in the world. ‘Blues’

tailor-made and hand me downs. are for the outlaws of society; they are little plaintive or humorI have seen honest men, pickpockets skilled, ous stanzas of irregular rhythm set to music not of the conservaThe place never closes until somebody gets killed. tories. When one laments a season in prison one sings The Jail I’d rather be here than any place I know, House Blues. For the girl whose ‘sweetheart’ of the dark alleys For it’s going to take a sergeant to make me go. has gone otherwhere there are many blues, such as He Left Me I have been in jail with my face to the wall, Flat Blues, Kidded Again Blues, and A Rat at Heart Blues. The And a great big tall man is the cause of it all. forsaken male has his own repertoire, which includes Lying Skirt

The graveyard is a nasty old place. Blues, She Done Him Dirt Blues, and He's Sore on the Dames They lay you on your back and throw dirt in youface, | Blues. The loser at craps, the luckless sport ruined by slow horses

(Get over, dirty) and fast women, the mourner for rum, the profiteer in things

Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, forbidden whom the law has evicted, the sick and lonely

If my singing don’t get you, my shimmy must. woman—all these have their appropriate blues. On the other

(Step on it, boys.) side there are blues for luck at cards and women and horses, for big nights in the restricted districts, for pungent pleasures in the The writer on the Sun offers this explanation of the origin of sectors of society that have no thought of the morrow; and again

the “blues”: there are blues with just a laugh for their object—low comedy —_ . fun in subterranean experiences. Just as Henley and Farmer’s

MISS GILDA GRAY’S “BLUES” AROUSE A DISCUS- seven volumes of slang and naughty words covers the outlaw SION CONCERNING THEIR QUESTIONABLE ORIGIN vocabulary of the English language, so do the blues embrace “Listeners have sometimes thought that a blue must be __ the outlaw emotions. They are right down on the ground in the founded on a Negro spiritual. It has the musical character as = matter of expression and packed with human nature and always well as the reflective nature of some of the Negrohymns. Walter —_ interesting. As Wellington said, “There’s no damned talk about Kingsley says the missionaries did sing these hymns to the in- —_— merit’ in them. They are gruff and sincere and as authentic as a

habitants of Beale and similar streets in the South in their ef- _ ballad by Francois Villon.”

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1910-1919 SEPTEMBER 1919 « MUSIC STUDENT September 1919 ¢ Music Student NEGRO FOLK SONG When the Fiske Jubilee Singers visited England, some forty or | Burleigh says in an admirable note: “It is a serious misconcepmore years ago, the study of folk song here had taken no hold _ tion of their meaning and value to treat them as ‘minstrel’ songs, upon the musical world, and the colored singers made their ap- or to try to make them funny by a too literal attempt to imitate peal and won their success by means of the fervent religious the manner of the Negro in singing them. Success in singing emotion of their renderings and the luscious blend of their voices. them is primarily dependent upon deep spiritual feeling. Their The simple music itself was not a matter of interest to trained worth is weakened unless they are done impressively, for through

musicians. all, there breathes a hope, a faith in the ultimate justice and broth-

To-day, however, when the word “folk” has become a battle- erhood of Man.” cry, we find an American musician, Mr. H. T. Burleigh, discov- English singers are not likely to fall into the snare of a too ering that the plantationsongs known as “spirituals,” are “prac- _ realistic rendering of these songs, and if they will bear in mind tically the only music in America which meets the scientific their origin, they will find among Mr. Burleigh’s arrangements definition of folk song. They were never ‘composed,’ butsprang = some valuable additions to their repertory of folk songs. One or into life ready made, from the white heat of religious fervor _ two, in which the phraseology is not likely to raise a smile, such during some protracted meeting in camp or church, asthe simple, | as By an’ by and Swing low, Sweet Chariot, might well be added

ecstatic utterance of wholly untutored minds.” to a singer’s list of sacred songs. Mr. Burleigh has “arranged” a dozen or so of these spiritu- My Lord, what a mornin’ reaches the highest level of als, these simple, intense outpourings of the religiously-moved —_ any of the collection, with its subdued ecstasy in the opening Negro of some years ago, for solo voice with piano accompani- _lines of address, its contrasting second portion, minor in tone

ment. The piano is not perhaps the most suggestive medium for | and melismatic in treatment, and its return to the quiet first songs which came to life (did they not?) to the accompaniment _ phrases, thrilling now with an additional note. The rather farof the banjo or the concertina, if not merely to that of other fetched chords of the accompaniment on the last page, though voices. But Mr. Burleigh’s piano parts are on the whole extremely probably not what a “Sambo” or a “Mammy” could have exjudicious, never overshadowing the voice, nor introducing any- _— ecuted ex tempore, have a squeezy lusciousness which is not at

thing alien to the atmosphere. Here and there atouch of banjo _all foreign to the feeling. Oh Peter, go ring-a dem bells is anidiom, as in Go down, Moses, and My Lord, whata Mornin’,is _ other of the melodies with a fairly wide range, and the tinkling

brought in with excellent effect. bells of the accompaniment are prettily done. The dignified and As one would expect with songs formed spontaneously and = sombre Go down, Moses (“Let My people go”) will be familiar to under deep emotion, the melodies are very brief, andthe rhythms —_all who know anything of Plantation Melodies, likewise Novery simple and repetitions of phrase and of harmonic shading — body knows de trouble I’ve seen. On a plane apart is the curiare very prevalent; but the extreme simplicity of the phraseol- ously-touching melody of Weepin’ Mary. Had the arranger harogy and the primitive sweetness of the musical utterance com- —s monized the time with the notes of its own mode, the Dorian, he

bine to make a very touching piece of untutored art. As Mr. would have made a much more distinguished and also more correct accompaniment.

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2 1920 & June 12 ¢ Literary Digest : CLASSICAL VS. JAZZICAL MUSIC The Jazz is making inroads among our orchestra players in such “In the early days of the one-step and its fellows a considera way as torob us of talented musicians for the future. What we = able amount of beauty was recognizable in the compositions sacrifice to the dance mania is perhaps not appreciated, butone — brought forward by Mr. Europe and other Afro-American as of our oldest music critics, Mr. H. E. Krehbiel, sounds a warn- __—~well as white composers. There were admirable examples of ing. In speaking of the drain made upon the symphony orches- the Argentine Tango, which had been brought from South tras for players of jazz music, he points to a condition of pro- § America, fascinating melodies of a Spanish type superimposed gressive impoverishment. Orchestras, as he shows, are composed __ on the rhythm of the Habanera. Originally the Tango was a lasof four departments or choirs: the strings, wood-winds, brass- _civious dance, but it had been made into a thing of grace and winds, and percussion. “In not one of these classes is there a beauty. It was too difficult, however, for dancers who could not sufficient number of players in New York to supply the organi- = even master the waltz and who found pleasure in tight embraces zations which are spoken of as permanent,” he declares, while, —_ and interlocking knees. There has been further descent to the in referring to the wood and brass winds, he makes amore star- — shameless ‘shimmy,’ and those who know whence that exhibitling statement. “In these two choirs it is no exaggeration to say tion of licentiousness came will not be surprised when it is folthat there are not enough players entitled to be called artist— lowed by its companion in lewdness soon to emanate from the that is, musicians who are artistically efficient—in the United § Negro brothels of the South. That, however, does not concern States to meet the need which the multiplication of orchestras —_us, except as it will tend still further to debauch music and lower has created in New York City.” This, as shown in the New York __ the standard of our symphony orchestras.”

Tribune, is the state of affairs: If the losses here entailed did no more than reduce the num-

“The demand for trombone-players, for what are called ‘jazz’ ber of our professedly high-class orchestral concerts occurring bands, has not only made it difficult to keep them insymphony —_ between November and May, support might be found for a state orchestras, but it is destroying their artistic efficiency. The prin- —_ so bereft. But Mr. Krehbiel contends that quality goes while the

cipal characteristic of ‘jazz’ music is the vulgar sliding from numbers remain. He presents a formidable comparison to entone to tone. To produce this effect, resort must be had to un- force the poverty of our plethoric state. Last season New York natural contortions of the lips and forcing of the breath. This —_ heard more music of the symphonic type, he points out, than all plays havoc with the embouchure of the musician, and, if per- the capitals of Europe combined. “More New- Yorkers heard sisted in, inevitably unfits him for artistic music. We must not __ this music than were in attendance at the symphony or Philhargo into technicalities in an article like this; nor is itnecessary.It | monic concerts, as they are almost universally called, in Lonis enough to point out that the need of a correct and sensitive don, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Hamburg, Budapest, Cologne, embouchure is so essential that in the good orchestras of Eu- Munich, Mainheim, and all the other centers of classical music rope there are always a double set of wind-instrument players, —_ united.” All this array of musical activity argues at least a willand no oboist or horn-player, for instance, is expected to play —s ingness to spend money, yet— two days in succession, or more than two or three days a week. “Every one of these large concert organizations has ended When Schuch, director of the Royal Opera at Dresden, visited the season with a large deficit. Next season there will be a larger New York in the Conried regime he spoke with pained amaze- number of concerts and a correspondingly larger deficit all ment of the policy of the Metropolitan Company’s management _around. If the audiences have been larger than ever, why is this in compelling its musicians to play every day. What would he so? Because the expenses of concert-giving have steadily risen have thought of 150 operatic performances in 138 days? for years. Will they be less next season? No. Why not? Because “Some orchestral players have abandoned high-class music — the demands of orchestral musicians have made the meat they to play in the ‘jazz’ bands at hotels and restaurants where there feed on. This union of musicians federated with that of labor is dancing, the reason being that they can command wages as ___ generally is considering a large number of changes in its byhigh as $125 a week for such work. When the dancing mania _ laws to make the employers pay more than they are now payhas died out, as it must when the world returns to moral and _ing. Like other artisans, they are demanding more pay and less physical health, these musicians will be unfit for the higher — work. In these demands they are upheld by the action of the reaches of their art. Not only their ability but their taste also § employers, who are bidding against themselves.” will be vitiated. One need not be a moralist to see how the dance On the basis of such facts as appear here, the outlook for the music of to-day (the ‘Blues’ type especially) has kept pace in _—snext season, according to Mr. Krehbiel’s showing, is something

degeneracy with the dance itself. of a witches’ dance: 141

1920 JUNE 12 ¢ MUSICAL AMERICA “The Philharmonic Society is asking subscriptions for forty- _ nization in Detroit wants to be heard here, and it is within the four concerts of the symphonic order, the Symphony Society —_ bounds of probability at least that Cincinnati, which, because for a like number; the National Symphony Orchestra, which __ of its biennial festivals, has loomed large upon the country’s will take the place of that known as the New Symphony Or- _ musical map, may think it wise again to visit us; there will be chestra during the season just ended, has projected sixty con- —_ concerts of a special character (for children, for young people certs; the Boston Orchestra, which has successfully weathered — who have ceased to be children, but require classification; for the storm created by some of its members, who were eager to __ charities and advertising schemes more or less cloaked under throw over their allegiance to a management and ideals which _ professions of benevolence) by the permanent organizations and had given it world-wide repute, will continue its ministrations —_ also those which are tentative, but profess a local habitation in New York with ten concerts in the Borough of Manhattan and name. The number of concerts thus listed will be over two and five in the Borough of Brooklyn; we shall have five or six hundred, and to them will be added the miscellaneous concerts visits from the Philadelphia Orchestra, which New York admir- of a more popular character, given on Sundays in the Metroers and its promoters in its home city seem to think essential to politan Opera-house and the Hippodrome.” the education of the denizens of the metropolis; the new orga-

June 12 ¢ Musical America SPREADING THE GOSPEL OF NEGRO MUSIC by Cleveland G. Allen The story of Negro music is one full of challenge, andis woven _—_ South, studying the songs of the Negro. He tells how they are around adventure, daring, courage, faith, patience, hope, sor- _ collected, how in the camp meeting they arouse expressed relirow, and optimism. It represents the expressed hope ofa people _ gious fervor, and how the attitude toward this music has changed who faced desperate odds, who braved the hardships of slavery, within the last twenty years. Noted Negro musicians like Harry

and who at a period of their own life when all was dark and T. Burleigh, who many years has been soloist of St. George’s dreary, relied upon their songs to work out their destiny and P. E. Church; Nathaniel Dett, Carl Diton, J. Rosamond

carved their way to the promised land. Johnson, and the late Coleridge Taylor, all recognize the value When the Negro came to this country on a little Dutch ves- — of this music, and each of them has brought to it valuable sel, in 1619, landing at Jamestown, Va., in a strange country, contributions. the only weapon that he brought with him was his songs, and Another thing that has done much to save Negro music as with these songs he faced the long stretch of slavery, coveringa offered in these songs has been the attitude toward them of the period of 250 years, with a courage unequal in the story ofraces. | Negro leaders. These leaders have been quick to recognize the

With his songs he made known his sorrows, his hopes, his _—_ value of these songs and have kept constantly before the aspiration, his patience, and sang of the freedom to come. He _— younger generation of Negroes their sacred duty in helping to came to a country to find his way among strange people and _ save them. strange customs, but he knew by his songs he could express his Dr. W. E. B. Dubois, one of the foremost of the Negro thinkcharacter and soul, and that it would not be long before the __ ers, in his book on The Souls of Black Folks, devotes a chapter world would see this soul and accord to hima place among the —_ on “The Songs of Our Father,” in which he speaks of the socio-

races of men. logical value of this music. Dr. Robert R. Moten, the principal If the Negro did not have the gift of song, he would have lost of Tuskegee Institute, while he was at Hampton Institute, urged his place in the struggle, he would have become extinct and to __ the importance of a knowledge of these plantation songs as a cease to be of sociological value. In my lectures on the story of necessary part of the education of the students. Dr. Moten, in an this music I try to emphasize this music as best representing the —_ article contributed some time ago in The Southern Workman, major note in the Negro’s life, and how upon it he must rely for __ tells of the impression that was made upon him when he first further development in the economic, social, moral and spiritual heard these songs, and how it was at Hampton that he grew to realm. I feel that upon the young generation of Negroes depends — admire their strength and beauty. Will Marion Cooke, another the responsibility of saving this music and emphasizing the fact | Negro musician, refers to Hampton as a good center for the that it is a priceless heritage that ought to be treasured. It was this | development of this music. The late Booker T. Washington, while fact that led me to make deep research with reference to the study = at Tuskegee, drilled into the students the respect they should of Negro music, so as properly to interpret it, in order that the — have for their music. proper gage of the Negro’s hope may be seen.

Prof. John Wesley Work, a Negro educator and musician, Foster Songs Not Negro for many years a member of the faculty of Fisk University, in his book on The Folk Songs of the Afro-American, or TheAmeri- | Negro music expresses itself in Negro folk songs, and Negro can Negro, tells of his many years of research throughout the —_ folk songs are called such because they are peculiar to Negro

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JUNE 12 « MUSICAL AMERICA 1920 folks. If the numerous songs that were sung by the Negro dur- _ of the country, and if the singers could get an opportunity their ing slavery had been built upon from songs of other peoples, | fame would be carried over the country. On the day that the singthey would not have been Negro folk songs. Thatis the reason __ ers arrived, states Professor Work, everything had gone wrong at why Old Black Joe, My Kentucky Home, and Suwanee River __ the convention. Permission was asked for the singers to sing, but are not Negro folk songs, because they were written by awhite the request was waved aside, but while the convention was debatman, Steven Foster, although built around a Negro theme. This ___ing the fact as to whether or not they should be heard, they had point is one that should be borne in mind, because itis the com- _ stolen around to the gallery without anyone seeing them. mon impression that the songs of Foster are Negro music. There All of a sudden there floated over that large convention hall are many notable characteristics of these songs, amongsomeof __ the soft strains of Steal Away to Jesus. There was a commothem are their direct reference to the Scripture, and their won- _ tion, as eyes turned toward the direction of the singers. A hush

derful strength of reserve and resignation. fell over the audience as on and on the strains of that song Concerning the first, one would stop to think, why isitthata floated over the hall. _ people during slavery, who could not read, had such a remark- There was pathos, harmony, sympathy in the song, because able and accurate knowledge of the Bible. The reason for this these were trained singers, and they made that vast audience, was that the Bible was the only book that was read to the slaves, some of which represented New England culture, actually see and while this was being done a remarkable knowledge of the __ the slaves stealing away to Jesus. The singers stopped, but the book was acquired, upon which was based most of the melo- —_ convention cried “more” and then came more of the folk songs dies of the Negro. This fact is strongly recognized in suchsongs — of the American Negro, as only Fisk can sing, and from that as I Want to Be Ready to Walk in Jerusalem Just Like John,Go — moment to the present time no one doubted the place these songs Down, Moses, Roll, Jordan, Roll, and My Lord Delivered Daniel. had in American life. Prof. George White, a Northern White Concerning their strength of reserve and resignation, out of |= man, who had gone down to teach in the South, and himself

the 500 or more of these songs that have been collected, not one a musician, had faith in this music, and when he saw this of them show resentment or breathes revenge. This is particu- music receiving such a reception at its initial bow, his faith larly characteristic of the Negro race. Speaking of this trait of | redoubled. Negro music, Professor Work says: “Another characteristic of Fortunately for the Fisk Singers, Henry Ward Beecher, the the Negro song is, as has been stated before, that ithas no ex- —_—s noted preacher, then a pastor in Brooklyn, was visiting that conpression of hatred or revenge. If these songs taught no other —_ vention and after he had heard the jubilee singers, he rose in the truth save this, they would be invaluable. That arace whichhad — midst of the convention and invited them to come to his church in suffered and toiled as the Negro had, could find no expression —_ Brooklyn. The singers started for the North with fear and trembling

for bitterness and hatred, yes, could positively love is strong because on whatever the New York critics said would depend the evidence that it possesses a clear comprehension of the great —_ future of the songs. But the singers came and came with faith force in life, and that it must have had experience inthe funda- _in their music. Their coming had been widely heralded and mentals of Christianity. One shriek of hate would jar all of the = a capacity audience greeted their first appearance in this hymns of heaven.” The character, therefore, of the Negrois best section.

expressed in music. Prof. White wanted to know what the New York newspapers had to say about the singers the next day, and when he looked

The Fisk Singers for the comment, instead of ridicule, there was praise, herald-

ing the singers as a splendidly trained group of singers, who But it is in the music as expressed in the Negro folk songs that — were bringing to America its own original music. They were this character is best shown. Although these songs were sung __ praised for their fine interpretation, their technique, and for their for many generations on the plantations throughout the South = deportment as well. The colored singers had won, and the suc-

their charm, beauty and strength of character was not recog- __ cess of their tour was assured. , nized until 1871, when Fisk University, at Nashville, Tennes-

see, one of the first institutions for the higher education of the Touring Europe

Negro, sent out a consecrated group of young colored men and

women properly to introduce these songs and leave it to the After touring throughout America, the Fisk Singers traveled world to place its proper value upon them. It was an epoch- _ throughout England and Europe, touching the heart of peasant making tour of these Fisk Singers, because they were going on _—_and nobility with these American melodies. They sang before

a tour the outcome of which they knew not. It was the first | King and Queen and brought to them in this music the story of time that a band of trained singers were going out to introduce __ the struggles of the American Negro. While the singers were in to the public the music of their race, and they were willing tolet | England, Dwight Moody was holding religious services in Lon-

the American public be the judge. don, and he frequently used them whenever he could to aid him So on Oct. 6, 1871, under the direction of Prof. George White, _in his services. the Fisk Singers began their tour. Their first stop was in Oberlin, Prof. Work vividly describes the tour of the singers in these Ohio, where the Councils of Congregational Churches were in —_ words: “From 1871 to 1878 that company enjoyed one consession. The leaders of the church were there from every section tinuous ovation. New England crowded her largest buildings

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1920 , JUNE 19 ¢ MUSICAL AMERICA and paid liberally to hear them sing. Mr. White began to send —_—-ward this music has changed and the country no longer looks back to Professor Spence hundreds of dollars to add to that one, upon it as something to be despised, but on the other hand,

lonely dollar to keep from having an empty treasury.” something to be revered. Prof. Work tells how Queen Victoria wept before the songs Prominent white musicians have joined in paying tribute to of this band of singers from the south, and the reception they | Negro music, as expressed in these melodies, and some idea of received from Lord Shaftesbury and other eminent men and _ how they are regarded in America may be seen from the recepwomen of England. They traveled with equal success in Ger- _ tion they get from an American audience when they are offered many and France. For eight years these singers toured the world, by white musicians. Mme. Schumann-Heink always includes touching the heart and consciences of people, as it never was __ in her repertoire several of the colored folk songs which retouched before, until when they returned to Fisk University, | ceive the same reception as other numbers on the program. The they laid at the doors of their Alma Mater $150,000, which —_ annual recital of Kitty Cheatham, in which the entire program went toward the erection of Jubilee Hall, a building that —_is made up of Negro music, is looked forward to with delight stands on the campus of that university, dedicated to Negro __ by music lovers of this city.

music. Walter Damrosch, one of the foremost authorities on music Jubilee Hall stands on the place where once aslave penstood, in America, in an article contributed to The Southern Workman

and has inspired generations of students who have passed _ says the following of Negro music: “But if proof positive of a through that institution. That a company of singers could raise soul in the Negro people should be demanded, it can be given, such an amount of money argues for the beauty and charm, as _for they have brought over from Africa and developed in this well as the value, of Negro music. The tour of the original sing- | country, even under all the unfavorable conditions of slavery, a ers was followed by other groups of young men and women, _ music so wonderful, so beautiful, and yet so strange, that like until even to-day the Fisk singers still travel the country sing- — the Gypsy music of Hungary, it is at once the admiration and

ing the songs of the American Negro. despair of educated musicians of our race.” Henry E. Krebiel of Fisk University stands as the foremost exponent of this music, the New York Tribune has given the results of his study of this and was the first to introduce it to America. Other institutions like | subject in a remarkable book on The Folk Songs of the AmeriHampton and Tuskegee Institutes, Atlanta University, the Calhoun — can Negro. It is a fair and impartial tribute to the music of the Institute and others throughout the South are teaching the students § Negro and shows the fairness of the American people in allowthe beauty and value of this music. Hampton Institute stands next —_—ing to the Negro a just contribution to American art.

to Fisk University in the preservation of this music. Wherever this music is heard, one should think of the days Prof. Work gives as the reason for this, that the State of Vir- _ in the Negro’s life when he relied upon these songs solely for ginia is rich in folk lore appreciation, and that the colored people = comfort and strength, and how they were the only vehicle upon of that State take particular pride in saving this music. The Hamp- —_— which he could rely to carry his message to a hostile world. It is ton singers have done much to carry the power of this music to —_ encouraging to see the attitude that is being taken toward this the world. Dr. Robert R. Moten, the principal of Tuskegee, who —_— music, and I believe that through them many of the problems

for twenty-five years was the Commandant at Hampton Insti- could be adjusted. This music is bound to become more the tute, did much to get before the students of that institute the | concern of the public, as the community song, and the attempt correct attitude toward these songs. Even in the public schools _ to introduce music to every community is being stressed. Perof the South the pupils are taught to love these songs. This __ haps the best testimonial to this music is, that after three hunchange, as it affects the public schools, has come about within _ dred years, it still lives, gaining more in favor, and earning the the past decade, and was not when I was attending the public |§ commendation and admiration of all classes, and universally schools in South Carolina. The whole attitude, therefore, to- | acclaimed as the original native American music.

June 19 ¢ Musical America THE MARCHE FUNEBRE OF “JAZZ” by Harcourt Farmer Its birth was inevitable—and so is its death. Evoked out of sheer Balfour was undergoing one of his periodical phases of unsensationalism, ramified by an ill-placed enthusiasm on the part of popularity, the crowd fashioned the phrase “Balfour Must Go,” the unmusical, commercially exploited to the nth degree—Jazz — which was rapidly abbreviated, as is the way with crowds, into had its day, and it was a glorious one. But every fad has its day, the symbol, “B.M.G.” It would not be out of place to say that and “Jazz music” is no exception to the rule. It would be difficult to every musician in the United States should to-day make due find to-day many “Welcomes” on musical door-mats for Jazz, the entry in his diary of the symbol, “J.M.G.,” for not only does Jazz

simple reason being that the nation is tired of it. deserve to go—it is going. When a nation tires of anything, whatever it is, that thing is If we recall that the persons immediately interested in the bound to go. Over in England, some years ago, when Arthur _ survival of Jazz unmusic are the sellers of it, we are spared a 144

JUNE 19 «© MUSICAL AMERICA 1920 deal of conjecture as to the reason of its continued existence —_ term) Jazz, and they played it for all there was in it. And, at the

even so far as this. But Jazz, like cheese and Fords, has to be _last analysis, there wasn’t very much in it. pushed, else would there be no gorgeous dividends to split up. “The first offering was a delectable item dealing with ‘Blues’ So the musical convulsions of a few harmonic freaks have —_ whatever that means. If it implies that hearing it gives one the been thrust upon the long suffering public until they accepted _ blues, there are thousands who’ ll hurriedly agree. This number Jazz for the identical reason they accept any nationally adver- _ they tore from the vitals of the piano and the violin and the tised product—they were forced to feel that they wanted Jazz— —_ trombone and what not—embellishing it with hair-raising runs,

and they got it. spine-chilling slides and general musical indecency. After the The blatant appeal of the stuff, the exaggerated minor ef- _ third number we left the theater.” fects, the unmitigated noise, the purple patches of this har- At the time we thought it a thousand pities that such able-

mony—all these elements contributed hugely to the selling suc- | bodied young men shouldn’t make a more decent living at some

cess of Jazz scores. The music stores sold copies by the _healthier trade than musical gymnastics. But, perhaps, they know carload—and if there is aspecial musical Gehennareserved for — their own business. Judging from the way they played, they such folk, may they roast therein forever! The records carried — didn’t. the Jazz legend, likewise the player-piano roll, till Mr. Man-in- Jazz has had its day. It has pounded and banged and prodded the-Street admitted Jazz in all its obviousness and crudity, to our musical senses for many moons now. It’s high time we had the bosom of his inmost family. One is inclined to think he did. some fresh novelty. And we will.

it because Jazz is so horribly obvious. For that’s one of the delightful aspects of the American pubThe writer of this happened to be in a vaudeville house —_lic—they will take to novelties, wherein lies their great and childin one of our largest cities recently, and a Jazz visitation — like enthusiasm. Others, not of the immediate public, teachers, being on the program, he thought he would try to sititout— = musicians, critics, and the like, will possibly deprecate this this being the sixty-first Jazz injection he has suffered. Well, | tendency to rush to the very newest in music (and in everypresently, after the buxom retailer of marital woeshad given __ thing else). Still, it is an indubitable evidence of liveliness place to the virtuosi on the xylophone; and after the virtuosi —_ on the part of the people—and that’s something devoutly to

on the x. had given place to the star of the bill—an ancient be wished. damsel who gave nine songs and three encores, without any

undue provocation on anybody’s part—the Jazz fiends Not American appeared. The present writer’s training in the profession of writinghas | The public snapped up ragtime—because there was nothing disciplined him to a certain restraint when dealing with unusual _ better in view. They “fell for” (the popular phrase is inevitable) lunacy on the stage, or the concert platform—but he is forced this business of Jazz because there was nothing better in sight. to confess that if he had written what jumped up in his mind, _Is there not, here and there, a teacher, a musician, a director, after the first offering of the Jazz gentlemen, no editor, who —_ aStute enough to write a real folk-song—something eminently possessed any feelings of delicacy for his readers, would have — and essentially American? Jazz isn’t American; it isn’t even

printed his remarks. music. Ragtime came a little nearer the mark, but not near

However, for the sake of the musical history of America— | enough for most of us. Where, then, is the man who can give us and chiefly for the sake of the history of Musical America—he | something which will be at once alert and authentic, American refrained from writing what he could have written, but he did and attractive, lively and living?

produce this: For, there is little doubt, Jazz is dying. His funeral will be attended by those who have made most money on him. Repu-

Listening to the “Experts” table musicians never recognized him. But those responsible

for his birth and his feverish career, will shortly be looking for “This thing they call Jazz is positively one of the most awful __his successor in the selling field, if they haven’t already done and most inexcusable of musical sins ever committed against — so. Will the next be worse than Jazz? the face of the people. Tonight, in a prominent vaudeville house, Coldly and analytically speaking, there is no possible logiI saw and heard (couldn’t help hearing) five young men who _ cal reason for Jazz’s existence; but there he is, and here he must proclaimed themselves Jazz experts. They appeared, clothedin _ linger for a while until the very ignoramuses who play him feel white, and proceeded to play, so to speak, on various instru- | some sense of boredom, then he’ll be cast out. And none too

ments—piano, violin, trombone, and what not, from which _ soon. For a more disreputable, savage, tiresome, hideous, unoffending instruments they called forth such dismal and dis- | screaming piece of musical tomfoolery has never been thrust cordant wailings, such tomcattish howlings, such immoral dis- _ on the public before the red days of Jazz. sonances as to render them instantly liable to thirty years in jail It may be deemed frightful heresy to say this, but it must be

for making public nuisances of themselves. said—and in all sincerity. The writer believes that the Jazz black“They didn’t play ragtime—which might have been excus- _—_ smiths got their unholy inspiration from old Franz Liszt’s Hunable on racial grounds; no, they played (to employ acourteous —_ garian Rhapsodies, for what are they but the forerunners of po-

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1920 JULY 31 ¢ LIFE, LETTERS, AND THE ARTS lite Jazz? This may raise a hornet’s nest about these journalistic —_ sicians. They know that Jazz is simply a nine-day wonder; the ears. But what matter? The very best thing one Jazz composer —_ authentic musician comes back to old Ludwig in the end—even did was to impudently lift an entire section from something of __ if he does take a dip into the new water of Jazz.

Liszt’s, transpose it, and pass it off to us as original Jazz. He Any music palpably built upon the principle of unavoided

wasn’t the only one. Hence this theory. noise, and nothing more, isn’t music at all, but sheer disturBe that as it may, Liszt (despite his occasional vulgarisms of | bance. Hence the declining popularity of Jazz. For, although tone) will live; the Jazzians will not. Relying, as they do, upon the general public may be, and frequently is, ignorant of musisheer aural blasphemy, their novelty must die—has, indeed, cal values, yet there is in every man and woman an inherent

died—and so Jazz becomes mere musical antidote. sense of rhythm, which makes in the end for full musical satisPounding a drum, blaring through a tinny trumpet, scratchinga faction—rather than fool musical delusion. mediocre violin, all accompanied by incoherent human cries, bleats, So it goes. Through the fantastic vicissitudes of ragtime and yells, screams—this isn’t music. Only a fool could call it such. fox-trots and “Blues” and Jazz—the spirit of American Music When the Jazz mechanics evolved the crude idea of building |= moves, surely, winningly, sincerely and inevitably toward the Jazz tunes, they rightly decided that the more ugly and noisy __ building of a music for the people that shall be truly American,

their stuff was the more it would sell. And it has sold. More _and truly music, and nothing else. Jazz sold last month than Beethoven. But that doesn’t worry In the meantime, we bid a cheerful au revoir to our old friend, Ludwig, nor does it worry the educationalists and the real mu- = Mr. Jazz. Play the Marche Funebre, please—and don’t jazz it.

July 31 ¢ Life, Letters, and the Arts JAZZ The other night I happened to be a guest at a pleasant suburban —- War's men, who rescue Mr. Dogood from the fatal pot, and parry house just across the street from a pleasant suburban church. It _ the noxious anthropophagi back to their jungles. It is with a start

was one of your modern churches, a little Gothic affair of gray that I open my eyes on a hall full of dancers. The forest vision is stone with an adjoining parish hall built of stucco. There must | Much more real, and, in some subtle way, more refined.

be thousands of just such churches and parish houses scattered Nor shall my quarrel be with the church for associating over these states. One associates them with the guardianship of itself with such a degradation of art. The church is a hardwhat honor and decency there is left in these extraordinary times. | Pressed institution these days; foes of all kinds swarm over Well, just as we had risen from dinner, just as the last of the | her battlements, and she must make some concessions to evening glow was fading, there burst from the lighted windows __ the spirit of the times, barbarian though they be. Yet in penof the parish hall a sound much more indicative of Hell than of | ance for her sin, she ought in fairness to have the noblest Heaven. Screams, moans, crashes, blows, cowbells, andtinpans music for her ritual, and every orgy of jazz music which she fought desperately with each other, something like a tugboat | permits might well be expiated by a special organ recital. In siren cried ghastly at the night, and a booming bass drum car- __ these days, the church is almost the only institution left which ried one’s mind to the kraals of Africa. “A social evening for recalls the fact that there is such a thing as the human spirit the young folk,” said someone indulgently, “it helps tokeep the to be cared for. In other ages, that spirit was nourished by

young people in the church.” great architecture and noble language and music. Why should Now I am not going to raise my hands in pious horror at jazz we depart from that ideal to-day? music. Such music is the order of this barbarian day, and the There is no creation more eloquent of civilization than the minority can do little but endure. I cannot say that I admire it | Writing and enjoying of great music. And we are pitifully withmyself, for the truth is that my soul loathes it, yet when I find Out it to-day. For one thing a good band concert costs so enormyself in the center of a jazz corroboree, I listen with no bored, | mously to give that such a performance is almost out of the snobbish insouciance, but with what I imagine to be serene tol- | question for the average, debt-burdened town. Professional eration. I can even derive imaginative satisfaction from it. Let music being thus in default, there is nothing to do but to foster me but close my eyes, and there surges up before the innereye, 4 feeling for good music in the community. In spite of all that a tropical African glade at night, the queer trees all lit from | may be adduced to the contrary, Americans are exceptionally below by the light of a leaping fire of dead, swiftly-consuming Sensitive to music; with a little encouragement, the lovers of wood, a circle of cannibal forms, a great black pot, nothanging good music would break the chains of the present vulgarisms. from a bar but with the fire built up round it, and in the back- _—_ But there is no encouragement. Jazz is at once a symptom and a ground, the Reverend Eusebius Dogood, late of the New Bedford cause. And the hullabaloo, bursting from the windows of the Missionary league. Being of a dramatic and merciful turn of parish hall, startles the quiet neighborhood. mind, I like to finish the picture in the style of the genuine old Can nothing be done to bring better music to American com-

Drury Lane school, and bring on acutter’s crew of daring man-o’- | Munities? H.B.B. 146

AUGUST ¢ CURRENT OPINION 1920 August ¢ Current Opinion JAZZ AND RAGTIME ARE THE PRELUDES TO A GREAT AMERICAN MUSIC A transformation of musical opportunity in America is going the Danube, and at the same time seek to repudiate a growing on before our eyes in a very remarkable fashion. Within a gen- —_— musical art springing fresh and original from our native soil? eration the idea of an American’s producing works that would be “Young men and women—you who would become the symaccepted for performance at the Metropolitan Opera House or by _ phonic writers of tomorrow—let us suppose that you were born in the Chicago Opera Company would have been ridiculed, yet of | Budapest instead of Keokuk, San Diego, Tampa, Bangor or Selate several have been most successfully performed, and their _attle. Being born in Budapest, you would naturally be proud of success holds the promise of an original native American music —_ being a Hungarian. Would you regard the music of the gypsies that shall rank with that of any other country. Critics are not lack- with scorn just because they strolled through the streets in rags and ing whose faith in American composers is unbounded. Why? _ dirt? Would you say that the music of the gypsies is fit only for the Because, as one of the critics, Rupert Hughes, author, playwright people with low and vulgar taste? If you did, you would never and musical lexicographer, tersely expresses it, “because we shall | become a Brahms or a Liszt. Here we have in America something combine with Yankee sense our pioneer love of freedom.” This, _ really vital in music. It is right before you, yet you pass it by in he goes on to say in The Etude, does not mean that we shall make _lofty scorn. This is not a new stand with me. It has been my conten-

incessant attempts to see how freakish music can be made 4la _ tion for years that in ragtime the American will find his most disSchoenberg, Ornstein et Cie, but “we shall make music do our _tinctive rhythms—his most characteristic music.”

bidding and make it express real messages from real emotions This champion of the jazz, which 1s defined as ragtime raised and convictions.” In other words, we are to be Americans inmu- _ to the Nth power, is of the opinion that the change in the popusic, as in loyalty and patriotism, not Americans trying tobe mu- _ lar American attitude toward music, in regarding it as a daily

sical echoes of Germans or Frenchmen. Further: spiritual need rather than a mere pastime, has been brought about “We shall be conventional only when it suits us to be conven- _— paradoxically by the astonishing material success of not a few tional. The whole idea of saying to the student of Harman, for § contemporary musicians. Their box-office triumphs have uninstance, ‘You must not do this under any circumstances!’ and = doubtedly led many so-called captains of industry to realize replying to the student’s ‘Well, Beethoven did it!’ with “Yes, the that “perhaps there is something in music after all.”

giant Beethoven could do it, but you cannot’—this idea will go Possibly, the writer concludes, one of the reasons why out of teaching practice. Suppose you are in arace,andsomeone —__ music has earned the reputation for being a poorly paid pro-

says, ‘The champion can go without shackles on his ankles, but fession (despite an occasional Paderewski, Caruso or you are too young and weak not to wear them,’ would not thisbe | McCormack) is that, for the most part, the thousands of very discouraging to you? For goodness’ sake, if Beethoven, Bach, —_ teachers of music scattered over the country who do not re-

Brahms or Wagner have done a thing well and proven that itcan = ceive nearly so much for their services as they should are be done, why shouldn’t any student use the same principle? Inno —_— people of education and entitled to social standing and rec-

other art than music are there prohibitory text books which say, — ognition in their communities. If they did not have this soYou shall not put this color beside this one. Mind you, am not cial standing by common consent, and only a few stars were talking about the grammar of the art, for every art has acertain observed twinkling, the great fortunes earned by men in the grammatical perspective. If one sets out to write asonnethe must — profession would be more conspicuous. As it is: know the laws of the sonnet; but there should be no one to tell “The average father knows that if the son works as hard in him that if he does not want to write a sonnet he will have to write = music as he might in business, and if he elects to do the profitable

one anyhow. America, the land of liberty, will one day findanew _as well as the artistic things, he stands a chance at becoming a freedom in music, and then we shall see a new and significant art_ |= man with an income which few financiers would despise. If he is

which will contribute one more impetus to American ideals.” a composer of successful compositions and receives adequate As a matter of fact, we are told, American music at this mo- —_ royalties upon the mechanical rights of his works his annual inment is sweeping the world and its progress is due not to any = come under very favorable circumstances need not drop below artificial characteristic but to certain elemental melodic and __ the five figures of the rich man of fiction. Indeed, there have been rhythmic features which have given musical vitality to all who —_ cases of musicians whose incomes have not only run into the listen to them. John Philip Sousa, the march king, is recorded — hundred thousands, but who have been compelled to make inas a pioneer in finding foreign appreciation for native Ameri- —_ come tax returns large enough to irritate a real Croesus! But, you can music. Later has come the jazz which during and since the __ say, there are only a few Carusos, McCormacks and Paderewskis. war has taken Europe by storm. Challenging those of our native —_—‘ True, but in proportion to the size of every industry there are only

musicians who profess to scorn the Jazz as fit only for the mu- a very few men with enormous incomes equal to these men. There sical waste basket, Major Hughes finds behind it “something —_ are men like Irving Berlin and George M. Cohan, whose incomes very wonderful which the composer with ears made in America — from popular successes have been enormous. As in everything will build into the master-music of tomorrow.” Why applaud else, we must have music to suit the oatmeal taste as well as the the Czardas, he asks pertinently or the dances from the Volgaor — Paté de foie gras appetite.”

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1920 AUGUST ¢ MUSICIAN August ¢ Musician A HOPEFUL VIEW OF THE RAGTIME ROLL by W. L. Hubbard The room was a small one. Or at least it seemed so, for the grand It had ever been a source of wonderment to me as to just piano and two uprights left little free space in it. The five of | howrecord rolls were made, for the notes that came forth from us assembled there were not crowded, however, for two of | them could never have been compassed by any one set of ten the five were seated, one at the grand and the other atone of _ fingers. Straight and Bargy showed me how it was done. They the uprights, while the remaining three of us perched near by __ play the record in four hand fashion, but so cunningly is the

and listened. arrangement devised that the notes played by the two hands The two at the pianos smiled slightly now and again, and _ of one are never duplicated by those played by the other. One occasionally they flung a remark or two at each other, aremark — of the men plays melody and bass on one piano, the other puts not always wholly complimentary, and yet ever good natured —_—in ornamentation and elaboration on the second, but the melody

and always taken in the comrade spirit in which it was sent. _is usually played in the higher octaves of one piano, with the And when they paused between numbers or “stunts,” they spoke = accompaniment well down in the lower, while the ornamental commendation of each other in that half bantering, half depre- —_— parts are put in by the second player, using only the middle cating way which the American uses when he feels most genu- _ part of his instrument. Of course, the processes vary constantly, inely and estimates most highly The three who listened con- _ but there is ever this skillful avoiding of playing simultaneously

sisted of one who heard smilingly and wore on his face a certain on the same sections of the two keyboards. The result is a look of ownership. He knew the pianists well; their work was __ using of the whole keyboard range, yet seemingly accomhis daily handling, for he managed the department where the __ plished and compassed by a single pair of hands. products of their skill were sold. The second listener was no To watch them do it is like watching two deft jugglers whirl, inexperienced auditor. He had done similar work himself and __ toss, and keep in the air some fragile, shining objects. Only had created along the musical lines there being pursued. But _ that in this instance these objects are tonal bubbles which, if his eyes gleamed with appreciation of what the two players were they touch each other, would burst and crash into nothingaccomplishing, for he heard with the ears of the fellow worker ness. The strange new harmonies flash and glitter and ting, who knows. The third was a greenhorn who had strayed into __ but only for the instant. The player of good rag does not cona music world comparatively unknown to him, for his busi- _ fine himself by these modern chords. He loves the familiar ness had taken him into other tonal fields. But he heard, mar- _— and the standard, but with a skill that many a “great” comveled, felt guiltily and frankly ignorant, and rejoiced in a _ poser might well copy, he sweeps into these ultra harmonic

new experience. effects only to swing back quickly into the well known and

Paul Reese had just played and sung his Pickaninny’s Slum- _ thoroughly established, thus intensifying the effect of the new ber Song, which is making its way rapidly into popular favor, —_ and the restfulness of the old.

and “Charlie” Straight and Roy Bargy gradually “got to work.” And listening to this master playing of ragtime music, the These two names may not mean anything to many of our readers, thought came that by neglecting the studying of this departbut to the lover of popular music, as it is made known to the — ment of our music life and its processes and activities the creworld through record and player roll, the names areas household _ator of our more serious forms of music possibly is overlook-

words, and have place among the biggest and best. ing something that could be of distinct value and help to him. These two men sat at the pianos, and for an hour played § Say what we may, the fact remains that the only music which one popular success after another in the way in which these _is typically American is our so-called ragtime and jazz. compositions are played in order to record them on the auto- Much of this output is now banal, crude, and hopelessly matic roll. Shades of Godowsky and Hofmann. It is doubtful = cheap, but down under all the mass of commonness and worthif these two master pianists themselves could do what Straight —_lessness that the output in its entirety represents, there are and Bargy did during that hour. They surely couldn’t without |= worthwhile elements which it is believed the coming Ameria goodly amount of hard work and long time practice. Both = can composer will discover and utilize. The melodies of the the youngsters are gifted with a technic that fears nothing, more extreme example of rag are often as truly and accurately and with a musical keenness that acknowledges no obstacle. the rhythmic and intervallic out-growth of the words of the During that hour of glorified rag and jazz I heard harmo- _ text, as are those of a Strauss, a Debussy, or a Rachmaninoff. nies that Debussy, Ornstein, Scriabin, and all moderns have — And the student of melodic creation could find material of used for their most extreme and daring effects, and they were __ profit in examination and analyzation of them, as well as in used here not in mere hit or miss fashion, but with real musi- _ the skill with which this melodic line is ever kept prominent cal intent and for actual musical purpose. There were rhythms __ in the composition, no matter what the harmonic or accompathat would puzzle the most gifted theorist to analyze and clas- nying foundation and ornamentation may be. The employment sify, and yet they were made to skip along in most captivating of daring harmonies and their skillful speedy resolution into the

and seemingly natural manner. simpler ones will also supply helpful suggestion to the man who 148

DECEMBER *¢ MELODY 1920 is patient enough to study them and their use inragtime. And can but result in his putting into his music the spirit which ts the rhythmic variety and shift, which is the very spiritof good |= American. For itis the spirit which is American that has made rag, is a field so rich in possibilities, already so fardeveloped for us our ragtime music, and keeps it so vitally active. And and so vitally essential to the discovering of the musical utter- | when the man comes who, taking that spirit, can glorify it, ance that is to be typically American, that the future creator of — ennoble it, and beautify it through his genius, that man will be

the “big American music” cannot afford to overlook it. the first real American composer, and his music will be the There is no reason whatever why all the resources of rag- _first true American art music the world has received. (“I take time and of jazz should not be utilized in symphony, in sym- — my good from wherever I find it” is an axiom for the progresphonic poem, in overture, in rhapsody, in opera, and in art __ sive thinker. Thousands of player pianos are making homes song. The composer gifted with fantasy and real creative pow- ring with popular music rolls, as described above. The good is ers will find in these commoner materials suggestions andhelps _—_in them. By the clear-seeing teacher they can be put on the which will fire his imagination, quicken his inspiration, and _ profit side of musical culture. Editor)

December ¢ Melody JAZZ MUSIC AND THE MODERN DANCE The attitude representative of that class of musicians whichis _ enclosures are reflecting less and less the ridiculous movements the “nerves and sinews” of the profession towards “jazz” ques- _ of dancers inspired by slow, barbarous music. Public dance halls tion was firmly and broadly expressed by Benton T. Bott, presi- are far cleaner, if we are to believe the authorities. And all of dent of the American National Association, Masters of Danc- __ this is not only true of New York, but of the country at large. ing, who was recently in New York to attend the thirty-seventh “Dancing is an essential. What would tens of thousands of annual convention of that association, at the Hotel Astor. people do nightly in New York if they were not permitted to go “We do not recognize the term ‘jazz,’ whichis purely acoined = somewhere, meet socially and dance? If the places where these word,” Mr. Bott told the Tribune. “We do, however, recognize —_ people meet are decent there can be no finer, more healthful or syncopation, and we have nothing against certain forms of syn- enjoyable recreation anywhere. copated music. It can be played brilliantly if played right, and “Clean dancing is an efficient form of exercise, amusement then again it can be played in another form so sensuous and evil and recreation for both sexes. It develops muscle co-ordination that it harks clear back to the wild and irresponsible barbarism which results in grace of movement. Girls run, roll hoops and of the dark ages. We have tried to teach and preach moderation. skip the rope during their more youthful years, but later their Civilization has begun to revolt against the wrong kind of syn- play becomes more sedentary and should be supplemented by copation, this so-called ‘jazz,’ which during the more unre- __ class exercises and games. Dancing is one of these. Dancing is strained period of the war swept the country with a crop of _ likewise a mind quickener. By fixing the attention, bringing to immodesty in both song and dance in its wake. It first appeared __ bear the force of will on the complicated actions of the body, it on the stage, and eventually it audaciously entered the public | educates the mental faculties. This is especially true of esthetic

dance hall and private ballroom alike. dancing, during the performance of which the muscles of the “There is a decided upward trend in music now, as com- arms and trunk are used, as well as those of the legs. pared with a year ago. New York, a leader in entertainment whose “Dancing is older than Christianity. It will live so long as example is followed everywhere, is setting a cleaner pace. Com- there is music. It is our struggle to keep this form of amusement pare New York’s Roof Gardens of some of the leading hotels, clean and moral, and we feel that the Methodist Church can do compare the theatres, the moving picture palaces and even the —_ more for humanity by helping us than by opposing dancing in dance halls now with a year ago. Twelve months ago the ‘jazz’ general. It is only the older and more conservative Methodists craze was everywhere. It was reflected from the stage and the ~— who now oppose dancing. Younger Methodists favor it. dance floor and in a wave of ribald, suggestive songs written “The American ‘jazz’ craze has been like a popular celebra-

and distributed to every corner of the land. : tion—for a day or two all is enthusiasm, flags and speeches. “Today we find ‘jazz’ dying a natural death. This form of | Soon it wanes and dies its natural death. syncopation is giving way in motion picture houses to pipe or- “ ‘Jazz’ is now dying that natural death, and European nagans and great orchestras playing real and beautiful music. Itis _ tions which so quickly adopted the American craze will see its to be heard less in all the theatres. The roof garden dancing |§ American demise spread across the seas. ‘Jazz’ has had its day.”

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1921 & January 11 ¢ The New York Times VOLIVA BANS JAZZ RECORDS

Chicago, Jan. 10 summarily confiscated and destroyed as unholy and disagreeBy an edict promulgated today by Wilbur Glenn Voliva, over- ably noisy. The burning of phonograph “jazz” records is the seer and virtual ruler of Zion City, Ill., all phonograph disks chief item in a new program put under way today for the future which record music of the variety known as “jazz” are to be _— Salvation of Zion. [The remainder of the article was not relevant to jazz—KK. ]

February 5 ¢ New Statesman JAZZ MUSIC by W. J. Turner I must confess to a liking for jazz music when it is good, and it acquire “taste” by mere association with good music. It seems to was unfortunate that Sir Hugh Allen, the new head of the Royal meas unscientific and as false to truth as to think that if I develop College of Music, when making his recent onslaught onthe popular = my biceps by shadow exercises my children will inherit them. taste for “beastly tunes,” was not a little more specific in his de- | Everyonecan perhaps develop to a certain limited extent a faculty nunciation, for it is futile to declaim vaguely against all popular _ that he has already got, but I expect that even this is an erroneous music. I suspect that most of our best musicians are not very fa- _idea, and that the process of development is not under our control miliar with the songs of the theatre and the music-hall or with the —_at all. However, be that as it may, experience shows us many an waltzes, one-steps and fox-trots of the dancing clubs and restau- accomplished musician accustomed since childhood to the best rants; but they are making a great mistake if they imagine that this | music whose “taste” or judgment is no better than that of the first music is all bad or “beastly.” No one can deny that the tunes ofthe — wild baboon one might catch in the Congo. Does this seem an average musical comedy are, as a rule, without beauty or distinc- | exaggeration? I am certain it is not so. I believe that the more tion, but they are extremely academic. They are modeled ontunes _ plausible and more probable a theory or an argument is the less that have attracted in the past, and they have acertainsmoothness _likely it is to be true. The paradoxes of Mr. Chesterton are nothing and lack of character that betokens the training of the schools. to the paradoxes of reality, and one of the commonest of paraThe absence of crudeness, clumsiness or originality could not be —_ doxes is the trained musician who can discern the beastliness of more marked if their composers were pupils of the Royal College —_ the tunes he never hears—the tunes of the rag-time comedian and

or the Royal Academy of Music. One would almost imagine that the gramophone dance-record, but is completely taken in by vulSir Hugh Allen believed that an academic musical training anda _ gar and banal tunes elaborately disguised for a large orchestra. familiarity with the best music of the world’s greatest composers | Speech may have been given us to conceal our thought, but brains must inevitably give a man good taste and enable him to write —_ or technique are certainly acquired by the modern musician to good tunes! How many of Sir Hugh Allen’s students can write a conceal his spiritual beggary. The amount of nonsense that is writbeautiful tune? The Royal College of Music is lucky if it pos- ten nowadays, for example, about orchestration (I plead guilty to sesses one. But what is to be done while we are waiting for that | some of it), astonishes us in those moments when we have a little one, and is he to provide all the music-hall singers and all the —_ leisure to reflect and find ourselves to be simply repeating what revues and musical comedies with their music? The fact is that | everyone else seems to be saying. there is a large commercial demand for music, and the numerous What our academic teachers are really asking for from the comschools and colleges of music in the country have been busy fora _ posers of popular music is more skill. They are so accustomed to long time meeting that demand. There is no commercial demand _hearing poverty of thought and crudity of feeling well masked by for genius because genius cannot be supplied with the certainregu- _ the adroit manipulation of technical devices that when they come larity of the A.R.C.M. or A.R.A.M. or the morning’s milk. But —_—sup against vulgarity and “beastliness” in all its nakedness they are there is no reason why the quality of the commercial productshould _ horrified.

not be continually improved, and this is, no doubt, what Sir Hugh Composers, like men and women, can be taught good manAllen was really aiming at. This improvement is dependent upon __ ners, but nobody surely pretends that their essential nature is the existence of some faculty called “taste,” but Imust confessto thereby changed. The same variety of individual character remains being wholly skeptical as to the power of scholastic training to _— underneath; all that has been done is to push that individual charimpart “taste.” It has not been my experience thatmenor women _acter out of sight for the mutual convenience of society. However 150

MAY 11 * THE NEW REPUBLIC 1921 excellent this may be in daily life it is fatal in art. The music-hall —_ hear anything of them in after life? Would they ever know whether songs and rag-times may very well be beastly, sentimental and _ they were listening to Brahms or Beethoven except by sheer exervulgar, but in so far as they express the life of the people and not —_—cise of memory? Have they any passion for music? Have they any their drawing-room behaviour they are far more valuable and far _ blood in their veins at all? Their works seem to deny them all the less vulgar than the carefully trained, colourless insipidity of the —_ attributes of life. Better far Mr. Jack Jones’ Tipperary or the El composer produced by the Royal College or the Royal Academy —— Reliquario one-step and many a rag-time than Mr. Frank Bridge’s

of Music who has been so remorselessly dosed with Bach, Lament for the “Lusitania,” Mr. Cyril Jenkins’ Magic Cauldron or Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner and Tchaikovsky, and so combed Mr. Percy Grainger’s huge and elaborate orchestration of a penny and flat-ironed that he has no more individuality than any otherof — worth of high spirits which exhausted nearly a hundred musithe starched shirt-fronts produced by his musical laundry. What cians and nearly as many machines at Sir Henry Wood’s symdo these students feel? What do they think? Does anyone ever — phony concert last Saturday at the Queen’s Hall.

May 11 ¢ The New Republic THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF JAZZ by Ruth Pickering A friend of mine was approached the other day by the Inquiring —__ ing couples, rather than a long line of stamping hoodlums; be-

Reporter. “Is modern dancing immoral?” he was asked. Natu- __ sides it saved the furniture. The old fashioned waltz with a rally, since he seemed old and rather stiff in his joints, Iex- | dreamy unhurried rhythm, with its wide circling movement, pected him to answer “Yes.” But he did not. He said with a __ couples held at arms length from each other, with room and to professorial air: “It is necessary.” And repeated it. Whereupon __ spare for four feet apiece, came into vogue.

he began a dissertation which might be called an economic in- And now, said he, jumping rather ludicrously to his concluterpretation of dancing—while the Inquiring Reporter crept _ sions, what takes place? The life of trade moves population into quietly away in search of saner responses. I, however, listened, __ the cities, rents soar, space is cramped. Men and women must because it seemed rude to appear uninterested in the face of — and will dance, to be sure. But what chance have couples held such fluent mental excitement. I can give in substance his line — wide apart, swaying in extravagant rhythms to the old-fashioned of thought, which he bolstered up with innumerable statistics | waltz, what chance have they, for pleasure or their lives on a about ground rents and city populations. These last I cannot __ cabaret floor, nineteen by forty feet—hundreds of them together? give, however. But his general argument was rather simple, and = Off course, I saw his point. “Now, the problem of modern danc-

I am obliged to confess, clever. ing is to gain the maximum of motion in the minimum of space, In the first place, I liked his anger at being asked “Is modern —_ and what do we have?” he proceeded dramatically. “The shimmy,

dancing immoral?” He fairly thundered, “It is necessary! Moral a violent agitation of the entire body in an excessively confined or immoral, forsooth. Under our economic system,” he said, area. What kind of music do we have? The jazz—a quantity of “at could not be otherwise. Nor is jazz music anything but __ tiny beats to one short measure. All the dreaminess hustled out

necessary.” of it, syncopation to the thirty-second note.”

Because, he went on to propound, in earlier times America Music and the dance have become more and more restricted, was a huge sparsely populated country. The inhabitants lived the intensity increasing in direct ratio to the rise in rents. The on large farms. The barn was built to protect their livelihood. It | two-step occupied less latitude than the waltz; it was naturally was the source of their existence and consequently their merri- followed by the one-step. This latter did not produce the rement and pleasure. They danced in it, of course, when they cel- —_ quired motion, so the trot eventuated, the needed range being ebrated any festival. And their dance was adapted to the vast gained perpendicularly. This fell into the toddle, and that word, space it provided. What did they dance? Among other things, _as well as any, signifies the point to which the commercial age the Virginia Reel. Note the unlimited space suggested by the _has stultified the dance. But still the syncopated beat does not word “Reel.” It made no difference by what circuitous route go by without being recaptured. The stationary toe with the they migrated from place to place. They had all the height, depth = ankles waving is all, however, accommodations afford. So con-

and width they needed. Moreover, barns were chilly. Broad _scientiously, in fact, is the rhythm followed that a couple may

rhythms and much motion kept them warm. progress only half the length of the prescribed area during a Then some families grew a little richer than others. It be- single encore. The slow horizontal motion makes for safety, came impossible to invite the community into the barn. The too. And men and women are obliged to cling closely together handsome manor house marked their gentility. This gentility | in order to move at all. What, in fact, does the much discussed was preserved by a certain amount of exclusiveness. Carefully | cheek to cheek dancing result from? The ethics of it cause infiselected invitations were issued, therefore, and the parties moved _ nite worry. But its necessity is an argument inescapable. Two or into the somewhat more circumscribed though stillample bound- —__ three years ago, it was enough that the man should watch for

aries of the ball-room. Now it became easier to manage revoly- = approaching disaster in the hurricane descent of a comrade 151

1921 AUGUST ¢ LADIES’ HOME JOURNAL couple, and the lady be urged accordingly. Not so any more. It | becomes a question merely of rents. Now the confiscation of takes the watchful eye of both participants now to guard them- = economic rent by the single tax would,,,, selves from rude jostling imminent on every hand. What is to At these words I realized that I had been listening with rapt be done, save that the lady turn her face forward also? And _attention to a fatal bore, and I fled to fulfill an engagement in what then is to be done, with the allotted space for one pair the supper room of a nearby hotel for a little musical exercise already congested? Nothing, save today her cheek to his cheek —_ before dinner. Hardly had I found a table and glanced around for further crowding. And so it goes on—the heat engendered — when I saw a familiar figure on the crowded floor. My single in these overpacked rooms with no air leading inevitably again _tax friend had preceded me apparently by several minutes. He to the lower-necked gown. One moral question after the other — was toddling divinely with a decided blonde.

August ¢ Ladies’ Home Journal DOES JAZZ PUT THE SIN IN SYNCOPATION? by Anne Shaw Faulkner We have all been taught to believe that “music soothes the — from the dancing masters themselves. Realizing the evil influsavage breast,” but we have never stopped to consider that an _— ence of this type of music and dancing, the National Dancing entirely different type of music might invoke savage instincts. | Masters’ Association, at their last session, adopted this rule: We have been content to accept all kinds of music, andtoadmit “Don’t permit vulgar cheap jazz music to be played. Such mumusic in all its phases into our homes, simply because it was _ Sic almost forces dancers to use jerky half-steps, and invites music. It is true that frequently father and mother have pre- —_ immoral variations. It is useless to expect to find refined dancferred some old favorite song or dance, or some aria from op- _—ing when the music lacks all refinement for, after all, what is era, to the last “best seller’ which has found its way into the dancing but an interpretation of music?” home circle; but, after all, young people must be entertained Several of the large dance halls in the big cities are followand amused, and even if the old-fashioned parents did not en- _ ing the lead of the proprietor of one of them in Chicago, who, joy the dance music of the day, they felt it could really do no —_— when he opened his establishment a few years ago, bravely ad-

harm, because it was music. vertised in all the papers that no jazz music and no immoral Therefore, it is somewhat of a rude awakening for many of | dances would be allowed on his floor. His announcement was these parents to find that America is facing a most serious situ- met with ridicule, but his dance hall has become the most popu-

ation regarding its popular music. Welfare workers tell us that lar one in Chicago. The place is crowded every evening, and never in the history of our land have there been such immoral yet nothing except waltzes and two-steps are allowed on the conditions among our young people, and in the surveys made _ floor and absolutely no jazz music is tolerated. by many organizations regarding these conditions, the blame is That jazz is an influence for evil is also felt by a number of laid on jazz music and its evil influence on the young people of _ the biggest country clubs, which have forbidden the corset check to-day. Never before have such outrageous dances been per- _— room, the leaving of the hall between dances and the jazz ormitted in private as well as public ballrooms, and never has — chestras—three evils which have also been eliminated from there been used for the accompaniment of the dance such a —s many municipal dance halls, particularly when these have been strange combination of tone and rhythm as that produced by _ taken under the chaperone of the Women’s clubs.

the dance orchestras of to-day. Still another proof that jazz is recognized as producing an

Certainly, if this music is in any way responsible forthe con- evil effect is the fact that in almost every big industry where dition and for the immoral acts which can be traced to the influ-. | music has been instituted it has been found necessary to disence of these dances, then it is high time that the question should —_ continue jazz because of its demoralizing effect upon the work-

be raised: “Can music ever be an influence for evil?” ers. This was noticed in an unsteadiness and lack of evenness in the workmanship of the product after a period when the work-

The Rebellion men had indulged in jazz music.

Many people classify under the title of “jazz” all music in In history there have been several great periods when music — syncopated rhythm, whether it be the ragtime of the American was declared to be an evil influence, and certain restrictions | Negro or the csardas of the Slavic people. Yet there is a vast were placed upon the dance and the music which accompanied _—_ difference between syncopation and jazz. To understand the it. But all of these restrictions were made by the clergy, who _ seriousness of the jazz craze, which, emanating from America, have never been particularly enthusiastic about dancing any- _—ihas swept over the world, it is time that the American public way. To-day, however, the first great rebellion against jazz mu- — should realize what the terms ragtime and jazz mean; for the sic and such dances as the “toddle” and the “shimmy” comes — words are not synonymous, as so many people suppose.

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AUGUST ¢ LADIES’ HOME JOURNAL 1921 The Elements of Music Out of Tune weird chant, accompanied by the syncopated rhythm of the

; , i. , , voodoo invokers, has also been employed by other barbaric Jazz is not defined m the dictionary or encyclopedia. But Groves people to stimulate brutality and sensuality. That it has a demorDictionary of Music says that “ragtime” is a modem term of alizing effect upon the human brain has been demonstrated by American origin, signifying in the first instance broken rhythm many scientists. and melody, esp ecially a sort of continuous SY ncopation.” The There is always a revolutionary period of the breaking down Ency clopedia Britannica sums BP syncopation as “the rhyth- of old conventions and customs which follows after every great mic method of tying two beats of the same note into one tone m war; and this rebellion against existing conditions is to be nosuch a way as to displace the accent. Syncopa Hon, this currous ticed in all life to-day. Unrest, the desire to break the shackles rhythmic accent on the short beat, is found in its most highly of old ideas and forms are abroad. So it is no wonder that young developed forms in the music of the f olk who have been held people should have become so imbued with this spirit that they for years in political subjection. It is, therefore, an eXPres- should express it in every phase of their daily lives. The quession 1 MUSIC of the desire for that tree dom which has been tion is whether this tendency should be demonstrated in jazz— denied to its interpreter. It 1s found mn its most intense forms that expression of protest against law and order, that Bolshevik among the folk of all the Slavic countries, especially in cer- element of license striving for expression in music. tain districts of Poland and Russia, and also among the Hun- The human organism responds to musical vibrations. This

garlan ByPsies. , , fact is universally recognized. What instincts then are aroused

For the same reason it was the natural expression of the by jazz? Certainly not deeds of valor or martial courage, for all American Negroes and was used by them as the accompanl- marches and patriotic hymns are of regular rhythm and simple ment for their bizarre dances and cakewalks. Negro ragtime, it 4, armony; decidedly not contentment or serenity, for the songs must be frankly acknowledged, 18 ONE of the most important of home and the love of native land are all of the simplest melody and distinctively characteristic American expressions to be found and harmony with noticeably regular rhythm. Jazz disorganizes in our native music. Whether ragtime will be the cornerstone of all regular laws and order; it stimulates to extreme deeds, to a the American School of Music may be a subject for discussion; breaking away from all rules and conventions; it is harmful and but the fact remains that many of the greatest compositions by dangerous, and its influence is wholly bad. past and present American composers have been influenced by A number of scientific men who have been working on exragume. Like all other phase Sof syncopation, ragtime quick- periments in music-therapy with the insane, declare that while ens the pulse, it excites, it stimula tes; but it does not destroy. regular rhythms and simple tones produce a quieting effect on Wh at of Jazz? Itis hard to define jazz, because it is neither a the brain of even a violent patient, the effect of jazz on the nordefinite form hora type ot rhythm, it is rather a method em mal brain produces an atrophied condition on the brain cells of ployed by the interpreter i pl ayn’ the dance OF SON: Familiar conception, until very frequently those under the demoralizing hymn tunes can be jazzed until their original melodies are hardly influence of the persistent use of syncopation, combined with recognizable. Jazz does for harmony what the accented synco- enharmonic partial tones, are actually incapable of distinguishpation of ragtime does for rhythm. In ragtime the rhythm is ing between good and evil, between right and wrong. thrown out of joint, as it wert, thus distorting the melody; in Dancing to Mozart minuets, Strauss waltzes and Sousa twojazz exactly the same thing is done to the harmony. The me- steps certainly never led to the corset check room, which now lodic line is disjointed and disconnected by the accenting of the holds sway in hotels, clubs and dance halls. Never would one partial instead of the simple tone, and the same effect 1S PrO- of the biggest fraternities of a great college then have thought it duced on the melody and harmony which iS noticed in SYnCO- necessary to print on the cards of invitation to the “Junior Prom” pated rhythm. The combination of syncopation and the use of that “a corset check room will be provided.” Nor would the girl these enharmonic P artial tones produces a strange, weird ef- who wore corsets in those days have been dubbed “old ironsides”’

fect, whi ch has been designated "jazz. , and left a disconsolate wall-flower in a corner of the ballroom. The jazz orchestra USES only those Instrume nts which can Now boys and girls of good families brazenly frequent the lowproduce partial, enharmonic tones more readily than simple est dives in order to learn new dance steps. Now many jazz tones—such as the saxophone, the clarinet and the trombone, dances have words accompanying them which would then never which share honors with the percussion instruments that accent have been allowed to go through the mail. Such music has besyncopated rhythm. The combination of the syncopated rhythm, come an influence for evil. accentuated by the constant use of the partial tones sounding Last winter, at one of the biggest high schools in one of our off-pitch, has put syncop ation too off-key. Thus the three simple largest cities, a survey was made of the popular songs of the elements of music—thythm, melody and harmony—have been day by the music supervisor, who suggested that a community

put out of tune with each other. sing be held for one assembly each week. He requested the students to bring all the popular songs to school that a choice might

Its Effect be made of what to sing. At the end of two weeks he had in his

_ ; office over two thousand “best sellers.” He asked the student Jazz originally was the accompaniment of the voodoo dancer, body to appoint from among themselves a committee of six to stimulating the half-crazed barbarian to the vilest deeds. The choose the songs to be sung at the assembly. This committee, 153

1921 SEPTEMBER ¢ THE NEW REPUBLIC after going through the two thousand songs, chose forty as legitimate device when sparingly used. But “jazz” is an unmitibeing “fit for boys and girls to sing together.” With this evil gated cacophony, a combination of disagreeable sounds in cominfluence surrounding our coming generation, it is not to be _ plicated discords, a willful ugliness and a deliberate vulgarity.” wondered at that degeneracy should be developing so rapidly Never in the history of America have we more needed the

in America. help and inspiration which good music can and does give. The In a recent letter to the author, Dr. Henry van Dyke says of | music department of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs jazz: “As I understand it, it is not music at all. Itis merely an _ has taken for its motto: “To make Good Music Popular, and irritation of the nerves of hearing, a sensual teasing of the strings |= Popular Music Good.” Let us carry out this motto in every home of physical passion. Its fault lies not in syncopation, forthatisa in America firmly, steadfastly, determinedly, until allthe music in our land becomes an influence for good.

September ¢ The New Republic “PLUS DE JAZZ” by Clive Bell On the first night of the Russian ballet in Paris, somewhere about Matisse, Picasso, Bonnard, Friesz, Braque, etc.—were firmly the middle of May, perhaps the best painter in France, one of _ settled on their own lines of development before ever Jazz was the best musicians, and an obscure journalist were sitting ina __ heard of. Only the riff-raff has been affected. Italian futurism is small bistro on the Boulevard St. Germain. They should allhave the nearest approach to a pictorial expression of the Jazz Spirit.

been at the spectacle; all had promised to go; and yet they sat The movement bounced into the world somewhere about on over their alcools and bocks and instead of going to the bal- —_—s the year 1911. It was headed by a band and troupe of niggers, let began to abuse it; and from the ballet they passed to modern _—_ dancing. Appropriately it took its name from music—the art

music in general, and from music to literature: till, gradually, that is always behind the times. Bavroche was killed on the into the conversation came, above the familiar note of easy deni- barricades, and it is with his name that it should have been asgration, a note of energy, of conviction, of aspiration, whichso sociated. Impudence is its essence—impudence in quite natugreatly astonished one at least of the three that, just before two ral and legitimate revolt against Mobility and Beauty: Impuo’clock—the hour at which the patron puts even his most faith- | dence which finds its technical equivalent in syncopation: imful clients out of doors—he exclaimed with anemphasisinhim —__ pudence which rags. “The Rag-time movement” would have

uncommon “Plus de Jazz!” been the better style, but the word “Jazz” has passed into at It was the least important of the three who said it, and, hadit —_— least two languages and now we must make the best of it. After been the most, I am not suggesting that, like the walls of Jeri- | impudence comes the determination to surprise: you shall not cho, a movement would have tottered at an ejaculation. Jazz be gradually moved to the depths, you shall be given such a will not die because a few clever people have discovered that start as makes you jigger all over. And from this determination they are getting sick of it; Jazz is dying, and the conversationto issues the grateful corollary—thou shalt not be tedious. The which I have referred is of importance only as anearly recogni- _ best Jazz artists are never long-winded. In their admirable and tion of the fact. For the rest, it was unjust, as such conversations — urbane brevity they remind one rather of the French eighteenth will be; the jazz movement, short and slightly irritating though —_ century. But surprise is an essential ingredient. An accomplished it was, having served its turn and added its quota to the tradi- §_ Jazz artist, whether in notes or words, will contrive as a rule to tion. But Jazz is dead, or dying at any rate, and the movement __ stop just where you expected him to begin. Themes and ideas has come for someone who likes to fancy himself wider awake _are not to be developed; to say all that one has to say smells of than his fellows to write its obituary notice. In doing so he may, the school, and may be a bore, and—between you and [illegadventitiously throw light on something more interesting than _ ible] to boot. Lastly, it must be admitted there is a typically the past, for since always movements are conditioned to some = modern craving for small profits and quick returns. Jazz art is extent by their predecessors, against which, in some sort, they soon created, soon liked, and soon forgotten. It is the movemust ever be reactions, he may adumbrate the outline of that ment of masters of eighteen; and these masterpieces created by

which is to come. boys barely escaped from college can be appreciated by the

The Jazz movement is a ripple on a wave; the wave—the —_ youngest Argentine beauty at the Ritz. Jazz is very young: like large movement which began at the end of the nineteenth cen- _ short skirts, it suits thin, girlish legs, but has a slightly humiliattury as areaction against realism and scientific paganism—still ing effect on gray hairs. Its fears and dislikes—for instance its goes forward. This wave is essentially the movement which one horror of the Noble and the Beautiful—are childish; and so is tends to associate, not very accurately perhaps, with the name _its way of expressing them. Not by irony and sarcasm, but by of Cezanne: it has nothing to do with Jazz. Its most characteris- __jeers and grimaces does Jazz mark its antipathies. Irony and wit tic manifestation is modern painting which, be it noted, Jazz —_ are for the grown-ups. Jazz dislikes them as much as it dislikes has left almost untouched. The great modern painters—Derain, | Nobility and Beauty. They are products of the cultivated intel154

SEPTEMBER ¢ THE NEW REPUBLIC 1921 lect, and Jazz cannot away with intellect or culture. Niggerscan distinguishes what used to be called “serious art” from their be admired artists without any gift more singular than high spir- —_—s productions was of no consequence whatever, and that, on the

its: so why drag in the intellect? Besides, to bring intellect into —_ contrary, it was these, if any, that ought to be taken seriously.

art is to invite home a guest who is apt to be inquisitive andeven The output of verse which was manifestly much too easy to impartial. Intellect in Jazz circles is treated ratheras money was __ write and much too difficult to read went up suddenly, by leaps once in polite society—it is taken for granted. Nobility, Beauty |= and bounds. What is more, some of it got printed; publishers and intellectual subtlety are alike ruled out: the two first are held = and even editors bowed the knee. Naturally the movement was up to ridicule, the last is simply abused. What Jazz wants are —a success at the Ritz and in Grubb Street, Mayfair. On the other romps and fun and to make fun; that is why, as I have said, its | hand, because to people who reflected for an instant it seemed

original name Rag-time was the better. At its best, Jazz rags highly improbable that fox-trotters and shimmy-shakers were

everything. sensitive or interesting people, that Christy Minstrels were great The inspiration of Jazz is the same as that of the art of the —s musicians, or that pub-crawlers and demi-mondaines were po-

grand Siécle. Everyone knows how in the age of Louis XIV _ ets, there sprang simultaneously into existence a respectable, artists found in la bonne compagnie their standards, their crit- intelligent and ill tempered opposition which did, and continics and many of their ideas. It was by studying and writing for ues to do, gross injustice to the genuine artists who have drawn this world that Racine, Moliére and Boileau gave aneasier and _ inspiration, or sustenance at any rate, from Jazz. less professional gait to French literature, which—we should Though on painting its effect has been negligible, Jazz, durnot forget—during its most glorious period, was conditioned __ ing the last ten years, has dominated music and colored literaand severely limited by the tastes and prejudices of polite soci- _ ture. It is easy to say that the genius of Stravinsky—a musician, ety. Whether the inventors of Jazz thought that in their pursuit —_ unless I mistake, of the first order and in the great line—rises of beauty and intensity, the artists of the nineteenth century had —_ superior to movements. To be sure it does; so does the genius of strayed too far from the tastes and interests of common but well- = Moliére. But just as the genius of Moliére found its appropriate to-do humanity, I know not; but certain it is that, like Racine —_ food in one kind of civilization so does the genius of Stravinsky

and Moliére, and unlike Beaudelaire and Mallarmé and César _in another; and with that civilization his art must inevitably be Franck, they went to la bonne compagnie for inspiration and _associated. Technically, too, he has been influenced much by support. La bonne compagnie they found in the lounges of great —_— nigger rhythms and nigger methods. He has composed rag-times.

hotels, on transatlantic liners, in wagon lits, in music-halls,and _So, if it is inexact to say that Stravinsky writes Jazz, it is true to in expensive motor-cars and restaurants. Labonne compagnie __ say that his genius has been nourished by it. Also, he sounds a was dancing tangos to rag-time music. This, they said, is the _ note of defiance, and sometimes, I think, does evince a will to thing. The artists of the nineteenth century had found la bonne __ insult. That he surprises and startles is clear; what is more, I

compagnie—the rich that is to say—dancing waltzes to senti- believe he means to do it. But tricks of self-advertisement are, mental “Volgas” and “Blue Danubes” but they had drawn quite —_ of course, beneath so genuine an artist. Far from seeking small

other conclusions. Yet waltzes and waltz tunes are just as good _ profits and quick returns, he casts his bread upon the waters as, and no better than, fox-trots and rag-time. Both have their — with a finely reckless gesture. In fact, Stravinsky is too big to merits, but it is a mistake perhaps for artists to take either seri- | be covered by a label; but I think the Jazz movement has as ously. Be that as it may the serious artists of the nineteenthcen- = much right to claim him for its own as any movement has to tury never dreamed of supposing that the pleasures of the rich —_ claim any first-rate artist. were the proper stuff of art; so it was only natural that the twen- Similarly, it may claim Mr. T.S. Eliot—a poet of uncommon tieth should go to the hotel lounges for inspiration. And of course — merit and unmistakably in the great line—whose agonizing lait was delightful for those who sat drinking their cocktails and = bors seem to have been eased somewhat by the comfortable listening to nigger-bands to be told that besides being the jolli- | ministrations of a black and grinning muse. Midwifery, to be est people on earth, they were the most sensitive and critically’ | sure, seems an odd occupation for a lady whom one pictures gifted. They, along with the children and savages whom in so ___ rather in the role of a flapper; but a mid-wife was what the poet many ways they resembled, were the possessors of natural, un- needed and in that capacity she has served him. Apparently it is corrupted taste. They first had appreciated rag-time, and sur- _ only by adopting a demurely irreverent attitude, by being primly

rendered themselves to the compelling qualities of Jazz. Their insolent, and by playing the devil with the instrument of instinct might be trusted; so, no more classical concerts and § Shakespeare and Milton, that Mr. Eliot is able occasionally to music lessons; no more getting Lycidas by heart; no more deliver himself of one of those complicated and remarkable Baedeker; no more cricking one’s neck in the Sistine Chapel: = imaginings of his apparently it is only in language, of an exunless the colored gentleman who leads the band at the Savoy —_—_quisite purity so far as material goes, but twisted and ragged has a natural leaning towards these things, you may depend _ out of easy recognition that these nurslings can be swathed. As upon it they are noble, pompous and fraudulent. And it was _for surprise, that, presumably is an emotion which the author of delightful, too, for people without a vestige of talent—andeven Ara Vos Prec” is not unwilling to provoke. Be that as it may, then these were in the majority—people who could just struma —— Mr. Eliot is about the best of our living poets, and like Stravinsky,

tune or string a few lines of doggerel, to be told that all that —_ he is as much a product of the Jazz movement as so good an artist can be of any. 155

1921 SEPTEMBER ¢ THE NEW REPUBLIC In literature Jazz manifests itself both formally and in content. | movement, save only that called “Art nouveau,” which did not Formally its distinctive characteristic is the familiar one—syn- —_ contribute something to the world’s artistic capital and to the copation. It has given us a ragtime literature which flouts tradi- _—_ great tradition.

tional rhythms and sequences and grammar and logic. In verse What, I believe, has turned so many intelligent and sensitive its products—rhythms which are often indistinguishable from people against Jazz is the encouragement it has given to thouprose rhythms, and collocations of words to which sometimes is sands of the stupid and vulgar to fancy that they can understand assignable no exact intellectual significance—are by now famil- _art and to hundreds of the conceited to imagine that they can iar to all who read. Eliot is too personal to be typical of anything, create it. All the girls in the “dancings” and sportsmen at the bar and the student who would get a fair idea of Jazz poetry would —_ who like a fox-trot or a maxixe have been given to believe by do better to spend half an hour with a volume of Cocteau or —_ people who ought to know better that they are more sensitive to Cendrars. In prose I think Mr. Joyce will serve asa perhaps not —_— music than those who prefer Beethoven. The fact that Stravinsky

very good example: I choose him because he is probably better © wants his music to be enjoyed in the cafes gives pub-loafers known to readers than any other writer who affects similar meth- fair ground for believing that Stravinsky respects their judgods. In his later publication Mr. Joyce does deliberately go to —s ment. Well, the music of Brahms is not enjoyed by pub-loafers; work to break up the traditional ... overboard sequence, syntax, but formerly the concert-goers were allowed to know better. and indeed, most of those conventions which men effectively | Stravinsky is reported to have said that he would like people to and with a will he rags the literary instrument. Unluckily, this will be eating, drinking and talking while his music was being played

has at its service talents which are only moderate. (how furious he would be if they did anything of the sort), so, Contempt for accepted ideas of what prose and verse should —_ when a boxful of bounders begin chattering in the middle of an be and what they should be about, nervous dislike of traditional | opera and the cultivated cry “hush!”, the inference is that the valuations, of scholarship, culture and intellectualism, above cultivated are making themselves ridiculous. Again: if rules were all an emphatic protest against the notion that one ideaoremo- — made by pedants for pedants must not mere lawlessness be a tion can be more important or significant than another, are, I —_- virtue? and, since savages think little and know less, and since take it, amongst the leading tenets of this school, whose grand savage art has been extolled by the knowing ones (I take my object it is to present, as surprisingly as possible, the chaos of — share of whatever blame may be going) as much as “cultured” any mind at any given moment. Like most theories of art it _ has been decried, does it not follow that ignorant and high-spirsounds stupid enough. What matters, however, are not theories _ited lads are likely to write between verses than such erudite but works: so what of the works of Jazz? If Stravinsky isto be — old duffers as Milton, Spenser and Gray? Above all, because it claimed for the movement, it has its master: it has also its petits has been said that the intellect has nothing to do with art, it is maitres—Eliot, Cendrars, Picabia and Joyce for instance, and — assumed by the mob of ladies and gentlemen who, if they wrote Les Six. Oddlys of four musicians—Darius Milhaud, George _ not with ease could not write at all, that there is no such thing as Auric, Poulenc and Germaine Tailleferre—chaperoned by the __ the artistic problem. And it is, I believe, chiefly because all genubrilliant Jean Cocteau.[sic] All five have their placesincontem- _ine artists are beginning to feel more and more acutely the need porary civilization: and such talents are not to be disposed of of a severe and exacting problem, and because everyone who simply by the presence of a bad name. Itis notenoughtocallan cares seriously for art feels the need of severe critical standards, artist “extremist” or “reactionary,” “cubist” or “impressionist,” that, with a sigh of relief, people are timidly murmuring to each and condemn or approve him as such. These classifications are other “Plus de Jazz.” merely journalistic or, if you will, archaeological conveniences. And, indeed, there are autumnal indications; the gay papierIt is the critic’s business to inquire not so much whether an artist | maché pagoda is beginning to lose its colors: visibly it is wiltis “advanced” or “cubist” or “jazz” as whether he is good, bad, ing. A few days after the conversation I have recorded it was or “interesting”; and that is what most critics fail to do. One’s —_—s rumored in Paris that the admired Prokofieff, composer of Chout,

general opinion of a movement or school ought not to affect had said that he detested rag-time. The consternation into which one’s opinion of any particular work. One may, for excellent | were thrown some fashionable bars and salons was as painful reasons, dislike a movement: one many hold that ithampers or to behold as must have been that into which were thrown parsets on a false scent more artists than it serves; that itinduces __ lors and vicarage gardens when Professor Huxley began pourstudents of promise to waste time and energy on fruitless prob- — ing cold water on Noah’s Ark. We hurried away to the Southern lems; that it generally fails to get the best out of its most gifted © Syncopated Orchestra, only to find it sadly fallen off; and we adherents, while it pumps into a multitude of empty heads so _ found ourselves wondering whether it had changed so much as much hot air as to swell them to disquieting proportions. Thisis | we? Also, more and more, immense musical and literary activpretty much what I think of cubism; but I am not suchafoolas _ ity notwithstanding, people began looking to the painters, with to deny that, experimenting in these very problems which seem _ their high seriousness, professionalism, conscience, reverence, to me to lead most artists into a rather unprofitable world of _and vitality, as the sole exponents and saviors of “le grand art.” abstractions, have produced works of the greatest beauty and = What the pick of the new generation is beginning to feel is that significance, while those of Fernand Leger, Jean Metsinger and art, though it need never be solemn, must always be serious; other avowed cubists are of extraordinary merit anddeservethe that it is a matter of profound emotion and of intense and pasmost careful attention. The fact is, perhaps, there never was a _sionate thought; and that these things are rarely found in danc-

156

DECEMBER 18 * THE NEW YORK TIMES 1921 ing palaces and hotel lounges. Even to understand arta man _ than spirits is required, quality rather than color, knowledge must make a great intellectual effort. One thing is not as good _ rather than irreticence, intellect rather than singularity, wit rather

as another; so artists and amateurs must learn to choose. No than romps, precision rather than surprise, dignity rather than easy matter that: discrimination of this sort being something = impudence, and lucidity above all things: plus de Jazz. Meanaltogether different from telling a Manhattan from a Martini. | while, whether the ladies and gentlemen in the restaurants will To select as an artist or discriminate as a critic are needed feel- soon be preferring sentimental waltz-tunes to flippant rag-times ing and intellect and—most distressing of all—study. However, —_ is a question on which I cannot pretend to an opinion. Neither unless I mistake, the effort will be made. The age of easy ac- —_ does it matter. What these people like or dislike has nothing to ceptance of the first thing that comes is closing. Thought rather _—_ do with art. That is the discovery.

September © The New York Times BOTH JAZZ MUSIC AND JAZZ DANCING BARRED FROM ALL LOUISVILLE EPISCOPAL CHURCHES The death knell of jazz music and dancing, so far as the Episco- Members of the clericus said that the body always had taken pal Church is concerned, was sounded officially this morning _a liberal position toward dancing as a form of recreation, but before fourteen Episcopal congregations in Louisville and as _— conditions having progressed to such an extent, “a reasonable many more in the environs. This is the result of resolutions | check must be made for community good.” adopted by the Clericus of the Episcopal Church of Louisville Dean McCready, in presenting his resolutions, said his study

and its vicinity in Christ Church Cathedral. began a year ago. The resolutions, prepared by the Very Rev. Richard L. “Louisville must take some means of protecting the younger McCready, Dean of the cathedral, were unanimously received |= members of society,” he said, “and there is no better agency to by the body and sanctioned by the Right Rev. Charles E.Wood- — advance this work than the church.

cock, Bishop of the diocese of Kentucky. “The Episcopal Church unknowingly, by its lenient attiStating that such forms of pleasure lead to jazz manners and _ tude has fostered the present tendency, and must command all jazz morals among the younger members of the Church, the orga- _—‘ facilities within its power to right the wrong.”

nization declared that “under no circumstances should they be Referring to all dances in parish houses, the body stated permitted in any church or parish house under Episcopal control.” —_ that “These, either when under the direct control of the con-

Couples retiring to automobiles and remaining there during = gregation, or when rented to other organizations, should be dances were frowned on also by the body, which held that prop- = chaperoned adequately and wisely by competent and reliable erly appointed persons should have authority and ought to, at §=men and women of sound judgment and discretion, approved

least every half hour during the continuance of the entertain- by the clergy, who should have full authority to exclude and ment, to examine rigorously to ascertain that the practice was —_ eject any persons whose presence or actions shall by them be

not being followed. deemed objectionable.”

December 18 ¢ The New York Times “JAZZ "ER UP!” BROADWAY’S CONQUEST OF EUROPE American composers of “jazz” tunes and similar lowly but popu- In all the length and breadth of the Europe of nocturnal enlar outcroppings of the musical art have accomplished in their —_joyment, of restaurant orchestras and variety shows and reviews field something which American “highbrow” musicians, in _ and cabarets and cafes-chantants and dance palaces, the Ameritheirs, have never even come within hailing distance of accom- can jazz fraternity are lords paramount. In fact, the only popuplishing. They have utterly vanquished their European rivals. lar composers who seriously rival them are the Spanish and In the matter of providing light music for Europe they have = South American manufacturers of popular dance tunes, such as forced Europeans to take a humble back seat. They have com- _the tango, “‘paso-doble” and “Spanish schottisch,” and what these pelled scores of European composers, under penalty of forfeit- _ latter gentry are up against in the matter of competition is enough ing popularity among the dancers and hummers and whistlers_ _ to make even the stoutest-hearted Castilian musician shimmy— of Europe, to produce melodies as much like the genuine simon- _I mean, shiver—with apprehension. pure American article as the non-American musical brain can In Paris and a score of other European centres of gayety the

compass. They have dominated music-hall Europe. words “fox-trot” and “one-step” have become so much a part 157

1921 DECEMBER 18 * THE NEW YORK TIMES of the local language that natives have to think twice to remem- There is a music publishing firm in Paris which seems to ber that the words were originally imported from America and —_ have something like a monopoly of the job of Gallicizing Ameri-

are still members in good standing of the English language. can popular tunes. In its window are displayed two or three Moreover, the regular European name for a place where you go —_ dozen piano or vocal scores of melodies well-known along to practice the terpsichorean art is a “dancing”—used just like | Broadway, but oh! what a change is there! They have been that, without any supplementary word like “academy” or — decked out with covers drawn by French artists, and underneath “thall’”—and Parisians toss off the word with sucha Gallictouch — their English titles they have a translated French version of in the pronunciation that it might just as well be a bit of classic | them—sometimes, in fact, the main title given is French, with French, sanctioned by the immortals of the French Academy. the original American title displayed underneath in modest, reIf a Mexican, touring music-hal]l Paris, shuts his eyes after __ tiring type. The whole effect which these transplanted Broadbeing shown to his seat at the Folies-Bergére, the Concert-Mauol — way flowers produce upon the American onlooker outside the or some such place of supposedly ultra-Parisian entertainment, |= show window in which they are displayed is very much like he will find himself wondering again and again whether, afterall, that produced by the American who, after a few months in Paris, he has really left Broadway. Copious doses of American “jazz” _1s totally unable to remember enough English to keep French played by the orchestra, assail his ears. From the stage, singers pep- = words out of his conversation. per him with song after song which first burst upon a listening world In addition to the main title, the French adapter of these from the jazz-factories of Tin Pan Alley, Manhattan. These ditties, _ American songs often adds little subtitles to give prospective of course, are served up to him with French words, just as French —_—s purchasers a rough idea of what a grand little thing the music

chefs serve to Americans in Paris beefsteaks and mutton chops with = hidden within the covers really is. For instance, you will be mysterious and complicated sauces. But even several thickness of — informed that such-and-such a ditty is “le plus célébre des foxthe French language wrapped around a Broadway melody and tied _ trots,” or that another, of a wild and abandoned character, is “le with a stout knot of French irregular verbs cannot rob it of itsessen- veritable shimmy!” This same publishing house, by the way, tially out-and-out, devil-may-care Broadwayism. It remains as = makes a specialty also of dressing up in French garb the great

American as a wheat cake. successes of Spanish light music, so, in American slang par-

The number of popular American tunes which are the small _lance, it may be said to “catch ’em coming and going,” seeing change of the orchestras and bands which provide light melody that it deals in the two kinds of music, which, in Paris, are drivfor Europe is amazing. You stray into a place for dinner and you _ing the native article to the wall. get “Avalon” with your soup, “Whispering” with your roast, There is something irresistibly funny to an American in see“Bright Eyes” with your dessert. After paying the waiter—tothe — ing a song, an old friend of his in its original American heyday, notes of “The Vamp”—you stroll along the boulevard, turn into | now dressed up in Parisian toggery and described as “Le Vamp,” an inviting looking music hall, take your seat to the strains of just as there is in the talk which one hears on every hand of “le “The Love Nest,” and are forthwith regaled in the course of the = shimmy” or “le fox trot,” and in the intention, expressed with evening, with the Parisian conception of four orfive more Ameri- —_ astonishing frequency, to repair with as much expedition as can-to-the-marrow ditties whose Farthest East, you confidently possible to “undancing.” These things give the visiting Amerisupposed, was Coney Island. All these tunes may be a bit stale can a feeling of internal joy similar to that which he experinow in America, but that doesn’t bother the Parisian in the slight- | ences when, walking along the boulevards just beyond the Paris est; his passion for American “jazz” is so great that, once he gets = Opera, he comes upon a theatre where they are giving the French hold of a tune that he likes, he will play with it and worry itasa —_—r version of that great New York success of a few years back, Peg

cat does a mouse, and he won’t drop it until he has squeezed the 0’ My Heart, under the delicious Parisian disguise of Peg de last squeaks of life out of it and left it as dead as “‘ta-ra-ra-boom- §_ Mon Coeur. It is to be hoped that no American song with a title

de-ay.” including the word “sweetheart” will become popular in Paris American tunes which were rampant in Paris when I was__and, therefore, expose itself to translation into French, because here more than a year ago are still doing duty on the boule- _ there is an instance on record of a Frenchman who, in conversvards; they are still being whistled, or hummed—with a sauce — ing with a young American girl and trying desperately for a of French words—by French enthusiasts who simply cannot —_ French equivalent of “sweetheart,” called her, in honeyed acbear to lose them. There is a saying that Paris is the place where __ cents, “coeur sucré”! good Americans go when they die. Be that as it may as regards The English, by the way, have not been slow to take advanourselves, it certainly applies to American jazztunes whenthey __ tage of the craze for American music on the European contidie in America. It is quite a pleasurable sensation when one is _ nent. Having the great advantage of speaking the same language walking along the street in Paris to hear suddenly, issuing from _as the creators of American songs, and having, moreover, acthe lips of a light-hearted Parisian, an American tune which — quired the craze some time before the Parisians and the rest of anybody around Forty-second Street and Broadway wouldhave _ the continentals, the English are now in a position to do a contold you had died—after long and honorable service on some ___ siderable export trade not only in “jazz” singers and dancers, of the hottest sectors of the Broadway cabaret front—in the _ but also in “jazz” tunes. English composers being by this time

Autumn of 1917. remarkably proficient in the production of fox-trots and one158

DECEMBER 18 « THE NEW YORK TIMES 1921 steps almost impeccably American in character. At one of the —_ in competition against the ubiquitous overlord of present-day leading cafés-concerts in Paris (described to the American visi- | dancing, the Broadway jazz tune. In this audacious revolt the tor, be it observed, as typically Parisian) there is a dazzlingly | languorous semi-Spanish melodies of South America are ably pretty young English actress. When she first appears on the stage backed by those of Spain herself, “La madre patria,” the mothershe starts talking a strange jargon. The American auditor, after | land of Spanish America, the land which, in the eyes of Spanpaying careful attention and comparing it with what is being —_iards and many non-Spaniards as well, is the real home of dance talked by the Parisians in the seats around him, suddenly real- = music. At the most up-to-date dance halls of Paris nowadays izes that this jargon is supposed, by the dazzlingly pretty young —- you are sure to hear one Spanish “paso-doble” in every four or Englishwoman in question, to be French. But just as he has _five pieces played by the musicians, and you are also practicome to the conclusion that she will stick to this amazing lingo _ cally certain to be regaled with a Spanish “schottisch,” the latthroughout the show, seeing that she is in Paris and bent on __ est importation from Madrid, which is sweeping, by way of pleasing the Parisians, she suddenly turns upon the audience _ Paris, all over the European Continent. This invasion of Europe with a fascinating smile and announces that she will sing and —_— by Spanish dance tunes may be new to Europe in general, but dance a “jazz” tune, whereupon she bursts into a ditty with there is nothing new about them to Spain. The Spaniard, who is Broadway written all over it. Broadway woven into its inmost supremely indifferent to other countries and what they think of notes. And with what zest that young person abandons her __ him or his amusements, has been composing “paso-doble” and Anglo-French—which sounds as if it had had a very rough pas- “schottische” tunes, and dancing to them for dozens of years. sage from Dover to Calais and switches into English, dwelling | The former are the darling of the bull-fighting public; no bull on every syllable with devilish gusto, and how her teeth and _fight is complete unless a rattling, ultra-Spanish “paso-doble” eyes flash with joy at being in her own element again! Andthe _is played as the bullfighters march into the ring, unless another Parisian audience shouts its approval. Probably had she failed _is blared forth by the band every time there is a lull in the proto give them an American jazz song, in accordance with the ceedings. There is a raciness, an originality, an irresistibly bartrue Parisian etiquette, they would have gone out to the box _ baric verse about a true Spanish “paso-doble” capable of caus-

office and demanded their money back! ing the most confirmed pessimist, or the most uncompromising But, as has been remarked, American composers of popular _ partisan of “highbrow” music to start humming and beating time

dance tunes have a group of rivals in Europe. Up to the present with hands and feet in helpless abandon. The Spanish these rivals have been unable to compete, in quantity, with the § “schottisch” is the pet dance of the lower classes of Madrid and flood of American melody which has been poured across the _has been for decades past: to see it in all its glory it was necesocean from the jazz factories of Broadway—but they are for- _ sary, a short time ago, to go to the “tough” dance halls of “La

midable, nevertheless. I allude to the composers of Spanish — bombilla,” just outside Madrid. But now you can go into any popular ditties and to those who turn out Argentine tangos and _— Parisian dancing emporium, high or low, and see flocks of dancother South American dances. The tango experts aresometimes __ ers laboriously attempting to dance it as the Spaniards do. They native South Americans’ sometimes they are Spaniards, who —_ don’t succeed—that goes without saying—a Spanish dancer is have always shown great facility in composing according to —_ born, not made—but they have a mighty good time, apparently, South American rule, just as North Americans have always ex- — and what more can one ask? An idea of the extent to which the celled in turning out “coon” songs of all sorts; sometimes, again, | Spanish “schottisch” has forced its way into Paris may be gained

they are natives of France or some other European country, who from the fact that the most popular of all present-day French have noted the trend of popular musical taste toward Spain and —_ tunes, Mon Homme—well known in America as a fox-trot—is South America; in many cases, finally, they are natives of the — on sale in Paris arranged as a “genuine Madrid schottisch.” United States, where many a tango has first seen the light. But One reason for the great popularity of Spanish ditties just the best composers of South American tunes are native South —_—snow in Europe is the tremendous hit made in Paris during the Americans or Spaniards, and, as for the dance measures pecu- _ last two years by Raquel Meller, a Spanish singer, who is freely liar to Spain, it takes a genuine South American. ‘Spaniards are |= compared with Yvette Guilbert and the rest of the best singers mere imitations, just as European attempts at an American jazz of popular songs. Although she sings in Spanish, the Parisians tune are pale and unsatisfactory compared with the genuine _ have been flocking in crowds to hear her, they never seem to

Broadway brand. get tired of hearing her rendition of Spanish songs which, for-

The tango has never lost its popularity in Europe. In Paris —= merly known only to Spaniards, are now played in Paris and all and many another European big city it is still being danced as- |= over Europe. Raquel’s most famous song, the one that infallisiduously, to the typically South American strain of Pan y Agua, __ bly bowls her audience over, is E/ Relicario. She was singing it Lulu, El Irresistible, El Joaquina, El Reservao and many other _ fifteen months ago in Paris. She is singing it there now. I have really Spanish-American tunes, some of which have never be- _ heard it played in Madrid, Vienna, Budapest, Rome, Stockholm, come acclimated in New York, where the tango failed some- _ Berlin and Copenhagen. Its composer, Sefior Padilla, who enhow to gain a real foothold. In addition to the regular tango, = joyed a modest fame in his native country before El Relicario various variations of it, as well as other South American dances —__ resounded from one end of Europe to the other, must be rubof the same family, have swept thorough the dance halls of bing his eyes in amazement and wondering what has happened Europe in an irresistible wave, actually daring toraise theirheads — tohim. 159

1921 DECEMBER «¢ LADIES’ HOME JOURNAL “Know any other Spanish tunes?” I asked a violinist at a Popular as Spanish and South American dance tunes are all over leading Berlin restaurant. Without a word he launched into the — Europe they are but a poor second to American “jazz.” The most wild strains of Alma de Dids, one of the best of the songs of that —_ that can be said for them is that they materially aid the latter in clever Valencian, Serrano, and a dozen Teutons in the dining — chasing away the native article in whatever countries they aproom took up the refrain. The last time I had heard it was ina _ pear. If you ask what the latest production of Christine or some

Montmartre resort several months before, along with the “paso- other popular Parisian composer is you are almost sure to be doble” composed in honor of Gallito, the greatest of Spanish _ told that it is a “fox-trot” or a “Spanish schottisch.”

bullfighters, who was killed by a bull last year. Now and then some Frenchman turns out a waltz that reEl Relicario, by the way, is also a “paso-doble,” so that Raquel —s minds one of the good old days of French waltzes, and, of course,

Meller, in singing it, has done her bit toward further populariz- | Franz Lehar is still busy composing Viennese waltzes, and Leo ing that typically Spanish dance measure. And she is helping _ Fall is still on the job. But an mistakable air of mustiness seems along the vogue of the Madrid “schottisch” also by treating —_ tocling to them. The waltz, somehow, reminds you of grandma. Parisians to Ay, Cipriano! which is so essentially a “schottisch” | And only at one place in Montmartre can you still witness the that I doubt if it could be warped or twisted into being anything §_ dancing of the genuine Parisian can-can. Hail, Broadway!

else even by the cleverest of musical adapters. Viva Espafia! To them it is that Terpsichore today pays allegiance.

December ¢ Ladies’ Home Journal UNSPEAKABLE JAZZ MUST GO! by John R. McMahon “Jazz dancing is a worse evil than the saloon used to be!” and that those who are sober often dance more reprehensibly This statement fairly startled me because of its source. If it | than those who are somewhat in their cups. had been made by a zealot of any sort I should have discounted ‘A person who is partly intoxicated knows it and is afraid to it heavily. If it had been uttered by an average clergyman or go too far. The sober one argues that he can take care of himself publicist one would make allowance for lack of exactinforma- and may go as far as he likes.” tion. But the statement was made by a man of the world, a per- “Is there anything bad about jazz music itself?” I asked. son without prejudices or illusions, one who is familiar with “There certainly is! Those moaning saxophones and the rest every phase of terpsichorean theory and practice in the United _ of the instruments with their broken, jerky rhythm make a purely States, an expert in the dance and a professional dancing mas- _ sensual appeal. They call out the low and rowdy instinct. All of ter. His name is Fenton T. Bott. He lives in Dayton, Ohio. And us dancing teachers know this to be a fact. We have seen the he knows more about the subject than most professionals by _—_ effect of jazz music on our young pupils. It makes them act in a virtue of his position as “director of dance reform” inthe Ameri- _ restless and rowdy manner. A class of children will behave that can National Association Masters of Dancing. Itis his business —_ way as long as such music is played. They can be calmed down to keep in touch with dance activities throughout the country. — and restored to normal conduct only by playing good, legitiHe is a big, broad-shouldered man of ruddy face that breaks = mate music.” into frequent smiles. There is nothing narrow about his make-

up. He is an ideal witness in the case of the Commonwealth of Dancing Masters Seek Reforms Decency versus the Jazz.

“Jazz is worse than the saloon! Why?” I asked. “Dancing, as you know, has enormously increased in the last “Because it affects our young people especially,” said Mr. few years. It has become a great public institution in which all Bott. “It is degrading. It lowers all the moral standards. Unlike ¢lasses and ages are interested. We have estimated that about liquor, a great deal of its harm is direct and immediate. But it '" per cent of the entire population, or more than ten million also leads to undesirable things. The jazz is too often followed People, have become dancers. When you eliminate little chilby the joy-ride. The lower nature is stirred up as a prelude to dren, invalids and the aged, this means a very considerable part

unchaperoned adventure. of the population. Anything that is radically wrong with the “This strikes especially at the youth of the nation, andthe con- _—‘Tecreation of so many people must affect all of us.”

sequences are almost too obvious to be detailed. When the next “Granted,” I said. “Now what is the organized dancing progeneration starts on a low plane, what will its successors be? fession doing to reform conditions?” “We have had more flagrant dancing since prohibition than “We are working in several directions,” replied Mr. Bott, “but before. This may be partly because people substitute one form We have an uphill fight. We have tried to cooperate with of sense excitation for another, a dance spree instead of about Churches, but except for a liberal minority, the institutional with liquor. I believe this is done deliberately in many cases churches that conduct regulated dancing in their parish houses, 160

DECEMBER °¢ LADIES’ HOME JOURNAL 1921 we have met with little success. The extreme evangelical — the crime. When acouple is observed in a serious violation upon churches stand on their old program, which bans all dancing, —_a public floor they are asked to step outside. A patrol wagon regardless of its character. They do not discriminate between ___ rolls up and the tearful pair are escorted into it. But instead of the art of a Pavlov or of aesthetic Greek dancing and the lowest __ being taken to the lockup they are driven to their homes and performance in a dive. On the other hand our work is appreci- presumably sent to bed by their parents.” ated by a good many managers of settlements and of welfare “What is the attitude of music publishers?” I inquired. activities.

“We have a booklet and chart which we send to welfare or- Dividends and Public Opinion ganizations, owners of dance halls and dancing teachers. The booklet describes the dance approved by our association, and “Not very helpful, unless they have had a recent change of heart,” the charts, which are meant to be placed on the walls of dance __ replied Mr. Bott. “The music written for jazz is the very founhalls, show the correct positions and steps for the various ap- —_ dation and essence of salacious dancing. The words also are proved dances. I am glad to say that the United States Public — often very suggestive, thinly veiling immoral ideas. Now, at the Health Service has not only commended our booklet but has 1920 convention of our association we appealed to the music distributed thousands of copies of it to welfare agencies. High _ publishers to eliminate jazz music. A representative of the pubschools throughout the country have been well supplied. This _lishers came before us and replied that personally he was against is the third year of publication and to date we have issued about _ the indecent stuff, being himself a church elder or deacon, but

twenty thousand copies.” the publishers had to give the public what they wanted and they In parenthesis, I was informed by J. Henry Smythe, Jr., that also had to reckon with stockholders calling for dividends. That’s the unrelenting attitude of the Methodist church toward all danc- a fine argument! Perhaps we dancing teachers are not less self-

ing was being rapidly modified, with the prospect that evan- ish, but I hope we are more intelligent. No body of men can gelical churchdom generally would soon line up with all liberal afford to flout public opinion and the best interests of the comforces who want to abolish the jazz outrage, yet who believe in munity. wholesome, sane dancing. Mr. Smythe ts a prominent lay mem- ‘What do parents say to your efforts?” ber of the Methodist Church whose ancient “blue laws,” he says, “Naturally most parents are heartily with the dancing teachare not obeyed by a majority of the membership and should be __ ers in the effort to discipline youngsters and make them toe the repealed. Numerous annual conferences of the Methodistshave —= mark of propriety. There are a few exceptions of fashionable

lately voted to repeal the rules which ban dancing along with = mothers, who want their daughters to learn everything up-to-

theater going and card playing. date and snappy and who consider objections to high-society “A nation-wide clean-up of the dance is really needed,” re- | movements as being squeamish. A mother of this type, when sumed Mr. Bott. “The present efforts at reform are too sporadic her daughter at finishing school was reprimanded for cigarette and local. Each section is a law unto itself or has no law. Mu- _—s smoking told the principal she thought the art of cigarette smoknicipal regulation has been started and applied to some extent —_ing should be taught with other accomplishments fitting girls in something like sixty towns and cities. The best-regulated cit- —_ for a social career. ies are probably Cleveland, Detroit and Omaha. The movement It is no easy task to keep discipline and order in public or began not long ago in Cleveland when officials asked my brother, | semipublic dance places. Last winter a St. Louis dancing teacher who is a professional teacher, to assist in the regulation of pub- — of repute, who was conducting a semipublic dancing academy, lic dance halls. They asked what he wanted for his services,and gave up the effort in despair and closed his doors. To be sure, he told them he would be glad to do the work for a dollar a year. some of his fellow professionals thought this was an admission “When we had our convention in Cleveland the assembled — of weakness. Barring out disreputable people sometimes seems teachers were warned that strict rules governed public dancing aproblem, for recognized bad folks often behave better in welland that when they visited a public place it would be well for | conducted public dance halls than the respectable and virtuous. them to mind their steps. Some of the teachers visited Euclid | For example, in a Middle Western city several women of disreBeach Park, where six thousand people were dancing inthe big = pute were pointed out to the floor manager. They were perlakeside hall. There were two bands, one ateachend, supplying — fectly decorous. They were having a fling at respectability. music for the army of dancers. Each dance number was posted = Should they be ejected? “No,” says a humanitarian. On the other up in order, whether waltz, two-step, schottische or Cuban waltz. —_ hand, some of this class, while never misbehaving personally, The visitors thought they would test the vigilance of the mu- —_— may be present with sinister motives of entangling youth in their nicipal inspectors. They had hardly taken three steps when they _ toils. Men and women who prey on youth as a commercial enwere tapped on the shoulder and asked, ‘Have youreadtherules? _terprise find a rich field in the public dance hall. You must be strangers. Everybody is required to dance the same The United States Public Health Service offers to cooperate way. Right now it is a waltz. You must waltz and do it like the — with the dancing teachers more fully than it has already done, others or leave the place.’ Names and addresses of offenders _ but from an angle of social-disease prevention which, the teachare taken in Cleveland. There is a blacklist of dancers who are __ ers claim, has little bearing outside of public dance halls. In

not allowed on public floors. short, Surgeon General Comming wants to put medical warn“Omaha has a punishment for boy and girl dancers that fits | ings on the teachers’ dance reform literature which goes to high 16]

1921 DECEMBER °« LADIES’ HOME JOURNAL schools and reaches thousands of young folks. No doubt the —= men and women. The other organization, called the InternaPublic Health Service experts are right in their attitude as ap- _— tional Association Masters of Dancing, is an offshoot of the plied to many if not most public dance halls in cities. first and includes in its membership owners or managers of dance Doubtless the more widespread danger is not from disease. _ halls as well as teachers. Some persons belong to both bodies, Don Juan never had such a potent instrument of downfall asthe —_and it is expected that the two may soon unite in one associaultra dance supplies to every evil-purposed male to-day. The __ tion. road to hell is too often paved with jazz steps. If a refined girl The first-named organization held its thirty-eighth annual were alone with a man in a drawing room and he offered the = convention in New York during the first week of last August familiarities of the ultra dance, she would resent them as in- —_ and followed this by a “post convention” at Salt Lake City the sults. But she accepts them without question on the dance floor. | middle of September, the latter session lasting five days. Fine and imprisonment for flagrant dancing were suggested

as the only remedy by A.J. Weber, a member of the Dancing Teachers as They Are Masters’ Association.

“If the jazz is not reformed,” said Mr. Weber, who has a stu- A banquet hall on the eighth floor of the Hotel Astor was the dio in Brooklyn, “the first thing we know there will be ana- | New York headquarters of the dancing masters this year. Thanks tional law prohibiting all public dancing. It will be just like the [0 a disclaimer of hostile purpose, I was permitted to view the story of the saloon. The metropolitan area stands in need of all Past-graduate terpsichorean performances on the convention

the reform that can be applied. floor.

“The jazz is simply rotten. It belongs in the underworld, A male dancing teacher, according to newspaper cartoons, where it is called a name that would shock a lot of respectable 18 4 wasp-waisted, effeminate young man. He has a tiny muspeople who tolerate it if they heard that name applied. It must tache and a violet-edged perfumed handkerchief. I looked for

go and leave room for clean and wholesome dancing.” this chap but did not see him. In truth the men seemed to be of the business sort, the majority middle-aged or elderly, quite like

“Don's” for Dancing Masters hardware merchants at their annual convention. The women

would pass for school teachers with the usual number of old Among the rules contained in the booklet for dance regulation Maids, save for a couple of flappers and two or three little girls. issued by the organized professionals is one that separates ex- __The latter were either children of the teachers or pupils who treme youth from age in public dance places or otherwise. had been brought on to learn or to aid in exhibition work. Youngsters under eighteen are not to be admitted at grown up Doubtless a newspaper humorist would find something comic functions. This coincides with regulations insome high schools _ i" Certain of the male types and in parts of the general specand also with civic or state law in some sections. Animal names _ ‘acle. A piano supplied the music. A petite, comely young for dances, such as cat step, camel walk, bunny hug, turkey woman with bobbed hair and a decisive voice that rose to a trot, and so on, are disapproved as of degrading tendency. Rapid musical shrillness acted as generalissimo to a motley crew of and jerky music is condemned while a medium dance tempo, encircling dancers whose ages ranged almost from the cradle to ranging from forty measures to the minute for the fox trot to the grave. There was a chubby legged little girl next to an ausforty-eight for the waltz, fifty-four for the two-step and sixty- tee spinster, and then a deaf man with an ear apparatus, and six for the one-step, is recommended. There are ten “Don’ts,” then an understudy for Mark Twain in a Palm Beach suit, and

which may be summarized: further a pair of girlish figures, and down the line in his shirt

Don’t permit vulgar jazz music; don’t let young men hold sleeves a venerable individual with a long, white chin beard as their partners tightly; no touching of cheeks which is public rightly pertains to a veteran confederate general. The old gentlelove making, no neck holds, no shimmy or toddle, no steps very man skipped along in heelless slippers and revolved as best he long or very short, no dancing from the waist up but rather from could at the musically shrill behest of the bobbed-hair instructhe waist down; suggestive movements barred; don’t copy stage _—‘F- Who was this Father Christmas and what was he doing here?

stuff; don’t hesitate to ask offenders to leave the room. A public He was a professional dancing teacher of Chicago, I was told, dance hall may be cleaned up by polite dismissal of one dozen Seventy-eight years of age and the oldest member of the Assooffending couples, handing the young men cards for a refund ciation. Come to think of it, he is the kind of dancing master of admission at the cashier’s office. If this does not work, “fire” that a lot of parents would prefer to have for their children. He another dozen couples. Don’t be afraid to lose patronage. All of as taught three generations in the same family.

which seems to be a sound line of advice. It is conceded that ladies do not use strong language. Yet one

The dancing masters are well organized and long established. of them with whom I was chatting, suddenly exclaimed: “I could There are indeed two organizations of them, the elder and bet- ‘have strangled her!” The speaker was a charming young woman

ter known being styled The American National Association °F the blond type. Blue fire flashed from her eyes. Her smooth Masters of Dancing. It was founded in the mists of antiquity, cheeks and forehead were swiftly aglow. She was a keen-minded when quadrille and cotillion were vogue. It is composed chiefly 2nd well-balanced person of exceptional worldly experience. of teachers who carry on their business in the larger cities, and Why such a state of mind and such an expression of primitive there are about five hundred members equally divided between Motion? 162

DECEMBER « LADIES’ HOME JOURNAL 1921 “Strangle? Great heavens! Why?” clined to throw out everything, including the furniture. “Because she was publicly insulting my sex through her Impossible? Well, San Francisco, whose Barbary coast is

dancing!” credited with originating those dancing scourges called shimmy It was Miss Marguerite Walz who made the quoted state- _—_ and toddle, recently bent so far backward in virtue as to conment, and she registered thus her reaction to a spectacle onthe — template police permission to be required for all dancing, even roof of a stylish New York hotel. It happened the night before. in private homes! The measure was shelved for the time being Miss Walz is a professional teacher of dancing. She is also the __ through a fight of the sane minded. premiere policewoman in Philadelphia, serving without pay and

charged with the special duty of supervising public dancing in A Proprietor’s Plea that city.

Miss Walz went to the mayor of Philadelphia in the spring of | No clergyman in America has uttered such a scorching and au1921 and suggested that the authorities should supervise public _ thentic denunciation of the ultra-modern dance as a certain very dancing. She feared, like other teachers, the abolition of alldanc- successful proprietor of a dance establishment in Chicago. His ing if the prevailing license continued unchecked. She was ad- —_—s name is J. Louis Guyon. He has long been a voice in the dance vised to return with a delegation of her fellow teachers and did — wilderness crying for reform. He has prospered by sticking to so. Testimony was given especially as to “Kaffee Klatches,” or clean, old-fashioned dancing.

clubs in private houses, with admission charge, dancing and Mr. Guyon’s slogan for the new band wagon reads: “Aboldrinking by girls and boys without restraint. The mayordeclared —_ ish jazz music!

a clean-up was due and he appointed Miss Walz policewoman Abolish fox trot, one step, toddle, shimmy or any form of to supervise dancing in conjunction with the Rev. H. Cresson _ dancing or any position that permits the gentleman to walk di-

McHenry, who conducts a mission. rectly in front of his partner.”

An advertisement by Mr. Guyon that has the fervor of a ser-

Work for the Censors mon and the frankness of biblical writers in speaking of vice was published in a Chicago newspaper some months ago. In ‘My duties,” said Miss Walz, “are largely the instruction ofabout — this he says that dancing, our most universal form of amuseseventy-five policemen who are detailed to enforce the dancing = ment after motion pictures, has become a greater menace than

regulations. They are taught what is permissible and what is _ liquor, segregated vice or “the brothels from which much of it not. Why so many police dance censors? Well, itis anindex to sprang.” He declares that “many of the couples performing these the immense popularity of dancing in our city life. We may — dances should have a marriage license before stepping on the have twenty thousand people at our weekly Parkway dance, __ ballroom floor, and—if they had a marriage license there would which covers several blocks of space. It is held every Thursday be no excuse for committing such acts in public.” Anyone who night. There are two bands, the police and the firemen’s, with _ says that “youth of both sexes can mingle in close embrace” — about sixty pieces in each. No jazz music is played and noim- __ with limbs intertwined and torso in contact—“without sufferproper conduct is tolerated. You can see there is work for over ing harm lies.” Add to this position the wriggling movement half a hundred policemen in supervising twenty thousand danc- _and the “sensual stimulation of the abominable jazz orchestra ers. There has been a marked improvement since this work be- with its voodoo-born minors and its direct appeal to the sensory gan. The police class in censorship is told not to permit cheek- —_ centers, and if you can believe that youth is the same after this to-cheek dancing, abdominal contact, shimmy, toddle or the — experience as before, then God help your child... .” Washington Johnny, in which the legs are kept spread apart.” Mr. Guyon asks his fellow proprietors of dance places and That the reaction against lewdness in the terpsichorean art —_ also dancing teachers whether they are coining “easy dollars” will have a consequence similar to that which resulted fromthe out of the corruption of youth. He says that if they permit jazz evils of the liquor saloon is a fear constantly expressed by all |= music and immoral dances their “effect on the community it those interested. Nor does this seem to be an imaginary alarm worse than that of the unspeakable creatures who live from the or an unlikely event. We Americans are quiet and complaisant __ scarlet earnings of women, for you are conducting a wholesale for a long time. Then we make a quick clean-up and are in- _ traffic in the souls of boys and girls.”

163

et 1922 « January 6 ¢ Variety ORIGIN OF “BLUES” (OR JAZZ) by Frank and Burt Leighton In Butte, Montana, when life was harsh, spectacular, percus- I never loved but one woman’s son, sive, uncertain, two boys climbed to the cinders from the rods Far thee, honey, fare thee well. beneath a freight car. They were explorers. The equipment they And I hope and trust I never love another one, packed consisted of a guitar and a banjo. They were pushing Far thee, honey, fare thee well. deep into the forbidden regions of the underworld, then flour- I worked out in the rain, I worked out in the snow ishing in every American city, and, while making a flighty liv- What all I done for that man nobody will ever know. ing as troubadours from bar to bar, from dive to dive, were col- He woke up one mornin’ and skipped with all my dough. lecting material which gives the clue to the original sources of An’ just said—“Fare thee honey, fare thee well.”

the jazz wave now rippling over the world. CHorus Butte received the wanderers well. The silver pieces that flew

into the caps of the strollers between numbers were of generous I done all that a poor ol’ gal could do. proportions. For the songs the boys gave were songs native to I fed him pork chops, cooked him kidney stew; the surroundings; songs of the Mississippi river traffic, of the T even knelt down on my knees and blacked his shoe. railroad, of the mines and the cattle ranges. Not one could have All for that man, that measly man.

been printed. Their most pungent verses were marred, accord- or ;

ing to aceped standards, by phrases of medieval frankness. apa te it time, or on ofthe fs mes, that he What our old ballads have lost in passing into print, these songs pathetic lamentation of the unfortunates of the underworld. In a stuffy room, reeking and rattling with crude revelry, the That was an origin of a blues, and the blending of the blues singers found an accompanist on the piano, a mulatto girl, hol- and ragtime created the J a27 now P mevalent although the aur

low-eyed, who turned her back on the throng at intervals to thentic ve tbon view “P clon vom ; ° deeps rN eero woe in manipulate a hypodermic syringe that flashed against the brown ane ° a an re “s k sf d Bie oun hte MUSIC'S nt .- , of her lean arm. With her, the two singers hushed the racket one explores, Hrans an urt Leig ton, now standard variety with such choice outpouring of sentiment as: artists, belonged to a group of American minstrels, most of whom died young after going down into strange places to bring up the

Listen now, white folks, while I tell to you, songs of Negro outcasts, of cowboy, miner and gambler. The Negro

Coons without a habit are mighty few: was the true singer of that feverish section of America. Before the Some have a habit of dressing neat, Civil War, the Negro population was rural. The black man had his But my bad habit is to sleep and eat. SOITOwsS and his “spirituals” and jubilee songs were chants of bar'll tell all you coons you’ll soon be dead baric sombreness. These are preserved intact. Some of the moIf you don’t stop sniffin’ coke in your head. tives have been ambitiously elaborated, but only achorus of Negro

There’s two bad that war, I havethe barred, aa neta Ne N rimitive swing ne hat al is began am of Let’ ; oyhabits ter the Negro quarters of industrial cities

That's fightin’ "bout the gals an’ workin’ hard. to grow. Black folks and yellow huddled in slums and the child

CHORUS nature of many succumbed to vice. It is only fair to say that

Oh, that is a habit I never had, many went up into respectability while the few descended, but

That kind of a habit is mighty bad. it is also only fair to state that the rag-time melody, which Negro I’m tellin’ you, white folks, I’m mighty glad, leaders are glad to have credited to their race, grew in lawless

That is a habit I’ve never had. haunts. The Negro lives at his worst with an abandon utterly

lacking in white debaucherie. He never acquired the hard cyni“Dell’s got a song of her own,” said the white proprietor, cism of the white sinner. He laughs, loves, fights, gambles with

“Let ’em have it, Dell.” an ardor the colder race cannot imitate. When the outburst of The mulatto struck a minor chord and, in a husky soprano, _ hot animalism dies down, and the dicer has lost his last dime, the wistful and pain-fraught, she voiced the lament of the forsaken | gunman or the razor wielder is in a jail cell, the lover and his

woman: mistress are torn apart by jealousy or death, then the black man’s soul is overwhelmed with grief which translates itself into song.

164

JANUARY 6 ¢ VARIETY 1922 In Memphis, a colored gambler lost his “high-yallow” girl Went out and spent most a hundred dollars for Johnnie’s new to a rival. He lured the lady back into his clutches and returned suit of clothes. her to the new love, dismembered and packed in a trunk. The Cause he was her man, but he done her wrong.

lover, who beheld the handiwork of outraged passion, ran

screaming into the street, stark mad. The vengeful one was Some of the conclusions of Frankie and Johnnie are as folcaught, and while the gallows were being prepared for him, lows: composed The Death House Blues, which he played on the piano Frankie she dashed around the corner, in the sheriff’s home, and sang with all his heart a few hours Peeped through a window so high, before the trap fell from beneath his feet. The song consisted of There she saw her lovin’ Johnnie makin’ love to Nellie Bly.

numerous verses on the order of the following: Oh, Lord, my man he’s doin’ me wrong. I’m sittin’ in the jail house behind the stone wall Frankie came back around the corner, And a brown-skinned gal was the cause of it all; This time it wasn’t for fun,

In the morning at half-past nine, Underneath her silk kimono, she had a great big 44-gun Hacks and hearses will form in line, Lookin’ for her man, ’cause he done her wrong. Friends and relations will gather ’round Johnnie he ran down the hallway, cryin’,

To carry my body to the buryin’ ground. “Oh, Frankie, don’t shoot!” But Frankie she fired her 44-gun five times with a rooti-toot

To one who has glimpsed the sources of jazz music, there is al- toot.

ways a shock to be received when some sweet, young thing, tinkling She killed her man ’cause he done her wrong. the piano in the sancity of a good American Methodist home, sings: The Judge he said unto Frankie,

Won’t you come home, dear daddy, There ain’t no use to cry to me,

Please, dear, come home, The jury done brought in the verdict of murder in the first

She cries the whole day long. degree.

“T’1l do the cookin’ honey, I'll pay the rent, You killed your man, ’cause he done you wrong.

I knows I’se done you wrong. Send for the rubber-tired hearses, Remember that rainy evein’ I drove you out Go get the rubber-tired hacks,

With nothin’ but a fine tooth comb, Take my lovin’ Johnnie to the graveyard I knows I’se to blame, now ain’t that a shame, And never, never, bring him back. Dear daddy, won’t you please come home!” He was my man, but he done me wrong. (Ed: We know this lyric as Bull Bailey.) The ballad in its reconstructed shape is popular in Y.W.C.A. Whosoever’s name is on the folio, the song came to being in parlors. Frankie and Johnnie is a specimen of the authentic coon the soul of some dusky light 0’ love, dwelling so far beyond the | Song, and was taken from a true happening. The story of this world of the sweet young thing that its existence is unsuspected | SOng’s ascent into respectability is the story of the authentic by her. Nor does she, or her mother, or her brother, orherchums, | ©0On song, not the counterfeit produced in tin-pan alley by the

know the real meaning of the words they carol. commercial exploiters. The first line informs the experienced Billy Considine, famous in the sport world, sat in ear whether the jazz composition is real or faked. Few white Hammerstein’s Victoria Theatre, New York, and heard, for the | men have been able to create the rag-time of the true quality, first time, the Leightons sing their sterilized version of Frankie although many have been skillful in adaptation of the tunes

and Johnnie. created by nameless Negroes.

“T held my breath,” he said afterward; “I thought you boys The Leightons, young men yet, represent the only active surhad gone balmy, and I knew if you sang the real verses there vivors of the pioneers in the discovery of jazz. With them, two would be a riot. I laid ‘Betsy’ (his revolver) on my lap and fig- decades or less ago, were Hughie Cannon, Gutter Wilson, Johnny

ured I’d do my best to save you from being mobbed.” Queen and Ben Harney. But Mr. Considine had no cause for alarm. The minstrel men By what miracle of self-respect and good sense they avoided who discovered the coon song placed it on the market in strongly __ the pitfalls which swallowed up many of their comrades, they censored form. Frankie and Johnnie, a standard ballad of dance =: cannot explain. Hughie Cannon, who wrote Won't You Come halls and “joints” from coast to coast, remained obscure to the | Home, Bill Bailey, as a sequel to the Leightons’ Bill Bailey, Aint polite world until published by the Leightons. They have recorded § Dat a Shame, died in the charity ward of a hospital in Toledo more than 100 original stanzas of the ballad. Versions and tunes before he was forty. Hughie’s songs, which netted publishers are varied. How barren and how empty are the words in print tens of thousands, were sold by him in barrooms where he played when once they have been heard to the mob and twang of guitar, the piano for a living. A round of drinks for the house and a suit with a mixed company of harmonists to join the refrain: of clothes was the price he received for Goo-Goo Eyes, the fa-

, vorite of a season, and is still remembered as the forerunner of

He was my man, an he done me wrong. the deluge of coon songs.

Frankie she was a good girl, most everybody here knows, | 165

1922 JANUARY 14 * THE LITERARY DIGEST Casey Jones was given out by the Leightons. They frankly Steamboat Bill admit that their work in connection with this classic consisted of I Got Mine selecting a series of clean verses and standardizing a tune. Many Frankie and Johnnie of the Negro ballads require a variation of the melody with each There’s a Dark Man Comin’ With a Bundle stanzas, and change the refrain to fit the unfolding of the story. Lonesome Blues They sold this song outright for $5,000. No one ever identified Bill, You Done Me Wrong the author of Casey Jones. He was undoubtedly a Negro engine and numerous other songs which did not obtain such wide popuwiper in the railway yards of a Southern city in the United States. larity. A haunting tune and a verse OF TWO start such a song in circula- (Frank and Burt Leighton are the earliest singers of “blues”

tion. Gifted ones add to it; it grows from town to town; it pro- k ; deville. That tyve of sone was their dependence

duces off-shoots; would die have in a few yearstoeeu e pene ip: ; almost as anitact. They grown be mnaaiands so stronglyYP identified

conventionalized. ; . as , 3 Following are some of the songs the Leightons wrote which ; f ,

if it were not preserved, expurgated, by a publisher. Two- th “blues.” it is expected of them. especially Frankie and thirds of its charactermentioned is lost, of course, when becomes ees P But ; » Speiany an Ser Johnnie, by them in itthe abovewit article. compara-

. ; ; tively in recent vaudeville times were the “blues” a strange song style to an audience. A minute percentage of the audience knew

became popular: what it was all about. The Leightons had to work harder in those Ain't Dat a Shame days to get across the “blues” than now, when almost all popular

Casey Jones song-singing turns, even to sister acts, are using one or more.

Fare Thee, Honey, Fare Thee Well The sister acts found the “blues” songs were easy to harmonize.)

January 14 ¢ The Literary Digest JAZZ PLAYED OUT Peace to the soul of jazz—‘though it gave little peace to oth- —_—-was to play only the notes indicated by the score, and no inter-

ers!” In such words is spoken the threnody over the demise of __ polated effects would be permitted. Then he set a tempo and a that form of music that came nearest to reviving some of the — rhythm. The new tempo was somewhat more deliberate than effects of the jumping maniacs of the Middle Ages. Dead, we _ that usually set by a dance orchestra, and the rhythm was rather are assured, it is, though some words in commendation were suggestive of a glide than a hop. reported to have been spoken recently by no less a musical ge- “Soon the hotel began to have a most desirable dance folnius than Dr. Richard Strauss. The New York Herald reports lowing, and Reisman found himself invited to play for the big that “the decline and fall of jazz has been going on apace __ social affairs of the big Eastern colleges.” during the present theatrical season, as attested by the suc- “We do not depend upon our rhythm to create interest,” says its cess of the non-jazz musical offerings in the New York the- leader. ““We merely use this rhythm for its psychological effect. We ater, and the comparatively short runs of the attractions fea- _—_ attempt to make our music melodic, so that the foremost suggestion turing jazz music.” The impetus to the new vogue for sane __ tothe dancer is a suggestion of gliding and never of jerky,ungraceful music, particularly sane dance music, is said to have been movement. We seek always to give the melody its true importance.”

given in Boston: While jazz for dancers is moving off the stage, our reputable

“Musicians generally, and particularly leaders of dance or- |§ composers seem disposed to enshrine it in the halls of real art. chestras, are of the opinion that the march back to normality as © The Chicago Symphony Orchestra recently gave a first perfor-

regards dance music started in Boston, and with the Leo F. mance of Krazy Kat, a Jazz Pantomime, by John Alden CarReisman dance orchestra, which has been engaged to come to _penter, a piece destined for early production by the Bohn BalNew York for the first time in Good Morning, Dearie. let. The Program Notes contains this: “Two years ago in Boston, Reisman, the leader of the or- “Krazy Kat was composed during the months of June, July chestra, was called upon to put together a dance organization § and August, 1921; it has not yet received stage representation. for the Brunswick Hotel. Jazz then was at its height, and, aside —_ The orchestra for which it has been scored comprises one flute

from clarinets and trombones, the alleged musical instruments (interchangeable with a piccolo), one oboe, one clarinet, one of a dance orchestra included such melody makers as cowbells, — tenor saxophone, one bassoon, two horns, two trumpets, one whistles, sleigh bells, cocoanut shells, and even tin pans and tenor trombone, kettledrums, ‘traps,’ harp, piano and strings.

wooden rattles. Concerning the story of Krazy Kat, Mr. Carpenter has kindly ‘Reisman eliminated both clarinets and saxophones, andhe _ supplied the following for this program: informed his trap drummer that he was to play only the drums, “To all lovers of Mr. Herriman’s ingenious and delightful while to the orchestra in general he issued the instruction that it | cartoons it must have seemed inevitable that sooner or later Krazy

166

FEBRUARY 18 * THE NEW YORK TIMES 1922 Kat and Ignatz Mouse would be dragged by some composer _fore possible for him to maintain constantly at white heat a pasinto music. I have tried to drag them not only into music buton _sionate affair with Ignatz Mouse, in which the gender of each to the stage as well, by means of what [have called, for obvious remains ever a delightful mystery. Ignatz, on the other hand,

reasons, a Jazz Pantomime. condenses in his sexless self all the cardinal vices. If Krazy blows “To those who have not mastered Mr. Herriman’s psychol- _ beautiful bubbles, /gnatz shatters them; if he builds castles in ogy it may be explained that Krazy Kat is the world’s greatest | Spain, /gnatz is there with the brick. In short, he is meaner than optimist—Don. Quixote and Parsifal rolled into one. Itis there- | anything, and his complex 1s cats.”

February 12°The New York Times

TWO-STEP TO JAZZ SENT BY WIRELESS . Dancing to “jazz” played miles away, made possible by day for members and their friends of either sex. We welcome wireless telephone, is the latest innovation of the new City Col- _ ladies to our club-house and delight in pleasing them as well as

lege Club at 46 East Fiftieth Street. This is probably the first | their member hosts. After theatre, they can come and eat and college club in New York that has installed a radiophone for —_ dance, enjoying the true spirit of sociability.”

dancing and concerts. Mr. Naumburg announced that at a dinner attended by about The work of installation commenced several days ago, said — twenty alumni and non-alumni, a week ago, Adolph Lewisohn, Bernard Naumburg, Chairman of the Building Committee, yes- _ the philanthropist, pledged $3,000 to the club. Other contribu-

terday. Receiving its musical message from both the Radio __ tions swelled the total to $8.5000. The contributors included Corporation’s apparatus at Roselle Park and Westinghouse’s Judge Julius Mayer, Herman A. Metz, Joseph Buttenweiser, transmitter at Newark, the club is able to offer its members |§ Robert F. Wagner, Dr. Joseph H. Klein, Louis M. Josephtral, and their friends a varied program. If the consensus of those |= Edward B. Ley and Albert Weiss. present is that “jazz” is wanted, the wireless transmitting Of the 6,600 letters sent out to graduate and non-graduate “jazz” will be called upon. A classical audience, onthe other —_ alumni, only 300 have declared their unwillingness to join the hand, will be given concert music. If this kind can be coaxed __ club. It therefore has a potential membership of 6,300. Mr.

from the air. Naumberg said. He urged therefore that those who desire to

“We are dispensing with most restrictions that other college | become affiliated with it and make use of everything that it ofclubs impose on their members,” said Mr. Naumburg. “It is ru- fers, communicate at once with those in charge. mored that some clubs have increased their membership be- There are perhaps 15,000 former City College students who cause drinking is permitted, despite Mr. Volstead’s formal dec- —_ did not receive letters from the club. It is Mr. Naumberg’s wish laration forbidding it. Nothing harder than near-beer is drunk _ that all write to the clubhouse for membership cards. He warned,

in the City College Club. however, that the membership list might soon be closed, be-

‘We make our appeal for membership on the social advan- __cause of the present limited facilities to accommodate all that tages offered. The large and beautiful dining-room is open all —_ planned to join. Dues are $15 a year.

February 18 © The New York Times ABOUT BOOKS, MORE OR LESS: IN THE MATTER OF JAZZ As we go to press, the country is still waiting for someone to place in the high art of music as it 1s pursued in the United rise and demonstrate two truths for which the world cries aloud: States, and for the reason that jazz is native with us. There is, of (1) that President Coolidge represents the perfect embodiment — course, no quarreling with Mr. Henderson’s contention that a

of the spirit of jazz in the realm of statesmanship; and (2) that nation is really creating art when it uses its own methods for the Constitution of the United States is the most wonderful ef- | working up the raw material mined from its own soil. That has fect ever produced at any moment by the lungs of a man opera- always been well understood. Jazz, according to Mr. Henderson, ing a strangled saxophone. These two things must be true, be- | who speaks according to Fred Stone, may be traced as far back cause Mr. Coolidge and the Constitution of the United States —_as the year 1895, when Mr. Stone heard it in New Orleans. It are obviously part of the civilization of this America whose in- —_—_ was then the accompaniment to a dance known as “Pasmala,”

ner meaning is so satisfactorily being revealed in terms of the which Mr. Henderson conjectures to be an improvement on pas

cabaret ensemble. a méle. Here the doubt occurs whether this is not another case Mr. W. J. Henderson in this month’s Scribner’s presents some- of Dvorak and Negro folksongs. It will be recalled that the emithing more than an apology for jazz. He assigns jazz a high —_ nent Czechoslovak pointed to the slave tunes of the South as 167

1922 FEBRUARY 18 « THE NEW YORK TIMES the native foundation upon which to build a native American _in England, it would have been possible to say that jazz exmusic. Later it was demonstrated that Negro folk music was __ pressed the ebulliency of the Elizabethans, the carefree optionly an evolution from early Anglo-Saxon hymn tunes. The —=mism of a Charles James Fox, the nervous energy of a Nelson pas a méle would suggest that behind the New Orleans jazz of —_and the extravagant humor of a Samuel Butler. It would be 1895 we may yet get back to something from the France of __ stretching things a bit, perhaps, but I have seen worse things Louis XIV, and so not native. If the thing does not happen Mr. __ happen in the most solemn histories. Henderson is justified in his proud claim: “Jazz need not be a From the chill atmosphere of abstract speculation let us now poor thing, though assuredly our own.” And it is ourown not —‘ descend to a few facts about this supposedly jazz-motivated only because bred from the soil, but because it expresses “our _land of ours. In the course of five minutes I find myself jotting ebulliency, our care-free optimism, our nervous energy andour down seven heads of discourse which, with another five min-

extravagant humor.” utes to spare, might be expanded into fourteen or twenty-one. What I understand Mr. Henderson does not claim is that jazz | Somewhat elaborated, the topics present themselves as follows: expresses everything in the United States entirely, or that it ex- 1. President Coolidge. I find it hard to think of the President’s

presses us better than certain other phenomena now visible in —_—s mind processes or emotions as expressing themselves in the jazz

the United States. That is precisely the thesis of one playwright, | rhythm; and yet Mr. Coolidge is generally admitted to be fairly who, looking about him for the art form most closely suited to —_ representative of the countrymen over whom he presides. In any American life as a whole, found the answer in jazz. The argu- _—s case, a very noticeable majority of his countrymen have declared ment is plausible enough. This is a big country with 110,000,000 — that Coolidge is what they like. And as I look back over the people in it, made up of original white stock, Negroes, Jews, | Coolidge annuals of the last six years as Governor, Vice PresiIrish, Poles and all the way through the ethnology numeratedin —_ dent and President, I find it utterly impossible to think of his the immigration law; divisible into mine workers, shopkeepers, _ standing the slightest chance in any jazz competition with Lloyd walking delegates, mine guards, soldiers, vaudeville artists and | George, Mussolini, the Moscow Expressionists, the three British all the other inheritances of Adam enumerated in the United —_—_ general elections within the space of two years, the eight German States census on gainful occupations; addicted to waging for- | Cabinets within the space of five years, or the extraordinary oreign wars for safeguarding democracy, lynching Negroes, or- _chestral effects that have been going on in the most classical of ganizing Rotary clubs and I. W. W. locals, building cathedrals, all lands, in China, under the inspiration of Messrs. Sun, Chang, modernizing the Bible, violating the Eighteenth Amendment, Wu, Lu, Chi, Tuan and Luang. Compared with the jazz of other saluting the flag, reverencing the mother idea and other exer- | Governments our Administration is Beethoven at his serenest.

cises physical and spiritual, and in endless other ways present- 2. The Constitution of the United States. After 138 years it is ing us with a world such as, according to William James, con- —_ the same dear old classical composition. During this period France fronts the new-born baby: one big, booming confusion. Andhow _has jazzed through three monarchies, two empires and three re-

can this world be better described than in the accents of jazz? publics. Great Britain has experimented with Whig oligarchy, The picture is true enough. The only difficulty is thatitistoo | Whig democracy, four great franchise revolutions, the Empire true. It is a way of looking at life in the United States that has —_ and the British Commonwealth, has had a fling at Labor Governbeen applied on different occasions to looking at lifeinthe land = ment and has even made tentative approaches toward a shimmy of Uz in the time of one Job; and in looking at Greece in the — with the Soviets. But, what is the use of calling the roll of a fortime of Aristophanes; and in looking at England in the time of —_ eign world that has jazzed itself out of recognition? For us the

Elizabeth, when one man discovered the perfect jazz formula: Constitution is still the Ark of the Covenant, altered radically “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying noth- —_ only once, in respect to the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amending,” and since then everywhere. Life everywhere and fromthe — ments affecting the Negro. There have been other amendments. beginning has been interpreted by two rival schools as either |§ The popular election of Senators amendment has enabled the full of purpose or full of jazz. American life no more compels _ people of the States to elect exactly the same kind of Senators you to view it as jazz than life in Germany does; if jazz isthe that used to be elected by the Legislatures. The woman suffrage way you choose to view it. And the proof of it is, of course, in | amendment has increased the Republican vote by three-fifths and the fact that the jazz drama or the expressionist dramacomesto the Democratic vote by 60 percent. The prohibition amendment, us from post-war Germany. If there had not been Germanexpres- _as I am informed, has not quite revolutionized the ethics or the sionism it is reasonable to suppose that an American dramatist morals of the American people. It is odd, is it not, that the very would not have thought of jazz as the very voice of America. same persons who deplore the American people’s blind devotion So much, then, for the saxophone and the tom-tom as pecu- to an antiquated character of government should be the persons liarly native to the soul of this nation. No doubt they express who think that the spirit of America is jazz. our ebulliency, our optimism, our energy and our extravagant 3. Our party system. It is no longer true that every Englishhumor. But I imagine these qualities could be found in other —§manis now born either a little Liberal or a little Conservative. It nations, at least in sufficient degree to meet the needs of afor- _— certainly is not true that he stays where he is born; and so in mula. If it had happened, for example, that jazz originated in _— other countries. Lloyd George began as a radical, progressed to England instead of being borrowed from us by the English and _ Liberal, developed into Coalitionist, is suspected of planning to by them worked quite as hard as we do—if jazz had originated become a Nationalist. Of Winston Churchill no details are nec168

MARCH 4 « VARIETY 1922 essary; in the matter of partisanship Mr. Churchill holdsacom- _ally it is as regular a beat in our national rhythm as the procesmutation ticket. Across the Strait of Dover there is M. Briand, sion of the equinoxes. A generation ago it was A. P. A. Two

who began as an anarchist and is now conservative; M. generations ago it was Know-Nothingism. The historians have Mitterand, who began as a Socialist and is now accused of roy- _ traced it much further back. A nation that can so perfectly sysalism; Signor Issomino who began as editor of the ultra-Social- _ tematize its emotional sprees is not a jazz nation. It is a model ist newspaper Avanti and now suppresses newspapers. But in _ of self-control.

America men are born Republicans or Democrats and their 8. The farmer. His case strongly suggests the Ku Klux. Once grandsons die Republican or Democratic. Compared with the —_ in a generation the American farmer goes in furiously for jazz;

jazz of European politics ours are Johann Sebastian Bach. but the external phenomenon does not in the least correspond 4. The mother idea as enshrined at Rotary Club conventions, to an inner, spiritual reality. It depends entirely on wheat prices in the American Magazine and on the vaudeville stage, and —_ at Chicago and Liverpool. Less than a year ago the Northwestroughly handled by the jazz interpreters of America. Ifthe mother _—_erner was as wild as any cabaret impresario on Broadway. To-

chant, as we raise it, is bunk it is part of an international bunk. It = day he is as calm as the Parthenon. So here, too, there is an is a hypocrisy we share with most nations and in which we are _ eternal law beneath the troubled surface. When men are regusurpassed by some. On the basis of what I have read it is my larly wild at 90 cents a bushel and regularly Tory at $2 a bushel impression that the country which goes in most heavily for __ they are not jazz victims. They are in tune with the infinite. the maternal blah is classical, logical, sophisticated France. 9. Local genius. Against the spirit of regionalism the forces The one faith which the Paris boulevardier holds to, as far of evolution beat in vain. It is not only Massachusetts, there she as I have read, is his faith in maman. A generation ago __ stands. The South, there it stands, always down on the Negro.

DuMaurier summed it up: California, there she stands, always after the Chink and the Jap. Iam gai. I am poet. I dvell Rupert Street, at the fifth. Pennsylvania, there she stands, always after tariff revision upI am svell. And I sing tralala and I love my mamma. ward. New York, these she stands, always torn between the re-

And the English I speaks him quite vell. solve to despise the American hinterland and the passion to be 5. We stifle, as I am frequently informed, under the dead _ loved by the hinterland. Herren, there it stands, gun-play in the hand of Puritanism; but no one has as yet ventured to find the —_ agricultural age thirty-five years ago, gun-play in the industrial

essential jazz throb in Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards. age today. We are classical. 6. We are the most capitalistic nation on earth. That is prob- Glancing back over the schedule I find my seven heads of ably true if you define capitalism as laissez faire for the indi- _ discourse turning into nine. That perhaps may be due to the jazz vidual. But to the extent that we still think in the Cobden rhythms influence. At any rate, this is the thought to carry away for the of seventy-five years ago we cannot be accused of going infor | day: Howcanacivilization which has been so severely stigmathe newer economic dances. Read the history of ourlate Farmer- tized as stick-in-the-mud, creaky, antiquated, anachronistic, Labor Party and there is but one answer: not for us the Socialist | suppressionist and in every other way hostile to adventure, quest-

saxophone, the Syndicalist trombone, the Guild castanets. We — ing, experimenting, life—how can such a civilization be demay be hopeless, but emphatically we are not running wild. scribed as jazz? 7. Ku Klux: At first sight this is a jazz manifestation. Actu-

March 3 ¢ The New York Times PRIMITIVE SAVAGE ANIMALISM, PREACHER’S ANALYSIS OF JAZZ Syracuse, March 2—“Jazz may be analyzed as a combination of “It has gotten beyond the dance and the music and is now an nervousness, lawlessness, primitive and savage animalism and _attitude toward life in general. We are afflicted with a moral lasciviousness,” said the Rev. Dr. A. W. Beaven of Rochesterin and spiritual anemia for which the Church has the only transfu-

his civic Lenten sermon here today. sion that will cure.” March 4 ¢ Variety

SCOFFS AT FEAR OF JAZZ There is more danger in the fear of jazz than in jazz itself, accord- | simple manner that they can get more fun out of worth-while ing to Henry L. Gideon, musician and lecturer, who is conduct- = compositions. “In my opinion,” he added, “many of the sentiing a course in the appreciation of music at the public library. He |= mental waltzes of former generations were far worse than jazz urged parents to point out to children all they really enjoy injazz _and it is strange that no one objects to the extreme sensuousis taken, often bodily, from good music and to show them ina _ ness of certain operatic music.” 169

$922 MARCH 18 * THE LITERARY DIGEST March 18 ¢ The Literary Digest STUDENTS IN ARMS AGAINST JAZZ Jazzy tendencies among Chicago’s high school pupils are to be We believe that young people of high school age should suppressed by the pupils themselves, their leaders having decided keep early hours and devote five evenings of the week to on this course after an alarming state of affairs had been brought their high school studies. to their attention. Other methods having failed, we are told, an We believe that parents should be invited to share in appeal to parents to save the high school girls and boys from the the patronage and chaperonage of all school functions. effects of jazz music, “shimmy” dances, “lovers’ lane” automo- In as much as our greatest concern is to preserve the bile rides and immodest dress was circulated by Superintendent wholesome elements in the characters of our young of Schools Peter A. Mortenson. A “troublesome three percent” is people, and to insure a development into a strong manheld responsible for what is described as a serious situation, and hood and womanhood, with a will to combat evil, the suthe ninety-seven percent, comprising the better element, is said perintendent feels that he has a right to the active support to be determined to enforce a stricter standard of morals among of the parents in these matters of standards and ideals. the offending few. For two years, we are told in the Chicago Jour- But the students didn’t wait for their parents to act, They nal, principals and teachers have been studying the complaints began at once. we are told. a concerted movement lookin to

that the present-day school boy and girl are deteriorating mor- i “Th d ‘ f he rules of the school é d

ally. All sorts of expedients—school dances, community centers, reform, “ine students can entorce the rules of the sc eo"s an and socials—have been tried in an effort to check the students’ the proper standards of conduct better than any one else, , said “increasing tendency to worldliness,” and finally it was decided Fred Bennett, Q student leader, as he 's quoted in the Chicago that the cause of most of the trouble lies within the home and that Daily News Ifa boy s father, or the prine ipal, or a teacher tells it is there that initial reform must be started. Recently several him to quit smoking he gets sore, but ifa student whom he scandals are said to have been disclosed, and it was discovered, respects tells him to quit he thinks it Over pretty seriously a nd according to the Journal, that there were organized systems pro- probabl y quits. , The same P sychology 's observable in girls, moting immorality among high school students. In his appeal, according to this young philosopher: “If a girl's mother tells which is endorsed by the high school principals and deans, Su- ne : that ner shirt . poo short she mauens me , ys every pony Short perintendent Mortenson holds that “the greatest force for good in “he o mat ad but " . ° tl her a i °h we k skirt 18 too short the school is the sentiment and public opinion of the main stu- she gets mad, but if I tell her—well, she thinks that over. In our dent body,” and the students, with their parents, are urged to co- school there are only about three pe rent of the students who operate with the school board in setting standards and in restrain- cause difficulty, but they get written up in the papers an d Bie ing the less responsible. In defining the causes which have been the school a bad name. The work of moral reconstruction will

| a not be left to the students without assistance. Recognizing that

P roductive of'so much trouble and scandal, the statement, as it is mere prohibition only creates a desire for the thing prohibited,

quoted in the Journal, sets forth: the superintendent has decided in [addition to] forbidding jazz

, , to encourage the taste for good music by having daily musical

much ete down respect for womanhood. has done programs given by orchestras, glee clubs, bands and soloists in We feel that no effort on our part can counteract this the school assembly halls. Expressly noting, as did Superevil unless the parents realize the danger and help us main- intendent Mortenson, that ninety-seven percent of the high

tain the standards. school pupils are “normal, sensible young people,” and insist-

We believe that jazz music has done much to corrupt ing that the harm caused by the offending three percent should dancing and to make it impossible for young people to not bring general reproach on the whole student body, the Daily learn the more refined forms of dancing, at the same time News says editorially:

| vitiating their taste for good music. Youth is impressionable and the bad example of evena small We believe that the unrestricted use of the automobile element is likely to have undesirable effects. “We are living ata is another demoralizing influence, and that parents who pretty ta st clip, said a noted educator the other day. To none is allow boys in their teens to take high school girls joy riding fast living more InjUrbOUs phy sically and morally than to the are doing much to break down the moral standards of the young. Rational recreation is essential, but it is notorious that

community. the line of moderation, propriety and decency is too often overWe believe that in accordance with the State law, pu- stepped at dancing a nd other parties, and that some parents tol-

pils should refrain from smoking. erate or acquiesce in forms of amusement and modes of dress Extremes in dress are deplorable. We believe that moth- that offend good taste or right conduct.

ers should know that modesty and simplicity in high Educators can do Something to correct or prevent excess

school girls’ costumes are most helpful and uplifting to but parents can do muses MOF’. The ome may undo or nullify

the school ideals. the work of the school in regard to behavior, speech and man170

MARCH 30 © THE MUSICAL COURIER 1922 ners. Parental responsibility cannot be shifted and ought notto _— pale as compared to the revelations of Hollywood,” remarks The

be evaded. Many of the parents who lament loss of authority Christian Century, “they ought to be shocking enough to the over their children have never really tried to exercise it with — respectable fathers and mothers of immature youth. To subject anything like method, firmness or reasonable consistency. adolescent character to the moral overstrain of such unhedged “Sororities and fraternities, the dance, youthful liberties with |= and unchaperoned customs is community purblindness.” the automobile, and certain types of games and entertainments—

while the conditions complained of under these headings are

March 30 © The Musical Courier VARIATIONETTES by the Editor-in-Chief Following recent Musical Courier editorials on the subject of —_ forth a fiat prohibiting Turkish women from swaying themselves jazz, we have been flooded with letters and clippings on the __to the jazz strains of the American infidels. Gaylord Yost, the subject. We feel, however, that there is nothing more tosayeven composer, sends us a careful analysis and dignified denunciathough we read all the communications with real interest.Canon __ tion of jazz and we shall publish his valuable screed elsewhere.

William S. Chase, of Christ Church, Brooklyn, puts himself on Meanwhile, you ought to hear Mischa Levitzki improvise record as a staunch advocate of the Duke Anti-Jazz Dance Bill, = jazz on the piano. Really, it is too annoyingly appealing. introduced at Albany, for the purpose of punishing persons who —_ Germaine Schnitzer, a very well known and very gifted pianist, permit dancing to jazz music at public resorts. Another minis- —_is out with a statement which she makes extremely amusing but ter, Rev. John Handley, of Ocean City, N. J., declares that “our § which has an underlying basis of great seriousness. “I have de-

country is jazz mad and its deadly virus has infected schools, cided upon a step,” she says, “which may draw down upon me fraternities and even teachers.’ Hulbert Footner, one of ourbest §=much condemnation from those persons who have helped to book reviewers, points out that even book authors are begin- | bestow upon me the success so far achieved by me. I intend to ning to write in jazz style: “By jazz, I mean in general the stac- _ be guilty of what the musical highbrows call ‘commercializing’ cato note, incisive and averting at its best, flip and disgusting at — my art. I shall take that step at Carnegie Hall on Sunday afterits worst.” Mr. Footner qualifies, however: “If offhand, graceful noon, April 9. In other words, I am tired of playing the works of and unforced, the jazz style achieves a certain note of distinc- the great masters for the benefit of the comparatively few who tion. One must not look for depth or sustained feeling in jazz, understand those works. I am tired of having my sole reward but one is never bored.” The pulpit is on hand again with the consist of laudatory notices in black and white. I desire a few dictum of a Syracuse preacher (who wishes to remain anony- __ rewards in green and yellow, signed with the name of the treamous) to the effect that “Jazz may be analyzed as acombina- _ surer of the United States of America. To get them I must disretion of nervousness, lawlessness, primitive and savage animal- —_— gard in a measure my audience of the past years and create for

ism and lasciviousness.” John Philip Sousa foretells the early |= myself anew audience from those people who love music only decline and oblivion of jazz and says: “Jazzis greatforthe man __ because it is melodious. I know very well what I am doing, I or woman who doesn’t know how to dance. It doesn’t require _ realize that I shall be called an iconoclast, a Bolshevik, a Red; dancing to dance jazz. Take the dance away from the floor and _ but again I say that the green and yellow of the reward will not jazz music wouldn’t last a week. The flat-footed, knock-kneed, — clash sufficiently with the red of the tile to offend my artistic pigeon-toed man, or the man or woman who hasn’t any rhythm _ sensibilities. What is the use of trying to conceal my motives in or music in his soul is what keeps jazz music and jazz dancing __ this matter? I have garnered enough praise since my debut at before the public. Jazz is a dance made by and for the flat- _‘ the age of thirteen to last me for the rest of my lifetime. I can’t footed man. When jazz is buried, and the funeral is not far dis- _ eat praise. I can’t pay the landlord with it. I want some financial tant, it will be buried so deep that God himself can’t find it | reward for my years of work and training, and I intend to get it then—and the flat-footed man and the unmusical souls willbe if possible. There are thousands of people in this country who the mourners at the grave.” Aclipping from La Revue Mondiale —_love music, but who will not attend piano recitals because the (Paris) puts that serious publication in the position of conduct- —_— programs that are usually played bore them to death. All-right! ing an organized campaign against American jazz (meanwhile _I intend to give them programs that will attract by the melody the cable reports that nude male dancers are allowed to appear __ of the selections regardless of the name and standing of the publicly in the French capital) and also that President Mitterand |= composer. Beethoven, Bach, Brahms were wonderful masters. and ex-President Deschanel have danced to jazz strains at vari- |§ Admitted. Huxley, Spencer, Darwin were wonderful writers, ous balls. Vice-Chancellor Farnell, of Oxford University, so a but comparatively few read their work for entertainment. I am missive informs us, has put the ban on jazz as “a frightful dis- —_ not conceited enough to believe that simply because I play popu-

traction and temptation to students.” The muftis of lar music that will make that music good; but I do believe I can Constantinople got together recently, so we are told, and put _ play programs of tuneful music that is good and make it popu171

1922 APRIL 6 * THE MUSICAL COURIER lar. Fully counting the cost of my undertaking in every way, the | Maier and Pattison, and Albert Spalding have performed idealprogram I shall play on Sunday, April 9, at Carnegie Hall, isas ized ragtime and jazz at concerts. John Carpenter has composed

follows: (programs lists a number of ‘light classics.) it. Mengelberg has led Strauss waltzes, and Harold Bauer put More power to Miss Schnitzer, the more so because some _Albeniz’s Tango on his program. other performers, like John Powell, Henry Souvaine, Messrs.

April 6 ¢ The Musical Courier SONG ECHOES FROM THE OLD SOUTH by George A. Miller With whatever care the words of the songs that follow be re- Here he appeals to his God, thinking of his earthly needs— corded, and however cleverly their musical notation be made, it —_ just wants to “git er long,” to “break by”—and at the bottom of it

is impossible to convey through any black and white agency all in a very natural and human way there is woman—his “baby.” the exact effect of these old songs of the old slaves and their A strikingly beautiful melody of intrinsic worth carries these children and their children’s children among whom I was born simple words, which Monroe would sing by the hour in his and reared. The music itself is anything but cultural. Whensung droning tones:

it must flow freely and untrammeled by conventional

restraints. The Negro himself regularly introduced new little turns on LAY MY HEAD. and miniature variations, but he sang them always seriously

and with respect and feeling, although white people heretofore ww oe =

have affected to think even his religious songs were “funny.” It ; > ee must be remembered that I am speaking of genuine folk song,

most of it perhaps handed down for generations, and of a very : aa =e _— —— Te _

simple and primitive people and of their very natural and sin- ee wee es Ss ee ee

cere expression through the medium of their music, and that wre ee therein lies (at this late day when serious interest is revived in

it) is beauty and its value to the musical folklore of our country. And then add a second verse:

, ; Police, Police, why don’ turn me; gious and occupational songs, the latter termyou broadly covering

loose, ; .; _ and let me leave dis here Caliboose.

In this article I have room for only a few of the old Negro reli- ; ; ;

his love, work and pastime songs and giving an authentic and an inmate view of him—a sort of thumbnail sketch of both the Monroe was psychic about the dinner hour; he used neither

singer and his song. sun nor watch, but when 12 o’clock came, Monroe “stuck his plow” and Kit understood him perfectly. Monroe only sang when

Monroe the Psychic he was at his field work; at all other times he was as silent as he ‘dle.

Monroe Brown was coal black (and, by the way, where are all the was idle

eee ey a. ae: ively Oliver

real black ones now—did you ever think of that? Is this another Li .

one of his “native qualities” disappearing under “white influences?”)}—but as I say, Monroe was coal black, and as is often —_ Oliver Jones was the exact opposite of Monroe Brown. he was the combination, had a predominance of white in his eyes. His _g high strung and wiry negro, with the skin drawn tight over his bodily movements were slow and he was temperamentally si- bony face and body. In repose (which he seldom was) he looked lent, but his eyes were quick and shifty. The same description _Jike the mummy of old Rameses the third. Oliver was also disholds good for “Old Kit,” a fat and lazy mule, only the quick and tinctly a plow hand. He plowed “Beck,” a high stepping, natushifty part applied at times mostly to her heels. Monroe slowly _yally restless, bony old mule, the mate to lazy Kit. They were followed his mule down the long furrows, holding his head poised —_ we mated—Oliver and Beck. I can see him now pumping out and suspended slightly to one side, not so much to watch his task jerky explosive laughter, as he hollered, “Let’s go, Babe;” and as not to disturb his dream. His only perceptible movements were _ ag he left the “big house” yard and the other “boys” for the to hold his plow, to walk and to sing. This was his song, which _ yearby field, he would hold up his plow by the handle with one sometimes he would whistle and sometime he would sing: strong hand and skip it along until he “struck” his furrow. Then

O Lord, do my Lord, as old Beck, shaking the dew of the early morning from her I break by, by, restless flank, struck a stiff and steady gait, with the plow turn-

I break by. ing the rich and steaming soil, Oliver would open up: 172

APRIL 6 * THE MUSICAL COURIER 1922 Gwine ter sound de Jubilee. |

2. OH, CHARGE HIM. Somebody di’n ende mountain,

hapeadhnehiaeneS ae Somebody di’n en de daid,

Gwine ter get up en de mohrnin’ shoutin’,

Ps @arye awa Wim 110g weweee ob Gwine ter rise up fum de said

> t= =e Se Y if in’ ; Chorus

idee -— meme let el Ef you git dare befo’ I do,

ou runan tell de Lord I’m er comin’ on too

Woe eth aa ewes pagers te eee And then they would keep time with their hoes, with a backward and forward stroke, a kind of a “lick and a promise” to

+ alll ee . out a we this song, Coronation:

3. CORONATION.

Spoken: “Git Up Here, Beck! dil Nate (Cacepiette) Oh mule, on mule move lively, oh move on down de line, a aS SSS SS SS SS = You got ter make er livin’ fer dat Lil’l gal of mine.” a wn ty tat egies Sop esewe te

Spoken: “Wo Haw Here, Babe! PSs Se ee me ee ee eee Oh babe, oh baby dahrlin’, oh lis’en whut I say! sees of tlk; Bene wt te righ us chal ge ‘Sous

Gwine ter buy yer Lil’t finger ring. a _ _ ng 4 h - = Gwine pint de wed’n day”.

And as Oliver would swing his plow down another furrow, Bop oneen Bk beet of = ALD «Sea! teeny eal apeniomeme

other, and sing: a aoe —— ™ Den er ha, hae mye Lord, tse! tray enelh come! Gemma Bay awe Bin = tend Of alte en de mornin’ erha, hae, ha mye Lord!

he would shift his song as though it were but the chorus to the

§ Caadqwecascunsenccrsenste-cor 6 we dase named

Comin’ down, comin’ down, comin’down to Jordan

Sister don’t you think it bes’,

(And about this time there was a certain little barefoot boy, Hep criown Him Lord of all, with stone bruises, stumped toes, dew poisoning an’ everything, Bear de witness in yo breas’, following Oliver Jones with his mule and his song, and though Hep crown Him Lord of all. he didn’t know it, he was being deeply impressed—and he

wasn’t to forget.) There could be no restraint either in motion or emotion; there was nothing to stop the flood-gates of feeling, and, what was

A Field Leader also quite important, the rhythmic stroke of the hoe. Oliver Swillin had a very numerous family, some twelve or four- Aunt Sara of the “Battlin’ Bone.”

teen. I particularly remember three of them—Tildy, Tayebaker and Teobonia. It is aside from the point that Oliver Swillin was Aunt Sara Warren was our washwoman—sometimes our cook. a sort of a preacher and that on one occasion my father founda She and one other only, in all the days of my boyhood down on large amount of seed cotton concealed beneath his cabin floor the farm, did this work for us—so steadfast were our old servithat belonged—not to Oliver. Tilly was a leader, a great hoe _—‘tF's, even during those days of shift and settle, and shift again.

hand, and during the daytime in working hours was possessed She was a deeply religious woman; her smile had fairly to break of a religious fervor that was sometimes almost hysterical. It through the crust of her austerity, and yet all the time her heart seemed to buoy her up and kept her attuned to her work. She WAS loyal and right. Unconscious loyalty, perhaps, was a part of sang with an exuberation that made you forget she was any- her religion. She was very high and lean. She was at her best at

thing short of an inspired leader, which perhaps, after all, she the battling board, that 1s, with the wash pot,” the “wash was, in a way, with her cotton field full of singing hoe hands board” and the “battling stick,” a sort of an animated perambu-

Listen: lating laundry all within herself. This was Aunt Sara’s great song, in a minor key; truly a masterpiece. Jubilee Song. Somebody ber’d en de graveyard. Somebody ber’d ende sen. Gwine ter get up ende mohrnin’ shoutin’, 173

1922 APRIL 6 e THE MUSICAL COURIER sage “Woo de, rip” er, tap er, rip er, tap er, hoo dad-dlee de bum. sea 4, LAMENT. a Woo bing! chu chu!” (Repeat: ad infimitum.) One couple after the other thus dancing until all of them had “walked on de green

"fem te ene tee eto fe 1b 0 em bey grass’ at the “Infair’” or “Hot Supper.” It was on each occasions that they raised money for the church or some other benevolent purpose.

tamorbe erice wera mem Ee we WALKIN’ ON DE GREEN GRASS Walkin’ on de green grass, dusky, dusky dark (twice)

Greate pine ot eet ow tore, 4 htetewerne Nit So fair so’ pretty I chose yu as er Lily. Han’ me down yo’ pretty Lil’ han’. An’ take er walk wid me—wo!

Tred Le guise toe use! a tov, Jee 00 40 tree fall Dogs in de woods, treein’ up squirrel,

tS MtDinah true love de beauty eS— SSSree oe apate) Miss sheislove sugar of in de herworl’, tea.

mm ae . Miss Dinah she loves candy,

Miss Dinah she can steal all or roun’

Trouble gwine to wea’y me down, in de mornin,’ And kiss dem pretty boys handy.” Trouble gwine to wea’y me down, I believe it,

Trouble gwine to wea'y me down, God knows it The dance wound up with a big kiss and then the contribu-

Trouble gwine to wea’y me down, tion to the common pot, by the purchase of some of the food—

Jis’ so de tree fall, jis’ so it he, hot gingerbread, ‘lasses candy, hot peanuts’ not popcorn, hot Jis’ so de sinner live, jis’ so he die, den ‘taters, hot pies, fried chicken—all contributed, most of it from

CHORUS very mysterious sources. Trouble gwine to, ete. Chestly of the Primrose Path

Sometimes Aunt Sara would sing another song ina peculiar = Chegtly Brown was Monroe Brown’s brother. They didn’t look tempo, and accentuate every syncopation with a stroke of the alike. They never spoke to each other, although there was no battling stick. The poem in this song is, incidentally, most beau- enmity between them that I knew of—just two utterly different

tiful: A-EMEN CHULLUN sorts of colored boys. Chestly had wavy hair—not kinky. Chestly was copper colored—not black. Chestly was a dandy—not a

When Chris’ was walkin’ hure on earth field hand. Chestly was a cynic, and literally curled his lip at

Some said He was er spy, life, though he took everything good naturedly. We boys adHe heal de bline an’ raise de dead, mired Chestly, and he liked that, though he took it in the most Go thou an prophesy, chullun. nonchalant manner. He liked the easy way—the Primrose Path—

CHORUS and he was most worldly wise, though he had never been out of Anderson County as far as I knew. This was his song, The Trav-

A-Emen Chullun, A-Emen Chullun, eler:

A-Emen Chullun, A-Emen, A-Emen. I played cayads in London, I played cayads in Spain,

Er sinful ‘ooman kiss His robe ’se gwine back to New York to play cayads again. En fall upon de flo,

En Chris’ Herais her up en say There was another one of Chestly’s songs that had a pecu“Go thoou and sin no mo” chullun. liar, unusual twist to it, a real “big” work song, which calls for a leader and a chorus refrain on the repeated words and on the

CHORUS last line of each verse,, all keeping time with their picks: It was in the little cabin home, where the happy company RAILROADIN

most enthusiastically engaged in the songs and pastimes that Workin’ on de long Georgia line, Georgia line, were near and dear to the hearts and habits of the Negroes, that Workin on de long Georgia line, Oh Lord. we find them unrestrained and natural. Here is one song espe- Workin’ on de long Georgia line, Georgia line, cially typical, a great social and pastime song: Walkin’ on de En I don no whut in de worl’ um gwine to do, Lord. Green Grass: aman and woman, the “lady choosin’ de gem’en,” Oh meh Donie got er hole en de wall, en de wail, would walk or dance up and down in the midst of the company, Meh Donie got er hole ub de wall, Oh Lord. all the others looking on, sometimes hand patting, with synco- Oh, mey Donie got er hole en de wall, en de wall, pated triple time, as an accompaniment, together with some one En er don no whut in de worl’, um gwine ter do, Lord.” on the side line calling time until relieved by another, thus: 174

APRIL 6 * THE MUSICAL COURIER 1922 Then, at the end, came the “holler”: Peaches in de sumnmer time, Apples in de fall,

5. RAILROAD “HOLLER.” I don’t git de gal I want - an enpnne bpaen Mnednsaneadfleangemafhroans _ Won’ have none er tall. Rr Thad er sooldia’ wif

‘Me rat, wee a le ont ‘Hoop’ er sho’d you born, Tek her down ter New Orleans

(To a negro then a railroad—a most comprehensive term— En trade her in fer corn. was a mechanical miracle, and a heifer the friskiest thing that

moved.) Han’ me down my bam-o-ral, It is conceivable that Chestly might have swung a pick ina Han’ me down my shawl, railroad gang (either free or chain) once upon a time, a very Han’ me down mos’ ev’ ythin short time though the last verse sounds very much more like ‘Cep my waterfall. Chestly—that he could visit his “Donie” in her little “hole in de You go down de new cut road, wall,” which is another name for her home. I knew him at his I go down de lane, best, sitting down cozily in a corncrib, shucking corn of a rainy You git dar erfo I do, day, telling us of his marvelous experiences and great aspira- Talk wid Liza Jane. tions.

Isham, The Philosopher . . . “Blue Lias.”

“Blue Lias,” who was “so black ‘till he was blue,” as they said, Isham Moore was a bachelor, also a philosopher. He had all the — was a pure African and glad of it, and a fast worker. He could

physical earmarks of a colored gentleman, and a man of parts. pick 400 pounds of cotton a day and did it almost every day. Had he been educated in his day and time, he would probably (So could his sister, America Indian Ola Rice, who was, if anyhave been very unhappy, for at times he was given to “stud’n” _ thing, a ‘little blacker than “blue.”) Two hundred pounds was a (thinking) and became quite morose. He grew a very preten- —_ high average for good cotton pickers. Blue was temperamentious mustache, which quite distinguished him, and he had a tally alert. He was on the qui vive for everything in life. His quiet sense of humor. He sang some quaint songs andhelaughed _ great explosive expression was “Boom! Den I shot de nigger!” at them in his quiet, winning way. “Isum” was amaster withthe = Then he would laugh convulsively way down in his chest. I’ve women, though nobody ever saw him with one. Here was one __ seen Blue Lias turn up a five gallon can of kerosene oil over his

of Isum’s little favorites in major and minor ad lib: shoulder and take several big swallows and then sweat it out

« ; . over his oily hide. I want you to note Elias Rice’s own peculiar

HA! HA! MY DARLIN’ CHILE idea of melody! I think you will say that it is unique and most Somebody stole my lit’! black dog, expressive. Musicians will understand this little phase of music

I wish dey’d bring him back. and recognize a value of which, of course, Blue was entirely

He run de seed-tick thoo’ de fence, unconscious, but he enjoyed it just the same, and there were En de chigger thoo de crack. others. When he saw it was about to rain he would suspend his

. ad

Seed tick is my ridin’ hoss, rapid action (he reminded one of a playful bull yearling) what-

Chigger is my mule, ever his work was, just long enough to look up and sings

Gwine on down to de white folks house, '

Oh, nigger, ain’t you er fool. aad 6. “WOO BLO DE OODLE: Fy aes ee ey ee ee nen ee eee eee CHORUS

Den—Ha, ha, mi darlin’ chile, ha, ha, I say, on tle 6 ak we he Wo, ha, ha, my darlin’ chile, got no whar to stay.

Oler Massa bought er yaller gal, oe Bom en Mier miner

Fetch er fum de Souf, =e yearn ee ee Hair growed so tight upon her haid

Could not shet her er mouf. ta%ene a ewESSELTE a ee Cw Ole Massa built fine(Ballo house, oS SSS

Every story in dat house uae we Blown Filled wid chicken pie.

175

1922 APRIL 6 e THE MUSICAL COURIER Look like er cloud er risin’ , (pause, then work) face and a few gray hairs. He had two great, fat mules, a fine

Woo blo de oodle. (Thenstop and sing) growing crop of cotton, and his check for a considerable amount

Look like er rain er fallin’, (Pause.) was honored at our old bank. Jerry may be able to stand in the

Woo blo de ooodle. middle and almost throw a rock of his land, when, as he said,

is, “You all couldn’t see off’n yourn,” and yet with all the acres

(And then, after a pause) and all the stock, I question if financially Jerry isn’t better off Look like er storm er comin’! today than we were then.

(The he would suddenly exclaim)

Boom! den I shot de nigger. | The Barber Shop Quartet

Where did Lias get his idea of correct and harmonious musi- Sam Reed, Yance McGee, Joe Norris and Billy Cowan, the latcal progression? His theme was of nature or natural phenom- _ ter known as “aromatic Bill,” were sports-night-roamers, out ena and he sang as he felt about it. I wonder how truly he ex- _ very night, either playing “cayrds” (Seven Up) usually for to

pressed the idea of “er storm er comin?” bacco (anything from a chew to a plug), possum hunting or

sparking their donies, perhaps all three in the one night. They

Jerry’s Banjo Song. were all great and most melodious “hoo-daddlers.” Their mel-

low voices blended wonderfully in this great, reverberating Jerry Johnson was a renter on our plantation, a fine type, a good “Yoodle” or “Hoo daddle” (so called by the “po’ whites,” but man and an intelligent Negro. There were several of Jerry’s more appropriately “wo-de-oo dle”), sung only at night, the songs, widely different in theme. “Old Granny Hare” wasamost __ very essence of Negro melody: peculiar one. These are the words: 8. “THE HOO DADDLE.”

OLD GRANNY HARE | Pe apuagERSIEEEnRaNGT wutan mn

Old Granny Hare whut yer doin’ dare, ~ e -. eo, mm www we

Runnin’ down de hillside hard as you can tare, $6$-——+ —— a Wo Law Mam, look at Sam

wag to, tener 00 eng, Rqnastames sopoanen Pang!

Sottin’ on de corner soppin’ out de pan.

got a wife and er sweetheart, too, - . .

naw Loo-ee—Shall i do, My old colored friends now began to be modernized. They

Wo! Look back, look back, Daddy shot er bear, sang ° part songs’ —lead, first and second tenor and bass. The

Hit him en der eyeball, never tech er hair. first time I ever heard real barber-shop” chords really to know and recognize them, was in a great song these boys sang, and

This is another one of Jerry’s songs, a “banjo song,” quite syn- aaiaed immensely popular locally with both white and black— copated, full of funny skips full of funny skips which the banjo Whar’ was Eva when She Died. It is “barber-shop” of the most

fills in most attractively: aggravated and virulent type. I am sure every one would recog-

, . nize it. It has never occurred to us to flee from it as a disease,

Hot 7, “GIT ERLONG HOME. for we have contracted it along with our other musical epidem-

, 20ers we! ght (iw! tpt Conscious syncopation as such was then undressed of it had a fs to come some years later, as the story goes, from the colored

slaves of Memphis, Tenn. out of all of which has grown our

ane me! gt! amst Sot thu or present day “jazz’—regret it or not, but in the evolution of

American folk songs, these new notes have taken their place.

; a a a jae —= Whar’ was Eva when she died was usually sung in quartet form.

—— ~~ ww ew Maces It called for very close harmony and felt so pat on the suspended

chords as sometimes to cause the obsessed and enthusiastic mamecnememe O68 tony eae tems hem, fs long quartet to break from its affectionate stranglehold argued each pany -f—— _-—2«-—doOther’s neck, shout with delight, and indulge some wild and

exuberant and entirely irrelevant excitedness as, for instance,

bend Sand anemone song heme ay Teer when Stuttering Sam would say, “M.M.Mr. Faud, Oh! Oh! M.M.

a arnt ay «=©60- Mr. Constable—p.p.please take d’ dat d-d-dead n.n.nigger o-off d-de side w-walk.” Yance would spin around and laugh and toe errr Ne scream falsetto-like, Bull would give his staccato guttural grunts,

The last time I saw Jerry Johnson, just a few years agoona —_ and Joe would exclaim “Odngity!” And then with a scream of visit to my old home, all the scenes were utterly changed; yet | delight they’d jump together and lock up for another round, there was Jerry—the same of Jerry—with kindlier lines in his | only to explode again at the next great barber-shop chord. 176

APRIL 7 * THE NEW YORK TIMES 1922 WHAR WUS EVA WHEN SHE DIED 9, "“CAYN’T YO’ LIVE 'UMBLE?”

Oh! Warwhen wus she Evadied. when she died IF == alk.eae - _FE: Sleepin’ | btébiscpsspes

When de leaves turn red, when de leaves turn red en fall. tery = 0! ow | eoemtampeeeteented, aol odie

Good night, good night, I’1l remember you in my dreams ye Sire Jones nes Som om Soe 9 as ae When de leaves tum ceed, when de leaves turn red en fall. (ff eres GE Creraneccccsema escetwemmacnecoreccrs 6 fy ¢ ad ba

(chores)

The “Gorilla.”

: 5 aeeditcher, mee‘a drainer 98 eweorrorerce ansa man ores sis lbes George Sadler: was of the lower lands, of prodigious strength, who could throw a huge shovelful of (jase ee thick, blue mud with the least apparent effort—only a grunt— oe ee — from the bottom the ditch We ten feet deep to exactly the spot on hae SS hepae7}ee the bank where itofbelonged. called Sadler “The Gorilla” Heaaah [== eer had a small, flattish head, with wiry kinky hair tufted down c= Oe nme tre tae enn theme! een nearly toclose his eyebrows, set wide apart, a large nose fe SS SSS ==. flattened to his face, asaucer mouth eyes split almost literally from are SoS ee -ét————wne Be =u ear to ear, crunching jaws and a great bull neck, extra broad shoulders, a waist as small as a woman’s, long spiral dangling And now, what do we learn of ourselves in this music? There legs, and feet like hams, with long, suspended arms solong that _has been here presented a varied and original group of what is, he could almost scratch the calf of his legs without bending his —_ in my opinion. genuine and unadulterated folk song, coming

body—this was George Sadler, “The Gorilla.” from a large portion of our population, uttered at a crucial and George Sadler was a good singer, his voice was as softas a important period of our national life, straight from the heart zephyr and as smooth as velvet. He was also a good whistler, and close to nature, all springing from elemental human expecopying his notes from nature. He sang a peculiar guttural song. rience and the impulses of the bottom strata of our plain people. I have never known what his words signified—I have an idea, | These, is seems to me, must largely form the background of our but I will not attempt to describe it. There were only thesetwo —_ folk songs; they are the echoes reverberating through the lives

lines: of our people; they form the dominant note; they are the fundaGaulman, Gaulman, Gaulman day, mental harmonies in the spirit of America. Can we hear in any

And er one two dunkum die. concrete way the basic music of the people? Has it color, form or life recognizable to our conscious thought? Do we sense

Spirituals America in it? Here is one of the Negro’s great religious or revival songs, a true “spiritual,” often roared out in a great shouting chorus:

April 7 ¢ The New York Times MUSICIAN IS DRIVEN TO SUICIDE BY JAZZ: WOULDN'T PLAY IT, COULDN'T GET EMPLOYMENT. His fellow-lodgers at 124 East Thirty-first Street said yester- the mornings before he went to his daily task in a cabaret, the day that jazz was responsible for the death of Melville M. Wil- —_ deep wailing tones of his instrument were often heard from his son, 72, a musician, who committed suicide Wednesday night. _ little room on the third floor back.

Wilson shot himself with a pistol. Finding that he had not in- Then came jazz. The old man revolted. He wouldn’t insult flicted a mortal wound, he laid the weapon down and inhaled _his cello, he said, nor the old melodies he had played so long

gas through a tube fastened to a jet in his room. and loved so well. Therefore he lost the job he had with a cabaA note, evidently printed with the utmost care, lay beside _ ret in Upper Broadway. At first this did not worry him. There

the chair in which he was found. It read: would be other places, he thought, where jazz was not the rage “When I am dead notify Harnleys, Akron, Ohio. Mevlville — and he would find them. M. Wilson. I want no funeral service. The Church will please But it was difficult. Jazz was everywhere and no one seemed

keep its hands off.” to have any use for Wilson and his cello. He finally found a Wilson for twenty-five or thirty years had beenacello player _ place in the Bronx, but left it immediately, because, he said, the in various restaurant orchestras in New York. He had taken pride _ piano player, who headed the orchestra, succumbed to the lure in his work. He lived alone and music was his chief delight. In _ of jazz. 177

1922 APRIL 19 e MELODY This was a month ago, and since that time Wilson had been Frank Orbis, who occupies a room adjoining that of Wilson, without a job. He was heard Wednesday softly playing oldtunes = smelled gas just before noon yesterday. Patrolman Joseph and it was thought he had found work. It was only his farewell, | O’Brien was notified and they found Wilson’s body. however, spoken through the cello.

April 13 ¢ Music Leader A JAZZ CONFERENCE The misdemeanors of jazz are to be brought before a higher _ other rule. There is jazz—and jazz—and Mr. Stock has played court, for Frederick Stock, conductor of the ChicagoSymphony __jazzy syncopation in both his symphony and popular concerts, Orchestra, and music supervisors in public schools are to meet — where also were heard Percy Grainger and the duelists, Maier next Saturday to discuss this most vital subject. They will de- _—_ and Pattison, in their picturesque razzling, dazzling, jazzling. It termine if the school children are to be deprived of their chief | was such glorious musical fooling that the audience literally

rhythmic outlet. ate it up. Instead of discussing the elimination of the rhythmic

Jazz has been the means of interesting many who otherwise —_— jazz, Mr. Stock and the enlightened progressive element among would have registered an abhorrence of music as taughtin pub- _‘ the supervisor would be more advantageously employed in forlic institutions—high schools, grade schools, kindergartens and = mulating a plan whereby music education for school children normal schools. Anything worse than much of the mis-named — would be placed in the hands of musicians who have studied singing, piano vamping and thumping accompaniment cannot __ the subject under competent teachers in the large private colbe imagined. In comparison jazz is musical manna from Heaven. _leges and conservatories. The present generation of Americans Some two or three of the supervisors are trained musicians, oth- —__ will never become musical until conditions are changed in the ers were picking out the notes of The Maiden’s Prayer before _ public schools. Mr. Stock who has been responsible for so many

the Civil War, and many of them would flounder on aC-major innovations and reforms, can now tackle this problem and try scale. Not to mince words much of the music teaching in the _to find a solution. public schools is a joke. There are exceptions to this as to every

April 19 ¢ Melody BERT WILLIAMS, NEGRO COMEDIAN Egbert Austin Williams, who prior to the death of his former On Tuesday (March 8th) another vast throng that filled the colleague was principal in the famous stage team of Williams auditorium of the Masonic Temple and overflowed into the and Walker, died in New York City on Saturday, March 4th, street, gathered for a second service of respect, this one, conafter less than a week of illness. He was stricken with pneumo- —_—_ ducted by St. Cecile’s Lodge under the solemn and beautiful nia in Detroit, where he collapsed on the stage during a perfor- _ ritual of the Masons, for the late comedian was a member of mance on Monday, February 27th; was taken to his New York Waverly Lodge of Scotland. This, according to officers of the home on Tuesday, and following an unsuccessful attempt at order, was the first time in New York that a Negro had been blood transfusion on Friday night, suffered a relapse to which buried with the regular Masonic ritual but it was at the cabled

he succumbed on Saturday morning. request of the Grand Lodge in Scotland that the services were The first funeral services were held in St. Philip’s Episcopal —_ held by St. Cecile’s—known as the theatrical lodge of the city. Church on Monday, March 7th, and while a thousand people were = The funeral dirge was rendered by an orchestra from a Broadgathered in the church at the services, fully 4,000 more knelt outside = way musical show and noted soloists from some of the most in the street in the rain—paying their last tribute to the famouscome- —_— exclusive churches in New York chanted the Lord’s Prayer. Many

dian. The full Episcopal rites for the dead were solemnized by the __ of the late comedian’s former theatrical associates, officers of Rev. Hutchins Bishop, rector of the church. The casket was literally | the lodge and prominent members of his own race, many of buried beneath a mass of flowers—the simple floral tributes from = whom had come from the South and West, made up the funeral Negro friends mingling with the elaborate wreaths and designs sent = cortege to Woodlawn Cemetery where the body was buried.

by the Friar’s Lambs’ and Clef clubs and many others, prominent in This most successful and best known of Negro comedians the theatrical world. Among the throng gathered in the church were __ has passed from a sphere of stage life in which he was a unique Charles Donavan, the late comedian’s first manager: members ofthe figure, not only unsurpassed but unequaled; depicting the simple first Williams company; Charles W. Anderson (Negro) supervisory credulity and the happy, indolent side of the Negro character as agent of the Department of Agriculture; Henry T. Burleigh (Negro), —_ none other has ever done. He was born in the West Indies, but noted as acomposer and singer, and the baritone soloist at St.George’s _ was reared in San Francisco, and although it has been claimed Episcopal Church and who was selected by the late J. Pierpont Mor- _ that in his veins the blood of the white race predominated over gan to sing the latter’s favorite hymn at his funeral; LeonErrol;Gene _ that of the black, he accepted the strain of the black as the de-

Buck; Charles Canfield; and many other life-long friends. termining factor in his life and career and made for himself a 178

APRIL * METRONOME 1922 place on the American comedy stage where he stood as a star. bringing up in a far western locality which threw him out of perWilliams has been accused by some critics as having refined — sonal touch with the life and dialect of the southern darkey, he his stage artistry to a degree which robbed it of the Negro sponta- —_ nevertheless created a broad, country-wide theatre clientele neity, yet he never failed in “putting over” his work withaclarity _‘ through his skill as a Negro delineator and entertainer. and distinctness which left no doubt as to his meaning, and in Bert Williams has passed, and leaves no successor among this he was inimitable. When intoning one of his melancholy his ownrace. He was not born to the career he made so marked, complaints that luck was always against him he was irresistibly _—but self-made it through hard work and clear insight, a clever, humorous, and the listener not only understood every word of well-liked stage comedian who created insight—a clever, wellthe song-text, but also caught the full sentiment in its singing. As_—_—‘ liked stage comedian who created his own “vogue,” and who

a teller of stories he was without a peer, and notwithstanding his —_will be greatly missed by thousands upon thousands of theatre going people in this country.

April ¢ Metronome JAZZ AND THE MOTION PICTURE by Jerome Lachenbruch When we think of the word jazz, zigzag dancerhythmscometo _ particular, are filled with sudden surprises and compressed emomind. We flatter ourselves with the thought that jazz is a dis- tional excitement. The popularity of the films depends largely on covery of the present generation. But the rhythms that we now __ the story; that is to say on the conflict presented. If a story on the hear in all dance halls, on many stages and on our phonographs _ screen does not contain a sufficient number of action scenes to have been used in other types of musical composition long be- _ please a modern audience, it is usually unsuccessful, no matter fore their sensuous appeal found its way into popular composi- —_ how beautifully the picture may have been made. The sad side of tions. Perhaps the evolution of the popular dance within the last __ this condition is that the scenes may not have dramatic signifitwenty-five years from the waltz, two-step and polkato the one cance; they may succeed merely because they are exciting.

step and the fox trot has freed composers from the belief that .

they must stick to the conventional rhythms. What they have Jazzing Up a Picture done was to search the possibilities that lay in surprise-rhythms, Before a motion picture is made, those who arrange it for the

and to make these the subject of their labors. screen often discuss what is known as “jazzing up a scene.” , Woven into the fabric of many a so-called classical compo” Magazine editors, often with their pitiful results, do the same sition are deft rhythmic changes, SUEPFISES which, if persisted thing with stories that they consider “tame” in part. In the moin, would have produced the jazz music we know. But the com- tion picture studio, however, the jazzing process may mean the

posers of a more remote age used sudden rhythmic variations introduction of an episode to heighten the suspense or to infor contrast or for purposes of transition from one theme to crease the interest. Sometimes, the jazzing process is applied after

another. The element of in themhas heightened the me. ,surprise the picture been completed.

If the photoplay seems too even,

lodic values and made their compositions more ingenious and many scenes may be deleted entirely or others substituted.

entertaining. So necessary has the “jazzing up” process become that many Jazz Always Surprises studios have specialists whose main duties consist in inventing scenes that will add suspense and excitement to the film.

The characteristic of jazz is surprise, and the effect is produced

by quick, daring changes of rhythm. Take away the melodic Jazz as Interpretation

quality of a Jazz comp osition and what is left is a variety of There is another side to the picture which is, perhaps, indica-

rhythms that primitive peoples call music. tive of the trend in motion pictures as well as in music. Since The connection between jazz music and the p resent day musicians like Percy Grainger and John Alden Carpenter have motion pict ure is not far to Seek. A widely known physician used jazz rhythms in compositions that are far from the dance told the writer recently that ours is a NETVOUS age, that two out hall variety, others have realized that it has characteristics which of every three patients who came to him suffer from nervous are worthy of preservation because they define the emotional affliction. He went on to say that modern events MOVE SO Tap- state of an entire generation. But these rhythms are clothed with idly that people have not the leisure to think about them calmly intellectual meaning; they are not used merely for effect; they

and that they apprehend life only in emotional terms. have descriptive and interpretative value.

The Jazz Attitude In the motion picture, there have been many splendid pro-

ductions that are jazzy when the story demands it and

This jazz attitude towards life is evidenced in our popular litera- © Mendelssohn when the “sweetness and light,” episodes flicker ture, our plays, motion pictures, fashions. Motion pictures, in by. Apicture, for example, like Goldwyn’s The Wall Flower has 179

1922 APRIL * PIANO TRADE MAGAZINE many scenes that are undoubtedly of the jazz variety. Events Under the influence of the jazz spirit, motion pictures have happen quickly and without too much attention to detail tobe —_ taken on acomplexity formerly undreamed of. Scenes that were disturbing. On the other hand, there are scenes for which Balfe once considered unimportant have suddenly become essential;

would have loved to compose the sentimental music. and many that were considered necessary, are no longer used. I With photoplays of this kind, motion picture theater orches- _ need refer only to the type of scenes that show a maid receiving tras assume a pleasant responsibility. The jazz spirit is contrasted a letter for the mail and later revealing her on the steps of the with homely sentiment, and the change from one to the otheris —_ house and at the post box. This sort of thing is now taken for sometimes rapid. This combination is a modern development _ granted. The elimination of scenes that do not help the story in photoplay writing. Ten years ago, we had crude action pic- —_ along means that all the footage devoted to obvious actions may tures or slowly moving, sentimental ones—rarely a combina- _ now be used for important scenes. Deleting the obvious 1s a

tion of the two. healthy “jazzing up” of the motion picture, and has resulted in adding terseness and vividness to the present-day photoplay.

April ¢ Piano Trade Magazine THAT “JAZZ” WAIL AGAIN The reformers are still at it. What they deign to call “jazz” mu- _‘Its own attitude on this question was stated in the preceding sic still holds the bull’s-eye spot in the ubiquitous target which _ paragraph. But it does believe that the professional reformers was set up for their special benefit. The daily newspapers, evi- _—_ are trying to educate the public in the wrong way. To intimate, dently finding themselves short of good copy and long on sur- _for instance, that most people who will listen to syncopated plus paper-stock, sat in on the game, bought a stack of chips _—s music are rotten to the core, is ridiculous. Syncopated music is and began to play with the reformers. Now, after four or five _— not necessarily “jazz,” and if rendered on a music roll it cannot years of the over-orchestrated popular music, we are told that _ be “jazz.” If virtue in this country were to be gauged by the type “jazz” is corrupting our morals, damning our souls and prosti- —_ of music preferred by the mass of people, and it were assumed

tuting our social life. that lovers of syncopated music represented the class lacking in

Inspired by the verbosity of the reformers several of ourmu- _ virtue, only an infinitesimal percentage of the people would be sic critics have taken it upon themselves to carry the campaign _ found to be virtuous. further, and entwine the player piano and the music roll—par- There are a large number of intelligent people in America ticularly the latter. They tell us that “jazz” music rolls and “jazz” = who do not care for opera and the classics. Some of them may phonograph records are cooperating with the devil and are _ lack culture, but culture is something which most of us acquire spreading the “jazz” evil just as much as the orchestra and the _as we go along, though we all love to pretend that we inherited band. All this would be facetious were it not for the factthat many _it at birth. Show a group of persons a view of real culture in its people take the statements of these reformers too seriously. most pleasing forms, and you can rest assured that the worthy In the first place there is no such thing as a “jazz” music roll. It | people in that group will adopt it, in part if not in whole. Hurl it is a physical and a mechanical impossibility to manufacture aplayer at them and you will create a bitter antagonism for culture and roll which will play “jazz” music. Those rolls which are called everything it represents. This is just what the reformers are do‘jazz’ rolls are simply imitations, and the roll cutterstoamanhave _ ing. They are trying to force their views on the public instead of never attempted to fool the public on that score. The rolls which — showing the public the benefits which can be derived from adopsound “jazzy” are heavily orchestrated to give that “jazzy” effect, tion. That kind of doctrine is dogmatic theology, which is the and if the reformers are wailing about anything connected withthe one outstanding defect in the egregious arguments of most of player roll it must be this heavy orchestration and not “jazz.” our social and religious reformers. The Piano Trade Magazine does not believe that the verily- The music-roll cutters are not to be censured because “jazz” orchestrated syncopated music roll is the best thing forthe player = music secured a strong hold on the public during the war. The piano industry. But at the same time it appreciates the fact that public got its first taste of real “jazz” from the bands and the tastes differ, and that a large majority of roll buyers have been _ orchestras, which originally launched it in the theatre, the cabapurchasing the heavily orchestrated music rolls. Men like Tho- _ ret and the dance hall. In the course of time the public wanted mas M. Pletcher of the Q. R.S. Music Company and Arthur A. to bring “jazz” into the home. They found that difficult, but Friestedt of the United States Music Company, have testified to | accepted acompromise in the form of music rolls which sounded this, and as both are business men of sound judgment they would “Jazzy” and phonograph records which reproduced “jazz” munot tell us that these rolls were good sellers if it were not so. sic. If the reformers are sincere in the intention to eradicate They believe in giving the public what it wants, andif the pub- “jazz,” let them get after those who started the craze in this lic did not want what it calls the “jazz” roll, Mr. Pletcher and —_—country, and the mediums which were first to carry it through.

Mr. Friestedt would be the first ones to abandon it. A little intelligent investigation will divulge the information that This publication is not putting up an alibi for either “jazz” _ neither the player nor the player roll were guilty. music or the over-orchestral syncopations in music roll form. 180

MAY 4 * MUSICAL COURIER 1922 May 4 @ Musical Courier “JAZZ” —THE NATIONAL ANTHEM (part I) by Frank Patterson It was a clever thought, to dignify “jazz” with that high sound- The fact is that the “ad libbing” soon got tiresome because it ing title, and to make it the name and the subject of a play. Itis | was always so badly done. Scarcely any body of musicians could a good play. Whether it proves anything or not may be amatter — be found who could “keep apart,” that is, play different parts. for debate, but it certainly makes one think and wonder. In it They found that, about half the time, they were drifting into the

“Jazz” is characterized as “poisonous, nerve-racking, shatter- same part—sometimes all on the melody, at other times all on ing, the din and clatter, the tom-tom music—no rhythm, no __ the counterpoint. The necessity for some sort of an arrangemelody—yjust sex and bedlam.” And upon the strength of the |= mentsoon became evident, and the arrangers took the matter in misinformation contained in that phrase an article is to be writ- |= hand and made what all the world now recognizes as refined

ten—with authority. “jazz,” or the offspring of “jazz.” For to say there is no “jazz” at

The authority is “he who makes the ‘jazz,’ “ or, one might _ present is hair-splitting, quarreling over terms, which mean one say “He who gets slapped,” for, like the well meaning clownin __ thing for one person and another for another.

the play, the “jazz makers” are getting slapped right and left. For the sake of convenience let us call all music that is played Not that it troubles them much. Why should it? They have clear —_ by the modern “jazz” orchestra “‘jazz,” whether the players play

consciences, they know that “jazz” is just fun and foolishness, the printed arrangement or “jazz” it. Then we will discover that and they know that, musically, much of itis of ahigh order; that —_ out of the uply, barbarous “jazz” of a few years ago a beautiful is to say, contrapuntal and colorful, as music of the older order popular art has arisen, with reservations, of course.

and generation was not. The reservations might as well at this point be met and dis-

Who, for instance, can compare the splendid orchestrations of | posed of. They are manifold and regrettable. One of them is the the popular orchestra of today with the orchestrations of only a _s unfortunate, stupid, silly, splitting of the tempo—that is to say, few years ago and not be aware of the vast improvement” The old, —_ giving an accent to every eighth note of the rhythm. This is made colorless, piano-violin-clarinet-cornet aggregation, all playing the —_all the more evident, and nauseous by the fact that the players melody with scarcely ever a note of either “obligato” or counter- | dance up and down, or, if sitting, dance their feet up and down, to point, has gone by the board, while “jaz,” or what people call “jazz,” ‘this double rhythm. Many of the dancers also break the actual is on deck, in the first and second cabin and steerage, and the ship _—_ dance steps into pieces with this same absurd double rhythm.

of state, carrying this “National Anthem,” is sailing the seven seas, This objection 1s, of course, made from a strictly musical

and carrying Americanism to every end of the earth. point of view. And the objection becomes all the more forceful Is it Americanism? Well, that is a fine point of contention. when one finds this double rhythm used in “jazzed” arrangeThere are those who say it is not, that itexpresses nothing of the — ments of classical compositions. For instance, one orchestra, American character; that it is exotic, African Oriental, what not. consisting of three saxophones, violin, banjo, trumpet, tromBut if it were any of those things it would never have got a foot- bone, piano and drums, plays an arrangement of the Pilgrims’ hold in Europe. Europe has been living just across the Mediterra- Chorus. The effect of the saxophones and muted trumpet and nean from Africa for centuries, but did they ever hear of “jazz” | trombone, with the violin playing the well known counterpoint, until America made it? They have been in close touch with the _is really excellent, but is spoilt by the drum, banjo and piano Orient since the beginning of time. Did they ever get any “jazz” § making a rhythm on every eighth note from the first to last. It from it? No. They never got it at all until America took ittothem. | becomes dreadfully monotonous, and the public, even the most And then they received it with delight because of its vigorous —_ uncultured, would enjoy it more were this objectionable rhyth-

rhythm, its fervid color, its (for them) exotic character. mic feature omitted. The interesting part of it is that those who make “jazz” seem Other objections are the borrowing of classical tunes, except to feel that there is very little of it now in America. That sounds — when they are parodied and made humorous, the endless use of like a contradiction and needs some explanation. And, to begin _— Foster tunes and other American folk songs in the form of meanwith, one must ask: What is “jazz”? That is answered by the _ingless medleys, and, finally, the fact that so much of this music

arrangers, who were called upon for information, by the term consists of a “verse” entirely lacking in inspiration, tacked on “ad libbing.” In other words, real “jazz” consists of the players —_ to a good refrain, to which the composition owes its life. Most of the orchestra “making up” the parts as they go along. They __ of the music is melodically commonplace, of course, but it is also, very often, cut up capers and monkeyshines while play- enlivened and beautified to an extraordinary degree by the aring. That is “jazz” —-so say the arrangers—treal “jazz” andthere —_ rangers, who are, one might almost say, the actual makers of it.

is very little of it anywhere in America at present. Ithas had its | They must, of course, have a tune, and a good one, on which to day, has left its influence, and passed. One arranger, indeed, hang their arrangement. The public must have a tune it can catch said he had succeeded, once, in writing a piece that “sounded _and likes to whistle and sing at work and at play. But the tune, like jazz” which is the same as saying that most of the arrange- as it comes out of the mind of the composer, is generally noth-

ments do not sound like “jazz. ing but a tune. The arrangers say that, mostly, composers who 18]

1922 MAY 6 °¢ THE LITERARY DIGEST know nothing about music make the most successful popular the fact that in popular orchestras, all of the instruments are melodies. They play piano a little, perhaps but have no knowl- _ supposed to play all the time. There are no rests. Then again, he edge of how to write down what they play. More often stillthey had only a few instruments—frequently only one violin. Furare singers, like the minstrels of old, and their inventions must __ thermore, instruments capable of playing inner counterpoints,

be taken down by the arrangers from dictation. such as the clarinet and cello, were either not loud enough to be They are then made up into all sorts of forms. The piano _ properly heard or unsuitable, too difficult, or not of the proper arrangement issued for sale is very simple indeed, made to suit —_ tone color.

the capacities of the average American amateur. But the player The solution is the American popular orchestra as it now piano arrangements, the orchestra arrangements, are highly com- —_ stands—ttwo or three saxophones, generally tenor and alto, someplex, and could not be written except by a skilled musician with _ times soprano and bass interchangeable, violin, piano, two trum-

a thorough knowledge of counterpoint, at least practical coun- _ pets (not cornets), tenor trombone, bass tuba, banjo and drums. terpoint, and a no less thorough knowledge of what Lampe calls | Sometimes two horns are also used, and occasionally a bass the “symphony dance orchestra” a felicitous term. The arranger _ clarinet, of which, however, the tone is too dull in comparison must make introductions, “vamps,” interludes, three or four ar- with the saxophones for dance purposes. Of course in larger rangements of the melody to be used as desired, and a coda. In orchestras the usual strings are used. There are also other inthe comic opera or musical comedy the arranger has to write — struments such as an ordinary funnel played with a trumpet the overture, all of the entrances and exits, dramatic interludes, | mouthpiece, slide whistles, and all sorts of traps, xylophones, and so on. All he gets is a set of melodies. Out of this he makes _ bells, which play sometimes melody, sometimes harmony. The the work. And it may be true that the success of the work de- __ effect, for instance, of a bass xylophone provided with resona-

pends upon the attractiveness of the tunes; but if it fails the tors and played with four hammers, is exquisite. The player arranger gets the blame, though he gets little enough of the credit | holds two hammers in each hand and plays harmony. It is an

if it succeeds. effect worthy to be introduced into the classic orchestra. SaxoYet one must acknowledge that the arrangers have made the —_— phones and muted brass instruments already have found their

great American popular music of the day. To them is due the __ place in the classic orchestra which will undoubtedly be excredit of having done away with the old combinations of instru- _ panded, in the direction of color as time goes on. In the Ameri-

ments and having introduced into popular music the “wind” can popular orchestra several kinds of mutes are used on the (wood and brass) effects that have become inrecent yearsmore __ trumpet and trombone, the latest being the “kazoo” mute, which

and more pronounced in classical music. The problem of the — gives much the same effect as that obtained by the children arranger was not an easy one. First of all he had tocontend with — when they put a piece of paper over a comb.

May 6 @ The Literary Digest “TO JAZZ” OR “TO RAG” Ragtime and syncopation are two words that have been griev- | depend wholly on syncopation. The fox trot is being danced ously misused, says Mr. Paul Whiteman whose orchestral lead- (this is in 1922) to the rhythm 1 and 2, 3, and 4, which is not ership in the playing of popular airs is recognized as among the —_—syncopation. It is the rhythm of the old Greek poetic dactyl, foremost. “Syncopation sounds important,” he tellusinthe New __ older than Christianity.” York Tribune, “It gives a sense to the ignorant of participation The “rag” and the “jazz” are different, and we’re glad to be

in the world’s scientific knowledge.” But he pulls us up. enlightened: “Every community has its own ragtime pets. These are the “Strictly speaking, to rag a tune means that you destroy its fellows that are killing American music and standing inthe way — rhythm and tempo and substitute for the one a 2/4 or 4/4 time

of your development. and a syncopated rhythm. To do this properly calls for a good

“Syncopation no longer rules American music. Syncopation, ear, a good knowledge of primitive harmony and for quite a of which ragtime is the most familiar form, as we use itin the _ little experience with a set of ulterior musical laws as scientific United States, is an African inheritance. It has descended tous, _as those which put up a building or write a sonnet. You may not on one hand, direct from Africa, and on the other, through Spain —_ know their science, because only the ear may be called into

and Spanish-American civilization. play. But remember that when you begin to rag a tune you fol“Syncopation still exists in American music; infact, youcan low some other man’s methods—something you have heard not hear more than a very few bars of any popular composition some other fellow do. If you don’t follow, you are a great and without its cropping up. But to-day it is no longer a necessary __ original genius, far too big a man for us in the Whiteman Orthing. It has been retained much as an ornament. It gives to all__—chestra. Possibly the sculptor is just being born to-day who will American music much of its peculiar character. But if you lis- | make your statue before which future generations will stand ten close and look sharp you will note that few dances of to-day —_ bareheaded.” 182

MAY 11 * MUSICAL COURIER 1922 May 11 ¢ Musical Courier “JAZZ""—THE NATIONAL ANTHEM (part II) by Frank Patterson There is some difference of opinion among the musicians them- _ pulses and complexes that govern our conduct. But one thing is selves as to whether this music can ever be considered directly — sure; there is a great deal of perfectly pure dancing in America, improper or conducive to improper dancing. they all agree that done by pure-minded American boys and girls, and to them “jazz” the “ad libbing” or “jazzing”’ of a piece is thoroughly objection- _is aharmless Joe. It is not the music of “jazz” that is impure, but

able, and several of them advanced the opinion that this _ the interpretation that is put upon it by certain people. and those Bolshevistic smashing of the rules and tenets of decorous music, — people would be impure anyway. However that may be, Mr. this excessive freedom of interpretation, tended to a similar let- Barroll is certainly perfectly right in his criticism of musicians ting down on the part of the dancers, a similar disregard of the — who prostitute their art with their cat-calls, smears and other self-contained and self-restrained attitude that has been prescribed — wholly unmusical tricks, and, it may be added, that sort of “jazz”

by the makers of the rules of dignified social intercourse. Some _is fast disappearing, and the highly artistic offspring of it, the of the musicians say that, in the great majority of cases, itis just | symphony dance orchestra, is taking its place. Those who are pure fun, but that the danger lies in the odd case, the exception = making it are the arrangers and the musicians themselves. These whose impure mind reads sex into every form of play, and turns _ arrangers are, as has already been intimated, cultured musicians. innocent pleasure into a near-orgy. In a recent issue of Jacob's _—‘ There is Frank Barry for instance, who does arranging and editBand Monthly there is an article by Edward C. Barroll entitled — ing, for Leo Feist. He is a young musician of skill and attain“In Self Defense,” in which the fate of the saxophone is discussed, | ment. He was educated at Northwestern University, worked at and the saxophone player urged to defend his means of earning a arranging for a time in Chicago, and then took his present posiliving by “refusing to be the type of ‘maniac manipulator of a _ tion in New York. He possesses a thorough knowledge of the lewd saxophone’ whose ‘gyrations’ are those of anape orclown _ classics, of harmony, counterpoint, form, orchestration. The aror idiot, rather than being a part of the legitimate performance of —_ ranger for Remick Company is J. Bodewalt Lampe, a musician and

a musician. By omitting the cat-calls’ smears and other wholly | composer, orchestra and band player and conductor of many unmusical tricks and ‘effects’ which the perverted taste of your —_—years’ experience. Conversation with him brings one very quickly

typical unclean-minded ‘jazz’-hound of the lowest type of the _to the realization that he is a man of wide reading with a thordance hall so vastly admires and applauds, you take another step ough knowledge of music in all its forms and phases. In the home in the direction of making your work a permanent proposition.” | of Waterson, Berlin & Snyder one finds Arthur Lang, arranger in The same writer says: “Every musician, if playing music is the chief of their publications and stage productions, as well as arway he earns his bread and butter, should assuredly be some- _ ranger for his own dance and talking machine orchestra. He does thing of a leader in the strong, sincere, consistent and openly _ not believe in “jazz,” and believes that “jazz” is fast coming to its advocated opposition to a venomous viper which is really strik- end, but he does believe in the orchestra arrangements that are ing at his means of livelihood—nasty dancing. And both indi- _ the evident result of “jazz” colors, and he is writing a symphony vidually and collectively can be a mighty force to discourage, along these lines—a symphony of a serious nature but full of weed out, eliminate the perfectly well known things—some mu- —‘ American vigor and color. Finally, at M. Witmark & Sons, there sical, others ‘personal’—which constitute the real evils of danc- is George J. Trinkaus, who studied four years at the Yale Univering. and dances, which are sometimes nothing more than ariotof sity Music Department under Professor Parker, and amuses himsuggestive display with little else in response to the hideous pros- _ self in his spare time writing fugues. He has also composed nutitution of the art of the musician which measures the estimate of | merous orchestra pieces, arranged for theater orchestra, by which some people of that thing which is called ‘jazz,’ and which means __ simple expedient he gets publication and performance, while the exactly whatever your own individual conception of itmay cause | American composer who writes for our own symphony orches-

you to accept as its meaning.” tra is unable to get either. These are a few of our arrangers, and Perhaps without knowing it, and probably unconsciously, Mr. __ the work they do and the way they do it is highly interesting and Barroll has lit upon a deep philosophical, psychological and so- _ instructive In the first place, they write at their desks, away from cial truth which covers the entire problem of he moral aspects of __ the piano, carrying their complicated scores in their heads. First music in its relation to the dance. it is expressed in the twoclos- _ they make a sort of tentative piano arrangement, much more coming phrases of the above paragraph: “the estimate of some people _ plicated than the piano arrangement that is offered for sale. From of that thing which is called ‘jazz’—-and ‘which means whatever __ this they work, building up the orchestration so that it will be your own individual conception of it may cause you to acceptas _ available for almost any combination of instruments from piano its meaning.” In other words, “jazz” is a frolic to the pure minded, _and violin to acomplete orchestra. Most of the essential parts are an orgy to the evil minded. Or, it might be better said, rollicking cued into the piano arrangement as well as into the other orchesfun is pure to some, evil to others. To children it is always just _ tral parts, so that whatever instrument is missing can be filled in pure fun. To grown-ups it will depend upon nationality, environ- —_— by another. there are generally three different arrangements of ment, up-bringing, culture, self-respect, and all of the dozenim- __ the refrain, one of them being what is known as a ‘stop time 183

1922 MAY 11 * MUSICAL COURIER chorus,” in which the melody and harmony are written staccato _ trivial character of most of the tunes. These leading arrangers, and the pauses filled in with contrapuntal passages. The arrange- whose names have already been mentioned, assure me that “jazz” ments are for ordinary orchestra with the addition of saxophones — came from the West originally, brought here by some of the orand, sometimes, banjo. They are very ornate, full of strange har- chestra players and orchestras that came from San Francisco and monies, borrowed to some extent from the moderns, and, as Mr. __ other Western cities. It was greatly stimulated by the amusing Lang expressed it, of a nature that could only be invented by a__antics of our soldier band boys during the war. ““They discovered person ignorant of the rules of music. These queer harmonies, how to make a clarinet of a saxophone laugh,” or squeal and how mostly used in the “blues,” are either invented by the composer _to do other stunts that greatly amused their fellows and made a or imitated from the accidental inventions of “ad lib,” players of | “hit” at the many war benefit performances at which they played. “jazz.” They are often refined by the arrangers, but not entirely It also—and this is a matter of no small importance—freed them abandoned because of their characteristic nature. These “blues” — of the stigma of being “sentimental” musicians. An earlier feacame direct from the Negro field hand, and were originally long- _ ture in the development was the clown band of the circus—which drawn wails, not, however, expressive of grief or discouragement, was imitated from time to time in the theater—and the oriental but, generally, of uplift and joy, often religious. But to the white _ procession, also of the circus, with the beating of drums and the borrowers of the idiom they seemed blue, hence the name. Hence _loud notes of Oriental oboes or similar reed instruments. Also the also, in imitation of the strange slurring and gliding of the Negro — drums of our American Indians. It is significant that our Amerisinger at work (when he is unconscious of any listening ears), the | can Negroes never have showed any tendency to use drums. They so-called “blue note” in the arrangements (a diminished interval took to the banjo and to “bones,” but the African drum never or minor note not belonging to the key) and the sliding harmo- _ seems to have interested them. “Jazz” is made up of a number of nies with their frequent consecutive fifths, etc. Thusis American _ borrowed idioms, all consciously borrowed because they obvimusic made: the Negro borrows from the whites, puts his own __ ously appealed to the American taste. Even the idiom of the interpretations on things, and then the whites borrow itback again —_— melody has occasionally been borrowed but, for the most part, it

and adapt it to their own uses. And while itis true thatthe rhythm _is pure invention and pure American. Also it is to be noted that of American popular music may, partly, be attributed to the Ne- “Jazz” in America is by no means confined to music and danc-

groes, it is also true that the tunes now being used have hardly ing. Our magazines, movie shows, melodramas, comics in the any of the Negro character. The syncopation is largely in the ar- newspapers, much of our fiction, our business, our politics and rangement. it is also true that a good deal of the character of our social life is as rowdy, as noisy, as full of punch, as little some of the music used for dancing—and it is almost all good for _ restrained by tradition, as vigorous and as strongly rhythmic, as dancing—comes from the Tango, the Maxixe, and Honolulu _any “jazz.” Just set a group of average American down in staid melodies, not to speak of the melodies of the American Indian _ old Europe and see how they stand out with their energy, their and imitations of Oriental, Japanese and Chinese music. All sorts quick decision and vigorous determination, their noise, their boisof people have been held responsible for “jazz,” but especially __ terous good humor. They are as different from the European as the Negroes and the Jews. The Negro question has already been _ the child is from the man. The East blames this sort of thing on discussed “ad nauseam’’—and as for the accusation against the __ the “wild” Westerners—but the fact is that we are all alike, and Jews, that is really too absurd to require comment, and yet, since —_ the whole world is copying us. Nothing is doing more to break the statement has more than once been made, it might just as | down the trammels of tradition in Europe than the irresistible well be disposed of. The situation is this; that a good many of | American combination of boisterous good nature with honesty, those who write our American popular tunes are Jews, but the —_ consideration, kindliness and idealism. Europe used to laugh at arrangers and the players who have made “jazz” are not. The —_us as savages. Now Europe is saying to itself that America has composers of some of the biggest “hits” that have been writtenin _ the right dope. And, between ourselves, “the right dope” is “jazz.” America in recent years have been Jews, but the tunes have not _‘It expresses our American nature—and as long as our nature is been “jazz” tunes. There is no such thing as a “jazz” tune—the — expressed by anything so simple and straight-forward we will “jazz” is in the arrangement—and those who have made the ar- _ have no cause for worry. When our nature becomes so complex rangements have only rarely been Jews. That disposes of that that we need the high art of Europe, or something similar, to foolish and unfounded accusation. The fact is that the “jazz” has _ express it, it will then be time to realize that we are getting old not come from any single group—or should one say “bloc?”—of and effete. A word remains to be said about the saxophone. In the Americans, but from America as a whole, just as rag-time and _article above quoted Mr. Barroll gives a list of a few of the charother forms of American popular music came from Americaasa _acterizations found in books and magazines expressive of the whole. There have been influences of all sorts, of course, but the general impression gained of this instrument: “the seductive saxodetermining factor in all this activity has been American taste. phone,” “the ribald saxophone,” “the wailing voice of the wicked And is a taste for “jazz” confined to any single group of Ameri- _—_— saxophone,” the madness of passion inspired by the saxophone,”

cans? Obviously not. It is the same old story of the American _— “the gyrations of the maniac manipulator of a lewd saxophone.” idiom: if Americans did not like it, it would not stick. Who made __ That, of course, is not to be taken too seriously. It is largely, no . “jazz?” Every American: North, South, East and West. Butis was _—_ doubt, the art of the picturesque fiction writer that invents such the arrangers who made it musically interesting, who put the color _ phrases, and the context must be known to get their true mean-

in it, color of such richness that it almost compensates for the — ing. Such phrases often refer, and are intended to refer, to the 184

MAY 13 * MUSIC TRADES 1922 ribaldry, the lewdness and the passion of the characters in the _ particularly awful. Arrangers are realizing this and are putting it story. It is not an intended criticism of the saxophone, but of the —_inits proper place. It is to be hoped that they will also realize how place in which it is found, and the people with whom it is indi-_ _ bad the banjo is and do away with it altogether. They may be rectly associated. The writer recalls having seen exactly similar | depended upon to do that. They are, these arrangers, animated by expressions in French fiction referring to the dances of the Apaches —_—a Sincere ambition to create a real art. They would like to go the

in the low dives of Montmartre and to the music, which hap- _ orchestration of the Viennese operetta one better, and they have pened to be not a saxophone but a piano and violin. In one case _actually already created something which, though perhaps not so such expressions were used in a story with Spanish setting and _ refined, is more expressive and more colorful, and possessed of a referring to a guitar and castanets. That the saxophone is any of contrapuntal richness that none of the European popular comthe things here named is absurd. It is absurd even when subjected —_ posers ever thought of. They are out to kill “jazz” in the sense of to the objectionable practices of some “jazz” players. and yet,as = “ad libbing,” not because it is any of the evil things the reformers

a musical instrument, it can never take a very high standing until = would have it, but because it offends their art sense—and they its tone is greatly improved. As already pointed out, its penetrat- —_—will do it. And when “jazz” is dead and gone, will then families

ing tone renders it useful for inner counterpoints, and its coloris that are going to destruction, like the people in The National Angood in combination with other instruments and also in chords, — them, reform and follow the “straight and narrow?” They will especially on low tones. It is a poor solo instrument, and whena _ not. “Jazz” does not bring about their downfall, and the absence player attempts to sentimentalize it by using atremoloitbecomes __ of “jazz” will not bring about their uplift. The abolition of an abolition might—But this is not a political newspaper.

May 13 © Musical America TILTS AT CARL ENGEL OVER JAZZ To the editor of Musical America: try is flooded with “hooch” and that, like jazz, God only knows In your issue of April 8, under a date line of Nashville, Tenn., — what it is, but we all know that it is bad. April 1, appears a report of an address by Carl Engel, official of The government authority is further reported as having said: our government, delivered before the Music Supervisors’Con- _— “Its harmonic device has a hue all its own, popular audiences

ference in that city. call it ‘blue,’ and so a new type of music has developed.” Mr.

Mr. Engel is quoted as having said, “The future of jazz may Engel may know more about harmony than I do, but I know be good or bad.” Like its inseparable and necessary compan- _jazz from the jungles of Haiti and Ecuador on up through the ion, “jag,” jazz in my opinion has no future in America’s decent _ parlor until its recent use as an adjunct to the wide-spread sosociety but it could only be, like its shameful past, eminently _ cial revolt against all constituted authority. If there is any harbad. It has been relegated to the underworld from whence it — mony in it, it is not jazz. If there is any music in it, it is not jazz. came and where it is and always has been the “professor’s” The supremacy of Dr. Engel’s reported endorsement of jazz

perquisite. is seen in: “Jazz equals rhythms plus blues plus syncopation The gentleman from the Music Division of our national pride, _ plus orchestral polyphony and results in chaos in order.” Does the Congressional Library, further says, “There exists such a _ booze do less? Starting with smooth, rhythmic, well-ordered thing as good jazz and good jazz is better than bad ballets or _life, booze adds the blues, the remorse, the sin-co-pation, all bad playing of Beethoven.” Again affinity between jazz and its sorts of sounds and results in making chaos of order. boon companion, booze. There exists such a thing as good booze Jazz awakens no refinement, inspires no sentiment of beauty (no doubt Mr. Engel will agree to that assertion; most lovers of _ or purity and suggests no clean or sweet memories. It is simply jazz will), and good booze is better than concentrated lye or —_ a musical crime which has been repudiated by the American spoiled meat. The head of the Music Division also says in the _ people. It is not and never was American. Blood, bone and sinew report: “It takes a certain amount of talent (small ofcourse) and _ itis African and African voodooism at that. Its sole purpose and unusual courage to write good jazz.” That same is very true of _use is to cause us to forget ourselves, order and decency. Jazz is good whiskey, especially the “unusual courage,” hence the coun- _ the “Nigger in the musical woodpile.” J. M. Cunningham, M. D. Fort Pierce, Fla., May 6, 1922

May 13 ¢ Music Trades “JAZZ” WAITS AT THIS CHURCH Bennie Krueger and his “jazz” orchestra did not attend service The Rev. Frederick Brown Harris, pastor of the Grace M. E. at the Grace Methodist Episcopal Church, New York City, though = Church, was much pleased when he heard the Bennie Krueger they had been invited and their appearance had been advertised —“ja77” artists. The preacher concluded that the members of his

in the newspapers. They were willing, but—well, listen to the congregation would enjoy their playing as much as he did. complete story. 185

1922 MAY * METRONOME But he did not ask them before arranging with Mr. Krueger _ the proposed entertainment by “jazz” artists in their church they for the appearance of his aggregation at a Sunday evening ser- _— got busy right away. And the result was that the musical provice. The notice of their playing was advertised in the newspa- —s gram was canceled. (See record review of June 23). pers. Whew! When Grace Church members read and heard about

May * Metronome JAZZ THE PRESENT-DAY LIVE ISSUE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN MUSIC by William Ludwig The American press has been flooded of late with articles onjazz How the Piano, Trombone, Corne t, Clarinet and Violin

and its attendant dangers. Followed Suit

But the American reading public we believe, can be relied The pjanj “ras it” on the Dj d -,

on not to give undue weight to such extreme statements as those ° pianist was next to rag ut ° A ihe piano ant at one ume in by a prominent judge in Chicago who say: “Jazz is obscene”or the earliest stage of the “ragtime” orchestra the pianist and drum-

the New York clergyman who says: “If Jazz is our National thei indi, ne a sane They had to work together in anthem then the devil’s crying argument ‘Go to Hell’ is our their Individual form of syncopation.

National slogan!” The trombone and cornet soon followed the piano and drum, Thus while prominent men, trained in other lines than music but they, through use of slide and mute, were able to p roduce seem to be more or less alarmed, the musicians of this country new harmony effects. From this developed the jazz orchestra with believe that jazz is simply a step in the progress of music and clarinets and violins beginning to improvise and syncopate.

that the present development is a step forward and upward. The clarinet player, jealous of the trombone, resorted to other

instruments of the family to produce the desired effects that the

a public craved. First by using a clarinet and then by the saxo-

The Origin of Jazz phone. Finally the violin, a little weak on syncopation, took up At the very beginning a brief review of the origin of jazz may _—‘*he banjo. os

not be amiss. The word itself means “to step lively” and was As a result we have the Jaze orchestra of today. But up to first used in this country by Negroes working on the docks and this time the players still had to improvise and fill in. Moreover

levees in the South. each combination rendered their own conception of “jazz,” acJazz as applied to music is a form of improvising and added cording to their individual ability. Some were good, some bad,

development of ragtime or syncopation. but most of them pleased the public, and their services were in Ragtime is a development traceable to the rhythmic South- demand. This demand forced composers and arrangers to write

ern melodies plus an accented syncopation. and score for this new kind of an orchestra, and this made it Radical jazz is already gone, never to return. It was only a possible not only to write and select the proper and correct harnecessary stepping stone in the development of the true Ameri- _ ™Ony but, to create new and extremely pleasing effects through

can Orchestra. this new use of instruments and instrumentation. We cannot jump to perfection with one leap. There must be

the intermediate; and more important, there must be the start. The New Syncopated Melody Orchestra

Some credit the saxophone as having started this new form of As the final h h

musical interpretation but that is not the case. There were rag- s the final step we now have t © new syncop ated melody or jazz orchestras before saxophones were used in orchestras. chestra, developed partly by the individual instrumentalists and by the composers and arrangers of the music they play. The classics are not transformed into American music by this com-

The Trap Drummer: The BF irst One Who Started bination and this is only the real beginning of American cre-

Ragtime ations. The next step is already determined. It is the syncopated It was the trap drummer who first broke loose from the old time Concert Sree And as . 0, of course there will be Eu-

practice of holding strictly and religiously to the printed music ropean tours not oF Symphony Orchestras but for the modern sheet. He began syncopating on the snare drum instead of hold- American Syncopating Concert Orche stra. These compositions

ing to the after beats as written. This syncopating was called will not evapo vclecon ‘hen but real American crerag-drumming. The beats were an imitation of clog-dancing. ae ‘t ‘urope Wil We come t em. F th Thus the drummers started playing ragtime and for this innova- that Is necessary to appreciate one of the new synco-

tion were called fakers by the more pious. Nevertheless, it was pated melody orchestras 1s to step into some cafe oF garden where a decided step forward in the progress of music interpretation. one of them Is playing an engagement. You will hear no discord, din or disagreeable sound: simply a combination of clever performers playing both popular and classical compositions.

186

MAY * MUSICIAN 1922 Blending of Foreign Character with Original American Another Word About the Drummer’s Work

Effects The drummer’s work must fit in with the melody combinations You will hear effects introduced which suggest the atmosphere __ that are used and therefore his work now is not burlesque but of some far away country; you will hear a Russian classic played § more and more refined. This instrument must have tone. The tom faultlessly, but woven through the harmonic construction will tom used should be tuned if possible. The snare drum, muffled, be arrangements and effects which are purely American; you _ should also be tuned. The tympani should be chromatic.

will note that the rhythm is changed with wonderful and pecu- Bass drums and cymbals must be played together or singly liarly pleasing effect and yet, it is harmonious and played in _ alternating in rapid succession. Also wire brush effects on snare

masterly musical style. drums and cymbals are important and they have a novel effect. This new melody orchestra has merely introduced different For the drummer in the new syncopated melody orchestra, arrangements which not only require that each performer be a _—susSing pedal tuned tympani and snare and bass drums correctly

master of his instrument but that he must have a knowledge of tuned, there are unusual opportunities to introduce novel efharmony and musical construction as well. He must know that _ fects of his own creation. countless melodies and effects can be built around one succes- As the drummer in reality started ragtime I would advise sion of chords. The greater the number of individuals in this him to be progressive and lead in the new syncopated melody orchestra having this knowledge the greater will be the variet- orchestra and I would suggest to those who criticize “Jazz” to ies of individual ideas and inspiration and hence the greater the _‘first study the subject to gain full comprehension of this newly

success of this orchestra. developing syncopated melody orchestra. Then if not satisfied As the name implies a “syncopated melody orchestra” is that the final result will be the development of an essentially

pleasingly harmonious and rhythmical. This rhythm which is _ different and better type of light music, let them suggest a method so essential to the syncopated melody depends upon the instru- of how this can be brought about.

ments and more especially upon the drums and tympani used. Music like everything else is developing; it cannot stand still; The drummer’s part because of its opportunities for novel ef- _it will not be allowed to go backward. The present development

fects is rapidly becoming a more important one. is a step forward and upward in the mind of the great mass of American music lovers.

May ¢ Musician THE DECLINE OF JAZZ Jazz was the voice of the Money-Changer in music. Jazzhasceased —_ years most of the popular music publishers have been kept alive

to be profitable, and hence we shall soon hear of it no more. by the royalties they have received from the records made of Only a few weeks ago the head of one of the most popular of their numbers. These royalties have gone into large advertising the Mid-Western dance organizations sent out prettily printed pink = campaigns which have either boosted these numbers themselves announcement to his patrons to the effect that as the “best people” —_—later or have brought forward other new numbers of no better were setting their faces against “jazz” the orchestras of thiscom- —_ musical lineage. As a matter of fact clever publicity work of a

pany would thereafter no longer discourse jazz. In a word, jazz highly varied character—well financed—is responsible for the was discovered by this keen sighted business man to be on the — seeming success of so much musical trash. verge of becoming “unfashionable” and he hastened to take his There is such a thing, of course, as a self-respecting popular position in the van of fashion’s devotees and to set the new style — song, a thing of words and rhythm and melody that really makes Of interest, as having the same significance, isarecentletter itself popular. But most of the stuff we have had under the name of considerable length sent out by one of the leading talking §_jazz has boasted of a vogue that was the artificial of the artifi-

machine companies to its dealers, about twelve thousand, cial; it suggests painted street harridans thrust into the limethroughout the United States. This letter was a strong and well- _ light. reasoned appeal to these music merchants, probably the most To those who may have felt that standard music was on the influential group in the country, to cease centering their atten- | wane, and jazz on the gain, it can be stated emphatically that tion each month upon the “new releases” which are largely jazz __— their impression is wrong. Quite the opposite is the case. From numbers in dance or vocal form, and to give their time to sell- —_‘ the executive offices of the biggest of our standard music pubing the more standard numbers to be found distributed through- —_lishers comes the good news that such music publishing as is

out the pages of the regular catalog. there represented is distinctly prosperous. This is important because probably the greatest impetus that On the other hand it is quite evident that the so-called “jazz” “jazz” has received came from the strenuous sales efforts ex- _— publishers are having very hard sledding. The past year has not

erted by the phonograph dealers, who have found in the latest = produced a single number that could really be called a “hit,” jazz numbers their greatest source of profit. This reacted,ina suchas Smiles, Over There, Keep the Home Fires Burning; this peculiar way, to develop the “jazz” producers, since in latter | notwithstanding the fact that popular composers today certainly 187

1922 JUNE 1 e MUSICAL COURIER have learned a thing or two about dressing up their slight me- —_— posers have searched far and wide for inspiration for their exlodic ideas, and will grab aresolution, or arhythm from Debussy _ travagant harmonic and rhythmic effects, and they have, in their or Strawinsky with the utmost nonchalance. They have indeed —_ borrowings from the masters, introduced the public to many acquired the art of giving their productions harmonic spice and _ things that were good, and that unless dished up in popular form rhythmic interest. And yet failure. Simply because the publicis | would never have been understood or appreciated by the aver-

fed up, is “‘on to” them. age listener. Latterly whole masterpieces have been “jazzed”

As a matter of fact the records of the better class publishing entire, and have been received by the populace with acclaim. houses demonstrate, beyond cavil, that the general taste of the We can say, undoubtedly, that jazz leaves us, as a country, American public has tremendously improved in the past de- with ears and intelligence wider open to the message of the cade. And so has the product of ourhome composers. The Ameri- — newer writers. The public knows better how to listen and to can public buys songs and piano solos of the very best charac- = appreciate. The messages of “les jeunes” have a slightly better ter, and buys them in steadily increasing quantity. This is astate- | chance of being understood by a populace that has been dement proved by the figures in the order books of the big pub- _ lighted by a Whiteman jazz version of Rimsky-Korsakoff’s lishers. And our composers today, while we may have none of —= Chant Indoue. surpassing gifts, produce compositions characterized by beauty, We are not deceived; the internment of jazz will not be imgrace, originality, and fine spiritual content, quite often show- —_—s mediate, but it is inevitable. In the mean time the music teacher can

ing real genius. do his or her share in hastening the dissolution by pointing out the In the inexplicablness of this strange period of musical de- _—_ absurdity of jazz, and especially by showing that unquestionably it

velopment of our nation, which has harbored and nurtured jazz, is no longer fashionable. To any up-to-date young gentleman or there is just one profitable feature. The cleverer of the jazz com- lady, that latter point should settle the matter at once

June 1 ¢ Musical Courier JAZZ MUSIC AND ITS RELATION TO AFRICAN MUSIC by Nicholas G. Taylor of Sierra Leone, South Africa. The over-insistence of syncopation in both the primary as well — enough, but a good lot of them are interesting just as in any as the secondary accents of a measure, the too tacitemploy- _ other branch of musical composition. Some day some real mument of transitional dominants and the frequent use of triplet _ sical genius will bear out this contention. First and foremost, appogiaturas in the bass before the principal accent of amea- __ this is the real popular music in America, and as the people take sure (which, by the way, is more often than not given to the _to it and still clamor for it, it will hold its place. trombones in nearly all orchestral arrangements of “Jazz” mu- The whole matter then turns upon the question of associasic by American Negro musicians, a serious abuse of that in- __ tion. “Jazz” music is more closely associated with the dance strument), are the principal characteristics of aspecies of musi- _ forms: the fox-trot, the one-step and other steps. These dances cal compositions which is called “Jazz Blues, Mammy Blues, are all harmless in their way, but the dancers who make more Father Blues,” and many other capricious names which the cu- _— motions with their bodies than the dance steps provide, whose rious student fails to find in any musical encyclopedic dictio- posture in dancing is repugnant to any sense of respectability,

nary. are the real cause of the nuisance, not the dance forms, nor the In New York, at least, this “jazz” music has been the subject music. And yet the cry and everything else is directed at the

of much controversy of late, both by the press and the pulpit— —_ harmless species of musical composition which is the real popu-

some denouncing, others commending. lar music in American.

But what is the matter with this music that has evoked so But does the music itself suggest the different motions of the much comment? Has syncopation never been used in music _ body which are made in dancing ? This is a question for experts before with such frequency, or is it because the harmonies some- __ to decide. Harry T. Burleigh, in his preface to some arrangetimes employed are rancid and sea-sick, as Wagner’s music was__ ments of Negro spirituals, wrote to the effect that the making of described by some in the latter part of the last century? When different motions by swinging the head on one side, then the the attention is directed to the study of Bach’s Well-Tempered __ other, as was customary in singing the spirituals, are to be depClavier more syncopation will be observed than has ever been __recated, inasmuch as such manner of singing the spiritual is used in the whole realm of “jazz” music; and as for the harmo- altogether inconsistent with the spirit and meaning of them and nies, “jazz” composers are well conservative whenitisremem- _—_ does not add one inch to their effectiveness, but rather detracts bered that some composers of the present day use whatI may _ from them the original purpose which they are intended to serve. term chords of the “twenty-second,” and abandon as common I was once invited by a member of the orchestra to a matinee

place those of the seventh and ninth. concert given by the Southern Syncopated Orchestra in LonMusically, in my opinion, there is nothing the matter with —_ don and it was really amusing to see how one of the banjo playthis kind of composition. Some are dull and commonplace __ ers tossed his instrument in the air and did so many funny things 188

JUNE 1 * MUSICAL COURIER 1922 during the course of the performance. Being ignorantasto what __ shall deal with the question of rhythm, as this makes ‘jazz’ music all this meant, I asked a neighbor: “Is it thus that musicians —_ more closely allied to African music than at any other. I shall also

perform in England?” “No,” said he, “it is the effect of the mu- _ be reticent about the philosophical question as to association sic. This music is wonderful.” I thought it strange that perform- _ of ideas, as that is purely a question of environment. ers should turn somersaults in the concert halls. One prefers to Man’s capacity for knowledge being limited, it has been the

see those things in the music halls. foremost concern of the masses to reduce everything to its lowIf, in the singing of the spirituals and in many otherinstances, — est terms in order to understand it. Seers, prophets, teachers the intelligence of the audience is insulted by the making of — and the geniuses of every age have endeavored to infuse new different motions of the body, is it to be wondered that in danc- __ life into this seemingly commonplace material; the respective ing more movements are inserted than the dance forms pro- __ generations of every age call them modern, but before long even vide? “Jazz” music therefore, being closely associated withthe — they themselves take to the teachings of their leaders and then much abused dances, is condemned. This same association of — begin to reduce those teachings also to their lowest terms. Of ideas brought about the condemnation of contemporary church course, this will continue until there be no more sea. music by the Council of Trent on account of the fact that the

canti firmi were associated with secular ideas and the composi- More Syncopation

tions were found to be out of place in the mass though they would be welcome in their own atmosphere. That was a deplor- ‘Jazz’ music makes use of syncopation to a marked degree able day for church music, a condition of things which was —_ more than African music pretends to do. It is regular in its aconly remedied by Palestrina’s genius. And this condemnation — cents and the rhythmical contents of its bars; it is mostly of the of “Jazz” music will be all the more necessary in respectable | four-and-eight bar period. All these things, together with the circles until some musical genius in America brings outits pos- | question of idiom, are so foreign to the native African that he

sibilities. scarcely recognizes any connection between ‘jazz’ music and The Negro Musician (June, 1921) printed the following about —_ his own. On the other hand, African music is cross-rhythmic,

“jazz” music: its use of syncopation is decidedly moderate and the rhythmi“The Negro Musician has no apology to offer for the consid- cal contents of many a bar of African music is as irregular as it eration of popular music in these columns. Despite its restricted | could be. Again. owing to the use of cross rhythms, the periods forms and transitory appeal, we believe with the Boston Tran- _ and phrases are explained in a different method from that emscript that the time has passed when even learned critics cry out. = ployed in ‘jazz’ music. upon ragtime. The time is here when they study it and seriously The American Negroes brought over from Africa this music announce that it demands consideration for its genuine art pos- —_ with its cross rhythms. Here they were surrounded with a difsibilities. The Negro Musician further believes that the teacher ferent idiom; they had to face different conditions and the atwho fears the influence of ragtime and thus denies its posses- | mosphere in which they lived was a decided contrast to the ension of any merit, encourages a curiosity which does harm to —_—- vironments that they had about them in their native land. The

the very ideals he claims to foster. result is that they began to reduce African music to suit their “Therefore, embrace; study, improve and utilize its values. | new conditions and this is how they did it: Teach its source, history and influence, but point to its limita-

tions and instruct of its harm as alone medium of expression.” “When the African says: But The Musical Courier has asked me the question which

this article is designed to answer: how far ‘jazz’ music is trace- gg

able to the influence of African music. a aaa aS aaa ae ae

Back To Africa (eden [Fl e,

i Te 2 Ue CU eee Leet Cm eee aes eae eee Some think that this ‘jazz’ music is nae leading the generation to ee the African jungle, but I believe that the more ‘jazzy’ the music, the more distant it 1s from that of the African jungle; which of

these is nearer the truth could be proved by a reference to the eS ee ee eee eee —-

musical examples of children songs contained in the late Natalie im) — oe

Curtis’ book, published by G. Schirmer and entitled Songs and

Tales from the Dark Continent. rT | — Ju. I shall leave out of consideration the question of idiom which Se a oe ae ee ee ee ee at once decides that “jazz” music is not African music, but I a a ae

189

1922 JUNE 23 ¢ VARIETY Jazz reduces it to: Jazz has it:

= SS Ss SS Se SS gg pe

|} aera eg etc. ee etc. } ew

y =. = Se ee a ee ee ee ae See

Sc a ee eee eee (ee

When he says: This method of reduction, this system by which everything is to be brought within the confines of man’s limited knowl-

a edge so as to be suitable to the conditions of his environment, oo Te gives the clue as to the only link (and a most important one,

gw ew ke le too) between African music and ‘jazz’ music. That neither Ex-

_ ample 1 nor Example 3 is respectively the same as Example 2

ee or Example 4 is evident to any thoughtful musician. Thus far has European music been so influenced by African music as to produce ‘jazz’ which is popular American music. And “jazz”

SE 7 music, having been so reduced, takes its own course and at the Oo —3——— 6 hr present time has nothing more or less in common with African

is ob me ete. music. Is it also true of peoples as well as of music? OS ee ok eeeEE ee But of reduction Re!eeCOR P Athis EEprocess © 1 a». GE Ee i is. ;termed the development of

pe science. Well, be it so!” June 23 ¢ Variety

REVIEWS OF RECORDING DISCS Bennie Kreuger’s Orchestra—Stumbling (fox trot) & I’m Wild Bailey’s Lucky Seven—Poor Little Me (fox trot) & Dont About Harry—Stumbling is the outstanding summer dance hit. Leave me Mammy—The “Lucky Seven” certainly can throw a Its peculiar choppy rhythm has brought it to the fore practically perpetual “natural” when it comes to dishing up blues and rags over night. Kreuger has done some of his best recording work _to stir sluggish feet. Jazz—just jazz! that’s their first, last and with the selection. He has put a snappy “hic-coughly” effect | middle name and while it may not sound very melodious, it’s into the bass sax that’s a winner. The soprano and alto saxesin _ irresistible for moving the hoofs. the fore section carry the melody, contrasting dashingly with Edith Wilson and Original Jazz Hounds—Birmingham Blues

the eerie tom-tomming effect. & Wicked Blues—After Perry Bradford had had a falling out I’m Wild About Harry (Sissle-Blake) is another dance gem — with Mannie Smith and the Okeh record people he dug up this from that fertile musical all-colored show, Shuffle Along, thathas —_ colored jazz baby for the Columbia firm, took away the origigleaned a harvest for the authors and publishers of Love Will Find _ nal Jazz Hounds from Miss Smith and transferred them to Edith

a Way, Baltimore Buzz, Bandanna Days and Gypsy Blues. Wilson. Bradford, in addition, had to consult counsel anent enPaul Whiteman one day arranged the “Harry” song for his —_ joining the Okeh people from using the Jazz Hounds’ appellaorchestra, and it surprised even him as apopular dance number. ___ tion. Miss Wilson as a blues vocalist is eclipsed by none. That The soprano sax is featured practically all the way thoroughin _ part of her race around 135th Street and Lenox Avenue, New the selection, Kreuger handling the instrument himself. Funny ——- York, and below the Mason-Dixon line who purchase these thing about Krueger: if memory serves right, he played some _ disks, as well at the fair Caucasian percentage that dote on barinstrument other than the saxophone (was it the violin?)acouple —_ baric wails of the indigo order, have a good buy in these two of years back. The manner in which he has mastered the dulcet _ selections. In the “Birmingham Blues” number a banjoist comes

toned wind instrument credits him. to the fore with some wicked strum and pick work. 190

JUNE 25 © THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW & MAGAZINE 1922 Tampa Bay Jazz Band—8 Rock Blues & Hurry Back Home— ___ title suggests.

The Tampa Blue Jazz Band evidently is a newcomer to the disk Vincent Lopez—Happy Days & Georgia—Two “happy” fox field. Their forte must be blues renditions, judging from these __ trots are coupled on this Edison disk. In the first, it is novelty two recordings. Both make mean toddies, the “8 Rock Blues” —_ arranged for the sax and the trombone to do some “laughing” being distinguished by an accelerated start and then a slowing _ to get across the optimistic idea. down that proves to be but a temporary calm before the jazz On the reverse, Don Parker of Whiteman’s orchestra leads a

storm. trio with the Georgia number. Banta, pianist, and Lucas, banjo, Peerless Orchestra—Heartsease & Impassioned Dream Waltz complete the combination. Parker’s soprano sax pipes forte (both instrumental)—These two compositions are paradoxicalin throughout, with Banta’s piano fingering coming to the fore in

their origin. The first, composed by Neil Moret, who has contrib- —_— passages. Lucas faithfully submerges his banjo picking in favor

uted much to the popular song field, is more on the order of a _— of the accompaniment. It’s a corking combination that will bear classical composition. The second, with its passionate title, by J. | watching. The possibilities to develop into as standard a recordRosas, would make an excellent tango waltz for dance purposes. _—_ ing feature as the All-Star Trio (Victor), which consists of piBoth, however, are charming concert renditions, the “Im- —_ano, sax and xylophone, are potential. A snatch of “Jublio” leads passioned Dream Waltz” being as dreamy and entrancing asits —_ into the snappy “Georgia” selection, which is further medleyed with “Malinda Brown.”

June 25 ¢ The New York Times Book Review & Magazine JAZZ LATITUDE by Burnet Hershey A new line of latitude one-steps around the globe. Itslocationis inevitable jazz. No sooner had I shaken off the dust of some city reckoned by the degree of its jazz and computed exactly by the _—_and slipped almost out of earshot of its jazz bands than zumpnumber of minutes and seconds it is distant from its meridian— |= zump-zump, toodle-oodle-doo, right into another I went. never

Tin Pan Alley. To trace it, you don’t have to be a student of — was there a cessation of this universal potpourri of jazz. Each geography. Even the amateur globe-trotter on an automatictour — time I would discover it at a different stage of metamorphosis won’t need his Baedeker to find it, for every ship the traveler | and sometimes hard to recognize, but unmistakably it was an takes today throbs with the staccato cacaphony of jazz and _attempt at jazz. every stop at a port is punctuated by the syncopation of Jazz. If you follow jazz latitude you will pick up the original traces Jazz latitude is marked as indelibly on the globe as the heavy of jazz. You will wonder how from the crude and sensuous line of the equator. It runs from Broadway along Main Street to | dances and savage music there has evolved our new national San Francisco; to the Hawaiian Islands, which it has lyricized = anthem, jazz, and our National Conservatory of Music, Tin Pan to fame; to Japan, where it is hurriedly adopted as some new _— Alley. Natives of far-off tropical lands eagerly nod their apWestern culture, to the Philippines, where itis royally welcomed __ proval of Tin Pan Alley’s latest masterpieces. They prick up back as its own; to China where the mandarins and even the __ their ears in recognition of something strangely familiar to the coolies look upon it as a hopeful sign that the Occident at last —_— plaintive melodies of their homelands. Occidental versions of knows what is music; to Siam, where the barbaric tunes strike a | Oriental rhythm and harmony they do not regard as plagiarism kindred note and come home to roost; to India, where the na- _—snor as an improvement upon their own music, but as their own tives receive it dubiously, while the colonists seize upon itav- —_ songs and dances which the West has adopted. idly; to the East Indies, where it holds sway in its elementary The stepping-off point of jazz to the Orient is San Francisco. form—tragtime; to Egypt, where it sounds so curiously familiar | Saxophones and trombones have come to drive away the ghosts and where it had set Cairo dance mad; to Palestine, where itis | haunting Barbary Coast from their last resting place behind the looked upon as an inevitable and necessary evil along with lib- —_ boarded bars and fenced-in saloons where ragtime had its Amerieration; across the Mediterranean, where all ships and all shores __can tryout. Here the turkey trot, the bunny hug, and the rest of

have been inoculated with the germ; to Monte Carlo and the __ the “gutter dances” originated and presaged the tango, the Riviera, where the jazz idea has been adopted as itownenfant- = maxixe, the Boston dip, the shimmy, the fox trot, the collegiate cheri; to Paris, which has its special versions of jazz; to Lon- _ glide and the rest of the one-step dance innovations. Barbary don, which long has sworn to shake off the fever, but still is | Coastis now amemory, but the rest of the Pacific Coast is jazzjazzing, and back again to Tin Pan Alley, where each day, nay, —_— ing away to the latest of Broadway melodies.

each hour, add some new inspiration that will slowly, but surely Jazz follows the flag ships freighted with jazz—‘“Made in

meander along jazz latitude. America’—form the newest product of export to the Orient. CarI set out on a tour of the world with the wanderer’s lure of — goes of jazz are laden on all vessels passing through the Golden adventure, strange lands and quaint customs. My trailled alone —_ Gate. To the Orient they sail, carrying the jazziest song hits, the

curious enough byways, but all along the route, yawping after latest dance steps and the phonograph records, stopping someme, ululating along with me, blatantly greeting me, was the __ times to unload some of the cargo of choice tunes at Honolulu.

19]

1922 JUNE 25 * THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW & MAGAZINE Since Waikiki Beach has been rhapsodized by Tin Pan Alley, are multiplied. So we find a twenty-five piece orchestra attemptjazz has made a hit with the Honoluluans. The Wawaiiana appre- _—ing jazz in Tsurumi. ciate the music written about themselves, and to repay the com- In Tokyo, at the Imperial Hotel, destroyed by fire a few weeks pliment are now busy fox-trotting along their famous moonlit —_ago, they held three dances a week. A Japanese band supplied

shores. Incidentally, the sheik, the kings the suzerains, the ra- the music there for a while, substituting one atrocity after anjahs, the moguls, the nabobs, and the local Boards of Aldermen _ other for what they call “Jahas.” The American call them “joss”

of the communities that have been so widely advertised—Ho- bands. nolulu, Kale, Siam, India, Araby, Hindustan—are exceedingly In Peking I found a diplomatic corps turning to jazz somegrateful for the publicity. It helps the tourist trade and the sale of what in the fashion in which the Washington foreign colony has souvenirs, they say, and feel honored that some song writer, _ turned to golf. The two leading hotels were filled every day at who never visited their shores should have found in them an _ tea time and dinner. Everybody danced. adequate theme for his inspiration. Filipino orchestras are the The Mandarin loves to dance. Jazz to him means harmony interpreters of jazz on the Pacific Ocean liners. Where musicis of the soul. It is his reed pipe and lyre chosen from a celestial concerned, the Flipinos are known as the Italians of the East. symphony. His son, returned from a Western university, is satuAdd their own barbaric musical strain—a blend of Oriental and _ rated with the jazz idea. Any observer in China will tell you that Spanish “ear culture’—and you get an idea of their adeptness —_ whatever the students say ought to be done because it is done in with the torturous instruments of jazz. The banjo and cornet are the West is done with a gusto—a gusto peculiarly Chinese. still the mainstays of the Flipino jazz bands. The saxophone is Jazz is the new idol in China, the new jazz, especially the

only a recent addition. cymbal and cowbell part, so similar to their (Inn) music. The

Nowhere else in the world, outside of New York, have the | Temple of Temples where his Pagan Highness King Jazz is cymbals, ells, sirens, motor horns, cow bells and all the clap-trap | worshipped in the Orient is Shanghai, “Paris of the East. ” of the original ragtime bands been abandoned. Every jazz band _‘ There, in the exotic atmosphere of the gay and cosmopolitan, in Asia, Africa or Europe starts with the drum and trap accesso- _in that city which is a fixture of the familiar and the strange, ries as a nucleus. This constitutes the jazz, the rest merely band. —_— jazz has come to mean Shanghai. Shanghai without jazz, withI was in Yokohama only a few hours when I heard the call of —_ out its night clubs, without its ballarooms crowded with dipthe West: a jazz band tuning up, or getting out of tune, inthe —_lomats, business men, tourists and that ever picturesque rabble Grand Hotel. In this most European of Japanese cities there are | of European for tune hunters, adventures and derelicts cluthalf a dozen jazz bands. One European troupe, led by anex-U.S. _ tering the gay cities of the East, would not be Shanghai. Jazz Navy bandmaster, dispenses ragtime at the leading hotel. The _ is the very essence of its existence. An American post office, others are Japanese groups who, with that marvelous faculty |= an American Tribunal of Justice, American banks and shops, for imitating the occident, manage to organize some semblance _—a real soda fountain and a place where they serve honest-toof jazz. And the Japanese customers like it well enough. The goodness griddle cakes—and jazz. With it all the fascination Japanese have taken to jazz dancing with an enthusiasm that — of Chinatown and a good measure of Paris, and do you woncharacterizes every Japanese adaptation of Western convention. | der why no one is homesick in Shanghai. Japanese men and women outnumber the Europeans on the floor On a Shipping Board steamer we journey to Hongkong and during a dance at any of the large hotels in Yokohama, Kobe or _ enter the “most beautiful port in the world” to the tune of Tokyo. So popular has the fox-trot and one-step become thatan “Chong, he comes from Hongkong.” which the Silver State entire park in Tnurumi, midway between Yokohamaand Tokyo —_jazz fiends have picked out as an appropriate air to make our on the route of the modern electric railway, has been set aside — entry. The jazz fiends are a band of devil-may-care college

for bi-weekly dances in the open air. men from Seattle who have chosen the happy life of the sailorHere the youth of Japan toddle with their favorite Miss Yuki- = jazz bandsmen. Han or Mlle. Cherry-Blossom, arrayed in her finest kimono and Everything in Hongkong is very English. Nowhere throughgaudiest obi, her black hair greasier than ever. In a picturesque out the length and breadth of the British Empire is English inbackground of paper lanterns such as only the Japanese in Japan — fluence more impressed than in Victoria, otherwise known as can hang, and in a setting of doll-house, papier-mache balconies | Hongkong. Everything except the music and dancing. That is and toy gardens, they glide and tango. I watched them and mar- American. Twenty-four days from Tin Pan Alley and when the veled at their adroitness, their natural grace. I danced witha little | song hit gets to Hongkong it spreads like a tune in Harlem. cat-eyed butterfly in a gold-red kimono embroidered with drag- © Everybody whistles it, hums it, plays it on the graphophone.

ons and hats. Broadway would have raved about her. The sale of American jazz records in the Far East is enormous. One thing I found astonishing: how, with all the quick steps In the West jazz has trespassed on the domain of music, required by jazz, these dancers, men and women alike, were but in the East it has made inroads more revolutionary. It able to keep on their sandals, caught to their feet only by the = sound incredulous, but jazz has been introduced into the insertion of the sandal-band. Not a slipper was lost flower boats of Canton. The flower boats are the amusement Japanese jazz bands are veritable orchestras. The Japanese _ halls of this fantastic city. Just as much of the life of Canton evidently figure if a four-piece band can make so much noise __is spread over miles of sanpans and junks, so the night life how much better and more American is itif the number of pieces = of the metropolis is concentrated on floats, moored to the 192

JUNE 25 « THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW & MAGAZINE 1922 river edge or tied up in the jam on the canals. The Mandarins _jazz for the porch dancers. Lantern glow and the dancing lasts seek their favorite boats at sundown. For generations past, into the small hours of dawn, for in Bangkok they sleep during each evening the opium smokers, fan tan gamblers and the __ most of the hot day. A young college man of San Diego has arsing song girls have assembled in the tinsel, lantern-litcab- _ rived in Bangkok. He has bought a trunk full of new jazz records

ins of these junks. and he is planning to teach the chic Siamese the latest steps.

Jazz has now supplanted a number of peculiarity Chinese In Calcutta, as in Bombay and throughout India, where the vices. It is “all the rage.” If you’ve heard the crash of Chinese —_ English civil service man makes his home, and where a handful cymbals and tintinnabulation of their gongs, you will under- —_— of white business, army and professional men make up the Euro-

stand the popularity of jazz. pean colony, Jazz is welcomed as a “life-saver.” In this country You jazz across the China Sea on a floating jazz palace to —_— of few diversions, if relieves the tedium of routine existence. InManila, to our own Philippine Islands. No sooner arrived at the dia sounds like a paradise of romance, but the colonist, the army Manila Hotel than the strains of a jazz band greet you. The jazz _ — officer who has spent many months and years amid the “dirt of band of jazz bands is to be found here. Our champion one-step- _—Asia,”’ is blasé and weary of the life. He has turned to bridge and

pers, officers of the naval and army base, and their partners, poker. Now he gladly seizes upon jazz. And there is always the American ladies all dance the very latest from New York and = “stengha,” the whisky-soda, faithful auxiliary of jazz.

often set the pace with some new step of their own. In India, the full state of jazz has not yet been evolved from One dances in Manila throughout the day, and most of the —_— ragtime, although the frequent streams of returning officials from night. Only when the sun is hottest, between noon and four, is | England all bring with them new cargoes of tunes—direct from there respite. Picture a flower-hung pavilion jutting outto Ma- = New York via Lescester Square. But by the time they reach nila Bay, the last touches of an Eastern sunset, jazz bands play- _ there, they are old and shopworn. Journey along the India coast ing one of Tin Pan Alley’s India melodies, officers in white —_in the Arabian Sea to India’s little brother, Ceylon, where you ducks and shining gold braid, handsomely gowned women ___find jazz in its most antiquated state. It isn’t jazz, but they think gishes? to the twilight as the Oriental moon slowly comes up. __ itis. They have only arrived at Down in Jungle Town. The record,

That is Manila where jazz is at its best. played on a venerable gramophone, was one of the old ones Continue Westward Ho on jazz latitude. Steam out on an which announced the song and the band. But the one-step is English vessel to the Malay States and Borneo. No jazzbandis __ there. On the terrace of the Galle Face Hotel, on the edge of the

aboard, but there is a graphophone and the latest New York Arabian Sea, an Arabian moon, swaying cocoanut trees, chirprecords. Stop for a brief spell at Saigon, miniature French me- —_— ing monkeys and cawing of big birds mingled with the strains tropolis on the edge of mysterious Indo-China. Yes, they’rejazz- _—_ of the local band.

ing at the Cafe Panerusi and Continental. Painted ladies from Six days from Ceylon to the first port in Arabia. Aden, gateParis who follow the khaki of the French colonials everywhere — way to the Red Sea. In Araby, theme of countless jazz, but not are busy here spreading the culture of jazz, even into the virgin _— the glorious Araby of Tin Pan Alley’s magic lyrics. Alas, it is

teakwood forests of Tonkin. sun-baked and dirt-ridden, and what passes for jazz there would In Singapore and at Raffles, that oasis of the globe-trotter | make the song writers ill. After a fashion, it is jazz, but it re(shades of the Johorre Sultans’), they’re even doing it. There was — quires the vivid imagination of the Broadway song wizards to no mistaking the jumble of sound. From the verandah of the big —_—s recognize it. And not a far stretch across the water, in the Sudan, hotel came the diapason. What do you think I heard? Alexander’s French and British bungalows were taking their measure of Jazz.

Ragtime Band as unpleasantly reminiscent as the hurdy-gurdy The entire strip from Suez to Port Said has also succumbed old tunes. It was, in fact, the venerable grandfather of jazz, Irving | to American jazz. Tommy Atkins is still encamped there, in all Berlin’s first attempt at syncopation away back in history. his warlike accouterment along the canal from EI Kantara to I stopped to reason out the cause for this antique state. It was Port Said, and the soldiers, dancing with one another, were stepevident that the further we go away from Manila the staler the —_ ping to Wabash Blues and singing Oh, How I Hate To Get Up jazz. It takes years for some songs to travel around the world. —_in the Morning: the last outpost “east of Suez,” and still jazzy. Some tunes linger a long time en route; others flash around in Cairo, gay, exotic Cairo, with its population of Orientalized less than Jules Verne’s eighty days. In Cairo we heard some of — Europeans and its legion of pleasure-seeking Americans; here the new Sheik songs ground out this year in Tin Pan Alley, jazz comes, back into its own again. It comes directly from New whereas in Japan—ten days from Seattle—they were still play- | York, without stopping in Europe. The idle rich of Europe, the ing old songs. Japan, really is the crossroads where jazz ends _ newly rich from South America, wanderers from all corners of

and ragtime begins. the globe, are here. To Egypt jazz is something native. It echoes In Siam they do little else these days but dance. The King of __ pleasantly familiar to the Arabs and, as far as the cabaret is Siam, a great admirer of things American, gives weekly dances —_ concerned, you might just as well be in new York It is jazz, and at his palace. His Royal Orchestra becomes a jazz band forthe __ real jazz, and even in the shade of the Pyramids there is a New

occasion and the diplomatic agents and Ministers of Europe _—Yorker leading a band of jazzers. and the American find a common ground amid the strange sur- From Cairo the road leads to Jerusalem, and in the Holy roundings. His Majesty also boasts a high powered phonographic — City there is a jazz band. The bearded patriarchs and the creduoutfit which is brought out on the lawn and supplies the requisite lous Arabs listen in amazement to the new importations of jazz, 193

1922 JUNE * METRONOME come to ruffle the ancient complacency of the Biblical city. They —_ placed at the ends of the band, looking like bandmen, and rattle

accept it doubtfully. tambourines or crash cymbals just to make a racket.

Crossing the Mediterranean—you do it to jazz—you strike Of London little need be said, for, like New York, it has been Nice and Monte Carlo and the Riviera, and find jazz laboring — caught in the whirlpool of jazz, and, try as the English will, under French influence. Incidentally, it may be noted that jazz —_— they cannot disentangle themselves. They sermonize against it,

is an important part of the services of the steamers inthe Medi- _ they editorialize against it, but it only serves to intensify jazz. terranean. At present there is a rate was in progress, and jazz— Once upon the Atlantic steamer, a French floating chateau, I the latest, the best, the jazziest—is enlisted as the principal in- settled down to thoughts of home. Since I had jazz all the way ducement. needless to say that Nice, Monte Carlo and the —_around the world. I knew I wouldn’t miss it here, on the last lap. Rivierva have adopted jazz as their own enfant-cheri, and no —_— But what was that? Say, that’s a snappy tune. Where did I hear one could conceive these spots without that necessary element— _ that before? No. I haven’t heard it before. It’s something new.

jazz. So here, leading for Tin Pan Alley, I heard the first strains of Paris is exhibiting its own versions of jazz, too—boulevard new jazz. The masters of noise acrobatics were blaring out concoctions of Tin Pan Alley’s inventions. The Negro band still | Broadway’s up-to-the minute stuff. Nowhere along the route is the vogue. So essential do some Montmartre dance halls find had I heard a song I didn’t know. Now I might as well be listenthe black musicians that they have hitupon the ingeniousscheme _ing to the pounding of pianos along Tin Pan Alley and the yoto use their disguise for their own French jazz bands. They may __ deling of its serenades by radio. It was jazz at its latest. be French colonials, or some longshoremen from Harlem left It made me reconsider jazz latitude . What the world is getover from the war—it doesn’t matter. These colored folk are ting along jazz latitude is old. It travels and gets there, but by that time it’s jazz platitude.

June ¢ Metronome CHARINSKI DEFENDS JAZZ Louis Charinski, one of Kansas City’s best-known orchestra __ likes and dislikes of the various acts in which music plays quite leaders, has come out in flat-footed defense of jazz music, and —_ an important part. under his direction, however, the orchestra is when one considers his standing among dance players of the _— rapidly gaining the reputation of being the most entertaining Middle West, the opinion expressed by him becomes of real _ orchestra in Kansas City.”

importance. That “Louie the Leader’ is a thorough musician in spite of

Speaking of jazz he says they all ask him whether jazz mu- his defense of jazz music is proven by the fact that his rendition sic is dead. Don’t you believe it. Whoever says so is wrong. = of famous overtures are rated as being equal in entertaining jazz is not dying; it grows stronger every day. One of the local — value of any vaudeville act playing at the theatre. When an orpapers, commenting on his defense of jazz music says: chestra leader playing good standard numbers can hold the at“Louie the leader should know all about this because day _ tention of a vaudeville audience, and then put all the vim and after day he stands in the pit of the Empress Theatre, where in _ dash he possesses into the rendition of popular numbers, then the course of a week he often plays to an audience of twenty _ his opinion as to the ultimate fate of jazz music is certainly thousand persons. He certainly is in a position to learn their = worth consideration.

June ¢ Metronome AN OPINION ON “JAZZ” by Leopold Godowsky Just like his famous confrere, Rudolph Ganz, Mr. Leopold __ think they do.” Furthermore, he says, “these sillies are of the Godowsky, one of the greatest of contemporary pianists, has | Opinion that any tune which calls for or on which is imposed a taken it upon himself to defend the much-maligned “jazz” mu- cowbell obligato is jazz.” sic in very decided terms. To begin with he doesn’t believe that As to the origin of the word, Godowsky says: “It is as innothere is any danger to public morals in this form of music and __ cent and it comes from the same source as that other disliked he utterly refuses to blame the social, moral and political ills of . and expressive work ‘hoakum’—that is, from the widespread today upon it. To denounce jazz he would be compelled, he —_— industry of the theatre. ‘Jazz’ is just a phonetic spelling of the says, to denounce, “in whole or in part,” the work ofevery com- —_ diminutive of ‘jasbo,’ a word invented by the old-time minstrels poser who has done anything worth printing from Bach on- __ to describe the tricks and songs and antics that invariably drew ward. In his opinion nine of ten persons who denounce it “do —_ laughter and applause. not know jazz when they hear it, and do not hear it when they 194

JULY 22 * MUSICAL AMERICA 1922 “If new material did not take well the manager would say, it is the legitimate expression, is perfectly all right. It is even ‘Give ‘em the jasbo’; otherwise, try the old stuff again. Intime, | amlation. Might it be that the great goddess of Music exacts the the command became ‘Jas’ it up!! Jas’ it up! make ‘em laugh!’ grace of unabashed sincerity from us, whether we play upon an “Mr. Godowsky believes that the waltz is coming back—“that _oaten pipe, or lead an orchestra across the battle filed of a mod-

is,” he says, “admitting that it ever went away.” ernist symphony?

July 7 ¢ The New York Times FAILS TO STOP JAZZ , IS ARRESTED LATER Atlantic City, N.J., July 6. Goldenberg had brought action to shut up the music in the The application for an injunction to restrain the jazz music in _ early morning hours at the care on the ground that it disturbed the Music Box cafe here was refused today by Vice Chancellor the neighbors.

Robert H. Ingersoll. Goldenberg himself was arrested today in the “cafe war” on The right of injunction, Chancellor Ingersoll held, stands or — the complaint of Hazel Romaine, a cabaret singer, who charged fails on the question of whether the cafe music was a nuisance. that shortly after midnight recently a score of tin cans were He held that the affidavits of Ralph Weloff and David Abrams __ thrown through the window of the restaurant while she was in answer to the petition of Nathan Goldenberg were sufficiently | dancing. They came from the direction of Goldenberg’s cafe strong to create a doubt in his mind as to the existence of a _— next door. They were followed by a shower of milk bottles, nuisance. He further held that the court had no power to en- Miss Romaine said.

force a city ordinance. Goldenberg denied the charge, but will be arraigned tomorrow.

July 22 ¢ Musical America SAYS JAZZ WOULD GALVANIZE AMERICAN OPERA by Joseph Kaye The period is now at hand when the familiar plaint, “Ameri- The patent fact, however, is that, despite the possession of cans cannot write opera,” is heard in our journals. The critical _ theatrical instinct, fine musical equipment and the inborn inspiauthorities, commenting on the season’s boredoms, dig deep _ ration to create worthy works, the American composer, when into American operatic efforts and lament or wax sarcastic, ac- _ he undertakes to write opera, fails. What, then, is lacking in

cording to the degree of their sympathy. him for this purpose? Year after year the Metropolitan Opera Company has more

or less cheerfully assumed the duty of presenting American European Opera and Ours opera. Rarely, of course, has the management entertained hopes

that the production would be successful, It has gone about the A puzzling question may be solved by resort to comparison task patriotically philosophical and put down the costs, like the and precedent. Consider, therefore, the case of European opera scene-shifters’ wages, to the season’s general expenses. The and compare it with the American. In European opera one comes Chicago Opera Association’s attitude is similar, albeit a little | upon this pre-eminent fact: It bears a distinct, individual stamp, more eager, since the element of competition is greater. And | $0 conspicuous a stamp that you would consider highly preposafter each dismal production the conclusion has been: “Ameri- _ terous the suggestion that Coq d’Or could be written by an Ital-

cans cannot write opera.” ian, Aida by a Russian, Thais by a German or Parsifal by a Yet is this not an unfair condemnation? Opera, the least logi- | Frenchman. And this despite the fact that the subjects of these cal of all the fine arts, is not the achievement of only a privi- operas are not always national. leged species of genius. It is a form of art that is within reach of It will be found that the really successful composers of opany true composer with an instinct for the theater. And no one __ era, those who have made Italy, Russia, Germany and France will deny that we have such composers. The intense desire and __ the pillars of our opera houses, are men whose works are inagitation for American opera alone should prove this. Where separable from the characteristics of the land that gave them there is the desire to produce there is always the material for | birth. Take away these characteristics and their work would be production, though that material may not be of the same brand _as soulless and barren as the life of the hapless individuals who that others use, and the finished product consequently may be can claim allegiance to no country. It may be the occasional

different. fashion to speak of international art, but deep at heart we all 195

1922 JULY 28 *« THE NEW YORK TIMES feel what art would become were every nationality to merge its In Afro-American music, however, and in the modern syncoachievements in one great melting pot. Monotony, stagnation, — pated concoctions is to be found material to make genuine Ameri-

sterility would be the result. can opera.

Have American composers been as true to themselves, to the The Negroes were and are part of American life. They are spirit and character of their country as the Europeans? Reflect —_ the only individual race in America, the others being essenupon their productions: Herbert’s Natoma and Madeleine, tially European, and they have been instrumental in creating a Damrosch’s Cyrano, DeKoven’s Canterbury Pilgrims and Rip _ definite type of national music, which we like and appreciate. Van Winkel, Parker’s Mona, Cadman’s Shanewis, Gilbert’s We shall always remember the thrill of the barbarous, captivatDance in the Place Congo, Converse’s Pipe of Desireil, Hugo’s —_ ing themes and rhythms of Dance in the Place Congo. Why Temple Dancer, Breil’s The Legend, Hadley’s Azora and __ this dramatic opera-ballet was shelved at the Metropolitan after

Cleopatra’s Night. a few performances has always been a puzzle. In its music there

was the breath of life in a new world. Gone were the trans-

Far-flung Sources of Inspiration planted European schools, the veneer of a style ill-fitting to an unsympathetic wearer. Dance in the Place Congo may be conExcluding Shanewis, an opera based on Indian themes, and The _ sidered the only really successful serious musical stage piece Dance in the Place Congo, which is really asymphonic poem __ written by an American composer.

with ballet, this partial list comprises as perfect a musical and |

dramatic potpourri as it is possible to conceive. All the compos- The Joys of Jazz

ers except Cadman and Gilbert searched the world for their inspiration, methods, styles and themes—but kept scrupulously As Negro music is truly American, so is the vaudeville, musical clear of America. Debussy, Wagner, Puccini, Verdi Strauss; gob- |= comedy and dance music of to-day. We may affect scorn for lins, magicians, demons, Nihilists, Greeks, stone-agers, cava- —_ ragtime and jazz, but were we all really frank on the subject, liers—these are all liberally represented in their works, in addi- _ this would appear to be pure affectation. There is something in tion to some Indians who may have been born anywhere from the American character which reacts this popular music. There

Lisbon to Petrograd. naturally, what we heard from our native _is in it exhilaration, gaiety, boldness, smartness romanticism

composers was soulless and artificial. and sentimentality typical of America. So why not accept ragThe American composer who wishes to create an American time and jazz as honest American forms which may be polopera will have to stay in this country. He will have to come _ished into a true art? Imagine the success an American opera closer to American soil and make his work as representative of | would have if it were written by a keenly alive young American America as its literature, trivial though so much of it is, as its © who wove into his work, before it came thorough the refinery

theaters, its movies. of artistic realization, the popular music of the people?

To some composers this representative creation will come Here, then, are two elements that may help to bring about instinctively when they realize fully the principles that underlie — real American opera as long as the “instinctive” composer is a popular art and yield themselves whole-heartedly to Ameri- _ lacking. can life. Failing the natural spontaneity, there is another method Numerous musical institutions, teaching academies and fafor the creation of national opera, one which the Russians and mous music teachers have made America a leading country of the Bohemians have employed to such good advantage, namely, § musical culture, and there will eventually arise the “instinctive”

the utilization of folk-music. American composer. But for the present, while so many of our America is young and does not possess the wealth of folk- | composers are under the influence of European associations lore which the other nations have. But there are three springs | and European forms, it is their duty, to themselves as well as to from which a national music may be drawn; the music of the _ the nation, to band themselves together as did that Russian group Indians, the music of the Afro-Americans, and American rag- of nationalists, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Balakireff, Cui, Mous-

time and jazz. sorgsky and Borodine, which created the Russian school of opera To Indian music we are not greatly sympathetic; and to de- _and ballet, to dedicate their efforts to the establishment of Ameripend upon Indian themes in American opera is a mistake, for | can music, and incidentally of American opera, and to resist the the Indians were never sufficiently assimilated into American temptation of cosmopolitan composition. life to make such themes dramatically interesting to us.

July 28 © The New York Times QUEEN MARY BARS JAZZ

London-July 27 The band concentrated on fox trots, one steps and waltzes and At an informal dance at Goodwood race track this afternoon the queen danced one fox trot. King George did not dance. Queen Mary requested the orchestra not to play jazz music. 196

JULY * METRONOME 1922 July ¢ Metronome DRUM TAPS Poor Jazz! It has been maligned in print and pulpit. Allthe sinsof | could be much worse. And when it is good, it is not necessarily a wicked world have been traced directly and uncompromis- _art. But it is the stuff from which much art will be made, just as ingly to its door. It is the source of all evil according toacertain —_in the olden days the folk song was the stuff from which a great class of so-called reformers. And now from Washington comes ___ deal of art music was made. Civilization with its printing press,

an official slam for the Great God of Jazz. its musical nomenclature, and its symbols of musical notation, In reply to a communication requesting an American Jazz _ precluded the birth of future folk songs. The folk songs of the Orchestra for the International Centennial Exposition whichis eras preceding the perfection of musical notation, like the folk to be held in Brazil, Frank A. Harrison, deputy commission lore, were passed along by word of mouth and handed down general of the Department of State Commission to the Exposi- —_ from generation to generation. In this journey they were puri-

tion writes: fied and finally evolved to perfect art products of a simple kind.

“There will be no opportunity for the employment of musi- _ Finally the artists found in these same simple art products the cians to perform at the Royal Exposition as a part of ourGov- —_ germs for more complicated and elaborate art products. ernment activities. The expense of transportation, salaries and With the introduction of printing the evolutionary process in maintenance would be prohibitive. We will, of course, have the — the development of the folk song was changed in its nature and services of the splendid bands of the Navy Department vessels the crude and elementary beginnings of a spontaneous creation

that will be stationed in Rio harbor. were set down in black and white for all to gaze upon. Similarly I cannot refrain from the observation, however, that Br‘‘azil_ — the evolutionary development of all crude creations are now is a friendly nation to which we owe every demonstration of — open to the public gaze but the refining process is quicker. It good will and that if “jazz” is unknown down there it would be _ progresses in leaps and bounds and each stage in its developnothing short of an unfriendly act to introduce such so-called = ment is so far removed from its predecessor that it becomes music to an unoffending people. Certainly we would not want difficult to trace the relationship between the various stages. them to believe that such conglomerations of foolish sounds —_ Furthermore, unlike the folk tune, a multitude of tunes, harmo-

represent the musical taste of the United States.” nies, and rhythms enter into the development of any one parWe note especially in Mr. Harrison’s communication that _ ticular style and from the thousands of motives but one or a few the services of the “splendid bands of the Navy Department __ persist for art development. Undoubtedly at the birth of many a vessels” will give the Brazilians musical treats. These bands _ folk tune, which later developed into an art product, the crudity will of course refrain from Jazz and undoubtedly they will val- was as apparent as our “whiniest” of jazzy tunes. iantly make excursions in the realms of the Classical and mod- In the days of the folk song, there were, without doubt, those ern art music. We are led to infer from Mr. Harrison’s declara- — who turned up what they were pleased to call their “intellection that these hands will “represent the musical taste of the _ tual” noses at the infant, little realizing in their bigotry and short-

United States? sightedness that the “child” would grow. To be sure some infant What more can we expect from officialdom? It is our _ folk songs died during the process of development but such as officialdom which advertises in auction sales proposals in the — possessed an atom which was fundamentally sound progressed,

disposition of war materials “100 first violins and 99 second _and even though it took generations to mature, it eventually violins!” Imagine being able to buy second violins! Why not _ reached the point where it was perpetuated by the pen of the first, second, and third basses with the home plate throwninfor _ artist. good measure? No doubt the good old song Home Sweet Home Think of the hue and cry which was raised some twenty or was written to be played on the home plate possibly withaknife __ thirty years ago against ragtime. And today art composers are and fork. Like Jazz, the deck of cards has been maligned. Was _finding therein material for art development. The old Negro the ban on an innocent game prompted because some people —— melodies with their characteristic rhythms together with the gambled with cards? Or was such a ban the result of the ideas —_ dance hall “rags” of the late 90’s are now being studied by comof the poor deluded Puritan? Intelligent people of today have posers. But it took a foreign visitor to break the ice. Before no patience with such bans. If prompted by the objection to | Dvofrak’s visit to the “New World” there were scoffers of gambling, why not carry the same process of reasoning tothe —_ Harrisonian-like proclivities who were decrying the rag. These drinking cup and refuse to drink milk or water from a glass —_ same scoffers were probably the first to katow to the Bohemian because some people drink whiskey out of a glass? As for the = composer. Puritan’s disapproval of recreation and pleasure, we have fortu- And then came Jazz; a strange mixture of Hawaiian idioms

nately outfrown such childish and fanatical beliefs. with a sort of offshoot of the American rag. It was made ridicuThose who unqualifiedly derogate Jazz are as childishin their lous in its elementary stages by the monkey-like antics of its psychology as those who prophecy hell fire and brimstone for crude interpreters. In its raw state and in its rendition it was him who enjoys his fireside game. Jazz may be good, bad, or __ barbaric and as sensuous, though in a different way, as the wild indifferent. And when it is bad, it sure is bad. In fact nothing = music of the Dervishers. It is still young but already it has fur197

1922 AUGUST * THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY nished germs for art music. France’s Ravel and America’s Car- _his friendship for Brazil, we have orchestras today composed penter have seen in this much maligned product of the dance of splendid musicians who are rendering the simple jazz tunes hall possibilities for humor. And, in spite of Mr. Harrison and in a humorous and “catchy” manner devoid of all obnoxiousness to the musical ear.

August ¢ The Atlantic Monthly JAZZ: A MUSICAL DISCUSSION by Carl Engel Jazz is upon us, everywhere. To deny the fact is to assume the = company; make room for the benign third party that turns comclassic ostrich pose, head buried in the sand, tail-feathers tothe | pany into crowd; devise a dance in which there is general parsun. To shout alarm hysterically from the housetops, is to ex- _ ticipation, as there was in the quadrille, the figure dances, the hibit over-confidence in clamorous indignation as a purifier of | milder forms of country reels, and you will not only improve

morals, if it be not wholly to ignore historic precedent. the tone of public amusements, but possibly you may open a The situation we are facing is not new. If offers many prob- — way for dance-music to resume a swifter, ampler, and more lems which are grave, yet seemingly not more perplexing that sweeping gait, instead of the repeated, jogging, stubborn mothose which have arisen, under similar conjunctures, in the past. tives which lead to stupid, short, reiterated movements. True it is that the dance to which jazz music has been coupled is For the present, I am not concerned with dance reform, nor not precisely setting an example of modesty and grace. True, | am I interested in jazz as an accompaniment to Terpsichorean also, that certain modern dance-perversions have called up music _atrocities; it is rather the musical side of jazz—how it origithat is as noxious as the breath of Belial. Only by abold stretch —_ nated, what it represents, and what it may lead to—upon which of fancy can this delirious caterwauling be brought under the I shall try to throw a little light head of music proper or improper; as noise, its significance at

times becomes eloquent to the point of leaving little or nothing Il

to the imagination. However, let us remember that the worst of our presentdances To a great many minds, the word ‘jazz’ implies frivolous or

are not beginning to approach in barefaced wickedness the al- | obscene deportment. Let me ask what the word ‘Sarabande’ most unbelievable performances of our forefathers, for which suggests to you? I have no doubt that to most of you it will we need not seek much further back than the time of the French = mean everything that is diametrically opposed to ‘jazzing.’ When

Revolution, when the 1800 dance-halls of Paris were notenough = you hear mention of a ‘Sarabande,’ you think of Bach’s of to hold the whirling Paris, but dancing went on gayly inchurches — Handel’s slow and stately airs; you think of noble and dignified

and in cemeteries. And let us admit that the best of jazztunesis Strains in partitas, sonatas, and operas of the eighteenth censomething infinitely more original—perhaps even musically bet- _ tury. Yet the Sarabande, when it was first danced in Spain, about

ter—than the so-called “popular” music that America produced 1588, was probably far more shocking to behold than is the in the “good old days,” that golden age which lives only inthe = most shocking jazz to-day. The Sarabande seems to have been

mythology of disappointed sinners. of Moorish origin. Then, as now, the oriental, the exotic touch, My ideas on the dance and the possible causes of its recur- | gave dancing an added fillip. When Lady Mary Montagu, writring degeneration I have set forth in an article, ‘Why do we __ ing from Adrianople in 1717, described the dance that she saw dance?’ which appeared in the Musical Quarterly for October, _1n the seraglio of a rich Mussulman, she made allusions which 1920. I shall merely remind you that almost every race andev- _— leave no uncertainty as to the exact nature of these proceedings. ery age have known social conditions which result in an un- Something of that character must have belonged to the earliest loosing of instincts that nature wisely has taught us tohold well |§ Sarabande. They were the proud Hidalgo’s hoolah-hoolah. in check, but which, every now and then, from cryptic reasons, A French author, Pierre de Lancre, wrote in 1613: ‘The cour-

are allowed to break the bounds of civilized restraint. tesans who mingle with the players have given this dance such Such excesses have not infrequently attained to tragic mad- a vogue on the stage, that there is hardly a young girl in the ness. The silly, lewd gyrations for which jazz is held respon- = country who cannot copy them to perfection.’ How truly the sible by some are the release of tension in a witless, neurotic | same might be said of our generation; it is the stage that starts a stratum of society. But such dances were common long before novel mode of dancing, the public which is alert to ape it and the word ‘jazz’ was coined. Our latest dance craze has known _ out step it. Father Mariana, in his book De Spectaculis, pubthe Tango, the ‘shimmy.’ the various zoological trots, to much __ lished in 1609, devoted a whole chapter to an attack on the

the same purpose that now cries out for jazz. Sarabande, accusing it of having done more harm than the buWhoever wishes to reform the dance must break the grip —_ bonic plague which devastated Europe in the Middle Ages.

that clutches partner against partner, in shuffling, wriggling Again, we hear it alleged that the moral corruption worked ambulation. Abolish the comparative intimacy of that twofold by jazz is vastly more calamitous than was the material havoc 198

AUGUST * THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 1922 wrought by the World War. And yet, as we know, this once —_— poems in slang would be broken on the wheel and quartered.

objectionable Sarabande finally became a matrix where inthe | And I should be delighted to help set up the punitive machin- | greatest musical composers have cast some of their loftiest and _ery, if musical barbarians were to be similarly executed. purest inspirations. Dances, popular and no doubt shocking in So much, then, to clear the stage, and range into a solid backtheir day, have furnished the soil for the cyclic growth from ground these protests and restrictions, upon which I shall ask which has sprung, by way of the concerto and sonata, the grand- you to fix, from time to time, a reassuring glance, while I step est form of absolute music, the orchestral symphony. to the proscenium and speak my little piece. The burden of it is What the waltz was when first it set Vienna spinning, when _ this: there exists such a thing as good jazz music, and good jazz it turned Paris into one big whirlpool, has been variously _is a great deal better, and far more harmless, than is a bad ballad chronicled by pious and blushing witnesses, none of whom was __ or the bad playing of Beethoven. And, if you are open-eyed in

more perturbed than the impious poet, Lord Byron. surveying our musical tendencies, you cannot pass blindly over the unspeakable riff-raff of our male and female balladists: the

Not soft Herodias, when, with winning tread, ‘Smile’ songs; and ‘Mammy’ songs; the sloppy ‘Sweetheart’ Her nimble feet danced off another’s head; drivel; above all, the unpardonable maltreatment of the classics

Not Cleopatra on her Galley’s deck by the multitude of amateurs—offenses infinitely worse than Displayed so much of leg or more of neck, good jazz. And to the latter I now come. Than thou, ambrosial Waltz. IIT

Yet Weber was to vest such bareness in the spacious mantle

of his art, and Chopin crown it with the coronet of quality. Jazz, as a state of mind, is symptom, not malady. Jazz, in the I have taken the license of rapidly rehearsing these few his- | guise of music, is both anodyne and stimulant to the afflicted. torical facts, to answer those who might question my sanenessin To the immune, it is an irritant. The term jazz, as applied to bestowing upon the musical side of jazz so much as a particle of | music, is rather elastic. It embraces not only the noisy-noisome studious thought. Without speculating what the future develop- _—sort, the jumble-jungle kind, but a type that refines upon and ment of jazz may be, what ultimate contribution to musical styles | meliorates the racy stuff of wilder species with matter of a disit may make, there is an excuse for believing that long after the — tinctly and engagingly musical nature. Good jazz is a composdance known as jazz will happily have vanished, investigators in ite, the happy union of seemingly incompatible elements. Good

the field of musical history will have occasion to search for the | jazz is the latest phase of American popular music. It is the inception of these peculiar tunes, to seek for traces of contempo- —_ upshot of a transformation which started some twenty years rary opinion on their merit or their faults. I frankly think that it | ago, and culminated in something unique, unmatched in any would set us down a rather jaundiced lot, if those investigators other part of the world. Fifteen years ago we had progressed to were to discover no sign of unbiased appeasement, nothing but _ the insipid Waltz me around again, Willie,’ to the Coon-song wholesale ranting against a laxity of morals which wasinveterate | and Rag-time factories in the back parlors of the West-Twentibefore the frenzied beaters of pots and kitchen kettles became — eth Streets of New York. With the period of Everybody's Doing

entitled to full membership in the Musical Union. It, Doing It, Doing It, about 1912, we reached the short insisLet me emphatically state that I in no way sympathize with — tent motive which was to usurp the prerogatives of songfulness. these perpetrators of infernal din, who are giving a poor imita- Then, one fine day, in 1915—or fine night, I should rather say, tion of the admirable savage, with his highly perfected and as- _ for if I remember correctly, it was in the second act of a mildly tonishingly diversified art of sounding pulsatile instruments. entertaining operetta,we were treated to The Magic Melody. A young The savage stands far above the clownish tricks of rubbing man, gifted with musical talent and unusual courage, had dared to sandpaper, blowing shrieky sirens, or hitting atrandoma battery _ introduce into his tune a modulation which was nothing extraordiof gongs. The savage is immeasurably more cultured than the _ nary in itself, but which marked a change, a new regime in Ameriperson who belabors a piano with his whole body and, thrum- —_—can popular music. It was just the thing that the popular composer ming two or three ill-assorted chords, frantically fumbled together in the making had been warned against by the wise ones as a thing in endless and stale repetition, tries to tell you that he is playing —_—‘ too ‘high-brow’ for the public to accept. They were foolish proph-

jazz. As a matter of fact, he is doing nothing of the kind. ets. The public not only looked it: they went mad over it. And well Like any other type of music, jazz can be bad or good.Iam _ they might; for it was a relief, a liberation. not defending bad jazz any more than i would defend a bad Gradually, the courageous young man found imitators more ballad or the bad playing of Beethoven. I have no intention of | daring than himself. harmonic richness and variety entered vicstanding up for the insolent plagiarists who misappropriate and —_ toriously where stereotyped cadences, barren and threadbare disfigure Rimsky-Korsakoff, Puccini, and that superlative mas- progressions, had reigned ad nauseam. Mind you, I am not setter, Johann Strauss. One of the most audacious in this little game ting milestones with the tunes I have named; I merely wish to is said to be a good musician, conductor of a practiced band, suggest to you different stages of a continuous evolution, by the son of arespected Supervisor of Music in the Public Schools songs which were typical of each. of Denver. (So says The New York Times.) | am certain that the Ihave not given the subject sufficient study to say definitely apostle of vulgarization who should try to rewrite Shelley’s _ at what point the course of popular American music took a new 199

1922 AUGUST ¢ THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY turn, but, unless I am very much mistaken, The Magic Melody pation: the blues were syncopation relished with spicier harby Mr. Jerome Kern was the opening chorus of an epoch. Itis = monics. not a composition of genius, but it is very ingenious. While it is In addition to these two elements of music, rhythm and haralmost more tuneless than was Everybody's Doing It, if thatbe | mony, the people—who in the beginning had known but one possible, and largely adheres to the short, insistent phrase, it thing: melody, fastened upon a primitive and weak harmonic stands on a much higher musical plane. Its principal claim to _ structure of ‘barbershop’ chords—the people, I say, who had immortality is that it introduces a modulation which, at the time stepwise advanced from melody and rhythm to harmony, lastly it was first heard by the masses, seized their ears withthe power — discovered counterpoint. And the result of this last discovery is of magic. And the masses, for once, showed excellent judg- —_— jazz. In other words, jazz is rag-time, plus ‘Blues,’ plus orches-

ment. tral polyphony; it is the combination, in the popular music curMr. Kern subsequently proved to be one of the most fertile, rent, of melody, rhythm, harmony, and counterpoint. tasteful, and characteristic composers of light music. When he

tries to be purely melodic, he is apt to fall back upon cheap IV

sentimentalism, tinged with spurious folksong color. But his little harmonic device had a hue all its own; and popular par- —_ Each of these four ingredients bears racial features which are

lance decided that it was ‘blue.’ unequivocally American. Yet this Americanism is not exclusively A veil of mystery covers the first dark deed that went by the _—_a tribal one; it is not content to borrow from the Negro, to filch

name of ‘blue.’ Forever hidden, perhaps, is the identity of the | from the Indian. What marks of oriental inflections it shows melancholic culprit who perpetrated it, although stout hearts _ hail from the Jordan rather than from the Congo River. While are ready to cite the man, the place, and the tune. They are not the primitive syncopation was taken over from the colored man; apt, however, to tell you of an ancestral and bona-fide ‘blue — while the Semitic purveyors of Broadway ‘hits’ made us an inchord,’ which Richard Wagner deliberately chose in order to _—- valuable gift of their more luxurious harmonic sense, the conmake more graphic the word blau when Tristan, in the begin- trapuntal complexity of jazz is something native, born out of ning of Tristan and Isolde, refers to the green, but distant, shore the complex, strident present-day American life. Where did you as shimmering still in a blue haze. That is the sublime instance. _ hear, before jazz was invented, such multifarious stirring, heavThe ridiculous one is the maudlin glissando on ukulele and __ing, wrestling of independent voices as there are in a jazz orsteel guitar, the tear-duct of popular music. What stainless ears chestra? The saxophone bleats a turgid song; the clarinets turn considered a rather weird turn of the melody, a morbid shifting | capers of their own; the violins come forward with an obbliof harmonies, entered the dictionary of professional jargon as gato; a saucy flute darts up and down the scale, never missing

‘blue note,’ or ‘blue chord.’ the right note on the right chord; the trombone lumberingly I am under the impression that these terms were contempo- _ Slides off on a tangent; the drum and xylophone put rhythmic

rary with, if they did not precede and foreshadow, the period of —_ high lights into these kaleidoscopic shiftings; the cornet is sud-

our innumerable musical ‘blues.’ What the uninitiated tried to | denly heard above the turmoil, with good-natured brazenness. define by that homely appellation was, perhaps, an indistinct | Chaos in order, orchestral technic of master craftsmen, music association of the minor mode and dyspeptic intonation with that is recklessly fantastic, joyously grotesque, such is good poor digestion; in reality, it is the advent in popular music of | jazz. A superb, incomparable creation, inescapable yet elusive; something which the textbooks call ambiguous chords, altered | something it is almost impossible to put in score upon a page of

notes, extraneous modulation, and deceptive cadence. paper. The trick had irresistible charm; everybody tried it. It was in For jazz finds its last and supreme glory in the skill for imthe preludes and interludes of the popular songs that the radi- _ provisation glory in the skill for improvisation exhibited by the cals began to break down the old order—that is, in those mea- __ performers. The deliberately scored jazz tunes are generally clumsy, sures where the voice did not interfere with their freedom. The __ pedestrian. It is not for the plodding, routine orchestrator to forebackneyed ‘Till ready’ was mercifully dispatched to limbo, and _ see the unexpected, to plan the improbable. superseded by some dexterous harmonic tricks that not only Jazz is abandon, is whimsicality in music. A good jazz band stood, but demanded and deserved, rehearing. Instead of the — should never play, and actually never does play, the same piece traditional sequence of dominant diminished-seventh, and domi- _ twice in the same manner. Each player must be a clever musician, nant-seventh harmonies—which formed the timeworn transi- an originator as well as an interpreter, a wheel that turns hither and tion into the refrain and accompanied the chanted announce- _ thither on its own axis without disturbing the clockwork. ment: “When he to her did say,’—there sprang up a diversity of Strange to relate, this orchestral improvisation, which may the freshest, most unexpected modulations, which fell upon the seem to you virtually impossible or artistically undesirable, is ear like drops of evening rain upon a parched and sunbaked __not an invention of our age. To improvise counterpoint was a soil. The various shades of blue, in which untutored harmonists _ talent that the musicians in the orchesras of Peri and Monteverdi, indulged, ranged all the way from faint cerulean to deep in- three hundred years ago, were expected to possess, and did posdigo. The last could often be more fittingly compared to mud. sess, to such a high degree that the skeleton scores of those Between the earlier ‘rag’ and the ‘blues,’ there was this dis- | operas which have come down to us give but an imperfect idea tinction: the rag had been mainly a thing of rhythm, of synco- —_ of how this music sounded when performed.

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AUGUST « THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 1922 A semblance of this lost, and rediscovered, artis contained in _ original contribution America had so far made to music. Nor do the music of the Russian and Hungarian gypsies. Just as that music | American composers of repute disdain to try their hand at it. Leo is a riotous improvisation, throbbing with a communicative beat, | Sowerby, the young Chicagoan, who is the first musical stipendiever restless in mood, so is jazz. Just as the gypsy players are —_ ary to be sent to the American Academy in Rome, has been guilty

held together by an identical, inexplicable rhythmic spell, fol- of sounding the jazz note in his chamber music and in a piano lowing the leadier’s fiddle in its harmonic meanderings, eachin- _ concerto. No less respectable a person than Professor Hill himstrument walking in a bypath of its own, so is the ideal jazz band _ self associate professor of music in Harvard University, a man constituted—that is, the jazz band made up of serious jazz artists. | who may be credited with harboring no desire for cheap notoriFranz Liszt could give a suggestion of gypsy music on the _ ety, has signed his name to a Study in Jazz which Messrs. Pattison keyboard. He had a way of playing the piano orchestrally. There | and Maier have played in their remarkable recitals for two piare few people who can play jazz on the piano. Jazz,as muchas _anos, and which arranged for full orchestra, I believe, has been the gypsy dances, depends on the many and contrasting voices programmed by M. Monteux for the regular concerts of the Bosof a band, united in a single and spontaneous rhythmic, har- | ton Symphony. There is frank and appropriate tribute paid to jazz

monic, and contrapuntal will. in Mr. John Alden Carpenter’s Krazy Kat ballet. The playing and writing down of jazz are two different things. What more conclusive evidence could you demand to prove When a jazz tune is written on paper, for a piano solo, itloses _ that jazz—-good jazz—is not void of musical possibilities, not nine tenths of its flavor. Only the bitter grounds are left. In that | wanting in musical merit? If the fastidious musician succumbs form, also, it is not unlike the chavecin music of the seven- __ to it, can you blame the people of America and Europe for likteenth and eighteenth centuries, of which only the melody was _ing good jazz?

noted over a figured bass, or ‘ground.’ Perhaps some of my hearers have begun to be agitated with Jazz, fortunately, can be preserved on phonographic records — words whether I am a paid emissary of the ‘affiliated dancefor our descendants. They will form their own estimate of our _hall proprietors,’ or a hireling of unscrupulous publishers and enormities. If we had such records of what Scarlatti, Couperin, |§ phonograph companies. and Rameau did with their figured bases, we should need fewer As a matter of fact, in standing up for good jazz I am not realizations, restitutions, and renditions by arranger and —_ making a plea for the deplorable dances of our day; I am not deranger. Of the people whom I have heard play jazz on the —_ defending the prurient panders of the musical fraternity; I am piano, I can name but two who have impressed me with their not absolving the indiscriminate manufacturers of records. uncanny skill, with their infallible musicianship. One of them —_ Against all three I want to register a loud, emphatic grotest. But is a young man in Boston who will play you the ten pianosona- _—‘I cannot rouse myself to such a pitch of virtuous wrath that tas of Scriabin by heart (!), one after the other, and, if you have _ blindness is the result. Nor will I admit that music, at its worst, survived that, will give you some transcendental jazz which,I _can be guilty of all the misdeeds that have been laid to jazz.

wager, you will declare eminently more worth-while than all Let the reformer sacrifice his days and nights in the noble the metaphysical ramblings of Scriabin’s ‘third period.’ endeavor to save mankind from the diabolic pitfalls which conMy other young friend hails from New York; he is an ac- _stantly surround it. For one thing, the champion of righteouscomplished player of Chopin and Debussy, yet nowhere quite ness may rely upon the satiety of the public which, sooner or so much at home as when he seems to grow another pair of _later, is sure to make an end of every ‘rage,’ including jazz hands, is over all the keys at once, and with the touch of wiz- _ dances. It is more than likely that he does rely on it, and thereardry, conjures up tonal jazz spooks that leave you baffled but —_ fore is as the more enthusiastic in his reform. He has, however,

grinning with delight. so far overlooked the powerful assistance that he might derive

from bringing into wider prominence the musical and artistic

V potentialities of jazz. Nothing will help more speedily to lower it in the esteem of the public at large, than gently to hint, artHere is something in music that is a more typical,amorecom- _fully to suggest, subtly to insinuate, that it may have some vague,

prehensive expression of the modern American spirit, than all remote relation to art. our coon songs, our pseudo-Indian wails, the regional songs of If jazz music has any of the gypsy music’s fitness for sura hundred years ago, the tenth-rate imitations of vile English vival, it will leave a trace, unsoiled by memories of indecorum ballads, the imperfect echoes of French impressionism. Good _and police raids. Meanwhile, the curious and heretical inquirer jazz is enjoyed by capital musicians, by men who are neither —_—s may be pardoned for dwelling reflexively upon as odd a case as inordinately immoral nor extravagantly uncultured. It has fas- _ that presented by the gradual accession of melody, rhythm, har-

cinated European composers like Stranvinsky, Casella, Satie, | mony and counterpoint to the leading role in the popular music as Debussy was fascinated before them by rag-time. Golliwog's of America, a process covering barely more than five decades. Cakewalk and Minstrels are works of the purest art, notwith- It has no parallel in musical history, unless we take musical standing the fact that the essence of their peculiar charm was _ progress as a whole during the last five centuries. Good jazz,

filtered from the emanations of the music-hall. once brought into the focus of unclouded criticism, reveals, aside Maurice Ravel, last summer, told Mr. Edward Burlingame _ from the grosser features visible to a naked eye in the dark, Hill, who was visiting him, that he considered jazz the only some finer documents, which make it appear justly entitled to 201

1922 AUGUST ¢ METRONOME the benefit of honest doubt, based—if on nothing else—on the Quite true. Yet some argumentative and jazz-loving person

examples of the sarabande, and the waltz. might come along and retort that, while the means and speed of Of course, someone may interpose that we cannot drive jazz, locomotion have changed, human nature has remained stationwaltz, and sarabande in one and the same harness; that the musi- ary, or, at least, much as it always was and will be. Said person cal vehicles of 1922 are as different from those of 1822 or 1722, might add to our embarrassment by averring that perhaps the as is a snorting eight-cylinder automobile from a feather-weight — real trouble is a momentary shortage in Handels, Webers,

Tilbury, or a pompous stagecoach drawn by six. Chopins. And how shall we prove him wrong?

August ¢ Metronome SOME FURTHER OPINIONS ON “JAZZ” BY PROMINENT WRITERS Under caption of “The Question of the Day” The Musical Leader _Straton’s sermons that jazz, in the musical sense, has been unof Chicago recently collected a large number of opinions by —_dergoing a mighty metamorphosis. The strident chaos of yesprominent writers on Jazz, which are well worth reprinting. “Two _terday is now the mellow harmony of sonorous strings. Horns questions,” says the writer, “occupy public attention inthiscoun- —_ are muted. The bizarre “blues” and maddening litanies of the try today—jazz and the flapper. Every paper devotes columns _|d-style jazz band are dying in a vanishing diminuendo. Gym-

to these two, which are in some way considered related.” nastics and hula-hula are giving way to melody and orchestraThe opinions by prominent writers are added as follows: “The _ tion. Credit for the revolution in jazz is generally attributed to last generation was agitated by Wagner,” says The Boston Tran-__ Paul Whiteman, formerly a violinist in the San Francisco SymSCr ipt. “Today the intellectual battles of music are waged about phony Orchestra. He has literally applied a symphonic technic the citadels of syncopation. Tin-Pan Alley is more exciting than —_ to syncopation, has added a dramatic sense of color-values and

Bayreuth.” contrast, and now, if you please, jazz is carrying the white man’s According to J. Hartley Manners, jazz is “The National An- _ burden. them.” The indictment is not confined to music; jazz, we are The critics who are assailing “jazz” are just a bit behind the told, is merely the leit-motif of the philosophy of the new gen- times. We strongly suspect that they know not whereof they eration. The play in which Laurette Taylor starred the past sea- speak. Forgetting the tempo of New York life they are aiming son is a debate on this subject, transferred back of the foot- _ their vitriolic darts of June against a condition that existed far lights, with the heavy roles assigned to the ladies and gentle- —_ back in November. How else can one account for such a de-

men of the negative. scription as that given by the Rev. Percy Stickney Grant, in a “On the day I went,” says Bruce Bliven of The Globe,ina _ sermon at the Church of the Ascension? diverting commentary on “Razzin’ the Jazz” the audience looked “What is jazz, then?” asked Dr. Grant, answering the quesand acted rather like a meeting of the Ladies’ Auxiliary of Flush- _ tion immediately: “A music of animal noises which makes you ing, L. I., assembled to hear a lecture on the white slave traffic. want to chatter and twist your tail around a tree. It is going back “Responsible suburban matrons from Montclair and Pelham _to the tom-tom and the beating upon a hollow log of savage stared round-eyed at the horrors of jazz and agreed with every times for music. It is a gesture of the devil—jazz goes back to bit of moral indignation the playwright displayed. Already, I _ the jungle.” am told, “The National Anthem” has created a sufficient furore The word “jazz” is now a convenient label for ticketing any to have become quite a burning issue in that middle-class Sub- —_ tendency you don’t like. It is quite the thing, for example, to urbia which includes not only all the commuting villages buta _ point out that ours is a Jazz Age.

large part of the city in addition. “When the police play a tattoo on the pates of prisoners with “Mothers are bringing in their flapper daughters in the hope _ their billies, that is jazz. When the police invade a public meetthat they will be horrified and stop flapping. The alarmed sup- _ing at Carnegie Hall and stop the speakers with the command: porters of jazz are preparing to fall back on the alternative of — ‘Cut it out!” When a representative of the mayor stops a public

light waltzes and Meyerbeer!” hearing on the question attended by representative citizens, that It has been evident for some months to observers who don’t —_js jazz. When the people are muleted by shopkeepers to the get their ideas on the subject from reference books or Dr. _ tune of half a billion a year and the Government does nothing about it, “jazz again.”

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SEPTEMBER * MELODY 1922 September ¢ Melody A DEFENSE OF JAZZ AND RAGTIME by William J. Morgan Numerous articles have appeared in various American newspa- Most classical players adhere too strictly to traditions and pers and magazines during the past few months, all of them _ so fail to meet innovations in playing that have been introduced deprecating the growing tendency of jazz and deploringitscon- —_in the present age, but if they would devote more time to earsequent results: neglecting the classics and creating musical _ training and observe the playing of good motion picture players tastes of a low order. As one speaking from an unprejudiced _ their own playing might come more into public favor. Our new standpoint and based only upon that which has come under ac- _ type of American music and musicians is not something for tual observance and experience, I would like to air my impres- —_ which to be apologetic. Rather is to an accomplishment of which

sions as to this state of affairs. to be proud as being typical of our swift, alert race that is unWe are living today in the most wonderful era of invention equaled by any other nationality. and progress known to the world since time began, and our Then again we have those who claim that ragtime playing is watchwords are economy and practicability. Everything isnow injurious to one’s ability to play classic-music. But where of do done in such manner that no lost motions are made. Results at —_ they speak and what reasons have they for making such absurd once must be forthcoming, else the task is put aside as imprac- — claims? If they answered the question frankly they would say

tical, and no further consideration given it. Yet any thing that “no reasons.” It is simply a false idea they have gained from meets the taste of the public and warrants its constant approval __ others, the fallacy of which they never have taken time to invesmust have some good qualities and be worthy of alittle consid- _ tigate. I maintain that real ragtime is rhythmical, harmonious and eration, and such is true of jazz and ragtime. They always have _full of “pep,” the last named quality having become so imperamet with public approval because they are the only forms of __ tive in all other lines of endeavor that there is no reason why we real American music so far evolved with which the masses are __ should not include it in our music.

broadly acquainted. Our contemporaneous composers of clas- The real ragtime pianist is a composer as well as performer. sic forms are doing a noble work, of course, but the chances of —_ That is, he can take a tune and reharmonize it if necessary, judi-

their efforts reaching the populace are so slim that we do not __ ciously introduce innovations, alter the rhythm, and devise a have to be concerned with them for some time to come—at least _ bass that will make the composition alive and pulsating, and so not until some genius, some American Mozart of Beethoven, obtain the public approval. After all, our efforts must be directed

appears among us. towards pleasing the public at large, and even at its best classi-

The works of many of the old masters seem to have had their — cal music becomes dull, slow-moving and monotonous if heard day as the only worthy music. Americans prefer something fresh _—_ too frequently. its appeal is only to the minority, and with it only

and modern, something more in accord with the spirit of the | anexceptionally brilliant performer can make an impression.

age, and jazz is fast supplying this preference. There are still On the other hand, jazz predominates at the theatre, at the many among us, however, who claim to abhor jazz and any __ seashore, at the mountains; in fact, at every place where music reference to popular music, this for no other apparent reason _is played ragtime is used today almost exclusively as appealing (though we will not all admit it) than that we are unable tomas- _ to the popular taste. This test of its supreme popularity, toter its intricacies and so fail to appreciate the efforts of the more — gether with the sound musicianship necessary to a good per-

fortunate. former, should convince the most skeptical that ragtime is the It has been demonstrated time and time again that strictly | real American music. Its playing cannot in any way injure the

classical pianists are not practical performers. They cannot on —__ qualities necessary to classical performance but rather tends to

the spur of the moment improvise an accompaniment for a — broaden and make more wonderful the rendition of the older singer—something which almost every vaudeville, cabaret and forms. movie pianist can do and do well. Even with the notes before The big attraction in jazz, and that which enabled this form of them, classical players often make a dismal failure, especially | music to attain its present high popularity, is the comparative when their sight-reading ability has to be brought into play. | ease with which it is mastered. Once a mastery of its essentials is Their accompaniments coincide so badly with the singer or the | obtained new ideas awaken, and in a comparatively short time instrumentalist that their efforts at accompanying are ludicrous __ the performer can do credit to himself wherever he appears. even to the unlearned. These classical pianists are wellaware of After listening to The Sheik of Snyder, or to Everybody Step by their failing, yet point to it with pride rather than admit it as _— Irving Berlin, I cannot refrain from saying that such melodies

failure and make no effort to improve. which are giving pleasure to millions are the real tunes for Americans. On with the Jazz!

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1922 SEPTEMBER * METRONOME September ¢ Metronome THE BOYS WHO ARRANGE THE TUNES YOU PLAY “I was born in the Hoosier state, good old Indiana, some year _ cess of popular music it has become. The discernment of the ago, more than you think,” began Lee Orean Smith, well known _ public, coupled with a greater desire on the part of the orchesarranger, who was just closing his desk preparatory to a well __ tra and band conductors and leaders to cater to that discernearned vacation, “and educated at Wabash College and De Pauw __ ment has been an elevating element that has helped to bring this

University,” he resumed. importance about.

“T studied both art and music under the guidance of a gifted “As the writer has carefully followed each step of this upward father. During my ‘teens I wavered between these two subjects _ trend he feels somewhat qualified to speak of and analyze it. One as to choice of career but chose the latter—whereby Art losta of the factors that has called for and influenced arranging is the Musician, or Music gained an Artist,—I never determined which. slowly upward trend of quality of the popular song of the day. The The four year university course in theory brought me adiploma harmonizing of the musical portion of current popular songs with at the end of the first year. Whether this action was taken as an __ progressions and dissonances, unheard of in this connection even indication of being rid of the nuisance of a too inquisitive pupil —_as late as adecade ago, have crept in so gradually that to the ears of or because my super-knowledge (sic) might show up the Music _ the younger generation they are an unconscious, but essential, ac-

Faculty I was never able to learn. At any rate, anelection tothe | companiment to their interest in the song and dance melodies of same faculty was proof of something—what thatsomething was _ the present. The presence of these dissonant and formerly uncom-

they never divulged. monly used chord formations and progressions, together with the “Chairs of Violin, Theory and assistant Piano followed at _ greatly varied rhythmic effects, in popular song construction (ver-

the Indianapolis Conservatory. ily, the popular song is a work of construction not composition) “While playing in local theatre orchestras, I played every _has naturally had its influence on the part of arranging. instrument of the string section finally becoming conductor, and “Not that any of the fundamentals of interval distribution, incidentally arranging my own and other home talent creations. progression and tonal balance laid down long ago by master This put the call of the theatre in my blood, so I was off forthe _ brains have been disturbed, but, for the want of a better expresnext fifteen or more years as conductor with many of America’s _ sion, the style of the use of these fundamental principles aprepresentative grand and light opera companies and kindred mu- plied to popular instrumentation is constantly changing every

sical organizations. new moon. “Enough of this work, with its attendant travel brought a deci- “A constant search for interesting figuration and ornamenta-

sion to devote my entire time to composition and arranging. tion, together with artistic contrapuntal devices, creating a po“Since that time and for the past twelve years, Ihave held —_lyphony that is easily grasped and appreciated by both musithe exacting post of Managing Editor of the Band and Orches- _ cian and layman, is the means by which the progressive arranger tra department of the widely known popular music publishing __is making his efforts felt today.

house of Leo Feist, Inc.” Unfortunately, some of our older and best-schooled statisti-

During his early years with Leo Feist, nearly every piano, _ cians in orchestration have been either too slow or too unwilling band and orchestra arrangement issued by this house emanated ___to follow this trend of popular demand, perhaps feeling that from Mr. Smith’s pen. Now his name appears but occasionally they are degrading their art; consequently, it has left the field on a work. Nevertheless his handiwork shows in the supervi- open to younger, ambitious blood who sets the pace and fills sion of the great and successful output of their large force of the breach. It is really surprising at times the path the young

skillful arrangers. arranger treads; like an explorer, he doesn’t know where he’s

Our request for his viewpoint of arranging for the modern _ going, but he’s on his way, and strange to say, he gets there. dance orchestra brought forth the following, which was written True, his interval progressions are constantly faulty, his figura-

by Mr. Smith while on his vacation: tion is somewhat inane, because he so often chooses the wrong “Just as the writer was closing his desk, prior to being offfor interval upon which to base it, his knowledge of instruments is a few week’s relaxation, the Metronome representative steps in meager, but he has ideas and he effectively gets somewhere with a request for a short expression on arranging, especially as with them. He takes longer strides than his scholarly colleague, applied to the modern dance orchestra. Little did he realize the —_ and, if he is a student, he goes back, digs up his fundamentals task he put before his friend who is at this moment lazing away _and builds a foundation that will sustain his future work. in the heart of an Adirondack pine forest, where the Maker has Sitting in an editorial chair, where arrangements of every arranged such a glorious symphony of Nature, that man’s ef- _ description come to hand, brings to light, among much wasted forts, in comparison, seem puny and insignificant. However, effort, here and there a shining spark of great talent for arrangone of man’s efforts is blazing away before us, inthe shape ofa ing, where fostering, encouragement and well-intentioned adhuge, cheerful log-fire in the old stone fireplace of the camp _ vice, produce results that are eventually worth while.

and that in the middle of August! “However, after all is said and done; the best work of ar“The Arrangement—what an important relation to the suc- —_ ranging —that which embraces the cleverest and most musicianly

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SEPTEMBER * METRONOME 1922 treatment, the most solid counterpoint, the most sensible and __ the same effects. This brought about greater effort to produce fitting ornamentation, the most artistic handling of instrumen- arrangements for publication that would fill this demand until tal timbre, and which preserves its tonal balance under any and _it has finally evolved itself into the elaborate works of this deall circumstances of instrumentation emanates from the scription which are now being issued, adaptable to the smallest schooled, experienced men who are wise and far-seeing enough __ or largest combination under the title of ‘Feistyle Special Arto keep pace with the so-called style of orchestration indemand = rangements for Symphonic Dance Orchestra.’ These arrangeat the time. The live-wire arrangers keep just a little ahead of | ments are even more elaborate than the usual phonograph arthe style, creating new combinations of timbre and rhythm that | rangement as they are not confined to the limit of time comstamp their work with originality. Through the popularity of — pelled by phonographic reproductions. the dance, the orchestra has been brought into the limelight by “The question of the study of instrumentation has so often its skillful adaption of the popular song, as well as motives from _ been put to the writer as to the quickest and best way to acquire

more pretentious works, to the dance rhythm. the art. The invariable answer is, that there is no quick way, but “There is no doubt but what the phonograph record with its _ there is a best way, and no matter how far you may go you will demand for a variation of color of the song chorus, to avoid __ never reach the end of the trail for there is always something to monotony, was a big determining factor toward creating better —_ learn. It goes without saying that the groundwork is thorough and more interesting popular arrangements. Our arrangers were = musicianship from a theoretical standpoint, then natural talent constantly called upon to create new effects for recording pur- _—s for arranging must be abundant, and adapting the reply of the poses, by the orchestras employed for that purpose, orchestras great author to our subject: The way to learn to arrange is to elsewhere desired arrangements whereby they might produce arrange, arrange some more—and keep on arranging!”

September ¢ Metronome FIXING THE BLAME FOR “JAZZ”

by Edward C. Barroll |

Throughout the Mississippi Valley a great deal of interest | dancing any variation of the fox-trot would be virtually imposhas been aroused by a discussion which has been carried on __ sible, except for a few unmusical geraniums who could execute through the St. Louis Post Dispatch, St. Louis’ largest daily _ their sort of dancing to a funeral march or ‘God Save the King.’ newspaper, in which the opinions of a number of eminent rep- “Notice what the drummer does. He swats his drum with a resentatives of the clergy, civic workers, musicians and others steady, ‘Bump-boom-boom-boom—bump-boom-boom-bo-om’ have been invited to ascertain wherein “jazz” or “jazzmusic” is effect when it is any form of a fox-trot dance for which he is blameworthy or objectionable as the root and foundation of the — supplying the rhythm. Then if you can get a one-step played at wave of suggestive dancing which has swept the country andis _all nowadays, notice that he delivers a rapid “‘boom-flap—boomnow happily on the decline. One of the most interesting and = flap—boom-flap—boom-flap’ at a different speed, with a differe significant of the opinions advanced, to musicians, at any rate, nt accent entirely, and utterly changing the character of the is that of Edward C. Barroll, a saxophonist well known to Met- —_— piece though it may be identically the same tune played 10 ronome readers through his frequent contributions to these col- —s minutes ago in a different rhythm as a fox-trot. Now persuade

umns. Writing in the Post Dispatch he says: the leader to play a waltz—and note that the drummer delivers “Unthinking people speak of ‘jazz music’ and plainly mean, =a steady ‘boom—boom—boom—boom?’ just one ‘lick’ in each thereby, a structural form in which, just at present, an amazing = measure of three ‘beats’ the first accented—the following two variety of music—good and bad—is being played in order that —_ not accented. If your orchestra is a skilled one they can quite the prevailing dances may be danced at all. Music is getting | conveniently play the same music in all three rhythms.”

blame where no blame rests. Jazz in the sense of an environ- Now, which is Jazz? ment, a nervous condition, and a laxity of personal morals upon Neither or none! the part of perhaps 2 per cent of the good folks who like to And what’s the matter with the music?

dance—is one thing. Jazz music is quite another thing which Not a thing! has no more actual existence, as such, than Santa Claus or the It may be, as music, and in whichever rhythm played, indis-

oft-quoted ‘Bogey-Man’ of our childhood. putably first-class music, even “classic” in the finest sense of that “The fact is, the prevailing dances—whether embellished with — word, which sense is simply music that does not die. But lives, the “camel walk’ step or the ‘scandal walk’ step, or any other endures, survives. Because it is worthy and deserves to do so. step—all of the stiff-legged atrocities the raggers interpolate—or I have before me at this moment a fox-trot arrangement of the jiggly ‘toddle’ so popular a year ago—are all danced and — Brahms’s Fifth Hungarian Dance. Undeniably a classic. must be danced to a rhythmical form known among musicians as Nothing has been “done to it.” It is merely written out in ‘four-in-a-bar’ or ‘cut time.’ Any other rhythmical form would “cut time” so that its rhythm is adapted to the use of fox-trot result in a totally different rhythm for even the same tune. And __ rendition. Every musician who is working at his craft just now

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1922 SEPTEMBER * METRONOME on any dance floor is thoroughly familiar with the work of Rimsky- —_ sonance. Not painful discord. Not extraneous “effects” which

Korsakoff, and of Victor Herbert, and of Saint-Saens, and of — cannot be called musical. Puccini, and on down the line of the names of the immortals, Why, then, blame “jazz” for any of the things that a strucwhose beautiful and worthy musical melodies are preservedin- _ tural form of music and a definitely determined rhythm can no tact not “ruined,” not “changed “ in any manner whatsoever — more be responsible for than automobile tires can be responmusically to make “jazz” out of them. “Jazz” music isnotsome sible for the deviltry of auto lizards? special kind or sort or style. What is played for the purpose of Why not clear up in a measure the fog of misunderstanding

dancing is not necessarily “jazz music.” through which sincere reformers and socked participants are But more significant than that is the fact that when anything —_— groping trying to find the “way out” of this mess of indecent,

musical is “jazzed up,’’what happens to it? immoral, suggestive and hideous motions which a few dancers In the popular mind right now there is an impression that superimpose upon a fine, graceful, enjoyable dance-form inwhen a tune is “jazzed” the pianist hits sour notes, the drummer _herently proper and pretty?

delabors hardward of the sundry sorts, shricks with whistles It would be absolutely as sensible to condemn the form of and hammers on gongs and wooden things and tom-toms, the the much-loved hymn Rock of Ages, as to condemn the musical trombone player slides and slips and smears—instead of play- form of Ain’t We Got Fun or Song of India—possibly the two ing the notes on the paper in front of him—and the saxophonist — extremes of fox-trot music just now typifying “lowly origin” cat-calls and cries and moans and sobs and wheezes and hits _and “aristocratic parentage.” Let’s at least get straight on what

some more “off-color” notes to heighten the effect. we’re talking about before we go too far in talking about it. The If you will take only perfunctory note of the better sort of | attacking forces seem as blind as old Don Quixote and his idiorchestras—the “jazziest” of them—you will notice an amaz- _ otic windmills, and the “defenders” sometimes appear as grossly ing absence of all of those things. Each man is religiously try- —_ ignorant, from a musical viewpoint, as the foolish sitting hen ing to get in all that’s “on the paper”—and if your ear is sensi-_ — with her China egg which she chuckingly pretends she has just tive, you will notice that every note is harmoncially correct— _laid herself! Let’s get informed as to “what is jazz’ and then all fits where it is placed, and meshes in with every other note any | combine decent people, musical or not, all the forces that want one or all of the “gang” is uttering! That’s “jazz” as itis done —_ decency but not at the expense of music per se—to root out and today—and within the meaning of the term recognized and ac- —_ destroy the objectionable phases of “jazz” without confusing cepted by musicians. Not senseless noises. Not meaningless dis- “jazz” music with it at all!

September ¢ Metronome THE SPIRIT OF ‘76 IN JAZZ by Harvey B. Gaul Do you know who makes rag and jazz? He is the drummer boy in chanticleer, though I believe it is some kind of a river.

the pit: the man we call “Traps.” His 1s the spirit of “76 (or what- Anyway, after a hard week of listening to Casals on the ever the year was when they had spirits before Mr. Volstead was __—~Victrola and Godowsky on the Aeolian, it is a pleasure to go to | known) and his is the soul that goes marching, shimmying on __ the P. A.A. and there behold our Playboy of the Middle West-

through the long dance night. ern world as he sits enthroned upon his marimba dais ensconced He is Lilt, Atmosphere, Rhythm Incarnate, Till Eulenspiegel, with his little coterie of “Honey Melody Boys,” or whatever L’Apprenti-Sorcier, L’Aprés midi d’une Faune, Puck o’ the Pit, they call themselves, and hear their “light quirks of music, broZip, Smash, Crash, Flash, Dash and Bash. He it is whois the —_ken and uneven.”

uncrowned King of Syncopation; the Emperor of Jazz. How would you like to be a master of the “flams’? Not one When Saturday night comes and life sets heavy upon us and = “flam,” mind you, but whole battalions of them; from the “flamwe bethink ourselves of the soft delights of the P A.A. orthe two stroke” to the “flam-five stroke?” Then after you have that William Penn, who is it that “brightens the corner where we —_ down pat, so that you can separate the flim from the flam, how are?” Answer, fortissimo and a capella. “Traps.” He is more — would you like to have at your finger’s ends the snare drum indispensable than the traffic cop at the corner of Fifth and Wood. “roll?” And more, or worse, the “three-stroke roll,” or if you are

Sir Walter Scott knew him well when he wrote: ambitious or ambidextrous, the “fifteen-stroke roll”? Wouldn’t that quite terrify you? Failing all that, you might achieve a neat

Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife! but not over gaudy “three-stroke drag” or a “one-stroke ruff,” To all the sensual world proclaim, or if that is entirely beyond you, there is the “crushed ruff’ and

One crowned hour of glorious life all that it implies.

Is worth an age without a name. A “fifteen-stroke roll’ sound like the varsity crew. At least

And that’s “Traps” for you. He’s both clarion and fife, though there is a Henleyesque turn to it, and the “one-stroke ruff” seems I’m not at all sure what a clarion is. It may be some kind of __ to have quite a freshman twist about it, don’t you think?

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SEPTEMBER * THE MUSIC LOVERS MAGAZINE 1922 Oh, there’s lots more in “traps” philosophy than you thought lion roar,” “cuckoo,” “slapstick,” “cocoanuts,” to say nothing of of, horrendous. For instance, there’s a “flamacue.” One might well — every known variety of bells from a dinner bell, cow bell, Chithink that it was an Alice in Wonderland variety of ornithology,and —_ nese gong, to an electric door bell. He had an Indian drum, a then there is ““a dué,”’ which really has nothing to do with the mail |= Chinese drum, bass drum and snare drum. There was a colossal received on the first of the month, and which is nothing more seri- | tam-tam and wooden blocks for hollow sounds, an automobile ous than to be “played on both instruments.” In the cult of “traps,” = horn, a klaxton and a xylophone, and he, the great and only one finds all kinds of etymological eccentricities, such as would —_ Traps, the Haroun Al Raschild, the sensechal of our Saturday drive any self-respecting philologist into a nervous or terpsicho- —_ nights, could and did play each and every one. Sometimes he

rean breakdown. When one becomes “drummistic” one has to didn’t let his right hand know what his left hand dideth and master such words as “loco,” “ossia,” “sogue,” “volti subito” and a then he played them with his feet. And it seems that when he marvelous expression known as “‘tacet.” It would seem according had a free moment and nothing else occurred to him, why he to “traps” that “tacet” means “‘is silent,” and wonder of wonders, it threw the drum sticks up in the air and caught them on their

is often found in his stave of the score. way down without losing a single “flam,” “ruff” or “stroke.” He To my mind “tacet” is a noble expression, and a word that | showed us how the cat cried, the dog barked, the mule “heopens up a new and wide field of thought. Iam not sure but that hawed,,” and, in fact, the whole orchestral menagerie, from it is the most important word spoken by music, heavenly maid.I mange to rickets, from spring-halt to spavin. wonder why composers don’t use it more. Think of writing a “That isn’t all,” said Traps. “There is no way in which you symphony on such a word, a tone-poem if you wish. Liszt might — can teach ‘jazz.’ It’s a self-taught art, each man invents it for have done it. Surely there are many hidden possibilities in that himself, and every fellow sits up night trying to ‘dope’ out new freighty, meaty little word. One might fugue “tacet” in battledore sounds. After a man has invented the sound he gives it a name, and shuttle-cock fashion, throwing it around from instrument to —_—and that is why there are so many crazy names in the game. instrument, from choir to choir, and with great benefit not only to —_ There is no text book on the subject. You either make it up or the performers, but to the auditors. Browning might have extem- = you don’t and that means you have to have the habit of mind.”

porized upon it when he was improvising upon Abt Vogler or A Thus it is that all is explained in the land of jazz. All the unToccata of Galuppi’s. A polyphonic “tacet’”” would be a grand _ holy sounds that are so inspiring are thus accounted for. “Take scheme and one that Strauss might well utilize. Wagner would _ but one degree away, untune the strings, and hark, what discord have made a motif upon it had he only thought of it. The Ballet follows,” and there is the secret and modus operandi of the matRusse might dance it, and when it comes to the archanarchists, __ ter. Untune the strings, block up the cornet, put more, more oil on the cubists,spherists, vorticists and verists, what might they not _ the slide of the slide trombone, overblow the clarinet, and syncomake of it and with great satisfaction to all concerned. pate everything from the hat boy to the ware cooler, and it is all as Traps said the other night to a few of us in one of our private —_clear and translucent as mud. Certainly humanity owes a debt to

seances of horns: Debbler for laying bare the innermost secrets of his high calling.

“Do you know Pope was right in his day and generation when ‘The sobbing, sighing, rasping qualities of Prohibition Blues, Alhe wrote, ‘All discord is harmony not understood.’ Hadhe lived — coholic Blues, Laundry Blues, and all the other amendments of today he would have said all modern discords were the product _ the indigo trade which have baffled the scientists and master minds of harmony over-understood, that is, they are purposeful. The — are made plain now. It was simply that the gentlemen of the coronly accident about them is the deliberate employment of sharps _ nets and trombones were playing through their hats.

and flats where none were meani to blossom, and just to make Anyone can play in a symphony orchestra. All that it rediscord more discordant, special instruments have been invented — quires is the conventional technic, but to be a Traps and invent

to make the tones more curdled.” and extemporize is a gift that is denied most sane people. This And with that he showed us how he fired his barrage, and we _is certain: one Saturday night of his demoniacal diabolism—or were glad—or sorry—that he wasn’t a centipede. His catalog __is it metabolism?—-makes Sunday a blessed day of rest. The real like an insane hardware store prospectus. There wasa“baby §_ Merchant of Venice spoke truly when he said: cry,” “clogs,” sanaad board,” “dunghill rooster,” “rattle,” “steam- Lock up my doors! and when you hear the drum,

boat whistle,” “bird whistle,” “ locomotive whistle,” “sleigh And the vile squealing of the wry-necked fife, bells,” “annil,” “railroad imitation,” “horse imitation,” “shot pad,” Clamber you not up.”

September ¢ The Music Lovers Magazine THE “NEW” JAZZ by Stephen A. Estes It was George Elliot, I believe, who termed slang “a debasing Every generation has had its slang. But it remained to this of the current coin of speech.” In its simple form slang implies —_ twentieth century of ours to invent the musical slang we call

the twisting of acommon word to an alien meaning toexpress “jazz.” half whimsically a popular thought.

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1922 OCTOBER 25 ¢ THE NATION So long as jazz butchered melodies of its own levels to make “Behold! Good music!’ they exclaimed. its holiday, there was no harm done. But of late, stung by deli- How can one explain things to the exploiters of this extraorcate insinuations that jazz leaves something to be desired from — dinary musical conception? To the savage topped with a high truly musical standpoints, the jazzites have sought means of __ silk hat and patent leather shoes—and nothing between—one proving its blood kinship with the musical aristocracy of sym- — might better essay the exposition of what constitutes being clad.

phonic and chamber music. It is not only what these vulgarisers of beautiful things have This they have done with the sweet ingenuousness of achild —_ already done, it is a vision of what they may do, that fills one comparing its battered primer with a Shakespearean play. It was_ —_— with a sort of despair.

the simplest thing in the world to lift certain beautiful themes Consider: they can search through musical literature and from their shrines in symphonies and songs along the roads where _— abstract any well beloved theme that seems worth the effort, trod the musical elect, and weave them boldly intoajazz context. _ and ill-treat it according to their notions. And nothing can deter Such songs as Elegie of Massenet, Rimsky Korsakov’s Chant them. So long as they use only four bars consecutively, neither Indoue, the Samson-Delilah aria, The Rosary, (socontagious and __ the law nor the prophets can remonstrate. confluent among singers) and other melodies of presumably good Jazz in its “first beginnings” was bad enough—sometimes it

birth and breeding have been chosen for jazz purposes. was even provocative and amusing—but its latest eccentricities Then, having drugged these hapless bits of music into the blind — are destined to make it tenfold the outcast from the musical staggers, disordered their orderly pulse, and made them gurgle _fold it has already become. and wail strange saxophone sentiments, the jazzites registered triumph and demanded a revision of the musical dictum.

October 11 ¢ The New York Times WIN WAR ON JAZZ WITH BETTER SONGS Jazz is threatened by a musical counter-revolution led by Pro- — good food. What better proof of this fact could one ask than the fessor Peter W. Dykema of the University of Wisconsin, famous _ haste with which the public turn quickly from one bad popular musical authority of the United States, who this week startled song to another in unconscious search for the songs which will the country by his declaration that the majority of Americans _lastingly satisfy their musical hunger? Good popular songs are are no better than African savages in their use of musicalinstru- _ those which stress some fine and desirable aspect of American

ments. life and by both music and words awaken a sincere response in Delegates attending the Ninth Recreation Congress under __ the hearts of the people. the auspices of the Playground and Recreation Association of “IT do not mean that good songs need necessarily be ‘high America and Community Service today passed a resolution — brow’ songs. Let us have lots of songs in lighter vein, songs of declaring “it is vital that immediate stimulus be given to cre- — humor, sport, friendship, love; songs that express any ideal of ation of a song literature embodying the finer ideals of Ameri- | American life, not only its loftier moments.” can life.” The resolution appealed to the “poets and composers A committee of five was chosen to direct the campaign, inof the United States to devote themselves to creating more wor- — cluding Professor Dykema, C. M. Tremaine, Director of the

thy songs of the people.” National Bureau for the Advancement of Music; Sigmund

“We are musically undernourished,” declared Professor Spaeth, Mrs. Fred W. Abbott, managing director of the PhilaDykema. “America needs good music as badly as Austrianeeds §_delphia Music League, and Kenneth S. Clark of the Bureau of Community Music of the Community Service.

October 25 © The Nation JAZZ by William J. Shultz Itis at once the old and the new. Its elements are the raw materialsof together different element: rusticity; until the middle of the nineall music, raw materials presented with a primitive simplicity; its | teenth century, the only Massemensch was the great, silent, subrhythms are strident, its melodies are simple and sharply articu- _—ject, agricultural population. Their music was a music of outlated, its form is standardized and concise. Its substance is thatof | of-doors, instrumentally based on the human voice or the sim-

all folk-music; in its way, it is an industrialized folk-music. plest of stringed and wind instruments, a music of physical merThe folk-songs of the Continental peoples were the depos- = rymaking, a music that looked away from weary body-labor, ited sediment of centuries of submerged folk-life. Many ofthem —_ yet ever reflected its shadow through the wildest abandon. served the same purpose as the more modern jazz; they were The modern Massemensch is a creature of paved and lighted accompaniments to dances. But into their lyrics entered an al- _ streets and grimed air; his dwelling is the tenement and frame 208

OCTOBER 25 * THE MUSICAL COURIER 1922 house; his thoughts, still untutored, are urban. His music, asto __ erally left social strategy to be exercised by the ladies of the his earlier rural brother, is a diversion, and must make its ap- _—_— family. The new patrons, at their best, looking upon music as a

peal direct. His music is jazz, and it achieves its purpose. recreation, and lacking time and inclination to devote themRhythm, its chief component, even when startlingly complex, _ selves to a study of it, in time depending on specialists or critics needs no intermediary to make its appeal; its melodies are nei- —_— to judge their music for them just as they relied on hired experts ther extended nor complicated, and soon become familiar from in their businesses, sought only for the less exacting sensuous being reheard in succeeding compositions, so that they turninto —_ appeal in music. Those musicians who satisfied this desire in clichés, thus obviating much mental effort; jazz harmonies, of- _—_ their compositions received the loudest acclaim, and became ten discordant and unprogressing, provide a stimulant forjaded — the models for the next generation; romantic music developed

nerves. The lyrics are gems of naiveté, their topics are few and away from the symmetric form of classicism to the dramatic simple: sex crude and unabashed, the home, the romance of _— form of program music. far-off places—emotions the broadest and most universal. The The whole development of romantic music has been a slow Massemensch is the patron of the dance hall, of the vaudeville retreat before indifferent but all-powerful ignorance. From show, and must be considered in the box-office of the musical Schubert through Schumann, Wagner, the Russian school, Richreview. To these places he goes for the exhilaration he knows ard Strauss, to Stravinsky and Schoenberg, romantic music has he will receive from jazz; had he desired otherwise, he would _ been letting down the high standards of the classic era, saving its

have patronized a concert hall. face and apologizing for itself in philosophical terms where it But in contrast to the older folk-music, jazz is not confined —_ could, trying to cover its retreat by criticizing the older music as to the submerged strata of society while a highly developed — dry and formal. This movement has existed not only in music but music exists contemporaneously among the upper classes; it _in all the arts; in music, it is more evident. romantic music went has become nearly universal. This is notincomprehensible. The _ back to the national stores of folk-songs, extolled their primitivearistocratic society of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, _ ness and simplicity, and based itself on them; of course such mucentering about the continental courts which patronized the —_ sic would make a keener appeal to the more untutored ear, and music of the classic era, affected a nonproductive leisure as the — hence was hailed with greater rapture. Those musicians whose indication of their aristocracy. Their leisure gave the members — temperaments inclined them to revere the classic canons were of this class who were so inclined the opportunity to make mu- swept aside and submerged by the tidal wave of popular demand. sic more than an idle diversion, and their studies led them be- —‘ The instruments of the musician, particularly the piano, were furyond the mere sensuous elements of rhythm, melody, and har- _ ther developed; the orchestra was increased and additions made mony to the more intellectual element of form. The composers _to it that expanded its tonal possibilities; the acoustics of concert whom they patronized and supported, maintained in leisure _ halls were improved. More and more was the composer tempted themselves and usually with no other preoccupation than their __ to turn tone painter, to look upon the instruments of his art as a

musical studies, were enabled to produce an intellectualized palette for mixing colors, rather than a draftsman’s tool to create music, developing that symmetry of form which is the surpass- designs. The experimentor, in cacophony found limitless fantasing beauty of classical music, but which makes its appeal, not _ tic combinations of sound available. Strong-willed indeed must

only to the emotions, but to the appreciative mind. have been the composer who could resist. When the French Revolution and the succeeding chaotic Romantic music and the twentieth century have been united decades reduced the importance of this leisured aristocracy, mu- —_in holy wedlock, and the fruit of this union is jazz. It may be an sicians had to look elsewhere for patrons, and they turnedtothe — enfant terrible, but it is no changeling. It does not play the hypo-

new aristocracy of the industrial entrepreneurs. Many of the crite or deceive itself by talking glibly in the cant of art. It is conventions of the old aristocracy were aped by the new, andan __ vulgar, but it is healthily frank—as frank as the conversation of interest in music was one of these. The industrial nouveaux riches _a group of young people who cleanly and intelligently discuss attended the concert halls; what influence the wives anddaugh- _ birth control. Our contempt for jazz is snobbery and is arelic of ters had here might be interesting to discuss, for the stage-prop- —_—‘ the days when the “people” were considered solely as factory

erty of the previous noblesse de sang tended to be maintained _and politician fodder. The cognoscenti, like the poor, are alby the female side of the noblesse de l’argent rather than by the — ~ways with us’ theirs be the kingdoms of romantic and classic male. The husband and father, occupied by his business, gen- — music. The jazzists will never dispute them their possessions.

October 26 © The Musical Courier LEAVE “JAZZ” ALONE By the courtesy of the Community Service, Inc., we are in receipt But we are not. We believe that it is not only entirely unnecof a very full and comprehensive account of the war on “jazz” —_ essary but entirely useless. No campaign of the kind ever did or started at the recent Recreation Congress in Atlantic City. The ever will have any effect in lessening people’s like for what “helpful assistance” of our editorial department is requested, __ they like, nor is it at all evident to us that there is any harm in and evidently it is assumed that we will be in sympathy with “jazz,” or that “jazz,” or any other kind of music, ever can or

this movement. will do any harm to anybody.

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1922 OCTOBER * MUSICAL OBSERVER __. In our editorial entitled “Jazzando” (August 24 issue) we There is no mention of “jazz” in this but its intention is obvipointed out that “jazz” is not a cause but an effect. It is, like all ous. Fortunately itis impractical! As if the composers of America

music, a depression of the feeling of the people who write it or of any other country could write songs to order that would and the people who buy it in sufficient quantities to make it —_ win over the public taste! “Create more songs for the people!” popular. Some people believe it is an expression of Hebrew- _ But there are a dozen or more American composers already Americanism, others think it is an expressio of Negro-Ameri- creating songs for the people, songs which sell a million or more canism, still other’s think it is pure American, unhyphenated . copies apiece. And there are a dozen more who are writing dance However that may be, it makes absolutely no difference where tunes that are selling equally well. Why create more? What does it came from. It if had not fully expressed American feeling it the Recreation Congress think we are, children, babies, with would not have been popular. That feeling may be more or less out minds of our own, unable to distinguish for ourselves what universal—probably is—the American race is acomposite. But, we like and what we do not like? again, what difference does that make? Whatever else “jazz” may And who is to say what the “finer ideals” of American life be, surely no one will deny that it is a child of America. Its grand- —_ are? Energy is one of those finer ideals, and energy is expressed parents may have been Hebrew or Indian or Negro, South Ameri- _—sin “jazz” as it has never been expressed in the world of music

can, Spanish, Gypsy, but all of those influences were known for before. What else do we want to express? Our heart songs are generations, centuries in Europe, and yet Europe never made _full of love-of-home and of a sickly sentimentality that sounds “jazz.” America did, and some Americans are proud of it. Weare. a good deal like the hypocrisy of the pussyfooters. “Jazz” has We are not proud of all of its phases. There is a certain trend — brought more joy into American homes than all of those sentitowards sickening “heart-stuff’ that came right straightdown from = mentalities put together “Jazz” has put laughter where there our weakly sentimentalizing American forefathers, that we are —_ used to be nothing but boredom and puritanical tyranny. (We certainly not proud of. That is just as American as “jazz,” but = speak of “jazz” as music, not of the disgusting things that go

“jazz” is far superior to it. The rhythm and color of “jazz” isa with it and for which it is in no way to blame.) | splendid thing, a thing that has appealed to the greatest musi- If you wish to go a step further you might say that “jazz” is also cians of Europe as worthy of their attention. Whatelsehas America —_—an expression of freedom. And is not freedom one of our “finer ever done in music that is worthy of the same amount of respect? |= American ideals?’ But the worst thing that can be said about “jazz”

And this thing reformers and moralists, who seem to care _is that it is an expression of freedom—too much freedom—the nothing for art, are setting out to kill! We are not with them. sort of freedom the foreigner finds when he gets to America and Certainly not! Let them kill the “jazz” spirit which, we grant,is | escapes from the parental control of paternal governments.. a serious spirit of “laissez allez,” and “jazz” will cease to be the This sort of discussion leads nowhere. If you start on a wrong popular expression it now is, and will step into the realm of | premise youcan prove anything, and the wrong premise in this classical music where it belongs, just as Carl Engel points out —_ case is that “jazz” is a cause and not an effect, and ought, therethe Sarabande moved upward from the popular dance to the _ fore, to be abolished. Furthermore, before we can talk intelli-

classic forms of old : gently about expressing America’s finer ideals it will be neces-

The resolution of the Recreation Congress is as follows; sary to find out what these finer ideals are and whether they can ‘Whereas, the National Recreation Congress recognizes the in- be expressed musically. fluence of song in the lives of the people, and whereas, it be- That question is not new. It has been asked hundreds of times; lieves that it is desirable to give a greater stimulus to the cre- what is American music? What will it be like when it comes? ation of a song literature embodying the finer ideals of Ameri- What should it express? Freedom? Energy? Home? Our popucan life; be it resolved, that an appeal be made to the poets and _lar music expresses all of those things. But now the reformer composers of America to the end that they create more songs of | comes along and says “Nay! Nay!” the people. Moreover, the National Recreation Congress rec- Let the Recreation Congress prove to us that “jazz” is harmommends that a committee be appointed which shall devote _ ful, and let them tell us what sort of music they propose to force

itself to the accomplishment of this purpose.” down America’s throat, and how they propose to do the forcing. Meantime let us leave “jazz’ alone.

October ¢ Musical Observer COLLEGE JAZZ AND WHAT IT SYMBOLIZES by Elise Fellows White All things have their psychological aspect, and even the most Listening to this all-American product of our salvaged desordid phases of every-day life have their spiritual significance. mocracy, I seem to find it in the expression of certain essentially An analysis of the phenomenon called “jazz” or “rag-trme” —=_ modern attributes; for instance, self-possession under bewilder-

opens up depths of meaning hitherto unsuspected. Itappearsto ing and confused conditions. American college jazz illustrates the writer to bear a certain relation to traits thathave developed — the American college ideal of poise maintained under difficulin our national character. And in its monotonous and blatant __ ties. Here we find melody, of a not unmusical type, pursuing tts

vulgarity is sounded a warning. complacent course in the midst of bewilderment and distraction. 210

NOVEMBER 16 « THE MUSICAL COURIER 1922 It proceeds cheerfully, obstinately, inanely, despiteentanglements speaking; yet time and tune emerge triumphant in the end, and

in the way of syncopation, elaboration, or dynamics. Not even never a dancer falters. So long as money, melody and muscle the barrage of fireworks produced by a muscular and resourceful _ holdout, all is well. Not only “apres nous le déluge,” but bepiano player can “change a word of it.” The moving finger writes neath us the earthquake, above earthquake and deluge, the still steadily on, even as a ballerina preserves the same placid smile, small voice, chanting Ain t We Got Fun, supreme and care-free.

though her feet be vibrating between earth and sky. Over and over grinding out one idiotic and self-evident propoThis may be symbolical. Many illustrations are suggested. sition, this social merry-go-round of ours, with its tireless repCollege days, and the wild scramble they involve. Here come __ etition of like modulations, like cadences, and the inevitable athletics, prancing gaily onward, despite the clamorous inter- | “barber-shop chord at the close, like a departing curse. over, ruptions of Math, Lab., and Lit. To dance all night, andturnup _and over, and again, repeating placidly, fatuously, eternally, its fresh and smiling at chapel next morning is indicated by seis- statement of meaningless optimism; despite the rush of unseen mic disturbances in the bass, upheavals in harmonic progres- | feet—as in Dickens’ echoing corner, despite the pull of despersion, throughout which the familiar tune ambles amiably on. ate hands—they cry of the starving, the “tear song of the lowThe social whirl, so-called, who shall say that this, too, is | born” echoing from slave-pen and field-hand all the struggle not symbolized? Serenity in spite of distraction, that is stillthe | and contrast of life symbolized here in swift changes and suddominant idea. Notwithstanding mix-ups in rhythm, syncopa- _—_ den reversals of tempo and tonality. tion piled on syncopation, until rags are reduced to tatters, and Yes, there is much to be found in this expression of a nation’s we don’t know whether we are coming or going, musically — chosen joys; possibly, too, a hidden suggestion of its ultimate SOITOWS.

November 4 ¢ The New York Times BAN ON JAZZ SACRILEGE Paris, No.3 The raid of jazz plagiarists on the music of the masters cians of the city. These musicians will be circularized and perto meet the demands of the dancing craze of Paris has arousedto _sonally solicited to join in the general refusal to play plagiarized action the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs. This organiza- music. If necessary, the organization will resort to the courts.

tion has declared itself the guardian of the rights of authors and Chopin’s Funeral March, syncopated to fox-trot time, is the composers who have been dead for more than fifty years. In or- _ atrocity that has aroused the society to action. Previously Saintder to protect the works of these artists from the onslaughts of the | Saens’s Danse Macabre had achieved a paradoxical popularity music pirates they plan a direct appeal to the dance-hall musi- by a “blues” twist.

November 16 ¢ The Musical Courier OF INTEREST TO COMPOSERS by Kenneth S. Clark Might one request the courtesy of your columns for the privilege Even though the mention of “jazz’ in connection with the of removing, if possible, some justifiable misapprehensions of | campaign has drawn from your editorial writer the warning: your editorial writers concerning the campaign started by the re- “Leave ‘Jazz’ Alone,” it has done a signal service to the cause. cent Recreation Congress for the creating of new “songs of the “Jazz” is merely a kite to which the story of this campaign has people,” which may live to be additions to our folk song litera- | been attached as a tail and in the train of which the campaign ture? That such misapprehensions exist is indicated by the edito- —_ has swung into nation-wide notice. For instance, what reader of rial entitled “Leave ‘Jazz’ Alone,” in the issue of October 26. The The Musical Courier will be unaware that this campaign exists, word “justifiable” is used because of the caption which was at- now that you have devoted nearly a column to an editorial on it tached to the article upon which the editorial was based. That —_in addition to the space which, it is hoped, you may give to the caption, “To War on ‘Jazz’ With Better Songs,” was taken froma __ present reply? Just suppose that our “little” group of serious headline in the estimable New York Times on the Atlantic City thinkers” at the Recreation Congress had evolved some nice, news item announcing the campaign. Actually, the only connec- _ public-spirited , but unexciting plan for musical advancement. tion of “jazz” with that campaign is that it formed the news angle § The Musical Courier, being public spirited, would have taken from which the story was treated in the press dispatches. For __ notice of it, but would the daily papers have found room for it keeping that thought alive in the above-mentioned caption the among the murders and divorces? Echo answers “NO!” In other present writer, as secretary of the committee agitating the plan, — words, here is a recipe for steering such a campaign into public must confess “Mea culpa mea maxima culpa!” If that act wasa __ notice; begin by proclaiming stoutly, “Black 1s White.” Then

“first false step” in our campaign, may it be the last! after you have been annihilated for such iconoclasm, murmur 211

1922 NOVEMBER 16 ¢ THE MUSICAL COURIER gently, “Oh, we didn’t mean it. White is white.” Next, elucidate other hand, it is a positive movement for more fine songs that as to just what brand of whiteness you are sponsoring. By that |= may be sung sympathetically by the people. It is a campaign time the dear American public will know that your cause is alive. not of repression but of expression. The application of the above is plain: now that Mr. “Jazz” has One of several reasons why the effort has nothing to do with carried this campaign with him into the barbed-wire enclosure “jazz” is that the former is concerned solely with songs to be of national notice, we trust that he will not consider us heartless sung, whereas “jazz” is a manner of playing music. if we desert him for other companionship. It is not that we har- A few words as to your editor’s defense of “jazz” and then

bor enmity against him; we simply have other fish to fry. we abandon it to its cacophonies. With most of the things he Lest the foregoing may be considered unduly flippant, may says about it, the present writer would agree. Indeed, the leader we tell briefly the actual story of how this new campaign grew, of this campaign Prof. Dykema,is by no means deaf to the good Topsy-like, at the Recreation Congress? It happened that two qualities of “jazz.” His comment at the Congress on this subject noted musical educators, Dr. A. T. Davison of Harvard, and Prof. | which caused all the hub-bub was this: “I am not one who conPeter W. Dykema of the University of Wisconsin, spoke during = demns that modern dance music which is so frequently anath, the second day on the general program devoted to music. Italso | ematized under the name of ‘jazz.’ ‘Jazz’ music has a compara; happened that both made some quite unrelated remarks regard- _ tively new rhythmic arrangement of tones; has a piquancy, verve ing popular music which, when reproduced in the newspapers, —_ and stimulating quality which form a real contribution to mu-

appeared to be a “discussion” of “jazz.” sic. The objections to it lie in the way it is used. It is so atroAmong all the serious and inspiring measures for the public ciously presented with drums, gongs, cowbells, rattles, whistles good that were discussed at the Congress the one thing which _and other nerve-wracking devices that the musical element is attracted about fifty per cent of the newspaper notice was this _—_ almost obliterated. As a result, our people are losing those finer matter of “jazz,” which was a purely incidental and accidental —_—_ susceptibilities to rhythm which arise when the supplying of affair. Those who fret at the existence of our “Main Streets” —_ some of the rhythmic impulse is left to the listener. The poorer and our “Babbits” may be disheartened by this exhibition of | dance music and the poorer popular songs leave nothing for us unregeneracy. But is it surprising? “Jazz,” like the movies, is to do; we need not listen, we need not think. All we do is pay merely one of our greatest common denominators of public in- _ the piper, press the button, and the noise will do the rest. Make terest. Instead of worrying, let us keep striving to increase the your music sufficiently subdued so that the dancers will have to

batting average of good music as a whole. listen for it and thus assume a bit of responsibility by producing But to our story: when the music section of the Congress __ in themselves something of a rhythmic response. met on the final day one of the first topics stated was, “What In the final sentence of the foregoing, Mr. Dykema is evican we do about getting a better grade of popular songs for —_ dently taking cognizance of the soft pedal which has already community singing (it being essential to meet the people on _ been put upon “jazz” playing by its newer practitioners of what their own ground, which in many cases is the popular song.)? ~—= we might call the Paul Whiteman school. After all, the test of

Later we heard from S. A. Mathiasen, a Community Service “jazz” as a contribution to music is not whether it makes huworker, of the community singing which he had observed in’ mans dance—the African tom-tom does that—but whether it 1s Denmark while studying there last year. In the survey for Octo- _ pleasing to listen to when one is not dancing. That the more ber 15, he has written an expansion of this narrative. He toldus delicate style of “jazz” accomplishes the latter is proven by its that the best poets and composers of Denmark had been giving warm welcome in vaudeville and music revue. Furthermore, themselves to writing simple, melodic songs, which have be- _ this quieter “jazz” does not incite to objectionable dancing. On come folk song of Denmark. Someone remarked, “Why can __ the one evening when the writer felt plutocratic enough to dance we not apply this to our conditions in America?” Out of that — under Mr. Whiteman’s violin bow he observed but one couple suggestion gradually grew the decision of this meeting to present | who were dancing improperly and they would have done a lustbefore the congress a resolution appointing acommittee to start ful dance to a Beethoven minuet.

a campaign in which American composers and poets would be Before us there is a copy of the “Leave ‘Jazz’ Alone’ editoasked to give thought to the creating of songs that might in like —_ rial, on which we have underlined certain phrases that give evimanner become American folk songs. This resolution was unani- — dence of the misapprehensions before mentioned. For instance,

mously passed by the Congress. the campaign is not intended for “lessening peoples likes for Now comes the news angle. Because of the coincidence — what they like.” Far from it. We hope to give people more of whereby Mr. Dykema, who had been one of the principals in what they like, but the community singing crowds do not care the “discussion” of “jazz” was made chairman of this new com- to sing cheap, vulgar songs; you cannot force such songs down mittee, what could be more natural than that the newspapers __ their throats. They react favorably only to wholesale sentiments should play up the new campaign led by him as being an attack = expressed with worthwhile melodies. Many such songs have upon “jazz.” Actually it was nothing of the sort. The writer of | been found among the popular songs of recent years, for exyour editorial reminds us that there is no mention of “jazz” in ample, The Japanese Sandman, April Showers, and so forth. the resolution which he quotes. But he says that its intentionis | The fox-trot craze has brought into popular song a less banal obvious. Right there we agree with him; it is obvious, but obvi- _ type of melody one heretofore found only in musical comedy. ously not so negative a thing as an attack upon “jazz.” On the — The text, however, is not always a fitting mate for the melody. 212

DECEMBER 10 * THE NEW YORK TIMES 1922 The undersigned has been diligently combing the fall crop of | music is familiar music.” Should this new appeal result in the Broadway hits in search of eight songs suitable for inclusion in creation of songs which seem to meet the need herein expressed, the Community Service leaflet of “Community Songs.” It was those behind the campaign will dedicate their energies to seewith incredible difficulty that these were found. Now, one of __ ing that insofar as possible such worthy songs are made familthe purposes of this campaign Is to acquaint the writers of popu- iar to the mass of the people. To this end, it is to be hoped that lar songs with the fact that there is a wide public eager for the — they may be issued by all types of publishers in order that they wholesome type of song that we have been sketching. may receive the benefit of no less progressive exploitation than It is said by the writer of your editorial that there are a dozen the Broadway-made song hit. American composers creating songs which sell a million cop- What are the finer ideals of American life which we hope to ies apiece. Good! We would urge those composers to include —_ see expressed, asks the editorial? These are the aspirations which among those songs more numbers that can be sung with plea- _—_are to be found epitomized not only in songs of patriotism but sure by the mass of the people. Nor do those behind this cam- —_in songs of humor, sport, home, love and fellowship. It is to be

paign think of our citizens as being “unable to distinguish for hoped that such ideals will be voiced in a simple, vigorous and themselves what we like and what we do not like.” Inthe mat- —_s unsentimental way. We are not expecting the composers to write ter of songs for mass singing the public shows plainly what it —_ folk songs to order. We are merely asking them to give their likes: songs that represent wholesomeness and melodic charm. _ best thoughts to the project as have their brethren of Denmark. One sentence in the editorial intimates that our campaigners In order that our writers may have a hint as to the sort of are “reformers and moralists, who seem to care nothing for art.” songs desired, one of the committee’s first acts will be to preNot guilty! There is nothing of the blue stocking about this _ pare a list of existing songs of American origin as a suggestion; movement. Furthermore, we hope that our best exponents of __ not an all-inclusive list but merely one representing certain types. the composer’s art will respond to our appeal. We trust thatthey | Such tabulation and the perfecting of organizations are the imwill be animated by the same aspiration that one noted com- _—s mediate objective in the campaign. The committee appointed at poser expressed in war-time when he said: “If I could write one _— Atlantic City is to be regarded as a steering committee andasa_ song that our boys would sing in the trenches, I would feel that = nucleus for a large group which may be representative of the Thad done the greatest thing in my life.” We hope that the list of | various musical forces which may be expected to aid the project. writers of these songs will include not only the best writers of It is too big an idea to be merely the pet hobby of one group or popular song but those whose gifts have been given hitherto collection of groups. only to the forms of symphonic or chamber music and of art To sum it up, this campaign is one neither of reform nor of

songs. “uplift.” It is one of constructive building of a greater song litYour writer asks us to tell what sort of music we “propose to __ erature. If this letter may have cleared away most of the smoke

force down America’s throat.” He seems thereby to be setting § generated by the “jazz” discussion, it is to be hoped that the up his own windmill at which to tilt. We shall do no forcing—it |= movement may now be seen in a fairer light and that it may would be of no avail. Who can deny however, that the method _ have the support not only of your paper but of musical people of popularizing the Broadway hits does not approximate that of —— generally.

forcing. Certainly no one who is familiar with the ins and outs (signed) Kenneth S. Clark

of popular song “plugging.” Theodore Thomas said: “Popular New York City, October 26, 1922

December 10 ¢ The New York Times DRAWING A LINE FOR JAZZ by Richard Aldrich Jazz draws the line nowhere. Nothing is safe from its devastat- _his ideas, that they are entitled to take their own wherever they ing touch. The jazz blacksmiths soon came to the end of their _find it, though they do have a modern limitation to which he own stocks of ideas, such as they were, and then their only re- —_ was not subject, and must take care about running up against source was to lay violent hands upon music that musicians have the law. One of the most successful and lucrative methods of always approached with respect and even with reverence. There writing a popular song is to take the ideas of some musician is protection to a certain extent in the copyright laws for living who has written something that the world values, and change it composers, or for dead ones who have not been dead long _just enough to make it seem something different and of course enough to lose the protection of those laws. But copyrightlaws —_ cheaper and commoner—and retain the vital spark that made do not protect forever. Composers who have taken their place _ the original something. in history are likely to have their tombs violated if some jazz Sometimes they don’t change it enough, and get into trouble.

artist thinks it worth while to do so. It was not long ago that somebody took a melody of Puccini’s Nor is it the jazz artists alone who are engaged in this free- as something likely to make a popular song, and made one out handed exploitation. The writers of popular songs know a good of it. But he reckoned mainly in thinking that he could get by thing when they see it, and share with Moliére at least one of _ the watchful American representative of the Ricordis, the Ital213

1922 DECEMBER 10 ¢ THE NEW YORK TIMES ian publishers of Puccini, who at once descended on him in the In France, where they have a Minister of State who looks after courts and made him stop selling his popular song and also _ the interests of music and the other fine arts, the matter has been

disgorge the unlawful gains he had made with it. brought to his attention. According to the latest number of Le There are many popular songs that show similar traces of | Temps to arrive in New York, the Administrative Council of the their origin; but they are either sufficiently disguised, or the | Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music has sent legal guardians of the original are off their guard; or the origi- _—_—a circular to managers of dance halls and other establishments nal, the copyright having lapsed, has no legal guardian. where they “jazz” the classics into “shimmies” and “‘fox-trots.” It is a fact that many of the great music publishing firms are | The Minister has congratulated them on their protest and hopes kept constantly on the alert to prevent such an appropriation of that they will succeed in stopping the practice. Further than that, their property, or the property of the composers whose works _ apparently, the Government does not go. Buy Le Temps and other they publish. Puccini’s publishers themselves have had adozen _ influential journals have spoken strongly on the side of the classuch cases since the one referred to, and are kept almost con- sics, and there is at least a public opinion set in motion. stantly at work and quite constantly on the alert in regard to them. What might be considered even worse than jazzing the clasNot long ago it was reported that Puccini had sold the “jazz __sics is jazzing the “spirituals” of the American Negroes. These rights” of Tosca to some jazz experts for a price mentioned as__are folksongs. They have no known authors, no copyright pro120,000 lire. Of course, it was not true: to begin with his pub- _ tection and no legal guardians. This, too, has aroused considerlishers own the rights, and not he, even the “jazz rights.” It would = able and very justified indignation. The National Association hardly be conceivable that a serious musician, good business — of Negro Musicians has put itself on record as being opposed to man though he be, with great qualities, who has given an infini- such a use of the sacred melodies of its race. The Southern Worktude of pleasure by his music, should be willing to have the — man, organ of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, creations of his brain distorted and vulgarized just forahandful —_— in a recent issue adds its emphatic endorsement to the protest, of silver. No doubt he himself would stay away from the scene, = and quotes the remarks of The New York Age, an organ of the

but that would hardly be a sufficient consolation. colored race, in which a protest was made especially against But Mr. Puccini is not likely to be tempted by an offer to _ the jazzing of the beautiful and pathetic song Deep River. jazz either I] Tabarro, Suor Angelica, or Gianni Schicchi. That This tune, it truly says, is one of the most powerfully pais one advantage, apparently, of being “modern” and making ___ thetic of the many melodies which sprang from the hearts of so little appeal jazz-ward. And it is difficult to conceive of even the ancestors of the present Negro race in America, a melody Richard Strauss selling “jazz rights” to any of his compositions, which expresses intense belief in and hope for future alleviathough he once freely acknowledged to acquaintances in this __ tion of present pain, sorrow and suffering. country that he would do almost anything to make money. But “Tt grates on the finer impulses of those who have a reverent he, too, is protected from temptation even more completely by —_— love and respect for race religious traditions, when the modern the nature of his compositions. It is difficult to conceive of “jazz- dance orchestra, with its conglomerate mixture of dissonances, ing” anything Strauss has written. In some ways he has fore- —_ with a swing and lilt appealing only to the lover of sensuous

stalled the jazzsmiths. and debasing emotions, uses as a foundation for its utterances

But what, after all, are “jazz rights?” Is it possible to protect | such a theme as that of Deep River.” from jazzing by anything but moral suasion? Of course it is One phase of the Deep River incident was apparently closed perfectly possible to prevent the publication of jazzed versions. _ for the time being, when the original melody was found to be But publication is not necessary to the experts. They are largely | not only more beautiful but more attractive than the “syncoextemporaneous performers: a kind of “improvisators.” One __ pated version” that had been made of it by a Negro musician publisher has wearily confessed that he might as well try to —_— for a vocal composition of his own, to be sung in a chain of stop Niagara as to try to stop the playing of jazzed versions of | amusement hollers. his publications, even those of the highest brow, or of the low- But that there are more outlets than this for the jazz enterest brow. How can you legally prevent a man from playing a _ prise is shown by certain Negro composers as well as others in piece the way his fancy or his interest dictates? You can do it _ taking songs of this character for their use, and the Age’s reonly by being present at every performance, and you can do _ buke to those who do it is just. There might be an equally warm nothing except by way of moral suasion, or shaming the devil. one administered to those who tamper with Chopin and other How far either process will work on the unregenerate may be __ great masters in the same way. considered doubtful by cynical and much harried publishers.

December 10 ¢ The New York Times SHADY DANCE STEPS BARRED BY POLICE Dance hall proprietors of New York City will meet at the Hotel = ment of the principal dance hall proprietors to form an organiAstor tomorrow afternoon to form an organization fortheelimi- —_ zation to bar objectionable steps was brought about by Mrs. nation of the “Chicago,” “balconading,’ slow dancing and “park- George W. Loft, Deputy Police Commissioner, who called them ing” from the public dance halls of New York City. The agree- together last Wednesday at a meeting at the West thirty-seventh

514 Street police station.

DECEMBER 29 * THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW & MAGAZINE 1922 Mrs. Loft told those assembled that slow and tight dancing — was technically described as “parking” by the man who dewas permitted in many dance halls, that complaints from moth- nounced it. ers were flooding the Police Department and that Commissioner

Enright was prepared to take drastic measures by way of [ar- Variations of “Parking.” rests] and the cancellations of licenses to put a stop to it. She said that Commissioner Enright had suggested as a possible “Parking,” he said, “is when a couple takes the floor to dance alternative the voluntary purification of public dancing by the and then stop dancing. They simply stay on the one spot all

dance hall proprietors. through the dance. There are any number of variations to this.”

The “Chicago” was described as a slow step belonging to

Proprietors Agree to Ban calisthenics rather than to the dance. “Balconading” was described concisely as “rough.”

All the dance hall proprietors agreed that voluntary action was In general the plan of reform, it was said yesterday, is to desirable and promised to be present at the meeting atthe Hotel —_ introduce a noticeable distance and a brisker motion into public Astor on Monday, at which regulations will be adopted and pos-_ _— dancing. Several of the large dancing places, it was pointed out,

sibly a dance dictator after the Landis-Hay-Thomas pattern may _ have sets of floor managers, sometimes called umpires or refer-

be selected. ees, who compel observance of the rules of the hall as to the “The worst dancing is at the best hotels,” one of the dance ___ types of dancing. It is charged, however, that the evasions of hall proprietors said at the meeting of proprietors after Mrs. the rules are more insidious than the violations. Loft had outlined her views. She is said to have agreed with Mrs. Loft told the dance hall proprietors that if voluntary acthis, but to have contended that such dancing was not so perni- tion failed to introduce respectability into some of the offending cious because it affected comparatively few, while thousands places policewomen and policemen would be posted there with were trained in various styles of dancing at the public halls. It | orders to arrest for disturbance of the peace whenever partners was said to be impracticable, from the police standpoint toregu- | were detected in dances considered extreme. Such arrests, dance

late closely what took place at private affairs. hall proprietors were warned, would be followed by action through One of the dance hall proprietors said that no form of danc- —_‘ the License Commissioner to close the offending places. Dance ing was so bad as the failure to dance, which is now said to be __ halls on Broadway in the Eighty-sixth Street and 116th Street becoming popular on many floors in New York City. This abuse _ districts are said to have been commented upon adversely.

December 17 © The New York Times JAZZ! Alfred Walker To the Editor: Richard Aldrich in last Sunday’s Times deplores the When I was a student at the Royal Academy of Music in tendency of topical song writers to “Jazz” the melodies of the | London in the 70’s there were piano teachers who had objected masters. Mr. Aldrich should not despair, for ‘twas ever thus. The — to Robert Schumann’s music but a few years before.

dishing up of a melody to please the taste of the day always has Music is a living, growing art, constantly developing. These been, is, and always will be done while a taste for things exists. jazz people are just trying for new methods of expression. Their Dr. Hubert Parry shows how the old Hungarian folk-songs — doings are necessarily crude and often rather coarse, but so are were thus changed and decorated by the Gypsy fiddlers. Jo- the outer fringes of any other art. It is the price of progress. seph Haydn and even Beethoven, to say nothing of Brahms China tried to limit music in five tones (was it during the and Liszt, used the methods of these same Hungarian gyp- Ming dynasty) and we smile at the crudities of Chinese music. sies. Bach and Handel both took popular melodies of their | Music cannot rise higher than its source, which is the popular day and embodied them in their works inthe manner of their _ taste of the day.

day. Far worse than jazz to me, is this mawkish sentimentality of these solo violinists. What a contrast to the vitality and splendid spontaneity of Joseph Joachim and men of the day.

December 29 ¢ The New York Times Book Review & Magazine PUTTING THE MUSIC INTO THE JAZZ by Helen Bullitt Lowry Jazz music is passé in the best Broadway society. The whine of the queens of burlesque and the wicked split-sheath skirt that the saxophone, the raucous shout of “O Boy!” to instill a little | was producing its shocks and drawing its anti-vice sermons some pep into a flagging couple, the barnyard clatter of the whistles eight years back. But don’t for an instant think that jazz has will soon have gone the way of the original hour-glass figure of | been reformed by earnest missionaries in the Broadway mis-

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1922 DECEMBER 29 ¢ THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW & MAGAZINE sion field. Jazz music is passing because something better is about as exciting and dance inspiring. A “piece” was published happening. Something has happened from the inside looking — from a music publisher, ready to wear, and was played as writ-

out, instead of from the outside looking in. ten. And maybe it was good enough for the waltzes and stilted The new trick is that of orchestrating syncopation by the __ two steps of the period, over which as much sentimentality of rules of harmony. And the prophet of the new cult has been — the Older Generation has been squandered as on the fast-van-

Paul Whiteman. ishing steely ribbed corset.

Have you chanced to be in an expensive dance place this It was just about twelve years ago that the ragtime began to season? One of those new “club” places where the lure of the —=_ make itself felt—that first inspiring influence on staid Ameriexotic is added to the old-time obvious reveries? Then youhave — can dance music—through the strains of the darky cakewalk. noted the change in the music? Long, soft passages occur,more —_ To rag a tune meant that you destroyed its rhythm and substi-

dreamy than an old-time waltz, to be followed by throbbing tuted a two-four or a four-four time. You could rag any tune—

moments of excitement when the music has become a mad- from Greenland’s Icy Mountains to the “Lament” from dened rhapsody. Suddenly the flexible saxophone supplies a Pagliacci. Indeed, three-fourths of the popular songs of the last gay note of humor, but there is no tossing of instruments inthe | decade consist of a theme stolen from the realms of good music

air. Nobody calls “O Boy!” and then “ragged” by a composer who usually played entirely Instead, color and contrast and rhythm are playing onthe senses __ by ear, as the records of the copyright infringement suits will

of the dancers by the perfectly good scientific rules of music. indicate. And yet the ragtime tune had life, where the dance Now enters in plaintively a theme from Madame Butterfly. Strains —_ music that proceeded it lacked life.

from the Indian Lyrics of Cadman sway the emotions like a moon- Hum them over as you recall them—that first batch of rag lit summer night. And through all of it the syncopated time stirs tunes: Camp Meeting Time, Down in Alabama, Alexander’s Ragmemories of the tangos that have come out of Spain through the Time Band a few years later.That the turkey trot should follow Argentine and hark back to the gypsies and the East, entangled on them was as inevitable as that Summer should follow on with dreams of veiled desert women, their strings of gold coins Spring. The cakewalk demanded that you raise your feet in the clinking. Echoes of phosphorescent jungle nights are there, too. air. Everybody's Doing It Now left your shoulders no choice But the raw jungle emotions are clothed now in the glamour that _ but to be “tossed in the air.” Somehow there was something in distance lends. Jungle music is undergoing a refining process _ that first bunch of rags and of turkey trots alike that kept the

under the fingers of sophisticated art. movement up and down.

Jazz, “as she was spoke” in New York, played only on the Syncopation was still confined to its native haunts, to the primitive senses. This new dance music plays on the esthetic | demi-monde of New Orleans, to the tango of the Argentine, to senses as well as on the primitive. and for that reason itis more the enticing music of old Spain, with its haunting Moorish strain, subtle, more insidious than the jungle screeching of the saxo- and—why not be frank?—-to Brahms and to Wagner. Not yet phone two years back. At least so the reform-bent people will —_ had the American ragtime kings learned to let the accent fall on tell us. That is a matter of opinion. The matter of fact is thatthe a beat other than the given place for that accent, which, by the music played by the dance orchestra now is arranged and writ- —_— way, is about as near as untechnical language can come to sayten as for a symphony; each player must be a trained musician, ing what syncopation is, just as untechnical language must be who would probably be a member of a symphony orchestra, _ content to describe “The Blues” as “slurred syncopation.”

. save for that God-given trick of being a master of syncopation But the present writer is merely the dance public instead of that has taken him out of the mere highbrow financial class and _ the musical public, so she can only describe what syncopation into the $250 a week up class. Each player does the part allot- does, instead of why it does it; what “those blues” do to your

ted to him, and no more. feet when they take them away from your own control and into In the old jazz band the boy who wielded a wicked “sax” was __ the control of the music, even as the turkey trot rhythm did improvising a solo. That band was made up of halfadozenmen __ things with your shoulders. These Blue Danube Blues make doing separate solos to the same “tune,” while the man at the traps you take a step—but before that step is quite finished begin to thumped out the time and hold them together after a fashion. give an undertow. There are cross currents in the music as well Usually this traps man was the genius of the crowd; with feet, | as the up and down currents of the old turkey trot or the cakewalk. hands, elbows, lips and larynx called into play, a baby rattle of But we are getting ahead of the story, the dramatic story of silver bells attached to his head, dropping a pair of sticks and _ getting those Dangerous Blues into society. Remember that the picking up a flywhisk in the interval between two eighth notes. Argentine tango had come and gone without leaving a trace of The fact remains that the jazz band as known in white man’s _its peculiar quality of syncopated time on American dancing or land has produced discords, for the very good reason that the |= upon American dance music. Most of the tangos of our tango solos were more apt than not not to hit it off together. Therefore period, eight years ago, had consisted of just “fancy steps” by jazz was offensive to the trained musical ear. The new dance _ partners who stood in the “tango position.” Most of the music music does not produce discords, because it is constructed in _ had consisted of just a fancy brand of slow rag time. accordance with the laws of harmony. It might be called good And so, after all, it remained for the African jungle to furmusic in slang, as O. Henry was good literature in slang. nish the native birthplace to our modern dance music instead of ‘Twenty years ago dance music was as tidy and accurate and __ the more respectable birthplaces we might have chosen for it. unslang as an article in the Encyclopedia Britannica—and just §Syncopation can’t laugh it off. Up the Mississippi to back sa216

DECEMBER 29 « THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW & MAGAZINE 1922 loons of Chicago, across the deserts and mountains to the Bar- Meanwhile, on the western coast of California something bary Coast, jazz had gone first, long years before there was was happening. A young musician in the San Francisco Symmore than a hint of syncopation in the Negro dance orchestras = phony Orchestra, by name Paul Whiteman, was deciding that that played for New Orleans gay social world. And again more _ he wanted to get married, and that two not only could not live years passed before the first real “jazz band” migrated from as cheaply as one, but could not live at all on his symphony New Orleans and began creating its far-famed furor on Broad- _ salary. It was dance music for him or pas de marriage. Thus way. That was just five years ago, the date set by all our reform- came a thoroughly trained musician into the world of jazz— ers as the year that marks the final disintegration of American _ into the realm of dance orchestrations. His father had been the morals, the fatal day when the jazz got in and began its rapid |§ Supervisor of Music of the Denver schools for a lifetime. he spread to the furthermost hick town of our Country ‘TisofThee. himself was an accomplished violinist, as well as conversant From that time on the highest compliment you could pay to with other instruments. the music at the party has been to mutter admiringly. “That’s a By the spring of 1920 the entire coast of California was feel-

low-down band.” ing the change in its jazz like the quiver of an earthquake. CaliAs to the morals that have resulted, well, ll refer youtoany — fornia was shimmying without discords. In the Summer of 1920 of our warmer Sunday morning sermons, to the “resolutions” the Whiteman orchestra came East—a Summer in Atlantic City, of women’s clubs and to the bills introduced into our State Leg- —_and then at last its debut into New York’s night life, and the start islatures. Jazz has become a state of mind, the emblem of the _ of the train of circumstances that seem destined to alter the very insurgent Young Generation. As for what jazz did to the music ___ strains of our “National Anthem.” of the country, ah, that is something more specific, and, unlike For a year now the dance orchestras of New York have been sermons, resolutions and bills, a matter where facts can be |= modeling themselves on the Whiteman plan (which means play-

brought in as evidence instead of mere theories. ing to music arranged for orchestration) which naturally means In brief, the white man’s jazz has developed into copying the _ that better and better musicians are becoming necessary. To give Negro musician’s technique without his special gifts. Something —_just an idea of how these arrangements are made, take any popuborn inside the players kept the Negro jazz band from making _lar piece depending for its appeal on one good melody, and after discords. I happen to have been reared ina Southern town where __ that mere repetition. If the author has more melodies than are my yard stretched back to the side windows of a Negro church. _ needed for one verse and the chorus, he saves his other ideas for

Summer Sunday evening after Sunday evening Isatonabench another song, being usually a thrifty body. This one melody is down by the back fence and listened to the volume of melodious the same thing as the theme of classical music. song from utterly untrained voices, gloriously peeling forth in Now the Paul Whiteman idea is to take this melody and build in some rhythmic old hymn like Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. Each __ the gaps between its occurrence with counter-melodies, instead of Sunday morning I partook of the Caucasian quavering of the Pres- with improvising “fake stuff’ and gymnastics. An introduction is byterian Church, reducing Jerusalem the Golden to its final ig- usually given to the piece that the first strains of the melody proper nominy. So there is nothing born inside of a white jazz band to — may be approached dramatically, while each time the melody is

keep it from making musical discords. reached throughout the number it is arrived at through an entirely Nevertheless, jazz was the style, so all our busiest musicians __ different “counter-melody;”’ sometimes through breathless moments began to produce it. And no sadder sight have I seen or heard —_ of rhapsody, again through a plaintive love lament, or a theme from than some staid settled old dance orchestra trying to “jazz itup” | aChopin Mazurka may be used as a counter-melody to give buoyto suit the taste of that omnivorous Young Generation. Jazzcame _ancy to the spirits of the dancers.

to mean pep—well, then, yell “hot dog.” Let the cornetist hang There is no secret about the “method.” It is not patented. Nor an old hat over the bell of his instrument, the cellist rise up and sit | does Whiteman claim to be acomposer. He frankly says to other down and rise again, the clarinet be tossed in the air and caught — dance orchestra leaders, “You can do it, too, provided you are a on the head, as by a juggler. Full many a flagging orchestra has _ trained musician instead of a trickster.” given similitude of musical pep by such a noble burst of physical Moreover, the phonograph records of this new dance orchespep. So also has personality been a factor in putting across jazz _‘ tra have been spreading the knowledge of the new kind of jazz music, and that is why any typical jazzrecordonaphonographis broadcast until already one important result is manifest. A demonotonous. You grow weary of dancing it before a ten-inch —= mand is coming into music publishing houses for jazz comporecord is played out. The personality and the humor of the leader _ sitions “arranged” for a four or five or a twelve man orchestra, and of the musicians are not there to conceal the poverty of the —_ until the publishing houses are beginning to employ a musician music. At best the jazz orchestra had abandon and exuberant pep __to turn out these arrangements for the out-of-town trade, by and rhythm. At worst the jazz orchestra had synthetic pep and _ perfectly good Sears Roebuck methods. Countermelodies are

discords. And the thunder of sermons rent the land. now kept in stock. And so the great god Jazz spread over our fair land—until Nor is the ambition of the reformer of jazz yet realized. The the very electric pianos bowed their allegiance. Every dance |§_ Metropolitan Museum of Art has taken industrial art under its hall in Harlem had its whining saxophone, and every telephone _left wing. “Then why,” he asks, “should not some philanthro-

operator in South Bend was doing the shimmy. pist endow a dance orchestra? No symphony orchestra could exist without an endowment, for a commercial concern has to

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1922 DECEMBER * METRONOME follow public taste instead of to lead it. Dance music is wrongif _ built into sophisticated art. “Our dance music, with the possible it creates nasty steps. Then certainly it should be a matter of | exception of MacDowell and Cadman, has thus far been America’s grave concern to the country that our dance music should not __ one original contribution to the music of the world. Our other be wrong.” Such an endowed orchestra, he explains, could be — music has been the direct result of European influences. And given the leisure to spend on “research” on how torefine dance — Europe gives us credit for our one contribution.”

music. (One somehow visualizes the laboratory scene, where Anyway, when the Marshal Foch Commission was in New the effect of a good “Blues” is being tried out on the couple —- York one of the be-decorated Generals slipped away from the

chosen to act as guinea pigs.) formal dinner to hear the one sound that he had yearned to hear Nor is this a task that good musicians should scorn to be con- _ in our so-marvelous country—the strains of Paul Whiteman’s cerned in, goes on Mr. Whiteman. All classical music consists,in | syncopated orchestra of which he possessed the phonograph the final analysis, of the folk themes of peasants whichhave been __ records.

December ¢ Metronome RIESENFELD AS THE LATEST DEFENDER OF JAZZ Hugo Riesenfeld who has done so much to raise the standards “The saraband’s history is typical. There is doubt whether it of good music through the agency of his moving picture houses, — originated in Spain or came from the Orient about the beginhas recently given considerable attention to the question of jazz _—s ning of the sixteenth century. It became a popular form of enmusic and has introduced some of this popular styled music, __ tertainment in Spain, but aroused antagonism. Mariana wrote excellently prepared and carefully scored in a number of his __ of the saraband at that time as ‘a dance and song, so lascivious Rialto Theatre programs with considerable success. Asked as in its words, so ugly in its movements that it inflames even very to his opinion of this much discussed form of music, Mr. — modest people.’ He called it one of the disgraces of the nation, Riesenfeld remarked that “jazz is making remarkable progress while others branded it as an invention of Satan himself. and will find its way into the concert hall shortly, if it follows | Cervantes and Bvuevara attacked the dance. Lopez de Vega dethe precedent set by other forms of musical composition.” fended it and Philip II suppressed it for a time. It was revived in In further explanation of some of his opinions inconnection ___ purer form later and Richelieu introduced it at the French Court

with this subject, Mr. Riesenfeld said in part: in 1588, dancing it in a ballet before Anne of Austria. “Jazz is merely a colloquial expression and may pass, but “In England the saraband was transformed into a country the music form will probably remain, developing, fromadance — dance and was introduced as one of the movements of the suite, into a concert composition. Our most dignified music molds _and later great composers like Handel used the saraband in some began as dances, and musicians have learned that the source is _ of their noblest writings.

never a stigma upon a style of composition. Our great sympho- “A little more than a century ago the waltz came under a nies are exemplifications of how beautiful a dance oraseriesof social ban in England, Lord Byron writing a bitter attack on it

dances can be developed. in 1818. The waltz, the delight of our grandparents, was called “The history of music shows the progression of several crude “a disgusting practice,” “devoid of grace” and “improper” a cendances into more elaborate and musical forms and their final — tury ago. When Johann Strauss developed the waltz into the acceptance. Some of the finest music, like the saraband, origi- _ delightful compositions which were to make him famous it was nated in a dance form which was bitterly denounced andeven _ the jazz of his day. The Strauss waltzes became the rage of Eubanned by royal edict. The waltz became the center of contro- rope and people flocked everywhere to hear them. They won versy when it first reached England. The gavotte was called the their way into concert programs and Johannes Brahms expressed invention of the devil when it was in its first popular form. Itis _ regret that he was not the composer of The Blue Danube. Brahms the fate of most music forms—and the same is true of any new sent a photograph to Strauss, inscribing it with a few bars of movement in art—that it is first fought against, gradually de- The Blue Danube and the sentiment. “Unfortunately, not writvelops, interests musicians and finally becomes an acceptable __ ten by me.” matrix for composition.

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DECEMBER « THE NEW MUSIC REVIEW 1922 December ¢ The New Music Review CONCERNING JAZZ by Henry F. Gilbert What is jazz? Is it a species of music, ora method of immorality? _ history of our country to find that dancing itself, especially with

Our good friends, the exponents of ethics and religion, would _ persons of the opposite sex, was considered by very many as fain convince us that jazz is pernicious inits effect, andits mere the beginning of the “road to ruin.” existence a danger to public and private morals. We are told that Several years ago Mark Twain wrote a tale called, ““The Man it leads young men and maidens astray, and incites to various = Who Corrupted Hadleyburg.” It is a scathing satire, and incidissipations and sexual irregularities. In fact it seems to be the — dentally one of the best stories he ever wrote. It seems that fashion at present to lay on jazz the responsibility for the very | Hadleyburg was a town of rigid, immaculate, but purely artifiexistence of certain tendencies which we, as arace, have always cially maintained virtue. The town motto was “Lead us not into

had. temptation” and anything which might be considered a tempta-

There is of course always a certain percentage of human be- tion to either the young, or the old persons of the town, was ings in any age, who gravitate much more naturally toward the carefully suppressed. The result may be easily imagined. Bad than toward the Good. How large this percentage 1s I shall Now the town was unfortunate enough to incur the enmity not tell, for fear of libeling the human race. You know the law- — of acommercial traveler who passed that way on occasion. This yers say that the truth is sometimes the worst libel there is. But) man naturally had a deeper knowledge of human nature than even in the best of us there exists acertain percentage of badness _ the inhabitants of “spotless town” and was enabled thereby sucwhich must and will find expression some way or other. Such __ cessful to sow a seed of discord among these inhabitants. This expressions as “wild oats,” “no fool like an old fool,” etc., are seed sprouts and grows through some eighty laughter-provokpopular and eloquent admissions and appreciations of this fact. ing pages to the intense enjoyment of the reader. The artificial Both badness and goodness are qualities of the human heart. nature of the virtue of Hadleyburg is mercilessly exposed, and Neither moral nor immoral qualities are possessed by inanimate — the whole flimsy structure comes tumbling about their ears like objects; and certainly not by drums, rattles, or saxophones. a house of cards. The inhabitants recognize themselves to be a At this point I hear our Comstockian friends exclaiming: “But collection of “whited sepulchers” and in deep humiliation and the existence of certain things renders the expression of these contrition they enact a law changing the town’s motto to “Lead bad tendencies easier, therefore the public should be protected —_us into temptation,” for they taste the bitter truth that there 1s by the suppression of the aforesaid ‘certain things.’ Thatistosay | “nothing so weak as an untried virtue.” they believe you can get rid of a bad tendency by bottling it up. The moral of this story is brim full of suggestion for the They apparently believe that young persons whose initiation into | objectors to the pernicious influence of jazz. Is the “virtue” of vicious courses has occurred in a jazz dance hall would have __ people who go to the devil via jazz worth saving, or worth anybeen good and virtuous citizensm had it not been for the exist- thing for that matter? Wouldn’t these people go to the devil just ence of the jazz dance hall. Therefore, they are down on jazz. as easily via something else? If they have an innate tendency This is skin-deep philosophy. These young persons would toward badness, the suppression of jazz wouldn’t help them or have gone to the devil anyway. If not by one road, then by an- anybody else that I can see. other. Given the tendency toward badness in their natures, and Thoreau says: “There are a thousand hacking at the branches it would merely have adopted the handiest and most convenient __ of evil to one who is striking at the root.” Suppressions, prohiavenue of expression, no matter what it was, jazz dancing, or __ bitions, and “don’ts” of various kinds are negative in their efanything else. But it is human nature to blame our weaknesses _fect, and it is doubtful if they eventually accomplish any posion something outside of ourselves. We, as arace, do notliketo tive good. I cannot help thinking that our would-be guardians acknowledge that human nature is alone responsible. We are — of the public morality might be more generally useful if the usually very ready to glorify the larger and nobler achievements “started something” good, rather than confined their activities of mankind, but not at all ready to own up to the fact that allthe —_ to protesting against what they believe may do harm. It is my mean and vicious practice are likewise expressions of the same belief that they are usually guilty of “barking up the wrong tree.” universal human heart. We usually look around for something

to blame these things on. At present jazz is being honored and II

given credit for far more diabolic influence than almost anything else. But it is merely the “scapegoat” of the present time. | Considered entirely in its musical aspect, jazz must be acknowlFormerly it was “ragtime” that was blamed for being both mor- _—_ edged to be a true American product, and as such it is of great

ally and musically pernicious. I myself remember (not so very interest to all of us in America who take a serious interest in long ago, either) solemn resolutions being passed by Musicians’ — music. In spite of the fact that it has spread so rapidly, has beUnions disapproving of, and forbidding the playing of “rag- | come so well known, and is of almost universal appeal, there time.” All we have to do is to look a little farther back into the are afloat several very strongly grounded misconceptions about 219

1922 DECEMBER * THE NEW MUSIC REVIEW it. For instance I am told that it is quite a new species of music; __ trapuntal devices, in harmony, and in figuration than popular that the rhythm of jazz is unlike that of other music, etc., etc. music formerly, in which the interest vested alone in the melody. These misconceptions vary in intensity with the perspicacity Another point by which Jazz may be distinguished from the and general musical knowledge of the individual. But they have —_— popular music of the olden ttme—say ten years ago—is the large

been greatly fostered by the complimentary—and I fear not al- — number of cat-calls, clarinet-couacs, smears, glides, trombonetogether disinterested—observations concerning it whichhave _ glissandos, and agonizing saxophonic contortions which occur

been made from time to time be certain of our distinguished in it. But these things are largely rendered possible by the inforeign visitors. Alfredo Casella, the Italian modernistic com- struments upon which jazz music is played. Take away these poser who recently visited the United States, says: “I was greatly instruments and you take away the jazz quality almost entirely. impressed by the Indian music and the Negro ‘jazz’: musicofa _In fact this jazz quality, far from residing in the music itself, 1s most modern type and interesting in the highest degree.” Even almost wholly a matter of tone-color, and this tone-color is given

Richard Strauss (who is a good business man anyway) is re- to it by the instruments—unusual instruments—and not only ported to have said that he found jazz “very interesting.” Al- unusual instruments, but unusual combinations of instruments. most all these d. f. v.’s agree that jazz is thoroughly characteris- For instance who ever thought of writing for a combination of tic of America, anyhow. Almost everybody admits that it origi- | saxophones, banjos, and muted trombones before? Yet in this, nated here, and the most jingoistic of my compatriots are loud and similar combinations, lies most of the jazz effect in my and vehement in their assertions that it has conquered the world. opinion. Take many a piece of classical music, like some of Greig’s

A few days ago, at an evening gathering, I asked a promi- _ pieces, Dvofak’s Slavonic Dances, or even some of Mozart’s or nent educator what, in his opinion, was the most striking Ameri- | Beethoven’s compositions, and let a good jazz arranger arrange can characteristic. He replied without hesitation, “vulgarity.” | them for the usual jazz orchestra, with all its freak combinations Turning to a leading educational music publisher, who was also __ of instruments—and let the arranger not change the original present, I repeated the question. He objected to the reply given = music more than is ordinarily done in transposing a piano piece

by the educator as being too limited—not inclusive enough— _for an ordinary orchestra—and I would bet ten to one that it and said that in his opinion a far truer description of the most — would be received by the majority as a new and authentic piece prominent American characteristic was conveyed by the slang —_ of jazz music.

word “pep.” Our conversation was mostly in relation to jazz In the unusual instruments, their unusual combination, the music, and it was in an effort to determine wherein lay its Ameri- = manner of playing them, the grotesque and burlesque effects

canism that I asked the above question. Now while either defi- which are obtained; in all this lies, for me, the interest in the nition, standing alone, is somewhat unsatisfactory and incom- phenomenon of Jazz, not in the music. A great deal of my interplete, both together fairly express the character of jazz music, est in it is purely humorous. By means of these above listed as itis at present. This music certainly has plenty of “pep,” and — grotesque effects, jazz “takes off” or “makes fun of” certain it certainly has plenty of “vulgarity.” “Pep” and “vulgarity” are = well-known phrases, or legitimate methods of procedure in the its most salient characteristics. It by no means expresses any of _ respectable and established art of music. Jazz rings true in its the higher qualities of America. “Pep,” in its more noble mani- |= Americanism in that it insists on laughing and making fun of festations, is that impatient will-to-accomplish which will not — even the most serious and beautiful things. It is a kind of musibe denied. No, most of the ideal aspects of Americanism are far cal rowdy, and occupies the same relation to the art of music away from jazz. Much more is jazz (as itis at present) a perfect that “burlesque” (on the stage) does to the “legitimate drama.” expression of some of the worst and commonest elements in It can certainly be very funny, and I for one, and I believe many the American. For it must not be forgotten that while one half = more, have thoroughly appreciated the wit and skill of certain of our definition is “pep,” the other half is “vulgarity.” “take off’s.” A little musical nonsense now and then is relished But now is jazz a new kind of music? Has it anything to by the best of musicians. One night at Ziegfeld’s midnight contribute to the art? I find that almost all pieces of so-called — frolic—but the mere recollection of the way that saxophone jazz music, when stripped of their instrumentation (i.e. the in- _—caricatured a coloratura opera-singer is enough to make me laugh struments upon which they are played; saxophones, muted trom- “fit to split,” as the saying is.[sic]

bones, etc.) have almost nothing new to offer in the way of (A word about the saxophone. This instrument may be said strictly musical interest. And this isso,even when we consider __ to be the principal instrument in the jazz orchestra. It is so much jazz from a strictly “popular” standpoint. The amount of purely in evidence here, and so little in evidence in the regular symmusical value, and the amount of differentiation of this music — phony orchestra, as to give many persons the idea that it is a from other “popular” music, can be noted by playing a piece of — special development of jazz. But the saxophone was invented jazz music on the piano. It is true that for several years the rhyth- = by Adolph Sax, in Paris, about 1840. Meyerbeer, Massenet, mic element in popular music has been growing more insistent Bizet, Thomas, and many others have written for it. Bizet has and nervous, and it may have reached its culmination in jazz.I —_— written for this instrument a naive and pastoral melody of much rather think it has. So, as far as simple rhythmic forcefulness _ beauty, in his music to Daudet’s drama L’Arlésienne. However, and iteration is concerned, jazz can claim the proud distinction —_it has never become an integral part of the standard symphony of being the “worst yet.” Technically speaking, however, itmust orchestra. It has always remained a special instrument, used on be granted that the popular music of today is far richer in con- —_— occasion to impart its rich and expressive tone-color to certain

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DECEMBER ¢ THE NEW MUSIC REVIEW 1922 isolated phrases or melodies. It has remained for jazz to exploit it. | whose names are not even known in the musical world, have been And this has been done in a way to make the angels weep (with _ like “fools” who “rush in where angels fear to tread.” Their only laughter). Originally an instrument having a richly pathetic and object was to “make a hit,” and as they had no particular respect

lyrical tone quality, it has been made to perform all sorts of for any existing musical tradition, they went ahead boldly and ridiculous stunts, amounting to an indecent exposure of all its invented all sorts of shockingly new combinations—muted tromworst qualities. It is as if a grave and dignified person were bones and banjos, ukuleles, and muted trumpets, saxophones

forced to play the part of clown at the circus. and marimbas, etc.— the final result being that inimitable thing Nevertheless, all these grotesque and burlesque “effects” on called a jazz orchestra, which in its perfection is a genuine Ameri-

the saxophone, trombone, clarinet, and other instruments; the can creation, and stands out as having an individual character; unusual combinations of tone-qualities; and the invention _ different from anything which has preceded it. thereby of new and unheard-of effects, I consider to be the most Now the lesson to our would-be serious composers is plain. distinctive feature of the phenomenon called jazz. While thisis | The jazz composers have broken loose from tradition and have not a specifically musical distinction, itis, considering the world- —_ thereby been enabled to produce something which, although tt is

wide success of this music, and the remarkable quality of some | onacomparatively low plane, and is largely given over to caricaof these “effects,” pregnant with suggestion for the serious _ ture and burlesque, is at least distinctive in the domain of popular

American composer. music. But our would-be serious composers have, with scarcely an exception, followed and imitated the tradition of musical beauty

III as it exists in Europe. They have played the conservative part, and conservatism alone precludes growth. For this, the introducThe most important and significant fact about America isthatit tion of the radical element is necessary. This element of radicalis a breaking-away from the traditions of Europe with all their —_ism has been introduced with all sorts of cleverness and energy, constraining and deadening effects. Our governmentitself arose —_ although in a boisterously vulgar style, by the composers of jazz; from a protest against the form of the governments of Europe, _ but it is my belief that we shall never have a distinctively Ameriand a successful breaking away from the dominion of that form. _can school of serious music until the would-be serious composer All our subsequent enormous industrial and inventive develop- _do, on their plane, what the jazz composers have done on theirs, ment has in large part been made possible through our forsak- _i.e., cut loose to a certain extent from the dominative incubus of ing of the old, slow-going, safe, and conservative European = European musical tradition. methods. We have in large measure cast aside these time-worn Concerning Jazz—(2)—We expressed the opinion some time traditionary customs, and as a reward we have got a new start; a ago that “jazz” had about run its course and that the injured fresh impulse of originality and accomplishment. New energy _ were in the convalescent stage. But the Literary Digest claims has been liberated and found expression here in America, and _ that it has invaded church music, and recently a New York daily this has been made possible very largely through the casting- _ printed a jazz program that had been traced to an Episcopal

off of the customary restraints of the old world. church.

This freedom from tradition, and the coercive force of cus- Perhaps we were rather premature in being optimistic over tom, has been most fruitful of results in the domain of the prac- the general situation. Dr. Percy Grant, rector of the Church of tical industry, mechanical invention, and applied science have _ the Ascension, preached a sermon only three or four weeks ago performed miracles and made some of the wonders of the old _in which he attacked jazz in the following fashion: fairy tales seem tame. But now while this spirit of impatient “Jazz goes back to the African jungle, and is one of the cryconquest has functioned so splendidly in the domain of the prac- _ing evils of the day. It means retrogression—a savage crash and tical, its expression is as yet almost entirely lacking in the do- bang that rings the bell for full steam astern. Its effect is to main of the arts. It is true that our literature, especially about the make you clatter, and, as Voltaire said, “to go on all fours,” to middle of the last century, showed some unmistakable signs of it. which I would add, and to whisk your tail around a tree. Our Emerson, Thoreau, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Joaquin Miller,etc— great dance music has been profoundly pathetic. It seems to say each evinces in a different manner a feeling of independence of how fleeting is youth. Jazz says: “Cut it out; don’t dream, don’t the art-canons of Europe. But this spirit, the breaking away from __ worry about transient things. Seize the day. Don’t dream about the customary and traditional procedures of Europe, is very far _ possibilities of pleasure.” There is no pathos, no idealism about away from the great majority of our would-be composers of seri- _—_ jazz music. It is for sensation. In the dance instead of symbolous music, and, in consequence, our serious music is forthe most — ism it becomes sensuality. Plato said that whenever modes of

part of an imitative and undistinguished character. music change, morals change. Music has changed greatly within Jazz, on the contrary, is infected with this spirit with a ven- the past few years.” geance. The composers of jazz, being for the most part persons

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1922 1922 « MUSICAL QUARTERLY 1922 ¢ Musical Quarterly [UNTITLED] ...M. Darius Milhaud with his Caramel mou, Shimmy pour and cherish Jazz for what is best in it. I had a strenuous time Jazz-band (clarinette, trombone, trompette, jazz, chant ousaxo- defending good Jazz before the National Conference of Music phone ou violon a defaut, et piano), is out for something new _—_— Supervisors in Nashville, last March. What opprobrium was not and vital, for folk-music in the making, not for museum pieces heaped on me for my audacity by indignant upholders of and ancient parlor tricks. A young Italian, Ezio Carabella, marks —_ Puritanic sanctimony. Yet I know better. I smoothed the wrinkles his La morte profumata for piano “Quasi fox-trot,” Felix Petyrek’s | onsome of the prettiest foreheads in the assembly, banished the

Piano Trio contains a “Rondo di Fox-trot.” Mr. Casella has in- fear of hell from out some of the best and gentlest hearts that I cluded a fox-trot movement in a string quartet, ifI am not mis- —_ could almost hear beating with glad excitement as I followed taken. I only know the first two of these four pieces in modo —_ my anathema of lewd and noisy revels with an impassioned, Americano, and I must confess that they do not throw me into forensic plea for good Jazz. Go and hear the Victor record of ecstasies. But it is good to see Jazz recognized in Europe as When Buddah Smiles, and tell me where in the world to-day something more than the barbarism committed in its name, while — better dance music is written than right here in America. No we who should be proud of having originated it, let misanthropic official veto will keep the world from dancing. There have been joy-killers spoil our party. “O Freunde, nicht diese Tone.” Iam _ edicts against terpsichorean indulgence at all times, in all places. heartily in favor of abolishing the racket and din of the infuri- | Nor was the cause for them always so just as that which ated trap-man, the silly wriggling of neurotic simps. But save |§ melomaniac King David would have offered.

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2 1923 & January 4 ¢ Musical Leader NOTHING GREAT CAN AFFORD SHACKLES—IN YOUTH THERE IS HOPE Darius Milhaud, recognized as one of the most ardent workers = music.” Milhaud indicated the date of the works he had just in the cause of freeing art from shackles, is in America. Gra- __ played. It was 1887, and it was quite as fresh as though he— cious in manner, calm and gentle in appearance, entirely un- | Satie—had been the latest product of his country. ostentatious in everything he says or does, this brilliant French- “Tt is a strange thing to say, but I feel truly that our group is man, leader of the “Groupe des Six,” has much to convey to already old. Not that I am ready to stop writing, not that I think those interested in the trend of music. One naturally says “mu- I have said all that I am to say, but I can already see that the sic” because to this phase of life he devotes himself, but much — younger composers are ready to ‘carry on,’ and they will have that he said and infinitely more that he has to say is quite as |= something new and fresh.” significant in literature, or indeed in any of the arts. Thirty years Milhaud was quite as well informed upon conditions in other of age, and looking younger, Milhaud feels himself and his five | countries and spoke with equal conviction and understanding companions “old in the service.” “Youth is the watchword of — of the young Viennese school, for which he has great admiraprogress. We must look to the younger talents not only tokeep __ tion. He believes heartily in racial traits in art. “It is quite riup what has gone before, but to raise the art to a higher state of | diculous to say that art has no country. It certainly has a coundevelopment. There will always be originality and this in itself try, and each country has its art. One person has black eyes and is a beacon light, but he who would be creative must work with- another has blue; one is blond, the other is dark and that beout shackles. Can you imagine,” he said smilingly, “what we _ longs to all countries, but what is behind those eyes is another have suffered from press and public? One pays dearly for the = matter. That consciousness born of inherited emotions, tendenprivilege of being oneself. We are always held to account for __ cies, and history, is the spark which flames into racial characwhat the masters would have done when we may feel that the _ teristics. I find the young Viennese writers completely Austrian, masters have done their work marvelously and we might feel = not German in the least. Schoenberg is the logical outcome of

that these works must always be preserved, but thereisnorea- Mozart and of Schubert and out of Schoenberg son why the men who think and write today should only repeat has grown what is now coming from Vienna as exemplified what has been said by masters for over two centuries. Itisim- | by the works of Anton von Webern, Alban Berg, Egon possible to put originalities into those forms, evenifonehasno — Wellescz and others of that band, new, fresh, daring and worthy idea of being original for the sake of being original. We merely _ of respect.”

wish to have freedom in self-expression, to be ourselves, to write Then came the natural question about how could America ourselves down and not try to write ourselves into what has _avoid the influence of the countries of the old world inasmuch already been said, and not try to appropriate those things which _as we were all descended from European forbears. Milhaud an-

are complete in themselves.” swered this in a most unexpected manner, saying, “The influMilhaud is devoted to Eric Satie of whom he spoke in glow-_ __ ence lies much deeper than the blood of the older countries. It is ing terms. He drew from a well ordered working table abook of _ that thing which is of the soil and which even now is so powersketches of the French composer and seating himself at the pi- _—‘ful that it has crossed the sea and pervaded the whole of France. ano he played oh, so delightfully! A touch like velvet and a —‘ That is your ‘Jazz-Band.’ France was tired of that filmy, indefipower of extricating themes as one might pick out one perfect —_nite atmospheric, melting thing. It was ready for something with stone after the other from a collection of pearls and diamonds! the strong pulse of the present day. The jazz band came. It struck

“Satie is a great man,” he said. “He has touched three genera- us in the face like a cold fresh stream of something we needed tions of music in France and he is today, at the age of fifty-six, to freshen up life. Oh, be sure, the jazz band is doing mighty as keenly alive to the watchword that spells advance ashe was __ work. Certainly I do not mean that its banality, its vulgarity when first he absorbed César Franck and Camille Saint-Saéns, | must come with it—Chopin has shown what could be done with passing from their period to that of Debussy, Ravel, Dukas and _—_a simple waltz, a polonaise, a mazurka. Also remember what their colleagues, thence to the “Groupe des Six,” andI wastruly | Schubert did with the waltz and what others have done with the thrilled at the remark he made to me when I bade him aurevoir. polka. See what Debussy did with the ‘Cake Walk’; in fact, He said that he was on his way to give alecture atthe Sorbonne _ there are so many examples that I do not even have to go back where the class consisted of young people from the ages of fif- to the day that Dvora4k came to America to find the Negro themes teen to twenty. This tremendous breadth, this sympathy with — for his ‘New World,’ and what your American ‘Rag-time’ has and feeling for youth one sees in every measure of his own __ done is also history.” 223

1923 JANUARY 18 « THE MUSICAL COURIER The writer contended that Europe might use the jazz band = Debussy was perfection in his form and would not even imitate influence but that if Americans did it, they would call down __ or repeat himself. It is a mistake to suppose that the ‘Six’ was upon their heads no end of abuse of press and public. “He isnot under this influence, for its day was already run.” fit for this life,” answered the composer calmly, “who can not Asked as to his mission in America—whether he came as stand abuse and go along his way. Nothing great can afford conductor, pianist or composer, he said mirthfully: “I might say shackles, the shackles of public opinion, the fear of the press, _ that 1am a maid-of-all-work. I shall play a little, conduct a little, fear of oneself, flight! Freedom! Life! Light—that is the creed and give some lectures at Vassar, Princeton, Harvard and in a

of Art.” few other places. I am not in the class of virtuosi but I like to Once more reverting to the influence of the composers of play my own works and those of the ‘Six.’ My subjects for ‘conone period upon the next, Milhaud offered a most original idea —_ ference’ will include the evolution of art in France and Vienna

in stating that Debussy had exerted little influence, but that | where Schoenberg towers formidably—powerfully. Then there Rameau, the fountain-head which logically produced Debussy, __ is Stravinsky. But there was no more time and one might only had influenced others who traveled along somewhat the same _ hope that there might be “more anon.”

lines. “Debussy could not be imitated,” he said, “because E. F. B. January 18 ¢ The Musical Courier JAZZ by Reinald Werrenrath

Maybe some day jazz will be music, but it certainly is notnow, —= more pretentious novelties are merely the caviar, to be under-

and I doubt if it ever will be, otherwise it would have survived, stood and appreciated only by the few. These operas and the or I should say come down the ages from the original source — simple melodious tunes of folk music, as well as the fine old among the old Kamchadalic, Tahitian, and Abyssinian tribes. | English ballads are what the greatest number of people really The present day jazz is not music.or real melody. It is merely want. Does any one ever play a jazz record over and over again rhythm and accent, which are all very well in their place and _to calm their tired nerves in front of a grate fire at night? I have are an important requisite even to our best classical music. But —_s never found any one who did or could. There is no beauty, pothe outstanding argument against jazz, as against anything else, _ etry, education, enlightenment, inspiration, constructiveness or is that it has not lived, and though an attempted revival has = musical permanency in jazz. How, then, can it be an art or even

taken place in various forms at repeated times, it has died as |= acomponent part of art? quick a death as the peculiar spurt of popularity it has enjoyed. I do not want to moralize against jazz, that is such an easy _ _History has proven that the measure of the greatness of awork — way to evade the issue. I do not really think it is used for imor works is judged not only by the breadth of its appeal, but by moral purposes, except possibly in such places where immoralthe length and strength of its life. Judging from a broad view- ity would find some form of expression any way, and merely point jazz is not art. Art, after all, is for the people as a whole, __ resort to jazz as an aid and an abatement. I just do not think jazz not only for the select few or for a certain strata. Jazz appeals means anything, judging by what I see and hear, as well as what only to a limited number—most particularly to the dancer, the —_‘I feel. Whenever I dine out in hotels and restaurants before or cabaret lover. Classical music has an unlimited appeal. Itisnot after the theater, my friends all say, “For goodness sake don’t only for the music student, the music lover, but for the uni- —_ go where there’s jazz, I just couldn’t stand the noise.” I asked a verse. Music is fundamentally melody. Perhaps Milton knewa_ __ big orchestra conductor the other day at a hotel why he played few things when he said that “Melody is the hidden soul of __ so little jazz. Much to my surprise he said that he found the harmony,” for it is that which conveys the meaning of music’s_ _ people wanted it less and less, and that he only put in an occagolden tongue. Gather statistics on the subject of contrast and _ sional jazz number with a preponderance of the more melodicomparison of jazz and classical music, for figures cannot lie. — ous and better class music. “In fact,” he said, “it isn’t jazz any Go to opera houses, concert halls, outdoor band concerts orany = more that we play. That’s nearly out. The saxophone and real other outdoor musical performance, to country festivals, to pri- —_ jazzy stuff still goes now and then on the vaudeville stage, but vate or public musical performances, and also to the two most —_ even in vaudeville they want the real stuff.” He certainly is right, vital and forceful interests back of music today, the women’sclubs _ for I find that many of my musical confreres as well as myself and mechanical recording contrivances. What do you find a pre- _— have had attractive offers to go into vaudeville to do what they

ponderance of? Melody and classical music, certainly not jazz. call “straight stuff.” I would like to do it, too, some day, just to The most popular operas are not those that excel inrhythm prove that the masses as well as the classes want, love, and or modern dissonances, they are the old melodious ones. We _ appreciate, good music. There isn’t a living being who does not have a preponderance of Verdi, Puccini, Gounod, Wagner and __love beauty, and I leave it to any one from newsboy to a king to Bizet. They are the roast beef of all the repertories while the _ find beauty in Jazz.

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JANUARY ¢ MELODY 1923 January ¢ American Organist JAZZ AND THE ORGANIST It is queer the number of organists who say, “I can’t play Jazz, where anything else would have been out of place. Therefore, because I don’t like it”; or from the more egotistical ones, “Of | we should not consider it beneath our dignity to play these course, I can play Jazz, but I don’t like it.” Do you suppose it _ scenes, as it is part of our position. We should realize that the might be meager right if some would say, “I don’t like Jazz — fox-trot and one-step are the dance forms of the present day. It because I can’t play it”? There is something lacking musically isn’t a question of accepting them. They have been accepted, in the theater organist who does not like to play a good rhyth- _—_—and we have to play them. So we should strive for perfection in mical fox-trot or snappy one-step. Generally the difficulty lies that style as we do in other branches of organ playing. A fact in the fact that the average organist who comes from church __ that must be realized by the beginner in rag-time, is the neceswork to the theater naturally can’t be expected to have a good sity for left-foot pedaling alone, which is indispensable. Keepswing to his rag-time right at the start, because the instrument _ing in touch with new popular pieces is a great asset. It keeps up to the time of his debut in the theater, has been a “sacred” —_—you abreast of the times and shows interest in the work. Current instrument, and he cannot connect it with jazz playing. Buthe —_—*Victrola records afford opportunity to obtain many useful ideas should remember that it really isn’t desecrating the organtorag in registering and arranging these numbers. Don’t think I’m On it, nor does it detract from its standing as a church instru- _ rooting for the jazz pianist, who suddenly decides he could make ment; it merely widens its scope of expression, and increases = more money playing the organ, and after a lesson or two thinks its possibilities as an instrument. It is necessary for the organist — he knows it all. For such work lowers the standard of organ to change his ideas about the organ. For the organist who takes playing. What is necessary is for the legitimate organist to bea theater position should acquire the technic of motion picture come proficient in jazz playing in order to fulfill his duties as accompaniment. Part of this is the playing of dance scenes of __ theater organist. So, fellow organists, let’s work up our foxvarious types, as in the picture, The Impossible Mrs. Bellew, __ trots and one-steps, as we did or do our church music and see if the dancing in the casino and on the beach; also Mae Murray in we won't Say, “It’s a pleasure to play Jazz.” On With the Dance, which called for numerous dance pieces

January * Melody FRANK WESTPHAL, CHICAGO EXPONENT OF JAZZ by A. C. E. Schonemann If jazz music has done nothing more than to be the fore-runner __is expressive and so characteristic of our people. The average and impetus that has ushered in syncopated music, ithas more = American loves variety, and whether he visits a vaudeville house than justified its existence if one is to accept the opinion of or a cabaret he insists upon diversity of music, in dancing, in Frank Westphal, who draws his conclusions from fifteen years’ the numbers on the program and in fact in all entertainment. In experience in orchestra work, during which time he has been so far as this applies to the popular dance orchestra it has neceswriting popular music, producing phonograph records and sitated the writing of original arrangements and the use of new playing practically every form of engagement known to the and striking ideas in these arrangements.”

profession. Mr. Westphal contends that the secret of success in playing “Jazz music has had its day. Today it is a nonentity in the — syncopation lies in the use of unusual scores, in the introducpopular field and the music that many people regard as jazzis __ tion of novel effects and the featuring of one or more instruin reality syncopation of the highest form,” said Westphal ina —_ ments in sucha manner as to produce eccentric harmonies, quick recent interview. “Jazz was born in the Southland, and when it _ breaks and strange counter melodies. The most successful excame North it was served up with piano and drums. Latercame ponents of syncopation today, he says, are the men who can the saxophone and other instruments, including the cornet, trom- —_ take the themes of popular numbers and reconstruct them, bone, banjo and big basses. With this growth came the special —_ injecting unique ideas and making them palatable to suit pubarrangements, and then the finest forms of syncopation. Today, lic taste. the man who is skilled in the art of writing and bringing out “Men who are expert in arranging are in demand if they can most effectively the various instruments is usually the mostsuc- supply the ideas,” said Mr. Westphal. “Syncopation is not made

cessful in entertaining the public. up of freakish effects and trick playing, and the scores that are “Syncopation is typical of the American people. Itrepresents being used today call for men who can play entirely from manutheir thoughts and sentiments, and it has the dash and pep that _ script and who are artists in every respect. The modern dance

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1923 JANUARY ¢ MELODY orchestra has drawn many men from the ranks of symphony When asked to name the king of the instruments used in the orchestras because the opportunities are greater and the finan- modern syncopated orchestra Mr. Westphal stated that for varicial return is far in excess of that enjoyed by most symphony _ ety of effects the cornet usually held first place, but he pointed men. Another factor is that symphony men with their training _ out that in special arrangements any one instrument in the orare more competent to handle the manuscripts that are so _—chestra might be featured to the exclusion of all others. Modern often written out hurriedly and set upon the stands at the —_ arranging, and especially as it applies to the dance orchestra of

last minute. today, will enable the composer to build up an accompaniment

“The strange effects and uncanny tricks thathave been used — around a cornet, trombone, saxophone, piano or banjo, or even by some of the old jazz orchestras are for the most partamemory. a combination of instruments. They have been revamped until the supply has been exhausted, “The brass bass has supplanted the string bass because it is and many leaders are now striving for musical coloring and __ capable of giving a sustained tone,” said Mr. Westphal. “The shadings rather than the use of extreme musical effects. The | saxophone in many cases has taken the place of the violins bemusic that pleases today is popular because of its strange har- —_ cause leaders believe they can obtain greater volume of tone monies, and greater than this fact is the manner in which the from the former. The difficulty of recording the violin for the

orchestra presents the number. phonograph has also strengthened the position of the saxophone “Playing for the American public today and putting over __ 1n the modern orchestra.” popular numbers is largely a matter of interpretation. In the old Mr. Westphal has two ideals, one being the establishment of days we accepted orchestrations and played them. Now we make _a School where he can teach men and women to play syncoour own orchestrations. Individual features are injected into pated music, the other is the organization and development of a every number, and the success of the selection depends on the — syncopated orchestra with a personnel of between thirty and man who prepares the score. To successfully prepare the vari- forty men. He believes that time will bring the big popular dance ous orchestral parts one must not only know music but know _ orchestra managers of dance halls, cabarets and places of amuse-

just what appeals to the public.” ment cannot see the wisdom of the big orchestra has postponed In writing popular music Mr. Westphal believes that results the use of the large combinations but eventually, he says, the invariably follow concentration upon a given theme. He at- _ big combinations will be used. tributes his success in song writing to persistent application when “The need for a school where men and women can be taught working out a number, and he does not follow any system or —_ how to play syncopated music—the type of music that appeals method. Success, he says, in writing often comes after many to the American people—is apparent,” he said. “It will enable months of work, and in some cases with only a few minutes many who aspire to do orchestral work to realize their ambistudy at the piano, a noteworthy example of the latter being Mr. _ tions; it will serve as a feeder for the big jazz orchestras that Westphal’s Those Longing for You Blues which was writtenin _ have prestige and name, and it should draw from the small towns fifteen minutes. This number, according to Mr. Westphal, was and cities talent that can be developed. written “to break the monotony of playing over a few numbers “Many of the men who are taking up music today are intent that were the most popular hits of the day.” A lead sheet was upon becoming identified with the orchestras that are playing written, and after the number had been played for a Chicago _ higher forms of syncopation.To attain this ambition these men publisher it was turned over to a lyric writer and the result was _—_— should know that only hard work will enable them to reach the

Those Longing for You Blues. coveted goal. Many men who have devoted the greater part of “Writing popular songs is largely a question of one mande- _ their lives to music are now enjoying the fruition that comes veloping an idea, or two men, collaborating, one producing the —_ from constant application and hard work.

lyric and the other the music,” continued Mr. Westphal, dis- “Hickman, Whiteman and many others have given us a form cussing the question of song writing. Very often a striking idea —_ of music that is truly expressive of our people. They have added

is incorporated into music and ere it is turned out for general _ dignity to the popular orchestra game, and have given a certain

public sale it is destined to be a hit. prestige and standing to the men who are engaged in this work. “Some popular numbers go big from the date of publication, — In the old days the orchestra was hired and fired at will, the and immediately they are accepted as hits. Others are featured = musicians were regarded on a par with other necessary help. for months before the public accepts them. There is an uncer- _—_ Today the men in the orchestra must measure up to a high stantainly about the future of a song that one cannot explain be- _—_ dard, not only as gentlemen but as musicians. They must be

cause the decision rests with the public.” artists in their line, and the public is beginning to realize this The use of standard operatic numbers and compositions of _fact. the masters in special arrangements for dance work is done “Syncopated music is yet in its infancy and it is difficult to largely for “show purposes,” according to Mr. Westphal. He _ tell just how it will develop. It is, however, American through pointed out that such arrangements invariably proved popular _ and through, and this is due to the fact that it possesses what we with the public, despite the fact that many people regarded the |= Americanscall a ‘wallop’ from the minute the first note is struck use of this music in the modern dance hall as sacrilegious. until the cymbals strike out the final crash of the last bar.”

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JANUARY ¢ METRONOME 1923 January * Metronome DRAWING A LINE FOR JAZZ Under this title Richard Aldrich recently contributed an article in _—_sics, and there is at least a public opinion set in motion.” It

the New York Times which attracted considerable attention. seems that this above-mentioned circular urged the French orAmong other things he referred to the question of the adapta- chestras to cease playing such arrangements and that the appeal tion of classical music for jazz purposes, which seems to have _ had been very favorably received by them. On the other hand aroused a “veritable scandal” in Paris, as follows: “In France, the colored jazz bands did not take notice of the request, not where they have a Minister of State who looks after the inter- from any intentional purpose but, as we are told, for the very ests of music and the other fine arts, the matter has been brought —_ reason that they could hardly be able to recognize a number to his attention. According to the latest number of Le Temps to suchas the “Moonlight” Sonata if, by chance, they should hear arrive in New York, the Administrative Council of the Society _it played properly. According to the opinion of a Mr. Harry Pilcer, of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music has sent acir- —_ prominently mentioned in the report from Paris, the present steps cular to managers of dance halls and other establishments where _to jazz music will not continue in popularity much longer. He they ‘jazz’ the classics into ‘shimmies’ and ‘fox trots.’ The Min- foresees a return to the waltz, discusses the possibilities of our ister has congratulated them on their protest and hopes thatthey | dances taking up the polka again with slightly more compliwill succeed in stopping the practice. Further than that, appar- cated steps, and even hints at a modernized minuet. But all this, ently, the Government does not go. But Le Temps and other as he says “without justifying the spoiling of music which was influential journals have spoken strongly on the side of the clas- not intended for dancing.”

January ¢ Metronome SONGS AND DANCES OF THE SOUTHLAND by Nellie Flamm

Oh, Jean Ba'tees, pourquois, ently aimed in ridicule at some mulatto girl who attempted to Oh, Jean Ba'tees, pourquois, pass herself off as white. It was sung in Louisiana nearly, if not

Oh, Jean Ba’tees.Pourquois quite, 200 years ago, and it goes:

you grease my leetle dog's feet wit! ta-a-ah! Ah! Touconton! Mo connin toi; To semble Morico; The song came ahead of the singers, trolled in lusty Gallic voices, Y’a pas savon qui assez blane pour laver to la peau! around the bend in the Barataria Canal, and, softened by the

sounding board of willow-arched waters, until it struck my ears Old-Time Favorites Still Sung as a sort of introductory note to the Great Marsh. But to Captain

Barrow, at the wheel of the long, slim Brer Rabbit, it meant Quite probably Louis Philippe heard this song, along with a merely a turning to the right, over close to the edge of the smooth hundred others as old, in the once-famous residence of Bernard canal, so that the wash of the speedboat’s propellers might not = Marigny de Mandeville of La Nouvelle Orleans. But here it was, roll the coming songsters against the bank. Slowing down we _ coming down the canal, in the Spring of 1921, broken now and made the turn, with another turn ahead made visible by acy- _ again by the staccato barks of the engine in the boat of the singers, press log rising from the inshore current, but the singers were — when it should have been timed to the thrusts of the boatman’s still around this further bend, and as we creptdownuponthem, _ pole as he walked from bow to stern of his flat nosed bateau.

until they hove in sight, still worrying the absent Jean Baptiste To Captain Barrow it meant something else. “The shrimp with a typical question as to why he applied the tar to the feet of have come in,” he said

the “little dog.” And sure enough, as the lugger passed us, we looked into a There were four of them, one at the wheel of a low, wide _ pile of spun silver in her cargo box, a ton or more of shrimp, lugger hull, in which one of those snorting oil engines currently fresh from Barataria Bay, at once the cause of the presence of known as “mules” had been installed, and the other three gath- _the singers and of their bursting into song as well. Quite probered on the short bow deck. The three were the singers, and as _ _ably they had been singing these odd little songs, now in Creole they passed us they broke into another song, notachantey buta_ —_— French, now in Gallicized English, ever since they left their very old song of the furthest South of the United States, in which shrimp schooners with the cargo for the market at New Orleans. the man at the wheel joined fitfully, timing his vocal contribu- _As they rolled on their way we hailed them, and their answer tions to the bends in the canal and the rollers Brer Rabbit had _ bore word of the truth of the Captain’s forecast and a hint of the been setting up against the banks. The song they sang as they _ great dependence of the people of the marsh place on the shrimp waved to us in passing was a very old Creole chanson, appar- as their “staff of life.” 227

1923 JANUARY «© METRONOME ‘Ver’ fine, M’sieu; de swimp, he come in.” man be seeks. Even if that man has committed some overt act But they could not keep long from song, and as we straight- —_ against one of the marsh people, the injured man will conceal ened out for the entrance into Barataria Bay we could hear the _ the one who injured him until the minion of the law has passed,

second verse of the “Troubles of Toucouton’”’: when the law of the marsh will take its course, the injured perQuad blancs la yo donne yo bal, To pas capable aller: son anneal the punishment for the crime, and it will be

Comment t’a vaillant giabal? Toi qui l’aime briller! Th!

Toucouton! A Mixture of Races Those Who Live in the Great Marsh These people are not the ’Cadians, the “Cajuns,” as they are commonly called, for the remnant of the people of Grand Pre,

Out of the 12,000 square miles of marsh, stretching from the the descendants of the original Arcadians, are to the north of mouth of the Mississippi River nearly to the Sabine River of | the Great Marsh in the parish named for their heroine— Texas, filled with lakes and bays and bayous and rivers and —_ Evangeline. These people of the marsh are of all races. Here islands, these fishermen had come, typical representatives of | Greek meets Filipino, and the British younger son quite often the more than 300,000 people who inhabit the Great Marsh. finds himself working in the same boat with a Syrian, an Italian They are like the rails of the rush-beds and the tuleflats, in that | or a Basque. For the most part, however, they are men and one seldom sees them unless he goes hunting for them; a shy, women whose native lands are in the South of Europe, with a secretive, yet open-hearted people, hospitable to the last bitof | sprinkling of Chinese, a few Japanese and now and then a Kofood in the house, but as clannish as ever was Scottish High- —_ rean. The color line is rather strongly drawn, however, and the

lander or Tennessee mountaineer. Negro, plentiful as he is on the mainland, seldom invades the Their little cabins, erected with their own hands and withthe — marsh. The Asiatics, too, usually live to themselves, frequently aid of their kindly neighbors, at the old-fashioned “house-rais- —_in villages, while the Italian, French, Spanish, Greek, Basque ers” of a half century ago in more Northern climes, stand on __ or other white-skinned national as a rule lives in a solitary cabin little humps and hillocks in the marsh. These knolls they have — with his family and not in the settlement. dignified with the name of “islands,” yet ofttimes there is no

visible water around the island, merely mile on mile of waving A Closer View of the Settlements

reeds and luxuriant marsh grasses, seven or eight feet in height,

wild rice whistling through its bearded heads as the wind sighs __ There are, it is true, some settlements in the Great Marsh, but

down from the land or roars in from the sea. they are largely centers of distribution for such products of civiUnder this mat of grass and reeds and tules and rushes lies _ lization as the puffing steam packets or the larger motor boats water, a few inches deep, and then mud, black rich mud, poured _ bring in from “N’ Awleens,”’ Houma, Lake Charles or some other down for centuries by the Father of Waters as he built up his — town out on the rim of the marsh. Indeed, the marsh has revived

delta. And the hardest work the marsh man does isto keepopen __ the packet, the stern-wheeled river steamboat, whose famous the channel—often no more than 10 feet wide—which leads __ predecessors the Robert E. Lee, the Natchez and others, made from clear water to his island cabin. For the marsh man and his —_ steam-boating on the rivers of the Mississippi Valley an event marsh women and their children live by their boats. Withouthis —_ of history half a century ago. The packets have “come back,” pirogue, his john-boat, and, of late years, his motor boat, the _ but it is to the smaller work of the Great Marsh rather than to dweller in the Great Marsh of America would be as helpless as__ the main trunk lines of the north and south rivers to which they the Arab without his horse, the Bedouin without his dromedary. have come. Next to the shrimp, which comes and goes irregularly, but in On these packets, leaving New Orleans or any other of the general at certain seasons of the year, the marsh man values his “ports” of the Great Marsh, one may find a cargo more varied boat, and to steal a man’s boat in the Great Marsh is equivalent _ than that carried by a transatlantic liner, for it ranges through all to the taking of his horse in the old days in the West. Most often ___ the necessities of life to its luxuries. In one such cargo on a it is followed with much the same punishment, if the thief is | packet on which the writer rode from New Orleans to Houma, caught, without recourse to officers of the law or to courts. there were a piano and a cow, while back in the stern were four foxhounds being taken back to a lonely cabin by their new mas-

How the Law is Carried Out ter. The passengers are scarcely less interesting. Like the mountaineer of Tennessee, the womanfolk of the Indeed, the officers of the law have no particular liking for the | dwellers in the Great Marsh travel little, except to the Saturday Great Marsh. When they go into it seeking a transgressor, they night bailes on the shrimp platforms, or to the home of some are treated with the utmost courtesy; every marsh man’s cabin neighbor, possibly twenty miles away. When the women do get and all that is in it belongs to the “Sharref” or his “daypooty,” an opportunity to leave their homes for a journey to the home and he will be taken from place to place in whatever boat is of some relative in one of the towns, they travel always by packet most convenient; but, should he remain there the rest of his life, | or by the passenger-carrying motor boats, which also ply on he never, other than by accident, will be allowed to find the — more or less regular schedules through the marsh.

228

JANUARY ¢ METRONOME 1923 The men, however, do not like the packet, and when they are _—_ der to reach the platform on time, must be rather more than called by some business to the cities, they make theirown way __ twenty-five miles, ranging from five to seventy-five or a hunin their own boats, the more fortunate ones in motor craft; those dred miles. who do not own such pretentious boats, in their skiffs, or even Waiting for them on the platform will be the “givers” of the in their pirogues—and the Indian in his birchbark canoe was _ dance, a group of young men, usually, with one or two old men never one-half so clever as Jean or Alec or Alphonse in his —_ on the committee by courtesy. They do not in reality give the pirogue. This is merely a hollow cypress log, fifteen feet long, dance, because it is entirely co-operative, and the owner of the sharpened at the ends. A fifty-mile trip alone in this cypress _ shrimp platform donates it, as well as the use of the boiling and shell is nothing unusual to the marsh man. At night he straight- other sheds surrounding it, as resting places for the women and ens himself out in it and sleeps. Six or seven miles an hour for __ nurseries for the babies. There, too, will be the violinists—and an eight-hour run of rowing is by no means the record of speed __ they are called “violinists,” not “fiddlers,” by the humblest and endurance these marsh men have set in their pirogues, while | dweller in the marsh. These have been obtained by the “givers” the average man, even though a good canoe paddler, will find of the dance, who, by and by, will pass the hat to make up a himself struggling in the water within five minutes afterhe starts collection with which to pay the musicians. to paddle the pirogue.

The Dance; Those Who Take Part;

What Happens on Saturday Night What Is Danced; and the Return Home But it is on Saturday night that these seemingly lonely—at any —_— Such a dance presents one of the most animated, colorful and rate solitary—people of the marsh cast off their taciturnity and innocently happy pictures I have ever seen. The women, living for a few hours give themselves over to enjoyment. At irregular —_ drab lives in the marsh, adorn themselves with the most vivid distances throughout the Louisiana marsh are scattered the reds and blues and yellows, even though the material be only shrimp platforms, where hundreds of tons of shrimp are boiled —gaticg. Many of them are beautiful, in a dark, stormy way. and dried each year for shipment to China and Japan and for _Fiercely curled black mustaches mark the men and mantillalimited sale in the United States. It is the rule of these platforms draped heads the women.

that every Saturday night they shall be swept clean of all the The platform is illuminated by oil or gasoline torches. No dried shrimp, for not a man in the marsh will work on Sunday. new jazz dances are allowed, but the old-time waltzes, twoIn passing, it might be said he will not work any other day if steps and now and then a polka, schottische or even a quadrille there is bacon, cornmeal and salt in the house. On at least one keeps the company on their feet until the sun slips out of the of these platforms—which are often 300 feet long by 100 feet cast and the violinists strike into Home, Sweet Home. Then there wide, built of rough, but close-laid planking, out over water _ is breakfast, as there was supper at midnight and a luncheon at often 20 feet deep—there is a dance every Saturday night, —_§ or 7 o’clock in the evening, but whereas the separate parties

“cep’in w’en de rain he fails.” ate by themselves in the evening before the dance, now everyone is acquainted with everyone else and the whole platform

Attendance at the Saturday Night Dances becomes an animated party of diners. Then, babies asleep and most of the older folks well on the Like children to a Maypole, these grown-up youngsters of the |= way to slumberland, they go into the boats again, and the putmarsh flock to the shrimp platform designated for the dance, in put of the motors takes the place of the strains of violin and their motorboats they come, bringing all their families, from —’cello. The pilots of the boats are chosen from their compangrandfather and grandmother to the latest baby, through wind- —_— ions who came with them by lot, or volunteer, as being more , ing bayous, down narrow streams and across shallow lakes, | wide-awake than their fellows, and they steer until noon, if the bearing food for the family for the trip and for the night on the __ return home requires all day, and then they are relieved at the shrimp platform. Then distance means nothing to the man of _ wheel by someone who has slept away the morning hours curled the marsh, for, in order to get the largest crowds possible, invi- on top of the low cabin or along a rude, movable bench in the tations have been given to all the world at the last dance the — cockpit. previous Saturday night, and, by word of mouth, this invitation Home again in the little cabin raised on stilts, like the houses has been carried often 100 miles from the platform on which __ of the ancient villagers of the Swiss lakes, or set on an “island” the next dance is to be held. Scattered as the cabins of these — in the midst of a thousand acres of marsh, there is a night of marsh dwellers are, it seems to me that the average of their trips sleep, and then off again in the boats to meet the men they met on Saturday afternoons, and sometimes all day Saturday, in or- at the dance.

229

1923 MARCH ¢ THE ETUDE February ° Metronome DETRIMENTAL EFFECTS OF JAZZ ON OUR YOUNGER GENERATION by A. E. Guilliams A few words about jazz music and jazz combinations that are from my own knowledge that about fifty percent of our young different from any articles I have ever seen published up to the boys and girls from the age of 16 to 25 that land in the insane present time. Very often these days you will read articles in the asylums these days are jazz crazy, dope fiends and public dance daily papers and musical magazine arguing for and against jazz _ hall patrons. Jazz combinations, dope fiends and public dance music and jazz combinations. It seems that both sides have ar- _ halls are all the same, “one.” Where you find one you will find guments that sound reasonable, but I have never heard either the other. This “jazz” life is great while it lasts but it is shortside make any statements as to the final results of the two styles _ lived with many, as I have seen from three to five young boys of music (being played these days) on the public that attends _—_and girls land in our asylums one after another from the effect these concerts, theatres, dance halls, etc. Well, let me tell you —_— of too much jazz, dope and public dance halls. I, for one, think

something that I have observed along this line of jazz, its con- _ that if the present-day speed of the human race were cut down sequences and the music of a high standard and its consequences. _—_just a little the building of additions to most every insane asy-

Do you know of any of our young people, old ones either for lum in the United States could be eliminated. I think the real that matter, landing in our insane asylums from the effect of | crazy “jazz” combinations are fast losing their popularity and attending places where real orchestras and our best music is _ will soon be a thing of the past. Some of us at least hope so, as , featured? No, not many, if any; on the other hand, I can say we would like to see music one of the greatest of arts advance and not go backwards.

March 10 © Musical America DUCASSE USES RAGTIME IN NEW TONE POEM Paris, March 3—Among the dozens of new orchestral composi- the European craze for jazz may be put and it leads one to betions which have had first performances here in the last three —_ lieve that after all jazz may go down in the history of music as a

months, none has aroused greater interest than Epithalame,a __ real and lasting phase. new tone poem by Roger-Ducasse, who had been silent for some The tone poem opens with a short Adagio indicating a martime. It is the work of a composer who has a sound academic _riage fete, and passes quickly into a stirring cakewalk. Succesbackground and who has fearlessly taken ragtime rhythms and _ sively the poem includes a fox trot, a tango and then more conput them to his own uses with a sure hand. Not once does a fox- ventional movements indicating nightfall and the departure of trot or a cakewalk escape from Ducasse and divert the tone of __ the bridal couple. The composition is dedicated to Mrs. Margathe composition from that of serious music to the jiggy banali- ret Damrosch Finletter, daughter of Walter Damrosch. It was ties of a music hall. It is evidence of the valuable use to which | conducted in admirable style by Gabriel Pierné.

, March ¢ The Etude THE POETIC AND MELODIC GIFTS OF THE NEGRO by R. Emmet Kennedy Editor’s note: The author of this article is a widely-known writer, of the music of the past. At present, however, the freedmen have

lecturer and entertainer, whose studies of the Southern Negro _an unfortunate inclination to despise this music as a vertige of have brought him wide praise. He was born at Gretna, La.,and __ slavery. Those who learned it in the old time, when it was the has been studying Negro folk-songs since his youth. The late __ natural outpouring of their sorrows and longings, are dying off, Booker T. Washington said of him, “You have the ethical under- _ and, if efforts are not made for its preservation, the country will standing of the Negro people, I feel that you have made areal soon have lost this wonderful music of bondage.”

contribution to the literature regarding my race.” While it cannot be said that Mr. Fenner’s prophecy has been More than four decades ago, speaking of Negro music, in _ fulfilled outright, still, it is pleasing to know that several Negro his preface to Cabin and Plantation Songs, Thomas P. Fenner — composers have made very satisfactory excursions into the exsaid: “It may be that this people which has developed sucha __ tensive field of folk melody and have brought forth many wonderful musical sense in its degradation, willinits maturity | gems from the plentiful store which still remains theirs in their produce a composer who could bring a music of the future out own right.

230

MARCH ¢ THE ETUDE 1923 To anyone interested in the elementary forms of primitive __ their religious outbursts and devotional songs are essentially music and poetry, this field of southern slave music isone which spontaneous. They are the unpremeditated melodies that have is filled with surprises both profitable and delightsome. never been learned or pondered over and worked out for effect; Music and poetry of this nature are largely the possessions — the extemporaneous outpourings of simple souls. It is in the of the plain, common people; the unlettered folk who have not —_ devotional songs that you find the true racial characteristics, lost the gracious charm of being natural; those delightful, primi- _ the peculiarities of rhythm and interval, the manner of intentive people, the peasants of every nation. In all ancient litera- _ tion, and the fantastic interweaving of the major and the minor tures we find splendid examples of inspired rhythmic chants modes. It is in these, if we thoughtfully examine the melodies and songs which were intoned to the accompaniment of musi- _ of these despised people, that we see to what a remarkable decal instruments. The ones most generally known are: the He- _ gree they are possessed of the poetic sensibility.

brew psalms and canticles given in the Bible; the lyrics and Like the music and poetry of all unlettered folk, these prolegends of the pastoral Greeks and Sicilians; the runes and saga- _—_ ductions are of a purely sentimental and emotional quality, most

songs of the Scandinavians; and the ranns, englyns and battle- noticeable in that form of devotional song or spiritual which hymns and lamentations of the pagan Celts. And in all ofthese the Baptist Negro refers to as “ballets.” They are original exthere is a sublime simplicity of expression, in both music and pressions of religious fervor, melodies that unconsciously sing poetry, which plays upon the emotions more readily thansome themselves into being, the words, excellent specimens of primi-

scholarly production of any of the renowned masters. tive poetry. In our own day the untutored Negro of the South possesses Let us listen to the crooning of an old man in one of his this charm of inherent creative ability to an astonishing degree. scriptural moods, early in the morning. He is sitting in the shade He is wonderfully gifted musically and fairly tingles with poetic of a persimmon tree, with the fragrant blossoms dropping around tendencies, alive with sentiment and ready imagination, uncon- him, with a bunch of willow saplings before him, cutting them sciously expressing his thought in the direct rhythmic language _into slats to make into baskets which he will sell to the “mahof true poetry—crude [illegible] barbarous poetry, if you will, shawn” woman for carrying vegetables. As he works he is thinkbut savoring of the true essence. His partiality for high-sounding —_ing of the many years that have gone over him and of his unprewords, the wonderful way of mispronouncing them, his splendid pared condition if death were to call him away suddenly, and gift of euphony, and his fluency in making what the French call _‘ the uncertainty of life in general. Gradually his thought finds “liaison,” help materially to make the Negro a little more than expression in song, the improvised melody faithfully recording passingly interesting. He is anoteworthy factor when itcomesto — the melancholy wistfulness of his mood as he sings:

summing-up literary values, and his original melodies and de- P lightful dialect can never fail to bring him his just right to immor-

tality. Of recent years the deluge of so-called “rag-time’” and

“coon-song,” has had an unhappy tendency to give the impres- Wen de clouds hang heav-y and it

Pd

sion that the Negro is nothing more than a quaintly humorous Af mime. “Rag-time” does not express the true Negro sentiment. It

MS 2G ey WE ZS Ee eee =e

is a caricature of the people, a stage-picture invented by some ~

exaggerating minstrel. The nearest approach to expressing the look like rain, QO Lawd—

Negro nature was reached by Stephen Collins Foster in his plan- a ey tation songs, among them the well-known Old Folks At Home,

Old Black Joe, Nellie Was a Lady, Massa’s in De Cold, Cold ~ oo

Ground and Old Kentucky Home—songs that will live as long as - how long—————_ Wen de

. . eee ee ee

superimposed Christianity. You experience a sort of elemental Chink, pink. hon-ey— O Lu - la!

thrill as you hear them sing:

is 9 | | — | a —s — I i) Oe

“eee 5? rgLSfog SS =| _| ES «= YE Ee — —_—_ BF ee ee Ee T_T y f 4, fs Pa \_« s A EE =.a 2s hon - ey, Wat you ev-uh gin me. a ee | ee cee ES EE RE RE: ee... TK ”

Ne

Sa Chink, pink, hon-cy— O Lu - Ja! Chink, pink,

7A Ee a . ee . . oe .

bod-y down, Ay Lawd, in de grave yahd, And so on for many verses, until her fancy is exhausted and

P the baskets are filled with beans and the picking ends.

)) JE SS Da Aa a §8” s . * . ° e ru + — to good old Mother Elizabeth Foster Goose of.Boston; but one © AE, eee EE BY A SE . . . ee ‘ Oy to Tf Pa is surprised to find something of the same spirit pervading the It is not surprising to find in such impromptu ditties as this a

ss kind of relationship to that variety of accumulative song found

Think yu hear my — cof-fin soun’, My in the whimsical and delightful collection of jingles attributed

—— labor chants and play songs entering into some of the devo-

soul be singin’ = —sun-der de_ groun, — Ay tional songs, ofttimes with a kind of reverential gaiety. Some of

Ay —— prea 4 these are known as “cawntes’ himes” (contest hymns), and are fit j ite J. ¢ J {ie J Eb") usually sung at Saturday night contests at the Negro Baptist

oly churches. A prize in) is offered, most cases yahd. a basket of grocerLawd, singin’ dcingrave .., ies, and the singer keeping the floor the longest gets the prize.

232

MARCH ¢ METRONOME 1923

. . . io tf | fy Tt fle. eet

A man takes the part of questioner, and a woman the part of (7 ee ee ee

answerer. The man asks the same question again and again, the eet woman being required to give a different answer each time until come a - long,

her imagination is exhausted and his questioning plays her out. A

EP OS RT ES . an . . .

splendid example of this kind of song is as follows: The Negro thinks in pictures; and while the result is often

He fantastic in the extreme, still it gives evidence of a fine, unhampered imagination. Though he is declared by some writers noth-

ing more than a mimic or an imitator, what are considered his imitations never embody the form or thought of any suppositi-

0 tell me, my sis - tuh. won't you tious model. The essence is always native.

ST |, SR SA A A A ES WE EE ° .

—~—4—f 9 @ —7-— Aside from the songs of the various Indian tribes and the a ee) — ? collected Negro songs of slavery days, there is but small claim cll me little bet-tuh, Whah yu bin so long to what might be called American folk-song proper. Probably it

. is due to the fact that the country is yet young and has not had so She timeSRRARRTS to have its romantic memories andOR emotions Sta, CT; ST LAET F RTE . . . . .crystallize

SE CE ES RE AAof EE LEfrom DEL EE to. generauv —— the common property the people generation

into musical memorials the possession of no single person, but

gone? Bin a - wheel-in’ and a-knock-in’ at de tion. It is only within recent years that we have come to know

Ay —_—— very much about the music of the American Indians. Some of

2 | A SO Pn ih a Rs i ee See © Ae . . . ces . .

the modern musicians and students of ethnology have given their attention to collecting, transcribing and publishing these ole church door and my soul wants to go home to Indian melodies, which, like the melodies of the Negro, play an

Chorus: important part in the development of folk-music in this coun-

fy WO slavery, "ee eelong | Se ee Eepent eeupeeemotion ee . °and. all the barbarism, suffering, yo 7 —stry. And while there are undeniable characteristics that suggest lo - Ty. Roll and knock, come a - long. other elements that speak the poetry of the beginning of things there is also a native charm and an individuality that must al-

‘ ways link with the growth of the American nation, a beautiful unconditional bequest from the lesser Red and Black Brothers

roll and knock, — come a - long, roll and knock, of which the white man should be justly proud.

March ¢ Metronome TOWN CLEF TOPICS by Ed Chenette Coming or going? Who knows? And why is jazz anyway? Also _ say that classical music is hard music. If so then some of our what is jazz? Loud and lamentous are the cries proandconon —_— modern fox trots are at the pinnacle of the classics. We are usthis interesting subject. Some say it is waning—this Jazz craze: ing a special arrangement of a fox trot right now that begins in some say its day is but dawning; and when we analyze their __ six sharps for the alto saxophones and end in six flats for the C meaning of jazz we do not know just what they meaniscoming — melody, with all the keys and progressions possible throughor going! Neither do they for that matter. Now that we have __ out. It makes William Tell, or rather the difficulties of playing used this much space and said nothing we will proceed farther William Tell, like a first grade waltz in adagio tempo beside it.

in the same intelligent way. | Therefore if classical music is just difficult music then this jazz Jazz seems to be anything that is not classical, and classical piece is a world beating classic. And we heard a popular orseems to be anything else, and there you have it as clearas a _chestra recently play all of Poet and Peasant in fox trot tempo London fog. I wouldn’t call the Melody in Fajazz number but _and it lent itself very nicely to that treatment and wasn’t one nevertheless it is capable of some very illuminating effects when _half so difficult as our aforementioned number. it is jazzed up. We are using The Fifth Nocturne as a jazz num- The serious student is beginning to realize that “jazz” is a ber. Now does that make this number a jazz number in itself _ thing of itself that can be applied anywhere to any music (yes when for years it has been known as a classical number? Soif _as pretty a waltz as the Blue Danube makes a wonderful jazz jazz music is going is everything that can be jazzed going too? = number), and is not, as others lightly think, an actual kind of If so we will lose all the big standard music, forlo and behold, —_ music. Jazz is a musical effect produced by an operation and is the boys place the unaccented accents upon all of it! Some folks applicable to all kinds of music. Popular songs are not more 233

1923 MARCH ¢ METRONOME amenable to this treatment than are the standard numbers. There- —-His instrumentation is: drums, sousaphone, trombone, trumfore if we say popular songs are jazz music we might as well go _ pet, piano, violin, clarinet, saxophone; and Mr. Jones himself ahead and say that all classical numbers are jazz music. Instead —_ plays tenor saxophone. Of course the saxophone and clarinets of saying “jazz music,” it would be more to the point to speak —_—and one of the violins, double on oboe, English horn, and dif-

of “music jazzed.” ferent sized saxophones. Nearly all of his programs are played

Classical music is not necessarily difficult music. Itis music | from manuscript and very frequently the entire orchestra transthat has, first of all, been correctly written, and second been _ poses a Strain into another key instantly without rehearsal and interesting enough in structure to have survived during the sort- | without error. These numbers are full of double sharps, double ing and shifting and eliminating process of the years. In this flats, enharmonics, unnatural accents, weird effects, odd acconnection the matter of opinion deals somewhat too; fora |= companiments, abrupt cadences, unusual progressions, the Beethoven sonata would not be classic toa Chinese. There could = combination of which taxes the skill of these very competent be no better song of its kind than our Home Sweet Home. There- musicians. Harry Alford does a great deal of this ultra-modfore it deserves a high place in the annals of the classics. ern arranging for Mr. Jones, and to such men as he goes a lot Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech is as perfect an example of poetic of credit for making possible these interesting effects. For the art as “Thanatopsis.” A concerto may be more difficult to per- = day of the old time four-part, one-key, set-style arranger is form and require more of a musical taste for its appreciation |§ gone and we have the modern musical specialist in this line. than Sir Edward Elgar’s Salut d’Amour, yet one is not more Whereas we used to pay ten dollars for an arrangement we Classical than the other merely because of this. And bothcanbe __ now pay fifty dollars and are mighty glad to get it at that. My

subjected to this jazz treatment with equal impunity. orchestra is using one special arrangement which runs about Music jazzed is undergoing changes. Irene Castle says that five minutes that we paid two hundred dollars for, and we can the cow bells are going back to the cows, and tin boilers back to only use it a little while at that. the Ford shops, and that hats are leaving the bells of the horns Exclusive arrangements are coming, and coming fast.

and getting back to the hat racks for a hanging place. This is Since the big publishers agreed among themselves not to true. This musical treatment is changing but not going. We may furnish these novel arrangements free for the big orchestras, we

eventually lose the word “jazz,” but the novel treatment of find that these publishers are putting out, in published form, themes will be with us for a long, long time. In place of the novel arrangements of their own. This is but the beginning of noisy effects of music jazzed we are now coming tothe day of __ the craze for colored music. I have been in Mr. Alford’s office “colored effects.” By “colored effects” we mean the treatment many times lately and have found out that hotel orchestras have of a theme in many keys, many accents, many instrumental ways ordered one arrangement as a novelty. This is followed by an and in many combinations. The day of playing a popular num- _ order of another one or two as an experiment, then all of a sudber in one key is passing very rapidly. In its place is coming the | dencomes an avalanche of orders for an entire program of these piece of many colors, very many colors. After an orchestrauses colored arrangements. For, as I said before, after you have used

two or three of these colored numbers in a program the ordi- a couple of these specials and the dancers get used to them, all nary numbers sound drab, dark and monotonous. Once this color other one-key music makes the orchestra sound like a three gets into your organization as it is surely creeping in now, the — months’ old town band. craze for rainbow effects will be tremendous. And this color Jazz is not going then, it is only changing. It is becoming far music is decidedly pretty. And it is ttemendously difficult. Itis | more musical however and the slapstick effects are giving way so varied as to be delightfully refreshing and is sure to be the to real musicianship. The day of the loud pedal is gone. We

vogue for quite some time. have a climax of colored key effects instead of the old style

I know of no better exponent of this art of colored music — double F brass effects. Music is being jazzed very much pretthan Isham Jones and his orchestra now filling a three years’ tier than it was. I wonder what some of the long-haired musiengagement at The College Inn, Chicago. As a typical instance: cians think when they hear such wonderful symphony orchesHe uses To a Wild Rose, by MacDowell. It begins in six sharps _ tras, as those at McVickers and The Chicago, play Faust or for alto saxophone: this continues for twenty-five measures, then Galatea for one number, then use an ultra-modern colored theme modulates into the key of D flat concert for sixteen measures, for the next one? This is exactly what is happening every day. then a half-tone modulation in each of eight succeeding mea- Two kinds of music appear to take equally well with the audisures followed by sixteen measures in the key of G after which — ence. I wouldn’t say that these orchestras have to play this modwe get another eight measures of modulations through four dis- | ern music either. It appears to be more a matter of desire than tinct keys and into sixteen measures in the key of F. This is anything compulsory. And it is not ruining the musicians or the ended by sixteen measures in the key of G flat. There we havea _ taste of the listeners that we can see. For it takes a mighty keen modern example of colored music. In less than one hundred __ ear to follow through, appreciate and enjoy these tone colors. If measures we find five distinct keys, and modulations through __ there are any better schooled musicians than those who comall other keys. And when we are apt to be skeptical of the ability —_— prise these orchestras we don’t know where to find them. It of musicians who play this sort of music we call to your mind _ takes an artist to play this ultra-modern colored music. Some of that Mr. Jones pays his men on the average of four times what __ the second violin players draw ninety-four dollars a week. There they earned in the symphony orchestras previous to joining him. are about seventy men in this orchestra at The Chicago. And

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MARCH e¢ MUSICAL OBSERVER 1923 The Chicago is only a picture house and the highest admission __ replacing the quantity. Drums are becoming far less prominent.

is sixty-six cents. The weird pretty effects of various harmonies tastefully placed We sincerely hope that this article will give you anew slant among the various sections of the organizations and all capably on the trend of modern music. We are not going to the bow- _ played is the thing nowadays. The demand is spreading rapidly. wows or anything of the sort. Every day in every way we are It will soon reach the bands as well as the orchestras. And the getting better and better. The trend of popular music is an up- —_ country will have to produce better musicians and produce them ward trend, more music, more refined, more interesting, requir- fast. For this colored music requires musicians to handle it. If ing better musicians and paying better. The quality of tone is we are wrong in this we will let you edit The Metronome from henceforth.

March ¢ Musical Observer JAZZ, SAYS DARIUS MILHAUD, IS THE MOST SIGNIFICANT THING IN MUSIC TODAY We wish we could be present, if Darius Milhaud ever gets into —_ necessary to have the technic as rich and complicated as posan argument with any of the anti-jazz fraternity who feel that — sible. But if there aren’t eight measures you can sing without the country is going to the dogs, musically, because of jazz.M. | accompaniment, it is useless to have the most marvelous techMilhaud is one of the foremost composers of the new French __ nic; for you will not have made music.

school. We hear so much of the French influence on modern “T think the American composer will evolve something typiAmerican composition that it is interesting to learn, from Mr. cally American and vital if he will turn his ear to the jazz inspiMilhaud, that American music is having a tremendous influ- _ ration, using that for his tradition and basis. Of course he will ence on the contemporary French school. But, lest our musical —_—have to transform it—to mold it into the form he wishes. But I vanity suffer undue inflation, let it be understood at once thatit believe that will be the starting point for anew American school is jazz which the Frenchman says is the most significant thing — of music.”

in music today. “Jazz interests us tremendously,” say Mr. It is unfortunate that M. Milhaud’s visit is so brief, but he Milhaud. “We are fascinated and intrigued by the jazzrhythms —_ has engagements in Denmark and Belgium which will not perand are devoting serious study to it. There are new elements of — mit him to prolong his stay beyond four or five weeks. Howclarity and rhythmic power which were a real shock to us when ever, his plans included many important engagements, at all of

we heard jazz for the first time. It was in 1919, immediately | which he presented new works of the French school—many of after the war, that the first jazz band was heard in Paris. Tous it them for the first time in America—some still in ms. for the was a musical event of genuine import. Music had long been _first time anywhere. Some of them are his own compositions. under the domination of the Impressionist School. Poetry was __ He also lectured at several of the great Eastern universities— the predominating element. Jazz came to us as a good shock— _— Harvard, Princeton, Vassar—and before music clubs such as like a cold shower when you have been half asleep with ennui. the Bohemians and the MacDowell Club. It roused us electrically. All the young artists went every night M. Milhaud had with him mss. of several works for small to hear it played. [illegible] dance a la mode in their epochs. orchestra. He spoke of a distinct movement in France toward a Chopin was inspired by the Mazurka, Bach by the Sarabande— ___ return to the old forms of composition for small orchestras such

always we find great composers responding to the traditions of | as were used before Bach’s time. the times. Why should we not look upon our present day dances “T am especially interested,” said M. Milhaud, “in bringing

as the source of inspiration for our new music? to the attention of American music lovers, the work of the young “The jazz instruments and rhythms and melodic combina- —_ French school—compositions of men like Satie, so important, tions should lend themselves remarkably to chamber music.My _yet so little known. I shall always present some of his works on jazz sonata will have the orthodox three movements—allegro, | my programs. Satie, although fifty-six years old, is one of the

andante and finale. We are all very enthusiastic over this Ameri- | youngest men I have ever met. He is tremendously intercan music. All the melodies of the Blues are so well defined — ested in youth and in everything young. In a recent lecture

and melody is the prime essential in music. at the Sorbonne on the young musicians, he was full of en“When I was studying composition, the students would al- thusiasm for some composers he had found as young as fifways bring those enormous symphonic works toclass. The mas- _ teen years!” ter would say, ‘I should like you to write eight bars that could While an attaché, of the French legation in South America, be played without accompaniment.’ That is the real secret of | Mr. Milhaud visited New York some years ago. But this has music. All that lies above and below is merely technic. It is _ been his first visit in the cause of music. V.B.S.

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1923 APRIL 11 © MELODY April 11 ¢ Melody TED LEWIS OF JAZZ BAND FAME by A. C. E. Schonemann Ted Lewis and his band of jazz kings have developed into a —_—jazz band combination that it is possible to assemble.

| popular musical institution in the United States, and when one “The strings can be used effectively in the orchestra, but a calls up the names of the pioneers in the jazz band field the —_ jazz band should be a jazz band in name and effect,” said Lewis.

name of the indomitable Ted is invariably topmost and fore- = “String instruments do not hold up in the average jazz band most. The words jazz and band have been so closely associated = because they lack volume and from a musical standpoint with the name of Ted Lewis that any attempt to go into detail § they cannot compete against brass instruments. There is no

about one necessitates a discussion of the other. One instrument in a genuine jazz band that is superior to Lewis and his band have been identified with the “Green- another from a jazz standpoint; one is about as jazzy as the wich Village Follies” since the original Village Follies started other and they all contribute to the successful interpretation on the road several years ago. At the present time Ted Lewis —_ of a number.” and his jazzical clowns are en route with the latest edition of the Lewis with his men work out their numbers on the basis of “Greenwich Village Follies” and dispensing a brand of music —_ accentuating one or more features: the introduction of novelthat the dynamic and fiery Ted describes as “pure and unadul- _ ties and innovations that appeal to people. Their method is to

terated jazz.” develop and enlarge every point of interest in a musical numTed Lewis off stage is a quiet and modest gentleman: he is __ ber. Lewis like most of his contemporaries, insists upon givan intensely human sort of fellow and a musical enthusiast from ing the people what they want and in the manner that they crown to soles and through and through. Lewis revels in put- desire it.

ting over song numbers, in introducing what he calls the Lewis began the study of music when he was a boy in his “human factor” and in giving the public variety, melody, musi- home town, Circleville, Ohio. He was a member of the town cal tricks and all the features that are classed in the alchemy band when a boy of six, playing clarinet, and since that time he

of jazz. has devoted the greater part of his life to music. In discussing

“The original idea in music always appeals to the public,” — his work he epitomized his success by saying that he kept at said Lewis, in discussing his work. “If one can introduce a fea- music until he found the type that appealed to him and then he ture and inject something new and novel into the presentation worked to build up a musical organization that would convey of a number the people will invariably enjoy it. It must have life _ his ideas. and punch; American people like snap and fire in their music Ted Lewis and his men do not work out their numbers from

and they enjoy beautiful and soft, dreamy harmonies. special arrangements written out in detail and at length; they “Above all, the man who plays popular music should con- _ build up the melody and embellish it and elaborate upon it to centrate his efforts on making it human, for it is this particular —_ suit their needs. Lewis does not believe in stereotyped programs; quality that is understandable to men and women. One canplease —_—he advocates diversity, quick changes and the use of striking

an audience by playing snappy numbers and putting them over _features. in a manner that will start one beating time with hands or feet; “We have used successfully the metaphysical idea in our prethen will come smiles of appreciation and applause, and all are sentation of one number; the suggestion of wedding bells and like a barometer which enables you to measure your audience = marriage is conveyed in another, while a third has for its theme

in a musical way.” the patriotic thought, for which we used E. E. Bagley’s famous

Ted Lewis is aman of many methods, but through all of his = National Emblem March to give our interpretation of a small work he has had as inseparable companions his alpaca suit,a town band out to do its bit on Independence Day. great flaring cape and a battered two-gallon hat. He has utilized “In presenting these numbers we have been guided by what various eccentric dances; his juggling, singing and work with the = we know that men and women enjoy, what they understand and clarinet and saxophone have all served him at various times, but — what will satisfy them. We must strive to entertain the public, through it all the alpaca suit, cape and hathave come down through _and to do it successfully we must make our music conform to the years with Lewis. They are traditional with him and always —_— public demands. Conditions are always changing and we are

have been and probably always will be associated with him. compelled to govern our work by always playing the music that Ted Lewis started out in 1917 with his jazz band. He had __sis in the air and in such a way as to please people. four men, the instrumentation of his band being cornet, trom- “We know that men and women appreciate our efforts, not bone, piano and drums. He used what was considered at that only from the applause that comes to us but from letters that we time an odd combination, but the success of his first bandinthe —__ receive from time to time, and best of all through personal con-

years that followed was due to methods, with the versatile Ted — tact. One of the letters that I have received and which I prize being the man back of the methods. To show his faith in the |= came from the late E. E. Bagley, composer of the National original instrumentation he has added a cornet, trombone and Emblem March. He spoke highly of our program. This letter is bass horn, and he now contends that he has the most effective | but one of anumber received and indicates that men and women

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APRIL 19 ¢ MELODY 1923 will not hesitate to commend your work, to offer suggestions order to cultivate a taste for it on the part of the public.”

and even ideas at times.” He contends that the use of original ideas has saved many Speaking of popular songs, Lewis stated that in his opin- a song and that interpretation is the keynote to putting over ion Dardanella was one of the best written song hits turned = any number. out in a decade. He spoke enthusiastically of Fair One, which Ted Lewis has an ambition, it being to carry syncopation to he wrote with George Mallen, and of his latest number, Bees’ _all classes of people; to utilize his nimble feet in eccentric dances, Knees. Lewis has written the lyrics foranumber of songs and _ to juggle his clarinet and saxophone and bring from both strange

devotes a large part of his time to writing. and weird harmonics intermingled with those uncanny meloLewis believes that song hits may be so original as to “go _ dies that are, according to Lewis, “truly American, because they over big at the start or it may be necessary toplay upasongin represent the thoughts and emotions of our people.”

April 13 ¢ Music Leader A JAZZ CONFERENCE The misdemeanors of jazz are to be brought before ahighcourt, _ public schools is a joke. There are exceptions to this as to every

for Frederick Stock, conductor of the Chicago Symphony Or- other rule. There is jazz—and jazz, and Mr. Stock has played chestra, and music supervisors in public schools are to meet —_ jazzy syncopation in both his symphony and popular concerts, next Saturday to discuss this most vital subject. They will de- where also were heard Percy Grainger and the duelists, Maier termine if the school children are to be deprived of their chief —_and Pattison, in their picturesque razzling, dazzling, jazzling. It

rhythmic outlet. was such glorious musical fooling that the audience literally Jazz has been the means of interesting many who otherwise _ate it up. Instead of discussing the elimination of the rhythmic would have registered an abhorrence of music as taughtin pub- —jazz, Mr. Stock and the enlightened progressive element among lic institutions—high schools, grade schools, kindergartens and _ the supervisors would be more advantageously employed in fornormal schools. Anything worse than much of the mis-named — mulating a plan whereby music education for school children singing, piano vamping and thumping accompaniments cannot — would be placed in the hands of musicians who have studied be imagined. In comparison jazz is musical manna from Heaven. the subject under competent teachers in the large private colSome two or three of the supervisors are trained musicians, oth- —_ leges and conservatories. The present generation of Americans ers were picking out the notes of The Maiden’s Prayer before —_ will never become musical until conditions are changed in the the Civil War, and many of them would flounder onaC major _ public schools. Mr. Stock, who has been responsible for so many scale. Not to mince words much of the music teaching in the —_ innovations and reforms, can now tackle this problem and try to find a solution.

April 19 ¢ Melody JAZZING JAZZ TO DEATH They say the jazz craze is passing. Exactly what is meant by Humor in Our Music Jazz 1s not always clear. It is a much abused and misused a merican popular music is essentially humorous even the word. Jazz such as darkened the musical sky of four or five “blues” are often so funny that everybody laughs. From the years ago, is now seldom heard even in the alleged jazz qaughing trombone” to the “moaning saxophone” everything records. Many people mistake the fox trot rhythm, or any i. performed with an eye for sprightly humor. Negroid tunes marked rhythm for j azz. Some 80 SO far as to call all dance and manner of interpretation, featured in many current musical music by that term. This is in error, just as it was in error sivjes. often yield a humorous way of rendering a basically sad before the jazz craze started to term every bit of live MUSIC subject. The Negroid melody and words coupled with it may rag time.” Some instrumentalists think they are “Jazzing’ emphasize a troubled heart over some unfaithful lady love, but a tune when they play a Species of grace notes to which the heaviness of heart is usually interpreted in as funny a way their instruments are specially adapted. It is a matter of opin- as a Negro camp meeting song. ion whether this is really jazz, certainly if not done to ex- No one can claim that American native music is surfeited with cess it will be scarcely objectionable. The so-called jazz the biting weariness and cynic languor of say, Russian music. We effects of the best dance or chestr as today are mild in com- emphasize optimism in our tunes and the way we interpret them parison with the out and out jazz orchestras of a few years and not the crass pessimism of some foreign schools which the ago. This may be evidence that the jazz craze is really dy- unthinking sometimes hold up as models. Perhaps we have some

ing out, slowly but surely. faults, but we’ll remain optimistic with our music.

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1923 MAY ¢ METRONOME April 26 ¢ Music Leader “HIGH CLASS” JAZZ Jazz, as symbolized by Hugo Rieseneld, is to be handeddownto _ ing from a dance form into a concert composition. Our most dignifuture generations through the Music Department of the Library _fied music forms began as dances and musicians have learned that of Congress. Carl Engel head of the Music Department, has re- the source of a form is not a stigma upon a style of composition. Our quested the managing director of the Rivoli, Rialto and Criterion great symphonies are examples of how beautifully a dance or a se-

Theaters to deposit with the library, the scores of the classical ries of dances can be developed. The history of music shows the jazz selections which have been a feature of the Reisenfeld The- _ progression of several crude dances into elaborate and musical forms ater programs. Mr. Engel was so impressed by the fine musician- _ and their final acceptance. The sarabande was originally banned by ship in the classical jazz arrangements that he expressed the wish __ royal edict and the gavotte was denounced as an instrument of the

that the scores be deposited in the Library of Congress. Euro- devil. Even the waltz, the delight of our grandparents, was scowled pean capitals have heard of the classical jazz and Mr. Riesenfeld upon until Johann Strauss wrote his magnificent concert waltzes and has been urged to take the scores with him when he goestoEn- —_ Brahms expressed regret that he had not been the composer of The gland, France, Switzerland, Germany and Austria the last week © Blue Danube. Acentury ago Byron bitterly denounced the waltz—

in April, so that composers and musicians there can have first today we consider it a graceful, though old-fashhand information regarding this newest form of music. ioned, form. Mr. Riesenfeld predicts that if jazz continues to make the re- “Noisy presentations of jazz are on the wane and the musimarkable progress in the future that it has in the past few years, it | cal expression of the fox trot will be one of the newest and will ultimately find its way to the concert hall. Other forms of | more popular forms. With its shifted rhythms, its unexpected composition, such as the sarabande, the waltz and the gavotte, accents, its colorful orchestrations of musical counterpoint and began just as jazz has, in simple, sometimes in crude form. harmony, it is being developed into an art form of great origi“Jazz is merely a colloquial term,” says the young musician, _nality and freshness. It is vivacious and sparkling, irresponsible “and may pass, but the music form will probably remain, develop- and typically American.”

May 31 ¢ Music Courter REPRESENTATIVES OF 2,000,000 WOMEN, MEETING IN ATLANTA, VOTE TO ANNIHILATE JAZZ

Atlanta Ga., May 15 man of the state committee on citizenship, and Mrs. Alonzo Among the many interesting resolutions passed by the General _ Richardson, vice-president of the Atlanta Music Festival AssoFederation of Women’s Clubs, at the biennial in Atlanta which ciation. The subject was summed up by one of the speakers as ended May 12, was a move to annihilate jazz in the United States. follows: “Jazz is having a bad effect on our girls and boys and Delegations from forty thousand clubs representing two mil- on society in general. It must go and concerted action by the lion members discussed and passed the resolution. Among the |= women’s clubs of America will wipe it out of existence. Let us leaders of the crusade are Mrs. Basil Manley Boykin, president furnish real music for our young folks—but no jazz.” of the Atlanta Women’s club; Mrs. Norman C. Sharpe, chair- [The remainder of the article did not concern jazz.— KK. ]

May ¢ Metronome ARE AMERICAN HOTELS SPONSORING A TRULY NATIONAL MUSIC? by Carleton L. Colby The managers of our leading metropolitan hotels and amuse- —_— phonic Composers, but most of the critics overlook the fact that ment gardens who engage high price dance orchestras for the _q truly national music must be based on the music of the masses. entertainment of their patrons are indirectly doing more to pro- Every great composer from Bach and Beethoven down to the

mote the cause of American music than any other class. present has drawn freely from the tunes of his own people. A This statement seems a little absurd at first glance, particu- —_ Russian peasant will thrill at every note of a Tschaikowsky Symlarly so when it will be recalled that all music critics, newspa- —_ phony because it is built up of songs he has sung and the rhythm

per paragraphers and professional reformers have raised their —_ to which he has danced. The Italian weeps when he hears the

voices in concert protesting at what they term “Jazz.” long-drawn-out thirds and sixths of his infancy reflected in the We hear a great deal about Opera in English and read long _ Italian Opera. Yet our writers take every opportunity to scoff at essays concerning the chances of developing home grownSym- —_ our own popular music and wonder why Yankees do not crowd

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MAY ¢ METRONOME 1923 the music halls to hear an American Symphony based on Afri- out the major thirds of the Cantus Infirmus a half a beat behind can dirges written by a Bohemian, and fail to enthuse over an _ or ahead of his fellow conspirators. The whole proceeding was

American Grand Opera built around Indian themes. an intentional music joke. We are at present developing a popular music that is fully as

characteristic as that of any other nation and through the efforts Our Jazz Legacy of those who engage these high-grade organizations, it is gradu-

ally assuming the proportions of an entirely new art form. One Our legacy from these jesters of the court of music has been could easily trace its evolution from the days of our firsthome —1uite considerable, however. We have learned the value of the ballads and country dances with the later influences of ragtime Saxophone family as actual musical instruments—expressive, and “Jazz,” until at the present time when musicians of sym- flexible and agile, blending beautifully with the brass, wood or phonic caliber are lending their art to blend the whole into a _‘Strings. They taught us the possibilities of many drummer’s traps truly national music. Our dance tunes of today are much more __ that, in the hands of a first-rate performer, are now extremely American than the so-called “American” language and, as played effective. They also willed us the Banjo, which has a legitimate

by these clever dance orchestras, are real music. place in dance music. In phonographic records it is valuable for the purpose of marking the rhythm. In forte passages it is un-

What Is Good Music? doubtedly effective, but many leaders seem to feel that its conWe do not expect Brahms worshippers to acknowledge that there tant use is rather monotonous, and banjo players who can is any merit in our home grown product, and Americans who “double” are in increasing demand. have spent ten years of their lives studying theory in Leipzig With this wealth of material, these newly formed bands started will naturally be a little scornful. So we come back to the old _—‘the work of building. With the tunes of the masses—the songs question, “What is good music?” To the gentlemen we have __ that one hears whistled on the streets—as a base, they conjust mentioned, Hungarian Dance Music, German Waltzes, or _Structed little fantasies of their own—not impromptu, but carecharming little pieces written in 1714 (the bass all on two notes) ‘fully worked out and rehearsed—each man contributing his are all tolerable, but anything of American production is im- Uta of ideas. The regular printed orchestrations gave them

possible. And saxophones and banjos!—good night! ample opportunity for the display of their peculiar talents, but, Is it possible for dance tunes to have any artistic merit? Is 1" Many cases, some of the players had sufficient knowledge of Alice in Wonderland any less a classic because Macbeth and _—_—‘™usical theory to work out quite original arrangements.

Paradise Lost are literary masterpieces? Why compare Narcis- However, they soon reached their limit. It was like a drasus with Thus Spake Zarathustra? Is not a little tone poem in Matic company writing their own plays. Therefore, they found fox-trot time with all the elements of melody and counter melody _‘!t necessary to make it worth the time of musicians skilled in embellished with dainty figurations, tricky rhythmical effects, _ the arts of orchestration who had thorough grounding in counmodern harmony and constantly shifting tone color constructed _ ‘e*point and construction to score their fox-trot rhapsodies. Anby a writer of natural ability and long training and played by an _—therr interchange of ideas followed and the new dance form ensemble of real artists at least comparable with a Strauss Waltz? began to take shape. Strauss Waltzes are good music—ask any German musician. Here we have the nucleus of areal American School of Music: But what has all this to do with landlords of hotels you may‘ ™usic for Americans played by Americans in a thoroughly charask? In the endeavor to give their patrons the kind of entertain- teristic manner and like nothing else under the sun. Let our ment that they desired, the country was scoured in search of | ambitious symphonists gather their material from this native talent for the formation of novelty dance orchestras, attracted field —a harmonic idiom different from anything to be found in by offers of long engagements at unheard-of salaries. They found _ the text books, rhythmical effects absolutely bewildering, new themselves playing beside recruits from the Jazz orchestra— tone colors, a vastly improved technique in the brass instruthose self-taught musicians with plenty of original ideas and - Ments, the introduction of instruments not generally used in much practical experience. One learned from the other and the Orchestras, tricks of voice-leading in the inner parts that are blend of ideas resulted in the formation of ensembles of anen- _ Startling in their novelty. Study these and apply them to symtirely novel type: performers on brass instruments with atech- Phonic music. Learn the possibilities of the trombone, the trumnique hitherto unheard of and with an abundance of tricks and Pet, the chimes and the saxophone family from these new effects of their own invention not to be found in the instruction @%gles—then we may talk about the American Symphony. books; wood wind players who could perform on several dif-

ferent instruments with equal facility; young pianists brought Unlimited Possibilities up on Liszt and Chopin who turned to American music from the sheer love of it and who furnish a shimmering, sparkling The players and the arrangers have just awakened to the possi-

background of light, intricate figuration to the ensemble. bilities of this new field and are constantly striving for someThese superb orchestras are a national evolution from the thing better. Some of our best orchestral arrangers are devoting first jazz bands—those wild exponents of deliberate cacophony their entire time to the construction of fantasies in fox-trot time where all hands extemporized variations with maddening em- _‘for the use of these organizations, and although much of the phasis on uncanny minor thirds while a solo instrument wailed thematic material is derived from the popular songs of the day,

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1923 JUNE ¢ THE ETUDE the tendency seems to be in the other direction, original themes oped ear for music and a couple of assistants to help him take that are suited for orchestral development, which may be re- = down shorthand notes.

modeled into songs of a later period. We will acknowledge that there is an occasional tendency to Owing to the desire for exclusive material, most of these — revert to the merely funny noises of our great national joke, orchestras engage an arranger versed in the intricacies of their “Jazz,” but, in spite of that, we are bound to realize something craft to supply them with made to order poems—which they artistically worth while, and the chances are that our national music keep locked up in the vault—and the outsider who wishes to _ of the future will owe more to the hotel man who unconsciously ascertain the secrets of this new magic will need ahighly devel- _laid its foundations, than to the societies that subscribe large sums to send our promising young composers to Rome.

June ¢ The Etude THE JAZZ FIDDLER The Jazz fiddler—you have heard him—you hear him every day, In both cases there would be a one-finger slide to the top at dances, hotels, restaurants, vaudeville, and sometimes inregu- — note. The educated violinist would play such a passage as follar theatrical productions, whining, yowling and shrieking likea —_ lows:

lost soul in the feline Hades. Ex. 2 The United States has the doubtful honor of having given birth ————-

to anew school of violin playing—the jazz. Starting as a novelty 2 _# a few years ago, the jazz band and orchestra have multiplied like the rabbits in Australia. Unfortunately the popularity of this type of music has grown in like ratio. Every once in a while we hear

that “jazz” is dying out; but this does not seem to be the case, and It will be noted in this manner of shifting that the second its popularity still seems to be in the ascendant. The great major- finger slides only to B, when the fourth finger strikes the note D ity of the dance music of the American people is of the jazz de- —_—_‘ forcibly. The slide is thus broken at the note B, and there is no

scription. When a dance orchestra is to be engaged evenoursoci- __ slide from B to D, thus obviating the whining effect of the unety people almost invariably engage the “Syncopating Snorters,’ —_ broken slide. As the shift is made very rapidly, the small note B

instead of the “Mozart Sextette.” The young people seem to pre- _1s not heard, and the effect on the ear is that of a clean legato fer to dance to jazz. The applause which greets the efforts of jazz § from Gto D. The effect of the continuous slide is broken, and performers, at hotels, restaurants and vaudeville shows proves __ the result is most artistic. that it is extremely popular with the people.

Imitations Glissando Ad Nauseam Some jazz fiddlers also introduce bird calls and imitations of The art of the jazz violinist, if art it can be called, is foundedon —_ animals in their playing, together with all manner of grotesque the continual use of the glissando, that is, unbroken one-finger noises which they are able to imagine. It is likely that the jazz slides, ad nauseum. Now, nothing is more sickening to the ear _ players borrowed their ideas of this continuous sliding from the of an educated violinist, or the refined ear of areal musician, old-time country fiddlers who were strong for the slide, and than the constant use of these unbroken slides. Itis true thatthe —_ never lost an opportunity of employing it. There is something glissando is occasionally introduced in artistic and legitimate __ in the taste of uneducated musicians, and their hearers, who are violin playing; but this is only at rare intervals andin passages _—_ capable of comprehending only the lower types of music, which where it heightens the expression and is acceptable to a cculti- _ seems to find keen delight in these continuous one-finger slides.

vated ear. We find the same grace (?) employed by the jazz slide-tromThe jazz fiddler does all his shifting by the one-finger route, _ bone players. I often have had pupils apply for lessons who had and even at times slides between notes in the first position, where —_ learned to play the violin by ear, or “air,” as they called it, and

no shifting is involved. who had taken as their model some country fiddler, who would Expressed in notation, the jazz player would make the shift —_ do all their shifting with one-finger slides, and would even slide

given as below: the fingers between notes in the first position, frequently. They

Ex. 1 considered this sliding a great beauty, and it was often very difficult to wean them away from the habit.

a ay! 4 bd ~ 2 Primitive people and savages like this sliding. The Chinese Z — z fiddle has only one string, and no fingerboard, so naturally, Chinese fiddle technic is a case of “slide-slide-slide.” Still I know of not a few musicians who would as soon listen to a Chinese or-

240

JUNE e¢ VANITY FAIR 1923 chestra as an American jazz orchestra with its whining fiddlers, a burlesque on what true music should be, it would not be so moaning saxophones, plunking banjos and whanging cow-bells. —_ bad. But when they go to one or two dances a week and listen to

it from three to five hours in one evening, besides hearing it

The Primitive Fiddle frequently at parties, receptions, and other social gatherings as well as at the theaters, it cannot but have a serious effect in a The Arabian fiddle, and those of many Oriental countries, also —s musical way on the growing mind of the young.

have one string and no fingerboard; so their manipulation is The only possible use I can see in jazz, to the young violinist

also very much a case of the slide. or music student, is that when listening to it he should try to The present vogue of jazz will surely do a great deal of in- impress on his mind to avoid as far as possible the style and jury to the musical taste of the rising generation, and to the —_ execution of the music he is listening to and he ought to listen development of our young violinists. In addition to the out- _to very, very little of it even for this purpose. If a young person landish noises produced by the jazzers, the style of composi- _associates with refined, cultivated people, who talk good gramtions produced by the composers of “jazz” of the presentdayis = mar, with pleasing, well-modulated tones, he instinctively grows banal and demoralizing to the last degree. How can a young __like them. If he associates with rough boors, whose conversaviolinist or other music student listen to this stuff constantly, tion teems with bad grammar, profanity, and bad taste, he will without having his taste corrupted? We have “this blues” and also come to be like them. It is the same with the young musical “that blues,” and all sorts of demoralizing rubbish, written in student who listens to jazz many hours a week; he will likewise the worst possible taste and examples of the lowest type of music. | become corrupted in musical taste, and his performance on his If jazz was only heard occasionally by our young people as__ instrument will thus suffer.

June ¢ Metronome WOLVERINE BLUES A BIG HIT AS FEATURED BY NEW ORLEANS RHYTHM KINGS Some few months ago the New Orleans Rhythm Kings (formerly — to Chicago and introduced at Lincoln Gardens by Joe Oliver Friars Society Orchestra) made their first record for the Gennett and his Creole Jazz Band, and was an instantaneous hit. Chi-

Company, which became popular immediately. cago orchestra leaders began making inquiries about the numThis organization came to Chicago some eighteen months __ ber and were informed that it was as yet unpublished. ago from New Orleans to fill an engagement at Friars Inn where About this time, Walter Melrose of the Melrose Bros. Music they have become big favorites with the dance enthusiasts of | Co. happened to drop in to Lincoln Gardens and upon hearing that city. They have just recently resumed their title of New the number also became very enthusiastic over it. Negotiations Orleans Rhythm Kings, which was the name of the band before —_ were started at once with the writers on the coast for publishing it came to Chicago. Their style of playing is typical oftherhythm __ rights, and within a week’s time, the deal was completed. played by all southern bands, and their records have a dance The number has been recorded on practically all mechanicals punch that is irresistible. Wolverine Blues, one of their latest | from manuscript copy, and will be released in sheet music form

recordings, promises to be one of the biggest selling dance immediately. There will also be an immediate release of the records they have ever made, and they feature the number nightly orchestrations. Melrose Bros. Music Co. are planning an extenupon their dance program at Friars Inn. This number was writ- sive Campaign on the number and begin real work on it about ten by J. Spikes, B. Spikes and Jelly Roll Morton. Itwas brought May 1.

June ¢ Vanity Fair JAZZ: A BRIEF HISTORY A Consideration of Negro Harmonies and Modern Dance Music by Samuel Chotzinoff Every so often someone writes to a newspaper about Jazz. The — simple enumeration of these names the writer considers his case writer, with an almost religious fervor, dissects the current popu- _ settled, and is content to remain, etc., “one who loves music.”

lar tunes, assures us of their utter vulgarity, and finds in them the There is at once a rush to arms. The head of the Music Desource of all sorts of contemporary degeneration. The spirits of | partment of a well-known college thanks the writer for his clarion all the great composers from Bach to Brahms are invoked; witha | admonition. It is about time, he thinks, that we return to a state 241

1923 JUNE e VANITY FAIR of sanity. There are at present languishing any number of re- = Negro spirituals which have lain buried for half a century. In fined American composers whose only chance of a public hear- their stead we have had the Negro paraphrases of Stephen Fosing lies in the hands of a fashionable but ineffectual Society for ter, a refined drawing-room emanation of these tunes. These the Encouragement of American Music. America, he goes on, __ have had a tremendous vogue here and have passed for indigdoes nothing for its native Music, while the smallest nationon | enous Negro tunes abroad. Though they have charm and a certhe Continent builds opera houses, grants subsidies and alto- _ tain simplicity these paraphrases are pure white, and bear the gether considers music an important enough business for gov- _—_— same relation to the real Negro that a current Irish vaudeville ernmental interference. The result is that, while the German peas- song bears to a genuine, ancient Irish folk-tunes, like Molly ant goes about his work whistling the Andante from Brahms’ _ Brannigan. Fourth, the American man in the street goes about whistling

Stumbling or Yoo-Hoo or whatever vulgarity is at the moment in The Birth of “Lisa Jane”

the ascendant. To this there is a stinging reply from the president of a —_ But the genuine Negro spirituals (first introduced here by Alma popular music-publishing company, insisting that the music | Gluck) are, in their way, comparable to the folk-tunes of any published by his house is clean entertainment for the masses. | European nation. They are the musical expression of a great He points to the reverent treatment of the domestic virtues, the | group of American peasants, who became identified with the deification of parenthood and the little old homestead. Toclinch native soil through a century of compulsory labor on it. The the argument there soon appears an interview with afamous — music that arose from them was a confused mixture of vague pianist who avers that he is just crazy about Jazz and finds ita | African apprehensions, the breath of the fields and a crazy, degreat relaxation after a concert of serious music. This sort of | vout Methodism which had become mystical through a realiza-

thing recurs ad infinitum... . tion that only in religion could they find escape from hopeless

slavery. Thus many of these Spirituals attain a lyrical rapture in

The Invasion of Europe their adoration of God and their expectation of the promised

comforts in Heaven compared with which even the psalms of Meanwhile, the popularity of American jazz music, both here David seem to lack fire. The sheer musical quality peculiar to and abroad, is beyond dispute. As far back as 1920—-and inthe _ these tunes is no less remarkable, and, strange as it may seem, it history of Jazz that is a long time—most of the large cities in _is this which forms the basis and salient peculiarity of presentEurope had succumbed. In the winter of that year I found in —_ day jazz. most of the cafes of Paris two orchestras: an American Jazz The Negro spiritual has two characteristics: one, an insistent band and the usual French orchestra which played only tango and lively two-four rhythm which, being started, is carried along and waltzes. While the French band played, most of the patrons by the momentum of its start. This almost living beat is the base remained at their tables; with the first crash of American banjo for every kind of sentiment and passion the Negro slave felt and snare-drum, there was a rising en masse and a rush for the and expressed. It is the frame for the naive J Got a Shoe and the floor. In London the better hotels and dance-clubs hadimported _ passionately mystical J Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray. It is this American bands. In Berlin, though the music was entirely Ameri- _ relentless pushing onward of the music that carries swiftly over can, the orchestra was native, with aconsequentloss,itmustbe — sentimentalities and strengthens extravagant ecstasies. His con-

added, of brilliancy and “pep.” fused reaction to a complex and alien religion is borne with a It is not surprising that America and England, nations with- _— pathetic dignity on the stream of this throbbing mingling of out a musical culture or tradition of their own, have embraced time and sound. Jazz; but that France, with a peculiar and definite musical idiom The other characteristic of this music, of course an outgrowth extending over a period of several centuries, andthatGermany, __ of the first, is its physical effect on the listener. In the Negroes which has been to music what Italy has been to painting, have —_—‘ themselves it produced a sort of rhapsodical epilepsy of which

both succumbed so wholly to Jazz music, is astonishing. A se- the lingering effects may be observed in street-corner Negro rious analysis and appraisal of Jazz should reveal either adeg- —_— revivalists, and indeed in the antics of our own Billy Sunday, radation of the artistic sensibilities of nations hitherto notable who not unwisely adopted the Negro idea. The effect of this in the development of music, or new and unsuspected meritsin = rhythm on the white race is no less marked, though less ex-

the quality of the American creation. travagantly so. There is an irresistible inclination to bodily timeThe failure of America to develop a definite musical artis | marking: a lifting of shoulders, a rolling of eyes, a swaying of often explained from many points of view by economists, eth- the head (the latter a conspicuous feature, I believe, of what is nologists, historians and psychologists. But from a musician’s known as “collegiate” dancing). There is an inevitable longing viewpoint, the chief deterrent is the absence of acomprehen- _ to let this extraordinary rhythmic force take possession of one’s sive body of folk-tunes. That, as a basis and quarry yielding — body and works its will—like the devils that were believed to solid, earthy matter for the artist to weld into whatever form the —— enter the bodies of sinners in mediaeval or Puritan times. The combination of national and individual genius makes possible, _ reaction to this rhythm is universal and as compelling as a natuseemed to be non-existent. I say seemed, because we are only _ ral force. now unearthing a mass of such folk-tunes under the name of

242

JUNE e VANITY FAIR 1923 The Triumph of the Negro spectable distinction. But it lacked the inherent vitality to give it

a genuine popularity. The entertainments concocted by George

At the end of the eighties the Negro who had come north dis- —_ q_ Cohan were no better, though he advanced the metronome a

covered the commercial value of his own reaction to his own few notches. He, too, took his cue from the jigging Negro. music. He went on the stage and delighted white audiences with It is worth noticing that this conglomerate of popular art was dances of a character elemental, whole-hearted and extravagant, —_ unknown and unheeded outside America. Here musicians treated

quite alien to the deliberate and lifeless gyrations to which the sx, with ontempt. It never attained to the dignity of controversy. whites were accustomed. His native religious music could hardly On the Continent, where there had evolved a lighter music of have an appreciable effect on white people or even on the, by harm and distinction, it was quite unknown. this time, free and equal Northern blacks. He retained the vital

and living rhythm of his folk-tune as a foundation and lure and, , ,

on that, he erected a structure of entertainment that should rep- Mister Jazz Himself resent and flatter the taste of the day. He danced the cake-walk, There were at that time in New York, and probably in other cities

in elaboration of the courtly minuet, which he galvanized into a. well, a number of dance halls of a livelier character than the life by a substitution of the two-four for the three-four beat.He =. yay “Academies” frequented by the polite youth of the me“strutted.” He jigged. Soon the demand for Negro entertainers tropolis. These were in the Negro quarter, run by Negroes, at outgrew the supply, and white dancers and comedians found it first. for their own race. Gradually, white folk, weary of the uninprofitable to cork their faces and imitate their more gifted col- spired, insipid tum-tum-tum of their own dance orchestras, visored competitors. The black-faced minstrel show became the _ ited these questionable places and discovered a regime of the

vogue and earned large profits. liveliest description. In smoke-filled back-rooms of saloons cirMeantime, it must be noted, the advance of the black enter- —_cyjated dancers engaged in tortuous and unseemly revolutions tainer in public favor imposed a corresponding deterioration in —_ 45 the blare of barbaric, blatant orchestras.

the quality of his stuff. The native element became threadbare; The instruments were as nondescript as the players. A piano these shows became whiter and whiter until nothing remained stripped of its top and bottom coverings, the complete mecha-

but a rhythmical patter of feet. nism showing like the skeleton of a prehistoric monster. A few fiddles, a saxophone, a banjo, a drum and endless instruments

The Irish Movement for the making of sheer noise. Whistles, cymbals, cocoanut oo , shells, narrles [sic], all manipulated with amazing dexterity by the

The quality of the white American contribution to the gaiety of person at the drum. The entire orchestra behaved not unlike a that same period was a mixture of vulgarity and sentimentality, party of dancing dervishes. They sang as they played, leaned unredeemed by any suggestion of vigor or health. At that time forward, stood up in their chairs, moaned, flung instruments New York was Irish: the Irish immigration had reacheditsheight —jnto the air and recovered them without missing a beat, This and the Tammany Hall organization was in complete posses- madness communicated itself to the dancers on the floor: they sion of the city. America was singing Sweet Rosy O'Grady, swayed and clung to one another in a manner then considered Tammany and numerous similar ditties. The languid waltz shocking. was in the ascendant and the average topical song was at heart The tunes played by these orchestras were, for the most part,

awaltz. . . Negro improvisations but, also, they “ragged” the current tunes. The subject matter, when not Irish , sang of the beauties ofa ——-That is to say, they subjected these tunes to a rhythmical metaSunday afternoon in the merry month of June and the bound- —_inorphosis. The erstwhile waltz or two-step, ambling sluggishly

less opportunities for a spoon in Central Park or at the Coney aiong became, in their hands, a fervent quickstep. The familiar Island sea-escape. The amorous effect of the waltz were cel- and anemic complexion of these familiar melodies was charged ebrated in the famous Waltz Me Around Again, Willie. Adeeper and quickened with the old irresistible beat of the spiritual. note was struck by things like My Evening Star, which the late The thing caught on quickly and only waited on some astute

Aching aera cts er Spain orm * 0 wansien of person to secure its complete acceptance by toning down its

oe reed racial extravagances. The tradition must not be too abrupt. The

plague of childishly patriotic songs, for the most part in waltz pew music was presented to the public by Mr. Irving Berlin, not time. Break the News to Mother was both melting and danceable. directly as a complete invention of his own, but a sort of innuAll this is not far removed from the present-day lyric; but endo, In Alexander’s Rag-Time Band, Mr. Berlin called univerthe difference lies here: in the old songs, the meanness of the 5 ava ae, h Mets olit on G and O . Comms ° A ; something more soothing. He is famous for his handling of the the d season 0 i" © le Nan ch peta -ompany: ha cymbals. He can make them tinkle or crash at will. His drumsticks

SO ine CrurMmers We Nave a ways wi us——more s o now t an may describe fascinating parabolas in the air, but his eye is ever

ever—on ly, the modern drummer ts a complicated piece of musi- on the conductor and he is a master of rhythm and the personi-

cal precision. . fication of precision. 374

JANUARY 10 © SATURDAY EVENING POST 1925 For fifty of his fifty-six years Mr. Helmecke has been drum- _ Hill Lyceum, near Thirty-fourth Street and Third Avenue, in 1911.

ming on bass, snare or kettle drums. He is the highest-priced Soon after that tragedy the band disbanded. man in his profession, the prince of percussionists. It is not an The bass drums of commerce come in assorted sizes from the empty honor. He has devoted his life to his art, principally the art | tango, which is eight inches across the shell and twenty-four

of the big bass drum. inches across the head, to the large street drum, which is twenty inches across the shell and forty inches across the head. A

Spide and His Big Bass Drum drummer who can carry and play one of the latter, especially

when rain is falling during a five-mile street parade, can qualify That same bass drum has brought fame to many men and in _for the middleweight wrestling championship of the world. But divers ways. There was Spide Lawrence of the University of — out colleges, always keen about higher education and one anMinnesota band. Spide wasn’t much of a musician, buthe inher- _ other, are going in for superbass drums, known on the campus ited a sense of rhythm from his father, who ran a flour mill at —_as bull drums and in the trade as publicity drums. Wabash. So when Spide entered the university he attached him- A few years ago Purdue University, famous for its engineering self to the bass drum to escape military drill, and made the at- _ school, but not so famous for its football, decided its squad needed tachment so mutual that no subsequent applicant could pry him inspiration. So Purdue’s band marched on the field one day conloose—until the Spanish-American War took the thirteenth Min- —__ voying the largest bass drum in the world. The instrument of nesota Infantry to the Philippines. Spide wanted to go. So did _ percussion was forty-five inches across the wooden shell and

the rest of us unenlisted persons. seven feet three inches in diameter across the head. Each drum There didn’t seem to be a chance in the world for Spide. _ head represented the life endeavor of one of the largest bulls Spide was short for Spider. He was built that way, muchtoo light — consigned to the Chicago stockyards. The drum manufacturer for his length, according to military regulations. But he passed had waited a long time for the two big bulls to arrive.

the medical examination and rolled over to Manila on his big This giant granddaddy of drums rested on a three-wheeled bass drum. It was one of the longest bass drum rolls on record. carriage, hauled by two men. Another man beat it, here and Spide distinguished himself in the Orient as a thumper of _ there. The magic word “Purdue” was done on each head in large Filipinos as well as a thumper of drums. It was yearslater when _ letters and Purdue colors. The first time it appeared at a Chisome of us who didn’t get past the doctor learned that Spide — cago-Purdue football game, the Chicago student body almost had hired a substitute with the proper specifications to take his = mobbed it. After a heated exchange of telegrams, a rival manumilitary medical examination. But he wouldn’t have dared do _facturer was commissioned to make a bigger drum for Chicago that if he had not possessed the self-determination of the born —_ University—-promptly. The Chicago stockyards were again ran-

bass drummer. sacked for superbulls. The word flashed from pen to pen. Big Many men of wealth have beaten bass drums for the sheer _ bulls shrank visibly. But the two largest were finally identified, love of the sport, but as far as I know, Simon E. Bernheimer, of _ dispatched and skinned. The skins were shaved, scraped, seaNew York, was our only bona fide millionaire bass drummer. soned and again scraped. So far as mere hides would go, those From 1890 to 1910 he was the official bass drummer of the Amicitia —_ bulls were butchered to make a Chicago holiday. Presently the

Band of Manhattan, a meritorious musical organization popu- = Chicago University band appeared with a drum with a head larly known as the Millionaires’ Band, because somany mon- _ diameter of more than eight feet.

eyed men participated in its performance. Other institutions of high learning are searching the world Charles E. Lauten, still a prosperous real-estate man in the —_ for super-superbulls whose hides may be made into bass-drum Riverside region, was one of the band’s guiding spiritsand played —_heads. A good deal has been said of late about the wild bull of with finesse on clarinet, cornet, French horn, tuba, trombone, or —_ the pampas. If the college chaps will take a tip from me they will whatever was most in demand; but Simon stuck tohis bigdrum. —_look well to Argentina. Some of the biggest bulls in the world

He was a commanding figure, even in comparison with Mr. _ roam its plains. I know, for I have seen them. Lauten, who won first prize in the first baby show staged in this

country by P.T. Barnum in 1862. The Master of the Traps Simon continued to command the band’s bass drum after he became head of a New York brewery. And to some extent the | Though the bass drummer possesses weight and authority, the performances were command performances. For Simonnotonly —_ trap drummer is the real class in musical America. Jazz has enchipped in with his $1000 when the annual Carnegie Hallcon- __ throned him. The trap drummer, be it known, is both a snare and certs showed a large deficit; he also supplied ample refresh- | bass drummer and a player of parts—all the percussion parts of ments when the band rehearsed at the Brewers’ Exchange in =a syncopated world. He is the acme of imitation and a versatile Fifteenth Street. So the wise conductor of this de luxe amateur __ personality in the field of beats and after-beats. He is, among band used to write special music with special drum parts, andif others, Jimmy Lent. Jimmy pounds a bass drum with one foot, the regular music failed to take cognizance of the bass drum __ strokes a snare drum with both hands, and between times proSimon interpolated when the spirit moved him; andhe stayedin —_ duces all the effects known to trap drumming, which are many. the harness to the end. He dropped dead over his beloved drum It was during one of Jimmy’s eight years in the orchestra pit of during a band rehearsal of Wagner’s Evening Star atthe Murray — the New York Hippodrome that Sousa came forward with his war-

375

1925 JANUARY 10 ¢ SATURDAY EVENING POST time march, The Volunteers, depicting a scene in a busy shipyard. Hence the manufacturers are forever exercising their ingenuSousa asked for a riveting effect. Jimmy obliged. He attached a __ ity. New traps are made overnight, new effects are announced, piece of iron to the wheel of an electric motor, fixed another piece —_and the trap drummers buy them

of iron so the first would hit it, and turned on the current. He A young nephew of mine with the call of the wild trap drumnamed it Trap number 76. Later he substituted a soft seat cushion mers in his pink ears came into money last winter. Prior to inherfor the second piece of iron, proceeded to “putt” like a motor-boat iting wealth this boy—Hector, by name—had been devoted to

and called it Trap number 77. His seventy-five other traps in- the classics and archaeology. Moreover, he was a shy young cluded a cloth ripper, laugh machine, wind machine and cricket. thing, exceptionally diffident. He possessed a #100 set of drums One wanders far when he enters the field of drummers’ traps. and traps upon which he created an occasional uproar in priJimmy Lent, in his role of star trap drummer must have the flexibil- = vate. But no sooner did his fingers clutch his legacy than he ity of a contortionist and exceptionally agile hands and feet to | became the percussion department of the Hokeville Jazz Band. catch the cues that opera, musical comedy, vaudeville or dance- | Whereupon he discarded his existing time-beating stick and ran playing demand of him. In professional parlance, he is the act | amuck among the music stores. saver. But even Jimmy does not pretend to perform upon all the

traps produced during past ages of invention. There is a limit to The Jazz Hound Goes Shopping the best rap drummer’s versatility. The world 1s filled, for example,

with a weird variety of harmonicas. As aprelude to his appearance in the professional field of reeds We commonly think of the harmonica as amouth organ. Mouth- —_ and rhythm, he made the following investments: bass drum, $75; organ contests have been held in Central Park, New York, with — orchestra snare drum, $27.50; street-model snare drum, $20; foot thousands of fans in rapt attendance. The mouth organ is pecu- _— pedal, spurs and cymbal holder, thirty parts in all, $9; Chinese liarly the musical instrument of the people. Boys take to mouth — crash cymbals, $5; drum stand, $2.50; eight-inch triangle, $1.20. organs as they take to marbles. And as with the drums, many of _ Total for the first debauch, $140.20.

the boys never grow up when it comes to harmonicas. That was one day’s shopping for my young Jazz Hound The common harmonica of commerce is not the true harmonica. Lochinvar riding into the Wild West of modern music. On the Neither is the Chinese cheng, consisting of seventeen bamboo morrow he started early and brought home this booty: Jazz brush pipes in each of which is a little metal tongue, vibrated by the | and gourd, $2; castanets, $2.50; sleigh bells, $3.50; extra calf performer’s breath. This device has a hollow gourd forasound- _ head, $2.50; one set of cowbells, $5—a bargain; one wood block, ing board and was in use before the dawn of history. Musicians $2; clog mattlets, $1.25; tomaphone, $22.50; jazz sticks, .75; foot addicted to this Chinese mouth organ were said to die before control snare muffler, $4; Chinese tom-tom, $7.50; Chinese mureaching the age of forty. Some of them probably died atanearlier sette, $1.50; tambourine, $4.50; anvil imitation, $5; improved slapage when Emperor Shi Hwang-Ti, in 240 B.C., decreed the de- _ stick, $1.25; railroad-train imitation, $3.50; rattle and clamp, $2.50; struction of all musical instruments because devotion to music special pedal part to replace one broken, $1.65; horse’s hoffs, made his people neglect agriculture, divination and medicine, the $2; cow-bell, $1.25; duck quack, $2.50; crow call, $1.25. This three bases of national prosperity. But the cheng—like many other miscellany, mostly mystifying to me, brought his total expendiChinese musical instruments which are with us in various forms— _ ture for instruments of percussion to $220.60.

was revived in subsequent eras. I called for an itemized statement, from which I derived the The true harmonica is an instrument consisting of rotating information here recorded; then I called a halt. glasses which are touched by dampened fingers. One Benjamin “You're not a millionaire—only possessor of $286,000,” I reFranklin, of Philadelphia, was our first great sponsor for it. | minded him. “How much do you earn a night with your Hokeville Franklin was something of a song writer. Butas aleaderinmusi- § Jazzers?” cal matters of his time, Franklin also wrote on musical theory and “Four dollars,” the young hopeful replied; “but as soon as I harmony, played on several instruments and invented the glassy —_ get a better outfit I'll get a raise.” chord, or, as they had it in those day, the harmonica. This name “The neighbors tell me you are raising Cain right now,” I implies no studied dropping of the “h,” no aping of the cockney suggested.

English. But he had hustled his plunder into his study and was enFranklin borrowed the name from the Italian, and in describing grossed in setting up the machinery. As his guardian, I had his great improvement on the musical glasses, which flourished taken him under my wing and I was worried, justifiably so.

even then, he said, “This instrument is played upon by sitting Within a month he began to be moody. So did I. We were before the middle of a set of glasses as before the keys of aharpsi- affected by different causes. He was not getting noise enough. chord, turning them with the foot and wetting them now and then __I was getting too much. Then one night he reported jubilantly

with a sponge and clean water.” He played it himself too. with “a complete set of sanitary imitations,” including a dunghill It is only a decade or so ago that the musical glasses ceased —_—‘ rooster, a shanghai rooster, a bantam rooster, hen cackle, peato vibrate on our vaudeville stage, but some especially ambi- _—_ cock, jay bird, baby cry and Bo White—all of which had been tious jazz orchestra drummer is likely to bring them out again _— purchased for the insignificant sum of $6.50. He showed me how

almost any day. They never appear to get enough variety outof | they worked. Then he undid another package and produced

professional life, do these trap drummers. some stellar imitations. Among them was a tunable cuckoo, price 376

JANUARY 10 ¢ SATURDAY EVENING POST 1925 $4; a two-tone locomotive, $5; a three-tone tuning slide, $6; and He is, in fact, of the American school, because Jimmy Lent a one-tone steamboat, $5. He proceeded to demonstrate on each gave young Wales his start in life, musically.

of them. In 1903 Jimmy was trap drumming with Williams and Walker, I went down to the club, seeking sympathy. Half the fathers the Negro comedians, at the Shaftesbury Theatre, London, when

in the smoking circle were going through the same experience.I the company gave a request performance on the lawn of found one comfort. I was the only guardian uncle so afflicted. | Buckingham Palace. King Edward VII enjoyed the singing and

My wife found small consolation in that. dancing of the Americans, but he also enjoyed Jimmy’s antics in “Why don’t you resign your guardianship,” she suggested, the percussion department of the Williams and Walker orches-

“or send the boy to an asylum?” tra. So did two small boys in Eton jackets—the present Prince of Wales and his younger brother, Albert. They hung over Jimmy’s

The Prince’s Wicked Drumstick shoulder, demanding a private exhibition of the drummer’s skill. Jimmy obliged. They pleaded [for an] opportunity to use the Hector, my nephew, remained enthralled by new andexcessively _ sticks. Jimmy again obliged. The Prince of Wales then and there

outrageous noises for nearly a week. I once asked him how he _ had his first lesson in drumming.

was getting along in school. He replied that he had been made The lesson did not last long. Wales was instructed in the solo trappist of the high-school orchestra. That disposed of me _ holding of the sticks—the right stick held by all four fingers for a while, until Hector came home with the results of a bargain and resting on the thumb and the left stick held between the sale, to wit: acyclone whistle, for $1.25; water-carrying whistle, _ thumb and the second and third fingers. He was even taught a $2; metal cuckoo, $1.50; Frisco song whistle, $2; bassdrumelec- _ bit of the mama-dada roll, with which all orthodox drum lestric heater, $5; snare drum electric heater, also $5; four kinds of — sons begin. But about that time Jimmy found that youthful bass drumsticks, $8; drum rain cover, $5; wire cymbal beater,$1; —_ royalty was interfering with the Williams and Walker perforbass drum carrying strap, $1.50; cymbal holder, $1.50; drum case, mance, so he shooed the princes away and went on with his

$5; and trap tress, $16. professional work. He had been hired to drum for the American

As Hector had by this time spent more than $300 for his rare | Negro comedians and not for the younger members of the collection, I thought he would be content. But Bud Blivens, | House of Windsor. drummer with the Jazz-All-Night Syncopators, blossomed out But on that day and date Wales resolved to become a drumwith a flock of new contraptions. Bud and Hector were rivals. _ mer. During the current year his education has been completed Hector announced that he would not be downed by the thump- _ under the guidance of another American drummer, William ing Bud. So Hector promptly became possessed of a truckload = Speedy. Wales has an excellent collection of drums and traps.

of paraphernalia, as follows: Some of them were made in America. Wales can, says Speedy, One pair of kettledrums, with trunk, $300; one xylophone, _ hold a job with almost any jazz orchestra. So much for internawith trunk, $175; one marimba, with trunk, $270; one large cathe- _tionalism in drumming.

dral chime, with trunk, $275; one set of orchestra bells, $45; one Even if a novice has a genius for traps, it is not so easy to harpophone, $85. There were several smaller pieces which Hec- _ become a skillful snare drummer, although it is easy enough to

tor endeavored, ineffectively, to identify for me. determine whether one has a genius for snare drumming. For I didn’t pause to become familiar with the uses ofeach, forI $7.50 one may purchase a pair of snare drumsticks, a small rubwas busy putting my foot down on Hector’s purse strings. We _ ber pad and an instruction book; then in the quiet of one’s room have since indulged in more or less acrimonious debate, butI_ —_ or roof may experiment with what is known as the rudiments of have refused to let him go further, even though he has provedto —_— drumming. If he masters the following strokes he may become a

me that there are 200 other items, each of which is essential to — drummer. his happiness and his artistic success. The two most important

of these, in his eyes, are a horse’s neigh and a nose blow. Oh, Say, Can You Do the Flamacue?

Royalty has long had a weakness for drumming. Our nearest approach to a royal drummer is young Roger Wolfe Kahn, who, Mama-dada, seven-stroke, five-stroke, open drag, close drag, though heralded as one playing a wicked saxophone and pluck- crushed ruff, four-stroke ruff, open flam, close flam, flam and ing amean banjo, became a member of the New York Musicians’ stroke, flam and feint, feint and flam, single paradiddle, flam Union as a snare drummer. But we have recently entertained a —_paradiddle, stroke paradiddle, drag paradiddle, stroke-and-drag real royal drummer in the Prince of Wales. The future King of _ paradiddle, stroke-flam-and-drag paradiddle, flam accent, flam England goes in for all sorts of moral amusements. It is not _ tap, flam stroke, double drag, flamacue. strange, therefore, that in this heyday of instruments of percus- Of course there are a few supplementary beats or strokes,

sion he should develop skill as a trap drummer. such as the single ratamacue, double ratamacue, triple ratamacue, During his service in the English Navy his royal highness _ side flamadiddle, full drag, top ruff and compound strokes Numwas the drummer in many a band concert aboard ship. He be- —_ ber Jand Number 2. Then there is army duty, now largely taken came adept in military drumming and learned toread and play —_ over by the buglers, but including the general, assembly, colors, standard selections with the best of English and American __ recall of detachment, drummer’s call, adjutant’s call, sergeant’s

drummers. call, corporal’s call, cease firing, guard mount, drill call, police 377

1925 JANUARY 10 ¢ SATURDAY EVENING POST call, water call, wood call, reveille, fatigue, breakfast, surgeon’s Whether drums were invented before other musical instru-

call, retreat, tattoo, taps, and so on. ments is a moot question, but many believe prehistoric music In the olden days the army drummer was a person of consid- passed through three stages—the drum stage, pipe stage and erable importance. Such a one was Major Daniel Simpson, for _ lyre or harp stage. There is no doubt that many types of instruseventy-six years drummer of the ancient and honorable Artil- ments we know as traps have existed for centuries in China and lery Company of Boston, still the hub of the drumming world.He —_ the Americas as native whistles, rattles, gongs and bronze bells. carried a deep steel-shell army side drum in the War of 1812, the —_ J is equally true that bone and cane flutes as well as cane oboes Mexican War and the Civil War. When he died at aripe old age —_—_and other reed instruments of the pipe type were played before he had sixteen service stripes on his sleeves—one for each five history was written. But the greatest pipe of all is the saxoyears of service—and $60,000 in the bank. In his first battle, as phone. drummer for the New England Guard, Simpson marched to Fifty years ago the saxophones was a curiosity. Twenty years Marblehead, in which city now hangs Willard’s painting of The ago it was still a novelty. Ten years ago it became common-

Spirit of *76. place. Today it is a racial habit, a musical mania. Saxophonists Juba Clark, bom in New York City in 1787, was another old-time —_rage around the earth; but in this, as in some other things, we drummer. He was with General Scott in the Battle ofLundy’s Lane, —_jead the world.

was buried at Newport, Kentucky, with full military honors in Not less than 1,500,000 Americans have become actively and 1875, and left, among other pupils, William H. DeVere, who — persistently attached to saxophones during the past decade. drummed in and out of the Army for forty years; and at the age of Approximately 2,000,000 citizens of these United States are moansixty-six insists that if a good band andadrum corps godownthe = jp g on saxophones.

street, the crowd follows the drum corps and shakes the band. Anyone with enough music in his soul to beat time to a tune This is the declaration of the many members of the New York, New _can learn to play a saxophone in twenty minutes, more or less. Jersey, Massachusetts and Connecticut State Drum Corps Asso- —s_ The “Jess” should not be taken lightly. The saxophone is the

ciations, which thrive and hold annual tournaments filled with = \oriq’s greatest escape for those who yearn to do something in

excitement—and of Joe Cakebread of New York. a musical way. It is at once the most spectacular and versatile of The prevalence of jazz and the revival of interest in old and musical instruments, and about the easiest over which to gain young drum corps have brought many drummers into prominence. _ partial control. If you can overcome fear the chances are twenty Mr. O. Rich is doing well with his drumming in lowaand Nebraska. —_ tg one you can overcome the saxophone. The fear I refer to is

The pep of Cleotus Clobes has made him prosperous in the fear engendered by the sight of a saxophone. Bloomington, Illinois, and vicinity. John Goll, of Indianapolis, has There is nothing structurally appalling about the cornet, alto, a dog named Bounce. Bounce runs away from home, butis afraid —_ tenor, trombone, bass or drum. The violin is a simple thing to of thunder. When the return of Bounce is desired his master takes = Jgok upon, and the viola, cello and double bass merely its big his drum into the backyard and sounds the long rolland Bounce _ pyothers. The harp is a piano without a body. Performances on

comes home with his tail between his legs. the pipe organ is possible to any musician unusually ambidexThe kettle drummer is the real aristocrat of the percussion _troys who has the feet of a song-and-dance artist. But the saxodepartment. His drums, so aptly named, are calfskin-headed brass —_ phone is a mass of protuberances clinging to a conical tube, or bronze kettles. They have come down to us from the Saracens, — witha piece of flat cane at one end and a bell-like opening at the

although they were used in Biblical times. other. It seems to be all keys or the component parts thereof. They appear picturesquely with Egyptian camel corps or the So for forty days and forty night I went about asking practicHorse Guards in London, are tuned and played in distinct keys ing saxophonists, “How many keys has a saxophone?” and are necessary to the correct interpretation of classical mu- The answer in each instance ran about as follows:

sic. They are known technically as tympani. “Let’s see. There’s the low B flat, the C major, the octave, the More than any other percussionist, the kettle drummer has to g sharp, and”—running at random over the imposing array of learn to count time. If he is assisting in Meyereer’s The Prophet, gavelocks, jemmies, levers, springs, rings, pads, caps, cams and Auber’s Fra Diavolo or Wagner’s Rienzi, he may have tocount —_ what nots which make this most modern of musical instruments 100 measures or more before he hits one of his drumheads with —_—jook like an overgrown but devil-may-care meerschaum pipe— his felt-covered hand-held hammers. But ithe does his bitinthe —“there’s, alll told, twenty—no, twenty-one—no, that isn’t right— wrong place he will be asked to seek another job. It is no pursuit yes, I have it—twenty-three.”

for an absent-minded man. I checked up and found that the answer, whatever it was, was according to the keys there made and provided. But I still faced

Why This Saxophone Craze? the discouraging fact that the saxophone is so burdened with mechanical complications that its dearest friends do not know, Incidentally, he frequently has to change the pitch of his two without investigation, how much machinery they are wrestling tympani, either by foot or hand power. But masters like George ig Fraum, of the Metropolitan Grand Opera, J. Fred Sietz, of the But, encouraged by some saxophone fans, I borrowed a saxoChicago Grand Opera, and Albert Ritter, of the Boston Sym- shone and a book filled with wise saws and detailed charts,

phony Orchestra, get used to it. followed instructions—and achieved the scale from C to C! True, 378

JANUARY 10 © SATURDAY EVENING POST 1925 I almost slipped on the top note coming down, butI reached the — day, they found the remains of a patron stretched out on their bottom without breaking anything but the peace—and then a _ saxophone trunk. Eventually Tom, Bill, Alex, Fred, Vern and Percy

strange thing happened. I had taken to my breast a twisting | blossomed out as the Six Brown Brothers. Percy died in service thing called the saxophone. The serpent bit me. Since which — during the World War. The remaining five, with a new recruit, time I have been dying, Egypt, dying to own not one but the _ carried on in musical comedy and vaudeville. whole family—eight! Count ‘em! Eight!—of saxophones. If for- The World War added a final touch to the saxophone’s popu-

tune smiles, my ambition may become reality. larity. A regimental band was required for each new regiment This experience is important, because it reveals the why of going into service. Governmental regulations and the enthusithe saxophone: in spite of its forbidding aspect, itis almost as asm of recruits to the army purchasing department caused a easy to play as a tin whistle—up to acertain point.Anditcomes boom in saxophone manufacture. in such assorted sizes that it suits almost any musical or Impossibility of escaping the saxophone is daily impressed

semimusical taste. upon us. Boston rededicated itself to music with a Music Week, The E-flat sopranino saxophone plays E-flat clarinet or cor- | May fourth to tenth last year. One of the week’s features was a net parts. It is only eighteen inches long—too short tocomein —_jazz concert by a forty-piece band in which saxophones played the meerschaum model—but its range reaches to high heaven. —_ prominent parts.

The C soprano plays directly from vocal, piano or organ music So far as I know, the highest attainment in saxophone perforand hence is right at home in the family orchestra, church choir — mance Is that credited to Miss Lillian A. Boyer, of whom a curor singing society. The B-flat soprano resembles the mezzo- __ rent chronicler says, “If you ever have occasion to see Miss soprano voice, plays the B-flat cornet parts in the band andis = Boyer perform on a saxophone and note her turning a complete the star instrument in modern dance orchestras. The E-flat alto | somersault on the outer edge of the wing of a moving aeroplane saxophone can play the alto parts in the band, and might be- __ while playing a solo, we are sure you will get the thrill of your come a featured solo instrument with symphony orchestras. _life.” The C-melody saxophone is an octave lower than the C soprano Pll say you would! Not even Al Wilson, who, high in air, and has a cello-like quality. The B-flat tenor saxophone takesthe — drives a golf ball from an aeroplane wing, then leaps from one place of tenor or barytone in the band and trombone in the _ plane to another, can out point the musically inclined Miss Boyer. orchestra. The E-flat barytone saxophone has the pitch of the E- —_—- I am not sure what solo Miss Boyer plays while turning her

flat bass or tuba in military bands, and the B-flat bass saxo- _ aerial somersault, but I assume she specializes in The Heavens phone has the pitch of the BB-flat bass, biggest of all military | Are Telling. band instruments. It is a fussy musician who cannot find satis-

faction somewhere along this reigning line of vibrating brasses. The Chicago Noise Court

No wonder we harbor 2,000,000 of them!

Chicago, accustomed to disturbances, is trying to keep the saxo-

The Thrill of Your Life phone within bounds. It does not object to the uproar coming

from the upper floors of the State-Lake Building, where budding Antoine [Adolphe] Sax, of Belgium and Paris, developed the — saxophonists are attending a saxophone school, even though saxophone and began manufacturing the B-flat soprano, E-flat that uproar outsounds the rumble of the Loop and the squealing alto, B-flat tenor and E-flat barytone—first of the saxophone __ of the L trains. It does believe, however, in certain quiet hours family—in 1846. Edward Abraham Lefebre, a native of Holland, between nightfall and dawn.

became the first great saxophone virtuoso about 1850. In his Hence the noise court instituted by Health Commissioner capable hands the new instrument was endorsed by Wagner — Bundesen, who is campaigning against persistent and dynamic and Gounod. In 1871 Lefebre brought the first saxophonetothis self-expression which he contends “may affect the brain in such country. For nineteen years thereafter he was the featured saxo- —a way as to cause giddiness, dizziness and nausea.”’ Among the

phone soloist with Gilmore’s Band. offenders against the peace and dignity of Chicago are, accordHis mission in life was to establish the saxophone as alegiti- | ing to the Health Commissioner, “The saxophone player who mate musical instrument. He did his work well. Then the funny —_ begins his concert at a time when people should be sleeping;

men seized upon it. the ragtime player who finds it necessary to keep the world Knox Wilson, a “Dutch” comedian, was one of the first, if not © awake; the phonograph player who makes himself a nuisance

the first, to do a cakewalk with the saxophone. He starred in _late at night; the radio fan who turns on the new horn at unseveral musical comedies and is still in vaudeville. seemly hours; the early-morning streetcar gongs; the annoying Tom Brown started his career—on foot—from his home in —_ locomotive whistle and the automobile horn that screeches for Ottawa, Canada, where his father was leader of the Governor- _ the best girl to hurry.” General’s Foot Band. After many vicissitudes Tom became a Although Commissioner Bundesen hales offending saxocircus cornet player. A brother joined him under the white tops. phonists into court, he is not anti-music or anti-saxophone. He They began to practice on the novel saxophones between cir- _ has sponsored a saxophone sextet in his department. This sexcus performances. The other musicians made merry withthem. tet rehearses on the roof of the Cook County Building. But it So did the elements. After a blow-down at Aurora, Illinois, one _restrains itself after the Bundesen curfew has rung.

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1925 JANUARY 10 ¢ SATURDAY EVENING POST Edward C. Barroll, authority on the saxophone, hazards the —_ are best known—do have a dual mentality and do at times suffer

prediction that the end of 1925 will find twenty times as many from amnesia. saxophone bands in America as at the beginning of this year. The oboe is a diminutive wooden pipe with a delicate slightly Not only are individual and group performances increasing at —_ nasal but wholly sweet tone, and is the boss of band or orchesan alarming rate; saxophonists are coming upon usin pairs. Not __tra because its pitch is so stable that all other instruments are long ago we were presented with Filipino Siamese Twins, each _ tuned to it. It is of ancient, probably Oriental, origin and in the playing a saxophone. Down in San Antonio a pair of twins re- —_ course of its development has been known as the shawm, or cently dawned upon the public. They are pretty little girls with —_ reed pipe, of the twelfth century, the schawm of King Henry VIII,

long curly hair and bright faces, but they are joined Siamese- the howeboie or hoeboy of Queen Elizabeth and hautboy of

Twin fashion and they do saxophone duets! Samuel Pepys’ diary. ““Hautboy” may be translated “high wood,” France appears to be taking the saxophone situation more __ referring not to a tall chest of drawers but to the altitude so seriously than does America. Last June the cables told us the _ easily attained on the small musical instrument. French Government had decided to banish the multitude of

American jazz bands which were making life difficult for French Oboe’s Cousin musicians.

Prominent saxophonists in this country appealed to Secre- _— The first cousin to the oboe is the cor anglais, or English horn, tary of Labor Davis at Washington and Ambassador Myron T. which is neither English nor a horn, but is really an alto oboe Herrick at Paris, and the French ruling lost some of its harsh- | with a curved instead of a straight double reed and a bulging

ness. Great is the power of the saxophone. instead of a flaring bell. At first glance an English horn looks It is becoming more and more strenuous for the professional something like a garfish. saxophonist each day. Arrangers are giving modern saxophone Tradition has it that Samuel Butler once referred to the oboe players more difficult parts, and there isa demand in better bands —_as_a clarinet with a cold in its head and to the bassoon as a and orchestras for artistic work in the saxophone department.In _ clarinet with acold on its chest. The first comparison is not bad, such organizations the trick player has given way to the one _ but the second does not hold. A bassoon looks like the blackwho thoroughly understands ensemble playing. But many as- _ ened trunk of a slender sapling and sounds like a barking hippotonishing results have been accomplished by trickery. potamus. It is the bass edition of an oboe and the clown among There was the celebrated case of the Foster Quartet and the — the wood winds, which include the piccolos, flutes, clarinets, Pizzicato Polka. This Strauss number was long a favorite with oboes. Gilmore’s Band, because it is filled with difficult starts and stops Oboe players are said to go mad because the oboe’s bore is and unison, and harmonic passages which gave the dramatic so small and the instrument is so delicate that there is constant Irish-American conductor a bully chance to show off. For the | danger of a blow-out or blow-up. The oboist is something like a same reason it is a test number for a saxophone quartet operat- deep-sea diver—always holding his breath. There is constant ing without a conductor, because each of the four players, stand- | pressure not only on the oboe’s double reed but upon the ing in line on the stage, had his hands and fingers full—of keys. oboist’s brain. Incidentally, the oboist feels the vibrations of his And it is an axiom in the world of music that no four men can wooden reed instrument. This is also true of performers on those count time alike. Doctor Foster solved the problem of the Pizzicato _— other small-bore, double-reed instruments, the English horn and

Polka’s starts and stops in a unique and, for along time, myste- _ bassoon. Players on single-reed instruments do not so suffer. rious manner. For months after the first performance of that polka The bassoon player is also maddened by the long waits beas a saxophone quartet number, in Carnegie Hall early in 1910, | tween notes. This is particularly the case with the double-basmusicians sat out in front and marveled at the accuracy of attack soon player. Even in the symphonies and operas there are few exhibited by the Foster quartet. Then the secret was revealed. notes assigned to the double, or contrabassoon; but when it is The ingenious Foster had cut out and concaved a bit of cork —_ wanted it is wanted badly. Once upon a time a contra-bassoon which he thrust into one nostril. At the intake of breathimmedi- _ player traveled from New York to Pittsburgh just to play one ately before each passage of music a sharp but subdued whistle note. came from Foster’s nose. The quartet could hear it, but the audi- It must not be taken from the above that all players on doubleence could not. The attack was perfect. Engagements galore reed instruments are mad. Most of them are perfectly normal. followed. The quartet was a nine months’ wonder in the saxo- There are no signs of insanity in the highly intelligent faces of

phone world. So much for originality. Fred de Anelis, for twenty years oboist of the New York PhilharCarping critics may complain of the saxophone craze, butthe | monic Orchestra, Monsieur Bridet, foremost of French oboists, saxophonists will reply, ““We’re not so crazy as the oboe, En- —_— or Monsieur Carlin, first bassoonist of the Garde Republicaine

glish horn and bassoon players. See how many of them have __ Band of Paris. gone to the booby hatch!” And the records do show that there I took an inventory of a friend’s stock of musical instruments is some foundation for the tradition that the players of double- _ the other day. At current retail prices their replacement value is: reed instrument—of which the oboe, English horn and bassoon

380

JANUARY 25 « THE NEW YORK TIMES 1925 Oboe———————-— $300 band should have as many clarinets as all other instruments

Contra bassoon——-———--—- 350 combined.

E-flat clarinet-—-———-—_---— 12 The clarinet—which is an invention of hoary antiquity, an Bass clarinet-—-———--_-_- 200 indirect descendant of the Egyptian pipe and hence a distant B-flat clarinet——_————_-—---— 165 relative of the Welsh hornpipe, pibcorn or cornicyll—is also

Alto clarinet——-__—-— 150 blessed with a reed, a conical tube and many keys. But it has English horn———-—--- 150 been a tough proposition for American musicians since the modHecklephone——-———--——— 300 ern band and orchestra began to function. Only within this deRothophone—-—- ——-—-—-—-. 200 | cade have we had enough genuine clarinetists to supply the Octavon—_——_—-—_-—_—-—_-—_—-75 demand. E-flat soprano saxophone—-—-- - - 125 Though the clarinetist is often described as a grinning fool B-flat soprano saxophone—-— — 250 sucking a stick, and though he gets his result by vibrating a E-flat barytone saxophone-—-—— 500 column of air much as a saxophonist does, the clarinet has the Marimbaphone-dulcimer——-— 400 greatest range of any band instrument and a tone quality beBagpipes—-—-—-—-——_—_-—_-—-_ 150 tween the flute and oboe. It is to the military band what the violin is to the orchestra—the lead.

Total $3440 Fingering a clarinet, is much more difficult than fingering a This is not a complete inventory. Nor are the prices unusu-_ saxophone. Here are the catalogue specifications for one clarially high, for some of his saxophones are deluxe, with gold plate, _ net “Seventeen keys, four rings, rollers, including extra a-flat-Epearl buttons, engraving and other extra vagances. Butto prove _flat lever for little finger, left hand lower joint; B-flat trill key, first he is far from foolish, this man carries $5000 insurance on his _ finger, right hand upper joint; lever for first finger, right hand on

musical museum. He also carries several trunks. C-sharp—G-sharp key.” One must not only be a mechanician, mathematician and

The Boy from Baraboo musician to play a clarinet; he must also carry a chauffeur’s tool kit, including grease box, screw driver, needles, pliers, alcohol The flute, an ancient instrument, furnishes the bird voice forthe —_jamp, springs, spring hooks, cork wax and a swab.

band. The piccolo is to the flute as a dachshund is to a Great Many of the best clarinets are made from granadilla from Dane. One of my earliest hates was a quiet, likable little fellow — )\4ozambique, East Africa; many of the less expensive ones from named Billie Homes, from Baraboo, Wisconsin. BillieandItrav- —_ ebonite, a rubber composition.

eled with the same circus, I as a cornetist. I hated Billie because The World War, which pushed the saxophone into promiin those days all circus musicians had to tote their instruments —_ pence, almost put all reed-instrument players out of business. between circus lot and circus cars. This was particularly bur- — Ajthough the flat bits of cane sucked so assiduously by the densome after the night show. We all hated Billie, although Hank _eeq-instrument players look commonplace enough, practically Henderson, the bass-drum thumper, hated him the most. Billie lj of them come from the cane fields of Southern France. During was a piccolo player. When he finished his day’s work, he stuck _the war Senegalese troops were billeted among those cane fields

his piccolo in his pocket! and used the cane for fires, shanties and anything else that

In spite of the prevalence of the saxophone, the clarinet re- struck their fancy. There has been a great shortage of properly mains the dominant instrument in a modern well-balanced mili- —— Gyred and seasoned wind-instrument cane ever since then. tary band. European and American bandmasters agree that each

January 25 ¢ The New York Times SOULFUL YOUTHS BUY SAXOPHONES Far be it from the good people of Bensonhurst, Harlem or West __ they are peaceful any longer. They recall with regret their critiFarms to flout tradition, but doubt as to the truth of the ancient —cism of youths who spent their evenings and 2 1/2 cents a cue in contention that music hath charms is dropping heavily upon __ the local pool parlors. They yearn for the quiet click of the bil-

them. liard balls when they are assailed by some particularly agonized

In their milder moments they will concede that perhaps there — wail committed in the name of music. |

were times in their lives when music had a soothing significance It affords them no joy that the gangs have been supplanted for them, but that was before the young men in their localities | by the bands. They even miss the boys who stood on the corbecame unreasonably convinced that any one could learn to __ ner, with heads close together, keeping always a respectful display a wind or percussion instrument in ten lessons or receive _ tance ahead of the tenor as they apprised a disinterested public

his money back. of a warm regard for Sweet Adeline.

These peaceful communities, and the ninety-two other shoul- Today Sweet Adeline has been supplanted in young men’s der-to-shoulder hamlets that compose the metropolis, deny that = musical interest by a correspondent kind of a lady known as Hot

381

1925 JANUARY 25 ¢ LIVING AGE Mamma. Their homage to this livelier belle is paid with an as- —_ tune. They are blissfully impervious to the thudding on the sortment of shiny, leather-lunged instruments played with an __ ceiling by the family below. The urge is so strong upon them

accompaniment of puffed cheeks and shaking shoulders. that janitors are defied with as much impunity as are ordinary Many an innocuous telephone lineman by day isamadmas- _ persons. ter of saxophony by night. There are shipping clerks who take Their art is long and time is fleeting. It is often midnight up a clarinet when they drop the hammer. There are third assis- before there is a pause in their evening’s occupation. This intertant paying tellers who become lost in the shining embrace ofa _ val is customarily devoted to crimination and recrimination re-

Sousaphone when dusk falls. garding the authorship of divers sour notes.

Now and then they are engaged to play at local weddings or

A Double Lure large ice cream parlors. At the refreshment saloon they sometimes find themselves in stern competition with the nickel piano.

The boys have succumbed to a double lure. They crave wealth = This piano has seniority in its favor, but the orchestra gives and social desirability. They want to be appealed to by charming —_ motions with its music, this being a most popular blending in company to cause their saxophone to sob, croon, or have itask _ this restless era.

her please to come back to him. The remuneration is not precisely princely, but there are no The indulgence of the jazz orchestra leaders in permitting the discomforts from thirst. general public to peer into their pay envelopes and see the thou- One of the largest manufacturers of band instruments desands of dollars neatly folded there has caused legions of young clared that his sales for 1924 were more than double those for men to regard the merchandising of melody as their missionon 1923. He admitted that he has sympathy for those tenants with a

earth. two-year lease and an incipient orchestra on the same floor. He They all do not succeed in creating symphonic sound; but _ says he would pay a fabulous price to the inventor of a device they usually manage to achieve volume. They collect in quin- _ that would silence a saxophone when a player was exceeding tets and sextets at one another’s homes, much as card players his quota of harsh and unfeeling notes. Inventors, here is your

do, and prepare to blow and thump their way to fame and for- _— chance. B.R.

January ° The Etude THE DIXIE PICCOLO We learn from a press clipping that Walter H. Scribner, director | aminstrel show. The melody won instant applause and prompted of a theater orchestra in Lexington, Ky., is the proud possessor |§ Emmett to write the words for it. Following his retirement from of the piccolo on which the late Dan “Decatur” Emmett, of Mount __ the stage, Emmett settled in Mount Vernon, where he delighted

Vernon, Ohio, played his composition Dixie, one of the South’s the residents for miles around with his playing and singing. most famous melodies. Shortly before Emmett died, the famous |§ Emmett is buried at Mount Vernon and a large memorial tablet minstrel presented the instrument to Mr. Scribner, whose home __ was erected there a few years ago by the townspeople.” The is also in Mount Vernon, Mr. Scribner’s grandfather, Dr.John J. — flute seems to have been a popular instrument for composition

Scribner, was Emmett’s physician. at that time. It will be recalled that Stephen Foster played the “The piccolo was used when Emmett composed the music _ flute, and doubtless used it as an aid to the inspiration of his for Dixie, which was first played in New York at the opening of | melodies such as Old Folks at Home

February 7 ¢ Living Age THE TRIUMPH OF THE JUNGLE by Jaap Kool The incidental effects of music are, luckily, not the only things tures of every hue, and I long to be up and doing. that determine its aesthetic value, for if they were we should, no Then I say to myself: “You have the most magnificent of doubt, have to regard the jazz-band as the highest form of music. | Mozart’s and Bruckner’s symphonies—music for which you No matter how bad a humor I happen to be in, I find that — would go through fire. You honestly enjoy Richard Strauss. Yet playing one of Paul Whiteman’s magnificent phonograph-records —_ none of these has the same fantastic effect upon you as a jazzmakes another man of me in a flash. My pulse quickens, my toe __ band.’

begins to tap assiduously, my ears prick up in an effort to catch Is it not, after all, by the intensity of experience that we must all the fine points of the music, my fancy falls to painting pic- | measure the power of music? You will be thinking, I know, dear

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FEBRUARY 7 ¢ LIVING AGE 1925 reader—especially if you happen to be a professional musi- __ race, of a whole world of feeling quite different from our own, cian—that tastes vary, that there are those blessed with ataste — which had produced this effect. for purely intellectual music and others who adore the music of And now we grow thoughtful. Do we not hear that recently the variety hall. So be it; I am not responsible for that. And yetI _ the intellectual superiority of the Negro Prince Kojo Towahu

do not think that this is all the truth. Heunn created more interest in Paris than the Prince of Wales, To-day the jazz-band exercises an enormous influence. The — who was generally neglected? Was it not a Negro who in 1922 proof? Money is obviously the scale whereby our age measures = won the Goncourt Prize, the highest literary distinction of the influence and power. Well, is there a single symphony orchestra ‘intellectual Republic’ with his novel Batouala? And was not that supports itself? Is there an opera that is not struggling with = another black man, Battling Siki, the champion boxer of Europe? gigantic deficits? Is there, indeed, for the large number of well- _—‘It is not possible that this much-ridiculed black race may have trained and cultivated musicians the bare possibility of a half- | something of value to give us? Perhaps we ourselves may be way-decent existence? No! Meanwhile our best jazz-bands are = more subject to exotic influences than we suspect. Perhaps even receiving a thousand gold marks for an ordinary day’s playing, — the bobbed hair so commonly worn by women to-day—a fashin addition to which there are phonograph records to be made _ion known for hundreds of years among primitive peoples— and the royalties that come with them. A glance at the cata- = may have a similar origin. For primitive peoples do strongly logues shows that jazz stands to all the other music published in affect our modern life. the ratio of a hundred to one. Even the flood of operettas and In the moving pictures a principal character often remains revues survive mainly because they offerachance topopularize — while everything fades away about him.Let us, in the same way,

song-hits. allow the picture of that harbor resort in Philadelphia, where

And now I lay Paul Whiteman’s record on the phonograph = Jack Washington used to dance and play his drum solos, fade again. Is there really nothing here but senseless noises? Is this out of our imaginations; and when the picture forms again, we only a kind of musical uproar. My own ear is by no means un-___ shall see him once more in his native village, dancing the relitrained, and yet the music of a jazz-band pleases me. There is —_ gious dances of his people. I say ‘religious dances’ because all spirit here, still more, there is inspiration. There isevenafinely the primitive dances of exotic peoples are primarily incantations chiseled contrapuntal leading of the voices. How fulland beau- _— and magic rites, primitive peoples being, as a rule, extremely tiful is the tone of the saxophone! How enchantingly sentimen- _ pious. We see our friend Jack swinging the dance rattle, while tal! The contrasting tenderness of the violin! What ensemble! _ the women play in an orchestra that consists mainly of drums, What exactness! The saxophone soars with its syncopation — tom-toms, hollow bamboo, sticks of wood, and other things of

high above everything else. It seems to have forgotten the the sort. Now we begin to remember what an enormous part rhythm., and surges onward like a wave of the sea over water _—_— rhythm plays among primitive peoples. In many villages every flowing back the other way. And yet the saxophone’ syncopa- —s man has a special rhythm of his own, with which his friends can tion is immediately brought to a resolution by the percussion __ call him or greet him. If important tidings must be communicated

instruments. Bang! A tremendous thump spreads through the __in haste, they are spread from village to village by rhythmic

sounds of the other instruments. strokes on a gigantic wooden drum—the so-called drum-lanAll this can hardly come from banal superficial minds. Ap- — guage,—and the rhythms necessary for all this are by no means pearances are deceptive. There must be some deeper [meaning] simple. here, some deeper understanding. This highly developed rhythm, We know that among many primitive peoples there is a marked which is so new to us, can hardly be the work of a day. A lengthy preference for quintuple time. We see how naturally this time—

course of development must lie behind it. sO rare in our own musical literature—is suited to these peoples, Suppose we try to gather together what is known about the — when we find a melody from a French opera, originally written in origin of the jazz-band. If we may trust a mere story, the word — two-four time, taken over and changed into five-eight time by ‘jazz’ comes from a band in a water-front resort in Philadelphia, the repetition of the first eighth note. Indeed, our European which used to have a Negro named Jack Washington playing _ sense of rhythm is extraordinarily undeveloped when compared the drums. This Negro had developed a rhythm so fierce that the with that of primitive peoples. Compare the rhythm of one of our band, as a joke, used to stop playing entirely and let Jack rage — folk-songs with a primitive folk-song. In our song there is a on the drums alone. When the time came for Jack to play his _ continuous similarity, arhythmic monotony, whereas in the primipercussion solos, the sailors would cry in delight, ‘Jack! Jack!"—_ tive song there is much more life, even a kind of rhythmic counand from this cry of theirs the odd name ‘jazz’ is derived. But —_ terpoint—that is, something like a rhythmic conversation bewhat the Negro played had an inspired frenzy in it—had, asthe —_ tween two rhythms of equal value, balanced one against the French would say, le feu sacré, a fire that soon blazed up and _ other. I admit, it is true, that in compensation for this our music swept across the whole world. The sailors in that water-front has attained a higher melodic development; but there is no deresort thought they were watching something quite unique, a _ nying that the possibility of great progress in rhythm still lies kind of acrobatics, and many of Jack’s imitators in the years that before us—especially when rhythm is related to melody. followed have produced laughter and amazement on all sides. Neither must we forget that the rhythms of exotic peoples Only a few recognized that this was not an individual trick ofthe | have one fundamental difference from our own. All the more Negro named Jack, but that is was the inspiration of an entire —_—interesting to note, then, that to-day, when these exotic rhythms

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1925 FEBRUARY e FLUTIST have forced their way into our modern dances and dance or- _ body had the idea of supporting the violin with a tuba, later with chestras, it is upon them that musicians depend to determine the — a trombone, and finally with a cornet. But even these stood suitability of pieces for the jazz-band. We Europeans, whose _ then, and still stand, in the shadow of the drums and noisy music is derived almost exclusively from song and choral [mu- __ instruments. The tuba’s tone was carried up two or three ocsic], speak, for example, of a whole or ahalfnote,andsocometo __ taves and led the melody in the soprano. The trombone and take a very long note as our unit. Observe that all notes played = cornet were muted until the tone became sharp, squeaky, and faster than this unit—the so-called half, quarter, and eighth __ nasal. A study of primitive dances makes it quite clear that in notes—appear to us as breaks and divisions of this unit. Quite | them the unnatural is deliberately intended and deliberately otherwise with the exotic peoples. They think of along note of | sought. The limbs are intentionally given a painful or cramped the sort we term a whole note as the result of adding together _ position, the falsetto is used side by side with chest tones, the many shorter notes. Their rhythmic unit is something like our —_—voice is given a nasal quality. Notes are joined by a [hum]ming eighth note, and so they find in our long notes nothing restful, — glissando, and one shrieks and trills with lips and checks and but rather a heaping-up of unrest. While one of their musicians —_ tongue. The object is to emphasize by these extraordinary acis playing a whole note, he is feeling within him the sum of a __ tions and these extraordinary noises that something altogether series of eighth notes. This attitude toward rhythm explains —_ unusual is going on—something suited to the world of demons. why so many of our good and cultivated musicians find abso- To emphasize this impression, savages had masks made in horlutely nothing in a jazz-band, and also why almost all classically __ rible and terrifying designs, or else employed absurd colors and educated composers are unable to write genuine jazz. Irving —. symbolic paintings on their bodies. Berlin, one of the most famous composers in America, who has Taken in relation to these dances, many of the properties of recently established an immense music-publishing house, can _—sjazz assume quite a different aspect. Whether our best jazz-bands

neither read nor play notes. contrive to produce a genuine world of demons or not, at last

But modern jazz is no longer merely a matter ofrhythm. The _ there is no denying that they do produce a powerful effect upon saxophone is almost more characteristic of the modern jazz-band _us.

than the drum, itself. These two contrasting elements clash with The decisive turning in the history of the jazz-band came each other. One might almost speak of a mingling in the hearers’ with the victory of the saxophone. Where did this instrument mind, of exotic rhythm and of European melody. In the begin- originate? In the year 1842 a man came from Brussels to Paris ning the jazz-band was the creature of the drums. Not only didit |= without a penny. His name was Adolph Sax. His sole possession employ drums, kettledrums, wood drums, triangles, cymbals, was an instrument which he had invented in his father’s musiand even cowbells and motor-horns, but even such instruments __ cal-instrument shop—a bass clarinet of curious construction as the bass and the piano were used primarily as instruments to with which he stirred up a commotion upon the pinnacles of the create a rhythm through which the violin, the only instrument —__ Parisian musical world, among such men as Halévy and Auber. left to carry the melody, had an extraordinarily hard time making —_He received an especially favorable reception from Berlioz, who itself heard. In order to help it out, the members of the band _ provided the inventor with the money necessary to carry out his made a practice, in the earlier days, of singing the more impor- plans. Sax now built seven of these instruments, named saxotant parts of the melody, usually the refrain; untiloneday some- _ phones in his honor, of different [sizes, ]

February ¢ Flutist SYMPHONIC JAZZ There has been a great deal of discussion for the past few years _—_ arrangements after his own ideas, gathered together a few very

relative to the merits and demerits of jazz, and when allhad been _fine musicians and the results have practically revolutionized said, the diversity of opinions from various sources leftoneina jazz. We heard of this but took these accounts with the proverstage of bewilderment. Did it have anything redeeming in its _ bial grain of salt. favor or did it not? The writer confesses that the jazz he has On the night of January 14th Paul Whiteman and his Concert heard was positively hopeless, with nothing to commend it to | Orchestra of 24 musicians played in Asheville. The writer ateven the least musically inclined. Like the saxophone it was tended expecting to hear something just a little bit better than slammed and hammered by the better class of musicians. the usual jazz. Disappointed? No! Pleased? Yes, simply amazed! Some years ago Paul Whiteman, a symphony orchestra vio- As a matter of fact, his pleasure exceeded that of many perforlinist, went to the coast and being unable to secure an engage- = mances of fine symphony orchestras. He had been associated ment in any of the symphonic bodies there, had to take whathe — with symphony orchestras for many years and has heard many cold get in the way of playing. This led him to the jazz orchestra _ of the finest organizations in existence both here and abroad, in which he gave so little satisfaction that he was discharged as___ yet he must candidly state that never before has he heard such hopeless. This set him to thinking and he began to study the — wonderful effects in tone color as were given by this body of new craze and its possibilities in arefined form. He made hisown __ twenty-four musicians. Musicians? No, they are artists, being

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FEBRUARY ¢ MUSICAL COURIER 1925 recruited from our symphony bodies. unfair to charge them with favoritism, as everything they played Paul Whiteman, is first of all a fine musician, an artist who —_—was given in a spirit of excellence and they really did seem to would make an excellent symphony conductor. As a matter of | enjoy their work from the rankest jazz to the finest form of symfact, he should be in charge of such a body of artists. His con- — phony writing.

ducting is grace personified; he knows what he wants and he The Gershwin Rhapsody is Blue for piano and orchestra gave has the faculty of handling men so that they do their very best — Harry Perrella an excellent opportunity for displaying his pianistic

for him. He must be a drillmaster of the first rank, judging from — attainments and won for him an encore. The scoring of this the wonderful effects he obtains from his orchestra. With only — number is unique. One must hear it several times to get into it. seven Strings, including bass, string effects in shading, deli- | Needless Whiteman and the orchestra gave support to the solocacy and volume were heard that surpass what one usually _ ist that would have won superlative praise from our most exacthears in our best organizations with many times over thatnum- _ ing pianists. ber. In Ross Gorman, Whiteman has a clarinetist with a tone like Why are Paul Whiteman and his orchestra creating such a velvet and how he manages to retain it after playing the numer- _—s furore? Because they approach their art seriously. They are wellous other instruments with single and double reeds is a mystery schooled musicians and know how to play in perfect tune. Their to the writer. He is a born comedian despite his artistic attain- | oneness of purpose is a model worthy of emulation by any great ments and he knows how to put it over. He is tothe Whiteman —_ orchestra or chamber music organization in this country. There

orchestra what the concertmeister is to the symphony orches- is no sneaking in on the faintest pianissimo or crashing tra. The trumpet work was exceptionally fine with staccato at- _—_fortissimos that startle by their volume. They trace dainty detacks, pianissimo of whisper proportions to that of the stron- —_ signs one moment and then hurl thunder bolts the next and all is gest fortissimo. Horns good and trombones—well they wereon —_ done with that sureness that comes only from mastery of one’s

the job every minute. instrument.

The addition of two concert grands proved a happy one and One coming away from the influence of such playing is melined as for the cembalo—well you must hear it to appreciate itsinclu- —_— to be over-enthusiastic. At least the writer was, and while he

sion in such an organization. was tempted to pen this article immediately at the conclusion of The opening number of the program in front of the curtain —_ the concert he felt that the proper perspective would come only with clarinet, trumpet and trombone playing the earliest form of after serious contemplation. Three weeks have passed and yet jazz was ascream. The writer laughed until tears filled hiseyes. | the memory of an enjoyable evening still lingers. The curtain then went up on a beautiful setting. Whiteman knows But one criticism is in order. Whiteman began his concert the theatre, but whether his selection of changing lights forthe — with the rankest of jazz and framed his program with view to various numbers is a happy one, is open to question. Perhaps showing the various stages of jazz to the refined form of to-day. less frequent changes might have been better, but that is largely Had he stopped there, in the opinion of the writer, he would

a matter of personal opinion. have rendered a distinct service to even the most high browed So This is Venice was rich, giving Gorman a splendid oppor- —s musician, but, perhaps thinking the plane was too high, he sent tunity to shine in comedy. By the way, he is a past masterinthe his audience home with popular jazz tunes jingling in their ears. art of changing quickly from his clarinet to the saxophones of — This detracted in a measure from what proved an enjoyable

various kinds, and other instruments. evening of music.

Victor Herbert’s Suite of Serenades, the only compositions By all means hear Paul Whiteman and his Concert Orchestra. for the modern American orchestra, was very good indeed andit | You will come away from the concert with many new ideas that did seem that Whiteman and his associates put into them their __ will serve to make you a better musician. In fact your musical best, perhaps as Americans for Americans. However, it would be — education will not be complete until you have heard this new strictly American school of music.

February ¢ Musical Courier IN THE MATTER OF JAZZ Under this caption Simeon Strunsky presents his views in _ bodiment of the spirit of jazz in the realm of statesmanship, and the New York Times Book Review of February 8. He takes for his (2) that the Constitution of the Untied States is the most wontext the remarks of Henderson in this month’s Scribner’s, which —_ derful effect ever produced at any one moment by the lungs of

he calls “something more than an apology for jazz,” and sets |= man operating a strangled saxophone. These two things must himself the task of demonstrating that 1f America is jazzy, other _ be true, because Mr. Coolidge and the Constitution of the United

countries are more so. He introduces his subject thus: States are obviously part of the civilization of this America whose “As we go to press the country is still waiting forsome one _ inner meaning is so satisfactorily being revealed in terms of the to rise and demonstrate two truths for which the world cries —_ cabaret ensemble.” aloud: (1) That President Coolidge represents the perfect em385

1925 FEBRUARY e¢ SCRIBNER’S Of the saxophone and tom-tom as particularly native tothe — every other way hostile to adventure, questing, experimenting, soul of this nation Mr. Strunsky writes: “No doubt they express = Life—how can such a civilization be described as jazz?”

our ebulliency, our optimism, our energy and our extravagant The really important feature of all this writing and talking humor. But I imagine these qualities could be found in other about jazz and Americanism is the fact of tacit acknowledgment nations, at least in sufficient degree to meet the needs of afor- —_ of two things: (1) that our music should express us, (2) that jazz,

mula.” if it expresses us at all, expresses only a very unimportant part of This is, of course, in line direct with most of what is said us. The same is true of all American music based upon Negro,

about the tom-tom and the saxophone. But are either of these —_ Indian, or other exotic themes or idioms. instruments as above described, “ebullient, optimistic, energetic The jazz people are not the worst offenders, if they are offendand extravagantly humorous?” To many musicians itis sure that ers at all—which is highly doubtful. It is the writers of so-called the monotonous tom-tom beats of jazz are the opposite of ebul- (or would-be) serious music who offend by setting their standard lient, etc., and the saxophones, especially inharmony, seem not _ so far away from the sort of Americanism of which they ought to jazzy but exquisitely soft. However, Mr. Strunsky probably uses _ be proud. Of all the music composed by native- born white Ameri-

this as an illustration to include the whole jazz formula. cans there is little indeed that has set out to express the essence He then goes on to tabulate our national features for the of American tradition, as Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner and purpose of showing that we are, indeed, less jazzy than other —_ others expressed the essence of German tradition. nations. He mentions, in turn, President Coolidge, the Constitu- When Mr. Strunsky asks if jazz expresses President Coolidge tion, Our Party System—of which he says: “ButinAmericamen _and our Constitution, he asks if jazz expresses the spirit that has are born Republicans or Democrats and their grandsons die = made us and kept us what we are. And if he asks this of jazz he Republican or Democratic. Compared with the jazz of Europeans —s might also (and with much the same reply) ask it of much of the

politics ours are Johann Sebastian Bach”—The Mother idea— __ serious music that has been written and is being written by “Tf the mother chant, as we raise it, is bunk it is part of aninter- | Americans. national bunk” —Puritanism, Capitalism, Ku Klux, The Farmer, These works might be separated into categories somewhat

Local Genius. as follows: American music expressing America; American muUnder each of these headings Mr. Strunsky shows how very _ sic expressing France; American music expressing Germany; conservative we are and sums up by asking: “How can aciviliza- | American music expressing the Orient; American music express-

tion which has been so severely stigmatized as stick-in-the- ing Indians; American music expressing Negroes; American mud, creaky, antiquated, anachronistic, suppressionist and in music expressing cleverness; American music expressing Sentimentalism.

February ¢ Scribner's RAGTIME, JAZZ, AND HIGH ART by W. J. Henderson What is ragtime? What is jazz? And whence and whither? Rag- _ festival of the Three Choirs, or the Pagan Poem of Charles Martime is no longer mentioned. “Jazz” has lost its original meaning. tin Loeffler, trumpeting classic memories of Lutetia in the lanPaul Whiteman, artist in popular music, protests against calling | guage of all Gaul?

the prevailing species of dance-songs jazz. But no matter what We refrain. We hesitate and are lost in the mists of speculawe choose to call our popular music, itis sui generis. Weshould _ tion. For if we searchingly review the history of our musical rise not apologize for it. “A poor thing, but mine own,” mumbled the — and progress we arrive at the inescapable conclusion that we shamefaced Touchstone. Yet, barring her inability to babble like have assimilated the arts of all the nations of earth and made her chosen lord and master, Audrey was probably quite as valu- —_—s none of our own. History is tiresome even to people who do not

able a member of the human race as the fool in the forest. Per- share the skeptical views of Henry Ford as to its value; but we haps her price was not above rubies, but she was atleast worthy = must refer to it in order to declare that it denudes us of all gar-

of the respect of a Touchstone. ments of musical glory. Up to the beginning of the nineteenth Now, as for what is at present called jazz, we Americans have —_ century we produced nothing which still moves before us. When

no need to whimper “a poor thing, but mine own.” Itisourown, __ the little group of New Englanders, our first modern composers, but if it is a poor thing then we are poor things too, for itrepre- —_ began its activities, the ears of all musical students were turned sents us with uncanny fidelity. What else musical have we cre- —_ toward Europe, and they are still strained to the sound-waves ated? The melancholy echoes of dissenters’ chapels composed _ from the east. The nations of Europe were not only nations, but

by Hopkins or the solemn platitudes of Lowell Mason? Was __ peoples. They had the racial and characteristic backgrounds there a rural church in all Britain from which these might not _ essential to the creation of their own types of art. They had folkhave emerged? Or shall we pin our faith on the Hora Novissima — music foundations and long and painfully developed schemes of Horatio Parker, breathing the blessed spirit of the venerable of artistic musical architecture. Our would-be Mozarts and

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FEBRUARY ¢ SCRIBNER’S 1925 Schuberts had nothing national to build upon. We were ana- — And later came the prophets of the north with harmonic scales, tion, but not a people. The melting-pot was seething and boiling = harmony in two planes, atonal and polytonal mazes, and the with ingredients from the icy mountains and the coral strands. bewildering procession of new creations ranging from the ecWhen we made a play it was patterned after Farquhar or Sheridan. static poems of the polite Scriabin to the elemental disclosures When we painted a portrait we fixed out reverent gaze on Sir of the rude Stravinsky. And with her eyes still scanning the Joshua. When we fashioned a public building we bowed before —_ purple horizons over the eastern sea America read the new mes-

the shrines of Wren and Gibbs. sage and took up the weak man’s burden of imitation. Our students of music were nevertheless profoundly igno- The ignorant people chattered noisily over the new things. rant of the existence of the musical treasures of most of the = “Why do they bring us this music which is not music?’ some European nations. The Italian opera and the German symphony _ cried. “Let them keep to their Mozart, Beethoven, and even loomed as master creations before them. Since Italians operas = Wagner. We have gone as far as we are going.” But missionary were obviously desirable chiefly because they were imported — work was to be done in order that those who had nothing to say and but vaguely understood, whereas the native articles suf- —_ in music might bury their emptiness under a dazzling parade of fered from the shameless exposure of the language, the goal of — the new devices. And so began the rise of the leagues and the our musicians became the concert platform. The Titans of con- _ guilds. cert art were Bach and Handel, Mozart and Beethoven; the trea- How beautiful is the spirit of brethren who dwell together in sures in which their traditions were hoarded were the conserva- unity! What an inspiring influence is the good American “gettories of Dresden and Leipzig, Berlin and Vienna. But Austria —_— together” meeting! In all music there has been nothing more was practically terra incognita. Berlin was gloomily repellent. persuading than a Sunday-night gathering of one of these guilds So the youthful aspirants hastened overseas to learn all the devoted to the dissemination of the new gospel. Yet in the end it secrets of the Saxons. And when they returned they gave us __ was not the valiant apostles of the new creed who wore the symphonic Mendelssohn and water or hard-boiled fugues with- — crowns of glory, but the unbridled prophet of the steppes, Igor

out salt or pepper. Stravinsky himself. Renard and the Histoire d’un Soldat laughed

We possess among our musical treasures some of the most __ their way into the memories of unbelieving recorders of musical elegantly groomed symphonies and perfectly trimmed string —_ incidents, while the solemn absurdities of the profound Varése, quartets that have proceeded from the mind of man. We have _—_ Salzedo, and Ruggles evaporated in the cold sunlight of the

large, spacious, well-ventilated oratorios, wholesome and re- —s morning after. |

freshing as country afternoons. Our operas have been anxiously Neither the grave and reverend seniors who brought from made upon the Italian last and have altered their outlines with = Europe the rubber stamp “approved by Carl Reinecke” or the every slow shift of fashion along the Piazza della Scala. And —_—s youthful aspirants who dreamed they had found the fountain of what noble and uplifting tone poems, marching bravely behind __ eternal youth in the dead sea of Milhaud, Poulenc, and the so-

the grizzled standard of Richard Strauss, as their forerunners ___ called “Group of Six” produced anything that caused a single paraded with the flag of Liszt! Piano concertos and violincon- —_ responsive throb in the heart of America. From Skowhegan to certos we also own, reflecting every ray of glory from those of Port Jervis the spirit of the nation beat time to the rhythms of the

Mozart and Corelli to those of Saint-Saens and Tschaikowsky. jazz tunes, and when the inner brotherhood in Forty-seventh We have not stood still. We have made progress faithfully in | Street implores the people to harken to Ruggles’s Vox clamans the footsteps of Europe. We are nothing if not up-to-date. And —_ in deserto or the Octandre of Edgar Varése, the graceless people

style? Well, one may do some boasting about that, for there is rudely chant: “Why did you kiss that girl?” nothing in the shape of style which we have not tried at least There are signs of an awakening. The musicians have begun once. We are eclectic, above all things, and true to our mission _ to discover that their ancient altars are in danger of being burned as a melting-pot. Meanwhile we have missed one great thing— by the home fires. The Etude, a leading musical magazine, has music of the people, by the people, and for the people. We could —_ enriched its columns with a symposium on jazz. Eminent musinot produce that while the German maennerchorinevery town _ cians, such as Leopold Stokowski, John Alden Carpenter, Walter was clinging to the fatherland classics, the Swedish and Italian §_ Spalding, and a score of others have said their say. Stokowski,

and even Irish societies resolutely turning their backsonevery- _ the brilliant conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, is of the thing except what chanted the rhythms of their own lands. opinion that jazz is here to stay. Well, that may or may not be. Its So when an American composer felt itincumbent uponhimto __ effects will surely last, though jazz as it is at the moment may write asymphony in B flat just because all the ancientimmortals _ pass into the dim chambers of memory or figure only in more or wrote symphonies, he was compelled to invent absolutely col- _ less accurate histories of the developments of music in the United orless themes and develop them in architectural musical forms _ States. designed by Beethoven and taught with authority in the great But what lexicographer can catch and imprison within two

temples of culture in Dresden and Leipzig. lines of agate type the meaning of the word jazz? For the term But onward-looking Europe declined to tarry beside the biers has become involved in inextricable linguistic confusion. Ragof Beethoven and Schubert. She sought and found new melodic time was the syncopated music that rested on the basis of the and harmonic diction in the whole tone scale dangled before her —_ old-time Negro jig. The double-shuffle and the clarion call of the eyes like a string of pearls by the delicate fingers of Debussy. floor manager for everybody to “sift sand” suggested new con-

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1925 FEBRUARY ¢ SCRIBNER’S juring tricks to composers. Hardly anything of all that remains. orchestra must be apparent to any one possessing even a layman’s How much ragtime can be found in Irving Berlin’s latest gems? knowledge of orchestral effects.

It need not greatly concern the student of music where rag- This jazz orchestra is American. It has impressed itself upon time originated. Fred Stone, the comedian, saidinaninterviewin the artistic European mind just as the ragtime and jazz music has

the New York Times that he first heard it played onapianobya captured the popular fancy of Europe. Can any such thing be Negro in New Orleans in 1895. Mr. Stone believes that it was said of any other American musical creation? In the admirable derived from a dance called the “Pasmala,” which he suspected | compositions of the learned Athenians who walk in the groves to be a corruption of “pas 4 mélé”—a mixed step. This dance — of the Boston Common one finds all the urbanity and all the featured the shuffling, dragging foot, and the short tone preced- —_ lofty contemplation that characterize the works of the fathers. ing the long one as in the typical ragtime snap. From thisdance — But has Europe hearkened to them? Has a European musician Bert Jordan and others developed dances which depended for _ stretched out the arms of his flagging inspiration toward them their interest on the rhythms sounded by the feet and these —_and clasped to his throbbing breast their needed support? Alas

rhythms were generally of the “rag” type. no! But ragtime and jazz rule the feet of France and Britain. And Jazz, strictly speaking, is instrumental effects, the principalone only last winter there came into the presence of local musicbeing the grotesque treatment of the portamento, especially in —_ lovers a composition by Igor Stravinsky called Symphonies for the wind-instruments. The professor of jazz, in the English of | Wind-Instruments, which betrayed that famous experimentalist genius, calls these effects “smears.” The writer first heard jazz —_ as an attentive listener to the seductive breathings of the saxoperformed by trombone-players in some of the marching bandsin _ phones, clarinets, and stopped trumpets of the jazz band.

the days of our war preparation. Afterward the ingenious players Our jazz music is unquestionably our own. It expresses our of the popular music discovered how to produce these wailing, — ebulliency, our care-free optimism, our nervous energy, and our sliding tones on other instruments. Later came the incomparable — extravagant humor—characteristics which our foreign critics tell Ross Gorman, who can evoke the laugh of ahyenafromaclarinet — us demark us from the rest of the world. Our composers have in and the bark of a dog from a heckelphone. But the caterwaul ofthe — recent years disclosed a desire to embody in music national nocturnal to be?, [Editor’s notre: Original article uses this and __ thought, aspiration and emotion. Goldmark’s Gettysburg Sym-

following boldface type.| the baying of the wandering “houn’ _ phony, Hadley’s North, East, South, and West, Schelling’s Vicdawg,” and the unnecessary crowing of the 2-A.-M. rooster are — tory Ball and the Negro rhapsodizings of Henry F. Gilbert and not essential to jazz music. They have been made a part of it | John Powell are the fruit of earnest efforts to be truly American,

because such instrumental antics entertain the crowd. while John Alden Carpenter’s Adventures in a Perambulator The employment of curious devices for altering the tonal and Deems Taylor’s Through a Looking-Glass publish the finer quality of certain wind instruments shocks the conservative qualities of American humor. music-lover more by its appearance than its musical effect. When But almost no American composer of the highly cultivated a trombone player places the bell of his instrument close to the __ class has put forth anything that translates into the language of mouth of a megaphone and obtains new and genuinely beauti- _—_art the musical ideals of the people.

ful tonal effects, he is doing a legitimate musical thing which Those who have endeavored to follow the kindly advice of would be more subtly persuasive in dignified composition ifthe | Doctor Dvorak and make the folk-music of the Negro the basis mechanism were not so baldly exposed. When aclarinet-player of their compositions have failed to conquer the public because thrusts the bell of his instrument into a derby hat, thereby caus- _ that public declined to embrace the slave music when dressed in ing the tones to sound muffled and distant, he is not performing — the unbecoming robes of Teutonic tone poems. The arts do not a new feat in jazz, but merely reproducing an effect dating back descend upon the people, but rise from them. The opera was the to Hector Berlioz’s Lelio ou le Retour ala Vie, made knownin __ true child of Italy as the symphony was of Germany. The opera 1832. The composer directs the clarinetist ata certain passage to —_~ was before La Scala and the symphony before the Dresden Con-

wrap the instrument in a leather bag, and informs us that he _ servatory. George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, for piano and devised this singular “sordin,” or “mute,” to “give the sound of __ orchestra, disclosed certain possibilities of jazz, but Liszt after

the clarinet an accent as vague and remote as possible.” all cannot father an American son. The composition of the jazz orchestra is more pregnant in its Much of the music beloved of the people and called jazz is promise for the future than the jazz itself. Asymphony orchestra _ not jazz nor even closely related to it. The sentimental songs, will contain about seventy-five strings to fourteen wood-wind which seem to awaken responsive chords in the souls of people and eleven brass instruments. A jazz band shows a decided pre- apparently devoid of all sentiment and sunk in hopeless vulgarponderance of wind and it leans naturally toward those of the ity and sordid views of life, are for the most part without traces greatest flexibility. The flute and the horn are not much used. Inits — of an origin similar to that of jazz. They are descendants not of Aeolian Hall concert Paul Whiteman’s organization had eight vio- _ the jig and the double-shuffle but of the Negro’s religious melolins, two double-basses (both interchangeable with tuba), a banjo, dies, his Roll, Jordan, Roll and Come Tremblin’ Down. The acelesta, two trumpets (exchangeable with flugelhorns),twotrom- —_ semi-hysterical emotion of the “spiritual,” given over into the bones, two horns, and three players operating the whole family of | hands of “poor white trash,” has been transformed into maudlin saxophones, a family of oboes, and another of clarinets. The great | sentiment which one would expect to find lauded not by serious range and variety of sonorities within the powers of such an commentators but by the industrious society of “sob sisters.”

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MARCH 1 ¢ THE SURVEY 1925 These tearful ditties are prone to fall into slow waltz tempo, — Hall, Victor Herbert was the one composer who pointed out unknown to Negro music, while the real jazz seems unable to _ definitely the way to freedom. If jazz must be wed to the dance,

break away from the tyranny of the fox-trot. then let it seek new dance forms and rhythms. Mr. Herbert’s If jazz is to rise to the level of musical art, it must overthrow suite of dances was a triumphant demonstration of the possithe government of the bass drum and the banjo. It must permit _ bilities of the popular melody in this direction. It proved effecitself to make excursions into the regions of elastic rhythms. tively that jazz need not be a poor thing, though assuredly our When Paul Whiteman gave his now historic concertin Aeolian — own.

March 1 ¢ The Survey JAZZ AT HOME by J. A. Rogers Jazz is amarvel of paradox: too fundamentally human, atleastas —_ of the whirling dervish, the hula of the South Seas, the dance du

modern humanity goes, to be typically racial, too international venture of the Orient, the carmagnole of the French Revolution, to be characteristically national, too much abroad inthe worldto _ the strains of Gypsy music, and the ragtime of the Negro. Jazz have a special home. And yet jazz in spite of it all is one part —_ proper, however, is something more than all these. It is a release American and three parts American Negro, and was originally __ of all the suppressed emotions at once, a blowing off of the lid, the nobody’s child of the levee and the city slum. Transplanted _as it were. It is hilarity expressing itself through pandemonium; exotic—a rather hardy one, we admit—of the mundane world musical fireworks. capitals, sport of the sophisticated, it is really at home in its The direct predecessor of jazz is ragtime. That both are atahumble native soil wherever the modern unsophisticated Negro __vistically African there is little doubt, but to what extent it is feels happy and sings and dances to his mood. It follows that — difficult to determine. In its barbaric rhythm and exuberance jazz is more at home in Harlem than in Paris, though from thelook _ there is something of the bamboula, a wild, abandoned dance of and sound of certain quarters of Paris one would hardly think — the West African and the Haitian Negro, so stirringly described so. It is just the epidemic contagiousness of jazz that makes it, by the anonymous author of Untrodden Fields of Anthropollike the measles, sweep the block. But somebody had to have it ogy, or of the Ganza ceremony so brilliantly depicted in Maran’

first: that was the Negro. Batouala?. But jazz time is faster and more complex than African What after all is this taking new thing, that, condemned in — music. With its cowbells, auto horns, calliopes, rattles, dinner

certain quarters, enthusiastically welcomed in others, has gongs, kitchen utensils, cymbals, screams, crashes, clankings nonchalantly gone on until it ranks with the movie and the dollar | andmonotonous rhythm it bears all the marks of a nerve-strung, as the foremost exponent of modern Americanism? Jazz isn’t —_ strident, mechanized civilization. It is a thing of the jungles— music merely, it is a spirit that can express itself in almost any- | modern man-made jungles. thing. The true spirit of jazz is a joyous revolt from convention, The earliest jazz-makers were the itinerant piano players who custom, authority, boredom, even sorrow—from everything that | would wander up and down the Mississippi from saloon to sawould confine the soul of man and hinder its riding free onthe —_ loon, from dive to dive. Seated at the piano with a carefree air air. The Negroes who invented it called their songs the “blues,” — that a king might envy, their box-back coats flowing over the and they weren’t capable of satire or deception. Jazz was their _ stool, their Stetsons pulled well over their eyes, and cigars at an

explosive attempt to cast off the blues and be happy, carefree angle of forty-five degrees, they would “whip the ivories” to happy even in the midst of sordidness and sorrow. And thatis = marvelous chords and hidden racy, joyous meanings, evoking why it has been such a balm for modern ennui, andhas become _ the intense delight of their hearers who would smother them at a safety valve for modern machine-ridden and convention-bound _ the close with hussies and whiskey. Often wholly illiterate, these society. It is the revolt of the emotions against repression. humble troubadours knowing nothing of written music or comThe story is told of the clever group of “jazz-specialists” | position, but with minds like cameras, would listen to the rude who, originating dear knows in what scattered places, hadfound — improvisations of the dock laborers and the railroad gangs and themselves and the frills of the art in New York and had been __ reproduce them, reflecting, perfectly the sentiments and the drawn to the gay Bohemias of Paris. In a little cabaret of | longings of these humble folk. The improvised bands at Negro Montmartre they had just “entertained” into the wee smallhours —__ dances in the south, or the little boys with their harmonicas and fascinated society and royalty; and, of course, had been paid = Jews-harps each one putting his own individuality into the air, royally for it. Then, the entertainment over and the guests away, __ played also no inconsiderable part in its evolution. “Poverty,” the “entertainers” entertained themselves with their very best, says J. A. Jackson of The Billboard, “compelled improvised which is always impromptu, for the sheer joy of it. That is jazz. instruments. Bones, tambourines, make-shift string instruments, In its elemental?, [sic] jazz has always existed. It is in the tin can and hollow wood effects, all now utilized as musical Indian war-dance, the Highland fling, the Irish Jig, the Cossack —_— novelties, were among early Negroes the product of necessity. dance, the Spanish fandango, the Brazilian maxillae,the dance | When these were not available ‘patting juba’ prevailed. present

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1925 , MARCH 1 ¢ THE SURVEY day ‘Charleston’ is but a variation of this. Its early expression But there still remains something elusive about jazz that few,

was the ‘patting’ for the buck dance.” if any of the white artists, have been able to capture. The Negro The origin of the present jazz craze is interesting. More cities is admittedly its best expositor. That elusive something, for lack claim its birthplace than claimed Homer dead. New Orleans, San of a better name, I'll call Negro rhythm. The average Negro, Francisco, Memphis, Chicago, all assert the honor is theirs. Jazz, —_— particularly of the lower classes, puts rhythm into whatever he

as it is today, seems to have come into being this way, however: — does, whether it be shining shoes or carrying a basket on the W. C. Handy, a Negro, having digested the airs of the itinerant head to market as the Jamaican women do. Some years ago while musicians referred to, evolved the first classic, Memphis Blues. wandering in Cincinnati I happened upon a Negro revival meetThen came Jasbo Brown, areckless musician ofa Negrocabaret ing at its height. The majority present were women, a goodly few

in Chicago, who played this and other blues, blowing hisown — of whom were white. Under the influence of the “spirit” the extravagant moods and risqué interpretations into them, while —_ sisters would come forward and strut—much of jazz enters where hilarious with gin. To give further meanings to his veiled allu- —_—it would be least expected. The Negro women had the perfect sions he would make the trombone “talk” by putting aderby hat —_— jazz abandon, while the white ones moved lamely and woodenly. and later a tin can at its mouth. The delighted patrons would — This same lack of spontaneity is evident to a degree in the cultishout, ““More, Jasbo, More, Jas, more.” And so the name origi- —_—- vated and inhibited Negro.

nated. Musically jazz has a great future. It is rapidly being subliAs to the jazz dance itself: at this time Shelton Brooks, a — mated. In the more famous jazz orchestras like those of Will Negro comedian, invented a new “strut,” called “Walkin’ the = Marion Cook, Paul Whiteman, Sissle and Blake, Sam Stewart, dog.” Jasbo’s anarchic airs found in this strut a soul mate. Then Fletcher Henderson, Vincent Lopez and the Clef Club units, as a result of their union came the Texas Tommy, the highest — there are none of the vulgarities and crudities of the lowly point of brilliant, acrobatic execution and nifty footwork so far _ origin or the only too prevalent cheap imitations. The pioneer evolved in jazz dancing. The latest of these dances is the Charles- work in the artistic development of jazz was done by Negro ton, which has brought something really new to the dance step. artists; it was the lead of the so-called “syncopated orchesThe Charleston calls for activity of the whole body. One charac- _ tras” of Tyers and Will Marion Cook, the former playing for the teristic is a fantastic fling of the legs from the hip downwards. _—_ Castles of dancing fame, and the latter touring as a concretizThe dance ends in what is known as the “camel-walk”—1in real- ing orchestra in the great American centers and abroad. Beity a gorilla-like shamble—and finishes with a peculiar hop like —_ cause of the difficulties of financial backing, these expert comthat of the Indian war dance. Imagine one suffering fromafitof | binations have had to yield ground to white orchestras of the

rhythmic ague and you have the effect precisely. type of the Paul Whiteman and Vincent Lopez organizations The cleverest Charleston dancers perhaps are urchins of five that are now demonstrating the finer possibilities of jazz music. and six who may be seen any time on the streets of Harlem, “Jazz,” says Serge Koussevitzy, the new conductor of the Boskeeping time with their hands, and surrounded by admiring — ton Symphony, “is an important contribution to modern musicrowds. But put it on a well-set stage, danced by abobbed-hair _cal literature. It has an epochal significance—it is not superfichorus, and you have an effect that reminds you of the abandon cial, itis fundamental. Jazz comes from the soil, where all music of the furies. And so Broadway studies Harlem. Not all of the _ has its beginning.” And Stokowski says more extendedly of it: visitors of the twenty or more well-attended cabarets of Harlem “Jazz has come to stay because it is an expression of the are idle pleasure seekers or underworld devotees. Many are __ times, of the breathless, energetic, superactive times in which serious artists, actors and producers seeking something new, _ we are living, it is useless to fight against it. Already its new some suggestion to be taken, too often in pallid imitation, to _ vigor, its new vitality is beginning to manifest itself. America’s

Broadway’s lights and stars. contribution to the music of the past will have the same revivifyThis makes it difficult to say whether jazz is more characteris- _ing effect as the injection of new, and in the larger sense, vulgar tic of the Negro or of contemporary America. As was shown, itis _ blood into dying aristocracy. Music will then be vulgarized in of Negro origin plus the influence of the American environment. the best sense of the word, and enter more and more into the It is Negro-American. Jazz proper however is an idiom—rhyth- daily lives of people. The Negro musicians of America are playmic, musical and pantomimic—thoroughly American Negro; itis ing a great part in this change. They have an open mind, and his spiritual picture on that lighter comedy side, just as the spiri- unbiased outlook. They are not hampered by conventions or

tuals are the picture on the tragedy side. The two are poles _ traditions, and with their new ideas, their constant experiment, apart, but the former is by no means to be despised and itisjust they are causing new blood to flow in the veins of music. The as characteristically the product of the peculiar and unique ex- —jazz players make their instruments do entirely new things, things perience of the Negro in this country. The African Negrohasn’t _ finished musicians are taught to avoid. They are pathfinders

it, and the Caucasian never could have invented it. Once —intonewrrealms.” achieved, it is common property, and jazz has absorbed the na- And thus it has come about that serious modernistic music tional spirit, that tremendous spirit of go, the nervousness, lack and musicians, most notably and avowedly in the work of the of conventionality and boisterous good-nature characteristic of | French modernists Auric, Satie and Darius Milhaud, have bethe American, white or black, as compared with the more rigid — come the confessed debtors of American Negro jazz. With the

formal natures of the Englishman or German. same nonchalance and impudence with which it left the levee 390

MARCH 7 ¢ SATURDAY EVENING POST 1925 and the dive to stride like an upstart conqueror, almost over- _‘ The tired longshoreman, the porter, the housemaid and the poor night, into the grand salon, jazz now begins its conquest of elevator boy in search of recreation, seeking in jazz the tonic for

musical Parnassus. weary nerves and muscles, are only too apt to find the bootlegger,

Whatever the ultimate result of the attempt to raise jazzfrom the gambler and the demi-monde who have come there for victims the mob-level upon which it originated, its true home is still its and to escape the eyes of the police. original cradle, the none too respectable cabaret. And here we Yet in spite of its present vices and vulgarizations, its sex have the seamy side to the story. Here we have some of the informalities, its morally anarchic spirit, jazz has a popular mischarm of Bohemia, but much more of the demoralization of vice. sion to perform. Joy, after all, has a physical basis. Those who

Its rash spirit is in Grey’s popular song, Runnin Wild: laugh and dance and sing are better off even in their vices than

; ; , ; ; wild; those lost whocontrol, do not. Moreover jazz with its mocking for Runnin’ Runnin’ wild; mighty bold ae Jdisregard 6jazz eisteeae y ; formality is a leveler and makes for democracy. The spirit, Feelin’ and primitive, reckless demands too, carefree the time; blue - ; _gay , being more all frankness and never sincerity. Just; a, as éit .

Always I don’thas know where, always showin’sothat I don’t care .; ; ; ey .goin’ ar already done in art and music, eventually in human relaDon’ love nobody, it ain’t worth while all alone; runnin’ wild. Lo. tions and social manners, it will no doubt have the effect of

Jazz reached the height of its vogue atatime when minds were _ putting more reality in life by taking some of the needless artifireacting from the horrors and strain of war. Humanity welcomedit —_ ciality out. Naturalness finds the artificial in conduct ridiculous.

because ignites fresh joyousness men found a temporary forget- “Cervantes smiled Spain’s chivalry away,” said Byron. And so fulness, infinitely less harmful than drugs or alcohol. It is partly this new spirit of joy and spontaneity may itself play the role of for some such reasons that it dominates the amusement life of | reformer. Where at present it vulgarizes, with more wholesome America today. No one can sensibly condone its excesses or — growthin the future, it may on the contrary truly democratize. At minimize its social danger if uncontrolled; all culture is built upon all events jazz is rejuvenation, a recharging of the batteries of inhibitions and control. But it is doubtful whether the “jazz- civilization with primitive new vigor. it has come to stay, and hounds” of high and low estate would use their time to better they are wise, who instead of protesting against it, try to lift and advantage. In all probability their tastes would find some equally —_— divert it into nobler channels.

;O,, _silver Jazzonia by Langston Hughes . . tree! oh, shining rivers of the soul! frivolous, a; Lo tonic the strong and asix poison for the weak. . ; play. Infor a Harlem cabaret long-headed jazzers

morbid, mischievous vent. Jazz, it is needless to say, will remain a ;

recreation for the industrious and a dissipater of energy for the . ree

For the Negro jazz botheyes more ; ; ; ;himself, A dancing girliswhose areand boldless liftsdangerous high a dressar ofeo: silken

than for the white—less in that, he is nervously more in tune old

with it; more, in that at his average level of economic develop- BO ae

; Le ; Oh, singing Oh, shining riversofofsocial the soul! ment, his amusement life, tree! is open to the forces ; , . bold? . ; _ Were Eve’s eyes inmore the first garden just a bit too vice. The cabaret offbetter type provides acertain Bohemianism for ; of Was Cleopatra gorgeous in a gown the Negro intellectual, the artist and the well-to-do. But the average . ,

gold?

i, 4:is too Oh, shining tree! silver rivers ofinn.the thing much the substitute for Oh, the saloon and the wayside a: ;soul! ;

In a whirling cabaret six long-headed jazzers play. —from The Crisis

March 7 ¢ Saturday Evening Post THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTRELS by Marian Spitzer The passing, a few months ago, of Lew Dockstader, famous _ traditions discarded. minstrel, was more than just the death of a well-loved man. It There have been a number of good reasons given for the was also the symbol of the death of an American institution. decline of minstrelsy, all sound economic reasons. The inroads Minstrelsy, the one single purely native form of entertainment,a — of vaudeville and motion pictures, for instance. Every little town

form that flourished mightily in its day, has been dying for years. which formerly depended on the minstrel show for its occaOne by one the figures that gave it vitality and charm have died __ sional entertainment now has and has, had for years its own or gone into other pursuits, and no new figures have come to _—_— movie or vaudeville house, or both take their places.

A decade ago there were more than thirty minstrel shows of Tambo and Bones high repute in the country; today there are scarcely half a dozen. There is nothing left but the shell of minstrelsy—an occasional = The fact that good minstrel artists were gobbled up by the protroupe of old-time prominence still valorously touring the prov- _— ducers of burlesque shows, musical comedies and vaudeville, inces, a straggling handful of third-raters still barnstorming, and = who offered them more money and an easier life; the fact that that is all. The spirit is gone. The old form is abandoned, the old — minstrel shows were composed altogether of men, and that no

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1925 MARCH 7 ¢ SATURDAY EVENING POST entertainment can flourish today that hasn’t its quota of pretty volume was compiled in 1910 by Edward LeRoy Rice, son of girls; the inevitable amateur minstrel show, put on by the Elks or William Henry Rice, a famous minstrel. The author had a brief the Rotary Club or the volunteer firemen—these too, they say, career as a minstrel himself, but his activities were mainly along

helped kill the professional minstrel show. managerial lines. He is still active as a writer and producer of Logical reasons, all these; but the point is, the day isdead. If vaudeville acts. His volume, Monarchs of Minstrelsy, was a lathere were enough people left who wanted to see minstrel shows, _ bor of love, and privately printed. It is out of print now; but Mr. then the minstrels would be able to compete with the vaudeville | Rice, who is regarded throughout the theatrical world as a lead-

and movie houses. If there were enough people left to patronize ing authority on the subject, is planning someday to write a the minstrel shows, then they would be able to pay their stars complete history of minstrelsy. enough to keep them. But the day is dead. Minstrelsy was a

simple, unsophisticated form of entertainment, just as the source The Famous Jim Crow

from which it sprang was simple and unsophisticated. The the- . .

ater-goers of today are on the whole neither one, nor do they — The Jim Crow story relates that Daddy Rice, while wandering

look for either quality in their amusements. along the levees of New Orleans, or the streets of Cincinnati, It is said that minstrelsy is disappearing, for it was the one | Whichever you choose to accept as the setting of the drama— true essentially American form of theatrical art. It would not be | New Orleans is much the more romantic; but since Edward LeRoy unfitting for the Museum of Natural History to put on exhibition Rice, not a descendant of the original minstrel, by the way, cred-

in its Americana room a tambourine and a pair of bone castanets its the Mid-Western city, that is probably the correct one— as the relics of a bygone era in American life. And they might C¢4me upon an ancient, forlorn, dilapidated Negro, gnarled and even encase in glass, as they do reproductions of the redskins, bent with rheumatism, who, utterly oblivious of being watched, a semicircle of waxen minstrel men, with blacked-up faces and WaS doing a curious shuffling sort of dance to the accompanigaudy costumes, so that future generations will have some record Ment of an odd little song which he crooned to himself.

of this phase of our native development. Something in this figure arrested the attention of young Rice. The source of minstrelsy was the soil of the old South. The Some instinct told him that this ludicrous yet pathetic old man, plantation Negro slaves, with their crooning melodies and their with his hobble, his shuffle and his brooding song, was a symshuffling dances, were the models upon which the first minstrel bol of the race of slaves; and that if he could reproduce on the performers patterned themselves. Indeed, it was a decrepit old Stage what he was witnessing on the street, he would have darky, singing a curious little song, that gave to Thomas something with which really to fire the imagination of his audiDartmouth Rice, the accredited father of minstrelsy, hisconcep- &ce. So there he stood, watching and listening, photographing tion of a Negro characterization. There are records of black-face Mentally every pose and attitude of the old darky, and memorizperformers in America before the time that Rice began his career ing the words of the almost meaningless little song. Jim Crow as a minstrel, but they are scattered and casual. As early as 1799 —_~Was the song, and it has come down through the years until not there was an announcement in the Boston Gazette of a perfor- !ong ago, in a modernized version, it was incorporated into a mance at the Federal Theater during which one of the entertain- popular musical comedy. The original words were something ers would sing, in character, a song called The Gay Negro Boy, like this:

and many circuses of the early nineteenth century had black- First on de heel tap, den on de toe, face clowns. Authorities on minstrelsy, however, agree that the Eb’ ry time I wheel about i jump Jim Crow; genuine minstrel performer had his inception with Daddy Rice, Wheel about and turn about and do jis so, who has come down to posterity surrounded by quotation marks. an’ eb’rytime I wheel about I jump Jim Crow. He was known as “‘the father of minstrelsy” and “the original Jim

Crow.” The story of how he created this character has become His instinct had been right. When, clad as nearly as possible legendary; and like all legends, differs in its details with each _ like the dilapidated old Negro, his features hidden beneath a

telling. The essential points, however, agree. coating of burnt cork, the youthful performer shuffled out onto Thomas Dartmouth Rice was a young comedian of mediocre the stage of a Pittsburgh theater soon after and introduced himstanding but considerable ambition, when he stumbled on the self with the song, Jim Crow, the effect was sensational. Added old darky upon whose antics he built not only hisownfame and tO its original words were several quatrains of topical and local fortune but a whole institution. The accepted date of the occur- _ interest. Rice as a performer was made; and the song, setting a rence, I believe, is 1831; the place is given sometimes as New _ Precedent for many future ditties, was an overnight hit. The

Orleans, sometimes Cincinnati. melody was simple yet insistent, and the words easy to remem-

Deplorably little, incidentally, has been written about min- ber. Within a week everybody in Pittsburgh was humming Jim strelsy. Most of the information on the subject is obtainable C70w. only through the verbal reminiscences of old-timers; and these, Before he introduced Jim Crow to the public, Rice was a though extremely interesting, are likely to be somewhat inaccu- performer of little importance. After its introduction, he became rate. Aside from a few scattered papers and a casual chapter or | More and more prominent and was sought by theatrical managtwo in general books on the theater, there is a single volume on _—&F'S aS a big drawing card. Although he is credited with having the subject, and that an encyclopedia rather than a history. This originated minstrelsy, he did not appear in many minstrel shows

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MARCH 7 ¢ SATURDAY EVENING POST 1925 himself. He was with Charley White’s Serenaders forsome time, the years only one of that same date stands out as having been and played a starring engagement with Wood’s Minstrels in _ really important to the history of minstrelsy. That organization New York; and like most of the minstrels who followed himhe — was the Buckley Serenaders, organized by James Buckley, who played Uncle Tom at one time in his career. After his success in —_- was an orchestra leader in Harrington’s Museum in Boston. In this country was established, he went to England, where he —:1843, a few months after the Virginia Minstrels took New York by repeated his triumph with Jim Crow. In addition to performing storm, James Buckley and his three sons, R. Bishop, G. Swayne as a Negro, Rice wrote several Negro farces, the best knownof and Fred, began a minstrel troupe which they first called the

which was Oh, Hush. Congo Melodists. Later they changed the name to the New

The first minstrel show, composed of four men, was not given Orleans Serenaders, and finally they took the family name, by until twelve years after Daddy Rice brought Jim Crow to the — which they became really known to fame. They played successstage. In January or February—it has never been definitely es- fully in Boston, where they remained for two years, and in 1845 tablished which—1843, a quartet of friends, Billy Whitlock, Dick | came to New York. The next year they followed the lead of the Pelham, Dan Emmett and Frank Brower, presented in the Bowery Virginia Minstrels again, and went to England, where they were Amphitheater, New York, “the first night of the novel, grotesque, equally popular.

original and surpassingly melodious Ethiopian Band entitled, Later, after touring the country with great success, they added

The Virginia Minstrels.” two men to their organization and thus became the largest minBilly Whitlock, who was a typographer on the New York _ strel troupe up to that time. Herald by day and a performer by night, was particularly profi- The minstrel show in the form we know it now was first precient on the banjo, as well as being a comedian of some stand- _ sented by one of the most famous minstrels of all time, Edwin P. ing. One day he went to visit his friend Dan Emmett, also a — Christy. It was Christy who originated the idea of seating the talented musician, and droll; and they were practicing on the men in a semicircle on the stage, with the interlocutor, or middlebanjo, when another friend, Frank Brower, dropped inonthem. — man, in the center making the announcements and acting as Emmett produced a pair of bone castanets and they played in _— feeder to the comedians, who were also the tambourine and trio. After a while the fourth friend, Dick Pelham, came in, also by bone players, seated at either end and being known as end men.

accident. With this beginning, the minstrel show gradually came to take on as arbitrary and immutable a mold as any French verse

Virginia Minstrels form. The show was divided into two parts, the minstrel first part

and the olio. When the curtain went up on the minstrel first part, It occurred to one of them that they would make anexcellentand the men, attired in bright-colored swallowtail suits and tall hats, novel quartet, so Pelham went out and bought a tambourine, _ the uniforms of the end men a little more gaudy than those of the and they practiced for a while, then tried out the actonsome of _ rest, were standing in a semicircle. A chord from the orchestra—

their acquaintances in a bowery billiard parlor. The result was “ta-ra.” A command from the interlocutor, “Gentlemen, be the Virginia Minstrels. They played for several weeks in New _ seated!” Then the show began. York, exciting much favorable comment; then they went to Bos-

ton for a few weeks, and later sailed for England, where they had A Ceremonial Rite a successful engagement at Liverpool before going to London. There is an idea among legitimate and vaudeville performers | “Good evening, Mr. Tambo,” said the middleman. “Who was that the custom of American actors going to England for an __ that lady I saw you with last night?” engagement is one of rather recent date, but it seems that prac- “Good evening, Mr. Bones, I have a little question I want to tically every minstrel organization of any standing went over- | ask you, Why does a chicken cross the road?” seas to tour when going overseas was not the casual matter it is Jokes, ballads and comic ditties. Such songs, over a period of today. The Virginia Minstrels did not remain together long. By __ half a century, as Lucy Long, The Old Oaken Bucket, Always midsummer of the year which saw their organization they had Take Mother’s Advice, The Letter That Never Came, Silver

disbanded in England. Threads Among the Gold, Seeing Nellie Home, and a host of

Dan Emmett achieved the greatest fame of all the Virginia —_ others. Solos on the banjo, hard-shoe dancing, more jokes, more Minstrels; not so much because he was a better performer than __ ballads, more comic ditties, a grand finale—the end of the min-

his partners, but because he was the composer of Dixie, which _ strel first part. This became a rite. To digress from it by the later became the war song of the Confederate Army, andiseven __ slightest detail would be lése-majesté. It was the minstrel show. today looked on as little short of sacred in the south. It is inter- The “olio” section of the show was simply an aggregation of esting if somewhat disillusioning to learn that Dixie was not _ separate acts, like a small vaudeville show. There would be, for written in the heat and emotion of patriotic zeal, but quite incold — instance, a humorous sketch, a quartet of singers, a monologue blood, and presumably for money. Dan Emmett wrote it asa _— by the chief comedian, a miniature revue, a hilarious afterpiece, marching song for Bryant’s Minstrels, and it was first sung at —_ burlesquing all that had gone before. Mechanics’ Hall on lower Broadway on September 12, 1859. The minstrel parade, of course, became an integral part of After the success of the Virginia Minstrels, similar organiza- | every show, and just as important, especially in small towns, as tions began to spring up rapidly, although through the mist of _ the circus parade. In some communities they even used to close

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1925 MARCH 7 ¢ SATURDAY EVENING POST up the shops on the day the minstrels came to town, because It is rather curious that minstrel shows attained real popularthere wasn’t any business anyway. Everybody turned out to _ity only in English-speaking countries. Some of the American

watch the parade and listen to the band. companies essayed Continental tours, and several English perIn these, the pioneer days of minstrelsy, the emphasis was —__ formers, emboldened by the success of the Americans in Enplaced on the musical side of the performance. The full develop- gland, got together and tried their luck in France and Germany,

ment of Tambo and Bones into farce comedians did not come the ludicrousness of their cockney accent trying to sound like until sometime later. Sentimental songs of slave life, the violin | American Negroes apparently never occurring to them. The and banjo music of the plantation were the things given inthe |= French never took very kindly to minstrelsy; and as for the minstrel show of ante-bellum days. It was by Edwin P. Christy | Germans, it seems that they somehow got the impression that that the beautiful songs of Stephen Foster were first introduced, — they were being imposed upon; that these men with blackened although it was not until many years later that they were recog- _— faces were trying to pass themselves off as genuine Negroes, a nized by musicians as the only authentic folk music ever pro- supposed fact which their Teutonic minds deeply resented. duced in America. Foster, sharing the fate common to men of In England, though, minstrelsy gained almost as strong a genius, often poor and unrecognized. His songs, whichretained — foothold as it did in the United States. Gladstone proclaimed it the real flavor and atmosphere of slave life, with its pathos and __his favorite form of entertainment and used to attend minstrel yearning, contributed much to the success of others, but noth- shows as an antidote for the cares of state, just as Woodrow

ing to himself. Wilson, when he was President, attended vaudeville shows evChristy was a banjoist and an actor, as well asa manager; but —_ ery weekas arelief from the pressure of the war administration. he was best known as a singer of ballads, and My Old Kentucky Thackeray, too, admitted himself under the spell of the minstrel Home, Massa’s in de Cold, Cold Ground. Suwanee River, Old man, and once penned a brief but eloquent tribute to this art.

Black Joe and many other songs of this kind were first sung by “I have gazed at thousands of tragedy queens dying on the him. This and the fact that he is credited with having originated — stage and expiring in appropriate blank verse,” he wrote, “and I the idea of the half circle of minstrels make his name important in have never wanted to wipe my spectacles. Behold, a vagabond

the annals of minstrelsy. with a corked face and a banjo sings a little song, strikes a wild note and sets the heart thrilling with happy pity.”

Success in England Those few words of Thackeray’s conjure up an authentic

picture of the old-time minstrels, who presented not caricatures Christy’s Minstrels held continuous sway at the famous old _ but genuine character studies, real portraits of the plantation Mechanics’ Hall in New York for seven years, from 1847 to 1854. Negro of the South. Their fame brought them an offer of an engagement in San Fran- This type of minstrel began to disappear around the time of cisco, but they met with indifferent success in the West. Some the Civil War; and it was as early as that, some of the very old old-timers attribute their failure to the fact that George Christy, reminiscers—dead now, almost all of them—claimed, that minwho had been associated with Edwin for many years, left the —_strelsy began to disintegrate, although there are many to distroupe sometime before it set sail for California, and with an- _ pute that claim, as some of the most illustrious minstrel troupes other man organized another minstrel company known as Wood _and minstrel men did not begin to flourish until after the war. Col. and Christy’s Minstrels, in which he played one of theendmen. —_Jack Haverly, for instance, who organized the first big minstrel Under his auspices minstrelsy began to branch out. He opened _ troupe, one of the best known in the world, and who developed

another theater and played in both houses, appearing in the _ some of the greatest of all minstrels, did not begin his minstrel minstrel first part in the original theater, and doing specialtiesin _—_ career until 1864, and his troupe of Mastodons was not orgathe olio part in the second house. By the middle 50’s minstrelsy nized until 1878. McIntyre & Heath, among the few old-time was well established as a popular form of entertainment, andin _ minstrels active today—they are still impersonating the Georgia 1857 the first theater built especially for minstrel performances —_— Minstrels in vaudeville, and last year celebrated the fiftieth anwas erected in New York. It was called Wood’s Marble Hall of _niversary of their partnership—joined forces in 1874, but it was Minstrelsy, and was situated at 561 Broadway, now part of the —_— four years later when they organized their own minstrel commanufacturing and wholesale district of the city. George Christy, pany. Lew Dockstader made his debut in 1873; Al G. Fields, who

by the way was not related to Edwin P. Christy. His real name _at the time of writing has a minstrel show on tour, began his was Harrington and he only assumed the name of Christy after —_ minstrel career in 1871. Billy Emerson, Big Sunflower, the idol of

his association with the founder of the troupe. a whole nation during the heyday of his career, flourished all Meanwhile some of the original members of Christy’s Min- _ through the latter half of the nineteenth century; while George strels organized a troupe and went to England, using the origi- Primrose, William H. West, George Thatcher, Honey Boy Evans,

nal name of the organization. Their success in England was _ Eddie Leonard, Neil O’ Brien—still conducting his own show tremendous. Several subsidiary companies grew from this first around the country—kept minstrelsy an important factor in one, and the name “Christy’s Minstrels” came to be almost a = American life for at least the first ten years of this century, and generic term in that country. For years all minstrel companies even a little longer. there were called Christy’s.

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MARCH 7 © SATURDAY EVENING POST 1925 Billy Birch’s Minstrels Forty—Count “Em—Forty It was, however, during the years approximately between 1850 = There was Matt Peel, a very talented performer-manager, whose and 1870 that minstrelsy secured its strong hold on the imagina- show, after his death, was managed by his widow, the first and tion of the American public. The names of minstrels whoroseto _ practically the only woman minstrel manager. There was Charley popularity during that time are legion, and there wereanumber = White, who was regarded as a really great actor and a profound of permanent minstrel theaters as widely known throughout the student of Negro dialect; G W. H. Griffen, one of the greatest

country as the Hippodrome is today. There was Hooley’s, in _interlocutors in the business; the Guy Brothers, one of whom, Brooklyn, for instance, founded in 1861 by R.M. Hooley, who —_ George, is still active; Fox & Ward, partners since 1868, also still had been orchestra leader with the original Christy’s Minstrels. active; Joe Murphy, Cherry Gow, who died a millionaire; James

After several years’ wide experience in minstrelsy, including a | Unsworth and scores of others. The air of this country seemed tour of Europe, the Brooklyn company was organized, and there to breed minstrels, and under their influence minstrelsy develit stayed ten years. There are still a scattering of very, very old — oped into an always more and more specialized form of entermen in Brooklyn who can remember attending Hooley’s when _tainment, secure in its supremacy in the hearts and minds of the they were boys. Some of the greatest minstrels of that day trod |= American public.

the boards of Hooley’s. The original semicircle idea, begun by Edwin Christy, was The San Francisco Minstrels in New York were also a famous not abandoned. The interlocutor, who played straight to the end troupe, organized, as the name indicates, in California by Billy men, became more and more polished in his manner; the number Birch, an alumnus of Wood and Christy’s minstrels, together | of end men with each show was increased. At first there was but with Dave Wambold, Charles Backus and William H. Bernard. one Tambo and one Bones; later each show had two and someThis company, after many vicissitudes, opened shop at585 Broad- _ times three interchangeable comedians for each end. The cosway, New York, in May of 1865, and continued there forseven — tumes became increasingly magnificent, the scenery increas-

years. Their name was a household word in the city. ingly elaborate, the productions increasingly ambitious. The The minstrel theater of Philadelphia, founded by John L. _ nogue for burlesque opera came in, likewise the fashion for travCarncross, famous as one of the sweetest singers in minstrelsy, esties on dramatic productions and take-offs of celebrities of and E. Freeman Dixey, is still active, andis today the only perma- _ the stage and public life. William Henry Rice, already a popular nent minstrel theater in the world. Carncross and Dixey’s origi- —‘ minstrel, won undying fame by his burlesque impersonation of nal company was situated in the old Eleventh Street Opera House, Sarah Bernhardt in a travesty called, none too subtly—but then which was torn down not so many years agotomakeroomfora — minstrelsy didn’t try to be subtle—Sarah Heartburn. The Divine business building. In 1896 it went under the management of —_ Sarah, then touring the United States, attended a special perfor-

Frank Dumont and continued its career, becoming atraditionto | mance of this burlesque, and according to all accounts, enjoyed Philadelphians. For the past few years it has been under the __it hugely, laughing until the tears streamed down her face at guidance of Emmett Welch, and occupies the old Ninth and — some of the scenes mocking her performance in Camille. Arch Streets Museum, and is now known as the Emmett Welch Thus the minstrel show grew and grew, and waxed bigger

Minstrels. and bigger, until there emerged the first example of what, for a To give acomprehensive list of the eminent minstrels of that | better name, must be called modern minstrelsy—Haverly’s Mastearly era would be impossible; but afew names come insistently | odons. With the Mastodons a new era in that form of entertain-

to the mind—names that meant as much in their day as the — ‘ment was instituted, and it was with the Mastodons that most biggest stars of the legitimate and vaudeville stage do today. —_ people who recall minstrelsy today began their minstrel educaThere was Dave Reed, for instance, one of the earliest and best tion. known of minstrels, who made famous and was made famous by Col. Jack Haverly, it is generally conceded, did more for modtwo old songs, Shoo Fly and Sally Come up. He was known, as_—_—_ ern minstrelsy than any other man; and certainly the majority of

a matter of fact, as the Sally-Come-Up Man. minstrels within the memory of the current public served an Reed, like many other minstrels of his time, playedin Missis- | apprenticeship with him. Billy Emerson, George Thatcher, Willis sippi River boat shows. There were Kelly and Leon, famous in — P. Sweetnam, George Evans, Eddie Leonard and Lew Dockstader, their own show, and later as part of Haverly’s, Leon being par- _ the real minstrel stars of the last generation, all were associated ticularly noted as a female impersonator. Here is another branch —_ at some time in their careers with Jack Haverly. There were many

of theatricals which most people are under the impression isa __ others, to be sure, but these are the most prominent names. fairly recent innovation; but female impersonations were among Haverly was not a performer. he contented himself with the the earliest manifestations of minstrelsy, which forsome reason managerial end of the game and the development of stars. He was never a successful medium for women, although there were —_ was to minstrels what Ziegfeld is to chorus girls. Before beginOne or two attempts to send out all-feminine minstrel troupes; ning his career as a minstrel magnate, he was the owner of a and at least two well-known actresses, Trixie Friganza, now a variety theater in Toledo, Ohio. Later he was associated with vaudeville star, and Lotta, the famous soubrette who died re- _—_— several other men in minstrel ventures, but in the end he always cently and left a large fortune to charity, were knowntoblackup stood alone. He owned and controlled a great many theaters. He and play in real minstrel shows on infrequent occasions. was a man of great daring and imagination, a plunger, who won

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1925 MARCH 7 ¢ SATURDAY EVENING POST fortunes and lost them and won them again with an air of con- _ of place now filled by Babe Ruth. There is nobody on the stage,

vincing unconcern. He was characteristically generous and the old-timers insist, who is worshipped by the public as he was.

deeply loved by all who knew him. When he walked on the street crowds followed him. Small boys Probably he would have been a good advertising man, with —_ besieged him for autographs and souvenirs. Women gave him his aptitude for slogans. When he organized Haverly’s Mast- __ the idolatry they now squander on Rudolph Valentino. odons in Chicago, in 1878, he coined a slogan which swept like He appeared with a number of minstrel troupes, including wildfire over the country, a simple slogan, but ithad a punch. — Haverly’s and the Megatherians, as well as heading his own “Forty—count ‘em—forty!” it was, and it helped as much as_ —s company in several tours of this country, England and Austraany other single element to make the Mastodons the huge suc- _ lia. He was popular everywhere; but it was in San Francisco that cess they became. It was the first time such a large number of _ he was especially idolized, and return visits to that city were in men had been used in any single show, and playing up the __ the nature of triumphal marches.

number brought a great deal of business. The name, too, was a In spite of his fame, and the fortune he must have made drawing card, as several other minstrel managers must have _ during the years of his popularity, Billy Emerson died a poor realized, for soon there sprang up similar large minstrel organiza- man and a broken one. Like so many performers of the old school,

tions, entitled the Giganteans, the Megatherians, and the like. he was improvident. But Haverly’s Mastodons continued to be preeminent, and won The stories of the other minstrel favorites have no such tragic as much fame in the British isles as they did here at home. endings. George Evans, known to fame as Honey Boy because It was a member of the Mastodons in fact who had to his ___ he was the author of the popular song, /’ll be True to My Honey credit the amazing fact that he successfully kidded Queen Victoria. |§ Boy died in 1915, and was active until shortly before his death. That man was J. W. McAndrews, know as the Watermelon Man, In fact, his old act is still playing in vaudeville under the name of

and noted as the singer of the famous old song, Jim Along the Seven Honey Boys. His career as a performer included enJosie. It is one thing for performers of the current stage tojoke | gagements with medicine shows, minstrel shows, including Prim-

with the young and democratic Prince of Wales, anditissaidto rose & West’s, Haverly’s and the Cohan and Harris Minstrels, have been just as easy to spoof his grandfather, King Edward — which he took over as his own in 1910, musical comedy and VI, when he was still heir to the British throne. Butto jest atthe vaudeville. expense of Her Royal Majesty Queen Victoria as though she He wrote many popular songs besides Honey Boy, one of the were a mere mortal—such a thing was undreamed of. Yet the —_ best known being Jn the Good Old Summertime.

happened this way: Lew Dockstader Watermelon Man did it, and what is more, he got away with it. It

Reports of his success with the Mastondons had reached the Queen’s ears, and she commanded him to give a perfor- | George Primrose, whose family name was Delaney, was, among mance at Buckingham Palace. He came, of course, and as he other things, conceded to be the greatest soft-shoe dancer in walked on the stage of the theater in the palace, he noticed that —‘ the world, and the originator of that type of dancing. He also the Queen was sitting in a stage box. He did his monologue and lived until a short time ago. His death occurred in the summer of started to go into a song. It was part of the stage business of | 1919 while he was living in retirement in San Diego, California. that song to remove his painfully ragged coat, fold it up care- | He began his career at the age of fifteen, billed as Master Georgie, fully as though it were something infinitely valuable and lay it the Infant Clog Dancer, in a minstrel show. He alternated bedown on the floor. He shuffled over to the side of the stage © tween minstrel shows and circuses, and when he joined Skiff under the queen’s box, took off the coat, folded it with painstak- | and Gaylord’s Minstrels in 1871 he met William H. West, who ing exactness and laid it down with the utmost gentleness di- | was his partner for thirty years. He was later associated with rectly under the box and entirely within the royal reach. He started © George Thatcher and Lew Dockstader and spent much of his away, then looked back at the queen, an expression of great time during his later years in vaudeville. Primrose and Dockstader suspicion crossing his face. Then he returned to the coat, picked = aS. a headlining team were tremendously popular in the two-ait up tenderly, carried it across the stage, indicating by every line _— day.

of his face and body that it was far too precious to be left within As for Lew Dockstader, of whom it is said that he made more

her grasp, and put it down in a remote part of the stage. people laugh than any other man of his time, he achieved equal The court was aghast. Such effrontery had never before been —_ distinction as a performer and a manager. Under his real name, witnessed. They expected the outraged Queen to rise and smite George Alfred Clapp, he began his career at the age of sixteen in him. But she didn’t. Instead she broke the horrified silence with | an amateur minstrel show. He appeared with innumerable minone of her rare bursts of laughter. The tension relieved, the —_strel shows, including Carncross’ in Philadelphia, and Haverly’s, entire assemblage became hysterical. And McAndrews, when _always as a comedian. In 1886 he organized his own company, he returned to America, was the proud possessor of awatch and — which remained in New York for many years.

aring, gifts of Her Royal Majesty. All the minstrels in this little group were friends, and it seems Billy Emerson, it is said by all who remember him, was oneof that at some time or other they were all partners with one anthe greatest figures in minstrelsy, with a following as large and _ other. For anyone who was not following minstrelsy at the time, loyal as that of any modern idol. He occupied in his day the sort — the switching about of these names is very like a crossword

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MARCH 7 ¢ SATURDAY EVENING POST 1925 puzzle, or maybe a virginia reel would be most apt. At any rate, dant of the minstrel of the days before the Civil War in the Dockstader at one time joined forces with Primrose & West, authenticity of his characterization. He has, too, a fine sympaanother time with George Thatcher, and later with Primrose alone, —_ thetic voice; and though there is a great deal of fun poked at his

who had by then separated from Thatcher. Mr. Dockstader spent exaggerated mammy songs, they seem at least to be the offhis declining years as a vaudeville headliner, doing the minstrel _ spring, even if illegitimate, of the sentimental ballads sung by

characterization that had made him so popular. the early Negro minstrels. Of all the minstrels within the memory of the present genera- Eddie Leonard is still very active and popular. He is headlintion, none was so beloved as Lew Dockstader. His death last —_ing in vaudeville with an act built along minstrel lines, and still October brought real grief to thousands, not only to those who —_ employs with great effect the curious wha-wha method of sing-

had been his friends and associates, but also to the legions who ing that was identified with him during his minstrel days. He had been made to laugh by his japery, his burlesques and his _ _ began his career with Haverly’s Minstrels, and was featured ludicrous makeup, especially the huge coat and monstrous shoes with Dockstader’s, Primrose & West’s, Cohan & Harris’, as well

which were an integral part of his funniness. as heading his own troupe. As an end man he had no equal. He was the perfect minstrel. The Cohan & Harris referred to are George M. Cohan and His aptitude for catching the idiosyncrasies of prominent people § Sam H. Harris, who, during the years of their partnership as and reproducing them from the stage brought him added fame. theatrical managers, sent out an excellent minstrel company. He was particularly happy in his take-off of Theodore Roosevelt, Incidentally there are scores of actors, prominent today in who used to enjoy the spectacle of himself in burlesque quite as_ _ the legitimate and musical-comedy stage, and even in the mov-

much as anybody. ies, who either got their start in minstrel shows or played in them

In big cities Dockstader was loved, in small towns he was at some time during their careers. worshipped. The occasion of his coming to town was a red- First of all, there is Francis Wilson, the dean of American acletter day in the community. Not even the annual visit of the _ tors. With a partner, Jimmy Mackin, the eminent actor was once a circus was a more important or exciting event than the minstrel song-and-dance boy with the minstrel shows, among them of

parade that afforded a glimpse of Lew Dockstader. course, Haverly’s. After about ten years of minstrelsy he decided that he wanted to widen his scope as a performer, so at a salary

Favorites of Today about one-quarter as large as his minstrel pay, he joined a Philadelphia stock company and was started on his acting career.

Among the things for which he was noted was the fact that in Casting about at random, I find the names of Raymond his long career he never missed a single performance. He loved —_ Hitchcock, who substituted for George Evans in the Cohan & his work and was never so happy as when he was making people _— Harris Minstrels in 1909; the late Nat C. Goodwin, who was with

laugh. But even he, with all his powers, could not rescue min- _—- Haverly’s for a short time; Fred Stone, who first entered into strelsy from the oblivion for which fate so evidently intends it. _ partnership with Dave Montgomery in Haverly’s Minstrels; Sam Only three years ago he acted as principal end maninamusical —_ Bernard; Joe Cawthorne; George Beban—he began his career

show staged by DeWolf Hopper, in which an old-fashioned min- as a minstrel, although nobody would suspect it now; Jerry

strel first part was featured. Cohan, who was noted as a black-face dancer and tambourine In spite of his presence, and the presence of some other _ player before he achieved fame as the father of Georgie; Andrew widely known minstrels, the piece was a failure. The institution Mack, who, with Haverly’s sang that pathetic ballad, A Violet

was doomed. From Mother’s Grave. ) | Aside from the fame he gathered as a result of his own talents

as a minstrel, Lew Dockstader is noted as the man who started The Frohmans’ Minstrel Days

Al Jolson on his career as a black-face performer. Jolson, probably the highest paid and most popular singing comedian inthe = Julius Witmark, the music publisher, began his professional ca-

world, who now, still under forty, has his own theater in New _ reer at the age of twelve as a boy soprano in a minstrel show. It York, owns a percentage of every show he plays in and get a — was Mr. Witmark who first introduced such priceless gems of royalty on every song he sings, because if he sings itthe song _ balladry as The Letter That Never Came and The Picture That is made, was discovered by Lew Dockstader when he was play- Was Turned Toward the Wall. ing burlesque or small-time vaudeville. That was in 1908. Few people know or remember that the Frohmans, Daniel and Dockstader engaged him for his minstrel show, and the youth’s the late Charles, who together developed so many of America’s success as a minstrel was instantaneous. Big time vaudeville greatest theatrical personages, were minstrel managers early in

followed, then stardom in his own shows. their careers—in fact owned a troupe at one time. There is even Unlike most of the modern black-face comedians, Jolson re- rumor, although he has ever substantiated it, that David Belasco, ally plays Negro characters. Most of the funny men who work — when he was a young man, appeared in black-face several times. under cork today, in spite of their sable hue, are not Negro come- Paul Dresser, brother of Theodore Dreiser and author of the dians. They are Irish comedians, Italian comedians, Jewish co- famous song, On the Banks of the Wabash, was once a minstrel medians—anything but Negro comedians. They make no at- for a short time; so were J. K. Emmett, Jeff DeAngelis and Corse tempt to live up to their makeup. But Al Jolson is adirectdescen- Payton, the idol of the ten-twenty-thirty.

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1925 MARCH 15 ¢ THE NEW YORK TIMES There are dozens more that most people would never dream Was oncea famous one, were playing a single performance. Here

of. For instance, it seems inappropriate, but it is true, that Would be a real minstrel show, with all its old-time flavor. The Chauncey Olcott, the famous Irish comedian and singer, was for Program was promising enough, with its note, which read, “premany years a minstrel. And Harrigan & Hart worked in black- _—-Senting all that is near and dear to traditional minstrelsy,” and its face before they became musical-comedy stars. Denman Th- long array of “comic ditties, ballads and songs of sentiment.” ompson, of The Old Homestead fame, was a minstrel end man Alas! This minstrel show was like the proverbial Hamlet withsixty-five years ago. Bert Williams, one of the few Negroesever ut the melancholy Dane. Every tradition of minstrelsy was broto play in a minstrel show, blacked up his already dusky fea- ken. The men sat in a semi-circle, but that was all. They were in

tures; so did his partner George Walker. white-face and they wore powdered wigs. There was no trace of Julian Eltinge was once a minstrel, and James J. Corbett, once the familiar chord, or the command, “Gentlemen, be seated!” Not champion of the ring and now regarded as one of the best straight once did the interlocutor address the end men as “Mistah Tambo” men in the theatrical business, was an interlocutor with George Evans’ °F “Mistah Bones.” They sang and danced and told stories purMinstrels for a time. Eddie Foy, parent of the so numerous young porting to be funny, but they did not give a minstrel show. Later, Foys, was once a minstrel. Now he would like to wear a black suit when questioned about the omissions, the leader of the troupe instead of a black face, for it is a tradition along Broadway that the | ©XPlained. They have to keep up to date, he said, and the show is

comical Eddie has a consuming desire to play Hamlet. so long that they have to leave out all unnecessary things. All these people, and many others, were minstrels once—once, And this is one of four well-known minstrel shows still alive but no more. The day is dead. If further proof were needed, I in the United States. So much, then, for the American minstrel found it when I journeyed to a little Connecticut town where] _— oy. In the ranks of death you'll find him. learned that a troupe of old-timers, headed by a man whose name

March 15 ¢ The New York Times American Telephone and Telegraph Company and chief of WEAF, verse of musical forms and colors, only a brief history of its re-

told 2,000 diners that the public demand for classical music has naissance is necessary. Perhaps first honors for the preliminary been unprecedented in the last two years, to the detriment of jazz —_—s recognition of jazz by the critical fraternity should go to Mme. Eva

programs. Mr. Holman said that in January, 1923, about 75 per Gauthier, who introduced jazz offerings on her recital programs in cent of the radio fans demanded jazz; in January, 1924, the jazz Aeolian Hall two seasons ago. But one Sunday afternoon, Feb. fans diminished to 35 per cent, and in January, 1925, only 5 per 10, 1924 to be exact, Vincent Lopez conducted a program of “concent of the people who wrote to the company demanded jazz.Mr. —_ temporaneous popular music” in the Anderson Galleries, Profes-

Holman added that his company received 54,000 letters on the = sor Edward Burlingame Hill spoke impressively on jazz, and Gilsubject in January alone. Private statements by other broadcast- —_ bert Seldes was an interested bystander.

ing stations corroborate Mr. Holman. And there is Nicholas Or- Musical Citadels Invaded lando, musical director of the Plaza and Roosevelt Hotels, who told the New York Music League recently that jazzis waningand = Two days later, on Lincoln’s Birthday, Paul Whiteman and his

classical music taking its place. disciples burst in raucous glory from the fevered haunts of the But is jazz really dying? Certainly the modern creators of jazz, Palais Royal and captured Aeolian Hall, the citadel of Brahms Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Zez Confrey, Fred Fisher, Walter trios, Bach fugues and Beethoven sonatas. Mr. Whiteman gave a Donaldson, Cole Porter, Isham Jones, the music firms of Sissle & veritable musical history of the joy riding orchestras of America, Blake (of “Shuffle Along” fame) and Creamer & Layton, to men- tracing the development of jazz from the dark days of the Livery tion only a few, are not greatly disturbed. But the weather vanes —_ Stable Blues, the real jazz of discord, vulgarity and noise, through

on the watch towers of the kingdom of syncopated rhythms, that famous derivative of Handel’s Messiah, Yes, We Have No howling trombones and shrieking clarinets are whirling wildly. Bananas, to those impressive guideposts for the jazz of the fuWhy? The answer, judging by all visible signs and portents, lies ture, four serenades by Victor Herbert, and George Gershwin’s in the fact that jazz is passing from the hands of the tune-makers, piano concerto, A Rhapsody in Blue. scorers, adapters, compilers, arrangers and, perhaps, originators, Mr. Whiteman’s triumph was so hilarious that he promptly into the bands of trained musicians and skilled composers. Mean- —_‘ tramped uptown to Carnegie Hall and repeated the same rout of while, the word jazz will have to remain. Although the music has —_‘ musical paganism “for the benefit of the American Academy at long outgrown the title, no other word can suffice todefineinone |§ Rome,’ atribute which must have made some of the sober shades syllable that scintillating, sardonic, pseudo-romantic music, child _ of that institution moan fitfully in their graves. Mr. Whiteman’s

of its sophisticated age, playful, wistful, scornful—an art that | concert in the Metropolitan Opera House during the present seamocks itself and sheds hard tears, a product thatGeorge Gershwin son was another milepost. The shades of that pompous temple of

calls the folk music of the cosmopolitan. lyric art were shattered by the excruciating strains of Willy Hall’s To prove the assertion that jazz is rapidly passing into the solo on a bicycle pump, the staggering array of wind instruments hands of skilled musicians who may point the way toanew uni- —_— played by Ross Gorman, who uses trumpet mutes ranging from

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MARCH 15 ¢ THE NEW YORK TIMES 1925 brown derbies.to bed slippers, and the racket raised by that de- —_ house has published most of Victor Herbert’s music, the scores

mon banjo player, Michael Pingatore. for thirty of his productions, and the scores for The Student Prince, Incidentally, Irving Berlin’s mush was heard from the Blossom Time and other operettas. Isidore Witmark, a member of Metropolitan’s stage on Dec. 28, 1924, mixed with the jazzstrains _ the firm, asserts that the automobile, by taking people away from

of Isham Jones, Eastwood Lane, Rudolph Friml, Leo Fall and _ the parlor piano, and the radio, by furnishing them jazz music Vincent Rose. Vincent Lopez also gave a concert in the opera _— ready made, have killed the sales of song hit after song hit of a jazz house with several touching harmonica solos before the famous — character. Any one can tune in any evening and hear a dozen

prompter’s box. orchestras playing J Love You in twelve identical ways. This firm Finally, into the musical sawdust circle leaped Otto H. Kahn, _has given up dealing in jazz compositions and is devoting itself to liberal patron of the arts, with some liberally misquoted remarks the renaissance of ballads, operettas and similar music. on jazz which many people reported as an invitation for some Leo Feist and other firms dealing strictly in jazz report aswing

aspiring young genius to composer a jazz opera for the __ to the higher type of popular ballads and a corresponding depres-

Metropolitan’s classic stage. sions in the sale of popular jazz numbers. The house of G Schirmer, Nevertheless the current order of jazz has developed unrest.In —_Inc., which concentrates on classical music, reports an unprecthe public’s revolt against the orgy of the hammering tom-tom of — edented increase in the demand for good music. This firm bedual time and the fox trot rhythm, the operetta returned with a __lieves that the women’s clubs and small musical communities flourish and the modern scorers ransacked the musical shelves of throughout the country are responsible for the condition. celebrated composers for good themes. At present there are four George Gershwin, a young and promising Alexander of the companies of Blossom Time, with a score drawn from the music of new jazz world, whose Rhapsody in Blue, the ingenious score to Franz Schubert, touring the country. Three companies of The — Lady Be Good, and a dozen song hits, entitle him to speak with Student Prince of Heidelberg are playing in New York, Chicago _ authority, has this to say of jazz: and Boston. Sigmund Romberg, who arranged the music for these “As long as people dance in cities, jazz will remain. It is the folk shows, has brought another operetta, Eddie Cantor’s Louis XIV, —_ music of the cosmopolitan, not the countryman. Its present mate-

to town. Natja, the music compiled from Tchaikovsky by Carl __ rial will be built upon in the future by composers just as older Hajos, is a hit. The Love Song, with the music of Offenbach and —_ dance forms, the gigue, polka, polonaise and waltz were utilized the famous barcarolle, is still another. And there are Rudolf Friml’s_ —_ by former composers. But modern jazz emanates primarily from

Rose Marie and Lady, Be Good, with an ingenious operetta score the city. Look at the old Nashville Blues, the Memphis Blues,and

by George Gershwin. the elements from a dozen towns that have combined to make jazz

So it goes. The modern composers of serious music have what it is today. It is expressed in the sophisticated idioms of the dabbled with ragtime and jazz—Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud, city, and the very fact that it is today in the throes of evolution Debussy, Ravel, to mention a few of the leaders. Paul Whiteman from the hands of tune-makers and arrangers into the arms of in his opera house concert, played a Synconata, or Syncopated __ trained musicians is proof enough that jazz is here to stay. The Sonata by Leo Sowerby, a young American composer. Louis world is wide, and there is plenty of room for good jazz composGruenberg, an American resident abroad, has recently written a ers, modern music guilds and the masterpieces of classic music.” jazz version of Daniel in the Lion’s Den, set to Vachel Lindsay’s So onward drives the juggernaut of jazz. Those who have faith poem and interpreted from the standpoint of a Negro preacher. _in it, and the number includes many composers of sound judgSamuel Gardner, an American violinist and composer, has just = ment and thorough musicianship, point to its vitality and exuberfinished a Jazzetta for violin and piano, designed as an appropri- _—_ance, its kaleidoscopic forms, colors and rhythms. Such musiate concert hall piece for first-rate artists. Incidentally the number __ cians seek to emancipate jazz from the rigid shackles of fox-trot is issued by Carl Fischer, a publisher who has never before pub- —_—srhythms and assert that the advance made thus far only hints at lished a jazz composition. Hugo Riesenfeld’s classical jazz arrange- _ the infinite range of rhythmic subtleties, the fascinating modulaments have long been a feature of Broadway movie houses. These tions and above all the rich opportunities for sardonic humor,

are only a few of the straws. irony and fanciful absurdities in fresh combinations of wind instruments which shall be inherent in the new order of jazz.

What the Publishers Say And perhaps a small portion of the populace, in all this hubbub and tumult, will huddle closer about the gas log fire, meditate The leading music publishing houses all agree that the tendency _about jazz, and inwardly echo the cry of the German conductor in of jazz is to reach higher levels, while the demand for the so-called | Covent Garden, whose talkative and quarrelsome orchestra classic music increases. The firm of M. Witmark & Sonsdemon- _ caused him to exclaim: strates convincingly what is taking place in the world of jazz. This “Himmel! Don’t speak so much. I can stand it then and now, but always, my God, never!”

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1925 MARCH e HARVARD GRADUATE MAGAZINE March ¢ Harvard Graduate Magazine JAZZ by Edward Burlingame Hall, ‘94 Those who barely tolerate the eccentricities of the jazz orches- —_ has a meager opportunity to judge American musical develop-

tra are surprised and even shocked to learn that musicians of | ment as a whole. Nevertheless, if some of the most original serious purpose find its music commendable. They overlook |= among European composers consider jazz as fruitful musical the fact that there are many degrees of merit comprised injazz. material, may we not examine the matter afresh? Some species are negligible; others exhibit redeeming features, The most serious obstacles in the way of the use of jazz in the while others still may be considered artistic products. It is | main movements of symphonic works lie in the monotony and probable that the percentage of survival among jazz pieces is _ persistence of its rhythms. This is antagonistic to that flowing extremely low, but then only a low proportion of symphonies _ plasticity of musical current which is inseparable from presentremains in the repertory. Yet it is evident that jazz constitutesa | day conceptions of symphonic style. The actual motives from phase of expression identical with contemporary life. It has | which jazz themes are contrived are too often trivial, and do not found its way into pantomime and the drama. It has affected —_ possess that germinating power which is essential in the elaboraliterature and costume. It typifies the desire to escape from __ tion of a work of art. But the fact that even the gifted writer of jazz convention, to attain an untrammeled directness. Its ultimate is content to evade the true problems of melodic and rhythmical place is still uncertain. Newspaper writers foretell a great fu- | development, does not imply that such a treatment is impossible. ture for the jazz symphony and the jazz opera. This is little more | The crux of the situation technically remains the probable basic than careless exuberance with too little careful consideration incompatibility between the moods of jazz and the corresponding

behind it. What is the case for and against Jazz? needs of the symphony. When, however, one contemplates the Dances have always played an important role ininstrumen- — use made by Haydn of Croatian folk-songs, by Mozart and tal music. Among the earliest instances of the latter, dance- | Beethoven of similar Austrian melodies, by Tchaikovsky, Balakirev, forms were predominant. The eighteenth-century suite was | Rimsky-Korsakov, Moussorgsky and other Russians of their nacomposed of sets of contemporary dances. Of these the minuet _ tional airs, it is difficult to identify the theoretical possibility of a made its way into the most dignified of instrumental forms, the similar utilization of jazz. The average jazz tune does not possess symphony. It maintained its place through intrinsic merit, and —_‘ the universality of the best type of folk-song. But the gifted comin the end only gave way to the livelier scherzo. Chopin’s ide- —_— poser has never limited himself to a literal use of his model. Gliére

alizations of the mazurka and polonaise point to the vitality of | and Rimsky-Korsakov could produce as good imitation folk-song dance inspiration outside the sonata forms. Towards the end _as the original. The American composer could do likewise if need-

of the third decade of the nineteenth century, Berlioz boldly ful. Amore reasonable solution of the jazz problem in respect to introduced a waltz in his Fantastic Symphony. Later, | symphonic or chamber-music works would be to limit its use to Tchaikowsky and Mahler did the same. Brahms’s treatment of the dance portions of such compositions. Then the fox-trot bewaltz rhythms (the waltzes for piano duet and the vocal comes an inevitable successor to the polka, waltz and minuet. But Liebeslieder) records his thoughtful embellishment of the most __ theorizing in advance is idle. It is better to allow instinct to proordinary contemporary dance. Smetana found place forapolka — duce results. in a String quartet. Dvorak followed his example although the Up to the present, American musicians have attacked the jazz work was an orchestral suite. Thus there is sufficient prece- | problem from two opposite sides. The composer of academic dent for the use of popular dances in works of indisputable _ training has tried to assimilate jazz style in works of a “high-

artistic standard. brow” order. The blasé patrons of symphony concerts have

The French, lovers of the exotic, have always been quickto been delighted at the resultant indecorum, and the restrained turn material to new expressive account. Debussy, fascinated — suggestion of riotous atmosphere so foreign to the classics. It by Cambodian dancers at the Paris Exposition of 1900, re- —_— is doubtful whether the patron of jazz orchestras is equally shaped his impressions in Pagodas for the piano. When “rag- _— pleased. This, however, is less important. The pleasure of the time,” an incipient form of jazz, reached Paris, he was notslow |=moment may well be sacrificed for a potentially glorious future. to convert it to his own end. As Chopin made use of Polish = Mr. John Alden Carpenter, of justly high repute for his songs, dances, so Debussy refined upon “ragtime” to compose __ orchestral and dramatic works, has felt the lure of both ragtime

Gollywog’s Cake-walk, Minstrels and General Lavine. and jazz in the course of that unconscious search for someAt present, jazz has not only invaded European dance halls, — thing unmistakably native which every American composer it has also commanded the attention of distinguished compos- _ pursues. His Concertino for piano and orchestra (1915) preers. Milhaud, Auric, Stravinsky, Casella and Ravel have allfelt | sented a skillful amalgam of ragtime spirit and a successful its appeal. Ravel once remarked to the writer thatjazz was the _ solution to the normal problems of the concert-piece for piano only evidence of musical originality to issue from America. — and orchestra. M. Robert Schmitz, the soloist in its American This statement should be qualified by an explanation that Paris performances, hastened to produce it in Paris. In any other

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MARCH e VANITY FAIR 1925 country than ours, where native works are played during one —_ern French harmony, Orientalism and Slavic idioms have been season and then dismissed, this composition would have been _ creeping into jazz, not only without detriment, but with posiplayed frequently if not annually to stimulate and encourage _ tive benefit. In this camp Mr. George Gershwin is a significant other talented composers. In 1922, Mr. Carpenter againhadthe _ figure. His musical comedy jazz is unsurpassable—he may be

courage of his convictions and produced Krazy Kat, a “Jazz rated some day as comparable to Sullivan, admitting the differPantomime” after the cartoons of Mr. George Herriman. Adra- _ ence in stand point. When he thought to invade the concertmatic work must often stand or fall by the stability of its sce- _ hall, his troubles began. The Rhapsody in Blue was an astonnario or text. Despite its whimsical humor, Krazy Kat was _ ishing piece for a novice in this field. That he is uneasy in a scarcely substantial enough dramatically toendure. American __ piece of this length is obvious, but despite its defects it is musical critics of repute bewailed Mr. Carpenter’s lapse from _ better than the illusory jazz of some “high-brow” composers. dignity, and were seemingly deaf to the invention, the humor Mr. Gershwin’s recent Concerto was severely disparaged by and the originality of his music. With all due respect to critical _ critics, but Ihave heard dissenting voices from intelligent layjudgment, Mr. Carpenter’s music stands as an increasingly sig- | men. Of course one cannot at once master the problems of the nificant departure from over-trodden paths. When has the _ larger forms without long training and experience. Still Mr. value of a musical work of art been correctly estimated from its | Gershwin’s works indicate that it may be more profitable for specific gravity? The beginning of the regeneration of recent the jazz composer to turn to the larger forms than for the “highFrench music began with that irrepressible defier of every con- | brow” composer to condescend to jazz.

vention—Emmanuel Chabrier. We trust that Mr. Carpenter’s Prophecy in music is notoriously unsafe. For despite its forthcoming ballet Skyscrapers will continue to breathe forth —_ difficulties jazz may yet successfully inspire the depleted “highdefiance of our too-solid musical ruts. Other Americans have —_ brow” who is wearied by the effort to keep up with the latest essayed the jazz-problem but none, to my knowledge, so skill- | European novelty. On the other hand, “high-brow forms” and

fully as Mr. Carpenter. technique may in the long run stultify the gifts of even the The other pole of jazz evolution is reform from within— — most talented jazz composer. Why not leave jazz to take care of through giving jazz dances and musical comedy all that they __ itself? Undoubtedly the safest course is to wait some fifty can carry of assimilation from “high-brow” musical style. Mod- —_ years and note the result. That has always been the prudent practice throughout the long centuries of musical history.

March ¢ Vanity Fair GEORGE GERSHWIN—AN AMERICAN COMPOSER WHO IS WRITING NOTABLE MUSIC IN THE JAZZ IDIOM by Carl Van Vechten I cannot recall the time when I did not feel an instinctive interest | Ophelia, so much pseudo-Chaminade concocted in an Ameriin American popular music. Before I could play a note onthe —_can back-parlour, while it completely routed the so-called art

piano I was humming or whistling such tunes as Down Went music of the professors. At the time, however, I was serving as McGinty and The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo. A___ assistant to Richard Aldrich, the music critic of the New York little later, the execrable, sentimental ballads of the early nine- Times. In other words, I was a person of no importance whatties. Two Little Girls in Blue, After the Ball, and Daisy Bell were ever. Had I spoken, I should not have been heard.

tried on my piano along with two-hand arrangements of the Several years later, however, Irving Berlin’s masterpiece symphonies of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. When Ata Geor- having been succeeded by other popular airs worthy of attengia Campmeeting and Whistling Rufus appeared in 1899, ap- _ tion, such as Everybody’s Doing It, The Gaby Glide, Ragging preciated this indication of a modest advance in the public taste. = the Scale, and Waiting for the Robert E. Lee, I wrote a paper, It is worthy of note that Debussy’s sensibility to ragtime pro- entitled The Great American Composer, published in Vanity gressed no farther. His Golliwogg’s Cakewalk is an exact rep- _— Fair for April 1917, in which I outlined the reasons for my lica of the naive rhythmic form employed in these pieces. belief that it was out of American popular music that American

On the other hand, I gave a real welcome to Cole and art music would grow, just as the idiosyncratic national line of Johnson’s Under the Bamboo Tree, which I admire to this day.I_ so much European art music has evolved from the national folk

further enjoyed the primeval syncopations of Bill Bailey, Ain't song. Nearly seven years passed before my prophecy was It a Shame, Ma Blushin’ Rosie, All Coons Look Alike to Me, __ realized, but on February 12, 1924, a date which many of us will When You Ain't Got no Money You Needn’t Come Around, — remember henceforth as commemorative of another event of

Hiawatha, and Bon-Bon Buddy, but when I heard Alexander's importance besides the birth of our most famous president,

Ragtime Band (1911) I shouted. George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue was performed for the Here at last, was real American music, music of such vitality _ first time by Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra with the composer at that it made the Grieg-Schumann-Wagner dilutions of MacDowell _the piano.

sound a little thin, and the saccharine bars of Narcissus and 401

1925 MARCH e VANITY FAIR There is, however, an historical prelude to the Rhapsody. In Enthusiasm rewarded the first performance of the Rhapthe spring of 1923, Eva Gauthier, indefatigable inher searchfor sody, but gentle and adequate appreciation of the glamorous novelties, asked me to suggest additions to her autumn pro- vitality of the composition, exhibiting as he does, a puissant gram. “Why not a group of American songs?” I urged. Her — melodic gift in combination with a talent for the invention of face betrayed her lack of interest. “Jazz,” I particularized. Her _ stirring rhythms and a felicity in the arrangements and form, expression brightened. Meeting this singer again in Septem- _ did not come so rapidly; perhaps, because admiration for the ber, on her return from Paris, she informed me that Maurice | composer’s obviously rare skill a pianist already existed. After Ravel had offered her the same sapient advice. She had, in- Gershwin had performed the concerto several times in New deed, determined to adopt the idea and requested metorecom- _—- York and other cities (Whiteman undertook a preliminary tour mend a musician who might serve as her accompanist and __ with his organization during the spring of 1924), recognition of guide in this venture. But one name fell from my lips, that of _its superior qualities became more widely diffused; an abridged George Gershwin, whose compositions I admired and with — phonograph disk (even both sides of a twelve-inch disk offer whose skill as a pianist I was acquainted. The experiment was _ insufficient surface to record the piece in its entirety) added to eventually made, Mme. Gauthier singing the jazz grouponher __ its fame; and the publication of the score, arranged for two program between a cluster of songs by Paul Hindemith and _ pianos, in December, sealed its triumph. It has since been perBela Bartok on the one hand, and an air from Schoenberg’s —_ formed, although scarcely with the composer at the piano, at Gurrelieder on the other. This recital, given at Town Hall on __ nearly all concerts given by the Whiteman orchestra. Two November 1, 1923, marked George Gershwin’s initial appear- —_ causes have interfered with more good performances: first, the

ance as a performer on the serious concert stage. fact that the work was scored for a jazz band; second, the fact The occasion did not pass uncelebrated. Newspapers and __ that the piano part is not only of transcendent different but magazines commented at length on the phenomenon. Jazz, at also demands a pianist who understands the spirit of jazz. I last, it seemed, had come into its own. Presently, Paul Whiteman, = have no doubt whatever that so soon as an arrangement is weary of conducting for dancers more ready to appreciate a § made for symphony orchestra the Rhapsody will become part rigid tempo than variety in orchestration or the superlative of the repertory of any pianist who can play it. Quite possibly, tone quality of his band, had a pendent inspiration: he would __ the work may have its flaws; so, on the other hand, has Tristan give a concert to demonstrate the growth that jazz had made ___ und Isolde. under ears too careless and indolent to distinguish the fine The story of this young man’s career is worthy of attention. scoring and the intricate harmonic and rhythmic features of | Bornin Brooklyn, George Gershwin was brought up on Grand the new music from the haphazard, improvised performances —_ Street in Manhattan. Until he arrived at the age of thirteen he of a few years earlier. His second idea was even more notewor- _—snever even thought about music. Shortly after his thirteenth thy: He commissioned George Gershwin to write a composition birthday his mother bought a piano, for no other reason than

to be included in his first concert program. because her sister-in-law had bought one and it seemed a As [ had been out of the city when Mme. Gauthier gave her _ proper thing to do. Once the piano was installed, somebody revolutionary recital, she very kindly invited me, latein January _ had to learn to play it and young George was elected. After he 1923, to hear a rehearsal of the same program [in] preparationfor had received four months’ lessons he already performed suffi-

her Boston concert. It was [at] this rehearsal that Gershwin in- ciently well so that one of his father’s friends advised that he formed me of Whiteman’s plan and added, in rather an offhand _ be sent to Europe to study. This advice, fortunately, was not manner, that he had decided to compose a concerto in fantasia followed. Three neighborhood teachers, in turn, directed the form for piano and jazz band which he proposed to call Rhap- _ course of his fingers. Then, by a fortuitous accident, he fell into sody in Blue. On that day, about four weeks before the date the — the hands of a man who gave him his first real reverence for composition was actually produced, he had only made a few music. This was Charles Hambitzer from whom he received his preliminary sketches; he had not yet even found the now fa- first lessons in harmony. He was working on the Chopin Premous andantino theme! He played for me however, the jazz ludes when this teacher died. Gershwin was as yet unfamiliar theme announced by full orchestra, accompanied by figurations with the work of Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, Schubert, or on the piano, and the ingenious passage, not thematic, which —_ Brahms. A little later, he studied harmony with Edward Kilenyi, ushers in the finale (omitted from the phonograph record)—At __ but the full course of his instruction with his several teachers the first rehearsal the program for the concert, the score was not —_ occupied less than four years. In the meantime, George had yet ready. At the second rehearsal Gershwin played the Rhap- —_ become acquainted with Max Rosen, for whose playing he felt a

sody twice with the band on a very bad piano. Nevertheless, | deep admiration, but Rosen offered him no encouragement. “You after hearing that rehearsal, I never entertained a single doubt —_ will never become a musician. Give up the idea,” was the violinist’s but that this young man of twenty-six (he was bornin Brooklyn, —_ candid advice.

September 26, 1898) had written the very finest piece of select Very early in his piano lessons he began to dabble in compomusic that had ever come out of America; moreover, thathehad _ sition. A banal Tango appears to be the earliest preserved excomposed the most effective concerto for piano that anybody ample. Ragging the Traumerei, in 4-4 time, is written down in 2-

has written since Tchaikovsky’s B-flat minor. 4 and runs to twenty-one mediocre bars. At this same period— he was about fifteen—he started a song which began in F and

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APRIL 11 ¢ MUSICAL AMERICA 1925 wandered into G, from which region George found himself ut- in Blue would kill interest in his lighter music. It has had the

terly unable to rescue it. opposite effect, as he instinctively felt that it would have.

At the age of sixteen, George went to work as a song plugger I first became acquainted with Gershwin’s music through his for Remick, the music publisher, sometimes playing all day for | Swanee, written in 1919 for the revue which opened the Capital vaudeville acts and until two or three in the morning at cafes. | Theatre. With /’/l Build a Stairway to Paradise, written for the His remuneration was fifteen dollars a week. This irksome rou- —_— fourth of George White’s Scandals, I completely capitulated to tine might have ruined his fingers for future concert playing but —_ his amazing talent and nominated him to head my list of jazz Charles Hambitzer had instructed him to play with a “loose wrist,” composers. In this vein he has added to his fame with the Yana piece of advice which saved him his “touch,” As a matter of | kee Doodle Blues, The Nashville Nightingale, Do It Again, 1 fact, this engagement did him areal service inasmuchas ittaught | Won't Say I Will, Somebody Loves Me, and the present ubiquihim to transpose, no two performers ever being able to negoti- = tous Fascinating Rhythm.

ate a song n the same key. Further vagaries of fortune led him to The time has not come, of course, to appraise the fellow’s accept an opportunity to play the piano for the chorus rehears- —_ work, one can only predict his future in terms of his brief past. als of Ned Wayburn’s Miss 1917. It was here that he beganto —__His career up to date, it will be observed, has been a steady develop variety in his accompaniments, playing eachrepetition crescendo of interest. What he will do in the future depends on of a refrain in a different manner, a procedure which wonencour- _no one but George Gershwin, but it is fairly evident that ample agement from his employer, as it served to keep up the interest | opportunity will be offered him to do many things that he ought of the girls in their monotonous round of steps. Ittaught George —_ not to do. He is unusually prolific in melodic ideas; his gift for the trick of lending individuality to the accompaniments of his —_ rhythmic expression is almost unique; he has a classical sense

songs. While he was playing for this chorus, Vivienne Segal of form. His gay music throbs with a pulse, a beat, a glamorous sang two of his songs at a Sunday night concert at the Century _ vitality rare in the work of any composer, and already he has the Theatre. Harry Askins, manager of Miss 1917, wassoimpressed power to build up a thrilling climax, as two or three passages in with these tunes that he brought them to the attention of Max the Rhapsody prove. Even his popular music is never banal. Dreyfus of the firm of T. B. Harms, who, immediately recognizing There is always something—if it is only two bars, as is the case

the ability of the young musician, put him under contract. Eight in Rose of Madrid—to capture the attention of even a jaded months later Gershwin wrote J Was So Young and You Were So _listener. Tenderness and passion are as yet only potential atBeautiful and found himself launched as the composer of a __ tributes of his published music—it might be stated in passing

song hit. that these are the two qualities that Stravinsky lacks—but some

Launched, but not satisfied. It usually happens thatamanu- — of Gershwin’s finest inspirations have not as yet been either facturer of jazz hits goes so far and no farther. Many popular _ published or publicly performed. It is probable that the produccomposers are content to languidly pick tunes out with one __ tion of his twenty-four piano preludes and his tone-poem for finger on the piano, while an expert harmonizer sits by ready to | symphony orchestra, tentatively entitled Black Belt, will award step in. It is not even an infrequent occurrence fora man’s first him a still higher rank in the army of contemporary composers. success in this field to be his last. Gershwin apparently deter- Ernest Newman has remarked, in reference to jazz, that there mined not only to hold on to his success but to improve upon it. are no such things as movements, there are only composers. His friends and business associates advised him not to study Obviously, quite true. nevertheless, I am just as certain that the harmony. He answered them by working with Rubin Goldmark = Rhapsody came out of the jazz movement in America as I am that from whom, he assures me, he received invaluable suggestions, | Weber’s Der Freischiitz came out of the German folksong. Neespecially in regard to form. He was warned that the Rhapsody _ gro spirituals, Broadway, and jazz are Gershwin’s musical godparents. Whatever he does, or however far he goes in the future, I hope that these influences will beneficently pursue him.

April 11 ¢ Musical America NEW AMERICAN MUSIC DRAMA OF REDEMPTION UTILIZES JAZZ Henrietta Malkiel Jazz has proved a hardy tonal infant in the relatively few yearsof sible to express the tragedy of a particular type of emotional and its existence. We have had rhapsodies and sonatas exploiting this | unthinking American.

medium, and now comes the announcement that the Chicago “Michel and Toinette, the chief characters of my opera, lead a Civic Opera Company will add four saxophones to its orchestral ‘jazz’ life.” he said, “and naturally that would color the music with battery when it produces a new grand opera next season, A Light —_arepresentative rhythm. But although my opera is a ‘jazz’ tragedy

from St. Agnes, by W. Franke Harling, American composer. to one who has read the score, that little four-letter word, meaning When asked why he had been inspired to set the libretto toa © syncopated rhythm, has come to have so flippant and insincere a jazz rhythm, Mr. Harling replied that it was the only medium pos- _ definition that I fear it may place me among those who have not

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1925 APRIL 11 « MUSICAL AMERICA seen the score in the musical comedy category. For this reasonI — which Agnes has left for her. By persuasion and cajoling she had to explain that my drama is only a ‘jazz’ operarhythmically,as attempts to dissuade Michel from desecrating the body of the Strauss’ Rosenkavalier is a waltz opera, and intrinsically only —_ saintly woman, finally warning him that there is a rope which inasmuch as it reflects the life of the French-Americans of the hangs outside of the chapel which some one would surely pull,

small community which is its locale.” thereby ringing the bell, and they would surely be caught. Toinette, the heroine, is a strange blend of wickedness and Michel laughs and demands a knife with which he may cut the beauty, at once pitiful and lovely, and this part will be sung by _ rope, but Toinette suggests that he allow her to do it instead, Rosa Raisa. Georges Baklanoff, baritone, will be Michel, and Forrest _ since he is too drunk. She rushes out with the knife, apparently to

Lamont, tenor, has been chosen for the role of the Priest. Mme cut the rope, but instead she rings the bell to attract the good Raisa went through her part with the composer before she sailed —_ people to the chapel and thus save the body of Agnes from desfor Europe recently and Mr. Harling is now busily engaged inthe —_ ecration. In a drunken stupor Michel hears the bells, realizes his process of publication. “The opera is to be given either the firstor betrayal, and rushes out after her. They meet at the threshold and the second week of December,” said Mr. Harling. ““Acopyisnow _he takes the knife from her and stabs her. She falls lifeless on the in the hands of Herbert Johnson, manager, and Giorgio Polacco, cot, as the morning sun strikes on the chapel window on the hill

musical director, who will conduct the performance.” and reflects down upon her lovely face.....a light from St. Agnes! The opera pictures a tavern at the base of a hill in the marshy The libretto of A Light from St. Agnes was written by Minnie outskirts of a Louisiana village. High up in the background is seen § Madden Fiske, the noted actress, with an occasional suggestion the chapel of St. Agnes. The story takes place toward the end of from her husband, Harrison Gray Fiske. Mrs. Fiske, now touring the nineteenth century and deals with the transformation ofa girl — in arevival of The Rivals, wrote the play during three or four years from a “jazz existence” to a spiritual life which is thwarted by her — when she was not acting, following her marriage to Mr. Fiske. It

death at the hand of her former lover. was produced in play form in 1895 in the Fifth Avenue Theater In the annals of Louisiana there is the record of a woman, and was several times revived with Mrs. Fiske as Toinette, John called Agnes Deveraux, who devoted her life and fortunes to | Mason as Michel and William B. Mack as the Priest. converting the inhabitants of the city of Bon Hilaire to cleaner “About fifteen years ago,” said Mr. Fiske, “a young woman living and thinking. At the top of the hill overlooking the city she —_ representative of Italian authors, Mlle. St. Cyr, a lineal descendant

built a chapel and a convent to which she retreated in her later and disciple of Corneille, came here to look for plays to be transyears. The action of the play begins with the evening of her death. lated for Italian Librettos. After seeing a performance of A Light Agnes is lying dead in the chapel on the hill, with acrucifix of | from St. Agnes, she came to us with a request for the rights of diamonds on a chain about her neck. Nuns are chanting andthe _ translation, since she considered that it was the type of thing for organ is playing, while in the distance can be heard the ragttme = which Puccini was then looking. revels of the villagers who have turned a deaf ear to her preach-

ing. Puccini Accepted Libretto At the rise of the curtain Toinette is lying asleep on her cot. A

crowd of roisters come over the hills to fetch her toCamp Fleury “A translation was made by Roberto Bracco and was presented to join in the revels in celebration of the death of Agnes. Toinette to Puccini, who expressed his delight, accepted it and said he

refuses to go, saying that she is too tired. would work on it as soon as he finished the Girl of the Golden When they have all left her the Priest enters and tells her that West. In 1920 he was still procrastinating, his reason being that Agnes’ last words were of her, pleading with him to see her and _he felt it to be too thoroughly American for an Italian to write. It convert her from the life she was leading. She remains sullenand needed the poignant so-called jazz rhythms of American music, apparently unmoved until he hands her a crucifix which Agnes _ and so we withdrew the right and turned them over to Mr. Harling,

has left for her. As the Priest turns to go, he is confronted by who had written the incidental music to Mrs. Fiske’s Wake up, Toinette’s lover, Michel, who enters in a drunken condition and = Jonathan, then playing at the Henry Miller Theater, New York.

accuses the Priest falsely of his intentions at the tavern. “Although the original story was written in play form, we were both of the opinion of Mlle. St. Cyr that it would make an

A Story of Redemption unusual opera libretto, and so from time to time, we would pick it up and change a page or two into rhymed verse for arias, and

Toinette assists the Priest in getting away and Michel then drags —_ speeches of action into poetic prose for recitative. The libretto her to a table in the center of the room where, between throws of —__ was not written at any particular time, you see, but I should say

dice, he tells her that he has been to the chapel, has seen the _ that, like Topsy, it ‘just growed.’ corpse of Agnes, with the cross of diamonds on her breast, and is “The scene is laid in Louisiana, near New Orleans, where going back to steal it so that he and Toinette can go to New = Mrs. Fiske was born.”

Orleans and live a gay life. The opera is written in one very long act and will be anew twin Here the transformation of Toinette really begins. The emo- _ for Pagliacci. Mr. Fiske said that they had considered expanding it tions which the Priest’s words had roused in her, together withher —_ to two or three acts but found it more powerful dramatically not to disgust of Michel’s condition, now come to the top and she real- —_—shave a single break in the action. Mr. Harling likewise felt that it

izes that she wishes now to live up to the symbol of integrity | would be better to have the music continue unceasingly and work

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APRIL 25 ¢ MUSICAL AMERICA 1925 up to one tremendous climax at the end of a long act. obvious division between the recitative and aria. By this I do In discussing his method Mr. Harling says that he has tried to not mean that it is entirely declamatory or unmelodic, but rather introduce sane character psychology into his drama, without any _t is all melody, one continuous tune.

“verismo” wi f the ;

of the flourishes and insincere coloratura passages of Italian opera, .

and yet without resorting to the arbitrary selection of guiding mo- Pathos in Jazz

hel ocns ae ae wed to put into the Nok the light spirit qd Since Mr. Harling has made a study of j azz music, he has discovqualities of opera buffa with only a few subtle hints of tragedy. ered many wonderful p ossibilities In It. Jaz zis a much abused From the German music drama he has absorbed the concep- word and a more abused rhythm,” he says. “Until it is divorced tion of the scene as one dramatic unit. “Wagner has been my from the tinsel association of road-houses and cabarets, of tinoperatic Bible,” he says, “and somehow I have a feeling that if pan orchestras and misused saxophones it will never get out of he were alive today and visited American, he would be making a the hands of musical neophytes. What Its influence upon modstudy of American jazz and would not be the least interested in °™ society has been does not effect its musical value in the its purification. From the form of his preludes I have modeled my slightest, anymore than the destruction caused by poison gas

overture, which is written in symphonic style and introduces effects the value of its discovery to science. and develops old Creole folk tunes and typical songs of New | All music has had its origin in the dance, but ata certain age Orleans, with a modal chant, to set the tragic atmosphere, run- it gets away from its early association. Jazz is no exception. It is

ning polyphonically through it.” born of the American dance, but it is about time that real musiMr. Harling says he favors the technic of the Italian verismo “14S took it out of this realm and obtained a new viewpoint in

school in achieving poignant climaxes inane scene. A page of regarding It, . .

his score reveals a moderately dissonant idiom, very melodic ‘There is real pathos in the slow syncopated rhythm which and a very ingenious interweaving of parts. He does notclaimto 8S been so inadequately called the “Blues.” It has been exhave received a sudden inspiration for his opera. It represents ploited in rhapsodies, in sonatas and in such dramas as J ohn

rather many years of hard and patient work. Howard Lawson’s Processional. Now the time is ripe for Ameri“Sketching out the piano score was the least difficult work,” ©4" JA44 Opera. In A Light fr om St. Agnes I have made a bold he admits. “I had the entire thing planned in my mind quite attempt not only to justify its existence but to do a little pioneer logically before I set it upon paper; but now I have scored it for work in musical nationalism, with the hope that it will arouse full orchestra and four saxophones besides! The flux of tonality S©me dormant Yankee Moussorgsky!”” lies in the symphonic continuity of the orchestra and there is no

April 25 ¢ Musical America AWATTING THE GREAT AMERICAN OPERA: HOW COMPOSERS ARE PAVING THE WAY Henrietta Malkiel The great American opera, the idyll of the wide open spaces, There followed query on query. What about American comhas come down to earth. It has come to Broadway. The dream __— posers who are not of Broadway? What of Deems Taylor, of an American Wagner has passed with the day of Indian § Emerson Whithorne and John Alden Carpenter? Can an opera librettos. It is now the jazz opera that waits foracomposerand __ be all jazz? Can jazz composers write anything else? a plot. A new native consciousness Is stirring, we are told, and Suggestions for a libretto have run the gamut from the obvia new native art. The jazz opera must be “typically American,” — ously ridiculous to the almost possible. The New York World and Indians and cowboys are no longer “typically American.” |= nominated Bret Harte’s Outcasts of Poker Flat as a typically The American opera must follow the path of the American American and inspiring plot. Dramatic critics welcomed John drama. There are the mountaineers of the Carolinas and West | Howard Lawson’s Processional, a play written in jazz rhythms, as Virginia. There are the farmers of New England and the boost- _a singularly adaptable story. Alexander Woollcott, in a playful ers of the Middle West. There are New York subway riders and § moment, proposed the life of Irving Berlin as certainly the most Harlem cabarets. And there is always Broadway. There the jazz __fitting subject. But the composers have also thought about it. opera must begin.

Ever since Otto H. Kahn issued his diplomatic invitation to Lyricism vs. Jazz composers to submit a jazz opera to the Metropolitan there have been questions and doubts. Can there be a jazz opera? Who will | George Gershwin wants a fantastic, colorful book, with the ex-

write it? What will it be about? otic quality of jazz in it. The “home life in America” school of The answer was three names: Irving Berlin, George Gershwin drama is too drab and dull. It gives no opportunity for the dancand Jerome Kern. Mr. Berlin didn’t think he could. Mr. Kern __ ing which is essential to a jazz opera. Moreover, it has no lyri-

didn’t think he would. Mr. Gershwin was willing to try. cism. 405

1925 APRIL 25 e MUSICAL AMERICA “The jazz opera,” Mr. Gershwin says, “cannot be entirely “T don’t think anyone alive today will do so,” he adds. “The jazz. Jazz is not grateful music for the voice. Itiseasy todanceto musical grandsons of present day composers may be able to and difficult to sing. In it the words seldom matter. The tune —_ write a jazz opera, but I don’t think any of our composers can. seldom matters. It is the rhythm that makes jazz. A whole opera in The so-called serious composers can’t write jazz, and jazz comthat vein would be inconceivable. An opera must be lyric, andto —_— posers can’t write anything else. A jazz opera must combine the

me it must be fantastic. best features of each. You can’t have an all-jazz opera any more “IT think it should be a Negro opera, almost a Negro __ than you can have a waltz opera. There have been a couple of Scheherazade. Negro, because it is not incongruous for a Ne- waltz operas. Everyone is always talking about them, but you gro to live jazz. It would not be absurd on the stage. The mood __ never hear them. No one produces them, because they are neccould change from ecstasy to lyricism plausibly, because the __ essarily dull and monotonous. Negro has so much of both in his nature. The book, I think, “The Great American Opera will be written—well, let’s make a should be an imaginative, whimsical thing, likea Carl Van Vechten —_ few predictions. It can’t be written by a New Yorker. New York-

story; and I would like to see him write the libretto. ers are much too busy with more trivial things. Chicago? Chi“That type of opera could not, I am afraid,, be done at the | cago is much too busy being American to produce an American Metropolitan. It is a typically opéra-comique venture. | would __ opera. It can’t come out of the Middle West, because no one like to see it open on Broadway. I would like to see it puton with = who hasn’t a chance to hear opera can possibly write it. a Negro cast. Artists trained in the old tradition could not sing

such music, but Negro singers could. It would be a sensation as Watch Philadelphia!

well as an innovation. Processional, of course, is written in the jazz idiom. Jazz is played through several of the scenes. That, I “T think the Great American Opera will be written by a Philadelthink, is enough of a musical setting. Making a jazz opera of it | phian. Nobody talks about Philadelphia. They’ ve had time to would be overdoing it. I think the jazz opera needs amore pictur- forget about William Penn and the Indians. I think it will be

esque and a less topical libretto.” written by someone who lives, let us say, in Germantown and Emerson Whithorne is a little less optimistic about prospects | goes to hear the Philadelphia Orchestra every week and the

for a jazz opera. Metropolitan Opera every two weeks. The book will probably “T like jazz,” he says. “I really enjoy it, but I think we are be set in Jugo-Slavia in the fourteenth century. The poor comtaking it a little too seriously. It reflects the spirit of the age, but | poser won’t know he’s writing an American opera. He’ll think it is only a passing phase. It is not versatile enough to last. A _it’s just his opera until the critics tell him it’s American.

whole jazz opera would be monotonous. Jazz is inimitable for “After all, the book doesn’t have to be American, but it must

certain effects. but they do not make an opera. have a good dramatic story with room for emotional appeal and lyricism. It will be characteristically American because it will be

Working in Paris written by someone who feels American. Richard Wagner is

supposed to be the most typically German of all operatic com“After all, it takes a musician, acraftsman, to writean opera. The _ posers, and yet his greatest opera is set on the coast of Cornwall—

mere technical details are stupendous, and jazz writers know __ but nobody stops to think about that. nothing about technic. What the public does not understand is “A thing that is not realized by people who try to write operas that it takes two persons to make a jazz piece—the composer, is that an opera cannot be mechanically manufactured. it must who invents, or occasionally adapts a catchy tune with a tricky be of the theater, and most musicians don’t know the theater. rhythm and whose name is signed to the song, and the arranger, § They think if they collect a couple of arias and a finale they have who gives jazz most of its insinuating charm and remains anony- —an opera. What comes between doesn’t matter to them. But mous. Very few jazz writers can even make a piano score, much — what comes between does matter to the public. It’s the between less a full orchestral arrangement; and arrangers are devoid of — music that bores people to death or stirs them. It is a lack of all the ingenuity which gives the song its charm. The composers —_ dramatic interest in the book and music that makes American have no technic and the arrangers have no ideas; writing an _— opera so pallid and stupid. opera requires both.”

Mr. Whithorne himself does not disdain to use jazz. He used Must Be Absorbing

it in his New York Days and Nights, and in his ballet, Sooner and Later, which is now being given at the Neighborhood Play- “The Jazz opera can have any kind of a book, but it must be an house in New York, he has a whole jazz scene. But, ashe main- —_ absorbing one. I can’t exactly see it written around Outcasts of tains, this is only to produce an effect, this time a satirical one.It | Poker Flat’ or the life of Irving Berlin, although somebody may is not the body of the work. That, he says, is more thanamatter be able to do it. Processional is possible. It has the nervous of adding a few saxophones to an orchestra and syncopating —_ excitation that is jazz. For jazz, after all, is not an emotional excite-

the rhythm. ment, but a nervous tension. Processional is a part of jazz Reports about town has it that Deems Taylor is at work ona = America. It falls naturally into jazz rhythms. But I think the Amerijazz opera, but Mr. Taylor says that, though some day he may __ can opera book will be something less self-conscious and per-

write an opera, he never will write a jazz opera. haps more colorful. John Alden Carpenter is supposed to be 406

APRIL # AMERICAN MAGAZINE 1925 writing an opera around Liliom, a book that has all the require- _ to do that a little in Processional. It embodies vaudeville and the

ments for an opera libretto. comic strip. it has caricature and slap-stick; it has tragedy and “When the jazz opera comes it will be American because its lyricism. In the musical setting played as its accompaniment music is written by an American—not because it is set in the | George Gershwin’s Yankee Doodle Blues’ is predominant. This Rocky Mountains or on the New England coast. I’d like tosee | expresses the crudeness and naive vulgarity found in the play. the Great American Opera, or the Great American Drama, or the _It is typical of the setting that would have to be used for the jazz Great American anything. I’d like to see the jazz opera, but I _ parts of the opera. don’t know who’ ll write it or what it will be about. That will be “But there are tender, lyrical passages in the book, and they

discovered only after it is produced.” would demand another type of musical treatment. It is obvious, Processional, produced by the Theater Guild this winter, has _ of course, that the jazz opera can’t be wholly jazz, but I believe been, perhaps, more talked about as a libretto for the jazz opera __ there will be a jazz opera.”

than any other book. It was obvious that it would be, because in One jazz opera has already been written and is scheduled for it John Howard Lawson introduced a new stage technic, ajazz production in Chicago next season. It is a modern miracle play

stage technic. and a tragedy, A Light From St. Agnes, by W. Franke Harling, “I tried to let the words fall into jazz rhythms,” Mr. Lawson __ witha libretto by Minnie Madden Fiske. The book tells a tale of says, “because the story demanded it, because jazz expresses a sin and its miraculous redemption, of the influence of a saintly great part of America, the America of the comic strip, of vaude- _ personality on a modern flapper. ville, of burlesque. it is crass and it is vulgar, but it has power If that story can be told in jazz, the jazz of Broadway, perhaps and it has charm. Krazy Kat is of America as much as are the __ the Life of Irving Berlin as an opera libretto will provide a new New England farms. John Alden Carpenter was one of the first | source of royalties for Mr. Woollcott; and we may yet see Nigger

to use comic strips in music. Mike’s in Chinatown on the stage of the Metropolitan, with

“T think that part of America is coming more and moreintoour = miners from the pages of Bret Harte or John Howard Lawson, concert halls. Some day there will be an American operathat will |= and Carl Van Vechten’s ultra-sophisticates. combine all the elements of entertainment in this country. I tried

April ¢ American Magazine INTERESTING PEOPLE—MEYER DAVIS RUNS SIXTY-TWO JAZZ ORCHESTRAS Georgiana Lockwood Meyer Davis heads one of the largest chains of orchestras in At this point, his instinct for leadership came to the fore the United States, and his music is applauded by princes and _again. he organized a second orchestra from among his acquainpresidents. He books engagements two years in advance, and __ tances and, after considerable striving against strong competihe has received as high as ten thousand dollars a night for the tion, succeeded in getting a few minor engagements.

services of one of his personally conducted orchestras. “At this time, the outstanding organization in Washington Fifteen years ago, he couldn’t break into the high-school was the Marine Band,” Davis relates. “It had long been in deorchestra in Washington, D. C. He had to organize one of his §_mand to furnish music for every society event of any imporown from among his playmates. Fighting stiff competition from tance in the capital. Then came the introduction of ‘modern’ the “legitimate” orchestra, he finally managed to secure occa- _— dancing, the vogue spreading eastward from the western coast.

sional dates to provide music for high-school parties. The local musicians, however, ignored these tendencies, and As a seventeen-year-old boy, Davis was faced with the prob- — continued to play sedate marches, two-steps, and waltzes.” lem of earning his own living and of helping his widowed mother. Here, Davis believed, was a marvelous opportunity for an Seizing the first opportunity, he undertook to act as secretary to orchestra which would cater to this new form of dancing. Acting a clergyman. “As a stenographer, I was a good fiddler,” is Davis’s_ upon this hunch, he invested his savings in a flying trip to San comment on this episode, which lasted only a few weeks. Francisco, where the new dancing was at its height. Filled with Again young Davis was job-hunting. His mother wanted her —_— new ideas, he returned to Washington, where he secured an son to become a lawyer, With a view to getting work which — engagement to play for a fashionable ball. Washington society, would also be of some service in his study, he managed to — whichin those days customarily broke up its parties at the decosecure an appointment as court reporter before the opening of __ rous hour of midnight, danced this time until dawn!

the fall semester at George Washington University. The new “T immediately began to secure bookings for society parposition was not so congenial, however, nor the remuneration _ ties,” Davis relates: “but I kept right on attending law school. so great that incentive to find other ways and means of earning |§ Some of the parties for which we played were given at the New

a living was removed. Willard Hotel.”

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1925 MAY ¢ OPPORTUNITY Upon one occasion, Mr. Frank Hight, manager of the hotel, |= home of Mrs. Marshall Field, who is the mother-in-law of Admipaused to listen to the young musicians. There was apeculiar __ ral Beatty of the British Navy, and a personal friend of the Prince.

spontaneity and enthusiasm in their playing which was unlike In recognition of the Prince’s fondness for dancing, Mrs. anything he had ever heard before, and on the strength of ithe | Field engaged a Meyer Davis orchestra to play at her home offered Davis and his orchestra the chance to furnish music every afternoon from three to six during the week of the Prince’s regularly at the Willard during the luncheon and dinner hours. visit. His Highness was frankly delighted, called repeatedly for This should leave them free to play for private affairs during § “Blues” and fox-trot numbers, chatted with the musicians, and the evening, so Davis accepted. Mr. Hight is still manager of the — even did a little amateur drum playing with the orchestra.

Willard, and one of Meyer Davis’s sixty-two orchestras contin- Other hostesses, alert to catch up any whim or preference

ues to furnish the music at that hotel. expressed by the Prince, lost no time in engaging the same muWealthy diners at the Willard inquired the name ofthe young sic for other affairs to be given in the royal visitor’s honor. After leader, jotted it down in their pocket notebooks, and referred to a week in which he had listened to the orchestra play at every it the next time they entertained. Engagements multiplied so _ tea, reception, and dance during his Washington visit, the Prince rapidly that they began to make serious inroads on Meyer’s __ remarked that he wished “the band would come to White Sulstudy time. Finally, when offers began to pourin from allsides, — phur Springs, the next stopping point on his tour. Meyer cast aside his law books and devoted himself to develop- Mrs. R. R. Rogers immediately engaged the Davis orchestra ing a chain of society orchestras reaching from Bar Harbor to __ for the dance she was giving for the Prince at the Casino at

Palm Beach. White Sulphur. When the six musicians walked into the Casino, His idea was to follow the “four hundred” from their city the Prince left his companions and, his face illumined with the

homes to their favorite summer and winter resorts throughout —__ boyish grin which has endeared him to admirers on both sides

_ the various seasons. Meyer Davis doesn’t wait for the other of the Atlantic, shook hands with each of the jazz artists. They fellow to come to him; he goes after the other fellow! accompanied him to Halifax, from which point the Prince sailed. Soon he was flooded with bids from all over the Eastern _—_ Before his departure, the Prince presented each of the musicians coast. It was no uncommon thing for hostesses to arrange their | withadiamond stickpin, and sent a note of appreciation to Meyer dates to suit his schedule. It became increasingly difficult, and § Davis, in which he urged the leader to bring his music to Lonthen impossible for Meyer Davis personally to attend all ofthese don. This, incidentally, Davis plans to do in the near future.

engagements himself. He has long made it a practice, however, The distinguishing characteristics of the music which apto conduct on the inaugural night of each new orchestra. pealed to the Prince are decided melody, plenty of gaiety, and There is not one of his seven hundred and fifty musicians audacity, obtained without resorting to raucous trick effects. whom he has not heard play solo parts, Thus, he is able tojudge = The Meyer Davis orchestras typify the spirit of youth; hardly a into which of his sixty-two orchestras each will best fit. He knows —=_ man in the organization is over thirty.

how to get into touch personally and at a minutes notice with Any young musician, however obscure, if he has natural every member of his organization. He is an indefatigable toiler —_ ability, has a favorable chance of a hearing from Meyer Davis himself and will not excuse lazy or careless work on the partof for, remembering his own start, Davis prizes talent above trainhis employees. Many of his musicians claim they play thesame __ ing and experience. His primary demands of a candidate are number better in his organization than under other leaders. versatility and an excellent memory. Each man must be able to The history of his acquaintance with the Prince of Wales __ play three or four instruments equally well, and to memorize a forms an interesting chapter in the career of Meyer Davis.On ___ repertoire of almost one thousand numbers. his first visit to Washington, the Prince was entertained at the Davis insists that he himself is primarily not a musician but a business man with a keen appreciation of music.

May ¢ Opportunity JAZZ There is a new international word—Jazz. Within the past seven __ tion as “a species of music invented by demons for the torture years, it has flung itself impudently and triumphantly into the —_ of imbeciles.” Clive Bell, interpreter of the modernists, back in speech of seven nations. There is nothing vague about its mean- 1921, in a ridiculously premature announcement of its death, ing, even though no one seems able to define it. The etymologi- —_ explained that it was not merely music but a movement which

cal Dictionary of Modern English defines it as “a number of — “bounced into the world somewhere about the year 1911 Niggers surrounded by noise—a kind of ragtime dance intro- ...neaded by a band and troupe of niggers, dancing.” duced from the United States .....a word taken from Negro jar- When the subtle effects of this “movement” first began to be gon.” Horatio Parker, an American composer of note, decrying _ felt, there was a horrified revolt of the intellectuals against it. No the decline of our taste in music, in the Yale Review calls it _ primitive rhythms for these aesthetes! It was their duty to Art to “naked African rhythm, and no more.” Henry Van Dyck, the __ resist the magic and lure of the African’s syncopations and caurbane, referred to it before the National Educational Associa- — cophony. “Some happy day” remarked one of these, “we shall

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MAY ¢ OPPORUNITY 1925 beat our swords into plowshares and our jazz bands into uncon- The new front toward the music and the appreciation of its

sciousness.” relation to the new forces manifesting themselves in American

If there was sand bagging of any sort, itfailedtodiminishthe life have come recently and together. It is no longer the bounded energy of this new rage. The word is now used in Europe almost duty of the intellectuals to view these tendencies with alarm as exclusively to describe the kind of music and dancing imported _ the “enthusiastic disorganization of music,”—the symptom of from America. In America, its home, it describes not merely mu- _a national disintegration. “If, before we have produced somesic and dancing but a national mood, or, better still, ajumble of thing better,” says Gilbert Seldes, “we give up jazz, we shall be moods. It has come to mean things typically American.Ourcon- _ sacrificing nearly all there is of gaiety and liveliness and rhythtemporary critics speak of the “Jazz Age,” the go-getters wantto | mic power in our lives. Jazz, for us, isn’t a last feverish excite“jazz up” business, modern expressionism in art is jazz art. We = ment, a spasm of energy before death. It is the cultural develhave jazz bands, jazz murderers, jazz magazines! Itisevenused opment of our resources, the expected and wonderful arrival of

as a technical expression in aeronautics. If the propeller stops | America at a point of creative intensity.” Leopold Stowoski,

suddenly one must do a nose dive and “jazz” the throttle. leader of the Philadelphia Orchestra thinks it is the natural And here is the significant part of it: Jazz, which took itsname — expression of the times—its jerky rhythm a perfect expression from music—Negro music—has spread itself revealingly over __ of the life of today, the portrayal of the rush from one thing to the American temperament and become the expressive medium —§another,— a part of the quick transportation of modern life.

for it, asign and symbol of the American pace,—of its moving The amusing and yet profoundly significant paradox of the spirit. This curious complexity of moods John Howard Lawson whole situation is the fact that it is the Negroes, who not only tried to portray in his play, Processional, which Heywood can best express the spirit of American life, but who have creBroun asserts comes closer to capturing the spiritof American _ ated the very forms of expression. For apart from the swirl and life than any other contemporary play. Lawson calls ita jazz dash of the civilization of this country, there is, in the words and symphony. “The rhythm of the American procession as it music of Negro songs, as Gilbert Seldes reminds us, an expresstreams about us,” he says, explaining his attempt to devise —_ sion of something which underlies a great deal of America—our

something native to the American theatre, “is a staccato bur- = independence, our frankness, and gaiety. The distinguishing lesque carried out by a formal arrangement of jazz music.” feature of the Negro part is that it is more intense. The most Why has this music taken hold and what does this new move- __ effective instruments and improvisations are Negro, the themes ment mean? In spite of the startled protests of the classicists itis are Negro, the temperament is Negro. And yet it is American life.

growing in popularity and meaning. It is not being foisted upon Can it be that after all the creative energy of the Negro, who the public. As a writer in the London New Statesman points out, _ has been called the imitator, is sufficient in its strength to give the composers and the music dealers are not the criminals. They to the Anglo-Saxon temperament a medium of expression, or are giving to the people what they want and can appreciate. He complement its culture with the resistless spirit of rhythm and asks: Is jazz subsidized? Are the folk-song societies contributed — exultant life? May there not be in the ready appreciation of

to by the masses? Is the passion for the good old folk songs these Negro creations a recognition of common passions, inconcealed while a pretense for Snooky-Ookums is flaunted in _ stinct,—-human qualities? May not, indeed, this appreciation order to get accepted in society? Do the popular songscost more? — of song and sentiment be a concealed admiration for the simple

If we may believe Carl Van Vechten “it is only through the _art, the spontaneity and frank intensity of Negro life, which trenchant pens of our new composers” (who are utilizing the _ tradition teacher us to despise? Let some analyst of the public distinctive features of ragtime and jazz) “that the complicated |= mind explain the extraordinary vogue of George Gershwin’s vigor of American life has been expressed in tone. Itisthe only | Rhapsody in Blue, Al Jolson’s Mammy songs, the Weary Blues, music created in America today which is worth the paper on __ the blunt, frank sentimental songs about Aggravation’ Papa, which it is written. It is the only American music which is en- _ or Insufficient Sweetie which make no pretenses at delicately joyed by the nation (even lovers of Mozart and Debussy prefer | ornamented expression. Here is something to hold the interest ragtime to the inert and saponaceous classicism of our more __ of sociologists and psychologists as well as of artists! serious minded composers); it is the only American music which At present these jumbled strains are difficult to rationalize, is heard abroad (and it is heard everywhere, in the trenches, by but there is a deep meaning in the pattern. It 1s the same probway of the victrola, in the Cafe de Paris at Monte Carlo, in Cairo, | lem which faced John Howard Lawson when he essayed to

in India, and in Australia).” depict the American temper—with its inconsistencies and hecThe secret of this vogue is that they are the kind of tunes that tic march, its superficialities bored through at unexpected points a large number of persons can easily enjoy, remember, play,and = with deep shafts of conflicting sentiment,—its comedy and sing and even compose. Attention has been called to the fact —_ pathos blending into feverish rhythm. that artists as gifted as Rodin and Troubetsky think that Art like What an immense, even if unconscious irony the Negroes true goodness flames, and is unmistakable; that it must leap —_— have devised! They, who of all Americans are most limited in from the depths of feeling and be at its best understandable __ self-expression, least considered and most denied, have forged even to children. The great crowd is thus in good company inits __ the key to the interpretation of the American spirit. appreciation of these magic tunes.

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1925 JUNE 5 e LONDON EVENING NEWS June 5 ¢ London Evening News INTERVIEW WITH OTTO KAHN ‘You are supposed to believe that jazz is the music of the future, | as well as public buildings, have advanced by leaps and

Mr. Kahn.” bounds. I believe it is not too much to say that American “Of course, I hold no such belief,’ Mr. Kahn replied. “WhatI —_ architects, as a class, are in the very front rank of the profes-

do think is that, notwithstanding the imperfections of present- _sion, and fully hold their own with those of any other nation. day jazz, there will develop out of itin the future,a genuine and __ Better, perhaps, than any other form of art, theirs, at present,

significant American contribution to the art of music. expresses the spirit of America. “Jazz is a novel and characteristic thing. True, it is traced ‘As the skyscraper, an original American creation, adback to African origin, but America has taken it, modified it,and = vancing from crudity to beauty, came to be an American conmade it its own. It is easy enough to deride or disparage it, but _ tribution to art, so I believe that out of the seed of the thing any movement which is so vigorously intense, which has di- _ generally called ‘jazz’ something will spring to fruition which vulged new instrumental colors and values, which has takenso will take a worthy place in art.” firm a footing in its home country, aroused so much attention For a man known to be distinctively artistic, a man who abroad, and is the object of such great interest to European __ feels so acutely and deeply on questions of art and music, musicians visiting America—any such movementhasaclaimto — whohas given much of his life and fortune towards develop-

be taken seriously. ing what he sincerely believes and emotionally senses to be “There must be something genuine, convincing, responsive __ true art, Mr. Kahn speaks his opinions with a curiously calm, and vital to a form of music which, within a few years, hasestab- —_—_ detailed and deliberate manner: [. . . ] he has one of the explo-

lished itself throughout the world. Ihave just completed ajour- —_ sive ardors of the music-enthusiast of tradition; he talks of ney which took me through a good part of Europe and some of — music as unemotionally as he would talk of a business deal. Africa. Jazz was to be met with everywhere, even among the

Arabs. A Task for Young Composers

“Jazz is manifestly limited and affected with crudities in its present stage; its failings ‘jump at the eye’ as the French say, or, | “Will there ever by jazz opera, Mr. Kahn?” I asked. rather, ‘at the ear’; but it does characteristically mirror some of “* ‘Jazz opera’ strikes me” Mr. Kahn said, “as a contradicthe conditions of our modern life. It has rhythm and dynamics, __ tion in terms. In its literal meaning, it is utterly unthinkable. and seeks—what is too often neglected by the more ‘high-toned’ But I do hope that some of the young American composers of modern composers—melody. It is sincere and spontaneous __ who, at present, are devoting their talents to producing jazz and stands robustly on its feet, boldly disregardful of rules and dance music and jazz songs, will tackle more important and

precedent. more exacting tasks. I hope some of them will try their hand at “A first-rate ‘jazzy’ American revue or musical comedy, with | opera and endeavor to express themselves in their own way— its swiftly rushing pace, the spontaneous grace, zest and swing __ themselves and the spirit of the life which surrounds them,—

of its dancing, the tang of its humor, the kaleidoscope of its | however unconventional that way may be. color, the hustling, palpitating rhythm of its American talent can “Such an opera will probably contain some of the mobe more enjoyable than a savorless grand opera, composed with __ tives, rhythm, and characteristics of jazz, but whether it does painstaking erudition and technical impeccability afterthe model or does not, is immaterial. The main question is: ‘Has the of Wagner, Debussy or Strauss. By which I do not mean to be —_~ work got musical merit? Does the composer have something understood as upholding jazz as a model. I look upon jazzasa_ _ to Say, and does he Say it in the manner which, to him, is the

phase, as a transition, not as a completed process. natural and spontaneous way of expressing himself?’ “Similarly, with the book and story. Let it, too, be drawn

The Lesson of the Skyscraper from the fullness of present-day life. Don’t let it deal with the

love of a white hunter for an Indian maiden who, in the last “About thirty years ago the skyscraper came to New York. It _act, throws herself over a precipice. was an ugly, over-ornamented thing, in keeping with the ugli- “There is a call for a new departure in opera. That does ness of the monotonous rows of “‘brown-stone’ houses, when _ not mean that the old may be neglected, or looked at askance,

they were the prevailing architecture of New York. or thrust aside. But while respectful of the accumulated “Now, the skyscraper has become beautiful, splendidly im- —_ treasures, achievements and lessons of the past, and reverpressive in its mass and line, in its hold sweep upward wholly __ ential of the masters, music should seek to express its day uninterrupted by unmeaning ornamentation, expressive of power —_ and even to anticipate. True art is eternal, but it is too staand striving, and at the same time admirably adapted for its _ tionary.

utilitarian purpose. “The Metropolitan Opera in New York, of which I am “And, simultaneously with the evolution of the skyscraper, | chairman, conceives it to be its duty to encourage and foster the standards of general architecture of the city, private houses — every meritorious manifestation of American musical talent,

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JUNE 11 ¢ MUSICAL COURIER 1925 and will gladly produce operas whether by ajazzcomposerorby — refer—there is some peculiar and powerful force at work in the anyone else, and however unorthodox in style, provided they American atmosphere, whether it be sun, soil, climate, environ-

are of adequate worth and interest.” ment, or whatever else, which in the case of those born in America, I asked Mr. Kahn whether he was encouraging his son to — of whatever European racial stock, transmute inherited traits follow up jazz, for which he has shown distinct aptitude. Mr. and qualities into distinctively American ways and characterisKahn’s son, who is eighteen, has been conducting and working __ tics. with, and composing for, jazz orchestras for some time in New “My son is a case in point. His inherited taste and gift for York, and his activities have attracted considerable notice there. | music manifest themselves, thus far, mainly in what are among the essential American traits, namely, rhythm and dynamics.

A New Flavor to Inherited Talent Hence he is drawn now to what, for want of a better term, is comprehensively called ‘jazz,’ and expresses himself in that mu“My son’s development is, of course, no matter of public inter- _ sical idiom.

est, least of al outside of his own country. If I speak of his “He will later on come to Europe to study for a few years at a activities in music, Ido so merely to illustrate a phenomenon of — European conservatory, as quite a number of young Americans which, from my own observation, I see him as a typical example. are doing. It will be interesting to observe, in his case, as in the “As far back as I have personal recollection (and that in- _case of others, what will be the effect upon these intense, eager, cludes my great-grandparents), music has been cultivatedinmy — spontaneous, young American minds, of contact with the atmo-

family. From that ancestry, my son has inherited the taste and _ sphere and traditions of Europe and with the influences they gift for music. but—and here is the phenomenon to which I__ will encounter in European schools of music.”

June 11 ¢ Musical Courier PHILADELPHIA HEARS FIRST COMPLETE JAZZ SYMPHONY It was not ideal concert weather that was dealt out forthe Popu- _—‘ they cannot do in combination. The result was a clear, attractive lar Symphony Concert offered by John Wanamaker’s, Philadel- — work, very frequently antiphonal in character, something that

phia, on Friday evening, June 5. Not withstanding, agreataudi- _adds distinctly to its interest since it enables both orchestra and ence turned out to listen to the program which was framed around __ organ to stand out and not to blare and blow as they too frethe first complete jazz symphony ever written—an audience that | quently do when mingled in forte passages. The last movement, sat and fanned and sweltered all in among and around the —_ on atheme in Gregorian style originally announced by the organ counters and show cases on the main floor and the first balcony. and then varied by that instrument with interludes by the orThe Grand Court of the Wanamaker store, with its huge open _chestra, is particularly brilliant. Palmer Christian, organist of the space reaching up through four or five stories, is an imposing | University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, gave an excellent perforarchitectural feature, but acoustically it is far from ideal. The = mance of the solo part, and the composer conducted the orchesaudience on the main floor hears the music coming from forty _ tra of eighty-five men, a large proportion of whom were members feet or more over its head, while that in the balcony, on alevel —_ of the Philadelphia Orchestra. with the orchestra, but distributed around three sides of an empty

square, on the fourth of which the great organ and the orchestra Delamarter’s Whitman Symphony

platform are situated, hears a multitude of echoes. Under the circumstances it was hard to judge fairly of the new works pre- = The concert began with another composition by Mr. Delamarter, sented. Without question, though, the best one from a musical | aSymphony, after Walt Whitman. The movements were titled as standpoint was the only one which was not in tune with the rest | follows with Whitman quotations. “I Sound My Barbaric Yawp;” of the program, and played, doubtless, merely because the com- § “O Glistening, Perfumed South,” “Robust, Friendly, Singing With poser could conduct and because it was something to show off | Open Mouths.” To speak frankly, the thing did not quite “come

the Wanamaker grand organ. off’ as the saying goes. The first movement was founded on two Reference is made to the organ concerto by Eric Delamarter, tunes that have been so long dead it was a shame to resurrect the Chicago musician and organist and assistant conductor of — them, Grizzly Bear and The Honeysuckle and the Bee, the latter a the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It was the first hearing of the _ particularly distinguished number of its day, the words of which concerto in Philadelphia, though it had already been played in —_ had the honor of being quoted by Rudyard Kipling in a short Chicago with Mr. Delamarter at the organ and Frederick Stock — story. The second movement, the best, was built upon four Lone-

conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The concerto is § some Tunes from the Kentucky Mountains: John Riley, The short, concise and thoroughly effective. Mr. Delamarter has § Hangman’s Son (which also masquerades under the title of Ye found some themes that are worth while for his musical material, Wandering Boy), Little Sparrow and Frog Went a-Courtin’ (exand he handled them with a thorough knowledge both of the __traordinarily like A Frog He Would a-Wooing Go). These tunes organ and orchestra, what they can doin combination and what _—_are rich and meaty. Put on the orchestra effectively by Mr. 411

1925 JUNE e¢ VANITY FAIR Delamarter they made an excellent slow movement. The final move- from the Hotel Statler orchestra, St. Louis. Mr. Rodemich knows

ment, built on such modern favorites as Raggedy Ann, By the _his business and got all there was to be gotten out of a fatal Light of the Stars and Swanee Butterfly, goes at a swift pace.So —_ arrangement of the Dvorak Humoresque in combination with The

swift, in fact, was the pace, and so bad the echoes, that these jazz- | Swanee River, and then played an “overture” on themes from loving ears could not catch a single phrase of the favorite tunes § Rose Marie, which was at least ingeniously orchestrated. Next named in the movement, though they were doubtless there. The | came Ben Bernie from the Hotel Roosevelt, New York, who played Symphony had the great advantage of shortness. Withtworather | Sweet Georgia Brown and Bell-Hopping Blues, two very undislong pauses between its three movements, it only took nineteen _ tinguished jazz tunes. Mr. Bernie not only waved his stick; he minutes to play. Final judgment on it must wait for another hear- — waved himself, quivering and jiggering on the stand in jazz style, ing. The conditions at Philadelphia were too bad, especially from formerly much approved, but which is not quite il faut for the several rows back in the press gallery, whichis inalevel withthe — leader since jazz became respectable, as Mr. Bernie should have orchestra directly across the yawning void of the court wellitself learned. and very likely the worst place of all to hear. The front row, to be Then Mr. Delamarter came out again to conduct what were sure, was empty, reserved, as a polite.usher informed Frederick — called Three Characteristic Pieces in Rhythm, by Eastwood Lane. Stock, the Chicago Symphony conductor, and The Musical Cou-. _ The pieces, selected from his piano works, were Scene Savannah, rier staff writer, for members of the Wanamaker family. But the § Dirge for Jo Indian (Adirondack Sketches) and the Pow-Wow Wanamaker family was warm and stayed at home, and the seats = (Five American dances), and they had been orchestrated by Edgar remained empty until almost the end of the program whenacol- __S. Carver, Pietro Florida and Ferdinand Grofé. None of the three

lection of Philadelphia flappers invaded them. are among the best of Mr. Lane’s pieces. The best was the PowWow, which is built up upon an actual tune sung at the annual

Plain Jazz Green Corn Festival of the Onondaga Indians. One of the features of the program, which was rather lost in the big space and the After the Delamarter Symphony was out of the way the program —_ echoes, was some duos for two pianos by those immitable masof the second part descended to plain jazz and consequently took _ters of jazz, Edgar Fairchild and Adam Carroll, who began witha on alittle life. Dr. Hugo Riesenfeld was announced to conductthe = Carmen Fantasie which, according to the program, was written first offerings, a group of Riesenfeld Classical Jazz, but,detained _ by none else than George S. Bizet. This was followed by Victor in New York (doubtless owing to the opening of The Beggaron —_Herbert’s Indian Summer and an extraordinary piece by Mr. Carroll Horseback, the same evening) sent Willy Stahl over to take his —_ called Syncopetude, which is full of both syncopation and etude.

place. Mr. Stahl opened with Dr. Riesenfeld’s own American “This program,” said a foreword, “is designed to illustrate Humoresque, which is about ten years old, and sounds so today. various phases of American rhythm in both the ‘popular’ and Then he played a really good tune, Eubie Blake’s I’m WildAbout the symphonic fields, and for the first time, to bring them toHarry, and played it approximately twice too slow, so that it only gether in artistic association.” Just what playing /’m Just Wild sounded one-half as good as it should; nor was the Limehouse —_ About Harry, or Limehouse Blues, or Sweet Georgia Brown, or Blues particularly impressive. Doubtless part of the lack of real Rose Marie, all in their regular dance form, has to do with this jazz spirit, which is the only thing which makes jazz digestible, was —_ laudable purpose is hard to understand. Doubtless the regret of

the fact that symphony men, a large portion of whom were present many is that they could not get up and dance. It is a shame to in the orchestra, are seldom, if ever, ideal exponents of the less __—hhave a good tune like the one about Harry go to waste. Perhaps formal music. The second jazz conductor was Gene Rodemich, after all, it was the hot weather; but whatever the cause, here is one thing true about this particular concert—it didn’t “jell.”

June ¢ Vanity Fair THE CULT OF JAZZ by Virgil Thomson The worship of jazz is just another form of highbrowism, like the — can behave so, because its quality depends upon no trick, only

worship of discord or the worship of Brahms. To call Jazz “the | acertain way of sounding two rhythms at once in order to profolk-music of America” may be good advertising, but itis not. | vokeamuscular response. In short, it is dance music and always

very good criticism. will be dance music. Diverting pieces can be made out of it for

Jazz is too sophisticated to be folk-music. Like the Viennese the concert hall, pieces like Chabrier’s Espana and Liszt’s Hunwaltz, it is self-conscious, formal, and urbane. Without losing = garian Rhapsodies, but there is almost no implication in it of for a moment its quality or its poise, it can indulge in Negro — any intrinsic musical quality beyond this elementary musclewailing and Spanish heel-stamping; itcan hint at oriental melo- —sjerking. To imagine that a vigorous national art could grow in dies and obscene back-country dances, quote from the classic — such meager soil is to fancy that real roses (or turnips either, for masters, and scream out the rhythms of a Methodist revival. It that matter) could be matured in the jardinieres of a ballroom.

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JUNE ¢ VANITY FAIR 1925 Our local wild flowers, on the other hand, have long been mitment. Mr. Carpenter, in exuberant Chicago style, embraces used as material for American compositions, many of whichhave __ the popular muse as he might his neighbor’s wife, dancing at the flavor, if not consistency. Edward MacDowell liked Indian themes — country club. Mr. Gershwin, though privately aware of her true and wrote a couple of semi-Wagnetian orchestral suites about —_ character, would put her in an imported corset, give her a feather them that were a sensation in the nineties. In fact, they are still | fan, and take her to Carnegie Hall. Mr. Hill knows only too well

played occasionally. Dvordék’s New World Symphony is ever that as a New Englander and an academician he would find popular. It scarcely counts as new world music, however, be- _ distasteful any extreme familiarity with one whose race and upcause, in spite of Negro and Indian melodies, it manages to _ bringing are so different from his own. sound exactly like his four Bohemian symphonies. John Powell These pieces, the types for most of our highbrow jazz, are has pleased audiences with his excellent Negro Rhapsody, and __ really charming works. They are also disappointing, because Henry Gilbert has devoted a life time to the composition of suites —_ they are touched with insincerity. I would trade them every one

and overtures that depict the gaieties of half-caste society in for the symphony of Aaron Copland. Mr. Copland’s piece is less Louisiana. In the way of Negro music, the most authentic writ- | competently written. His instrumental technique is childish being that I know of has been done by Mr. Nathaniel Dett, himself side Hill’s Parisian mastery. He has neither the mature architeca Negro and acultivated musician. Most concert-goers and pia- _ tural skill of Carpenter nor the melodic gift of Gershwin. And he nists know at least his Juba Dance. Probably the best Negro. makes no attempt to write jazz. He does build his themes by music will always come from the Negroes themselves. Mr. Powell grouping notes together into measures and not by breaking writes about them as a Southern gentleman might retell their |= measures up into notes. But this procedure, although essential stories, sympathetically, perhaps, but more in delighted amuse- _to jazz, is in no way the essence of it. That essence is rather a

ment than with any passion or faith. muscle-jerking quality due to its counterpoint of regular against Here exactly is the trouble with writing folk-fantasias. Unless _— irregular beats. Copland accepts short-unit rhythm as a musical the material is of one’s own intimate folk-stuff, the music made — device without any patriotic or literary reference. There is not a from it is exterior, hard, and sentimental. And here also is the |= Negro tune or a Broadway formula in his work. Its European reason why jazz has been called a Pierian spring. [sic] It be- _ affiliations, principally Stravinsky and Fauré, are easily evident. longs to our experience as the Negro dances and the Kentucky — And yet it seems everywhere to belong to us and to be our own. mountain tunes never did. It is our native gin, sotospeak.One — Itis American music because it is honest, personal music written

feels as if one might almost achieve self-expression on it. by an American young man. This is probably an illusion. The principal large works it has To be an American one need not be ignorant. Perhaps one inspired have been a ballet, Krazy Kat, and a Concertino for | must be somewhat European, through reading, travel, or racial piano and orchestra, by John Alden Carpenter of Chicago; a _— proximity. Europe is the cultural background, the point de vue Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin, of New York; and a from which we discover ourselves. To fear it is to worship it Scherzo for two pianos and orchestra by Edward Burlingame __ blindly. To accept it is to enrich one’s life. And really, there is so

Hill, Boston. little danger of deracination. It may be true, as T. S. Eliot says, Of Mr. Carpenter’s two pieces, the Concertino is by far the __ that it is the good fortune of Americans to become what no more successful, because it does not limit its Americanism to. —- Frenchman or German or Italian ever becomes, a good Eurojazz and because it does not try so hard. Krazy Kat failed be- _ pean. It is certainly true that no American ever becomes what cause the composer bet on a horse he didn’t know anything __ the European is already; that is, French, German, or Italian. If about. The famous Catnip Blues in it are got together by pin- —-_ you doubt this, just look at your friends who have tried it. ning little furbelows of rag-time on to a long-winded melody that The fear of foreign influence is, for this reason, simply anmight just as well have come out of Deems Taylor’s pantomime _ other kind of provincialism. Of course we do bad work when we or Tristan and Isolde. Mr. Carpenter makes music out of mea- _ try consciously to imitate the aesthetic fashions of London or

sures and phrases rather than out of those short percussive Paris. But we do just as bad work when we try to imitate the

sounds which are the rhythmic units of jazz. aesthetic fashions of New York and Chicago. The artist, to do Mr. Gershwin’s piece, in spite of the excessive praise ithas | good work, must accept without shame whatever influence may received, and in spite of its enormous superiority to anything _ attract him; but he must also accept himself. that the better educated musicians have done in that style, (for For, after all, America is just a collection of individuals, and Gershwin can write blues, if he can’t rhapsodies), remains just | amazingly different ones at that. The idea that they can be exsome scraps of bully jazz sewed together with oratory andca- _ pressed by a standardized national art is of a piece with the idea denzas out of Liszt. Mr. Gershwin is an excellent composer for that they should be cross-bred into a standardized national charthe theatre. The concert room seems to clog rather than facilitate | acter, 100 per cent North-American blond. his expression. The Rhapsody is at best a piece of aesthetic Fortunately, our musical vitality is too great to be much op-

snobbery. That, and no more, is its raison d’etre. pressed by standards. You have only to walk down a side street Mr. Hill’s Scherzo [gets] as near jazz as John Powell’s Negro —_— in any suburb at 8 P. M. to know that America Is seething with a

Rhapsody does to a camp-meeting of the African Methodist — vast and explosive musical energy. There has probably been Episcopal Church. It is music about jazz, elegant Bostonian mu- _ nothing like it since the German Reformation. Jazz itself, amazing Sic, a witty and indecorous comment without any personalcom- _as itis, is only the temporary urban aspect of that energy. It is, of

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1925 JULY ¢ MUSIC & LETTERS course, a power in our lives. Even if it had not been advertised I wonder if we haven’t learned the wrong lesson from the by critics, we could hardly escape its rhythmic presence. There success of jazz. It doesn’t prove that nothing else 1s worth dois no danger we shall forget it. The danger is rather that its cult _—ing. It only proves that if you keep on doing your own stuff, in may intimidate those private devotions, local or foreign, which _ spite of the highbrows, you will eventually get to be good at it.

lie close to the heart of the individual composer and which must And what we really like about jazz is not so much that it is

ever furnish the true passion of his music. American (because it isn’t, very much) as that, whatever itis, it’s For where the heart lies, there lies the only honest art. Made- — darned good. All our aesthetic philosophy, in fact, born of our moiselle Nadia Boulanger says: “You have all the same diffi- —_ eclectic breeding, is just that. We admire whatever is good of its culty, you Americans. You have enormously of talent, but you —_—kind, complete self-assured and unafraid. lack the courage to be yourselves.”

July ¢« Music & Letters JAZZ by Cecil Austin It must be an enormous relief to non-musical people to realize boy Joe, and other pieces, together with the strange bodily conthat they may contemplate the art of music without being com- tortions necessary to correct interpretations, which endear themmitted to think of either Beethoven or Wagner, Mendelssohn or __ selves to the hearts of all. Strauss. Jazz, the brisk art, the art which we all enjoy, carries with The music-halls were delighted with the innovation, for the it no mental misgivings. The search for jazz has occupied many — songs about mothers-in-law and lasses from Yorkshire and years, but it has been like gold washing; nothing has beenfound — Lancashire had been worn threadbare. What was most importo be of any value until most has been swept away. That Wagner, tant, however, was that the novelty became a craze in the danceChopin and the majority of the Masters perished withthe dross _ halls. A languishing interest in the dying pastime of dancing is to be lamented, but it could not be avoided. The sediment — was immediately revived. Large and sumptuous dance-palaces subsided and left clear, crystal jazz. Since jazz attracts its mil- —_ began to rise side by side with the cinemas. The Lancers and the lions of enthusiasts and interests the most cultured minds, the | Quadrilles, the Waltze and the Schottische were promptly cast reader might imagine that the possibilities it affords of furnish- aside in favour of the Bunny-hug, the Turkey-trot, The Tango, ing an entirely new kind of musical genius with the means of _ -the Fox-trot, and a host of other strange movements. With the making fresh masterpieces would be fully realized by potential |§ war came a craving among people for unconventional excite-

symphonists and composers of the “realistic” school. ment, for novelty and childish entertainment. In ragtime they “Why do not our recognized composers interest themselves _ found an ideal means of forgetting cares and worries. The simin this form of art, and write and publish the ideal jazz?” asks a __plicity and the absurdity of it no doubt formed a very helpful correspondent in the Musical Times. “Is it not possible to write —_ antidote to the horrors of the battlefield. jazz music which combines the qualities of good dance music To trace the early growth of ragtime, one must go back to the from the point of view of the dancer with that of good music __ slavery days and follow its evolution from burlesque perforfrom the point of view of the musician?” That correspondent _mances of Negro spirituals. The spirituals themselves were Neechoed the sentiments of millions of people, for the knowledge — gro conceptions of Christian hymns, and usually sprang into that one may have the privilege of dancing to a five-hours’ life, ready-made, from the host of religious fervour during some programme of real musical masterpieces for one-and-sixpence meeting in church or in camp. Sometimes the inspiration would would be no mean argument in favour of an immediate world- _ be picked up by aslave whilst waiting outside the “white” church wide search for a composer endowed with all the necessary gifts for his master during service time; at other times they would for turning out the ideal jazz. Those who think they know best __ result from concerted effort. All the authentic specimens have call this art one of the current modes of expression, voicing the the fourth and seventh tones of the scale omitted, and the most thought and the talk of modern times, creating fresh lines and _ striking peculiarity about them in the rhythm. tone shadows every day, playing pranks with the minds of mil- When Gettysburg and Chancellorsville decided the result of

lions of our fellow creatures. the American Civil War, and the “Year of Jubilee” of which the The history of its evolution is as remarkable as its master- —_ slaves had prayed and sung for so many years came at last, over pieces are unique, Jazz, which is slowly losing itselfinthe halo —_— four millions of bondsmen were thrown on their own resources, of its glorified designation “symphonized-syncopation,” was —_ without homes, money, education, and without ever having had the outcome of ragtime, which began in its crudest form some __ the opportunity of learning self-reliance. The wonderful manner thirty or forty years ago; but it is only thirteen or fourteen years —_ in which the people of the Northern States acquitted themselves since ragtime became the rage of America and Europe, the lofty _ of the stupendous task of caring for these poor mortals ranks as strains of Hitchy-Koo, Alexander’s Ragtime Band, Ragtime Cow- __ one of the most charitable achievements of all time. Old men

414

JULY ¢ MUSIC & LETTERS 1925 could be seen bending over the same spelling books with their In a short space of time an entirely new form of entertainment grandchildren; fathers would work all day to support theirfami- was evolved. The performers, naturally, had no knowledge of lies and walk miles during the evening to attend night classes; music, and played from ear, improvising where their memories young girls would ask to be beaten rather than be suspended _failed them. The spirituals were soon distorted out of all recog-

from lessons. nition, and no doubt popular ballads and comic songs were Missionaries made great strides, and their work, their gener- “ragged” in a similar manner. osity, and the enthusiasm which marked their efforts stand as The success of jazz has been such that to-day it is exploited landmarks in a wonderful series of events which, during the _ like a film dealing with immorality. “There is nothing to ‘whistle’

short space of twenty years, raised the humble, illiterate and _ today.” says the programme of the first concert given at the down-trodden American Negroes to a position never anticipated = Queen’s Hall by the Savoy Orpheans’ Band.” The symphonizedin their wildest dreams of freedom. One cannot altogetherignore — syncopated melody of to-day is so subtle that it can be heard

the part played by the small band of singers who set out practi- § many, many times before it can be even partly committed to cally penniless to raise the sum of $20,000 with which to further = memory. It can be heard many more times than any other form of the work of their school, which became the first Negro univer- — “popular” music that has yet been devised—again and again— sity. Known as the Jubilee Singers, buffeted by fortune, refused — without being tiring. It has the disadvantage that we can spend cabin accommodation on the steamship lines, turned outofho- _a full evening of great pleasure and excitement, and then by next tels, and suffering all manner of insults because of their colour, morning we can recall no individual tune to mind. they returned home in triumph within three years, bringing with

them $100,000. During their travels they had sung their spiritu- Hail! the Gay Arts! Symphonised-Syncopation! als before the Queen of England and had gathered as guests

round the table of her Prime Minister, Gladstone. It is doubtful whether the magic terrors of jazz will scare many But such great movements have always their coarser ele- —_ people over here, although by exploiting to the utmost the falment. The more depraved young Negroes would often set ri- lacy that good music is beyond the mental capacity of the ordidiculous words to the tunes that had inspired so much fervour _ nary citizen, and by holding up jazz to the popular veneration as among their forefathers. For instance, with the pious promise _an art that can be understood so easily and enjoyed by all, no

contained in the following chorus: one will deny that large fortunes can be made by those who deal “Poor Mona, you shall be free in this commodity. No competent critic has yet taken it seriously, when the good Lord sets us free.” but the epithets hurled at it by the incompetent ones have been eagerly pounced upon and held up to popular ridicule. Some

a verse would be set: strange reason leads the jazz merchant to imagine that musical “Sheep an’ de goat were a-trottin’ in the pasture, people look down with horror at his miracles. He turns round to said the sheep to de goat, can you trot a lil faster; them all in childish glee and points out his SUCCESS. Chaliapin, in

a. ; 5s ram ...it is immediately sen O , enlarged upon,

Sheep fell down and skinned his shin, slog humour, ei Gown a Few bars ot muse on te back oF 3 © Lord-a-mercy how dat goat grin, grin. “arranged” and held up for the admiration of the simple and the

Poor Mona, etc. discomfiture of the “highbrows.” With a mockery of the actions which accompanied the spiri- Where the European would write or speak with his tongue in tuals, these burlesque imitations were in great demand at Negro _ his cheek, the American jazz purveyor disports himself in all “rags” or festivities. Moreover, “orchestras” composed of an __ SeTiousness. Take the following passage from the Savoy assortment of banjos, violins, Jews-harps, tambourines, tin- | Orpheans programme. “Art, the passions above all, the ecstawhistles, saucepan lids, bones and accordions soon became __ Si€S and sorrows... . these still remain, at least for a pastime, ina very popular among the Negroes and then found favour atlower- World in which it is no longer proposed solely to consider and class white entertainments, being known as “Crackerjack” bands. Calculate only the sterner issues. Is everything that breaks preThe term “jazz” in its relation to music dates from about this Cedents, canons and other people’s rules bad? Jazz demands time. “This band is certainly some jazz,” was a fairly common __ the most infallibly possessed artists. With what appetite! With expression at the time, and two dollars a night and unlimited _— ll the incredible enthusiasm of youth they sing to us of the quantities of beer always proved a strong attraction to the musi- _- delicious and swift and gay and trivial and shining things of

cians. life.”

An extract from one of these gay and shining things of life played at this concert is as follows:

415

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1925 JULY ¢ MUSIC & LETTERS d a a “tess yar! We Mew 4 fad ~s * " —— phe pany ~~. i)" ae 5 —-¢-§ > 41 ~4 pt a aey gp , 7 = =3» F —_ AE wae

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It is difficult to understand how “syncopation’s past” merely | . of the whole world, would find in it perfect expression. It is plain ~y 4

anticipated the5 .moment the spirit not only America, but . . . . aurea ) when Fi aaaemetentatitenjempsingun , ‘enof m_nieemtomumt ee m:el

to anyone with the slightest knowledge of jazz that the sup-

posed “dislocation” of the beat, the “tossing to and fro” of the ca tempo and all the different kinds of “accent” implies nothing Surely if jazz composers wanted to reach the zenith of their

more than taking a puerile little tune written in common time and Poe woule gIVe Us, aid something tn ee a few

adopting the childish expedient of trying notes here, substitut- ars 0 Fee-Tour, some SIX “Tour and’ SO TO » WI a alte varling quavers for crotchets there, adding accents and so on. The ous instruments playing in different time and in different keys, following extract from a Charleston-trot, a new “style” in which and so difficult in contrapuntal treatment that, although the rethe rhythm is “tossed to and fro” more than in any other piece of sult was satisfactory, only really live jazz musicians could play

jazz, will illustrate the meaning at once: it? It seems that this favourable state of affairs will never come

about; jazz is merely a question of experiment by musicians

416

JULY ¢ MUSIC & LETTERS 1925 whose knowledge of the art of music is very limited indeed. The The piano being one of the most important instruments in the publicity expert does the rest. “Jazz—sheer joy and expression —_ jazz band, and practically indispensable, it is not surprising that

in music —music which can hardly be whistled or ever sung, a special tutor has been published for jazz pianists. Described as music which carries you up and gives voice to that love of life _ the “most amazing and masterly piano scores ever offered to the which is in every soul, but is so constantly unexpressed. Jazz § American pianist......” the book has probably the circulation of lets no one stand still. Its melody and its rhythm are infallibly a best seller among novels, and Mr. Zez Confrey, its remarkable compelling.” The composition of the modern jazz orchestrais | author, composer of the famous piano pieces, Kitten on the worthy of comment. The banjos and tin-whistles have given _—_ Keys, Nickel in the Slot, Coaxing the Piano, Mississippi Shivway to the more cultured ‘cello, harp, and other orchestral in- _—_ ers, etc., seeks to assist pianists to reach the height of their art. struments. The best bands now employ two French horns, and, _ At the end of the work, when it is assumed that the pianist has of course, the saxophone family and the Sousaphone. One or mastered all the intricacies of the new art, the Fisherman's Hornmore pianos figure in every band and, together with the banjo, _pipe for the right hand and Yankee Doodle for the left, is set out keep a steady accompaniment practically throughout as follows: for performance; and later, for crossed hands, an extract from his African Suite for piano will bear out the statement regarding his

ba |G A Et re , Sa het oo So%eS. 2eSoee Se ee ee a Se No We a oa » , re a ae | eee | ale Patter , 92" - sg: eo... , , book:

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except in what are known as “novelty” choruses, where the J els gL piano may have to imitate a clock: 2 — — an —— a———-= a | fg tae fae por.) Zl

1 ea

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litle old clock. on the mane.tel — = Keeps tick-ugthe > ‘

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= | ,No surveytoofthe thiswords wonderful would be complete without reference which art often accompany the music. The gg et ragtimer usually preferred to hear songs about his mother in ¢ Dixie, or his sweet heart in Alabam, but the lover of symphonised-

syncopation need have no such limitations set upon his muse.

or (where the chief weakness of jazz lies) at the end of the eighth ‘ his "the ¢ a ectke ean he has the privilege of leaving his or the sixteenth bar, where the melody always comes to a dead eart in the middie of the sahara: stop for a couple of bars. In good jazz one or more instruments “Somewhere in Sahara, far across the Eastern sea, fill in the gap by what is commonly known as a “break,” i.e., someone to me there is singing love songs of Araby. something that breaks the monotony.

A417

1925 JULY ¢ MUSIC & LETTERS

ene

ee ee aR a

My desert flow’r ev’ry hour I’m calling you, calling you so 4 a ~ there beneath the Burmese Moon.” [ee ee eae me aa aloe melee eerearaes

been classified as those of “fine frenzy” and those } ert lo |=, | lee ofPoets “finehave natural gift.” An example of the latter species is as fol- ee lows. An Arab chieftain sings it to his bride while taking her = away, surrounded by his band of faithful followers. Drunk with , wee ee eee eee Se

love’s intoxication, and with legitimate poetic license, he bor- See ae Pee fates aes toon ee a ee eee

rows from the Indian Love Lyrics on the way:_ i eed eed ene

“Neath Persian skiesthe where temples rise, =. Seer You and I beside Shalimar. as « ; In the sky our Fate in ev’ry star. a break’ or two, a “novelty chorus—and the latest jazz masterpiece is complete; a new lease is given to the liveliness and

Where blue birds nest there I’! find rest, the rhythmic power of our lives. Held enchanted by Pale Hands I love, As for the so-called tonal effects, there is no doubt that most

‘Neath Persian skies.” of them were advised in the first place, not so much for their

novelty as in order to disguise the diabolical tone produced by So far, only examples from good jazz choruses have been _ third-rate instrumentalists. It would probably be a harrowing quoted. To refute the slur of bias, here is a bad one, where the experience to hear Mr. Paul Whiteman attempt a few bars of the muse entirely deserts the poet in the eighth and following lines: — py gar “Violin concerto” without his mute.

“I’m looking for the Ogo Pogo, the funny little Ogo Pogo Crescendos and diminuendos are so foreign to jazz bands His mother was an earwig, his father was a whale. that even the Savoy Orpheans took pains to add reverently the

, SiC,

I’m going to put a little bit of salt on his tail adjective symphonic to them in their programme. “It was also I want to find the Ogo Popo while he’s playing on his old found necessary, they said, to use arrangements written by

banjo; expert musicians, according to the old-established rules of mu-

Wants to pat vim in the Lond Mayor's Show.” | The worse the musician and the smaller his mind the better jazz exponent he can be relied upon to make. If he has no finer There are songs about sweethearts in China, inJapan, Hono- _fejings, no inner musical perception, and if he has never heard lulu, Havana, Hawaii; songs pathetically appealing tohernotto — good music at all, the greater will be his relish in burlesque creep into his heart while somebody else is there, and so on. No performances of masterpieces; he values not so much the novmatter how good the music might be, no one could reasonably _¢jty of the burlesque as the feeling that respectable musicians be expected to tolerate the association of such words with it. are likely to shudder in horror at his apparent effrontery. The Competent critics familiar with the performances of Mr. Paul _ egg the jazz musician knows of rhythm, melody, harmony, and Whiteman’s orchestra and other well-known jazzcombinations —_— aj those subjects so necessary to a correct understanding of of instruments tell us that so standardized are the devices inuse _the art of music, the more he will be convinced that of all forms in that ninety-nine pieces out of every hundred sound as if they — music, jazz is by far the greatest, because its prime asset is to had been written by the same man. Cross rhythms, combined _ offend all rules of decency. it is questionable whether any of the rhythms and other sorts of rhythms appear remarkable to the jazz composers would have broken the “rules” and “canons” of jazz composer because his knowledge is so limited and his gen- —s music had they known anything about them. Indeed, the leaderal education so negligible that what he writes in his ignorant ing jazz composers pride themselves on their ignorance of musimplicity seems to him to be remarkable new inventions; his gic. conceit always blinds him to the limitations upon his abilities. A No one jazz piece ever retains its popularity for more than little tune, perhaps a caricature of a well-known masterpiece, —_ eight or nine months. Every year brings the same shoal of “hits”

accompanying chords alternately in tonic and dominant: and “latest successes,” and as one tune fades from sheer anemia, another rapidly takes its place. That, of course, is the fate of

418

AUGUST ¢ THE SACKBUT 1925 time; it only ceases to be the music of an age or period when it Truth to tell, there is no affection for jazz in this country.

comes to be the music of centuries. Beneath the outward and inevitable materialism of the times, Tennyson held that real poetry should mean many things at __ there is areal craving in millions of hearts for finer ideals in life once. It is so with music. A really great composer has something —_and true conceptions of what is best in art. It is unfortunate of the best to say for every man, the scholar, the artist, the lover, | that so many people have an utterly shallow and false sense of

the mourner, the man in the street and the man in the field. Even values and are unable to distinguish between good art and painters, they say, are sometimes able to aspire tothe same lofty bad. At the same time, it is doubtful whether the percentage of heights. Gainsborough once strolled into Reynolds studio ina these people is any higher than it has always been. Jazz thrives carping mood, but on looking round, was forced to mutter “the | because the world is larger, and because there is more room for beggar’s so various.” The critic might admit the same of every — the humbugs who like to be in the limelight and play to the great composer. The hallmark of real music is its idealism andits gallery. They exist because we live in a more leisured age, and purity, its truth and its fidelity. The hall mark ofall great artisits | 1n spite of industrial upheavals and unemployment, people honest sincerity. But jazz is neither ideal nor pure, neither is it | spend far more money on entertainment than they did a desincere. It is faithful to nothing, an “art” without parents with- — cade ago. Perhaps in time many will learn to differentiate beout relations. No character or sentiment has ever been depicted — tween the true art and the false, and what will happen to the by it. No jazz wonder-piece has ever contained eveninits whole stuffed scarecrow, jazz, probably long before that happy day length the least inkling of that far sweeping philosophy that dawns, hardly requires comment, Beethoven often condensed in a few bars.

August ¢ The Sackbut JAZZ

: by Anthony Clyne The fact is, distressing as it may be to believe so, no one on More and more jazz is passing into the hands of skilled musiearth, the experts perhaps least of all, can tell, when many an _ cians. In New York, Paul Whiteman is described as invading the

innovation in any of the arts appears, whether it is the mere Aeolian Hall, the citadel of Brahms trios, Bach fugues, and vagary of a coterie or a transient popular craze, or the firstcrude | Beethoven sonatas, to give a musical history tracing the beginnings of a new authentic development. Again and again development of jazz from the dark days of the ‘Livery Stable the critics have greeted what has proved to be a genuine eman- _ Blues,’ the jazz of discord and vulgarity and noise, through that cipation and enlargement, the influx of new inspiration revitaliz- _ famous derivative of Handel’s Messiah—Yes, We Have No Baing an art sinking into conventionalism, as degeneration or vul- | nanas—to such indications of what jazz may become as the four

garity or absurd eccentricity. On the other hand, many a‘new _ Serenades by Victor Herbert and George Gershwin’s Rhapsody movement’ or vogue has its day and passes, leaving notatrace in blue, Gershwin, coming to be famed as a young Alexander of of effect upon the evolution of an art. Itseems tome that some __ the jazz world, has some interesting remarks to be quoted. ‘As fresh vigour is about to come, some extension of range, some long as people dance in cities jazz will remain. It is the folk-music

fracture of rigidity and upheaval of inertia, from jazz. of the cosmopolitan, not the countryman. Its present material Upon superficial examination it might appear that it is noth- will be built upon in the future by composers just as older dance ing but the triumph of musical chaos and confusion, the apo- forms, the gigue, polka, polonaise, waltz, were utilized by former theosis of hubbub, in which alone is distinguishable from the | composers. But modern jazz emanates primarily from the city. It mad medley the rude rhythm of savages beating sonorous gourds _iS expressed in the sophisticated idioms of the city, and the very in an African forest, the most primitive inchoate adumbration of _ fact that it is today in the throes of evolution from the bands of Art. If it were so, there would be little difference between one set | tune-makers and arrangers into the arms of trained musicians is of performers and another, whereas there is often a great deal. | proof enough that jazz is here to stay. The world is wide, and practice and skill could produce only greater violence. But if _ there is plenty of room for good jazz composers, modern music you listen to amateurs attempting jazz, what afiasco! They can _—_ guilds, and the masterpieces of classic music.” imitate what appears to them the unregulated frenzy, the confu- Rag-time is not exactly the ancestor of jazz but an elder relasion of sound, and there is overpowering noise. But the rhyth- _ tive. If, as some American musicians believe, the United States mic elasticity, the bubbling life, the piercing ecstasy and suffo- will produce an indigenous school of music, a national music cating pulsation of passion are absent from the tumult. The jazz _ like that of Spain or of Wales, the fruit and expression of Ameriband, as Vuillermoz says in Musiques d’ aujour d’hui, is an _— can character and traditions, temperament and mentality, upon organized force, obedient to laws obscure, conforming to ase- the basis of Negro folk-music—a question which in itself it is cret technique codified or not. Jazz is not a game of chance. Its —_ impossible to discuss now—then it seems to me that this native

loud disorder is only apparent. music will eventually come from such things as rag-time and 419

1925 AUGUST ¢ VANITY FAIR jazz rather than from the careful, patient, learned exploitation of their unceasing agitatio of the nerves to irritability, and the regu-

Negro folk-songs by composers of wide cosmopolitan and clas- lar crises of delirious sound as though the music were being sical culture. If native American music of genuine vitality, as | hurled against now thus, now that, mountainous wall, with a distinguished from music by American composers but not of _ blast of a trumpet, a shock of a drum, a furious blow of a gong, characteristically American inspiration, is to be evolved, it will overpowering in a suffocating volume and again emerging in surely not be by the purely artificial synthesis by experts in a the piercing ecstasy of a flute or the unfathomable pathos of a music laboratory, as it were, of the elements of Negro music with violin—exasperation of endless reiteration, cloying sweetness modern and ultra-modern technique, poly-tonality and quarter of pretty ornamentation, wild concourse of bewildering discords, tones and all the rest, but by the gradual emancipation of jazz recurring thunderous din—there is also an infinite range of rhythfrom fox-trot rhythms, the adoption of its exuberant vitality, its mic subtleties, entrancing modulations, opportunities for sarkaleidoscopic forms and colours by composers of skill andreal donic irony, fanciful humour, and graceful delicacy, playful and inspiration, whose work is not so much exploitation of jazz as wistful and mocking, at one moment arousing emotions which it

stages in its organic, inevitable development. brutally derides the next, a rigid regularity dissolving perpetuThe Negro race possesses a musical sense, an instinct for _ ally into tumult. rhythmic flexibility which may contribute something of great. That composers like Stravinsky, Milhaud, Debussy, Ravel, value to American music. In articulating, with accents seemingly and other have written rag-time or Jazz is not so significant of the capricious, the unfolding of a phrase, in projecting, as though _ potentialities as the gradual development of what may be called flung forth in explosions of unconfinable passion, the daring —_ the main stream of jazz music, the evolution of, so to speak, waves of loud syncopation over the torrent of melody, they are | genuine jazz composers. A writer in the New York Times recently returning to the primitive pleasure of naked rhythm and by its | gave some illustrations of the conquests of jazz, commencing barbaric voluptuous orgasms communicating with a vast ocean _-with its introduction in the programmes of Mme. Eva Gauthier’s of psychic energy. This vigour, young and yet so old, may trans- _—recitals at the Aeolian Hall two season ago. The classic stage of form the warning potencies of moder music,breathe new life into _ the Metropolitan Opera House has been desecrated by an array its technical devices. The secret use of jazz is that by repeated of instruments to stagger the orthodox. Louis Gruenberg has impulsions adroitly given the music moves with supple rhythm — written a jazz version of Daniel in the Lion’s Den, interpreting so that as one transport wanes and dies away another snatches —_ Vachel Lindsay’s poem from the standpoint of a Negro preacher. up the pulsations, as it were, at the very moment of the fall into | Another composer has produced a Synconata or syncopated

quiescence and imparts a new excitement. sonata, another a Jazzetta for violin and pianoforte. The writer Upon all this the musician may look with contempt. He would = quotes those bewildered, amid what is to the man epidemic of be greatly mistaken. However disconcerting or even incredible, | musical delirium, as echoing the cry of the German conductor to it is certainly possible that jazz contains the germ of much that _his talkative and quarrelsome orchestra—‘Himmel! Don’t spoke

will characterize a future species of music. The howling trom- so much. I can stand it then and now, but always, my God, bones and moaning saxophones, the indefatigable banjos with never!’

August ¢ Vanity Fair THE BLACK BLUES—NEGRO SONGS OF DISAPPOINTMENT IN LOVE, THEIR PATHOS HARDENED WITH LAUGHTER by Carl Van Vechten The Negro, always prone to express his deepest feeling in song, Like the Spirituals, the Blues are folksongs and are conceived naturally experiences other more secular emotions than those in the same pentatonic scale, omitting the fourth and seventh sensations of religion published in the Spirituals. Perhaps the | tones—although those that have achieved publication or permost poignant of all his feelings are those related to his disap- | formance under sophisticated auspices have generally passed pointments in love, out of which have sprung the songs known through a process of transmutation—and at present they are as the Blues. These mournful plaints occasioned by the prema- _—_— looked down upon, as the Spirituals once were, especially by ture departure of “papa,” these nostalgic longings to join the — the Negroes themselves. The humbleness of their origin and loved one in a climate of sunlight and colour—although in at —_ occasionally the frank obscenity of their sentiment are probably least one instance the singer indicates a desire to go back to __ responsible for this condition. In this connection it may be reMichigan—are more tragic to me than the Spirituals, for the called that it has taken over fifty years for the Negroes to reSpirituals are often informed with resignation, orevenajoyous — cover from their repugnance to the Spirituals, because of the evangelism, while the Blues are consistently imbued withapas- _fact that they were born during slave days. Now, however, the

sionate despair. Negroes are proud of the Spirituals, regarding them as one of

the race’s greatest gifts to the musical pleasure of mankind. I

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AUGUST e¢ VANITY FAIR 1925 predict that it will not be long before the Blues will enjoy a —_—ing refrain, which recurs in a score of these songs, “I don’t want similar resurrection which will make them as respectable, atleast no high yella.” Other picturesque locutions are; “I’ ve put ashes

in the artistic sense, as the religious songs. in my papa’s bed so that he can’t slip out.” “Hurry sundown, ets The music of the Blues has a peculiar language of its own, | tomorrowcome,” “Blacker than midnight, teeth like flags 0’ truce,” wreathed in melancholy ornament. It wails, this music, and limps Certain refrains, for a perfectly logical reason, recur again and languidly; the rhythm is angular, like the sporadic skidding of an _— again in these songs. for instance, “I went down to the river”: automobile on a wet asphalt pavement. The conclusion is abrupt, I went down to the river. underneath the willow tree

as if the singer suddenly had become too choked for further A dew dropped from the willow leaf, and rolled right down on

utterance. Part of this effect is indubitably achieved through the

fact that the typical Blues is created in three-line stanzas. As W. An’ tha t’s the reason I got those weepin’ willow blues

C. Handy, the artistic father of the Blues, has pointed out to me, the melodic strain can thereby be set down in twelve bars in- or: stead of the regulation sixteen. Not only are the breaks between Goin’ to the river, take my rockin’ chair verses and stanzas frequent, but also there are tantalizing and goin’ to the river take my rockin’ chair. fascinatingly unaccountable—to any one familiar with other If the blues overcome me. ’ll rock on awa from here

types of music—gaps between words, even between syllables. y

These effects are more or less characteristic of other Negro mu- or:

sic, but in the case of the Blues they are carried several degrees _ ; ; ;

further. When these songs are performed with accompaniment, rote a meen wean to scown-iwice) d the players fill in these waits by improvising the weirdest and © Diuecbines pushy me, tm Jump over anc crown.

most heart-rending groans and sobs, whimpers and sighs, em- ;

phasizing, at the same time, the stumbling rhythm. Extraordinary ; So many of the papas and mamas dep art on trains that the combinations of instruments serve to provide these accompani- railroad figures frequently in the Blues: ments; organ and cornet, mouth organ and guitar, saxophone Got the railroad blues; ain’t got no railroad fare, (twice) and piano; sometimes a typical Negro jazz-band—and by this I I’m gonna pack mah grip an’ beat mah way away from here.

do not mean the Negro jazz-band of the white cabaret—is utilized by a phonograph company to make a record. Many of of these men do not read music at all. Many of these songs have Goin’ to the railroad, put mah head on the track, (twice)

never been written down. If I see the train a-comin’, I’ Il jerk it back. Notwithstanding the fact that the musical interest, the me-

lodic content of these songs is often of an extremely high qual- of ity, I would say that in this respect the Blues seldom quite equal I went up on the mountain, high as a gal can stan’, the Spirituals. The words, however, in beauty and imaginative An’ looked down on the engine that took away mah lovin’ significance, far transcend in their crude poetic importance the man. words of the religious songs. They are eloquent with rich idi- An’ that’s the reason I got those weepin’ willow blues.

oms, metaphoric phrases, and striking word combinations. The , ; ;

Blues, for the most part, are the disconsolate walls of deceived There are many Blues which are interesting throughout as lovers and cast-off mistresses, whose desertion arouses the specumens of naive poetry, related ina way It won Id be difficult ‘0 desolate one to tell his sad story in flowery language. Another define, but which it 1s not hard to sense, wath oriental smaeery of cause has contributed to the inspiration of symbolic poetry in the type of The Song of Songs. Such a one is that which begins:

these numbers. Negroes, especially in the south, indulge in a A brown-skinned woman an’ she’s chocolate to the bone. great deal of what they themselves call “window-dressing,” in A brown-skinned woman an’ she smells like toilet soap, etc.

order to mislead their white employers. This is the reason for the ; ; ;

prevalent belief in the South that Negroes are always happy, for A typical example of this class of sone IS The Gulf Coast they usually make it a point to meet a white man with a smile and Blues, which also happens to possess a hig h degree of musical often with a joke. It is through this habit of window-dressing "Test. Unfortunately, I cannot reproduce it here. However, as that the Negroes have grown accustomed to expressing their sung by Bessie Smith and played by Clarence Williams, it 1s most commonplace thoughts in a special tongue of their own. perfectly possible to try it on your phonograph.

For example, a Negro boy who intends to quit his job surrepti- ; tiously sing to his colored companions: “If you don’t believe Hea tene, My man & Bone away. I’m leavin’, count the days I’m gone.” A favorite phrase to ex- For another girl. I’m told

press complete freedom has it: “I’ve got the world in a jug, the ; em

stopper’s in my hand.” I tried to treat him fine, | The Blues bulge with such happy phrases; “The blacker the hue oe mune,

berry, the sweeter the juice,” referring to the preference yellow- That’s why mama’s cot the blues

girls frequently bestow on extremely black men, or the contrast421

1925 AUGUST e VANITY FAIR The man I love he has done lef’ this town, (twice) Blues. Nevertheless, Mr. Handy himself has informed me categoriAn’ if he keeps on goin’, I will be Gulf Coast boun’. cally that the Blues are folksongs, a statement I have more than The mailman passed but he didn’t leave no news, (twice) fully proved through personal experience. To a greater degree than I’1] tell the world he lef’ me with those Gulf Coast blues. other folksongs, however, they have gone through several stages Som 0’ yo’ men sure do make me tired. (twice) of development. Originally, many of these songs are made up by You got a handful o’ gimme an’ a mouthful 0’ much oblige. Negroes in the country to suitably commemorate some catastrophe. As one of these improvised songs drifts from cabin to cabin,

In connection with this depressing lament, Langton Hughes, verses are added, so that not infrequently as many as a hundred the young Negro poet, has written me; “The blues always im- _ different stanzas exist of one song alone. Presently, these ditties are pressed me as being very sad, sadder even than the Spirituals, _ carried into the Negro dives and cabarets of the Southern cities, because their sadness is not softened with tears, but hardened — where they are served up with improvised accompaniments and with laughter, the absurd, incongruous laughter of a sadness —_ where a certain obscene piquancy is added to the words. Many of without even a god to appeal to. In The Gulf Coast Blues one _ the Blues, as a matter of fact, are causal inventions, never commitcan feel the cold northern snows, the memory of the melancholy _ ted to paper, of pianist and singer in some house of pleasure. This mists of the Louisiana lowlands, the shack that is home, the —_ does not mean that composers and lyric writers have not occasionworthless lovers with hands full 0’ gimme, mouths fullo’ much _ally created Blues of their own. For the most part, however, the

oblige, the eternal unsatisfied longings. Blues that are sung by Negro artists in cabarets and for the phono“There seems to be a monotonous melancholy, an animal graph are transcribed versions of folksongs. Even with such Blues sadness, running through all Negro jazz that is almostterrible at —_as are definitely composed by recognized writers, it will be found

times. I remember hearing a native jazz-band playing in the _ that their success depends upon a careful following of the folk Kameroon in Africa while two black youths stamped and circled —_ formula both in regard to words and music.

about a dance hall floor, their feet doing exactly the same figures So far as Mr. Handy’s own Blues are concerned, he admits over and over to the monotonous rhythm, their bodies turning _ frankly that they are based almost without exception on folksongs and swaying like puppets on strings. While two black boys, which he has picked up in the South. Occasionally he has folhalf-grinning mouths never closed, went round the room, the _ lowed the idea of an old Blues, more frequently he has retained a horns cried and moaned in monotonous weariness—like the title or amelody and altered the words to suit Broadway or Harlem’s weariness of the world—moving always in the same circle, while | Lenox Avenue. For example, the tune of Aunt Hagar’s Blues— the drums kept up a deep-voiced laughter for the dancing feet. | Aunt Hagar’s children is the name the Negroes gave themselves The performance put a damper on the evening’s fun. itjust wasn’t during slave days,—is founded on a melody he once heard a

enjoyable. The sailors left. Negro woman sing in the South to the words, “I wonder whar’s

_Did , mah goodever ol’ used to be.” Joe Turner is based you hear thisThe verse of theBlues blues? ; « on , the

a melody oldmah Memphis song, Turner an’ got mah I went toogthe Gipsy’softoanget fortune tol’“Joe (twice) , scome ; Gipsy done tol’ me goddam yore unhard-lucky soul.’ man an’ gone. Pete Turney at the time was governor of Tennes-

see. His brother, Joe, was delegated to take prisoners from Mem-

“T first heard it from George, a Kentucky colored boy who phis to the penitentiary at Nashville, and the Negroes pronounced shipped out to Africa with me—a real vagabond ifthereeverwas his name Turner. Mr. Handy has utilized the old melody and the

one. He came on board five minutes before sailing with no title, but he has invented the harmonies and substituted words clothes—nothing except the shirt and pants he had on and apair — which would have more meaning to casual hearers.

of silk socks carefully wrapped up in his shirt pocket. He didn’t Another of Handy’s songs, Loveless Love, is based on an even know where the ship was going. He used to make uphisown ___ old Blues called Careless Love, invented by the Negroes to tell

blues—verses as absurd as Krazy Kat and as funny. But some- _ the story of the son of a governor of Kentucky, shot in a love times when he had to do more work than he thought necessary for affair. Handy’s Long Gone is based on an old Negro song called a happy living, or, when broke, he couldn’t make the damsels of | Long John, Long Gone. The story runs that with the arrival of the West Coast believe love worth more than money, he used to —_ some new blood-hounds on a plantation it was decided to exsing about the Gypsy who couldn’t find words strong enough to _— periment with them on Long John. Getting wind of this unpleas-

tell about the troubles in his hard-luck soul.” ant prospect, the Negro supplied himself with a trap which he The first blues to achieve wide popularity was The Memphis _ dragged behind him in a barrel. Inveigling the bloodhounds into Blues, by W. C. Handy, who lived at that time in Memphis, and was __ the trap, Long John escaped into the woods and was never well-acquainted with life on the celebrated Beale Street. For this caught. Hence the song, Long John, Long Gone, which soon song—published in 1912, a year after Alexander’s Ragtime Band— ___ spread from shack to shack.

Mr. Handy received a total of one hundred dollars. Since then he Long familiar with the words and tunes of such songs, the has issued so many of these songs, The St. Louis Blues, Hesitation _ possibility of harmonizing them and treating them instrumenBlues, John Henry Blues, Basement Blues, Harlem Blues, Sun- tally came to Mr. Handy early in the present century. On tour down Blues, Atlanta Blues, Beale Street Blues, Yellow Dog Blues, with his band, he was playing for a white dance at Cleveland, etc., that, taking also into account that he was the first to publisha | Mississippi, when, during, an intermission, three local Negroes song of this character, he is generally known as the Father of the —_ appeared, and asked if they might perform a number. Permission

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SEPTEMBER 19 ¢ LITERARY DIGEST 1925 was granted and the men, mandolin, guitar, and viola, beganto — recently from the south knows at least half a dozen of them. I play a mournful, wailing strain, the strain of the Blues. Nowa- —s myself have heard as many as fifty in Lenox Avenue dives and days such accompaniments to Blues are improvised in dimly lit | elsewhere that have never been put down in any form. They are

cellars while you wait. not only an essential part of Negro folklore but also they con-

So far as I know there has been as yet no effort made—such _ tain a wealth of eerie melody, borne along by a savage, recalcias has been made with the Spirituals—to set down these songs, _ trant rhythm. They deserve, therefore, from every point of view,

verses and music, as they are sung under primitive conditions. the same serious attention that has traditionally been awarded To me this is a source of the greatest amazement. Any Negro __to the Spirituals

September 19 ¢ Literary Digest ON WITH THE “CHARLESTON”! “The dance that demolished a building,” as some writers name _ proclaim it the most harmless, tho fascinating, stunt that has yet the “Charleston,” has received the approval of the Dancing Teach- _—_—beeen introduced.

ers’ Convention, in session recently at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, Emil Coleman, famous orchestra leader, who has played at New York. Against it was quoted the accusation that its stamping — the Montmartre, Club Lido, and other fashionable night haunts rhythm had caused the disastrous collapse of the Pickwick Club _ of New York City, to admiring throngs of smart patrons, declares

in Boston, whereby forty-four people were killed and many in- that the “Charleston” is the most characteristically American of jured. Following that catastrophe, the Boston building depart- any of the modern dances. According to Mr. Coleman, the pecument received a request from the Mayor’s office to issue anedict —_ liar accent in time is the musical expression of the native tembarring the “Charleston” from public dance-halls. But the extraor- —_ perament.

dinary popularity of the new favorite among dances was not abated, The “Charleston” is said to have originated on a little island we are told, by its presumed guilt of the Pickwick Club slaughter. _ off the coast of South Carolina. From there it found its way to “Practically all dance teachers in New York and other cities ofthe the city of Charleston, where it was first taken up by the NeEast,” we read, “are forced to teach the Charleston.” One teacher groes. It became so popular among them that they inaugurated is quoted as saying that “while she did not greatly relish the —_it in the much-frequented night clubs of Harlem. New York City. Charleston, she thought a modified form of the dance, minus su- Bee Jackson, well-known dancer, is said to be the first white perfluous jazzing, would add life to an occasion,” and that the girl to feature the “Charleston.” She saw it danced in “Runnin’ Charleston “was distasteful to her only as it is danced by very Wild,” the colored musical show that became the rage of Broadyoung and over exultant flappers.” In an article syndicated by the way, and immediately decided to learn it. She took lessons from

International Feature Service we read: Lyda Webb, dancer at the Club Alaham, and soon became an From coast to coast the “Charleston” has caught the country — expert. She first put on the dance on Broadway in February, swaying to its curious rhythm. No dance, since jazz first came 1924, when she appeared in “The Silver Slipper.” Later she intro-

into vogue with the “bunny-hug” and the “turkey-trot,” has duced it at the Club Richmond and the El Fey Club.

created such a furore. According to Miss Jackson, the “Charleston” is a very smooth Enthusiasts ecstatically stamp to its syncopated measures, while | dance when properly performed. People who are inexperienced, others, equally in earnest, denounce it. “But the controversy that is she says, do a sort of clog, which is not, according to her, the

carried on everywhere concerning this latest mania has failed to correct way to dance the “Charleston.” uses the original stem its tide of popularity. America is “Charleston” mad. “Charleston” music from “Runnin’ Wild” and “Georgia Brown” After recalling the facts of the Boston tragedy, the article for her numbers.

continues: The orchestration for the new “hoofing” mania is distinctive. There were many similar cases cited to substantiate this sup- According to Emil Coleman, the time and rhythm are the same as position. The description in the Bible of the taking of Jericho _in the fox-trot, but the accent, being oddly placed “between tells how, when the seven priests, preceded by aforce of armed __ beats,” makes the curious syncopation that has so violently men, compassed the city seven times “the wall fell down flat.” —_ taken the country by storm. In the fox-trot the accent comes on Even to-day when soldiers march across a bridge they are re- the first and third beats; whereas in the “Charleston” it occurs quired to break step, for engineers assert that the strongest on the first beat and an eighth before the third beat. It is that bridge built can not withstand the strain of rhythmic vibration.A _ little eighth “off-beat” that fascinates the lovers of jazz so that violin chord, if tuned to exactly the right pitch, will shatter a they just can’t resist this latest terpsichorrean craze. vase. It is regarded by some, therefore, as not only a possibility Another distinctive feature of the dance is that it is “flatbut a fact that the “Charleston” was responsible for the Boston _ footed.” For the benefit of those optimistic persons who feel

tragedy. themselves capable of learning to dance by correspondence But for each one who believes the “Charleston” tobe adance course, the following information is given: of death, there are thousands who blithely trip its measures and

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1925 SEPTEMBER ¢ THE SACKBUT Oscar Duryea, American authority on modern dances, de- The man raises his left foot, at the same time rising on the ball scribes how it is actually performed. The position of the startis of the right foot, and twists both toes in, then puts his left foot as follows: Man’s left foot behind the right, left toe atthe heel of | behind the right one, and on the balls of both feet twists both the right, both those turned out—his partner’s right footinfront toes out—his left toe behind at the right heel. His partner of her left, her right heel at the toe of her left foot, both toes __ raises her right foot, at the same time rising on the ball of her turned out. The man raises the left foot and at the same time _left foot and twists both toes in, then puts her right foot in raises on the toe of the right, turn both toes in, twisting onthe front and on the balls of both feet turns both toes out—her ball of the right foot. With the feet in this position, both toes are right toe in front at her left heel. A toddle movement is take twisted out, with the man’s left heel in front of his right toe—his — throughout all the “Charleston” steps, on the foot on which

partner’s right heel in front at her left toe. the weight happens to be.

September * The Sackbut MUSIC IN AMERICA (AN IMPRESSION) by Arthur Bliss (London) America gives at this moment the impression of unexampled mu- _are invariably as well attended. In Chicago and farther west, one

sical activity—as if some hundred-headed hydra were, aftermany finds the same demand for orchestral music, and if bulk alone years of fruitful voice-training, to lift each of its young voices in —_ counted in audiences as in other essential commodities, the

lusty song: the fact that some of the throats emit a distinctly | scales would undoubtedly tip in favour of the Stadium in New foreign intonation does not affect the general exuberance, where- = York and the Hollywood Bowl.

fore it is no small wonder that the ensuing chorus bids fair to There is one distinctive feature about American audiences. drown the husky and aging voice of Europe, gradually enfeebled, They have not yet had time to acquire deep prejudices, judging

as it is, by the economic pressure on its windpipe. rather by a simple criterion as to whether a work interests or It is hard on one’s sense of patriotism, butin America liesthe |= moves them, irrespective of whether it is what their fathers and future of music. On the West side of the Atlantic arefound more —— grandfathers would have termed ‘music.’ If it be a new and unfaand finer orchestras, larger audiences, countless more clubs for —_ miliar piece of music, the audience, as well as the composer, will

the study of music, infinitely more schools, and withal every have the undoubted advantage of knowing that the presentasign of still further development. Hardly a year passes without __ tion will take place under the best possible conditions. I have its crop of new orchestras and musical institutions, into which — heard composers say that they never realized what a perforEuropean artists are being continually absorbed—a process = mance of anew work could be until they heard the Philadelphia which in time will inflict the Old World with pernicious anemia. orchestra play it, for with that as with other fine orchestras there, One feature of this growth struck me forcibly—it is almost they could rely ona plethora of rehearsals and a conductor who exclusively the professional element that sustains the interest; of | would direct with the conviction that a new work was more amateur choral societies similar to the English ones, of amateur — worthy of a fine rendition than a familiar one. It would seem that chamber music organizations, so prevalent on the continent, there with these many advantages, some truly American school of are few signs. Almost always the clubs rely for their entertainment | composition would arise, either a group having some technical on their own or visiting professional artists, to which attitude I and imaginative points in common, and in contrast to European ascribe the fact that the American audience is mostswayed bythe —= methods, or individuals representing strongly the districts in heart, and little by the head. They have not yet learnt to make — which they lived and worked—why not, for example, the New music in the true amateur spirit—for the love of it—and the con- —_ England school, the Middle West and Pacific Coast composers!

stant dependence on others has kept their critical instinct ina | With all wish to illustrate this attractive prospectus, one must somewhat primitive state. Hence, in America, personality andthe admit the truth that, so far, there is no American school of comglamour of an anecdotal private life have a dangerous advantage _— posers as such.

over mere musicianship. As soon as for every paid symphony The majority working in America so obviously bring the traits orchestra there spring up two purely amateur orchestras, andfor of their original country with them that for many years no disevery paid choir, three amateur choral societies, I prophesy a _tinctive school can grow up—until indeed, the country has abgreat change for the better in the critical attitude of audiences. sorbed its foreign blood and welded a characteristic style out of As itis, they possess a vitality for the absorption of music far __ the fusion. At present the country is in danger of becoming exceeding ours. It is almost awe inspiring to scan the list of | Europeanized. In addition to the swarms of artists who conduct, concerts advertised at the beginning of each season in New play, and lecture, some distinguished composer is sure to arrive York alone, and to gauge thereby the appetite of the average — who sets his stamp on the students of the country. One year it concert goer. It is well nigh impossible to get a seat at any or- —_ will be Casella, last year Stravinsky, next year Barték, later chestral concert in Boston or Philadelphia, and although sym- |= Honegger or Schoenberg, and each time some trick or mannerphony concerts in New York are as numerous as divorces, they —_ ism from Europe is absorbed.

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NOVEMBER 4 ¢ NEW REPUBLIC 1925 Most of the really living music in America draws its inspira- As for the beautiful Negro spirituals, in any other form they tion from outside the country, viz. Eichheim from the Orient, appear to me but barely disguised interpolations for effect, like Loeffler from the inspiration of the ScholaCantorum, Blochfrom the conscious dressing up of folk-song in symphonic guise, of the traditions of his own race, Carpenter from Paris. which we have seen so much, with the difference that the former [heard an American composer trace the musical stream ofhis _ tunes belong to an entirely different race from that of the com-

country to the twofold sources of ‘jazz’ and ‘Negro spiritual.’ posers who make use of them. Personally, I think he was unjust to his music. At present there is nothing in American music comparable to Jazz has been grossly overpraised, and when the experiment __ the architecture of the country, which has all the impulse of a was tried of supplanting this hot-house flower from the dance —_ newccreative effort. Only Varése shows something that may prove hall to the rarefied regions of the concert platform, it witheredto | the American uncut diamond meet to be polished by others who

boredom as would the slapstick suddenly introduced intoaspar- come later. But even he lives in and reflects New York—and is

kling Sheridan comedy. that not now the most cosmopolitan city in the world?

November 4 ¢ New Republic SHAKE YOUR FEET by Gilbert Seldes The scientific students of dancing have a pretty subject made The experts whom I have timidly questioned assure me that for their hand. A little over a year ago, ina Negrorevue called __ the time of the pure Charleston is new. The ordinary syncopaRunnin’ Wild, Messrs. Miller and Lyles presented a new dance, __ tion of ragtime seems to have been aggravated and the accent the Charleston. Everything about it was fresh and exciting; the _ falls in between the beats where you naturally expect it. This is steps were complicated, sometimes outrageous; and the danc- what give the Charleston its breath-taking quality; it corresponds ers helped the band by beating and slapping and stamping out __ exactly to the sharp broken intake of breath when you run into the rhythm which, in turn, was startling and complex. For a doc- some one coming round a corner, where you make a mistake torate in the lively arts I suggest a thesis, not only analyzing the — walking down a flight of stairs in the dark. Accustomed to the event into its elements, but delving into history and discovering — off-beat of jazz, we are startled again by this division of timewhether the song was written before the music, the music com- _ intervals, startled and exhilarated. It is a variation which multiposed before the dance; or did some genius create anew step __ plies the intricacies of jazz. Until you are accustomed to it the

and cry aloud for a fresh idiom? Charleston tempo is a little unnerving; and trying to follow it, The first impression made by the Charleston was extraordi- — evenso distantly as in beating time, is a little maddening. There nary. You felt anew rhythm, you saw new postures, youhearda seems to be no telling when the accent is going to arrive; you new frenzy in the shout of the chorus. You were aware thatinall are bewildered and excited as you are by the shifting measures this novelty there persisted elements as old as the cakewalk and of the Sacre du Printemps when you first encounter them. Yet probably as native, as traditional, as the levee dances. To me __ neither the one nor the other is actually irresponsible; it is only there is an extra flick of pleasure in the thought of this develop- —_ the phenomenon of a new pattern that is disconcerting. ment; and another, even greater, pleasure in seeing a dance which The Charleston, not yet two years old, has already had interuses the whole body far more than the now conventional steps —_ esting developments. The first impression—that it was purely an of the fox-trot and one-step. The Charleston as an exhibition —_ exhibition dance which the amateur would do well to leave alone—

dance employed to advantage what the extravagant shimmy has been corrected. It seemed a specialist’s style, no doubt, behad brought in—the quiver of the body otherwise motionless, cause of the superb Negro chorus which first presented it, the the use of the torso in the dance; it added the movements of the —_ abandon to the dance was so complete, the separate movements

hips, thighs, buttocks, made familiar since Shuffle Along—the so broad and free, that there seemed no possibility of two people characteristic Negro freedom of movement, frank andengaging; doing it together. The tango, a superb exhibition dance, both the patting which accompanies the blues was varied to slapping —_ beautiful and complicated, entered the dance hall by simplificaand the hand fell on any portion of the body, in a frenzy. Asif _ tion; essentially it was always right for the amateur because it was excited by the dance to the point where they did notcare whether _ based on the relation of one body to the other. The Charleston, as

they were graceful or not, the chorus assumed the most awk- we first saw it, seemed to admit no relation between bodies; it ward postures—knock-knees, legs “akimbo,” toes turned in until required only the relation of one body to the music. Certain they met, squattings, comic little leaps sidewise. And then, the — “steps’”-——where the dancer crosses his hands on his knockedvisual high point of the dance, these seemingly grotesque ele- | knees, weaves them back and forth, teetering at the same time on ments were actually woven, in the rhythm of the dance, into a _ the ball of the foot (a step, I may say, extremely lovely to watch, pattern which was full of grace and significance, which was gay — whenitis done by women, in spite of the way it sounds) are not in

and orgiastic and wild. our present style of dancing at all. Our style, the one-step style, requires the dancers to be continually in each other’s arms;

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1925 NOVEMBER 14 ¢ MUSICAL AMERICA whereas some of the essential moments of the Charleston would thing wild without caring what the others are doing. It has, of drive them apart as remorselessly as the Apache mime-dance does. _ course, some sort of form—must have if only to keep the girls in Nevertheless, there are enough steps in the Charleston adaptable their positions. But the exciting thing is the individual use of the to the duet, and schools are teaching it, the movie houses hold entire body—even the neck and the head participate in the moveCharleston contests, little children imitate its steps on the side- |= ment, making one thing of those “barbaric” dances Havelock walks and along country roads—I have seen them. Integrated _ Ellis describes, for the dance is voluptuous and frenetic. That is largely into the one-step they add a needed refreshment to its — the Charleston influence on the stage. growing sloppiness and monotony. Slide, balance, weave, kick— How far that influence can effectively reach the private citizen shake your feet! The Charleston gives you liberty. Only, like many is aquestion. The turkey-trot and its similars were supposed to be other liberating influences, it is a discipline, hard to master; andif _ liberating dances; they gave the decisive blow to the stately dance, you do not master it, taking the liberties without the discipline, the but they did not survive—because they were ugly, I think, more

resulting awkwardness is disgusting. than because they were “immoral.” They left the field free for the On the professional stage the Charleston has not quite de- —_—‘fox-trot and the one-step, easy to learn, pleasant enough to dance stroyed acrobatic dancing; it has provided a more exciting mark _to, and giving sufficient freedom so that you had the satisfaction for the good dancers to aim at, a new basic pattern about which —_ of creating your own conformity with the rhythm. They have they can weave their own variations. The best of the numbers _ lasted some ten years—a brief span if you compare the popularity

developed this year, as I have seen them, is danced by the _ of the waltz, or the schottische, or the Boston; and today the Gertrude Hoffman girls in Artists and Models, abacchanale which — Charleston has made them seem stuffy, over-polite. The new dance,

is far more thrilling than the number in which the same girls _ threatening them seriously, is at the same time more definite in its drape themselves around wide ropes of webbing and sail out — steps and more abandoned. It is certainly much more exciting to over the audience. The bacchanale seems to me altogether out —_ watch than any other current dance; excepting the tango it has all

of the ordinary, and it is a pity that it comes so early in the the points of all the others. And the triumph of doing even its evening that many people miss it. It has the appearance of being = most elementary steps correctly is more of a thrill than waltzing entirely disorganized, a chaos in which each girl does some- _ the original Merry Widow up and down a circular staircase.

November 14 © Musical America HAS JAZZ HURT CONCERT-GIVING?—MANAGERS SAY “NO!” Has jazz taken possession of public attention at the expense of More important to the concert artist and manager: have jazz other kinds of music? Whether popular syncopated idioms are —_ concerts hurt serious music during the past few seasons? changing the standards and content of concert programs, man- Answers are embodied in the following statements by some agers throughout the Middle West and in New England seem to leading local managers of New York, Chicago, Boston, Washbe confident that the influence is negligible, according to inquir- ington and Milwaukee. ies made by Musical America.

When jazz crashed into the concert field several years ago, Chicago Optimistic and serious recitals in this idiom were first given in New York,

Chicago and elsewhere, many musicians felt apprehensive of Jazz concerts have not had a detrimental effect on serious

the ultimate effect on musical art in general. concerts, in the opinion of Chicago managers. Reasons advanced Song programs juxtapose wordless vocalizes from Austria _ for this view range from the alleged monotony of the jazz conwith “blues” ballads from Broadway; and concert works for or- certs and the rarity of a real personality among leaders to the chestra and other instruments penned in the rhythm derived — opinion that the concerts do not have a real following among from lilts of the dance halls have been applauded by some of the __ the Chicagoans who habitually attend the recitals of artists.

most conservative listeners. Henry E. Voegeli, of the Chicago firm of Wessels and Voegeli, Then London has succumbed—at least partially—to an Ameri- _ said: “Jazz concerts have not been detrimental to the business can organization giving programs of this type in sacrosanct con- _ of serious concert artists. Business is all right. There are, howcert halls. The New York Symphony will next winter presentGeorge ever, too many artists in the field for many of them to expect to Gershwin as soloist in his new Piano Concerto, in which the syn- | win acommanding or exclusive place in the field.” copated idiom will presumably have an important role.

May Bring Competition

Whither Is This Tendency Leading?

Rachel Busey Kinsolving, Chicago impresario and manager of the

Will noted orchestras all over the world—the Gewandhaus in _ Kinsolving Musicales at the Blackstone Hotel, says: “Jazz conLeipzig, the Augusteo in Rome—be playing jazz before the de- _certs do not affect serious concerts unless they are scheduled on

cade is over? the same date with other recitals. In such a case audiences will 426

NOVEMBER 14 ¢ MUSICAL AMERICA 1925 show a decided preference for the jazz. But these concerts have — mal increase of patronage next year which is expected every no lasting effect. They may even have a beneficial effect upon = year with the development of business. So far as we can tell, the

the established concert business, because many in the audi- _ talk of bad business is coming from the East.” ences of jazz orchestras playing here have discovered they are

wearisome after more than half a concert has been heard.” “Will Have Its Day” Clarence E. Cramer, Chicago manager of artists, says: “Jazz is on the down grade. Paul Whiteman is the only jazzleader who —_A. H. Handley, Boston manager, makes the following statement:

has combined jazz with something artistic. He is doing an un- = “I_ would say that I cannot find that jazz concerts have either usually fine business, and is being engaged by large universi- _ aided or injured good concerts or courses of concerts in any ties, such as those of Wisconsin and Illinois, as well as by influ- = Way. ential music clubs throughout the country. From whatever mo- “When a manager presents a Whiteman or Lopez or some tive Mr. Whiteman’s orchestra is engaged, his combination of similar concert, it is generally done outside of a regular course jazz with something artistic has served to break down the old —_ and on an entirely different basis than I would present a serious conventional barriers. People everywhere are more receptive to _ artist. things which have hitherto been inexcusably frowned upon by “Personally, I feel that this particular form of concert is merely the ‘highbrows.’ The ballet is one thing to which doors have —_ a present-day vogue and will have its day.” been more liberally opened since jazz first made a claim upon the Richard Newman, Boston manager says: “I see no reason

serious attention of concert-goers. why jazz concerts should interfere or harm programs of more serious music. In my experience, the lighter phase of the more

Radio Listeners’ Preferences popular programs acts as a leaven to music generally. ‘Jazz,’ for want of a better name, is here to stay, and I believe it will prove “Radio listeners-in have tired of jazz, and an impromptu ques- — more of a help than a hindrance to the cause of good music. tionnaire of any one I have chanced to meet anywhere has = What the ‘better musicians’ should do is to adjust themselves shown me that the first thing a radio fan would like tohearover __ to the times and give the people what they obviously want.”

the other is a symphony orchestra. Among soloists they would . like a contralto. The old day is passing when anybody could sell Washington Not Enthusiastic a soprano or a tenor. Male quartets would be enjoyed, if goodness could be found which were willing to sing under present —_T. Arthur Smith, manager, of Washington, reports that he can radio conditions. Thus jazz, through the radio, has worked itself | see no detrimental effect on the serious concerts by jazz. The

out of a place where it now arouses unusual enthusiasm. people who patronize one kind do not patronize the other, he “The jazz concert has paved the way for a new American states. jazz audiences gradually become educated to better mumusic. Certainly we are a different people from Europeans, and _ Sic, he believes, just as infants learn to crawl and then walk.

our music will be different. It will combine some jazz elements The one organization brought to Washington was so poorly with others. An illuminating parallel is that of light opera, which _ patronized, he states, that it must have seemed embarrassing to started out very feebly, so far as art is concerned, but which ~ the performers. Washington did not seem to take to jazz con-

shortly developed into something extremely beautiful. certs. Milwaukee has had no jazz concerts except one by Paul

Sees Art Development Whiteman in the past season and, with the other possible ex-

ception, a recital by Eva Gauthier. The only place where jazz is “So jazz, which has at least go to the attention of serious audi- _ played is at clubs, in theaters, movies and similar places where ences, must surely be facing a development into something suit- _— the jazz music is an adjunct to the other forms of entertainment. able to refined appreciation. Mr. Whiteman’s concerts, a cross Marion Andrews, impresario, of Milwaukee, says jazz is not between art music and jazz, and not strict jazz, have done much _and has not been a factor in concert giving in that city. No paid for American music and for the stimulation of the concert busi- concerts are given in this field and the radio in jazz has no par-

ness.” ticular effect on concert giving as now practiced.

Harry Culbertson, New York and Chicago impresario and Margaret Rice, another prominent Milwaukee manager, was manager of artists, says: “The jazz concerts have had no trace- not in the city at the time the inquiry was made, and could not be able effect upon our business. Our prospects indicate the nor- —_ consulted on the question.

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1925 NOVEMBER e AMERICAN MERCURY November 14 ¢ Musical America SONGS LEARNED FROM NEGRO NURSE AND FOLK-WORKS INTEREST

yp& CHARLES STRATTON

g p. ne p Pp

A Southern Negro “mammy” rocked a white child, crooning to “I am using now, in addition to the Negro songs I learned at him mournful, rhythmic tunes with words about rabbits’ feetand |= home when! was a boy, a group of songs that I learned from the “debbils.”” Come the day when the white child grew too big for |= Negroes on St. Helena’s Island South Carolina, Every part of the the nurse to hold, but still in his child brain lingered the haunt- —_ south has its own special songs. The Tennessee spirituals, for

ing melodies that had lulled him to sleep. he planned to be a__instance, are different from the Virginia spirituals, the Alabama singer. He confided in his mother, herself a good amateur musi- from the Kentucky. Each section has its own dialect, its own cian. She promised to help him, taught him what she could, —_ individuality,” he says. helped him override his father’s objections. There were years of Mr. Stratton is about to start on a concert tour that will keep study, winters spent in Boston and New York, and Charles _ him busy until after Christmas. he will sing at the opening con-

Stratton tenor, began to appear in public. cert of the Chaminade Club in Brooklyn on Nov. 17, On Nov. 22 He remembered the spirituals his ““mammy” taughthim,made _he will sing as soloist in two performances of the Beethoven them a part of his programs until now they are everywhere con- = Ninth Symphony in one day with the Boston Symphony, under nected with his name. The Negro spirituals will be on his pro- _ the leadership of Serge Koussevitzky. Incidentally, these will be

gram again this year. He will also specialize in Icelandic songs, the sixteenth and seventeenth times Mr. Stratton has sung in

the study of which he has found very interesting. the Beethoven work in public. He has sung it with orchestras “They are written on the five-tone scale,” he says, “andthey under Bagrilowitsch. Stokowski, Monteux, van Hoogstraten and give the effect of being a combination of ultra-modern and folk- = Damrosch. he will make a tour of the south after Christmas and

music.” again after Easter.

Mr. Stratton will also feature this season primitive Greek songs, Besides his concert activities, Mr. Stratton is soloist for the

They are working songs, songs of the peasants that have been ___ Brick church and the Temple Beth-el in New York.

unearthed and arranged by Ravel. The rest of his programs will A.J.

be made up of modern French and Italian songs.

November ¢ American Mercury THE JAZZ, BUGABOO by H. O. Osgood At a party given on the Pennsylvania Roof in New York to cel- that one day Paul Whiteman made uP his mind that the rest of ebrate the return from London of Vincent Lopez, that redoubt- the United States would be just as willing as New York to pay able jazzist stood up and made a speech. “The point is,” he said, money to hear his cabaret band play, and sO metamorphosed it

“that we are now beginning to do Jazz artistically. Soon the real ‘hey a concert ore teres i PY ihe Simple process acing

composers, not Gershwin but those like Wagner, will write jazz.” ue ° ° P mm Suara an

Unfortunately, Senor Lopez, a hidalgo from the ancient Span- points beyond that his band was no longer a mere toe-inciter at ish city of Brooklyn, was wrong. He was wrong three times in the Palais Royal—that it had b veome suddenly a thoroughly one sentence, something of a record: (a) Gershwin is areal com- respectable “symphonic” organization (two pianos, count them!) posers; (b) there are none like “Wagner” today; (c) if there were and had celebrated triumphs in Aeolian and Carnegie Halls, hiththey would not write jazz, one reason being that they couldn’t. erto sacred to symphony orchestras, oratorio societies, Heifetz, Do you remember the futile efforts of Stravinsky and the late John McCormack, Al Smith and Nate Miller, the Beethoven AsClaude Debussy? Have you heard the attempts of other learned socianon, Burton Holmes Travelogues and Ignace Pad erewski, contemporaries to “descend” to the jazz level—for example, John To live up ; to news like this one must offer a musical meng Alden Carpenter’s Crazy Cat (the “American” ballet that was made up of things more substantial than Raggedy Ann," “Moon staged in New York by a Russian and conducted by a French- Dear,” and “I Love You.” They are toothsome ting , to be sure, man), or Leo Sowerby’s Synconata, or Eric Delamarter’s mean- but unless supported by an underlayer of solid pound cake,

dering meaningless Jazz Symp hony? they send the enlightened banqueter home with a void still achReading the jeremiads that have been launched against jazz vik peau a ae the ae ae must io Nhat

in the last year or two by solemn bigwigs, one might imagine meee Subllen te sale, core’ OT Snowing wet tual

i . George had done it to the queen’s tastethreatened. many timesNothbefore. that the ;very existence legitimate . . Whereupon George of Gershwin, a music youngwas man whose system is

ing could be farther from the truth. What are the facts? Merely , .; , , a. filled with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of ingratiating tunes, 428

NOVEMBER «© AMERICAN MERCURY 1925 was entrusted with the task of writing a piéce de résistance _ pets soar aloft to dizzy heights and keep their temper while dowhich, to change the metaphor, should make an honest woman __ing it; trombones coo legato melodies with the softness of a

out of jazz. sucking dove; tubas gurgle gently instead of blaring or gruntGershwin, a pianist both rapid and rabid, responded by writ- ing. And the best jazz bands play with a precision, balance and ing a piece for himself and jazz orchestra, and his lieutenant, elasticity, both dynamic and rhythmic, that are rivaled only by Fredie Grofé, confronted with an entirely new problem in or- such orchestras as the Philadelphia and Boston. chestration, solved it with ingenuity and promptness. The whole On the other hand, jazz has the defects of its own qualities. job was completed in ten days. The result, happily christened = The saxophone is its pride—and its undoing. Fascinating for

Rhapsody in Blue, sprang into fame with the rapidity of the first fifteen minutes, its sweet, oily tone palls in another Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps and the Honegger Pacific 231. fifteen, and after that becomes a positive irritation. The ear, More, it turned out to be better than either. Messieurs Stravinsky — clogged with unctuous utterances, rebels. So with jazz orchesand Honegger had nothing to say and said it very cleverly, but _ tration as a whole. It is all glare and glitter. This is not the fault of Gershwin spoke with intelligence and conviction. He knows, of | the composer, but of the colors that the jazz instrumental combicourse, considerable about what is called the theory of music, _ nation loads upon his palette. Primaries follow each other with

but not enough to hamper the originality of his invention. Ifhe the shifting restlessness of a kaleidoscope. One sighs in vain wants to spell doughnut “doenut,” he does so without hesita- _—for interludes of quiet gray or soothing green. The only recourse tion or embarrassment, whereas Messrs. Carpenter, Sowerby, is to get up and dance. Delamarter et al., hampered by early piety, invariably stick to the Dance—aye, there’s the word! The earnest souls who have

traditional spelling and lose all force in doing so. cried out against taking jazz seriously might have saved their The Rhapsody, however, remains the sole, only and unique __ breath to cool their porridge, for jazz is but the child of the work to win serious consideration for the new music of America— nimble hoof. Music began when the first savage beat on a hol-

the best and only good example of the only distinct musical low log to unify the steps of his fellows, and ever since then the style this country has ever originated and developed. Itis abit —_ fine music of every age has evolved from the favorite dances of hard to understand, indeed, why this solitary success should __ the preceding. Behind the classic symphonic scherzo as perhave stirred up such a hornet’s nest, save that it was the only fected by Beethoven lies the artful simplicity of the minuet. Betarget for the graybeards to shoot at as they flew to arms. “Vul- hind the cleverness of the Rhapsody in Blue lies all the good gar!” cried the Brahms Verein. “Tawdry!” shouted the Cercle _fox-trot tunes that have been written—some of the best of them César Franck. Vulgar?—so was young Wagner. Tawdry?—so _ by Gershwin himself. But Gershwin is no Beethoven, nor in this was old Liszt. Nobody understood better than cunning Meister _ restless, changing, slap-dash age will the fox-trot attain to more Richard how to brighten the face of honest music withasugges- __ than a fraction of the span of life enjoyed by the minuet in its tive daub of rouge, and nobody understands it today better __ time. Signs of the gradual decline of the fox-trot are already to be than Richard the Second. But do any of the solemn friends of — discerned; the Charleston comes in, and there is a gradual remusic get excited when the most circus-bandy of all overtures, vival of the waltz. It will die, and with it the jazz of today will go Rienzi, is played? Or shout “disgraceful” at the occasional in- too. Thus the bugaboo will disappear inevitably and automati-

sultingly sterile passages in a Strauss tone poem? cally—and be succeeded by another one for the solemn to wail Then, gentlemen, why all this bother about jazz? One long —_about, as the case has been ever and again from the beginnings Rhapsody will never create a musical revolution, any more than of music. one swallow will make a case of D. T.’s. You cheerfully welcome But maybe all this will come about too slowly to suit the a jaunty cocktail at the same dinner that boasts asolemnjointof beard-waggers. Rather than see them suffer longer I have hatched beef. There is just as much chance of the jazz rhapsody displac- _—_ up a little scheme to hasten things along and have been proming the symphony as the cornerstone of musical architecture as _ised the assistance in carrying it out of a tall blond young man, there is of the roast being supplanted by the cocktail. Plenty of | well known in the highest and most careless society and a paroom for both—and the musical epicure will enjoy both,eachin __ tron of all the lighter arts. About thirty-five minutes after the

its own way and at its own time. beginning of Maestro Whiteman’s next New York concert my Even those who denounce jazz most furiously as a disgrace friend will spring out of his seat, grasp the likeliest-looking, to music cannot deny that certain of its by-products are contri- nimblest-toed jeune fille within reach, and prance off up the butions of real value to the art. The men who orchestrate forthe aisle toward the platform with her in an exuberant fox-trot. It may jazz instrumental combination have invented many ingenious create a sensation. Doubtless it will. He will be arrested, fined— new colorings that legitimate composers never dreamed of.And _ perhaps even jailed. But what of that? What of a little personal this has been possible because the technical standard required discomfort? With that one spontaneous gesture, that sly reducof the player in a good jazz band is higher than that demanded tio ad absurdam, the musical stars will be reset in their courses, from the same kind of instrumentalist in a symphony orchestra. and the world will be made safe again for Bach, Beethoven, Clarinets play portamenti that are theoretically impossible; trum- George W. Chadwick and Daniel Gregory Mason.

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1925 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER ¢ MODERN MUSIC November ¢ The Sackbut THE JAZZ MYTH by H. S. Gordon (London) The outstanding achievement of jazz is that everybody has, or __ the riddle of the purpose behind life. And, just as they buy gum had, an opinion about it. Like the ‘Irish Question,’ ‘Tariff Re- because everybody’s chewing it, so they jazz, because everybody’s

form,’ the length of skirts of the female, and the width of the = doing it. trousers of the male, in their respective days, one could not es- In the very nature of things, the appeal of jazz could have had cape the Jazz Question in its day. Serious musicians were ago- nothing to do with a reaction to music. A mob movement in so nized by its piratical outrages, lesser musicians found itamod- _ exclusive a thing as music is a contradiction in terms. It gripped erately easy means of earning a substantial livelihood and were _ because its exploiters left nothing to chance. It was not put becontent to leave it at that, and the ordinary citizen alleged that it | fore the public with apologetic hesitancy, as our serious music is suited his taste admirably. The psychologist and the theologian offered. Instead, its sponsors came out boldly with a fine ensemble saw in its popularity a reaction against the tension of war,oran of players, well-dressed and taught to be showmen, and with the

outward manifestation of moral irresponsibility. confident assertion, “This is the thing of the future.’ nobody told Regarded as a musical affair, jazz is aseries of devices, mostly the public they ought to like it: They were informed instead that quite old, and in a few cases novel. Its humour is usually crude they would be unable to resist it. And, of course, they responded, and occasionally vulgar. It seeks to divert by an appeal to the — as they always respond to skillful propaganda. In competition ludicrous. Rhythmically it is strong, though no stronger than with serious music, it was acase of a less attractive article handled many a classic. In the matter of resource, it is poverty-stricken. | with the utmost skill, against the better article handled in a manEvidence of that may be found in the fact that an extraordinar- ner reminiscent of a hundred years ago.

ily efficient band employing the jazz medium was engaged to We learn very slowly. Sousa persuaded masses of people broadcast freely for several months. To borrow the words of an __ that a brass band was a more attractive thing than an orchestra,

official, the public used to yell for it, but in due course they and he has shaped his career on the response to his brilliant

yelled at it! Its monotony was deadly. methods as a publicist. The jazz myth carried this to its logical Having amused ourselves by succumbing to the universal urge conclusion and, in its wake, the population, even royal memto express an opinion about jazz, we may proceed with a light _ bers of it, are being persuaded that variants of tissue-paper and heart to the business in hand, namely, a consideration, not of its | acomb can furnish aesthetic delights to the adult intelligence, nature, but of its method of propaganda. For the notable thing is | superior to those provided by the greatest virtuosi. not jazz, but the jazz-craze. It is precisely because everybody talked At the heart of it all is the cheery appeal to the crowd, ‘Come about it that it is remarkable, and for no other reason whatsoever. and enjoy yourselves.’ Simultaneously, serious music has Jazz is amyth, but the salesmanship of jazz, the method whereby it | frowned upon the world and said “Take care. You might be bored;

has been foisted upon the public, is an imposing reality. you will surely be uncomfortable.’ You can succeed in business by creating an appetite and then Some day, somebody will wake up to the propaganda possi~ satisfying it. Has not Wrigley persuaded half the American popu- __ bilities of such points as the fascination of the world of great lation that chewing gum, an entirely useless and disagreeable habit, | music, and the unlimited resources of the modern orchestra with is both good for the constitution and a pleasure to behold? And _ possibilities so numerous that monotony is impossible; and even has he not profited thereby to the extent of being able, ifhe wishes, to the fantastic notion that there is no reason why fine music

to establish himself as a patron of the arts? should be performed only in hideous and comfortless barns, or The jazz habit is much the same as the chewing-gum habit. that concerts should be, as social gatherings, unbearable. Or People get it because they are persuaded—ever so subtly—that it | perhaps we shall drift along until our very countenances asis the thing they have been waiting for, almost the explanation of | sume the appearance of a pale imitation of the stars and stripes.

November-December ¢ Modern Music THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW by Darius Milhaud The tide of music ebbs, flows, turns, and swells again with a —_ He who listens to music should, above all others, be indulgent swiftness which disconcerts the hearer, always slow to accepta = and open-minded rather than rebellious, for in the end he will new idea. Instead of taking advantage of the flood, he watches _ probably be wrong anyhow. it ebb without seeing it, and at the moment when it is spent and Our beloved Satie serves as an example, for all his life this about to disappear, he wishes to halt it and keep it forever fixed. | man was ready to welcome the newest manifestations in our

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NOVEMBER-DECEMBER ¢ MODERN MUSIC 1925 music. Young people starting to compose always received sup- _ the music of this score is pleasing and that in itself 1s rare enough.

port and encouragement from him. Why demand that a youth His colleague, Maxime Jacob, is only twenty years old. When of fifteen have the technique of a university professor? We _he left high school at fifteen I showed his first attempt to Satie. should, instead, be patient until he can develop his gifts, and | How great a facility, what an over-abundance of gifts! In two or support him during the long period of groping and of doubt _ three years there followed an avalanche of sonatas, piano pieces, while he feels out a number of paths before choosing the road projects for ballets, comic operas, and so on. In all this litter

to follow deliberately. how many hastily written, silly compositions there were, and

Since the day when the Six made their debut with Satie as what severe criticisms and violent indignation they incurred. their idol, French music has passed through many different | But Satie admonished us to wait. Time has already done much, phases, has reacted to many contradictory tendencies. It has _ for within the last two years this youth’s progress has been conbeen the object of influences which have hurled themselves like siderable. He has an absolutely innate sense of the orchestra. At a hurricane upon it, and have passed on, leaving adeep, signifi- the recent premiere of an overture by him its assured and easy

cant mark. orchestration made a deep impression.

In 1918 jazz arrived in our midst from New York and be- Jacob is a young Jew, coming from Bayonne. Occasionally, came the rage. A whole literature of syncopation grew up to ___ racial inspiration urges him to the composition of psalms that convince a hesitant public. Strawinsky wrote his Rag Time for __ reveal a true emotion. But his nature and gifts lead him to write eleven instruments, his Piano Rag Music, his Mavra; Wiener __ chiefly easy melodies, real melodies like those of Gounod and wrote his Sonatine Syncopee, his Blues, and almost created a — even Reynaldo Hahn, not to mention Theodore Botrel. His field great public scandal by bringing a famous jazz band intoacon- _is, I believe, in light music, operettas and songs; he has just cert hall. During the winter of 1921-1922 in America, the jour- _ finished a little comic opera full of gaiety, ease and vivacity. nalists regarded me with scorn when I made out a case for jazz. All this is a tomorrow about to become a today. But what of Three years later jazz band concerts are given in New York, __ the day after tomorrow? Satie once said to me, “I wish I knew there is talk of a jazz opera at the Metropolitan, banjo classes —_ the music that the four-year-olds of today will compose.” Let are organized in the conservatories. Jazz is comfortably installed us not, however, be in such haste; we are getting old fast enough.

with official sanction. Let us turn to the generation born between 1905 and 1910, who

Here it is finished. The last works of Strawinsky owe it noth- —_— are just beginning to make themselves felt. At the premiere of ing; they return to a severe classicism and an ascetic sobriety in _ his ballet Relache, Satie was accosted by three young men who the Concerto and his Sonate are sure proofs of this change. The |= came to express their admiration of him. They spent the evening Concerto of Germaine Tailleferre leads back to Bach, Les Biches __ together. One of them, Robert Caby, never left him. Shortly by Poulenc carries us into a vast French park, Les Matelots of after this Satie fell ill, and during the long and serious sickness

Georges Auric is unhampered by the precedents of polytonal which he suffered, young Caby made one of the little faithful music on which he based the composition of his work Les band who put themselves at his disposal and took care of him

Facheux. during the weeks which preceded his death at the hospital of We are dealing here with proven musicians having behind —_ Saint Joseph. them a considerable body of work.Let us therefore follow Satie, Caby, Dautun, and Letac are the three young men who came still exploring the horizon. From behind his spectacles, withhis — to seek guidance for their first steps, at Satie’s side. Will the indefinable smile he peers, forever searching, until he discov- —_— future remember their names? Their first efforts are very strange.

ers. The young people who now approach him for an introduc- They write absolutely atonal music, worthy of the pupils of tion to the public are the School of Arcueil. Henry Sauget, born Schoenberg, and their imaginations seem to follow the fantasin Bordeaux, fond of the sea, of sailors, boats, colored shells _ tic chimeras which attracted Jules Laforgue. Is it an epoch that and Chopin’s music, has never fallen under the spell of jazz. It —_ is returning? If so, then what secret need brought them close to : is chiefly Chopin who influences him. One feels that he re- —_ Satie the purist, the apostle of a spare and limpid art, whose : freshes himself by turning over the most tender pages of Satie —_ simplicity is its loveliest ornament? A disconcerting contradicand Fauré. His music has a playful quality, his composition is tion! careful. He has the breeding of a Siamese cat. The stamp of his The very small piano pieces of Caby, his vast projects for personality is especially marked in the military opera-bouffe in __ the theatre, the timid and thoughtful art of Dautun, his curious one act, Le Plumet du Colonel. It may be said that this is badly —_ sonatina for piano and violin, the complex schemes and special orchestrated, but should one expect to find a boy of twenty-two —_ orchestration which are the goal of Letac—are these the promorchestrating pages of perfect balance in his first attempt? All —_—ise of a new phase of French music? The future will tell, and more quickly than one is wont to believe.

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1925 | DECEMBER 9 e¢ NATION December 9 © Nation FROM SPIRITUALS TO SWING by J. Sabastian For many of us the season of cheer began on the Friday evening § The music of Fox-Chase, New Orleans Love, and Train Blues is of December 23, when at Carnegie Hall From Spirituals to _ essentially simple, but his harmonica is capable of intricate rhythSwing, the New Masses concert of Negro music made honest _—mic designs and amazing blues notes—sustained wails which men of its most extravagant prognosticators. Itis difficultenough — he undulates by the movement of his hand.

to draw an attendance of three thousand, to achieve exciting Mitchell’s Christian Singers: This male quartet from Win- _ and commendatory comment from the daily and weekly press, ston, N. C., projected a dignified and deeply emotional quality to hold an audience spellbound—all of which the concert did; _in their singing of While He’s Passing By, You Rise Up, My Poor but to top this it gave a lesson in the history of American music; | Mother Died Shouting, and others. They showed clearly the el-

to use a dread word, it educated. It marked the close alliance | ements of jazz inherent in the most isolated Negro music no between the music made in the everyday life of the Negro and matter what its subject matter, and their entirely unique conthe music which has come to be called swing; it maintained an _ cept of spirituals consists of unusual intonations, rhythmic patauthenticity which served as acrushing indictment of commer- __ terns, and harmonic ideas. cial jazz with all its attendant chicanery and lack of sincerity; Williams “Big Bill” Broonzy: He bought a new pair of shoes and finally, it proved that an instinctive love of music willbreak —_ and got on a bus in Arkansas to make his first trip to New York through the thickest fog of oppression, and, with lightning speed _ to sing blues and play the guitar at Carnegie Hall. His blues are

and irrefutable argument, record that impression. of the most fundamental kind, and his appealing, lackadaisical, The playing of a recording of tribal music from the West and bemused performance of them is typical of hundreds of Coast of Africa was the signal for the unfolding of a history. _itinerant musicians of the South. This record served to show basic origins and to emphasize the Sister Tharpe: Possessed of one of the most remarkable fact that the rest of the program would be living history, told by — voices to appear during the evening, Sister Tharpe sang Holy human beings. From Spirituals to Swing proceeded to prove — Roller hymns which had the same vibrancy and excitement as that jazz has a patrimony which many have tried to deny it; an — blues. She poured unequaled fervor into such songs as Rock authentic beginning in the soul of a folk art. No one appreci- = me, and I Can’t Sit Down. ated “Sonny” Terry, the blind harmonica player (and a truly Sidney Bechet and his New Orleans Feet Warmers: This naive country fellow) more than did the sophisticated players —_ group, with inimitable style and vitality, gave aural picture to of hot jazz who also appeared in the concert. And, to turn about, the early New Orleans jazz era. Included in the ensemble were “Sonny” was in a seventh heaven when listening to Count Basie — such pioneer jazz players as Bechet himself, Tommy Ladnier, and his orchestra. Such an untutored homogeneity of tastecan and James P. Johnson. have no other explanation than that both musical expressions Ruby Smith: Niece of the beloved Bessie Smith, Ruby recre-

spring from the same germ. ated some of the songs that were sung by her famous aunt. These It seems inconceivable that any history of American music — included Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out, and could ever have been written without thorough cognizance and the Porter Granger composition, He’s Mine, All Mine. At the acknowledgment of this aspect of our native art, yetithas been — piano was Bessie’s favorite accompanist, James P. Johnson. done time and again with only a nod to the Negro composer = Though not as great as Bessie, Ruby nevertheless gave the flawho could best dilute his own musical feelings so as to make ___-vor of the blues in the glorious style of her predecessor and

them acceptable in fashionable concert halls. provided an example of the bedrock solid blues foundation. . Last Friday I unreservedly liked everything on the program, The Boogie-Woogie Pianists: Perhaps no other part of the = but it is not my intention to idle adjectives one ontop ofanother —_ presentation received so much applause as those masters of the

in expressing my appreciation. I want, rather, to submit a list- giant jazz passacaglias, Meade “Lux” Lewis, Albert Ammons, ing which will tell something of what each performer did, and —_and Pete Johnson. Over stunning ostinatos in the left hand, the which is arranged in what I feel to be the historical chronology —_ nimble right hands of these virtuosi pounded out music which

of the concert. was insistent and compelling. Individually, each pianist was treat Sanford “Sonny” Terry blind harmonica player from enough, but when they sat down to two pianos and an old up-

Durham, N. C. “Sonny” has all the attributes of areal folk artist right with a mandolin attachment, to turn out a superb collecwho employs primitive devices for producing his music. Mag- _ tive boogie-woogie, it was incredibly wonderful nificent effects are achieved through a combined playing and Pete Johnson and Joe Turner: Joe Turner is a typical Kansas singing. He provides amazing accompaniments for his voice City blues singer, using a clipped, sophisticated style which is and equally amazing vocal overtones to his harmonica playing. — ejaculatory and direct. His voice is exceptional and he enjoys

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DECEMBER 9 ¢ NATION 1925 the benefit of the masterful accompaniments of the already men- __ themselves ina difficult spot. As it was, these orchestras capped tioned Pete Johnson. In fact, they work entirely as a unit, and _‘ the evening with just the right amount of well punctuated verve, together have created the songs Roll ‘Em Pete and He’s All right. leaving the audience gasping at the spectacle of powerful talent

The Kansas City Six, Basie’s Blue Five, Count Basie and His let loose. Orchestra: These three groups (the smaller one derived from The whole program was a testimony to the vitality, interest, the large Count Basie Orchestra) were possibly the only logical — good taste, and unceasing devotion to Negro music of John climax of what had gone before on the program. Certainly, an Hammond, who conceived and master-of-ceremonied the enorganization with less drive and dynamic force would have found __ tire concert.

December 9 © Nation

MUSIC—THE PEDANT LOOKS AT JAZZ : by B. H. Haggin What I choose to call, for lack of a better term, the pedant in —_ contribute new material to the forms of serious music but produce musical criticism is the one who, because even beautiful music new forms adapted to its own material. necessarily exhibits peculiarities of technique or idiom, believes, The pedantry has been carried to its illogical extreme and utincorrectly, that its beauty may be attributed to them, and con- _terly discredited by Mr. Gilbert Seldes. “Jazz is good,” he says, versely that beauty and value may always be inferred from them; —_ for he may not enjoy it otherwise, “and I propose to summarize and who therefore bases his judgments on analysis of technique. | some of the known reasons for holding it so”; i.e., since he does The term is, then, not inappropriate since itis applied toone who _ enjoy it he must prove it “good.” To do so, since he conceives of drags in learning where it has no place. For analysis can neither = musical value as correlated with details of technique, he must explain, nor therefore justify, the value or charm of a piece of | show that it possesses a sophisticated technique. And since it does

music, or the absence of such value or charm. not possess such a technique he proceeds as follows: An example will make this clear. My pedant will hold that a He describes simple things at such length that through sheer passage in a d’Indy symphony must be deeply moving since itis | weight of words they appear complicated and extraordinary; folwritten in accordance with “principles” abstracted in this way —_ lowing his example one might speak of the effect of groups of four-

from emotionally expressive music, 1.e., since, for the purpose, sixteenths alternately rising and falling in pitch to the accompanithe motif is made higher or lower in pitch and compressed or — ment of staccato quarters, and yet be describing only the effect of expanded in time with the rise and fall in emotional intensity,and § aCzerny five-finger exercise. He gives one thing the name of somethe passage “begins in the comparatively ‘dark’ key of D flat, but _ thing he likes better, and supports his claims with explanations that touches in the fourth measure, at the acme of the climax, the _are incorrect, examples that are inappropriate, and reasons that do brighter D major, whence with the waning emotion it subsides to not support his conclusions—obtaining in this fashion dissonance the original key.” The pedantry, it should be noted, lies notinthe from the slide or smear, and from syncopation more dissonance analysis, which is legitimate and useful for certain purposes, nor — (and even polytonal) and rhythmic complexities such as “‘one finds obviously in the judgment, which in other cases might be cor- _ only in the great masters of serious music.” This toppling structure rect, but in the linking of one with the other, which is incorrect, he buttresses with a liberal and inexpert, when not actually incorsince its technical virtues make the d’Indy passage not moving ___ rect, use of technical lingo and with much talk about elusive, debatbut, like most of d’Indy’s output, only an expertly constructed —_ able qualities like rapidity and cleanness of style of composition. In

illustration for his “Cours de Composition musicale.” all this he profits by the ignorance of most of his readers, by the fact One would hardly expect a lover of jazz to indulge in this sort _ that use of technical terms carries with it the unnecessary presumpof pedantry, for the technique of jazz is quite primitive and must, if _ tion that the user can correlate term with object correctly and has his judgment is guided by it, lead him, as it has lead hostile critic like done so, by an appearance of perfect assurance, and above all by a

Daniel Gregory Mason, to a low estimate of its value. But some _ prose, corresponding to a thought, so unconsecutive that he can who, over-sophisticated and “fed up” with serious music, have —_ contradict himself almost in one sentence without appearing to enjoyed jazz by contrast have found apparent and convenient jus- _realize it. All this, however, Mr. Seldes has done only to substantitification for their enjoyment in details of technique here andthere —_ ate notions which he has picked up about him, notions already which are more sophisticated than the usual and which they have —_ exaggerated, which, through his lack of the necessary special knowl-

assumed to be the rule and made more of than is allowable. In this | edge, he has succeeded only in distorting and making absurd. way has arisen such a notion as that jazz is characterized by bewil- | What, now, of these notions in their original form?

dering rhythmic complexity, to which have been attached such very By rhythmic complexity is meant the shifting from one meter loose notions as that it is the only music of charm or value which __to another; the use of different meters simultaneously, this fre-

Americans can produce, because it is the only music rooted in quently being an effect of syncopation in one voice when the America and the American temperament, and that it will not only —_ regular beats in the other are unobtrusive; and above all the varying of the length and style of phrases and of the figuration.

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1925 DECEMBER 12 * MUSICAL AMERICA Now, jazz can be defined as music written in the meter of the | embellishment of this (also limited) by rich, ingenious scoring, by fox-trot. Its essence, in fact, contrary to the prevailing notion, is =a not unrestrainedly syncopated melody, and more recently by not the syncopation in the melody but the steady plunk-plunk- —_—_ chords borrowed from serious music.

plunk-plunk of the four quarters of the accompaniment in rapid This subject matter of jazz does not seem to lend itself to musitempo (one reason for the precision of the orchestras and their cal architecture. With a preoccupation with architecture I should ability to play without a conductor). It is not the effect of synco- — expect to see a shifting of emphasis from the essence to its mepation that is characteristic of jazz, since one finds syncopation —_lodic embellishment, and perhaps, as a result, a loss of the specific in greater abundance and variety in serious music, but the effect jazz character. In its treatment the material would, in any case, be of syncopation in the jazz meter and tempo; and actually onecan —_— governed by the same conditions of limitations as any other mustrip away the syncopation and still have “Bambalina,” proofthat —_ sical material—i.e., it could only be modified, or repeated, or fol-

the syncopated melody, like the scoring or the exciting rapid figu- | lowed by something new—and the forms would necessarily be ration introduced by pianists to fill in the beats, is mere embel- those we know. I do not care to predict; I can only point out that lishment. On the other hand, take away the plunk-plunk-plunk- until now the material has not been modified, and the form has

plunk and jazz is no longer jazz. been small. The large form characteristic of jazz has been, whatOne finds, therefore, no shifting from meter to meter oruseof ever its title, the potpourri, a series of small forms strung together. meters simultaneously, with the exception of a rare and necessar- There is, finally, no such thing as a type of music being rooted ily brief interpolation of a figure in triple time. since the regular _ or alien (if there is such a thing as a national temperament); inbeats in the accompaniment are so insistent the effect of the syn- _ stead one may speak only of persons being adapted or undated to copation in the melody is not that of a cross-meter but only one _it; and all that composition of a type of music indicates, and reof irregularity in the ordinary meter, the latter being no less four- quires as a necessary though not sufficient condition, is adaptaquarter for being irregular four-quarter, and the beats being, in __ tion to the tradition of previous composition. Whatever the failfact, emphasized by being anticipated. And finally there is lack- ure of American serious music indicates, it is not the lack of such ing the most important source of rhythmic variety inserious music, adaptation. If Americans are less successful in writing serious namely, variation in the length and shape of phrases, with artistic | music than in writing popular music it may be because one is use of figuration. This is so closely correlated with extended struc- = _ more difficult to write at all than the other, and also because at ture or form as to be almost identical with it; certainly onecannot the present stage of development of each it is more difficult to have one without the other. Both are, however, almostinconceiv- |= make a valuable contribution to one than to the other. able in the jazz meter; and so, according to one’s point of view, Here, lest one infer from all this that I dispute the charm of jazz, the rhythmic technique being what it is, the form is small, and the I hasten to repeat what the very prevalence of such pedantry form being what it is, one finds, for the most part, phrases of the tends to obscure, namely, that professor Mason can no more common symmetrical variety consisting of two or four measures — dispute than Mr. Seldes can establish the value of jazz by such with a strong cadence and an 0om-pah oom-pah in each mea- _— arguments. They will nevertheless attempt to do so, and in gen-

sure. eral their pedantry, though fallacious, will continue to be preva-

The resulting effect is one of the utmost simplicity, regularity, lent, because it is useful not only to themselves but to others: and rigidity; the effect, that is, of four quarters constantly reiter- some of those who formerly treated jazz, in public at least, as a sort ated, upon which any apparent eccentricity is superimposed and __ of scarlet woman of music may now lend their names to a jazz to which it is firmly riveted; and the prevailing notion to thecon- —_— concert without losing their musical respectability. There is some-

trary, since one cannot attribute it to what is done in the meter, thing suspicious in the sudden sweet reasonableness of these one must attribute to the meter itself, i.e., to the factthatadance _ persons and the rapidity of their conversion; and my guess is that meter cannot be anything but lively and exhilarating, regardless formerly they observed their musical moral standards, like their of how it is treated. It seems correct, therefore, to describe jazzas other moral standards, in true Angola-American fashion, by alan art of embellishment, based on a limitation—limitation toone lowing themselves to be bored almost to extinction at the public subject matter, the four quarters of the fox-trot measure; and __ concerts of serious music of which they were the patrons and guarantors, and enjoying jazz in private.

December 12 ¢ Musical America ORCHESTRAS OSCILLATE BETWEEN BEETHOVEN AND JAZZ In the quest of the unusual with which to vary the succession of — must be credited to Walter Damrosch and the New York Symstandard symphonies and symphonic poems, New York heard _ phony. Another novelty, Hermann Hans Wetzler’s Visions, was music from its orchestras last week that ranged from anew semi- —_ introduced by the Philharmonic under the baton of Willem

jazz concerto by George Gershwin to aconcert performance of | Mengelberg. Ossip Gabrilowitsch was soloist with the Beethoven’s Fidelio. Both of these out-of-the-ordinary events | Mengelberg forces on Sunday, playing the Mozart D-minor Concerto. The Yale Glee Club appeared with the State Sym-

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DECEMBER 12 ¢ MUSICAL AMERICA 1925 phony on Saturday night, participating in Liszt’s Faust Sym- At the most ambitious as well as the most widely discussed

phony, with Arthur Kraft as soloist. effort that has yet been made to voice this sopposititious “spirit The Philadelphia Orchestra, in presenting another ofits New of 1925” in the concert room, the two performances in Carnegie York programs Tuesday night, focused fresh attention on the — Hall Thursday afternoon and Friday evening of the concerto Fifth Symphony of Jean Sibelius, which achieved new beauties caused something of a commotion. It must be said at the outset as played under the leadership of Leopold Stokowski. that nothing was left undone by Mr. Damrosch to bring success Another experiment in the realm of syncopation was Albert —_ to Mr. Gershwin’s experimental work, either in advertising it or Chiaffarelli’s Jazz America, announced as the “first jazz sym- —_ in playing it. The concert at which it was introduced could

phony,” and played by Harry Yerkes and his “Syncopating scarcely have been better arranged to let it speak its merits.

Symphonists. | Certainly there was no danger of its being cast in the penumbra

of some more monumental work. The program was as follows:

Much-Bruited Jazz Concerto Causes Stir When Given Symphony No. 5, in B-flat... . Glazounov

Orchestral Baptism Suite Anglaise...............Rabaud

. . ConcertoinF............... Gershwin

Young America had its day in the court of art music last week The Concerto was thus preceded by an indifferent symphony

when_Walter Damrosch conducted two performances of George ;, . .; ; and a common-place series of small pieces.

Gershwin’s much-heralded Piano Concerto, especially commis- ; , .fame, ,sioned cs The composer’s Rhapsody in Blue, of Paul Whiteman for thewith New his York Symphony, with the popular and tis him ,;; . . together musical comedy adventures had“‘pep”’built for

filled composer the piano. ; ; , ; ; a following that of anat international celebrity might,clubs, have envied. It .was the young America the cabarets, the supper .; . ; Mr. Damrosch, in neatly devised press statements, had pictured

the flying visits to; :road houses—jazz-eyed, rouge-cheeked, ; ; Jazz by the him as the Prince Charming who was taking Lady flask-toting—the young American of taxicabs and movies, of ; .; ; ; . . , hand, Cinderella-like, and making her a respectable member of

Charleston. ve ;

ennui and thrill-seeking—foxtrotting itshad answer theafter riddle of , como- ; the musical family. He alone daredto this, various the universe, or freeing its emotions through the rhythm of the , ; posers had been observed “walking around jazz like a cat around

a plate of very hot soup, waiting for it to cool off, so that they could enjoy it without burning their tongue.”

December 12 ¢ Musical America JAZZ APOTHEOSIS IS PHILADELPHIA EVENT by W. R. Murphy

Philadelphia, Dec. 5 taken with Rimsky-Korsokoff’s Hymn to the Sun and the Kreisler The Stanley Music Club opened its series of five Sunday con- Caprice Viennois. certs with a program on Dec. 4. The spacious Stanley Theater The best thing on the list was Ferdie Grofé’s Mississippi: a was crowded with members of this latest addition to | Tone Journey, which had original melodic ideas and admirable Philadelphia’s musical organizations. Jules Maastbaum, head of construction. Meet the Boys was a novelty in which each of the the Stanley Company of America, is honorary president and = amazing jazz virtuosi was spot-lighted while he played a solo

Leopold Stokowski is president. bit. Excerpts from George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue had Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra gave a unique program _ Harry Perrella as pianist. The Whiteman players were especially that seemed the very apotheosis of jazz. Rhythmic liberties were notable for superior rhythmic capacity and the program went off with elan. -

December 12 © Musical America “SYNCOPATING SYMPHONISTS” Jazz America, described as the first symphony based on the syncopated species to be composed, was a feature of the con- scherzo on the first theme, and the fourth is built around the cert given last Sunday afternoon by Harry Yerkes and his or- —s murky joy of Limehouse Blues. William J. Guard said a few words

chestra, which rejoices in the title of “Syncopating before the work was heard, stressing the unusual honesty of Symphonists.” The Symphony is the brainchild of Albert |= Mr. Chiaffarelli in blandly confessing that and from whom he Chiaffarelli who, a program note awesomely contends, spentan _ had taken his themes. entire year in its composition. The first movement is based upon Jazz America is really not jazz at all. An advance notice on St. Louis Blues, the second on Beale Street Blues; the third isa | the symphony had it that the work was “developed with all the 435

1925 DECEMBER 15 ¢ METRONOME skill of a Tchaikovsky,” and one must admit the truth of that The Symphony is excellently scored and is written in strict statement—with one or two reservations. There are some pas- form. It is a continuously interesting and attractive bit of work. sages in Jazz America that are more like Tchaikovsky than Mr. Chiafffarelli knows what he wants and he knows how to get Tchaikovsky himself ever was, but limiting himself to synco- _it with the maximum of effect. More power to him! pated themes has been Mr. Chiaffarelli’s undoing, whereas it The rest of Mr. Yerkes’ program was unadulterated, highly

never was Tchaikovsky’s. enjoyable, and excellently-played jazz. WS. December 15 ¢ Metronome DEVELOPMENT OF THE JAZZ BAND, AND NORTH AMERICAN NEGRO MUSIC by Darius Milhaud

Paris. In the year 1918 a Jazz-Band from New York came over and From the standpoint of orchestration the use of the various was introduced to us in the Paris Casino by Gaby Deslys and _ instruments enumerated above and their special technical perfecHarry Pilcer. In this regard I need not recall to mindthe shock and _ tion has rendered possible an unusual variety of expression. In the sudden awakening experienced, nor refer to the sound ele- —_— order to form a correct opinion on this point, one must hear a ments heretofore never assembled which were now available, nor serious Jazz Band of thorough musicians, who work together to the importance of syncopation for rhythm and melody, based __ regularly, as is done—for instance—by one of our good string on a foundation of inexorable regularity, which is no less impor- — quartets, and who use an orchestration which in its way is impectant to us than our blood circulation and the throb of our heart; —_ cable, in the style of Irving Berlin. There have been mediocre Jazz nor to the elaboration of the drums, whereby all percussion in- —_ Bands and this very fact has caused numerous errors and misunstruments whose name figures in the known works on the art of —_ derstandings; their tonal equipment is inadequate, the instrumenorchestration, are simplified, arranged, and so grouped that they tal technic scant and the percussion instruments were entrusted become, as it were, a single complex of such perfect instruments to drummers without taste, who fancied they enriched their scope that adrum solo by Mr. Buddy (the drummer) of the syncopation _ by adding false elements, like automobile horns, sirens, ‘“claxons,”’ orchestra, we find, is a rhythmically constructed and smoothly __ etc. As a matter of fact, it is indeed noteworthy how quickly such

flowing composition, with many possibilities of change inexpres- exceptional instruments are again out of fashion and go into the sion, which depend on the tone color of the various instruments —_ discard, even when one considers, for instance, the marine signal also played by him; I will not mention the new instrumental tech- whistle, which has a pretty tone color, after all, and is something nic, whereby the piano takes care of the matter-of-factexpression between a signal whistle and the human voice. However, one and the precision of drum and banjo; nor the resurrection of the — shouldhear areally sterling Jazz Band, like that of Billy Arnold or saxophone and trombone, whose glissandos become one of the — of Paul Whiteman. Here nothing is left to chance, everything is most frequent modes of expression, and which are entrusted with —_ done with perfect tact and is uniformly distributed, which immedi-

the sweetest, softest melodies; nor the frequent use of sordines, ately testifies to the taste of a musician who is wonderfully familreeds, vibratos of slides, valves and keys in the above mentioned _iar with the possibilities of each instrument. Just follow Billy instruments; nor the use of the clarinet in the higher registers, | Arnold’s playing at the Casino at Cannes or Deauville during one with its sturdy attack and its large volume of sound: nor the _ of his soirees. Once he is playing with four saxophones and again glissando and suspended tone technic, which can confuse even __ with violin, clarinet, trumpet, trombone—in short it is a constant our most practiced instrumentalists, nor of the advent of the banjo, change of instrumental combinations, which gradually mingle with whose tones seem to us more dry, more nervous and more sound- _ the sound of the piano and the percussion instruments, and each ing than those of the harp or the pizzicati of the four violins; norof of which individually taken, has sense and logic, sound effect the special violin technic for sharp, penetrating tones, which, —_ and possibilities of expression. above all, inclines to very broad vibrati and less rapid glissandos. Since the first Jazz Bands were heard here, their development The strength of the Jazz Band lies in the novelty ofits technic has gone forward considerably. After this cataract of sound efin every direction. From the viewpoint of rhythm, the study of — fects came a noticeable emphasis on the melodic element; we are possibilities resulting from the continued use of syncopation per- _ coming into the period of the “Blues.” The melody is exposed, as mits the rendition of this music with the very simplest means, _it were, and merely supported by aclear, matter-of-fact, rhythmic without resorting to rich and varying orchestration. In the years —_ outline. The percussion instruments are scarcely in evidence and 1920/21, it was sufficient to hear Jean Wiener at the piano and = grow more and more emotional. The development starts with the Vance Lowry with the saxophone or banjo in Duphot Street at | almost mechanical, hard-as-steel rendering by a Paul Whiteman, the Gaya bar, in order to be able to fully grasp the Jazz music, __ to the almost imperceptible and, we might say, vague and misty which was here offered in pure, unadulterated perfection ofform, sound effects of the Jazz Band at the Hotel Brunswick in Boston. with a minimum of means.

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DECEMBER 23 © THE NEW REPUBLIC 1925 In the Jazz Band the North Americans have actually founda _ 6th, held in the Ackerbau Hall, introduced to us the Jazz Band of form of artistic expression that is absolutely their own, and their §_Mr. Billy Arnold. It was no more than right and proper that these

leading Jazz Bands attain such perfection in their performances | eminent musicians should be heard by us in a regular concert; that they are worthy to share the fame of the well-known sym- _ but it would have been in order that they played not only their phonic organizations, like our Conservatory Concerts, or such repertory of dance music, but let us hear them perform some organizations as our modern Society for Wind Instruments, or, | chamber music, written in a manner adapted to their special orlet us say, the Capet Quartet, which is our best known one. chestral combination. Under the influence of these American The North Americans, therefore, have gained absolutely new — dances the rag-time Packet-boat on Parade by Erik Satie and sound and rhythm elements that are peculiar to them. But what = Farewell to New York by George Auric, were created. In these possibilities are there to make use of them? So far they have used — works we have the picture of a rag-time and a fox-trot before us all this only in their dance music and compositions written for in the frame of a symphony orchestra. In Piano-Rag-Music by the Jazz Band have—up to the present—not left the domain of Igor Stravinsky we have a piano number which gives us the rhyththe ragtime, fox-trots, shimmies, and so forth. The mistake made — mic element of rag in the form of a concert piece. Jean Wiener in in transcribing for Jazz orchestra is thatfamous compositions are —_ his Syncopated Sonatine introduces to us a chamber music work _ used, from “Tosca’s prayer” to Peer Gynt and the Berceuse by which originates in the varied elements of jazz, but is written in Gretchaninoff, to form dance themes based on their melodic ele- —_ sonata form. This is another step forward. It now remains to us to ments. this is a mistake of the same nature as using automobile —_ offer the Jazz-Orchestras instrumental chamber music works and horns, etc., beside the normal percussion instruments, and is in —_ concert sonatas which are written for the normal instruments of bad taste. These wonderful orchestras lack only one thing: a regu- the Jazz Band. lar concert repertory. Jean Wiener in his concert of December

December 19 © Musical America JAZZ AS FOLK-MUSIC Aaron Copland, the young American composer, turned lecturer Mr. Copland’s contention that folk-music is the music that the other day in Rochester, and talked entertainingly on the sub- —_ people commonly know is sound. The old-fashioned theory that ject of jazz. According to the press reports from that city, he stated a folk-song or a folk-dance arose in the remote past by some that he did not believe that American composers could create a = mysterious and inexplicable action of the group mind has been type of music distinctively national without a literature of folk definitely exploded. Every piece of folk-music was composed music as a background, and that he had found for himself asolu- —_ by some individual, and was later modified in transmission from

tion. generation to generation.

“If we haven’t a folk-song foundation, we must invent one,” Folk-music is being written today. A popular song that is known he said. “I began by thinking—what is a folk-song after all? And —_—in thousands of homes and becomes a part of current life is a I came to the conclusion that in my case it was the songsI heard _‘folk-song. It may not have the merit to endure beyond one genwhen I was a child—rather commonplace jazz tunes and music __ eration, but that fact does not alter its folk-quality. Jazz is cerof the Old Black Joe variety. These, then, are my material, andI _ tainly one of our folk-expressions in music. What perdurable elmust accept them for what they are. If we have only these ele- |= ements it may contain will be manifest in time and will have their ments as essentially American, our music must make the best of —_ part in composition. it and do the work so well that something worth while will come from the effort.”

December 23 © The New Republic LADY JAZZ IN THE VESTIBULE by Abbe Miles George Gershwin and Walter Damrosch’s New York Symphony “Every now and again. . .that beautiful haunting melody Orchestra played the former’s Piano Concerto in F the other pops us, and crooned, now danced . . .now tinkled out by tripday; Harry Yerkes’ Sixty-five Syncopating Symphonists, inturn, ping toes on the piano... —but the weight of opinion was that unveiled Albert Chiaffarelli’s symphony JazzAmerica.Theevents jazz had not yet stormed the citadel. Rather than combat that were expected to throw light on the future of American music, —_ conclusion, let us consider in the light of these performances just

and received much critical attention. There was one wholly lyri- = what chance what citadel stands of being stormed, by what. cal account of the Concerto—a passage in which may have —_ Stormed by what? Not only by jazz, which is merely (1) a way of

excited some morbid curiosity: playing any music, or (2) music written to be played that way (viz.: 437

1925 DECEMBER 23 ¢ THE NEW REPUBLIC with weird figures or raucous sounds; see parts of Richard Strauss’s The writer, by the way, obtained keen enough enjoyment from Till Eulenspiegel and compare parts of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in __ hearing the Concerto to wonder whether the episodic treatment Blue); but by ragtime, a species of ball-room dance-music which _ is necessarily and absolutely fatal to an attempt even at Good

excludes the waltz and exhibits a syncopated melody, usually | Music. But he wishes Mr. Gershwin would try his hand at setover a steady beat in the bass. Stormed by ragtime, then, jazzedor tings for some of Vachel Lindsay’s poetry.

not.” Mr. Harry Yerkes is an old-timer in jazz. He was the first marWhat citadel? That of good music, would seem to be the sup- _ tyr to the cause, thrown out of his Broadway office years ago position. But this would render all talk of “storming” absurd: if |= when his saxophonists protruded their then unknown and terany popular song is musically good it is good music, andastone ___rible instruments through the windows and tootled into the trafof the citadel. No, read between the lines, and remember where fic. Yet never were old jazzers tamer than his minions, interpretyou are. When we, as Americans, fight about Good Music, we _ ing Chiaffarelli-Braham-Handy. The occasional glad Wham! from naturally refer to the larger forms. They are the citadel: whatchance —_ everything in the band didn’t count; the Boston Symphony, hav-

have ragtime and jazz to storm them? ing more instruments, can wham louder, and it does. How faint, There are loud complaints of Mr. Gershwin’s episodic treat- | how throatless was the occasional screech, how different the catment of his material. He jumps, it is said, from theme to theme __ call, how uncomfortably on their best behavior those humid muand back to theme again, without pause for development. Mr. __ sicians, supposed to be pulling down our civilization. Now hear Chiaffarelli reproduces (with honorable acknowledgments), en- = Mr. Damrosch: tire, W. C. Handy’s strange and delightful blues, Saint Louis and “Lady Jazz... for all her travels and her sweeping popularity Beale Street, and Philip Braham’s justly famous (though not “blue’’) has encountered no knight who could lift her to a level that would

Limehouse Blues; these themes are imperfectly assimilated; they enable her to be received as a respectable member in musical float about, substantially intact, in the soupy liquid of transitional —_ circles. George Gershwin seems to have accomplished this passage-work, among the vermicelli of old-time “variations.” miracle. He too has taken Cinderella by the hand and openly This may be due, less to any supposed deficiencies ofthe com- _ proclaimed her a princess to the astonished world.”

posers, than to the nature of the material. Suggestion: ragtime It may be so, but one can picture what went before. Mr. particularly benefits by a simple, well-rounded and briefform— = Damrosch: “T’ll receive her, for you, George, but I draw the line at eight or sixteen bars to the strain (in the case of the blues, twelve), what goes with her, those saxophones and cowbells and—She two or three strains, and then finis—or change of subject. Any __ says she ain’t herself without ‘em? Well perhaps she can have a

figure so striking as syncopation, or on the other hand, soregular § Charleston stick, and a wire brush for the snare-drum, and— as the beat in the bass which throws it into relief, is likely to | hm—yes, she can hang a derby hat over the trumpet. We can become monotonous with long repetition if there be not frequent | always call that ‘a felt cap’ in the program-notes. But that’s all, introductions of new themes. The Floradora Sextette music was _ absolutely all.” Or it might have been Mr. Gershwin who said, popular only in spite of its length, and because of its countervailing “Lady, keep that stuff back for a while. You’ll always know where

merits. Most composers have not taken such a chance, so that _it is; you’re young and times are improving, meanwhile here’s concise form has become part of what we think of when we think —_ floating Opportunity if you’ll just—be—treasonable.” Lady Jazz of ragtime. If the composer presses on into “development,” does _—_— was right; she wasn’t herself without her tools; she passed for he not risk taking his subject out of the category of ragtime as _— her mother, plain Ragtime. Since another definition of good mu-

well as robbing it of one of the very virtues which made it popu- sic is music played by the symphony orchestras, then if those lar, and so started all this talk of storming citadels? Take another —_ orchestras won’t equip themselves, or the composer won’t equip

tack: may it be said that a deft piece of ragtime or of jazz is to them, what chance has Lady Jazz of storming the citadel? If music as wit is to literature? If so, what was that remark about wit | Harry Yerkes as well is going to desert her when he thinks it’s a

and brevity? What would be the reaction to a proposal that the | case of Good Music, then is she indeed forlorn. Great American Novel should be built up from the 100 Best Jokes Worse, the playing of ragtime unjazzed takes a certain amount (or, at least, should be as continuously witty as possible—like of boning up, be the performers ever so eminent in respectable Michael Arlen?) Would Arthur (Bugs) Baer, when he had done __ circles. Imagine the predicament of almost any virtuoso from the the thing, be reproached for having strung his anecdotes loosely _ citadel, attempting in public the alien and terrific piano score together? Symphonic development of the wheeze has been _ through which Gershwin swept with such consummate grace and counted a characteristic not of Americans, but of stage English- ease. The orchestra was in a less difficult, but similar predicamen. Isn’t it just possible that Messrs. Gershwin and Chiaffarelli | ment. It did nobly, for a novice, but it was the piano only that knew what they were up against, and that the grumbling would __ crackled and pulsed with life and color. The score furnished it have been louder had they done as they were told? It has, indeed, may well have been partly to blame, but where will it find time to been noted in some quarters that neither composition stuck to —_ learn what Whiteman’s knows? Or vice-versa? One wonders ragtime throughout. The passages calling forth this outcry were whether, when the great work is written that shall combine and those in which the conscientious composers tried a little devel- fuse ragtime, jazz and Good Music, it will not be found neces-

opment. It’s a hard life. sary (if its full greatness is to be made manifest) to let Messrs.

Damrosch and Whiteman, side by side, conduct their combined organizations.

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DECEMBER ¢ RADIO BROADCASTING 1925 December ¢ Radio Broadcasting IS THE POPULARITY OF JAZZ MUSIC WANING?

| by Kingsley Welles When radio broadcasting was a novelty and one called in the _and that, playing the currently poplar tunes. Too much of the neighbors to hear the voices coming in “right out of the air,’ | program has been devoted to dance orchestras, or to soloists little or no attention was paid to what the voices were saying. | who had nothing on their repertoire but whatever numbers were “Radio is a marvelous instrument, a tremendously potential — being sold in the music shops as “the latest thing” or, worse, to medium, but what difference does it make if itis being used to —_ song “pluggers” in the employ or the music publishers. This give currency to worse than second-rate stuff,” is about the gist practice of the broadcasters, we firmly believe, has shortened of the very vocal objections made by these observers. George _ the life of many moderately good popular numbers, which othJean Nathan, the rapier-worded dramatic critic of The Ameri- —_ erwise might have retained popularity for a considerably longer can Mercury said in a recent issue of that green-jacketed organ _ time.

of dissent: Mr. Frank McEniry, of station KOA at Denver, in answering “Nights the front parlors of the proletariat resound to the —a recent inquiry of ours about this subject replied: strains of alley jazz pounded out by bad hotel orchestras, to “On the whole, I believe listeners tire of jazz much more

lectures on Sweden-borgiamism by ex-veterinary surgeons, to —_ quickly than they do of the classical or semi-classical presenta-

songs about red hot mammas, and Beale Street melancholias tions. This belief 1s of course, wholly a personal one, but it is

by hard-up vaudeville performers.” based on a daily study of mail from our listeners. Here is an Now all the criticism of radio programs made along these __ excerpt from the letter of a Western listener which seems typilines is true in that it is possible to hear the thing described from cal of a great mass of mail we are receiving on the subject: some radio station or other at one time or another. We should ‘One cannot be unmindful of the lovely entertainment last not judge broadcasting by that method any more than we should — evening; especially beautiful was the Floradora Sextet by the judge the thinking processes of the American citizenry by what Municipal Band. Likewise, the same selection with the lullaby we hear a chance street orator mouth. Broadcasting isnotnearly on the saxophone. It was such a relief from the slap-stick stuff as badly off as its hostile critics would have you think, andthe —_ one gets from many stations.’ That letter was from Charles G aerial offerings of the radio season now upon us are daily justi- |§ Hickman of Forsyth, Montana.”

fying that belief. And here is another from Mrs. Walter Burke of New Ply-

“If it weren’t for the constant stream of jazz following from = mouth, Idaho: nearly every broadcasting antenna,” remarked a listener to us ‘Almost without exception, we like the better class of muthe other day. “I would enjoy radio a lot more. These jazz or- _ sic. Jazz ceases to have any appeal after the first two or three chestras from every station in the country, all practically bang- — selections—it is all alike.” ing away at the same piece at practically the same time are much They are doing some good things at KOA, and by the time more than annoying.” The trouble with a criticism such as this _ this magazine is in the hands of the reader, the competitive prois that it groups all dance music as jazz, which is only true be- —s gram of classical music as opposed to jazz music will have been

cause we have no term which allows us to distinguish between given from that station. All the listeners will have a chance to the grades of jazz. We use the same term to describe the soft express their opinion and acomplete record will be made of the symphonic effects of Art Hickman, Ben Bernie, and Vincent __ results. We hope to announce the findings in an early number. Lopez as we use for the fifth-rate Five Melody Kings of Four = There should be some interesting letters after this contest.

Corners, Oklahoma. Mr. Freeman H. Talbot, that able musician responsible for

“T believe,” writes D. M. Craig, of Lamar, Missouri, “that the programs of KOA set down some of his thoughts about the the universal condemnation of jazz is contrary to the true feel- subject of jazz especially for this department. “For many years,” ing of a majority of radio listeners, if all music is classified as he says, music critics have been periodically announcing the jazz. Would these objectors want to stop the broadcasting of | death of jazz. Probably the so-called music of jazz is largely such organizations as those of Paul Whiteman, Vincent Lopez, __ responsible for the belief that it is moribund. To those who would Jean Goldkette, and many others?” Decidedly not. While there _ shed no tears over its demise, jazz displays a most disheartenare those who are utterly opposed to jazz whatever its origin, _ ing vitality. Phoenix like, it arises fresh after each reputed annithe more liberal among us recognize that jazz music hasavery _hilation.” Mr. Talbot continues: strong hold on a large percentage of the public of several conti- “Jazz has been called primitive, uncouth, banal. It has been nents, that it is not wholly as bad as it is pictured, and that, in charged with disrupting homes, weakening Church ties, and

moderation, jazz is excellent entertainment. undermining the morals of the nation. Personally, I feel that The trouble with broadcasting programs, and up to the past — jazz is not all bad—it is not clever enough for that. It may be six months this has been true of almost every American station, banal, and at times it is discouragingly stupid, but it is not esis that they have been too heavily loaded with this orchestra _ sentially bad. Lately, jazz has gathered to itself some notable

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1925 1925 e M. T. N. A. PROCEEDINGS defenders among the musically correct. Serious minded musi- To mention a specific type of program which has brought cians have perceived under the battered and tattered appear- § improvement in its tone, consider some of the “indirect adverance of jazz, evidence of a new vitality in music, a struggle tising” programs put on through the WEAF chain of stations. after a new form of expression, crude as the hieroglyphic of — Here is what the director of broadcasting for that station, Mr. J.

Cubism, but genuine art, nevertheless. A. Holman, says about them: “Programs have been presented “The moans, shrieks, cat call and sobs of jazz will eventu- —_—of a type that previously would have been considered imposally disappear, but the vibrancy of its stimulating rhythms will —_ sible by radio—impossible in the sense that they assumed too remain to be caught some time by amaster composeronanew __ high a degree of musical and general culture on the part of the work or series of works as revolutionary as the cacophonies of — radio audience. The public accepted them at their real value

Wagner.” and enthusiastically availed itself of their educational activities

How do all these remarks apply to present program? Well, ...No music was too “highbrow.” For example, George Barrére’s they are some of the signs—if indeed any are needed—which _Little Symphony Orchestra presented a series of chamber mushow that the old preponderance of jazz on programs is greatly _ sic recitals, which while beautiful and perfect gems of instrulessening. For some time, one of the two outstanding stationsin = mental music, are generally considered above the understandNew York City has had a rule, somewhat flexible, itis true, that | ing and appreciation of the average music lover. The interestno dance music can be broadcast until after ten thirty in the _ ing fact is that the American public welcomed the innovatio . . evening. Mr. Carl Dreher discusses this matter more fully on —_.The radio audience is not required to listen altogether to the another page of this number. The fact that the musical parts of sad stuff outlined by Mr. Nathan. The signs are unmistakable programs are being more devoted to more serious efforts by __ that the taste of the radio public is changing, and for the letter. stations in nearly every part of the country except Chicago, sim- (rest of article on radio broadcasting—not mentioning jazz.) ply means that there is less time left for jazz.

1925 ¢ M. T. N. A. Proceedings JAZZ AND AMERICAN MUSIC by Edwin J. Stringham It may seem to many that the discussion of Jazzin such a gath- | composers had to be imported, and when imported they fed us ering as this (Music Teachers National Association—Ed. note) — what they had learned abroad. When we brought forth a talent

is unwarranted and undignified, especially when commented — worthy of training there was no place but Europe to go and upon in a more or less tolerant manner; but the author of this _ obtain that training. Thus we were forced to adopt the idioms of article honestly believes there is some good in jazz and thatthe foreign nations. These conditions. together with the fact that subject deserves serious consideration on the part of every think- —_ our population did not begin to have a national consciousness ing musical pedagogue. During the progress of this essay, the | been observable), precluded any sort of Americanism in music, author hopes to set forth some of the reasons why jazz is of or in any of the arts, for that matter. value to American music; and if he does not succeed improving Now the nation has existed long enough to bear an identity his contention, he will have, at least, brought forth asubject for of its own, and we have aright to expect that our artistic expres-

thought and discussion. sions shall be distinctive and, we hope, original. It may take

Jazz, from a compositional standpoint, is divided into two __ centuries to arrive at the height of such a state; but, surely, the general classifications, i.e., good and bad. We have no intention _ signs of today lead one to believe that we have begun to arrive.

of considering the latter and will let it die of its own accord, as Jazz is one of the manifestations of this transformation and we hope it will. Jazz, of the quality Paul Whiteman is champi- = development. Art is always the expression of a people and an oning, is the only distinctive contribution America has givento age and if we may turn that saying “‘about face,” we can say the development of the art of music. Whatever else we have —_ with a certain amount of truth that the artistic products of our done in musical composition has been along lines already per- _ time reflect the people and the spirit of the age however much ceived and executed by other nations. This imitation, if you — we may like or dislike the result. will pardon the use of that word, has come of necessity. America As it stands today, we are imitating European nations less did not become a nation until after music had arrived atahigh —_and less and establishing a spirit in art that is unlike that of degree of attainment in foreign countries; we had no heritage —_—other nations and quite characteristic of ourselves. It is not saysave that which was imported. We had the immediate task of | ing too much to aver that America is the only nation of today preparing the material, social, and economic foundation of our _— producing a truly nationalistic school of musical composition, country. There was little or no time left for the development of — with the exception of Spain; and that distinctive mode of exour artistic nature, and what few musicians and music lovers _ pression is coming from no other source than jazz. This is a we had were brought up upon foreign music. Our artists and _ rather daring statement to make; but it is made in all sincerity

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1925 e M. T. N. A. PROCEEDINGS 1925 and with due respect to what is going on in the musical world Farwell, Skilton, and other in Indian idiom; and Burleigh, Dent, today. Recall, if you will, the musical characteristics of Euro- — Dett and others in the Negro idioms. The essential characterispean countries of our time and I am sure you will agree that __ tics of jazz were born in the music of the simple folk of our own there is so much international influence at work, so much ex- __ people. They were not invented or discovered by our composperimentation and so much direct imitation, that only America __ ers of the classical school. They were evident as germs in the

and Spain are producing music which is truly characteristic of | folk music of the Negro, seized upon the developed at large,

their respective peoples. and the resulting music adopted by the people of the country as

After so many years of adaptation it now looks as though we —a whole. To more the 75% of our population, jazz is the sole were about to create a school of musical composition that bids —_ means of musical expression and appreciation. However much fair to be peculiar to the people of these United States of America = we musical high-brows would desire it otherwise, such is the and, further, to be taken up by foreign nations—acompleteturn- _ truth as we see it and which is further substantiated by statising of the tables. Instead of being an imitative nation, we areto _ tics. So it seems that the basic qualities inherent in jazz do fulbecome a leading one, and that leadership is to come from the _fill the requirements for a nationalistic school—something which

inherent characteristics in jazz idioms. Already jazz is being __ our classical music of the present and past does not, did not, played in most foreign nations, and not a few serious compos- and could not hope to fulfill. ers of other lands are utilizing jazz idioms to advantage in their However, we are not content to let the matter rest here. There compositions. World travelers tell us that American jazzcanbe are additional considerations to observe if we are to consider heard in most ports of the world; but that only on our own soil —jazz as a serious American idiom, promising some reasonable can we hear jazz as it should be played. There is something init | degree of permanency. Jazz, as we know it and the exclusive that is so native to ourselves that other people are somewhat at _uses to which it has been put, is not, on the face of the matter, a loss when it comes to performance. Jazz is at once original —_ beyond its swaddling clothes in real musical development. Jazz, and peculiar to America, and, certainly, we have not enjoyed _ per se, is not worthy of such consideration on the part of the such a distinction before in our entire musical history. That is | serious composer; but that form of music does contain elements something worth while thinking about. That this should come _ that bid fair to become capable of being introduced into serious about through “popular” rather than serious, so-called, “classi- | music, with the result that the idiom will be accepted as a nacal” music is like rubbing the fur the wrong way and, conse- _ tional musical character of serious and dignified import.

quently, there are few of us who will admit the fact. The peculiar melodic and rhythmic elements of jazz invite As we have stated, there was a time when our composers attention. The harmonic schemes we often hear are worthy of were engrossed in either imitating European styles or trying to | any composer of serious music, well conceived and very effecmake something out of our native Indian and Negro music. It _ tively used; yet there is something distinctive in such usage that was soon learned that the Indian music did not lend itself readily marks it as being quite different from that of classical music, to idealized treatment except in a very limited degree. Like- —_ from which it was no doubt borrowed. The contrapuntal nature wise, Negro music had its limitations which could not be ex- —_— of jazz is a welcome introduction into popular music, even panded to any great extent, if one considered the true esthetical though it is, at present, a silly freedom of moving parts. Some elements of prime importance. Then, too, and by far the most __ day this license will be crystallized into something really worth important consideration, neither the Indian nor the Negro idi- while. Then too, the instrumentation of the best jazz orchestras, oms could be considered faithful and representative American __ such as that of Paul Whiteman, has injected a new life into the music. They did express types of Americans; but they did not —— music. and could not express the sentiments and characteristics of the Some really capable and serious composers and arrangers American people as a whole, as areal nationalistic school should. —_ have heard the call of jazz, with the result that we are hearing Nationalistic music, as its very basis, should be a type that = many jazz pieces that are really worth while as musical compoutilizes the musical expression of the common folk and should _ sitions, whether we consider them from the melodic, harmonic, be the national and general means of musical expression; there —_ contrapuntal, structural, instrumentation or esthetic standpoints. should be common and peculiar characteristics between the _It was not so long ago that we heard quite a bit about the dearth people and its music, a reversible equation. For example, the of American wood-wind players needed for our symphony ormusic of Spain voices the sentiments of the common people of __ chestras, if we wished to be free from foreign players. Schools that country; it has certain characteristics in its composition that were even established to train such players. Now jazz orchesstamps it as being of unquestioned Spanish origin, as a type, tras demand experts on all instruments, both common and rare, and it is the type of music generally adopted by the people of with the result that we have developed really capable artists. It

that country, in contrast to that of foreign idioms. was not so long ago that we heard a player in a jazz orchestra If we are to consider any type of music as a basis for our —_— play and make rapid changes from and to, an oboe, English Own nation, it must fulfill the requirements just enumerated. let —_ horn, saxophone, alto clarinet, and bass clarinet. The most prous see how jazz complies. Certainly we may throw outanycon- _ ficient symphony players of the past would have thrown up the

sideration of the so-called “classical” types we have produced _ sponge at such demands a few years ago. Now it is quite comas being ideal, even in the slightest degree; yes, in spite of the | mon and, be it said, the wood-wind players in the best jazz oroutstanding work done by MacDowell, Cadman, Lieurance, __ chestras are equal in artistry to their symphony brothers and, in

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1925 1925 e M. T. N. A. PROCEEDINGS addition, are given a much greater compensation than could be —_—‘ for a symphony or a sonata is possible through the infusion of

had in the very best symphony orchestras anywhere. jazz idioms! Jazz is the fun maker of the music world, and, as We are able to hear combinations of instruments in the best — such, far surpasses anything the classical music has ever ofjazz orchestras that were unheard of a few years ago, andeven _ fered. Then, too, jazz has a field of physical reaction all to itthough the results be criticized from the highest esthetical stan- — self—and a legitimate field, be it said. In the development of dards, they are as good, and often better, than can be heardin __ the essence of jazz, it is more than likely that the present-day some of our symphony orchestra. If we had to wait for sym- —_—jazz will undergo a tremendous change ere it shall reach the phonic writers to produce these results, we would have had to _ desired goal; but we have the firm conviction that it will arrive wait for some time—perhaps until doomsday. There isnoques- _and that music will be the better for its coming. tion in our mind that this new art of instrumentation, 1f one can There is a great value in jazz in the development of intellicall it that, will affect the writers of symphonic music and the — gent music lovers, a very potent educational factor in the musipersonnel of symphony orchestras all over the world. There is cal growth of our nation; but we are obliged to pass over this no question that jazz has borrowed heavily from classical mu- _ point with a mere reference, in due respect to the Musical Quarsic in every phase of musical construction; but we believe the —_terly which will present an article of mine on that question in the debt will be repaid with interest in due time. Meanwhile, wedo ___ near future. not think classical music will be the worse for the loan and the All these innovations due to jazz and the mediums of its per-

waiting. formance bear every earmark of becoming serious considerWe hasten to add, lest the listener forget, that we have refer- —_ ations, of forming the basis for a nationalistic school of our

ence only to the best type of jazz to be heard today and that we —_— country, and of virtually calling into being a distinctive Amerihave no tolerance with the squeaky, screeching, monkey-shin- __ can art which is bound to influence music as a whole. Jazz has ing jazz orchestras that are all too commonly heard. These are —_— unlimited possibilities which musical educators and other worknot to be classed as producers of music; all they do is to create —_ ers in the more serious musical fields will do well to guide and

a disturbance by means of rhythmical noise. develop rather than condemn wholesale. Jazz is here, and do One must not overlook the new life the better jazz writers = what we will, it will not be destroyed through condemnation. have introduced into musical forms. The symphonic poem, the |= What the outcome will be no one can predict; we can only guess, concerto, the opera, the symphony, sonata, and almost all musi- and it is our guess that jazz will be developed into a real, sane, cal structures of serious music are being utilized by jazz writ- —_ and vigorous art that will be worthy of the stamp, “An Ameriers, and who is there among us to say that the jazz writers have — can Art.” This will come when the elements of Jazz are refined

done them a wrong? and introduced into the serious classical types. If we do not It will not be long before we shall see jazz idioms freely — take advantage of the opportunity we might find ourselves outintroduced into our serious music. What a refreshing scherzo —_ done by foreign nations, as has happened with so many Yankee innovations.

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2 1926 January 13 ¢ The Nation MUSIC—TWO PARODIES by B. H. Haggin Mr. Damrosch had not been sure whether he ought to play the One might expect a similar result from the use of the idiom next number of his program, Modern Music Pleasant and _ of serious music by a composer of jazz; and judging from Unpleasant. He felt a sincere admiration for the composer’s | Gershwin’s Concerto for piano one would not be wrong. True, early works, but this—well, he would let the audience judge for —_ in selecting a form characterized by working-out, i.e., rhythmic itself; to my intense relief, for he had already exercised his usual manipulation of thematic material, Gershwin undertook only to

unwelcome last-minute discretion and sacrificed two of the apply to the melodic idiom of jazz the same treatment that is Schoenberg Five Pieces to his own wit in speech and program- —_ applied to the thematic idiom of serious music (the term memaking. I, for one, should gladly have forgone his opinion that —_lodic and thematic are used to express a difference, the signifigood music must express human aspirations and emotions, the — cance of which I shall refer to later). But—and this is the an-

love of father for son, son for father, brother for sister, and so swer to those who have been demanding such treatment for on down the line; nor should I have missed “The Ride of the =_jazz—-in so doing he undertook in effect to write serious music. Valkyrs,” which, though a stroke of slightly self-conscious wit, | For the difference in idiom, which is all that distinguishes a was not relevant, and The Beautiful Blue Danube, which was __ fox-trot from a Bach Bourree ostensibly in the same meter, is, not even witty. What, again, Loeffler’s Memories of My _ aside from the difference in melodic intervals (i.e., of pitch), Childhood had contributed to the occasion I did not know; and __s precisely a difference in rhythmic treatment. That is, in the foxit had taken longer than the two Schoenberg Pieces wouldhave _ trot every syncopation and rhythmic irregularity in the melodic done. But there had been fine moments, and one had arrived — embellishment only emphasizes the meter, implying it even

finally at Stravinsky’s Ragtime. when it is silent, as in the first languorous blues melody of the In music as in literature parody is produced by the use ofan second movement of the Concerto; but in the Bourree the meter idiom by one to whom it is foreign—foreign, be it noted, not —_is only aconvenience for notation and performance, while first through birth but through experience and training. Conversely, | importance belongs to the melodic voice; and this, free of the when an idiom is used, consciously or unconsciously, by oneto _ slightest bondage to the meter, assumes in its original form whom it is foreign, the result, whether intended or not, is al- |= whatever rhythmic shapes it pleases, which in the process of most inevitably parody. The term is applicable, then not only to being worked out are further transformed and integrated into

Casella’s In the Manner of but to a great deal of seri- | large rhythmic structures. As a result, while the themes of ously conceived music—most obviously to Kapellmeistermusik | Gershwin’s first movement were straight jazz, and, not very or such miserable stuff as Ernest Schelling’s Impressions ofan _ good jazz, the working out of these themes had all the characArtist’s Life, but even to some of the neo-classical parts of __ teristics of serious music and sounded like it, except that in Stravinsky’s Concerto and Sonata for Piano. And, whether this — writing serious music Gershwin succeeded in producing nothwas seriously conceived or not, it was applicable to his Ragtime. __ing better than a rather poor imitation. For the melodic idiom of jazz is distinctive, and needs, there- If on the other hand the second movement was first-rate, it fore, a composer completely at home in it to produce what is —_ was because, as a small form it required no more than the few

first-rate, i.e., first-rate of its own type. In the hands of — superb blues numbers that he strung together, quite indistinStravinsky, therefore, it resulted in parody. Listening toa jazz guishable in type from his blues numbers outside the Concerto. orchestra over the radio one hears one stereotyped melodic de- — This is quite significant, for, as it happens, we find in serious vice follow another (I might include the equally stereotyped — music the use of folk-song limited almost entirely to small forms, devices of orchestration) until all these devices, which together __ in particular to the middle, lesser movements of symphonic make up the melodic idiom of jazz, become indistinguishable — works; and it has even been contended that the melodies of folkand fade into an accompanying patter without significance; and = music are not the stuff of which a sonata-allegro movement can One is conscious only of the ceaseless percussion of the piano __ be built since they resist the rhythmic manipulation to which and guitar. It is this effect that Stravinsky reproduced by reeling themes are amenable, and that they have in fact been used for off the clichés one after another, or rather, by barely suggesting this purpose very little, if at all. them and superimposing these snatches on a too, too solid plunk- The significance of this is that the problem of American music plunk-plunk-plunk. This became the sole reality; the rest, by _—_ and of its relation to jazz has been misconceived and misstated the time the recapitulation started it all over again, was sheer — From the fact that jazz is a type of American folk-music it has nonsense; and the combination was a ghastly commentary in __ been inferred that it must provide the material for any serious

purely musical terms. music which is to be called American. But the definition of 443

1926 JANUARY 13 © NEW REPUBLIC American serious music is, serious music—i.e., music in the _ distinctively symphonic movements will be based on symphonic European tradition—by an American; and even the few frag- = material. To write such a movement, then, Gershwin must, ments left by Griffes demonstrate that this no more dependson _ forgetting jazz for the moment if necessary, assimilate this maAmerican folk-music for its material than similar music by _ terial and the technique of handling it; in working with jazz, Europeans depends on European folk-music. From European _ on the other hand, he had better forget about symphonic precedent we may expect an American symphonic work to in- | movements and their technique and apply to the material the clude jazz, when at all, only in its lesser movements, while the —_ treatment it suggests, of which he is already a master.

January 13 ¢ New Republic THE JAZZ PROBLEM by Edmund Wilson The efforts of popular jazz and serious musical art to effect a above, their invincibly alien spirit and technique had the effect junction and a marriage continue unabated. In fact, the struggle of blighting the jazz and rendering it uninteresting. In the case has furnished the chief source of interest of the new music of — of Gershwin, the jazz itself, which is his natural vehicle of ex-

the season. pression, does not lack vivacity or color: in 135th Street it is

On one hand the Jazzberries of Louis Gruenberg and the = admirable—especially in such passages as the prelude, where Piano Concerto of Arthur Honegger, both played under the aus- _he elicits sinister and disturbing effects from the characteristic pices of the League of Composers, apply tothe rhythms of popu- _ voices of the jazz orchestra. But it gives the impression of emerglar music the fastidious selective formula of modern impres- _ing in blocks from a background of conventional opera which sionism, and, in splitting them up and shaving them down, __has nothing in common with it and which, beside the vulgar largely rob them of their power. On the other hand, Mr.George _ vitality of the jazz, tends to take on the aspect of an imposture. Gershwin, parallel with his regular business of turning out mu- More artistically satisfactory than any of these compositions sical comedies, has proceeded with his assault on the concert = was Aaron Copland’s Music for the Theatre played at one of the hall from the direction of Broadway. The present writer was un- = League of Composers’ concerts. There are traces of Stravinsky able to hear Gershwin’s new Piano Concerto played by the New __ in Mr. Copland; but he is not an imitator of Stravinsky—rather, York Symphony Society (it has been discussed elsewhere inthe he has a similar gift for conveying the excitement, the emotion, New Republic); but his one-act Negro opera, 135th Street, was __ of the time, which has its popular expression in jazz, in a distinone of the most interesting features of Paul Whiteman’s recent guished musical form. His vitality is as spontaneous as his culconcert in Carnegie Hall. This opera was first produced three ture is genuine. And there is probably more musical drama in years ago in George White’s Scandals and its origin probably _his untitled and unanotated Music for the Theatre than in the explains the disappointment we feel in itas adrama when we _ whole of Gershwin’s opera. see it on amore pretentious stage. It is impossible to tell whether The career of Mr. Paul Whiteman, at whose concerts in 135th Street is to be taken as tragedy or burlesque. The scene is | Carnegie Hall the Gershwin opera was sung, is another intera Negro joint in Harlem: one of the girls is in love with a pro- _ esting episode in the artistic development of jazz. Mr. Whiteman, fessional gambler; the latter announces to the proprietor, though = as everybody knows, was formerly the leader of the most popunot in the presence of his sweetheart, that he is going to visithis —_lar hotel dance orchestra in the United States. Now he occupies dear old mammy, whom he has not seen in many years. The _—a different position: he appears in vaudeville and gives concafe fills with people; the girl and her lover are together; the — certs; his orchestra has become an entertainment, an artistic latter suddenly receives a telegram and leaves the room, refus- — performance, in itself. In listening to a whole evening of Paul ing to divulge its contents to his jealous companion; interested | Whiteman, we cannot always rid ourselves of the feeling— parties induce her to believe that the telegram is from another — which obtrudes itself also, and to a greater degree, in the case woman and when her lover returns, she immediately shoots him. of Vincent Lopez—that we should enjoy the music more if we He dies; but not before he has had an opportunity to hand her _— were eating and talking while we listened to it. But, on the other the telegram in self-justification; it says, “It is no use tocome. — hand, Paul Whiteman’s orchestra nowadays would never do in Your mammy has been dead three years.” Mr. Gershwin’s mu- _—_ a hotel; and I do not know whether it is any use for dancing. No sic, however, evidently aims at a certain dignity; a prologue |§ modern French composer could have robbed the Charleston imitated from Pagliacci introduces a score of which most of the |= music more completely of the qualities which make people setting of the action speaks with the conventional tragic accents | dance the Charleston to it than, by reducing it to its abstract of modern Italian opera. This setting cements together separate patter, Mr. Whiteman has. He has refined and disciplined his “numbers” in a vein of sophisticated jazz—a mammy song, a __ orchestra to a point of individuality and distinction where it love song and a “blues.” And here again the attempt to combine — would be likely to embarrass dancers and diners. Not that it is jazz with some more respectable musical idiom seems mechani- _ free from a virtuosity rather more curious than distinguished. cal and unsatisfactory. In the case of the composers mentioned § Among the features of Mr. Whiteman’s recent concerts were a

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JANUARY 20 ¢ THE NATION 1926 pair of pianists who played the same compositions at the same opments I have discussed above. It is as plain from his own time on two different pianos in exact synchronization and with — compositions as it was from his musical criticism that the probthe effect of automatic piano players; andamanwhoperformed __ lems and the struggles of contemporary music do not interest a duet on a cornet and a clarinet, played Pop Goes the Weasel him. I did not care much for his Jurgen, a symphonic poem on a violin held in sixty-five different positions and finally ren- _ played earlier in the season by the New York Symphonic Socidered Hiawatha on an old bicycle pump. But Whiteman has _ ety. It seemed rather syrupy and insipid. These are qualities, to drilled his musicians to better artistic purpose. When he makes __ be sure, of which Mr. Cabell himself is by no means guiltless; a speech, as he did at Carnegie Hall, we realize how much his _ but there are also to be found in his novel a genuine note of orchestra owes its peculiar excellence to its conductor, how far _ natural magic and a sinister malaise. That Mr. Taylor desired to he has succeeded in investing it with his own characteristics. capture at least the second of these elements his program notes Whiteman’s voice has precisely the qualities of one of his own _ show; but, to this author at least, he failed to evoke either Mother muted trombones: he speaks with a hard Western r, but his | Sereda or Koshchei the Deathless. He seems too easy-going, phrases have a precision and economy, a sharp edge andame- _ too amiable, too smooth, to be deeply troubled by the unknown tallic resonance. And this is the character that his instrument quantities which these symbols represent; he leaves out the distake on when they depart furthest from their function of play- _ turbing elements of Jurgen, as he did those of Through the Looking for other people to dance and come closest, apparently, to ing Glass. Mr. Whiteman’s heart; a little dry, a little deliberate, a little lack- But in Circus Day he has a subject as amiable as possible ing in lyric ecstasy, but very fastidious and elegant, andstamped —_ and he makes of it as charming as possible a piece of descrip-

with the ideal of perfection. tive music. With great ingenuity at finding musical equivalents Mr. Deems Taylor has hitherto been rather conspicuous for __ for roaring lions, jugglers, clowns, and the other features of the his avoidance of the universal fashion. He has however, in Cir- _ old-fashioned circus, he combines a taste which always restrains cus Day, which was played at the Whiteman concerts, made use him from overdoing his effects and sacrificing music to clever-

of jazz material. Nevertheless, he still stands outside the devel- = ness. Circus Day way perhaps the happiest number of the Whiteman concerts.

January 20 ¢ The Nation MUSIC—JAZZ LEAVES HOME by Marian Tyler There is no such thing as a Jazz concert. There are concerts of For dancing is the only active recreation left to our poor oversymphonic music influenced by jazz, and there are programs of entertained bodies. The radio does our singing, and automotrue jazz, namely, fox-trots. The latter are not concerts, how- _ biles do our walking; but our dancing we still do for ourselves. ever, but dances—whether the audience keeps its seat or not. | When we tire of movie horsemanship or Chautauqua oratory So Paul Whiteman in his recent concerts in New York put only — we don’t know how to ride or orate for ourselves. So we wait two numbers of sure-enough jazz on the program. Throughthose — until the pressure is intolerable—then we dance. No wonder numbers all Carnegie Hall swayed in its seat and shuffled sur- _‘ that we are a little feverish about it, and that the fox-trot seethes

reptitiously. To the rest of the program it listened. with accumulated vitality. We have not come to the point of It is no reproach in music to be called adance-form. Probably | admitting how bored we are with watching and listening and the first music in the world grew out of tribal dances. Awhole —_ admiring the skill of professional performers, but it is true none school is built around the theory that music can best be taught by _ the less. Aconcert by Kreisler cannot give us half the thrill we dance-like exercises. Folk songs and dances are inextricably —_ get from our own crude reading of a sonata. mixed. The gavottes and sarabandes and minuets of the seven- As soon as you make the fox-trot a concert number it loses teenth century created new musical forms which have long _its virtue. It is one more boresome thing to listen to, perhaps outlasted their period. The fox-trot is looked upon as a sort of | less boresome than the classics because it is only one remove disreputable descendant of the dances of the past, yet ina way, it from a motor activity. Not that we can keep it out of concerts, has more energy than its ancestors. It is hard to believe that the | but what goes over is a by-product. The essential rhythm of the stately minuet ever meant as much as the fox-trot means inthe — fox-trot—the plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk that B. H. Haggin delives of modern Americans, yet it was inserted bodily into hun- _ scribed in these pages the other day—is not suitable for concert dreds of classic sonatas. Those of us who dislike fox-trots are | music except in very short quotations. Some of the rhythmic going to be rather unhappy with the music of the next few years. | embroidery can go over, and the new orchestral colors—the We have already seen so-called serious composers borrowrhythms __ sour pervasive melancholy of the saxophones, the trombones’ from jazz and jazz composers borrow harmonies from the seri- harsh cynicism. Most of all jazz can lend symphonic music large ous moderns until the two are often indistinguishable. We shall | quantities of humor—not the sly ironic smile that serious see the fox-trot and its child, the Charleston, enthroned still higher. | moderns have extracted with such effort and pride, but a frank

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1926 JANUARY 30 ¢ LITERARY DIGEST guffaw. The clowns and elephants of Deems Taylor’s graphic __ ing. It is a one-act sketch, and the soloists do an extravagant Circus Day, as scored by Ferdie Grofé, caused the audience to _ parody of grand operatic heroics against a background flippant, rock with laughter—a thing which never happens at the Boston — syncopated, and full of fox-trots in keeping with the cabaret Symphony. The “Huckleberry Finn” movement of Mr. Grofé’s__ scene. “Ladies and gentlemen,” runs the recitative prologue granown Mississippi’ is an amusing cartoon; and George Gershwin’s —_ diloquently, ‘come with me to Mike’s colored saloon”; and Mike

jazz opera, 135th Street, is full of delicious musical burlesque. — follows with an aria: “Sweep on, you lazy nigger; I got those 135th Street is not the jazz opera for which the world is wait- | Blue Monday Blues.”

January 30 e Literary Digest

KING JAZZ AND THE JAZZ KINGS It came to pass that a certain rich man, who owns a wonderful — posed of young men not yet making music their profession. estate near Washington, was giving a party—no; to use the jazz §_ There are seventy-five big theaters with orchestras playing jazz dialect of the day, this butter-and-egg man was “throwing” a _ part of the time, five hundred and fifty moving-picture orchesparty. He had arranged to have one on the jazz kings on hand __tras playing jazz most of the time, more than a hundred hotel with his orchestra, regardless of expense. His choice,on which _ orchestras mostly jazzing the theme, more than two hundred he prided himself, was Vincent Lopez. At the eleventh hour his _and fifty recognized cabarets and night clubs devoting their time wife—the rich man’s wife—had a feeling that, toimpartafinal to glorifying jazz exclusively, and hundreds of clubs, ranging touch of luster to the occasion, to satisfy the most exacting tastes | from the cellars of Greenwich Village to the back rooms of and eclipse not only every party that had yet been “thrown” but = Harlem, where nothing but jazz goes. also every other one that was likely to be “thrown” one thing The theater musicians alone, on a basis of thirty week a year, yet was needful, and that was the presence of a certain other —_are paid five million dollars, according to the musicians’ union. jazz king, Paul Whiteman, duly attended by his orchestra. On that basis New York spends more than fifty million dollars a Very well. The story goes on, as related by Paul Kinkead, — year for jazz music. The figure is so appalling the musicians’ that Mr. Rich Man called Whiteman on the telephone and told —_ union refuses to make any close estimate. him to fix a price. Whiteman replied that his orchestra was en- The estimates of experts range from twenty-five million dolgaged for a big function and could not break the agreement. _lars a year to one hundred million dollars a year for the New The man persisted, and asked Whiteman if he wouldcome, pro- = York district, and they estimate that New York spends one-fourth vided he was released from the other host. Then he called the — of the American jazz budget. On that basis, the total is anyman who was giving the party in New York and pleaded with — where from one hundred million dollars to four hundred milhim to release Whiteman. The New Yorker consented, and _lion dollars a year for jazz music. Since music itself is a minor Whiteman was told to name a figure. Telling the story in Lib- _ part of the expense of the average entertainment, one may fig-

erty, Mr. Kinkead continues: ure for himself without the aid of logarithms what America is He named one that sounded like a band statement, and was _ spending in connection with jazz. told to bring his musicians. That night the hostess had her little The range of prices for musicians is so great it is impossible triumph with Vincent Lopez at one end of the dance floor and _to figure from a purely salary basis. You can hire a jazz orchesPaul Whiteman at the other, one orchestra starting as soon as__ tra for fifty dollars an evening—and up, with the accent on the the other concluded a dance number. The bill, it was rumored up. in Washington, was twelve thousand dollars for music, but what Moreover, it is pointed out that jazz is breaking down social mattered it? They had the two leading jazz orchestras of the __ barriers in a way that to some beholders is alarming, while to

world. others it affords an encouraging foretaste of the brotherhood of After which it is no great strain on the imagination to grasp §_man. Some of the wealthiest and most stable families in the

the idea that the United States “is paying at least one hundred —_ country have been drawn into the jazz maelstrom in one way or million dollars a year for seductive syncopation to the musi- —_ another. Now we have the eighteen-year-old son of Mr. Otto H.

cians alone.” Moreover: Kahn—“banker, international financier and New York’s greatAmerica, England, Germany, Japan, the whole world, is jazz est patron of grand opera”—becoming a jazz king on his own mad. In New York City approximately twenty-five thousandmen account and making more money than he knows what to do and a couple of thousand women are wailing through saxo- _— with. And anon we read of Miss Ellin Mackay, daughter of Mr. phones or playing musical instruments in more than three thou- Clarence H. Mackay—“pillar of high finance and President of sand orchestras, most of them specializing in jazz. It reaches the Postal Telegraph Company’—braving her father’s displeaeverywhere. There are ten thousand two hundred union musi- _ sure to become the runaway bride of another jazz king—lIrving cians in New York City, and more than fifteen thousand inde- _ Berlin, whose first bid for fame was made as “the singing waiter” pendents. There are one thousand four hundred recognized or- _at “Nigger Mike’s” Chinatown saloon and restaurant. Of young chestras and almost twice as many small ones, mostly com- _—‘ Kahn’s case we read:

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JANUARY 30 ¢ LITERARY DIGEST 1926 “There is a boy who will not reach his nineteenth birthday “The youngster threw back his head and burst into a genuuntil after this is printed, who is making more money ina year _ ine laugh, tickled to death that he had put it over.

than the President of the United States receives. This boy is “*Well,’ he said finally, ‘I’d make good at it, wouldn’t I?

Roger Wolf Kahn, son of Otto H. Kahn. Wasn't the service satisfactory?’ “The boy is making so much money he doesn’t know just “Young Kahn had to smash through the barrier of wealth, of how much—because, no matter how fast he makes, it he is social standing, of musical prejudice, to get started for the pouring it out hiring the highest priced jazz artists inthe coun- _ goal he had selected for himself. The Kahn family is musical. try, and promoting jazz de luxe. His newest idea is the Club The father, Otto H. Kahn, has for many years been America’s Fifth Avenue—the last word in New York night clubs, five- —_ greatest patron of grand opera, and he is just as conservative dollar cover charge and everything extra, probably a gold pad- —as grand opera and banking will make a man. When it was

lock for each guest. announced that his son, then just seventeen years of age, had

“The proposal to raid upper Fifth Avenue and establish the — organized a jazz orchestra., was planning to make his debut as first night club in the midst of exclusiveness furnished an- __ leader of his own orchestra at the Knickerbocker Grill, and other thrill to New York—and another jar to the Kahn family. __ that he intended to get into the business of improving the breed In fact, the big project was held in abeyance, waiting the con- _ of jazz, the father put down a well-shod but fairly emphatic sent of the father. But, since young Roger Wolf has not yet = foot. Coincidentally, the musicians’ union put down both feet lost an argument, the Club Fifth Avenue project, which is in- —_and, as aresult, Roger Wolf Kahn (himself, in person) did not tended to give New York’s most exclusive set the same chance _—_ appear at the Grill as advertised.

to have fun as the rest of the people, probably will go over; “He lost that argument temporarily. But he did not change and, as a financial proposition, it is the soundest of them all. his mind. Instead of being discouraged, he went before a com“In addition to organizing and directing the world’s highest mittee of the musicians’ union, took an examination, qualipriced (and, some musicians declare, the best) jazz orchestra, fied as drummer, and, after satisfying the committee that he directing and controlling twelve others, writing songs andcom- —_ understood orchestral drumming, he played half a dozen inposing musical comedies, this boy is organizing and laying — struments for them and became a qualified member of the plans for a great semisymphonic orchestra to develop the fox —_ union.

trot theme and to place jazz on a higher standard as a distinc- “Once convinced of the boy’s sincerity, the Kahn family

tive type of American music. encouraged and backed him, so the delayed opening was a big “I wanted to see this young fellow who dropped out of success, with a brilliant assemblage present, led by his father society and amateur music into the middle of Tin Pan Alley and and his father’s friends. Roger Wolf Kahn, at seventeen, caused a splash that startled the musical world, who,inayear stepped onto the leader’s stand and waved the highest priced and a half, has built up a musical organization rivaling those —_ baton in musical history. of Paul Whiteman and Vincent Lopez, and threatening to pass “How he convinced his father of the soundness of his idea

them. he alone knows—but he knew more about the situation and “Bert Cooper, who has helped manage young Kahn’s af- __ the financial possibilities of the jazz than his father suspected fairs, made an appointment with me for eleven o’clock. Atthat | and we are told further: Roger Kahn does not claim the leadhour I found the office of Roger Wolf Kahn—the name bla- — ership—yet. He says Whiteman is the leader in organization zoned on the windows larger than the lettering on his father’s and financially, but when his own plans are complete, Kahn bank, and just as big as that of Irving Berlin, whose office is —_ will, I believe, assume the supreme position. He is working up-stairs above it. A young fellow was alone in the office. I | toward the organization of a great semi-symphonic orchestra asked for Mr. Cooper and, as he ceased straightening up the __ that will develop a distinct and higher type of American mu-

desk, the boy said: Sic. ‘Mr. Cooper will not be down to-day.’ “Once convinced that the boy’s ideas were practical, Otto < . as H.IKahn encouraged andfor backed him to Itheasked. limit. It may May leave a note him?’ , ; have . jarred him to hear drums, oboe, and saxophone jazzing the “The boy scurried around, found paper and pencil, placeda § ‘Meditation’ from Thais, but he did not weaken. The boy

chair for me at a desk, and for half an hour kept busy waiting on — showed surprising aptitude for business and for organization.

me. Then the publicity manager came in, andknewme.Sowe _Instead of proving a ‘sap’ for the Broadway ‘wise ones,’ he sat down and talked of Roger Wolf Kahn, his past, present, | convinced even the hardest boiled eggs in Tin Pan Alley that future, his morals, his manners, his prospects—discussing him _he ‘is the goods.’ He opened an office, selected efficient aids, freely and somewhat breezily. I noticed the boy seemed as _and proved himself an adept in choosing musicians. He abandelighted as a mischievous kid and I became suspicious. doned his plan of going to college at Princeton, and decided

“Ts this Mr. Kahn?’ I demanded. to devote his life to music, and to the development of what we “*Yes—TI thought you knew him,’ ejaculated the publicity call jazz into a distinctive form of American musical expres-

man, as he introduced us. sion.” “*T thought you were the office boy,’ I exclaimed.

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1926 JANUARY 30 ¢ LITERARY DIGEST “He organized his own orchestra, which he leads in person ___ do it, and I want to contribute something toward its developat the Biltmore twice a day. It is the highest paid jazz orches- — ment.’

tra in the world, and composed of artists chosen from the best “Is he] ine th ? Listen! bands in the country. Besides that, he controls the new por- Sie fearning te games Listen: ters, the Dopey Dozen, the Society Serenaders, the Mayfair “*We’re not off the nut yet. But we’re coming.’

Melodians, a female orchestra called the Debutantes, and sev- “He j , ng to talk jazz

eral others, and is ready to supply jazz wholesale or retail, day © 1S CVE Near Hing 10 tals Jazz language. or night. He asks and receives higher prices than any one in “The romance of Ellin Mackay and her jazz king has drawn New York. My guess is that, after paying the highest prices to attention to Irving Berlin’s extraordinary career. The New York performers, he is making about two thousand five hundred —_— Times tells us that he became the prince of popular song writdollars a week. Which is fair for a nineteen-year-old boy. ers without being able to read music or play on the piano in “Among the songs he has written are: J Love You Sincerely, any but one key. As this writer relates: Nobody Loves Me, Let Me Be the One for You, Why? and a “““He was brought to this country from Russia when he was

pretentious composition called Pep. four years old. His father, a rabbi, fled from his home to es“His greatest triumph tho, he believes, lies in the fact that | cape persecution. Isadore Baline, as Berlin was then known, he persuaded the Biltmore to rescind its rule requiring formal = was the youngest of eight children, six of whom faced the

dress for all evening dancing and dining. As we read: battle of life in the basement of a Monroe Street tenement “He argued against if from the time his orchestra was se- where the parents, well-nigh destitute, found refuge.’ lected to play the dance music, and finally triumphed, so now ““Issy’ Baline, as he was then called, lived the life of the visitors who have left their formal clothes athome may dance average youngster of the neighborhood, selling newspapers, to his music. He thinks jazz and formal clothes often make a _ picking up odd pennies and not paying too much attention to

discord. school, in which he never progressed beyond the primary “*T don’t know when I started in music,’ he told me. ‘Ever — grades. When he became old enough to take a steady job, he since I can remember I loved it. There was something in me ___ drifted into the occupation of ‘singing waiter.’ that made music. I commenced with the violin when I was six “His first position in that capacity was with ‘Nigger Mike’ years old and worked on it thirteen years. I took up drums and Salter, who ran a cabaret at 12 Pell Street, in the heart of the studied symphonic drumming for two years. I tried almost _—_ old-time Chinatown. He stayed there for many years, singing every instrument. For a long time I was an outsider, an ama- _ the songs of the day as they were ground out. teur, I happened to be the son of a rich man, which is a good “Gradually, “Issy” Baline became bolder and bolder in adaptthing or not, according to the way one uses or abuses it. The —_ ing words of his own to the tunes. He also learned to pick out real musical fellows probably thought my love of music was _ melodies with one finger on the dilapidated piano the resort just the fad of a rich man’s kid. I did not know how to get —_ afforded. Later he worked in ‘Jimmy’ Kelly’s place in Union acquainted with them. I used to slip away, so no one would Square and in other places singing the songs as he served steins know who I was, and try to get acquainted. After wandering — of beer or sandwiches or what-not. around, I used to go to Ditson’s store, where they knew me, “Finally he composed his own song and offered it to a puband loaf around, playing all the different instruments. I found __ lisher. Authorities seem to differ on what this song was. His the saxophone there, and in playing it commenced to realize —_ official biographer, Alexander Wollcott, in his recently pubits possibilities. I got acquainted with some musical fellows, lished book, said that it was Marie From Sunny Italy. Sometoo. Probably it was the saxophone that gave me the entree to —_ where in this period he changed his name to Irving Berlin and

the best jazz circles.’ , turned all of his talent to song writing.

““My career? Well, my ambition is to organize a great semi- “The songs he composed began to sell readily and he was symphonic orchestra, something after the style of Paul — soon on the way to the song writers’ paradise. His first great Whiteman’s. I think Whiteman was the first really to under- = success was Alexander’s Ragtime Band. This song is said to stand jazz and to realize the possibilities of the fox-trot vogue; | have sold more than 2,000,000 copies and to have been played to take it seriously. I believe he was right. None of us under- _all over the world. He became a partner in an important music stands it fully; the new music is in a developing stage, and _ publishing concern known as Waterson, Berlin & Snyder, from

from it something new and fine will come.’ which he retired in 1924 to found Irving Berlin, Inc., at 1607 “Tam working now on asymphony adjusted to the popular § Broadway. vogue; a sort of Americana. I am working some of the best of “Besides his songs he has written the scores of musical the Negro spirituals into the main theme, and try to develop | comedies. He is a theater owner as well as producer, having something typically American in music. It may be Iam not __ launched the series of Music Box Revues. His latest contributhe one best qualified to do this, and that some great genius __ tion to the melodies of Broadway was the score of The Co-

will arise to perfect it.’ coanuts, in which the four Marx brothers are appearing.

“We are not fully up to the possibilities of this new type of “He was drafted during the World War and found himself in musical expression. There are glaring faults, musically,inmost — the Twentieth Infantry, 152d Depot Brigade, at Camp Upton, of the jazz, and these faults must be eradicated. Some one will |= Yaphank, L. I. While there he wrote a soldier revue called Yip,

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FEBRUARY 1 ¢ METRONOME 1926 Yip, Yaphank, in which his song, Oh, HowI Hate toGet Upin __als were flying thick and fast and the song was hailed as Berlin’s

the Morning, was introduced. valedictory in music to Miss Mackay.

“During the Democratic National Convention in Madison “Commentators on Berlin’s life agree that he can not read Square Garden two summers ago he wrote We’ll All Go Voting music, does not know the instruments of the orchestra and plays

for Al, a tribute of gratitude and affection to Gov. Alfred E __ the piano in a solitary key. He has a piano which is equipped Smith, another who began on the lower East Side[...sic]tohis with a shifting device which enables him to play in that key attachment to Miss Mackay. This, however, Berlin denied. Then __ while the piano transposes. His melodies are dictated to a musihe wrote Remember.This came at about the time when the deni- _cal_ assistant.”

February 1 ¢ Metronome IS JAZZ COMING OR GOING? by Cesar Saerchinger In America, if at any time of day you put on radio-phones,—and —_ instrumentation a new orchestra was born, which grew out of who in America has no radio apparatus?—-you hear on all wave the haphazard combination of Negro musicians. Alexander’s lengths, with very few exceptions, the same odd piece. Atleast, | Ragtime Band by Irving Berlin was the first great hit of the new you fancy you hear the same piece all the time, if you are not well epoch and the ragtime bands, consisting mostly of Negroes, posted on the repertoire of the Jazz bands. To one whois unini- —_— soon flooded the country.

tiated it does not seem to be music at all: from New York, Chi- The historians of Jazz date its birth from Irving Berlin’s Pack cago, Indianapolis, and Waco, Texas, the same rhythmical noise Up Your Sins, a purely instrumental foxtrot, in which the comis transmitted to him, so that he might easily imagine Americans _ poser already makes professional use of the concentrated, suto be a queer tribe of natives, who are everywhere, at the same — perabundant helter-skelter syncopation, as well as the contra-

time, performing a uniform and stirring rite. puntal extravaganzas of fully developed Jazz (both of which This 1s Jazz. America is under the spell of Jazz. Well, Europe _ originated in the improvisation of the Negro musicians). Other is about to follow it in this respect, and Europe has a fairly good = composers (the title is really libel) have enlarged on the style; idea of what constitutes Jazz. But Europe always receives only — there came Vincent Rose with Linger Awhile, then Brahms’ the respective end products; it does not know how itdeveloped § Limehouse Blues and many other “blues” with their melancholy

and therefore can hardly form an idea as to the future that is strain, many “medleys” and countless foxtrots in major and open to this cultural attainment. In America itis taken seriously = minor. In the meanwhile there also arrived Jazz-operettas by and perhaps this is justified; soon the German professors will —=‘ Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern and others, and Berlin’s famous take it seriously too and write lengthy historical treatises about © Music Box Revue, with a permanent theatre in New York.

it. In the meanwhile I wish to point out just a few entirely “ob- Beyond the above mentioned, the development of Jazz (it

vious” facts. became Super-Jazz and “symphonic syncopation,” but the fine

Before Jazz there was ragtime, and ragtime originated with —_appellations do not suit it)—is purely in the line of sound, hence the Negroes. In the Negro song—the so-called “spiritual,” which a matter depending on the Jazz orchestra. The trick today is not was sung by the slaves on the plantations, we already find syn- —_in the hands of the composer but rests with the musical direccopation, the odd accent on the short beat, or even on apause. ___ tors and orchestrators. These alone are fully familiar with the Investigators have even discovered that the basic form of the —_ new idiom, the new refinements of tone color, and here lies the Negro rhythm lives on in Africa, for the half-savage tribes beat —_ secret as well as the weakness of Jazz.

it on their half-savage drums. Then, when in 1913, people be- The Jazz orchestra of today (in the following I am quoting gan to cultivate the lovely new barbaric dances, in the dives of | some of the statements by Deems Taylor in the first—and only— San Francisco, the music was furnished by Negroes. Therefore | number of Music, New York, 1924) is something fascinating, it was truly popular music, for and by the people. whence the —_ new and unheard of. It is new because its beginnings were en-

dances and the original melodies came, must be left to the his- _tirely independent of the classic orchestra, because these betorians, but the lost tribes of Israel who wander about New York’s —_ginnings were in accordance with an absolutely crude taste. The

Broadway, soon took care of their profitable exploitation. exotic strain was there from the beginning and was not introIn America, anything in the way of popular music that hap- | duced subsequently by literature or reflection. It is the orchespened to take the popular fancy,—one after the other—the Coon __ tra of the western East, not of the eastern West, of the Pacific Song, the sentimental Heart Song, the exotically humming Uku- _and not the Atlantic world.

lele Song from Hawaii, even the New Vienna Kiss-Waltz, was The first Negro jazz bands (I first heard one in a New York adapted to the new dance literature. The song with words, gave __ restaurant during the first year of the war) consisted of piano place to the instrumental song (the processors will say that this and violin, trombone, clarinet, piston cornet, banjo, and perhappened once before in the history of music)and withthe new cussion instruments. These later instruments (called “traps’’)

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1926 FEBRUARY 1 ¢ METRONOME were the main thing and the Negro who worked with all these Paul Whiteman, who was originally a violist in a symphony drums, cymbals, bells, wooden boxes, sandpaper, etc., wasade- —_ orchestra, gradually gathered his “boys” and developed their techmon with supernatural-unearthly ability. It was incredible what _ nic in daily rehearsals. Until recently they played nightly in the he improvised in the way of grotesque rhythmic “stunts” and still | Palais Royal, a fashionable New York restaurant. On February

remained the backbone of the whole thing. The work on the wind 12, 1924—perhaps a milestone in the history of music—they instruments had the same improvisational character, but in the gave their first concert in Aeolian Hall, and a week later—before line of counterpoint. The clarinetist or cornetist suddenly inter- | asold-out house, in the enormous Carnegie Hall. Since then they rupted his melody in order to disport himself in gay cadenzas or __ have been traveling on the continent, as Paul Whiteman’s Conroguish extravagances, without, however, dropping out of the cert Orchestra (no longer as a Jazz band), and are the sensation of rhythmic construction. The brass never played openly, but al- _ the day. ways with dampers, so that it bleated and the clarinet, for the And what do they play? That is Whitman’s dilemma. The old most part played in a high, seldom heard register. The glissando _hits have only historical value now. As “specimens” they are still of the trombone, the “yowling, ” had become a regular practice. | presented, sometimes in new and sometimes in the old make-up. Only the violin kept to the melody and the piano furnished the | Then came arrangements or “adaptations.” Whiteman’s adapter, harmonic and rhythmic foundation. The general color was usu- _ Ferdie Grofé, is a clever conjurer; he makes new things out of old ally disagreeable—but new, barbaric and yet charming. material. He also takes “popular classic’ —-simple songs and piThat was the original form of the Jazz band. The new addi- —_ ano pieces—dresses them up in great style and—in despair—he tions are the saxophones and its varieties, as well as horns, tu- | evenseizes upon well known Muscovite specialties, like the Volga bas, bassoons, balancing of the whole by doubling some, and _ song, Rachmaninoff’s C-sharp minor Prelude, or the “Hymn to then an incredible technic of the individual players, anda posi- the Sun” from Cog d’Or—to transform them into Jazz. He calls tively stunning refinement of the tone-color shading. Not only _ that “flavoring a selection borrowed themes.” Only he can not one, but six different dampers are used today on an instrument compose. If he could, he would be the man we want—the Mesin order to bring out the most varied shades. The percussion __ siah of Jazz. instruments—once the mainstay, is today fully subdued and in- However, to the others, the “legitimate” American composfluences the tone color more than the accent. The perfect Jazz ers, the idiom is unknown. Three or four have tried their hand at orchestra could easily dispense with its kettle drums—its it. Victor Herbert’s Suite of Serenades—written for Jazz orches-

rhythms would be no less piquant. tra, and played in Whiteman’s first concert, according to authoriThe Jazz orchestra at the present time is already subject toa _ tative opinion, is still conceived in the old orchestra style. The certain uniform pattern. The classic example, Paul Whiteman’s three American Music Numbers by Eastwood Lane, which I heard orchestra, consists of twenty-three men with thirty-six instruments. | Whiteman’s band play in New York, are beginnings toward someThis fact alone shows the difference between it andthe oldregu- _ thing characteristic. “Persimmon Pucker,” the first, has a peculiar lation orchestra. Each member acts as a soloist and usually on —_ charm, and “Sea Burial,” the last, has musical quality; yet both more than one instrument. Ross Gorman, Whiteman’s first saxo- are merely hors d’ oeuvres, as is also Mana-Zucca’s picturesque phonist, plays eleven, among them oboe, bass-oboe, heckelphone, § Zouaves’ Drill. E-flat, B-flat and bass clarinet, basset horn and octavion. Each of The most successful experimenter thus far is doubtless George

the three saxophonists uses three saxophones in various pitches. | Gershwin, who has not come from the classical composers but

The Whiteman orchestra is made up as follows: straight from Broadway tradition. He has written a kind of piano 2 three violins (for special effects only—augmented to eight), _ concerto in one movement, Rhapsody in Blue, in which he welds (Ed: meaning 3-1st, & 3-2nd violins) 2 basses (also play tuba), 1 —‘ the melody and rhythm of Jazz with what we might call a symbanjo, 2 trumpets (alternating with cornet), 2 trombones (onealter- | phonic form. The piece has genuine American qualities, grotesque

nating with euphonium), 2 three-horns, 3 saxophones (with three humor, naive sentimentality and a piano technic which recalls keys each), from soprano to bass, also alternating with clarinet, the eccentricity of the famous Kitten on the Keys. Although the etc.), 2 tubas (as above), sarusophone, sousaphone, 2 pianos (one _ orchestral part probably is not Gershwin’s work but Grofé’s, yet alternating with celesta), cymbals and diverse traps (one player). it sounds more like the language of the saxophones than of the As will be seen it is a wind instrument orchestra, supplemented _ violins, and it means a beginning at least. by strings, instead of the reverse. This queer combination of brass, But who will “carry on”? Leo Sowerby, whose Violin Soplayed in chorus, gives it its characteristic, radiant sound. The —_ nata made such an honest appeal at Salzburg, has attempted a banjo is of particular importance for coloring and as a means of ‘“syncopation” which unfortunately I have not yet heard. But bringing out the rhythm, and a very special quality is peculiarto | ZezConfrey, the Chopin of Jazz, should learn Jazz instrumenthe orchestra, owing to the unheard of virtuosity of the players, _ tation so that we might some day have a whole musical jungle their powers of expression, often through imitation of the human _ instead of a dainty keyboard promenading kitten. If a Messiah voice or animal sounds, through portamentos which arerendered — of Jazz does not arise, it is doomed by reason of the deadly in perfection even on valve instruments, and finally also through § monotony of its literature and the future American who puts on the use of the higher registers of trumpets, etc.) and noveldamp- _his ear-phones every evening, is hopelessly headed for the luers. However, these qualities are not yet universal and an orches- _natic asylum. tra like Whiteman’s has not come to my notice so far.

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FEBRUARY 3 ¢ NEW REPUBLIC 1926 February 3 ¢ New Republic BLUE NOTES by Abbe Niles (The author wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to Mr. W. self: one sang of one’s own feelings, thoughts and interests, and C. Handy for much historical information included in this ar- if the subject was generally painful, that was the result, not of

ticle.) convention, but of racial history. This personal and philosophiThe blues are one of the most interesting and significant ex- _cal tinge distinguishes the blues from such three-line ballads as amples of Negro folksong, but they wouldn’t stay put. They | Frankie and Johnny, leaving them a secular counterpart of the broke through into American popular music; became confused __spirituals. with almost every related type; their origin forgotten, they have The structural peculiarities of the music parallel those of the

generally been passed over by collectors and students. stanza. As the latter had one less than the four lines normal to Say that A was conducting a kitchen courtship of Miss B, simple verse, so the voice would sing (in two-four or common who was cool, unsympathetic, and sparing of family eatables. _ time) four less than the normal sixteen bars to the strain—each As he sat, disconsolate, on the back of his neck, self-pity might __ line of the stanza being confined to four bars of music. As each call a thought into his head which would forthwith emerge, thrice _ line was more or less of a complete thought, so the air with the

repeated as a quavering and diffident bit of song: last syllable of each line would return to and rest on the keynote

“Got no more home than a dawg.” or another element of the tonic triad, so that the whole presented a period of three almost independent phrases, with suc-

Attention being obtained, and warming to his idea, there cessive bizarre effects of internal finality and of final incom-

would come a second stanza: pleteness. The line, relatively, was very short, its last syllable “Ain’t got a frien’ in this worl”. usually falling on the first beat of the third bar of its musical _ phrase, thus leaving a long interim to be filled in somehow; He might expect desirable results if he could keep this up | perhaps with a hummed echo; perhaps with vocal or instruindefinitely—and he could. It might, therefore, seem well totry | mental vagaries which later came to be called “the jazz.” Mean-

it again elsewhere, with improvements; the song might be while, in the mind of the improviser, the next line could be go-

adopted and further elaborated by others. ing through its period of gestation. In their developed condition the blues would still retain an Unwritten, unharmonized melodies, yet if the singer wished intensely personal flavor, and the three-line stanza. But the first | to accompany himself, he could do so with just three chords: line, now, would probably voice some grief, longing, or | The common chords of the dominant and subdominant and the unhopeful “if”; the second either repeat or reinforce the first; | chord of the dominant seventh. The melody would be a fourwhile the third would state a causa doloris, some collateralcon- _ bar phrase favoring a syncopated jugglery of a very few notes; clusion, or the course which would be taken should the “if’ | the second phrase would vary somewhat the first, suggesting to

come true: the musical ear an excursion into the subdominant; the third

, would give a final version. Play between the keynote and its

Goin to lay my head right on the railroad track, (repeat) third was particularly frequent, and the tonic third characteris-

Cause my baby, she won ttake me b ack. tically coincided with the antepenultimate syllable of the line.

, ; y gro songs, the singer was apt, in

Goin’ to lay my head right on the railroad track, (repeat) And in these as in other Ne the si tj

If the train come long, Pm goin’ to pull it back. dealing with this particular note, to slur from flat to natural or

If the river was whisky, and I was a mallard (1 said a mal- vice versa in such a way as to furrow the brow of anyone who

lard—I mean a duck) might attempt to set the tune down on paper. In singing to the if the river was whisky, and Twas a mallard duck— banjo—a cheerful instrument—the slur might be expected; if

I'd dive right down, and I'd never come up. the guitar was in use, the minor would be even more promiImprovisations in this form and spirit with the peculiar melo- _ nent; the melody therefore might seem, like Krazy Kat, uncerdies associated with them, had lacked a distinguishing name, _ tain as to its own sex. but shortly before 1910 they had acquired the title “blues” from The trickle of the blues into the national consciousness was persons unknown, and the term was in use from Kentucky down __ started by W. C. Handy (an Alabama Negro then living in Mem-

by that date. The essence of most is found in the traditional | phis and now his own publisher), the first of his race not only

common-property line: familiar with these weirds, but able and willing (racial reticence Got the blues, but too dam’ mean to cry is peculiarly involved here) to set them down and write more in the tradition. Although, the title “blues” being commercially No one sentence can sum up more completely than this, the | valuable, even with him it is not always an index to what folphilosophy between the lines of most of these little verses. Yet | lows, he has preserved some of the original examples in a very in them the forgotten singers did not always amuse themselves pure form, while some entirely his own, such as Beale Street, with their troubles: nearer universal was the element of pure Saint Louis, Aunt Hagar’s Children, meet every test of the folk-

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1926 FEBRUARY 13 ¢ MUSICAL AMERICA product except anonymity of authorship. emerge through the mouths of saxophones or the crowns of In writing down this music he chose to represent the primi- —_ derby hats as the jazz we know. The relative shortness of a line tive treatment of the tonic third, in some cases by the minor, _ of the blues had much to do with the birth and development of simple, sometimes by introducing the minor third as a grace- _ the most-discussed phenomenon of our present regime. note to the major, or vice versa. The grin of the singers had The blues are at their best as dance-music, but the orchestral been sardonic; the songs were as melancholy as their name _ treatment usually accorded them is a jazzing so continuous and would imply, but sadness in negro music is no more dependent _ indiscriminate that the melody is buried beneath the cowbells, upon the minor than is the color of the sea upon pigment, and _rattlers and miscellaneous screeching machines. This is unforthe blue airs demanded the prevailing major. Handy’s minor _ tunate because in many blues there is not only strangeness, but third, therefore, appeared as signifying a temporary change of — beauty, dependent only on a competent rendition. It may be a mode, and it caught attention as none of the structural features softly wistful beauty, or it may be the beauty of a savage and (more important because indispensable) did. Itacquiredaname _ bitter power; this where it is jazzed, but properly, and without of its own: “the blue note.” The more blue notes, the “meaner” _ obliteration of its line. Some music (to be dogmatic) can be the blues. And its occasional use, especially whenimmediately “properly” jazzed; some should be; many blues should be. Bepreceding a cadence, furnishes most white writers with their tween those slow beats of the tympani, in those long holds, is only excuse (from the historical standpoint) forhavingeverused room for such a syncopated gnashing of teeth, such cries of the title The .......Blues. There are not enough pedants, however, — pain and passion, as might attend the ceremonial mock-mar-

to preserve the integrity of the word at this late date. riage of two fiends—and while this brutal and aphrodisiac orTo Handy is also to be credited the introduction, in the ac- _chestral development of the simple tunes is recent, the germ companying bass of some blues, of the habanera or tango rhythm was latent in the originals. The contempt rightly visited upon a (a dotted quarter, an eighth and two quarter-notes), with asuc- | ham conductor’s gratuitous jazzing of some anemic steal from cess explainable on the well supported theory that thisrhythm— the Narcissus of Ethelbert Nevin, is not a sign of intelligence the native word is tangana—1s of African origin. He also wrote — when applied to a jungle treatment of laments of the jungle’s in strange figures for the long line-end holds (lineal descen- —_—_ grandchildren. The latter may merely be liked or disliked, and dants of the echoing wails in the originals), whichsooncameto __ the writer peaceably begs leave to like it.

February 13 ¢ Musical America JAZZ, AS ART MUSIC, PILES FATLURE ON FAILURE by Oscar Thompson Jazz, petted, pampered, exploited, propagandized, monstrously —_ gas engine. No other music the world has known has so apinflated, has pricked its own bubble. Its one contribution to se- _ proached the mechanics of driven wheels. rious music has been an additional form of boredom. In three This, of course, refers to what the cabaret frequenter might seasons of experimenting with art forms, the jazz obsessionists describe as “jazz what am.” Concert jazz, in which singularly have, like the young Oman, come out by that same door where- _ abortive efforts have been made to combine jazzist clowning

in they went. with Lisztian rhapsodizing. Schonbergian atonality and Each successive effort to make jazz respectable has only suc- _—_ Ravelesque post-impressionists, has had little of this virile, if

ceeded in revitalizing jazz. The intended art product has been _— vulgar forms. With perhaps the sole exception of George consistently inferior, as jazz, to its cabaret prototype. laborious Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue it has been music for the sophistication has supplanted spontaneity—if, indeed, there is _ precieuse, the searcher for truffles, the flagallantes who beat anything spontaneous in such formula-ridden, pattern-cut,ma- —_ one another with whips fashioned of lilies. Even the Rhapsody chine-rhythmed stuff as is ground out daily in the musical sweat _is second rate as jazz. As anything else it scarcely merits con-

shops. sideration.

One thing has been made very clear, and that is that jazz, Clever orchestration is, of course, no more a monopoly of

instead of being a liberating force, is acircumscriptive one.There —_jazz than of any other style of music; jazz being just that—a was never a greater absurdity than the talk of rhythmic variety _ style. Admitting without cavil the attractiveness and value of in jazz. Jazz is rhythm in a straight-jacket. Its so-called “vari- _ some of the tricks that have been devised by Whiteman’s jazzety” is the apogee of monotonous periodicity. Yesterday’s foxtrot smiths, these, too, have become mere formulisms with the arand today’s Charleston are shackles on rhythmic freedom, as __rangers. I can think of no sorrier spectacle than the gifted Deems

any musician who will stop for a moment to analyze the fallof | Taylor turning the score of his Circus Day over to the most

their accents must agree. prominent of these “specialists,” in order that it might be dressed It is this very regularity that gives jazz its propulsively for- _ up in the cheap tinsel that is now at the command of every oneward movement. Its measures are marked with the deadly cer- _ finger tune writer. If Circus Day had been better music than it tainty of a piston rod. Its rhythm is that of the exhaust of a noisy was, the regret would have been keener.

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FEBRUARY 13 e MUSICAL AMERICA 1926 Even before Eva Gauthier breezed into Aeolian Hall withher turned on Stravinsky. The imitator became the imitated. jazz song group, two seasons ago, the idiom had received what No satisfactory definition of jazz has been evolved, in a techprobably was as fair a test of its possibilities as ithas yethad,in _ nical sense. This writer described it several years ago as “musiCarpenter’s Krazy Kat ballet. That pantomime remains the most _cal slang.”” Most popular music has been that, changing as slang musicianly work of a jazz implication that New York has heard. changes from one decade to another. Jazz as popular music is Whether the same composer’s Skyscrapers, soon to be given at _ the legitimate successor of the cakewalk and the “coon” songs the Metropolitan, will equal or surpass it remains to be seem. _ of a generation ago. They, too, were musical slang. Where ragThe ballet, of all musical forms, would seem to lend itself bestto _ time ceased and jazz began is a question for hair-splitters. Synthe eccentricities of scoring, the syncopations and the dance —_ copation was as much an essential, or more, of ragtime than it rhythms of jazz. Whithorne’s Sooner and Later wasanexample _is of jazz. Instrumental buffoonery, together with the mechaniin point, if not one to leave a hunger for more experiences in _cal regularity of accent already spoken of, serve better to iden-

kind. tify the later form. Today, virtually all popular music is called But the merit of Krazy Kat is chiefly comparative. As jazzit jazz, though sometimes it is an old fashioned waltz, sometimes has no such life and zest as the popular article. As music, aside | apolka, sometimes a march and sometimes an opera air dressed from its jazz admixture, it is commonplace, and dependent —_ up in the Grofé-esque jazz toggery. chiefly for such success as it has achieved on the popularity of Real “jazz” is only a modicum of what passes under that

the newspaper comics that supplied its subject matter. title. There is far more music that can be described as “jazzed,” Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, as already stated, hasretained than as “jazz.” And it is in the “jazzing” of other men’s music more of the popular element, and therein lies its considerable that arrangers have prostituted an art. If George Ade had rewritmeasure of vigor. But, as art music, it is merely a parody of ten Shakespeare in the slang, of the day he would have approxiLiszt. Those who want jazz will find better brands of it, where § mated the offense of the jazz hacks, who, for the sake of new the article is served “straight.” And presumably ifsuch there be —_ potboilers, take the melodies of great composers and bring them as still clamor for Liszt rhapsodies, pianists enoughcan be found = down to the level of the musical ignoramus, by means of their to play them without doubling and trebling their inherent vul- —_—jazz restatements. There is no valid comparison here with the

garity through the antics of inebriated saxophones. action of the masters in utilizing folk tunes, or even in borrowComparisons have a way of making bad music seem better ing themes of lesser composers, as material on which to build than it is, simply because there is other music that is worse. So, their art edifices. They sought to glorify, to lift from the comwhen Gershwin’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra was played = monplace to the sublime, to enrich and make more lasting. The by the New York Symphony, there were complementary retro- _jazz arranger’s course is to cheapen, to bring to the illiterate’s spective references to the Rhapsody in Blue. In endeavoring to _ level, and to destroy forever the bloom of beauty, as such

bring his jazz material into conformity with the exaction of the | poopularizations almost inevitably do. The noblest of - concerto form, even as here loosely adapted, the musical com- = Beethoven’s themes could be so violated and staled by a jazz edy writer further sacrificed vigor and directness of utterance perversion of it that a generation would have to pass before it and became much more self-conscious and artificial thaninthe | would be tolerable listening again. For multitudes to whom it Rhapsody. The plain truth was that he had not the technical had become merely one of last years’ cast-off songs, it would ability to accomplish what he set out to do. Jazz or no jazz, a __—never assert its original power. concerto was beyond him, and such attempts as were made at Happily, most of the melodies from art music that have been development of themes—these, in themselves, trite, unorigi- _ so treated have not been of the highest musical inspiration. Some,

nal, banal—sounded a continual call for help. indeed, had already been exhausted of their beauty by a too Lest it be said that jazz has failed only because composers of — widespread popularity. So, to mention but one current instance, insufficient technic have attempted to give it an art currency, it | when Rimsky-Korsakoff’s “Hymn to the Sun” from Cog d’Or is is well not to overlook Stravinsky’s Ragtime, the several “rag” § maltreated and its character utterly transformed by jazz orches-

products of the Parisians, and the Hindemith “1921” (in the _ tration, it is the principle involved, rather than the particular Kammermusik). Those who identify jazz by freakish orchestra- offense, that must stir resentment. Violinists, by their transcription may not regard any of these works as coming properly _ tions, had already done this ornamental air much harm. Who can within the jazz classification, but the Stravinsky Ragtime could doubt that when the jazz version has fully gone its rounds, be rescored by Ferdie Grofé so as to remove every objection, |§ Rimsky’s imaginative, but none too substantial melody will have and still be what it is today—music of distinctly inferior inspi- | been thumped and crushed into the flatness of a deflated autoration and all too plainly an imitation of something not worth — mobile tire, its art significance virtually destroyed. Why are such

imitating. jazz versions made? To improve on the workmanship of marvelTherein lies the essential weakness of all the jazz that has _ ous technicians like Rimsky? No. To cash in on the temporary been heard in our concert halls. It is counterfeit. It is not the craze for mistreated melodies? Yes. “jazz what am.” Such circuitous vagaries as the songs by Will- But, after all, what the jazzists do in their own domain of iam Grant Still which Florence Mills presented atarecentcon- popular music is perhaps of no great concern to the musician. cert of the International Composers Guild supply indeed avery | There were worse atrocities, far worse, in the days of the illusconclusive illustration of “Jazz what ain’t.” Here the tables were trated songs in the motion picture houses, when maudlin senti-

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1926 MARCH 13 ¢ LITERARY DIGEST mentality had its innings. If the stop-at-nothing crew of arrang- their ensemble more to their liking without it—that was all. ers end by jazzing The Star Spangled Banner, as they did The —‘ That a saxophone “virtuoso” should now be able to attract an Marseillaise (with the result that a riot was provokedina French —_ audience to a New York concert hall has nothing more to do theater), this is as much the affair of every other decent citizen | with Negro music than would a similar craze over the harmonica as it is of the devotee of music. Jazz, as a thing unto itself, is or the ocarina. neither artistic nor inartistic; it is only its employment in ser1- Jazz by any other appellation might smell as sweet to sensious music that is of consequence to the art. Ifleftin its place,as —_ tively attunded nostrils, but there is no justice in calling a Spirione form of popular entertainment in the cafe, the dance hail, tual jazz, or in referring to an opera which employs Spirituals the picture houses and on the variety stage, ithas no more mu- _—_as a jazz opera—as the newspaper headline writers have done sical significance than Annie Rooney, The Sidewalks of New _ in dealing with a projected work. Both jazz and the Spirituals York, Sweet Rosie O’Grady,In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree, may be levied upon for one and the same score, but they will be Love Me and the World Is Mine—ad infinitum. There always contrasting rather than harmonizing elements—with far more has been—and always will be—a musical slang. That some of __ essential points of difference than of similarity. its words will find their way into the dictionaries of polite mu- The possibility of a successful jazz opera is a remote one. sic is not to be doubted. But that is quite a different thing from § The idiom is one of the most unlikely conceivable as a medium

taking its vulgarities bodily into the language. for dramatic musical speech. Its jerkiness, its essential dance No grosser or more libelous mistake can be made than that __ character, and its inelasticity of accent cripple declamation at of those who confuse jazz with the Negro Spiritual. The essen- —_ the outset. The most languorous waltz would be no more inap-

tial of the Spiritual is not syncopation. It is the antithesis of propriate to the expression of tense and tragic emotion than the clowning. There could be no more marked contrast than that | knee-knocking Charleston. Neither can be reconciled with rebetween the sincerity and deep feeling of the Spiritual, either | quirements for an approximation of natural speech. melancholy or jubilant in character, and the superficial, cynical But as the waltz has been used in dramatic operas for sepaproduct of Tin Pan Alley, where the prevailing racial traits are —_rate airs, or for character or scene suggestion, so it is conceiv-

anything but Negroid. able that snatches of jazz-writing might serve either for coloris-

Whether the Spiritual is the flowering of musical seeds which __ tic purposes, or to identify a locale or a character, particularly the black man brought with him from Africa, or merely his.ad- in a work dealing with modern life. The writer cannot speak aptation and transmorgrification of the white man’s ante-bellum — from personal experience of Harling’s A Light from Saint Agnes,

hymns and ballroom tunes, the essence is a deep human feel- — given recently in Chicago, in which, it is said, jazz suggestion ing—of all attributes the most conspicusouly absent from fox- has thus been employed with real effectiveness. A perusal of trotting jazz. The circumstance that the Negro’s favorite instru- _ the printed score is not, in itself, convincing. ment was the banjo no more links jazz to the Spiritual, than the But Gershwin’s one-act travesty on opera, 135th Street— saxophone (utterly unknown to the old South) links itto those “AI about a woman’s intuition gone wrong”—-was very nearly little German bands that first found this instrument an exceed- —_ conclusive evidence of the downright insanity of trying to cre-

ingly useful one. ate either illusion or musical beauty by any such means as pre-

It is doubly absurd, in view of the regency of the saxophone’s — sumably are meant when a genuine Jazz opera is spoken of; its

identification with this so-called American music, to find its one possible place of acceptance being the vaudeville stage employment in the score of an American opera spoken of as___ where it might be listened to tolerantly as a crude and halfone of the racial details of that opera. As has been pointed out amateur parody on the worst features of the lyric drama. in these columns before, the saxophone was used experimen- If this “opera” represents the best that can be given us in tally in continental opera orchestras from the time of its inven- support of the art vilidity of jazz, then indeed is twilight detion in the eighteen-forties. That it never habituated itself there | scending on the gods of Tin Pan Alley. was not because its qualities were unknown. Composers found Let us have an epic trilogy along these lines, and call it— “Jazzerdammerung!”

March 13 ¢ Literary Digest THE DESCENT OF JAZZ UPON OPERA Jazz has finally edged into the two leading opera houses in the __ need of critical approval. It was to be expected that not all of a

land. The Metropolitan has produced a ballet and the Chicago § “Monday night” audience could be held in their seats by the Opera a lyric work. Other efforts indicating the up struggling “infliction.” Mr. Carpenter insists that his production is not Jazz, of Jazz have been noted in concerts of vocal and instrumental — but “merely an attempt to picture American life in rhythmic character, John Alden Carpenter’s ballet, called Skyscrapers, frame.” Yet the word is too convenient to be discarded. Mr. carried the syncopated form into the heart of America’s most | Lawrence Gilman of The Herald Tribune shows how the comconservative music world and seems to have emerged with a —_— promise was made:

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MARCH 13 ¢ LITERARY DIGEST 1926 “Mr. Carpenter dreamt of a ballet expressed, for the eye, image of America at Work, projected by Mr. Jones’s superb phrasthrough a purely native choreography and native settings, | ing magoria of steel skeletons and hammering workmen and exhibited to the accompaniment of a music steeped in popular — winning traffic lights and processional slaves of the subway idioms, tho not enslaved or shackled by them. Therefore, he and the ... clock, and, as contrasting middle movement, of caused to be summoned, as adjutant for the management of | America at Play—the eternal Coney Island of the urban the choreography, the illustrious Mr. Sammy Lee, direct from _proletariat’s ... dreams, with its gigantic lovers’ moon, its sidethe revues of Broadway, trailing clouds of glory,a gleam with —_ shows, and ...,its paradoxical Ferris Wheel, its merry-go-rounds.

the authentic Americanism of Mr. Irving Berlin. Therefore, he “The designs (with their separating curtains) are brilliant and called to his aid Mr. Robert Edmond Jones, master of visual _ beautiful and often moving notations, searching and ... and beauty, contriver of settings as richly American as a New En- voraciously tragical, voraciously farcical. They have been admigland landscape or an attack of Moral Indignation. Therefore, — rably realized at the Metropolitan, and Mr. Sammy Lee has he bethought him of that golden symbol of our hopes and —_ wrought effectively in adapting to them the choreographic scenes dreams, the saxophone, and imported several of them (plus a __ of the ballet. He was obliged to work with the Metropolitan’s banjo) into the Metropolitan orchestra—that orchestra once __ regular corps of dancers, steeped in the traditions of operatic sacred to the Wagner tuba and the solo violin of Thais’s holy _ ballet, and only occasionally encouraged to peep over the walls

mediationist. of Thebes into the freer domains of Petrouchka and Le Coq “Mr. Carpenter realized, he says, that to create a musical d’Or. commentary on contemporary American life without reference His manipulation of this intractable material has been on the to Jazz would be for an American musician a ‘difficult if nota © whole remarkably successful. He has brought plasticity out of painful task.’ But the music of Skyscrapers embodies ‘an at- _ primness, and has made it yield a measure of fantasy, power tempt to capture the spirit of Jazz, and fix itin the ordinary and abandon. The group of riveting workmen in the first and orchestral sonority, rather than an attempt to write jazz itself.” last scenes, hard-edged, somber, sinister, and is one of the best “This commentary,” according to Olga Samaroff of the New of these designs. The play scenes are less happily achieved. York Evening Post, goes even deeper; [it] is, to her mind, “a § They lack variety and contrast, and the latter part of the scene vital expression of fundamental national feeling quite apartfrom — in the White City sags and trips a bit. Yet in one aspect of these

obvious externals.”’ She goes on: day scenes the collaborators have been curiously fortunate; “There is an eternal mystery about what it is that makes a_ —_ whether they sought purposely for it or not, they have conveyed deeply expressive art work different from a merely descriptive | something of the ...rish conformity, something of the sense of

one. mechanized Joy, that makes the American in his world of Ferris “We have had many plays, revues, operettas, movies, allkinds | wheels and sideshows and hot dogs as depressing and pathetic

of things filled with local color and sound. an apparition.

“When Mr. Honegger last season chose the locomotive as a And this note, for us, is the admirable and distinguishing symbol of modern speed and power, of vast distances and their — feature of Mr. Carpenter’s music. It is not sadistic, it is not cruel,

conquest by the ingenuity of man in his symphonic poem, Pa- _ this music of his; it is closer to tragic irony, and a richly comcific 231 (I hope the number is correct!) all he succeeded indo- —_—spassionate understanding, than we had fancied it could be. We ing, in my opinion, was to produce the suggestion of aliteraland _ are far indeed in this ...from mere brainless travesty. Some of the noisy locomotive, so far as music could describe it. 1remember § opening pages are conceived in almost a Stravinsky vein of fiercely resenting being pursued into a symphony concert by a _—_ sordant grimess. [sic] locomotive after endless nights on trains during a concert tour. The Chicago demonstration was a so-called Jazz opera writ“In Skyscrapers just the reverse seems to me to be the case. _ ten by W. M. Harling, of English birth but a Boston resident. It is The different scenes being before us the familiar sights and called The Light from St. Agnes. The words are by Mrs. Fiske, sounds of our every-day American life, but transformed through __ the actress. It “literally swept the Windy City off it feet,” says powerful artistic imagination into something intensely sugges- the Boston Post, and Mr. Harling was presented with the David tive of all the vital forces that lie beneath external things and § Bispham medal “given to the composer of the best musical com-

that was forming our distinctive national life. position of the year, American and English words.” The germ of ““Mr. Carpenter has not crudely sought originality in writing the story is thus stated: the music, but he has certainly achieved marked individuality. “The records of a small community in old Louisiana tell of _ He has used jazz as it should be used. He has not tried to make _ the life and works of a certain Agnes, who used her great wealth

it a fundamental esthetic of art. He has used it as a vital distinc- to bring good. On the summit of a hill not far from her home tive rhythm and color, and given its true nature and songsithas __ there stood a convent, and to this retreat she retired in the last twice the power that it has when an attempt is made to extend _—__ days of her short life. she built a chapel named for her patron

that scope beyond its possibilities.” Saint and from this chapel she was buried. Her name and her Turning from consideration of the music to whathappenson — deeds are remembered by her townspeople.

the stage, we read Mr. Gilman again: The story savors more of Italian opera and deals with the “Action of the piece is cheeringly free of anecdote. It [... favors of Agnes to influence Toinette, the leader of a dissolute unreadable] in disdain of plot. There is only a concentrated = family toward a better life. Not until Agnes’s death and her last

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1926 MARCH 13 ¢ LIVING AGE pleas of supplication to Toinette does a change come into the “Deems Taylor, by the way, has moved back to New York and is lover’s heart. Toinette frustrates her lover’s attempt to rob the _ living quietly here, busy on the score of the opera which the Met-

Chapel of Agnes, and dies at his hands. ropolitan commissioned. It is an open secret that the book is by no The Musical Courier speaks of future jazz efforts: less a figure in our literary world than Edna St. Vincent Millay.” “In the strength of the success of his The Light from St. Agnes Mr. Harling is quoted by the New York Evening Post conin Chicago, Arthur Hopkins, the New York producer, has just cerning his faith and his ambitions: asked W. Franke Harling to write the music of a ‘Jazz’ opera “Jazz is the only real American music, and being a real Ameri(whatever that may be) to be called Deep River, with book by —_ can myself, I naturally want to compose American opera”. Clarence Stallings, co-author of that much-talked-of play, What Harling, who introduced the moan of the saxophone and the Price Glory? Mr. Stallings is a Georgian, and tho Mr. Harlingis — twang of the banjo into his operatic score, said he believed ‘Tin an Englishman by birth, his residence has been here since he — Pan Alley’ had done more for music in this country than all the was four years old, which ought to make him a real good _ serious composers. American. One of the typically American things about the The latter are the imitators of the classical, but the work of announcement is that tho the book is not yet completed nora _ Irving Berlin and George Gershwin is the rhythmical and mesingle note of the music written, Mr. Hopkins expects to have _lodic expression of life in the modern United States. the work complete next season. Rossini, it is true, wrote The In the new art form fox-trot time could not be used throughBarber of Seville in something under three weeks, but things — out because of monotony, but the composer said that wherever

were simpler then. he could introduce rag-time he would do so, and that the theme of the whole opera would be woven around Jazz.

MARCH 13 ¢ Living Age FRANZ LEHAR ON JAZZ Still another good word for jazz comes from the pen of Franz “Even the dance rhythms of jazz seem to me to deserve a Lehar, the composer of The Merry Widow and—mostrecently— — word of defense. They are too natural, too obvious and con-

Paganini. Writing in the Neue Freie Presse, Herr Lehar says: vincing, ever to disappear entirely from our music once they “Every musical creation of one people may have astimulat- have been made at home in it. We have only two legs, and for ing and fruitful effect on the music of other peoples. The gypsy _ that reason we had to move almost entirely in two-four time. At

music of Hungary is a sufficient proof of this. After being for any rate, it is the easiest time in which to dance, and the best centuries outlawed from serious consideration, and scorned by __ suited for sustained dancing—a point not to be scorned in a professional music critics, it was at last utilized in a variety of | period when the age-limit for dancing is being extended upways by Liszt and Brahms—to name only the greatest figures— — ward so dizzily.

and is to-day fully recognized; its rhythms have been adapted “Of course the transposition of jazz rhythms into our own by Johann Strauss with the happiest results. Icannot see, there- = music presupposes a feeling for style, a solid taste, and great fore, why the melodies and harmonies of jazz—strange asthey cultural restraint. But given these things, there is no serious reasound to our ears now—should be forever excluded from the _ son to object to enriching our powers of musical expression by

concept ‘music.’ adaptations of jazz.

“In London I have heard Negro songs of so strangely melan- “This sort of addition to our store of musical forms will cercholy a charm that I have been profoundly moved. They were _ tainly not mean the abandonment of our own indigenous songs like the sounds of nature itself, outcries of a soul in despair, |§ and dances. I don’t think there is any danger that in fifty years notes of mother-love or home-sickness so genuine, so penetrat- nothing but Negro songs will be sung in Vienna. And I think ing, that one could not turn a deaf ear to them. Must we deny _ there is just as little danger that the waltz-step—which is musithat this is music, simply because its inventors were born with cally more valuable—will ever become archaic. The waltz-form, black skins? Yet if Shakespeare could make a Negro the chief _in spite of Johann Strauss, is not yet exhausted. The present figure in one of his plays, why should we regard it asimproper _ generation and its successors will write many charming waltzes, for Richard Strauss to introduce a couple of measures of Negro _—_ and the waltz will be danced in Vienna as long as there are

music into an opera? Viennese orchestra.”

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MARCH ¢ HARPER’S 1926 March ¢ Harper's THE ANATOMY OEF JAZZ by Don Knowlton Five years ago it was proper to loathe jazz. Today itisthe smart | ago. But musicians of the radical type were developing scienthing to hail it as the only truly American contribution to mu- _ tific dissonance. Strauss discovered new uses for the cymbals,

sic, and to acclaim it as Art. Either attitude is ridiculous. and Bloch conducted a series of fashionable experiments in Jazz bears much the same relationship to music as doesthe the receptivity of the human ear. So syncopation was picked limerick to poetry. It is a form of musical expression, and an __ up by the dance hall, cabaret, and vaudeville group, who of extremely circumscribed form. In fact, I know of no other va- _—_—course turned it toward their particular purposes. riety of musical composition in which so little latitude of con- Jazz has won and held universal popularity, I believe, not struction is allowed. In this country to-day the form has been _—_— merely because of its exploitation by the lower musical order,

developed to the ultimately within its limitations—but that fact but because of its own intrinsic qualities. These are: firstly, does not make jazz as an institution worthy of a special corri- | fundamental rhythm; secondly, simple harmonics; thirdly, standor in the musical hall of fame. Of the thousands of jazzcom- = dardized form. positions most are abominable—as are most limericks. There Note that I have not included “melody” in my mention of have been some excellent “rags” written, just as there are a _ the intrinsic qualities of jazz. This is not in the least because few good limericks, and these are deserving of recognition as | melody is not essential, but because it belongs to jazz no more being especially fine pieces of workmanship, considering the and no less than it belongs to any other form of music. To vehicle of expression used. But Hamlet could not welldietoa | write a story, one must have something to say: this is the tune. limerick, and neither may the aesthete soar on the wings of Shall it be said in ballad, symphony, anthem, or blues? Jazz is jazz. The devotee of Wagner and Stravinsky who condemns __ one form of expression; the tune is the thing expressed. The jazz unconditionally displays merely an utter ignorance of its | effect depends vastly more upon the method adopted than it purposes and structure; and the “jazz-hound” who chires that does upon the tune itself. Take that good old Methodist hymn American “blues” should follow Beethoven in the musical § Shall We Gather At The River. Play it on the organ, with its encyclopedias betrays a total loss of musical perspective. old-fashioned draggy sonorousness; snap it into a Boy Scout march; try it for a one-step; slow it up, syncopate it, throw in

II a few minors where majors used to be, and you will almost

For all the publicity so efficiently instigated by Irving Berlin, it think you hav a Mammy" song. Everythi ng Ih musie has a seems probable that the basic principle of jazz—namely, its tune, otherwise t could not move from beginning to end, Jazz essential rhythmic exaggeration—is a contribution of the Ne- tunes may be dis tinctive, but I doubt it. As Sigmund Spaeth

ero. has pointed out in The Common Sense of Music, many of the

Syncopation in popular music first came into evidence in best jazz melodies have been appropriated from the old masthe old “coon” songs of minstrel-show days. Remember But I te rs. Composers have always had for one of their mottoes Want Them Presents Back? Next came such childishly simple ENS? throw away an old melody. But the tune does not make attempts as Under the Bamboo Tree and Rainbow, songs that J Ie On ue contrary, Jazz cates life into many oho wn ch could not attain popularity to-day, which succeeded because ° f cta tion carry itselt tor Tour measures without dying they were the first to stress syncopation in a form which could It nequires no mental effort to enjoy jazz. A moronic musi-

be reached by the masses. Then along came Irving Berlin and ; . il that it has to ofwe were off. The ragtime piano player and then the jazz or- cal intelligence can absorb without effort ae Stoo

chestra developed, until to-day we have “symphonic” jazz. fer. The text of the , lyrics appears to be incidental. The muOld-timers such as Alexander’s Ragtime Band, When the sical form of the thing 1s what has “ap tv ated the MASSES, beMidnight Choo Choo Leaves for Alabam, Omar Kyayyam, and cause they can understand it Its simplicity is amazing: The Maple Leaf Rag began to establish a conventional form for ma rvel 1s that so many variations have been accomplished

; , , ; a within the prescribed limitations.

jazz. Since that time there has been no essential change in its For purposes of this discussion, we will omit the waltz

structure, the development having been confined almost en- ta i” 3 , ‘

tirely to internal elaboration. which is not jazz, and the so-called “ballad.” Just how is the The idea of exaggerated syncopation was first presented to typical “rag” built?

America in a more or less respectable way. “Coon songs” and Ill real Negro melodies were not considered damaging to one’s social or business reputation. Syncopation itself had a well- | A popular song stands or falls upon its chorus. Its verse is developed and honorable lineage at the time. If the socially | merely introductory. The standard chorus consists of thirtyelect had adopted syncopation it might have been comme il two measures, broken into eight phrases of four measures each. faut from the outset, and we might have heard the Boston Sym- At the end of the first sixteen measures is a caesura. The eight phony Orchestra rendering a legitimate jazz symphony years measures following the caesura usually repeat substantially

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1926 MARCH ¢ HARPER’S the theme of measures one to eight (as in Alexander's Ragtime V Band, Jealous, The Girl I Love Belongs to Somebody Else, and a thousand others), although sometimes this repetition oc- | Rhythm 1s the backbone of jazz. While I hesitate to go as far as curs in the last eight measures (as in Yes, We Have No Ba- _ Some and ascribe a Freudian motivation and a phallic symbolnanas, and I Want To Be Happy). In any event, the repetition | 18m to jazz, nevertheless, the fact remains that the beat of the of the opening refrain is certain. Measures thirteen, fourteen, | tom-tom which drives savages into orgiastic ecstasies and the fifteen, and sixteen end with a rising inflection: measures beat of the drum which sets the pace for the dance orchestra twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one, and thirty-two conclude witha _ are identical. Jazz serves primitive rhythm on a civilized platter. positive statement. The musical thought-content of a typical Some popular music uses the old one-two, one-two rhythm piece may be paralleled crudely in words by the following: (Oh, Katerina, Parade of the Wooden Soldiers) but this is not the typical jazz rhythm. It is simply the old marching time,

I like eggs for breakfast—Do you like eggs? popular now as always. The real jazz tune goes um-pa-tee-dle

IV Ba a |

I like eggs for breakfast, and eat them every morning. to each measure—four dotted eighths on the accented syllables It requires just about as much literary erudition to digest | Nd four sixteenths on the alternate syllables, to a basic one, the above as it does musical intelligence to understand jazz, ‘Wo, three, four.

Hence its popularity. st es

Jazz harmonies are amazingly standardized. Popular songs (in __¢ $ + |. + ——

the chorus, which is all that counts) never change key. They |e = = = =e all use thirteen chords or less (with variations in some of them, | _. .

such as lowering a major third to a minor, or adding that note eget: 33.53 et ee one tone below the basic note of the chord, which gives direc- (e tee co = === tion to the progression). Some songs are built upon three chords re er er “2 a, (such as I Want To Be Happy). Many are based upon four. I (ers Tipe ie ten = ——— met ar six or seven. No matter how elaborated the modulations in RITES ON THe aan

know of very few indeed which use all thirteen. Most employ cc Th AS A A) SD aoe | ga seen Semone a

modern “symphonic” orchestration, they are based upon these , ,

thirteen chords or less, with the exception of transitions from Upon this foundation are superimposed cer tain alterations One piece to another, borrowing from the classical, and simi- of rhy thm which are the true comp onents of jazz. lar passages in which the arranger has gone outside the strict First comes what I term “anticipation,” which consists of a

field of popular music. sort of hurrying of the melody, whereby the latter beats the This implicity of structure of course accounts for the fact base to the stroke of the rhythm by a fraction ofa second. , that anybody who has any “ear” at all can “fake” jazz. In play- Second, is true syncopation. This, as I have said before, Is ing the banjo, mind you, a change of key involves no change a well-established musical device and is merely exaggerated in of fingering. The player simply slides his hand up or down ragtime. Of itself it does not make ragtime, popular and musical upon the neck of the instrument until he strikes the proper oP mon to the contrary not withstanding. If syncopation cre basic pitch. There he plays his thirteen chords (with their few ated “rag,” B rahms s Lullaby ean d Goodnight would be a

variations) exactly as he does in any other key. dance-hall favorite. Syncopation in jazz serves a twofold purThe case is much the same with the ukulele, and hence the P OS® It makes it possible to accent certain words in th ° lyrmail-order advertisements that guarantee “Ukulele Mastered ‘“® 4S 1? I want to be happy, I want to be happy”; and it At Home in Six Lessons.” The instruction book gives the fin- attracts the listener s interest by its divergence from the norgering for the more frequent basic chords, and numbers each. mal, which is maintained in the bass by the Grum—the underThen it indicates accompaniments, note by note, but by chord lying one, two, three, four, w hich carries the entire structure. number! The “uke” accompaniment to the first eight measures Syncopation 1s of value not intrinsically, but m erely in its vari-

of By the Light of the Stars might be written thus: 11 1122 ance. Alone, it is meaningless. The irresistible sweep of the 1 1, each numeral covering one measure. Naturally, advertis- fundamental rhythm makes syncopation stand out violently ers are careful to pick simple pieces, and do not go into such against the background. This is the reason why a Jazz tune 1s complications as minors or the chord which the “faker” calls so flat and unconvincing in the absence of piano OF orchestral the “barber-shop.” But it is actually true that after some five accompaniment. The contrast upon which syncopation deor six hours of application, the business-college beginner can pends for its startling effect 1S lack ing when only one of the follow on her “uke” by this method such tunes as Barney two necessary rhythmic elements is expressed. Google or Follow the Swallow while father retires to the coal __ Thirdly, there is the imposition of a one, two, three element

cellar and mother has visions of a Musical Career. in rhythm upon the one, two, three, four fundamental. this, I believe, is the only characteristic of jazz which is truly of Ameri-

can—or rather, of Afro-American-origin.

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MARCH ¢ HARPER’S 1926 A Negro guitar-player once asked me, “You know the dif- —_ nothing to compare in artistic interest with the harmonious

ference between primary rag and secondary rag?” drumming of these savages. The fundamental effect was a comHis primary rag was syncopation; his secondary rag was _ bination of double and triple time, the former kept by the singthis superimposition of one, two, three upon the basic one, __ ers, the latter by the drummers, but it is impossible to convey the

two, three, four idea of the wealth of detail achieved by the drummers by means Graphically, it may be expressed thus: of exchange of rhythms, syncopation of both simultaneously, and dynamic devices.”

; ; , ‘ ; : ; 31231231 Krehbiel caught the thing—a simple superimposition of one rhythm upon another. Yet it is doubtful whether Seldes realized Although originally presented in the melody asinthe Down __ the significance of the very paragraph he quoted. Seldes’ chapHome Rag (see musical score) [not reproduced here] andsome- __ ter, “Toujours Jazz,” is delightful in comment, criticism, refer-

times accentuated there even to-day, as in Kitten onthe Keys, ence, and deference to the jazzicists of the higher order, but he the idea rapidly shifted from melody into accompaniment and, _—_ does not analyze generic jazz structure; nor does he recognize as itis arhythmic rather than a melodic principle, ithasfound _ that it is the rhythmic principle (of savage origin) referred to by its exponents principally in the banjo and the drum. Its true Krehbiel which has built jazz, much more than the ingenuity, function seems to be one of superimposition upon the melody ___ dexterity, or even genius of the individual composer. and primal rhythm alike. The Negro guitar-player was right-it is The principle I am inclined to regard as rather new to civia “secondary rag.” And it is this subsidiary one, two, three on —_ lized musical thought. Brahms and others have superimposed top of the underlying tempo that makes shoulder-muscles twitch, 1,2,3,4,5,6 upon 1,2,3,4 it is true, and pianists with classical that bedevils hips, that provokes wiggles and twists on the — educations, who have slipped back into the more profitable lap dance floor, and causes blue-noses to cry out that jazzisagreat | of jazz, use to-day that device with considerable effect. But never, immoral influence. The soprano saxophone has been blamed __ outside of American ragtime, have I heard the particular for the sins of the secondary rag. In fact, that silvery screecher 1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2 upon 1,2,3,4 in dotted eighths and sixteenths, merely releases impulses which the constant tickling of one, — which is so characteristic of jazz. However, I have never heard two, three upon one, two, three, four has brought clamoring to _ native tom-toms calling a jungle tribe to worship or to war. the surface.

The relegation of this rhythm to the accompaniment is illus- VI

trated by the score below, showing the opening measures of Jazz has many other standard characteristics, trimmings hung

Hot Lips. ae Lo, upon the main frame. Among them may be listed what the orThe skillful drummer even varies this rhythmic variety. He chestra player knows as the “break,” usually occurring during may omit from the one, two, three a stroke in sequence, making the caesura in the middle of the chorus. Here the melody often it one, (blank), three, one, (blank), three—or, one, two, (blank), is sustained upon a single note, usually the fifth, and the balone, two, (blank), and so forth. The rhythm may be expressed ance of the orchestra is enabled to break forth into a sudden merely by a one, two, three stroke upona single object (such as spasm of superimposed rhythm. the tom tom) or may be accentuated by striking three objects in Borrowing a device from the most approved musical circles, rotation, such as cy mbal, fom tom, wood block, cymbal, tom- jazz now and then uses dissonance with great effect. It is amustom, wood-block. Literally beneath this rhythmic super-struc- ing to see the followers of Strauss and Stravinsky berating the ture—to be exact, with the drummer s right foot—the funda- jazzists for employing the very devices which the former apparmental one, two, three, four continues without interruption, ently most earnest-mindedly admire. Jazz dissonances are simple setting the pace and creating the tempo-foundation for the en-

tire orchestral effect. The result would provoke Jonathan

Edwards himself, were he alive to-day, to the Charleston, the : Coe ee

hip-flask, and the lesser caresses of the road-house table. 7, Pa 8 oe ne eee AD

In this connection the references to Krehbiel in Gilbert Seldes’ See i —- ene. +4 = re The Seven Lively Arts are interesting. ’ i a ES Ne Krehbiel, to be sure, does refer to the “degenerate form” of

syncopation which is the basis of our ragtime, and that is hope- | — it, as.

ful because it indicates that ragtime is a development—intensi- : —¢—--9—+ — —t+—4—-t—1 6 —

fication, sophistication—of something normal in musical ex- “net UPS” pression. The free use of syncopation has led our good composers of ragtime and jazz to discoveries in rhythm and toa = g..g few. They are popularly known as “blues.” D E-flat G-sharp mastery of complications which one finds elsewhere only inthe —4 j. typical. great composers of serious music. In describing the Dahoman All this, mind you, takes place within the limitations of thirtywar dances at the Chicago World’s Fair, Krehbiel says: “Berlioz = yg measures, phrased in eight groups of four measures each— in his super most effort with the army of drummers produced = ng expressed in thirteen chords or less!

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1926 MARCH ¢ HARPER’S Vi the brass. I recall one orchestration of Spain, in which the saxoThis limitation of form, by the way, has a quite practical excuse phone tam PAS oe Binet’ pounds through the old entirely aside from the advantage of mass appeal to the musi- pamsamyinmo our’ In Bizet's Carmen, the drum main cally unintelligent listeners. To make money upon a popular tains the fundamental one, two, three, four of all ragtime, and song, the publisher must sell many thousands of copies. His me banjo SUPCTIMPOSes me seconcary ie The th genulty of market consists of the million Maggie Smiths who took piano t © arranger Is amazing. FOr the ore estra t © Simple st plece 1s

lessons for a year and then “just played.” built up with the utmost care, and jazz orchestrations are as Maggie will not practice, and her ear is none too good. Her correctly done, as well balanced and as effective in rendition as

technic is atrocious. She can barely follow a bass, chord, bass, are ess proemces for by symphony omenestras chord, in the left hand, and the melody, together with a few © Gays OF playing OY eal are rapidly Passing. Each man harmony-determining notes, in the right. Consequently the must play his part as written, for it has been carefully calcu“popular” song is printed for her in kindergarten form, embody- lated with respect to every other part. And not only that: these ing only the fundamental rhythm plus syncopation. The ele- arrangers, betraying their OngINS, have 5 nserted, in introdu

ment of “anticipation” is not there; neither is the one, two, three Hons ane ae e ne Nr s lifted nena the classics, superimposed upon the bass, unless it happens to occur in the i" re nee led a the d ee a a be in the [ast two years, I melody itself. As a result, the popular song as written is a poor ave et a . 4 the kee f M. D, well. Gor two from thing indeed. Nobody would buy it for its own sake. It must first Rach, t © Pa WOFKS 9 acDowell, Gounod, or

be popularized by being presented to the public in full form— - “foot th tarther. Not] -

that is, with the two missing rhythmic qualities included. The n fact, ‘. cy are going even arther. ot Ong ago, at one © trade calls this “song plugging.” The public buys a song be- Cleveland’s noonday dancing places, a thirteen-piece orchestra

cause it has heard it and liked it—but the printed song which it played the Storm” from William Tell exquisitely. Their rendibuys is quite different from the song which it heard. It buys a tion retained all of the essential qualities of the original orches-

primer edition only tration, altered only to such an extent as to fit the requirements

The piano player at the sheet-music counter never plays a of a small band, and to conform to the essential one, two, three, song as written. She adds (as do all good jazz pianists) “‘antici- four rhythm of the dance. At the conclusion of the number, a pation” and “secondary rag;”she inserts “breaks” and disso- sweet young office-blossom rushed up to the conductor and

nances; she plays three times as many notes as appear upon the gurgled: ; ,

printed copy from which she purports to read. Gee, that’sb)a9 peach of a number! Can I get it at Professional “song pluggers” hired by publishers appear at woetvon S: , here ina f a which sh

movies, theaters, dance halls, sheet-music counters, and radio i 0» * ° Willion Ol oot bail na se cinder on se can stations, and everlastingly sing the song into the public memory; play it, tor Wiltam Lett js not Dulit upon a Kin ergarten strucand of course their accompaniments, piano or orchestral, con- ture, and so cannot be reduced to a form of sufficient simplicity

tain all of the elements of good jazz to be within reach of Maggie Smith. On the other hand, Ukulele But it is in the dance orchestra that the most complete trans- Lady » essentially simple, and conforming to standard jazz limita-

formation of a popular song is effected. Have you ever heard a tions, can be built up by orchestration to produce an effect rousing good “rag” at a dance, bought the number at a music surprisingly equivalent in musical values to that of William Tell. counter the next day, taken it home and played it—and won- When Maggie buys and plays Ukulele Lady she is satisfied dered why your interest had been caught by such an empty and because the sounds which she makes on her piano are suffimeaningless succession of noises? The fact is, that the thing ciently similar to her dance-hall recollections to reproduce in her you bought at the counter and the thing you heard at the dance mind, in part at least, the effect of the piece when she first heard were alike in name and skeleton only. The sheet-music edition it, with all elements included.

of the piece bore the same relationship to the orchestration as VIII the framework of a house bears to the completed dwelling. The man who arranges popular music for dance orchestras With all this truly able orchestration, why are the lyrics of popuis rapidly becoming, in jazz fields, even more important than _lar songs so inane? I do not believe that it is because they must the composer. It is the arranger who provides life and colorand — be supremely twaddlesome in order to appeal to the masses. contrasts and lively dissonances and blasts of indigo harmony ___ Rather, I think it is because the men who are capable of writing and contrapuntal runs. He is given a bare stage, and upon ithe __ real verse have not been willing to descend to jazz lyrics, and the

builds a paradise. latter have been done, not by writers of English, but my musi-

The arranger, while adhering to the formal limitations of jazz, cians, vaudeville actors, and cranks. The popular song writer is employs in its decoration all of the devices which he can steal _ notoriously “lowbrow.” Years ago, someone started the spoonfrom classical music. He opposes progressions with the dexter- _ hug-kiss slush theme in ragtime words, and it has stuck, apparity of Bach; he snatches a frenzy from Liszt; he borrows abitof ently, not so much because the public insisted upon it, as bethe lyrical purity of Mozart, and inserts Wagnerian crashes in _ cause it was the only theme which was given to the public. The

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APRIL 5 ¢ LIVING AGE ° 1926 lyricists of jazz knew nothing else. It was conventional. That the IX ,

public would welcome a bit of humor in place of sentimental oo

garbage is evidenced by the success of Yes, We Have No Ba- The discouraging thing about jazz is the fact that it has been nanas, which not even the most methodical of Methodists can viewed in such false perspectives—either condemned completely

construe as immorally suggestive. It is the music and not the °F inordinately exalted. a | words which has carried jazz. The encouraging thing about jazz is that in its orchestrations On the other hand—perhaps because the word-writers of it is initiating countless thousands into sound principles of harpopular songs were not sonneteers—the lyrics of jazzpossessa ORY and counterpoint, and thus definitely raising the average quality which makes them infinitely more singable than the words level of musical intelligence. snort if you will, but the fact reof any other type of song. They are sung exactly as they would ‘Mains that the shop girl who has heard Paul Whiteman has be spoken. Musical emphasis is identical with conversational ‘@ken a step toward appreciation of Beethoven’s Seventh Sym-

accent. Certainly this is natural and healthy. In jazz, the jaw- Phony. , straining soprano cannot yammer through a vocal skinnin g-the- A Typical Jazz “Break”

cat upon what would normally be an unaccented syllable in every-day speech. The popular song gives each word and each Wo rreesercresccesscseteesces

syllable its proper stress—no more, no less. ee 2 ee ee ee Obviously, in order to do this, words and music must be SS SS SS SS SE written together. The words are not set to music; neither is the ae leer ol

music set to words. In this, jazz has followed honorable prece- = ee dent. To the coincidence of musical and conversational accent FSS the comedies or Gilbert and Sullivan owe much of their enduring i popularity. May I recommend that in this respect our modernists

thebook ofa? aristocracy might well take a lea from It employs both superimposed rhythm and dissonance.

April 5 ¢ Living Age | THE IMMORTALS OBJECT by Ernst Felix Tschudi (From Neue Ziircher Zeitung, January 21) bers had already left their seats and were on their way to the American bar, when suddenly a crackling sound from the rattle The International Modern Dance Composers Society washold- —_ which the President used instead of the customary gavel of ear-

ing its annual assembly in the Jazzband Hotel in the city of lier days called them back from their goal and forced them to Irgendwostadt. During the course of the official proceedings _ return to their seats. A telegram, the first glance at which obviseveral highly interesting addresses had been delivered, which —_ ously bewildered the President, had just been handed to him by dealt with the special purposes of the Society. Aprominentmem- _a chauffeur; and, his astonishment only increasing as he got ber had expressed his hope that in the dance-music of the future further into the text, he had decided to communicate his amazesome hitherto unknown but highly effective musical instruments — ment to the members before the official session closed. which he had discovered by chance in a Negro shimmy-chapel, When the big hall had once more grown completely quiet, during a journey of investigation in the interior of Africa would _ the President rose and, after another glance at the contents of come into more general use. In addition, the Society had de- the dispatch, addressed the assembly as follows: cided to establish a prize competition for a new and more effec- “Ladies and gentlemen: although I am quite aware that the time tive final measure for the fox-trot, because the customary old —_ has come tocclose our session and begin dinner, I am compelled to tam ta-ta. ta,-tam, ta-tam. ta-tam had begun to wear out. A _ask the indulgence of our honorable members for a few minutes composer from Argentina complained bitterly of the English longer. This telegram, which has just been received from the neglect of the tango and proposed—every other effort to popu- = Marconi radio station, is worded in such an extraordinary way, larize this dance in England having failed because of the conser- and comes from such an incredible source, that I feel compelled to vative spirit of this race of islanders—that during the nextdanc- _ read it at once. You will understand my amazement when I tell you ing-season tango compositions should be sent out from En- _its point of origin. The dispatch was filed last Sunday evening at glish broadcasting-stations, in order to force the dance on the _the telegraph office in the Milky Way in Heaven (murmur and

public. astonishment through the hall), and is signed by the following The list of addresses had been finished and the President persons: Johannes Brahms, Edvard Grieg, Felix Mendelssohnrose to say a word of farewell. Some impatient and thirsty mem- —_ Bartholdy, Anton Rubinstein, Franz Schubert.

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1926 APRIL 10 ¢ INDEPENDENT “I see from the surprise in your faces that, like myself, you _ of the soul to hear this delightful little dance shattered by banhave never heard of any of these names; and yet—from the very _jos and punctuated by the clacking and shrieking of jazz instrufirst moment it seemed to me that I had heard one of them some- ments. It is enough to make a Hungarian, in sheer despair, howl where; and I remember now that on the title-page of abook of | himself—if he did not have the blessed recourse of flight.

music that once belonged to my grandmother. I once read the “Other jazz bands delight to play “Ase’s Death” from the name of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. This leads me to believe | Peer Gynt Suite of Herr Edvard Grieg as a syncopated shimmy; that he—and quite probably the other gentlemen as well—be- —_ and without the faintest sign of compunction they have added longs to that curious group of old composers whom we call “the — effective accents to these profoundly melancholy strains by classic school,” all of whom, of course, died long ago. I shallnot introducing strokes of the gong and blasts from the trombone, keep you waiting for the telegram any longer, but shall read it at besides accelerating the tempo.

once.” “Among the dances that met with the greatest success in

With these words, which threw the whole assembly into the your last season was one called When the Leaves Come Tumhighest pitch of expectancy, the President lifted the telegraphic bling Down. The composer has been lucky enough to remember blank and began to read. The dispatch ran as follows:— the ‘Spring Song’ from Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s Songs With-

“Milky Way Telegraph Station, Heaven out Words and made use of this melody for his popular hit. No

, , wonder his newestDance creationComposers was such a success. International Modern Society These three examples are enough to show you how much is Jazzband Hotel, Irgendwostadt . ~«ce ,

amiss in your modern dance-music; but we have still further “We, the undersigned five composers, herewithenterformal grounds for complaint. In your dance-halls one often hears a protest against the desecrating use of our divine music for fox- | wonderful dance called the Boston, which can be unmasked as

trots, ragtime, and so forth. nothing more than Herr Anton Rubinstein’s Melody in F. with “We have, perhaps, no right to broach the question whether _its two-four time transformed into three-four. Many of your dancmodern dance-music can properly be called music at all, or — ers have been delighted with the lovely introduction to the foxwhether it is a mere concoction of noises. It may be quite appro- _ trot called Romany Love, without the least suspicion that this priate to the decadence of your age. The memory, however, of | comes, note for note, from Franz Schubert’s Moment Musical. the beautiful dances to which we devoted ourselves in the by- Good old Franz himself would never have dreamed that his work gone days when we were on earth compels us to look with regret = might one day be twisted into a fox-trot. It takes a fair share of

on the path which dance-music has since followed. shamelessness to do our work over into dance—melodies and _ “The chief object of our message is to protest against the —_ give it out as a product of your own brains.” _ theft and desecration to which our works have been subjected. At this point it became absolutely impossible for the PresiIn order to protect our own dignity, we find ourselves at length dent to read further, for he was interrupted by hisses, hoots, and compelled to give expression to our dissatisfaction andto warn __ catcalls which were loudest in the corner of the room where the you against further offenses. These are the crimes of which | American composers had their seats, and where the shrieks and

your members have been guilty: whoots and howls of protest reached a deafening pitch. “Among modern dance-orchestras the custom—and a very In vain the president strove, by a despairing clatter with his bad custom it is—has grown up of playing the Fifth Hungarian _ rattle, to restore quiet. There was nothing left for him but to Dance of Herr Johannes Brahms as a fox-trot. It stirs the depths —_ bring the session to an immediate close.

April 10 ¢ Independent

| JAZZ IN HIGH PLACES by Mitzi Kolisch

, ; Part I

Jazz is rampant everywhere-tumbling wildly about crowded torrid —_ have elicited the tired lifting of a cosmopolitan eyebrow if there Harlem cabarets, turning frenzied cartwheels on the stage of the = had appeared one morning a poster announcing the next program Emporium Opera house, strutting in mechanical precisionupand __ of the schola cantorum in this wise: down Tin Pan Alley, and whining sentimentally through the mil-

lions of radio horns that sprout in every cranny George of these United Ly , Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue

States. is, after all, anthirty old story. What is more novel and more , ,wood . ; ; That wae (Scored forjazz, saxophones, four cowbells,eight amusing is the sight of with its spangled, gaudy skirts turned ;. . : . rattles, two Chinese drums, threeduck calls, eighteen

. ; : Part I ; , ; Irving Berlin’s Easter Lily Moon

ae . ; whistles, and a few voices.)

sedately inside out and the purple confetti shaken from its tousled ; hair, sitting demurely under the classic chandeliers of Carnegie

Hall. For jazz, the latest American fad, is no longer content with ; sy , revolving dance and movie orchestrations. It has entered ; “ ;floors ; (Arranged for sixty sweet sopranos the young portals of “American Art.” Therefore, it would scarcely

462

stalwart tenor.)

grouped about one

APRIL 17 © THE NEW STATESMAN 1926 Yes, jazz is bearing the full brunt of American sentimentality, | and iron force of a gigantic city, though it touched nowhere on which is doubtless very advantageous to any real artform that that emotional beauty by which the most abstract and imper-

may be developing in obscurity. sonal of truths are lifted into that Olympus called, in an impoverSome faddists lay the cause for this mammoth encourage- _ ished world, “Art.” ment to the belief that jazz is distinctly American. As a matter of Within the next few seasons we may expect to see, wedged in fact, isolated from all false connections with the Negro spiritual § between Pagliacci and Lohengrin, the very newest and shiniand defined in an elementary and inelegant fashion, jazzis noth- —_ est of jazz operas, for Otto Kahn intimated more than a year ago ing more than the emphasis of syncopation on the primary and how sweeping and all embracing was the attitude of the Cazzaza secondary accents of a measure and the repeated use of the triple | regime toward all deserving American composers, whether they arpeggios in the bass before the principal accents of the measure, _ hail from the Littlefield Musical Conservatory or from Broadwhich phenomena can scarcely be called typically American in = way. Arthur Hopkins has already negotiated for his own jazz view of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavichord and Liszt’s Hungar- _ opera, whichis to be written by W. Frank Harling, whose A Light ian Rhapsodies—to say nothing of the Spanish rhythms. This from St. Agnes gave the natives of Chicago something more style has been used by composers of almost every generation.Of — than the menace of the Black Belt and the whereabouts of Ben course, the monotonous construction of an entire compositionin Hecht to discuss. Mr. Hopkins choice was a wise one—and the jazz idiom is American, or perhaps it were nearer the truthto —_ perhaps after hearing Gershwin’s flimsy little 135 Street consay, New Yorkers and Chicagoean. Even here the bizarrecombina- _traption, the only one. tion of instruments is not original, but owes much to Debussy If A Light from St. Agnes is any indication of Mr. Harling’s and to those disciples who follow his harmonic trend.Somuchfor _ attitude toward the use of jazz in opera construction, his view is

jazz and its original “American technique.” by far the sanest of all those writing in that style, for in his work he As for the argument that jazz is the spirit of America, thatis uses jazz, not as an expression of a nation or a phase, but as the another error—unjust as fallacies usually are. Jazzmay express keynote of acharacter. The “jazz character” in Mr. Harling’s opera the garishness of an amusement park on pay day, the subway _is Toinette, a sordid, drunken product of the New Orleans underrush at twilight, or the girl with the canary-colored hair stum- —_— world. The vile revelry in which she passes her life may easily be bling about in the fat arms of a clothing manufacturer atsome expressed by the vulgarity of jazz as we understand it today. But popular supper club. Jazz may express the bellowing Loop, with — even here this woman is no more typical of America than is the the elevated sending its shrieks into the thick Chicago air. But —_ bedraggled creature who straggles about the docks of Vera Cruz. how much of the desolate dignity of our prairies and the austere Jazz can, it is true, depict the tawdiness and the helter-skelter beauty of our mountains does jazz express? How far does it __ rush of our national life, but America is more than a strapping indicate drowsy Southern villages where days spring up and _=swaggerer and adashingly pretty girl doing the “Charleston” in wither away like grass, or New England districts with quiet farm- the shadow of a two-hundred-story edifice built on a solid mouners trudging from simple house to hard fields and back again— __tain of dollar bills. America is the young conqueror, weary altheir rugged lives moving steadily from sowing toreaping? Per- —_— ready of the poppy land of material plenitude which he has haps there is no such thing as portraying a nation realistically in created, and looking with shy, eager hope toward another planet music. Wagner did not express an actual Germany; rather, here- | where gold is sound and color, and power is loveliness of form

created a poet’s ideal of Germany. and phrase. And builders toward that dream are such men as E. However, John Alden Carpenter attempts to give the symbol =A. Robinson, Eugene O’Neill, and James Branch Cabell. Jazz has of modern American life in his ballet Skyscrapers, recently pro- —_ nothing in common with those men, and yet they are an expres-

duced with striking Robert Edmond Jones settings at the Metro- sion of the groping and the real struggle of the nation. The politan Opera House. The music, which did not cling too tena- |§ composer who will express this must have at his command more ciously to jazz strictures, did reflect the fevered restlessness | humor than exists in the shallow giggling of jazz, and a grandeur and wisdom to which jazz will forever be blind.

April 17 ¢ The New Statesman WALTZ-KINGS AND JAZZ-KING by W. J. Turner About a hundred years ago a Viennese musician named Strauss — even in 1825 had a century of musical tradition behind it. The had three sons born respectively in 1825, 1826, and 1827, who all city of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert has had an became composers and conductors of light music and were _ influence on the most frivolous of its sons, and from the birth of largely responsible for the vogue of Viennese opera which spread § Johann Strauss in 1825 to the present day even the lightest of over the world throughout the nineteenth century. The precious _ light opera composers, even the gayest and most superficial of and enduring results of a high degree of culture were never more musical comedy musicians of Viennese origin, has had a grace, obvious than in the compositions of this Viennese school, which —_an elegance, a sense of form and a good taste which in our own

463

1926 APRIL 17 ¢ THE NEW STATESMAN time have made the music of Leo Fall and Franz Lehar superior to 3. | Nadine (Saxophone Solo) B. Hinton

any work of the kind composed elsewhere. 4. (a) Indian Dawn

Johann Strauss did not invent the waltz, but he wrote the (b) Castles in the Air (Zamecnik)

most popular waltz of the great waltz century, and there is a well- 5. Meet the Boys—Paul Whiteman known and authentic anecdote that Brahms once wrote under- 6. Rhapsody in Blue (George Gershwin) neath a tune of Strauss—“alas, not by Brahms!” The waltz is In addition to these there were: supposed to have been introduced into England about 1812, 7. Four minutes with Two Grand Pianos. and it met with considerable opposition on account of its imag- 8. Popular request items,

ined the min nee nyo nis as an so many other matters, No composers’ names were given [for 7 and 8]. Nor were they

5° needed. The “Four minutes with Two Grand Pianos” perfectly

Endearing Waltz! to thy more tender tune described the music played by the two pianists, whose exhibition,

Bow Irish jig and ancient rigadoon. judged merely as empty virtuosity, could not bear comparison Scotch reels avaunt! and country dance forego with, for example, Stravinsky’s “Carnival Scene” from Your future claim to each fantastic toe. Petroushka, as played by Mr. Borovsky—whom nobody with Waltz, waltz alone both legs and arms demands, judgment would rank as a great pianist on the level of Arthur

Liberal of feet and lavish of her hands. Schnabel, but who nevertheless could outplay these two jazz Our age has seen the Waltz itself retreat and give way to the pianists with one hand. The PoP ular request ite ms” are also Fox-trot. and were Bvron alive to-day he might have written: adequately and completely described, for only with a telescope

y y S the size of Mount Everest could one ever hope to distinguish

Ear-splitting Jazz, thy brazen syncopation one from another. Has routed Waltz from every modern nation; We are left then with the composers whose names I have No more frail maids to dreamy violins given. We must omit at once from this list Kreisler and RimskyIn languor move their unrevealed sins; Korsakov, for the excellent reason that Mr. Whiteman omitted Athletic Jazz leaps liberally and shocks not, them also, In this he was wise, for the worst of all jazz music is Lavish of knees in one-step, tango, fox-trot. the music adapted from other sources. Of the rest only two Johann Strauss, the Waltz-King, has abdicated in favour of compositions are worth hearing. Easl ly the best thing on the

. ; ; , ;ofprogramme is the anonymous St. Louis Blues, which is a rather the Republic Jazz, for there isLtno Jazz-King discernible any- Log: ; .; ps oaiae pleasing bit of dance music, but in every way inferior to Johann

where, although I see; Strauss’s that Mr. PaulofWhiteman is hailed in a ;ts ta Legend the Vienna Forest Waltz—which only gramophone company circular as the King of Jazz. Fortunately ;not ; ae ,; ; ; a better tune but is a more imaginatively conceived composilast Sunday offered an opportunity to those who were suffi; wes ; . : ; tion. Of Nadine, the saxophone solo,between I can only say it ismonutterly ciently energetic to make a comparison the rival ; . ; contemptible. A polar bear on a cornet would be more amusing archs and their respective kingdoms. The national Sunday sacases ar , ; , and more graceful. The saxophone has possibilities—it would League, which is showing varioustosigns of emerging its possibilities— ; . scqeg: impossible such a voice andfrom not and have well-earned obscurity,; behad arrangedhave with Mr. De Groot an ; ; ar but Mr. B. Hinton has not got the imagination to perceive them.

augmented orchestra giveZamecnik’s a Johann Strauss programme at the as _Prnew é .toMr. music, like his name, suggest of palladium. At the same time Mr. Paul Whiteman conducted histo- me “ointment, ot:some ; . sort ; patent medicine called “Za, buk.” It is a musical proborchestra at the Albert Hall. of an ex-Brooklands _ . elaborate and 7 ; ; ably harmless, butWith whotheishelp in need of it? The most

taxi-driver, I heard both. also heard Mr. Whiteman’ssatisfactory, band we wehowever, than the St. ; ogI had ambitious composition—less

give at His Majesty’s Theatre on the pre; : .y Here ; ; .,a;private Louis performance Blues—is George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

vious Friday, and the programme was identical with the Sunday here js sh n familiarity with modern h ; ,

programme. there is s own a certain am larity u m pil vm onic devel No one who heard these two concerts could doubt that as a opments and an atte mpt “ epart from the dance form. But its composer Johann Strauss was far superior to any of the authors all very crude and insignificant.

; ; ; ; ; The most popular thing played Mr. was the foxof Mr. Whiteman’s band-music. Better melodies moreby inar Whiteman . - oe ; trot Valencia, which did notand occur on, the programme, as he had

genious treatment distinguished the music Johann Strauss ; Serna ; ; only made an arrangement of itof after his arrival in this country,

from that of Mr. Whitman’s composers, whose names appeared ; . where he found it had suddenly become the rage. Valencia is by

on his programme as follows: ; . ;

a composer named Padilla and is a good tune. Its amazing popu-

1. Mississippi Suite—Ferdie Grofé larity is complete proof of the nullity of the great bulk of jazz music 2. Group of Compositions in the Whiteman Style and a proof also that the best, and I would go so far as to say the

(a) St. Louis Blues. only jazz music, is dance music, and that to go to a concert to sit (b) Caprice Viennoise (Kreisler) and listen to jazz music is as foolish as it would be to go to an (c) Hymn to the Sun (Rimsky-Korsakoff) exhibition of tarts and jellies made by a good chef set out as an

(d) Tiger Rag exhibition of pictures in a picture-gallery. I have two further remarks to make. One 1s that the clever attempt of the Jazz-Kings to

, 464

APRIL 24 ¢ LITERARY DIGEST 1926 get away from the designation of “jazz” by calling their music —_ to which one dances is an excruciating horror. I have often asked “Symphonic Syncopation” and their jazz-bands “Syncopated = myself in amazement: Are these people all deaf that they can tolerSymphony Orchestras” is an amusing example of snobbishness. ate this awful row? Now I believe that Mr. Whiteman was one of Let them stick to that admirable and excellent word “jazz.” Jazzhas those who introduced a more melodic style and more subtle efmerits, symphonic syncopation has none. Moreover, symphonic _ fects into the jazz-band. If this is true I can only hope that some syncopation is quite meaningless as a description, since there is | moredrastic reformer will go a great deal further than Mr. Whiteman symphonic syncopation in all orchestral music from the time of _ has done. I like good jazz music. My complaint is that there is so

Haydn to the present day. very little of it and that what there is might be so much better. The Secondly, it is possible that Mr. Paul Whiteman deserves credit § Jazz-King whom we can place on the same artistic level as Johann for adevelopment which I have not mentioned. Those whodance, — Strauss, the Waltz-King, has not yet appeared among us. When as I occasionally do, know that to any sensitive ear, any kindof — hedoes so he will have no more devoted and faithful admirer than finer texture than wood, the sheer noise of the average jazzband _ the present writer.

April 24 ¢ Literary Digest FREE TRADE OR WAR FOR JAZZ? Since England barred a quartet of jazz-band players from America, § might have been called on to parallel the legislation proposed what are we going to do about European musicians who flock for the Ohio jazz players. Italy, in fact, put an embargo on certain over to this country? Shut them out in reprisal? It appears that | art exports long ago; and France has a society for the protection

the State Department can’t do that on merely professional of its treasures. The mere prohibition of export, however, is degrounds, so bills for protection of our jazz players are offeredin fensive, while the jazz incident has illustrated again the positive Congress, and the issue widens far beyond the jazz field. M.B. | aspect. Jazz as an industry possibly has a greater spot cash Levick observes that “it has remained for jazz to stirup human __ value than all the salable old masters lumped together. The repassions to the pitch of a war of retaliation in art.” His report of public of art, transcending boundaries, has, after all, a sharp eye

the first gun-fire reads: for the glitter of coin. This republic of art, indeed, is a good deal “Four jazz men from Ohio were refused admission to England, like other republics the world has seen; once it gets on its own and forthwith in the Senate and the House of Representatives _ feet, it starts ructions. The tendency is well marked to-day when bills were announced providing machinery for reprisals. Wit- nationalists and internationalists in ink, paint and marble are nesses have told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the ‘having at it’ hotter and heavier than usual.” British Ministry of Labor has adopted regulations that virtually The retaliation proposal in Congress was made by Represenprohibit the importation of American jazz talent. Similar rules, it tative Vaile and Senator Willis when it was discovered that the is said, obtain in France, and so the exporters of jazzask Uncle | Secretary of State had no power to refuse admission to EuroSam to protect them. Free trade in jazz is the battle-cry, with a | pean musicians per se, even if England or France chose to ex-

wall against syncopating immigrants as the alternative.” clude American bandsmen as bandsmen. With half the musiIs this agitation to be taken as forecasting atime when Rum _ cians of Europe already here, or trying to get here, the defenders Row will be but the tail of jazz row, twelve miles out, and foreign | of Ohio jazz considered this a sorry state of affairs.

musicians will be smuggled in with all the risks of hijacking, to Thus jazz advances toward the ad valorem tables, a circumescape the penalty of entering legally in bond under the warn- _— stance of worldwide significance. In Sofia, in the same week of

ing, “One toot and you’re oot?” the Washington proposals, the orchestra at a charity ball orgaWhile jazz has for the moment brought the issue to the front, nized by Princess Eudoxia was allowed to play only waltzes and we are reminded by this writer in The New York Times that there | Bulgarian national dances, and the guests went on strike so is a volume of similar hostility in the history of halfthe countries | definitely that jazz was restored. And the day before it was re-

of civilization; and he argues: ported from Italy that jazz had grown so virulent that a special “If jazz is art, so are the movies, and they, too, are having their police force was raiding public dance-halls to modify the wrigembargo troubles. Opera has gone through the same thing in gling of the younger generation. Will it be necessary to call out the past, more than once; and so have the theater, painting, | the army when the Charleston hits Italy? sculpture—the whole range of arts, lively or otherwise.” But if barriers are raised, may not a master of jazz become like The cash value of art looms large in the wager of battle again an old master—duty free only if more than a century old. And

and again, Mr. Levick points out: who wants a centenarian jazz player? “Only a few weeks ago New York heard of protests from Serious art is subject to the same sort of disputes and jealouAmerican sculptors over the employment of foreign artists on —_sies, as recalled by this musical critic, who continues:

the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The Americanization of “The point was so well understood in old Athens that a comic such a collection as Lord Leverhulme’s stirred up such astorm playwright could always get a laugh by referring to a Thracian that if an embargo could have kept it in England, Parliament _ rival as ared-headed barbarian. Handel, when transplanted across

465

1926 APRIL ¢ THE AMERICAN MERCURY the North Sea, kept a German flavor, and twenty years after his — while the court, Paris, and the rest of France divided. Marie naturalization as an Englishman he was forced into bankruptcy Antoinette, being Austrian, sided with Gluck, and so du Barry because his true-Briton enemies gave balls and banquets the automatically became a Piccinist. Young France rallied to the nights of his oratorio performances. This despite—or maybe Queen. The tall wigs of the ladies quivered with partisanship

because of—the occupancy of the British throne by a and the lace cuffs of noblemen trembled as they argued. The

Hanoverian. other estates followed suit, while the rival generals brought up “War with guns and trumpets has never raged more fiercely | soprano reinforcements and basso-profundo shock troops. The than that between the adherents of German and Italian music —_ test came when the two chose the same story for rival operas.

when the Gluckists pitched into the Piccinists. Literal-minded “Gluck won, and yet the war had to be fought over again a historians will have it that the heat was generated by court poli- — century later. Once more it was a German school against the tics, but with the example of jazz fresh in mind, one can see it _Italian, and once more the battleground was Paris, but this time must have been the other way round, with politics secondary. hostility was aroused not only by newness but by a conscious “Marie Antoinette precipitated it by inviting Piccinitocome French nationalism. Against Richard Wagner Paris set up an from Italy in 1767 and write operas in Paris; and seven years later | animosity not soon broken down; a protective tariff could have she asked Gluck, too, fresh from his German and Viennese tri- | done no more, and such a tariff might not have had behind it so umphs. The two composers went at each other with operas for | keen amemory of France’s defeat in real war.” (The rest of this weapons, and control of the opera as the immediate prize. Mean- article is not associated with jazz.)

April ¢ The American Mercury THE ANATOMY OF JAZZ by Henry Osborne Osgood “Come on, boys! Give it a lick! What do you think you are—a He would wonder how it is possible to obtain the proper

symphony orchestra or something?” balance of tone with such a band. The prominent position of the Past midnight, on the bare stage of the Garrick Theater, lighted | quartette of saxophones, right up in the front row, would puzzle by one glaring white bulb high up in the flies, Paul Whiteman, in —_ him, though saxophones themselves are nothing new. I do not sweater and felt hat, throned on an old wooden chair cornerwise __ recall that he ever called for one in an orchestral score—he had

upon a prop platform from Arms and the Man, faced thirty-odd __ plenty of colors on his palette without; though back in those players, a motley crowd whose temperaments and temperatures years when he was superintendent of the military music of all ranged from sport shirts with neither coats nor vests over them _ the Russians he doubtless used them in scoring for band. “Where through conventional white shirt-sleeves to business suits, sweat- is the other wood-wind?” he would ask, for the saxophones, ers and even overcoats. As I sat bundled up out in the cold audi- =‘ though made of brass, are reckoned orchestrally among the torium listening to the rehearsal of that extraordinary first operatic © wood-wind, and, as he watched, the answer would become plain. experiment in jazz, George Gershwin’s one-act sketch, One Hun- _—_ One or the other ( or perhaps all) of the saxophonists would

dred and Thirty-fifth Street, limagined to myself the surprise and, suddenly lay aside his first love, lunge into the stack of instruI am sure, the joy that even so recent a master of orchestrationas § ments about him and emerge in a second as a clarinetist, an Nicolas Andreivitch Rimsky-Korsakoff, who died less than four- _—_ oboist, an English hornist, a flutist, a piccolo player or even a teen years ago, would have experienced could he have dropped _bass-clarinetist. Then, I think, Rimsky-Korsakoff would see the

in and taken a seat beside me. light, and, fascinated by the novel colors that were charming his Peculiar is the right word for that orchestra, particularly from ears, he would begin to think of trying his hand at this new old Nicholas’ standpoint. Fifteen years ago it was not dreamed — medium.

of; ten years ago it was an infant; only two years ago was it Reflect for one moment on that appalling thing, the skeleton brought to its present state of development, and it will keep on dance orchestra of pre-jazz days! A flute, a clarinet, a cornet, a changing and growing. Whiteman has already greatly altered trombone, drums, a piano, a double-bass, and, squeaking vainly the instrumentation of his band from what it was at his first | against all this, one lone violin, or perhaps two! There was pracformal concert, “An Experiment in Modern Music,” atCarnegie __ tically no homogeneity. Held together precariously by the piHall on February 12, 1924. One can imagine the feelings of the —_ ano, it was unbalanced, squeaky, full of holes, noisy when the good Russian upon seeing the present combination for the first brass was working and dull when it wasn’t. Today the dance time. Instead of his string band of sixty, since the earliest days | orchestra has two or three saxophones, two trumpets (or corthe cornerstone, under-pinning and foundation of the orches- nets), a trombone, one or two violins, a tuba, a banjo, drums and tra, he would find scarcely a dozen, arrayed againstabrass band _—a piano. The flute and clarinet of the old combinations have of very respectable size, three trumpets, three trombones anda _ given away to the saxophones; the banjo is a new-comer; the tuba, not to forget percussion instruments like two pianos, a | double-bass is generally replaced by the tuba; and, oh, how

banjo, a steel guitar and all sorts of drums. different the whole sounds! 466

APRIL ¢ THE AMERICAN MERCURY 1926 IT devoted themselves to free fantasias, either contrapuntal devices or obligati. All this was arranged impromptu according to

The old style orchestra was with us for years indance-hall and suggestions from the leader or to the players’ own ideas. The theatre, hanging onto life with a grim persistency worthy of —_jiece was rehearsed over and over again, the embellishments hit something better. What finally brought about the present change, upon were tried out, remodeled and polished, and when it was not only in the instrumental combination but in the style of play- finally set it was not set at all, for, as Carl Engel said in an article ing? Did the newer dances of stronger rhythm, impulse and Vio- some time ago, “A good jazz band never plays the same piece lence develop a new orchestration to accompany them, or did twice in the same manner. Each player must be. . .an originator as the change in the orchestra promote the invention of the newer —_—_ we], as an interpreter, a wheel that turns hither and thither on its

dances? Which was the chicken, which the egg? Idon’tknow gun ayic without disturbing the clockwork.”

the answer nor can I find anyone who does. Mr. Engel also pointed out that this huddle system (to borA short time ago Herman Heller, director of Warner's Theatre, row a term from football), far from being new, goes back to the New York, had on his programme an interesting potpourri, at- very beginnings of the orchestra. “Strange to relate” he said, ranged by himself, called “Milestones to Jazz." Aleaderofdance —«;chestral improvisation is not an invention of our age. To orchestras for at least twenty years, Mr. Heller is one of the improvise counterpoint was a talent that the musicians in the many Californians who have had a lot to do with the develop- oy chestras of Peri and Monteverdi, three hundred years ago, ment of jazz. “Milestones to Jazz” began with one of the spiritu- expected to possess, and did possess, to such a high deals, since it is Mr. Heller’s theory that modern jazz is only a gree that the skeleton scores of those operas which have come development over the years of some of those old tunes, then —_ Gown to us give but an imperfect idea of how this music sounded came a soft-shoe dance, a cake-walk, the Texas Tommy, theone- =. y., performed.” Our ideas of the operas of Peri and step, the fox-trot and the Charleston. That seemed like an inge- Monteverdi may indeed be imperfect, but our descendants three nious and probably correct genealogical tree, especially when centuries hence will have no idea at all of what early jazz sounded backed up by the authority of aman of so much experience. Mr. jie. They will have no skeleton scores, for the simple reason Heller was the first I know of to use a banjo as aregularinstru- that there are no scores, skeleton or otherwise. Perhaps that is ment in the dance orchestra. He used two of them in 1909 atthe ——jucky, after all, for if they could hear that awful stuff, they would St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, to put more life into therhythm — form an even lower opinion of our civilization than that they

when the Texas Tommy came into vogue. In this case itseemsto wi] inevitably gather from such other records as come down to

have been the dance that introduced the instrument. them.

Incidentally, if the Pacific Coast is looking for something to Though the ear-wracking hot jazz continued to dominate the balance the fame of that ornament of the Atlantic Coast, Faneuil sg. for several years, its position was not undisputed. Into the Hall, Cradle of Liberty, it might christen that same St. Francis pain of that same Art Hickman there popped the revolutionary Hotel the Cradle of Jazz, for the first complete modern jazzcom- _igea that his new orchestra would be just as effective and much bination I have been able to locate played there in 1914. Art ore musical when playing softly as when blaring its way ruthHickman, who came East later and did much to arouse popular —_jegsty though an evening. For certain tunes whose moods suginterest in the kind of music already so well known on the Coast, gested gentler treatment he began at rehearsal to work out quiet was its leader. The combination was two saxophones, cornet, arrangements, effects that wooed the ears instead of blasting trombone, violin, banjo, piano and drums. For probably the first = remand “sweet” jazz was born. It was not, however, until time the limelight was focused on the drummer, since Hickman —_— several years later, when the Hickman combination (frequently was neither violinist or pianist, like the usual leader, butamaster ith an increased number of players and the addition of a tuba of the drums and traps. Though, as we shall see, the modern jazZ_—_—_y contrabass to fortify the bass), having proved effective and orchestra was already in existence as early as 1914,itwasbyno practical, became established as the standard, that the system means familiar; in fact, saxophones were rare for several years og improvised arrangements gave place to actual scoring. longer. The public liked its jazz hot in those days, and reveled in In 1920, Ferdie Grofé, New Yorker by birth and Californian such noise as Ted Lewis made with his combination of clarinet, by habit, was the pianist of Paul Whiteman’s orchestra at the cornet, trombone, piano and drums, the most nerve-shattering, —pyote] Alexandria, Los Angeles. Grofé, who had a sound musiear-destroying, cacophonic racket ever produced upon thisearth a] training, was a professional orchestra pianist with ambitions

in the name of music. toward something better. The previous year, 1919, when he was

There was no special scoring of jazz orchestra then. The one of the pianists with John Tait’s orchestra in San Francisco, combinations were so many and varied that there was no de- pa. hha started to make arrangements for the pure love of it. mand for such orchestrations. Each orchestra made its own af- — ,hen he went to Whiteman, where he found the Hickman orrangements, nor were these, as a rule, reduced to manuscript. chestration, he kept on experimenting. The system was to obtain a piano, violin, or song copy of the Instead of keeping everybody busy all the time, as was the piece to be performed and to learn it at rehearsal. The pianist — custom in huddle-system orchestrations, he studied the possiplayed it through till the others caught the tune and a general _pilities of the various instruments for solo use and worked out idea of the harmony, though the latter was not important except —_ combinations of them to produce novel colors. He made scores,

for the pianist. Those instruments that did not play the melody tne. first jazz scores, from which fixed parts were copied out

467

1926 APRIL ¢ THE AMERICAN MERCURY and played. He invented rhythmic surprises. He evolved the sider in what degree the development of the jazz player has harmony chorus, something entirely new. In this he gave the | extended the possibilities of his instrument, the saxophonist melody to the solo saxophone, supporting it with sustained _first, since he is practically both string band and wood-wind of chords on the brass, played piano, the rhythm being indicated — the modern dance orchestra. lightly by the piano, the banjo, or merely by light drum taps. If the melody was to be brought out more strongly it was allotted | Example2.

to the solo cornet, supported softly by the saxophones and trom- neem bone. Everybody played from parts, the only variations being Fie ee SSS Sa eT eet

the occasional impromptu embellishments of individual play- SS Ss}. r ers, still the grace of jazz. If you heard Whispering, the popular ‘ __ tune of that year, at the Hotel Alexandria on a Monday evening (SS = = and enjoyed the novel beauty of the arrangement, you could go -

back on Tuesday evening and be sure of hearing the same thing.

The saxophone is no youth. Ingenious Adolfe Sax invented

Example 1. it about 1840; in 1844 a forgotten Parisian composer named Kastner introduced it into one of his long-forgotten operas, in

a - f L : 1845 it was officially adopted for French military bands. It was

2S SSS SS SS SSS SSS then something quite new, a brass instrument played with a

y reed. Before that all reed instruments were of wood. There are

SSS SSS SS SSS S= seven members of the family, ranging from the sopranino down

} Lf — to the contrabass, though very few of the latter are now in exist-

2 SS ence, owing to their unwieldiness and the necessity of having a Land superhuman pair of lungs to play one. The sopranino can climb

2 up to the second G flat above the treble clef; the baritone (the average orchestra has no lower bass) can drop down to D below

SS SS ee es

———— eye _Csitthe bass clef. So there is plenty of room to write for them. They

es Ge grow bigger according to the depth of their voices.

—— SS125s ee ce2S ee ds | SS

(QS SS EES SSSSSSS= = SS SE The innovation caught once, and today every good Renker. aed pana| ———— orchestra has its staffonofat arrangers. There are hundreds—yes, — at | thousands of them. Each has his special task and talents. Ben SS SS SS ee SO Bernie has three, one for hot jazz (which the Charleston and the ("=~ a Stomp—ye gods, what a name!—are bringing back, worse re a ee Se luck!), one for sweet jazz, and a third for medium, with ele- Pit — ments of both. But there is no doubt that the honor of being the it PE ——— a orrwrn_e

father of modern jazz orchestration, which, an art in itself, is eer ee ee ae nearly always ingenious and very often beautiful, belongs to ES ——————————————

m —eS = IW -eS

Ferdie Grofé, who hasband now to retired theallposition of first eaAeeFEF eeeAig} = S| pianist in the Whiteman devotefrom nearly of his time to pnp

making arrangements and to doing composing on his own ac- j= ot Se The jazz orchestrator has been able to call for and achieve many | Sa Le ee _

of his unusual and extraordinary effects because of the virtuos- eS eS SS

ity of the players at his disposal. The trumpeters and trombonists of a good jazz band, for instance, possess a technique that is What you see ordinarily when there are three players are two not expected of their fellows in a first-class symphony orches- _alto saxophones and a tenor; if there is a quartette, the fourth is tra, because it is never called for. It will be worth while tocon- _a baritone. They all have bent-back mouthpieces and bells dou-

468

APRIL ¢ THE AMERICAN MERCURY 1926 bling back and up and out. When one or more of the players | background. Meyerbeer, Bizet, Massenet and Thomas all emsuddenly changes to a straight instrument, itis asoprano, andif ployed them as solo instruments, though not making technical there is one straight one about half as long as the others, thatis | demands on them. (See Example 6, below.) little sopranino. They are all transposing instruments; that is, As a bit of ironic fact, these passages generally were (and are they sound a note quite different from the one actually written. _ still) transferred to the clarinet because there was no saxophone player available in opera or symphony orchestras. Today, under

Example 4 the agile fingers of the modern player fluttering over eighteen or twenty keys, saxophones toss off scale passages and arpeg-

bal _—}—-5 gios with reckless ease (see Example 7, below); CO a A _ fee i They chatter, they bleat, they glide, they coo—especially the

le latter. They even produce portamenti that are, mechanically a Seoatel | speaking, not among their possibilities. Urged by a skillful tongue

[Pa aS (slap tonguing), they produce explosive noises that sound as if

i a door had been slammed upon a tone with a woodeny bang. They are invaluable in all situations—the heart, soul and spirit

Example 5. of the jazz orchestra. Muted Trumpets ers and trombonists, on the other hand, have taken their classic aety, 220:9 wenn GER pe SD CE OT . ° . oa oaeue ‘MSS Sas —— el one instruments and in a very few years extended their possibilities The saxophonists had a virgin field to develop. Jazz trumpet-

‘el — beyond the dreams of the generations that previously played

o" 4 pa a 7 ov sm! ww oe ° .

Sele Viclia “z them. The orchestration books, for instance, all give the so-

- a Som oe ore 2 an Se —_——— prano high C (two octaves about middle C) as the extreme upSa —— a ed as oe Se —S—— ward limit of range for the B-flat trumpet, the one in ordinary use,

|2 and even at that warn against the employment of the upper

register. “It is a good rule,” say Cecil Forsyth in his exhaustive Until the days of jazz there was practically no virtuoso saxo- —_— book on orchestration, “to take them......only for special purphone technique because none was called for. In military bands _ poses above their high G.” Yet the jazz players of today run up (Sousa has carried a quartette for years) they wander quietly | an octave higher than that with entire ease, and Leo Sowerby in and unobtrusively about, filling in and enriching the harmonic —_ his Monotony has actually written the B flat above that summit—and had it played. Example 6.

{.

,., 2 Muted Trumpets — _——

(SPE BS SSSR SESS SESS TS SSSS SSS a ie am octave lower

| Trembence ond Tuba

Example 7.

= | pF ee | ee aaa 5S ve ee ee ae

8 Saxephones Wes Fe Se

CO EEE A oa ______vccec S gliss

469

1926 APRIL ¢ THE AMERICAN MERCURY

iaIIIS — oe er nn eeAeee a

Example 8. Sea . Se ea. Sea.

0 Ziemann suaeeeneeanamnamae — aa a ee < —Seee WmNScOnENnEEE F naned

~' see eee”. Jee i... .cA

or byel) eee yi = Se wet +x ewe, fy Brass - , Te. Guuted)” f

Se 1 Gan neue eee ee ceemanemd EN

3 Clarinets | A re ~~ 2 OD OS SN OE C—O ee ee ee

Example 9.

‘ aa a 2 ite Cee RD SE ee ees ee Oe am =a om om

= ee ernerenny ———TS a

Ad - eek ~~ ~~ —— atenema a 28 One ee eee oe ee ee ee eee ee Ni ' 2=: eeeeee | eeneneeenmerneanermconennneny on oeerareneanssnapeaentananttamseneee renner2eens

(22 Cf ‘ snla om a pal a »- Lad Trempet break

6 Grueeeets ee ep ee ee en ee eee ren wu ee ee Seaman a mp ute eae eee

Lon: y A AS eS a a ae oo eo RE eee IV color and lilt of jazz music, we are talking about the man who

The tendency in modern symphonic orchestration is all toward scored it," says Deems Taylor.) It also shows a favor ite trick in

the development of the wood-wind, brass and percussion at the ne ote ae hin cometh fe Te ae ce in this case only

expense of the strings. Consider the relative importance of the lorful introduction th S diatel i h d > three as compared to the string band, first in a Beethoven sym- colori” Intro uction that seas rely catches t Sar ane ar hony and then in one of the larser works sav. of Stravinsk rests the attention. Grofé, with his bold harmonies and inge-

Th y hestrat ‘th i" 11 , ik ; ' " nious modulations, starts off as if a real he-tune were to follow,

h hirp ab he ch f th -

nale , wn a fore “hort years ae, developed hic an ra manner instead of the sweetnesses of this Indian Love Song. Soprano

and to a degree that has called forth the admiration of that same thing fortissimo. (The gc hcl nates heard ato need Prats, every: Stravinsky and the outspoken praise of so well-equipped a mod- tations, for the sake of clearness and convenience. No account

ernist as Alfredo Casella, who bore public testimony in writing k fth . h lari

that the American jazz men have invented effects that he and his iS faken OF the transposing instruments~~Saxop ones, Clarinets, colleagues never dreamed of. Jazz orchestration meets the high- rump ets and horns. Asa matter of fact, Jazz scoring 1s generally

est test of any art—the accomplishment of large effects with done this way, the transpositions being made only when the

art ied out for th f the pl ,

small means. There is no better way to prove this than by ex- P E ae . yy “468 yh © wth - “P "ric q ;

le. (See Example 10, above) xample (p. ) shows tr e figure which the composer in-

a? first quotations are from the arrangement made for the vented for the piano accompaniment. In Example 3 we see what Whiteman dance orchestra (not the large one ert band) of Thurlow happens to it. The time has been changed, of course, from 3/4 to Lieurance’s tune, By the Waters of Minneton, ka, purposely cho- alla breve—it must be a fox-trot. And look at that accompany-

,t;

sen because it is $0 widely known Grand-master Ferdie Grofé is ae figure! It begins now on the strong beat, not on the after the orchestrator. Notice how simple his effects look to the eye beat, as in the original, and has been assigned to the piano in

i eed f And yet how delightfully colorful they are to the ear! craves

Example 11 Example 12.Trombone an Ezt

= .S om Soe ype oo? SD gaen! t= a8EE,eee 9 oeone = waa’) hesalpeemenenaseny ED SS yt ——¥F ~—s the banjo and—the second trombone! Think of what confidence a that shows, on the part of the arranger, in the ability of the

The Victor record of this arrangement, made by Whiteman, second trombonist to play legato and strictly in tune! The melody will aid the layman. The recording orchestra consisted of fifteen appears in three octaves: high up, in three-part harmony on players. No drum part is shown because drums, at the time this three insistent soprano saxophones, a characteristic and frearrangement was made, were not used in phonograph record- quently employed effect; lower down, again in three-part haring, but they would be added, of course, in playing the piece for mony;

dancing. In 1924 Whiteman used a pair of horns, which appear B eG in this score, and three saxophones. The following year he dis- xamplc t.

pensed with the horns and added another saxophone, having Sexovt

decided that the horn color was too similar to that of the saxo- pon of oe —————— aT phones, and of too little individual value to be worth keeping. 010 da he ne eres aera en

Example I (p. 468) shows at a glance how much the composer fa = =

owes to the orchestrator. (“When we talk about the fascinating : wv

471

1926 APRIL ¢ THE AMERICAN MERCURY Example 14.

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APRIL ¢ THE AMERICAN MERCURY 1926 divided between the two trumpets and the first trombone; and, niment that is brand new both in matter and rhythm. Note the still another octave lower, sung by the two horns in unison, __ phrasing of the third clarinet part. It must have been a treat to without harmonic support. The tum-tum bass of the piano is = Thurlow Lieurance to hear that arrangement for the first time! strengthened by the tuba, which is not shown in the score, In this particular arrangement there happens to be no “break,” since it is taken as a matter of course. (See Example 14,opposite.) but the break is so characteristic a feature of jazz that it deserves This particular tune is in what the theorists call the ABA quotation. The orchestra comes to the end on a phrase and halts form. There is an opening section, A, amiddle section, B, anda _ abruptly, while the next two measures are filled with an impromptu return of A. Example 4 shows the simple but charming effect | and fantastic short cadenza on some solo instrument. I say imGrofé uses for B. Two solo violins play the theme, answered by —_ promptu advisedly, for though breaks are printed in orchestrabells or celesta. There is nothing else but the soft piano accom- _ tions, the soloist is not only left free, but generally expected, to paniment, in strict and regular rhythm. A then returns. thistime § improvise a clever break of his own. The Bell Hoppin’ Blues, the melody goes to the noble voice of the first ttombone, while — written and arranged by Don Sisson, first trumpeter of Ben the accompanying figure, ingeniously improved with an alto _— Bernie’s orchestra, has four breaks, each for a different instruvoice, is given to two alto saxophones. The piano continues its |§ ment. Example 10 shows that for the trumpet, Example 11 that for quiet accompaniment and the dominant E flat, simply sustained —_ the piano, Example 12, that for the trombone, and Example 13

on a solo horn, provides the proper binding. that for the saxophone. The banjo and drums get solo breaks The next time A appears the tune is assigned to two muted = sometimes and there are also set breaks for three instruments trumpets in harmony. Example 5 shows this, and alsosomething = (saxophones or trumpets), very effective indeed and known as

else very characteristic: the E-string obligato for the violin, its “three-part bones.” principal use in jazz orchestration. (The faithful piano back- In Example 14 another view of “stop time” is given. This is ground is always understood, though not quoted foreconomic __ played with pauses, just as it appears, or sometimes the holes reasons.) Before Acomes back for the fourth time, Brother Grofe, _ are filled in with impromptu breaks at the discretion of the leader.

tiring of its banality, snatches a rhythmic cue and, just to wake _In this particular instance (which happens to be from another things up, indulges in some quite original modernities—whole- | _Grofé arrangement, Lehar’s Gigolette) the score is marked “woodtone scales, augmented intervals and the like. (Example 6).The — block breaks ad lib.” There is a tremendous whip to this stop distribution of parts is shown in the quotation. Two clarinets —_ time, especially when played, as in this instance, by the full double the muted trumpets an octave lower, and an alto saxo- _ brass choir (muted) in quick, snapped-off chords. It’s a wonder phone supports the first trumpet in unison. After this outburst, the passage isn’t marked “hot” or “sock it,” for the jazz arranger peace is restored and three saxophones (two altos and a bari- —_ writes plain and understandable English and has introduced a tone) begin to coo with characteristic glissandos (Example 7), | number of explosive new terms into musical nomenclature. echoed, a half measure behind and an octave higher, by two

melting solo violins. Some of the glissandos have four notes in V them, some only three. The trifling difference is not detected by

the ear, which hears nothing but the gentle “ooo,” rising or | Jazz orchestration, it thus appears, has become a genuine art.

falling under the influence of slid fingers. Unknown seven or eight years ago, it has developed even more The next variation (Example 8) is ingenious and interesting. | quickly than the aeroplane. And whether or not jazz itself reThe brass has sharp, full, staccato chords on the first two beats mains, the lessons to be learned from it will not be forgotten by of the measure. (Another jazz trick—‘“stop time.”) The gentle, | orchestrators of more serious music. bell-like celesta answers with high chords, as explosive as it As for the serious development of jazz itself, there is no betcan make them. The solo horn binds them all with anindepen- _ ter way to conclude than with a quotation (Example 15) showing dent contrapuntal voice. (The composer sticks totonicharmony _ the orchestrator’s hand turned to scoring the first successful whenever these four measures appear, but Grofé, the musician, | attempt to raise jazz above the level of the dance hall and the has tired of it and introduces perfectly simple but effective har- | musical comedy stage, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Here are

monic changes.) the first measures, as imagined for jazz orchestration by Grofé.

Example 9 shows another jazz trick. By an ingenious modula- —_- Will anyone who heard Ross Gorman play the solo clarinet fortory passage preceding the final return of A, Grofé has jumped _ get the astonishment he created in the very first measure when, his orchestra up half a tone into the bright key of Amajor, much _ half way up that seventeen-note run, he suddenly stopped play-

more brilliant than the preceding A flat. Every brass player is ing separate notes and slid for home on a long portamento that busy blowing the tune for the last time, fortissimo; but the saxo- nobody knew could be done on a clarinet? It’s not in any of the phonists have turned clarinetists and, in the biting, penetrating books. Ross spent days and days hunting round for a special high register of their instruments, furnish a three-part accompa- _ reed that would allow him to do it. Days and days. That's the spirit that has made jazz what it is. By the way, what is it?

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1926 APRIL * MUSICAL QUARTERLY April ¢ Musical Quarterly “JAZZ” AN EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM by Edwin J. Stringham It may seem a bit strange that jazz should receive serious atten- Naturally, there is both good and bad jazz—that is, good or tion from musical educators; but the truth is, if one will be fair, | bad from a compositional standpoint, but in this article I have in that there are two sides to the jazz question. Unquestionably, mind only the better type of jazz; that which is composed by there is much bad in some of it; but there is also some good in —_— understanding musicians, that which is well conceived and writthe better type of this popular form of musical expression. As we __ ten according to ordinary esthetical and technical standards, and know jazz to-day, it is like most anything else in life; the vice or that whichis really clever in either composition or orchestration. virtue in a thing is largely dependent upon the use to whichitis | The other kinds of jazz need not bother us at this time; for the bad

put, or the degree of indulgence. A thing may be ever so good _ types of jazz are self-evident and carry within themselves their under certain conditions; but if it be used to excess, the effects | own swiftest and surest condemnation. will very likely be bad. Conversely, poison, in proper doses, may Certain types of professional musicians have seen fit to rail at be used as a helpful agent toward health. Almost any child (and _jazz, to denounce it to the high heavens and to demand that it be adult for that matter) likes sweetmeats, and areasonable amount wiped off the face of the earth. They seem to derive a great deal of of it at the proper time is helpful: too much of it at any time, or | enjoyment from getting such words of condemnation “off their

some of it at the wrong time, may cause ill effects. chest,” as the man in the street would say. They do not take the So it is with jazz. This form of music, as we shall callitforthe time to see if any good can be discovered, and they are insulted time being, at least for sake of argument, has been denounced when it is intimated that there might be a little cleverness here, a far and wide as being of immoral character and having within it good bit of harmonic, melodic or rhythmic writing there and elsethe means of inducing immorality. Nothing is so absurd. Music —_ where. Nothing but a burst of indignation and display of wounded itself, as we know, has no inherent moral basis; itis amatterof esthetic sense results whenever the subject of jazz is brought use and association. Take a hymn tune, for instance. There is —_ before them from out the closet of opinions. Yet, I dare say, every nothing in the notes themselves that stamps the music sacred. —_ person who loves music has some kind feeling toward jazz and Rather, it is the association with the words of the hymn andthe even likes quite a bit of it—and would say so if he were really inseparable wedding of both the music and the words toadefi- _ honest with himself and his friends. I often feel that many of those nite use, that impart the sacredness to the hymn tune. who denounce jazz so vehemently are inclined to be a bit guilty of It would be decidedly immoral to use such atune as Nearer My — “posing,” even though they do not realize it. It is their pride to be God, to Thee for any other purpose than its time-honored associa- | known as “one who dwells in the world of better music,” or “one

tion. It has been used for many years for sacred purposes that | whose musical tastes are unquestionable,” or the like, and it does nothing else save worship can be thought of in connection with —_ hurt their ego to be jostled by such a contemptible thing as jazz— either the words or the music, or both. Conversely, it would be an _it is far beneath their notice and never to be thought of in their act of irreverence to use a tune like, Oh, Gee, Be Sweet to Me, Kid,in_ _ presence. That may be hitting it a bit hard; but some of us take any part of a religious service. However, be it acknowledged that —_ ourselves so seriously, too seriously, too much of the time. We some hymns have been made from music that was composed origi- need a little esthetical relaxation now and then. nally for instrumental use or vocal works ofa secular nature. Granted; No form of music can do this as effectively as jazz. Jazz is the

but the music was good in the first place and had not suffered any —_ laughter, the fun, the “sans souci” of the tone-world. It is the disgrace in its use before being turned to service asahymntune.So _ironer of wrinkles that kink our esthetic senses now and then. It is we see how association plays a large part in determining the moral _an antidote for too much “beefsteak,” as I have heard “classical” character of music, and it cannot be proved that jazz, per se, is music called by a musical “low-brow.” Gastronomically speaking, immoral. It may be put to immoral use; but that is aside from the — the music of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms may possibly be lik-

inherent capabilities of the mere musical notes. ened unto beefsteak; but a menu cannot be constructed out of It is well that we have some understanding of whatismeantby such all the time. We need something to make us grin and laugh jazz. No doubt, we would have as many definitions as we would — once in a while. Jazz certainly can do that much better than music

have definers; but to me, jazz means the utilization of astrongly of the finer qualities, and who is there among us that does not marked rhythm of unusual nature (syncopated, complex, com- — crave for musical relaxation now and then? Jazz is the joke-smith pound, irregular, oddly divided or accentuated), which may or in the world of tones, and who would deny us mortals a joke now may not be interwoven with two or more rather free contrapuntal = and then? The musical jokes of the “classical” lore are usually as parts; the purpose of the entire piece being divertissement or funny as a hospital. Jazz has no pretensions of being anything dancing. As yet, jazz has no serious nature. One does not haveto _ other than light and disposed toward levity; at least it has had no read between these lines to see that it is difficult to define jazz; but | other ambitions until recently. But what of future possibilities? since it is customary to define a thing one is discussing, the What we need on the part of serious musicians, is not whole-

writer’s view, weak as it is, is presented at this time. sale denunciation, but succor. Jazz is in need of guidance into 474

APRIL ¢ MUSICAL QUARTERLY 1926 true, wholesome channels wherein it may be developedinto what = gap between the jazz and the classics, but this gap must be we would like to have it. Jazz is here; itis an actuality andcannot bridged from below and not from above. One of the writer’s be obliterated. It can be developed, and therefore it might be “cases” out of many, will illustrate this point. needlessly harmful to obliterate it, if we were able. Jazz is the only Mr. J. purchased a phonograph and a player-piano. His first music many persons know. It is a source of enjoyment to them _ stock of records and rolls were of the music he then liked and and it would be impossible for any other type of music to take its | understood—jazz. Little by little he added some of the better place immediately. We may do it gradually; but that is wholly types of popular music, then some rolls and records of the lighter another question. Jazz is both indicative and resultant of the present salon music. It was not long ere Mr. J. was buying only the day social conditions in these United States. Ina way, itservesan _ better music, symphonic, string quartet, and operatic records by immediate purpose of being a more or less artificial type of Ameri- — the dozen and recorded piano compositions by the three B’s can folk-music, in as much as it is widespread in adoption and _and the like. Now Mr. J. can discuss a dozen operas, not a few expresses the general, or popular, sentiment of the people of our == symphonic works and a host of piano works from the classics. country to-day—however much we would wish it otherwise. The — To hear him talk, one would think he has had a stiff Conservawriter does not consider it beyond possibility, or probability, that —_—' tory training: he has had, but in a different form. Now Mr. J. some of the popular music of to-day will be regarded inthe lightof | appreciates and understands music as do few other laymen and folk-music sometime in the future. The time for the birth of real, better than many a professional musician. This analysis would serious and legitimate American folk-song is past and whateveris be open to question as to cause and effect were it not for the done in the future in that direction must be, asin the past, amore —_ personal knowledge the writer has had of this “case” and of the or less artificial type of folk-lore, as we have already observedin —_ role jazz played in bringing about the transformation.

the songs of Foster and the like. Among other things, jazz arrangers and composers have There are many good things to be noticed inthe musicalcom- —_ drawn upon the well-spring of the classical composers for har-

position of jazz. Many of the orchestral arrangements are very § monic invention. A few years ago, jazz tunes consisted very clever indeed. Some of the effects of instrumentation are worthy _ largely of tonic, dominant and subdominant chords, some rightly

of composers of serious purposes and ideals. The use of the |= and some wrongly used, and a dash of a “barber-shop” chord instruments in some of the better jazz arrangements is oftenhighly | now and then. Modulations were of the most elementary kind, if

original and effective. The arrangers have so developed their art | any were used at all, and harmonic figuration was limited to a that they are able to write works which are so interesting for the few primitive designs. To-day we find it no uncommon thing to individual instruments and in ensemble that they bear close analy- —_ hear a succession of chords in a jazz piece that would do honor sis on the part of the more sedate and serious composers. This to any serious composer; accompaniment figuration is often has come about through the employment of arrangers who have _ingenious, and modulations have gone the way of modulations been “born and raised” upon the musical food of much sterner —_in general. As for secondary seventh chords of the dominant stuff. The writer personally knows of arrangers who have acquit- = family (sevenths, ninths, elevenths and thirteenths), the jazz of ted themselves creditably in the composition of orchestral music __ to-day is rich in them all and, we dare say, they are used with as of the serious and larger orchestral forms before going into the |= much effectiveness as similar chords in serious works. A broad field of jazz. No doubt the enticement of monetary ends has led _ statement; but the reader can see, or hear, for himself if he will them there; but the fact remains that some of the leading jazz _ but take the trouble and throw away his mask of prejudice for a publishers have upon their staffs men who can write and have __ short time. written excellent music of serious mien—one need but point to Rhythms are being used in jazz works that would make a the case of Victor Herbert. Nor is his an isolated case, since there “serious” composer sit up and burn the midnight oil so that he are many others if we but care to discover them behindthe screen might invent something near the variations of accent the jazz

of anonymity. writers are using all the time and using well for their purpose. The world of classical music has furnished much inspiration | Stravinsky himself has redoubtable rivals in this direction in to composers and arrangers of jazz; sometimes to the betterment | some of the jazz writers. Of course, they overwork their ideas of jazz and sometimes to the detriment of the classics. Be thatas and the jazz writers defeat their own purposes through moit may, debate on that subject is really futile. Also, itis beside the | notony; but that is another story. One wonders how they are question. As a mater of fact, the jazz purveyors have takentunes = able to conjure up so many variations of accent placing, time from our classical music, but they have put them in suchapalat- —_ divisions and combinations of rhythms as they do. It is one of able form that a greater number of persons can enjoy them than _ the marvels of jazz. It would seem as though the end of rhythmic would be possible for them with the tunes in their originalform. | invention had come; but, no, a new figure is born overnight. Yet Furthermore, in many cases, persons who once knew and _ almost all these inventions have taken place in duple rhythm. appreciated nothing higher than jazz were led onward toward _‘ The triple rhythm has, so far, been but lightly touched. A new the appreciation of the so-called “better music” by being intro- —_ world awaits the jazzist in this direction; also in the line of simulduced to the tunes of the classical scores by means of the jazz _ taneous use of different rhythmic schemes. Only the small complepieces. The writer has for a long time indulged in a personal —_—s ment of instruments composing the average jazz orchestra preinvestigation along this line and has discovered that the forego- cludes much invention in the use of this idea in the jazz of toing is a statement of undeniable fact. True, there is anoticeable day. But to-morrow?

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1926 JUNE ¢ FLUTIST Jazz writers have also drawn upon classical music for the for- I share the view that jazz is the most distinctive contribumal structure of jazz. A few years ago, jazz pieces were largely of — tion America has made to the world-literature of music. What the ballad type. Nowadays, the better arrangers go so farastouse | we now need is proper guidance of the jazz germ. There are two the “sonata-allegro” scheme as the skeleton of their work, and __ kinds of germs in the physical world—those that kill and those now and then we hear them utilize even the characteristic devices __ that preserve human life. Jazz germs are the same nature. It is of the concerto, the symphony and the opera. Indeed, some day _for the open-minded American musicians and musical educain the near future we may enjoy an entire jazz concerto, jazzsym- _ tors to discover, preserve and develop the worthy elements of phony or jazz opera. That experience only awaits the jazz writer jazz. Jazz as an end in itself, except for dancing and the like, is who has had sufficient training in the serious forms—or poverty __ to be deplored. Jazz as an idiom for something worthwhile, as a stricken classical composers who discover that they can live with stepping-stone to something better than we now recognize, is, more ease and luxury by being “versatile.” Though this last pre- as Shakespeare put it, “a consummation devoutly to be wished.” diction is written with the writer’s tongue in cheek, it contains nevertheless the proverbial grain of truth.

May 29 ¢ Literary Digest THE QUARRIES FOR JAZZ Paul Whiteman, it appears, has been revealing some of the se- —_ delighting the audiences and adding to the fame of Louis Hirsch,

crets of the House of Jazz; and they are such as serious musi- _jg said to hark back to Tchaikowsky. cians have long known or suspected, and been somewhat piqued “Mr. Whiteman might have added to his list the origin of the over. The classics, ransacked to supply musical ideas for those _ pervasive Two Little Girls in Blue, which swept over this country of limited invention, reappear in the new dress, unsuspected by _q generation ago. It began as a hymn tune but was accelerated in the general run of “hoofers.” The New York Sun summarizes Mr. _ tempo for its later incarnation. The opening phrases from the

Whiteman’s disclosures: quartet in Rigoletto were the motive of Hiawatha, which knew

“He admits that nearly everybody knows a chorus from _ boundless popularity in its day. The memories of Where Did You Handel's oratorio The Messiah was the inspiration for the dev- —_ Get That Hat? are still awakened in every middle-aged listener astating Yes, We Have No Bananas, while what did not come _ to Lohengrin, since it is exactly the phrase with which the Herald from Handel the composer took from Balfe’s “I DreamtI Dweltin _hegins his exhortations. Marble Halls,” which is Arline’s aria in The Bohemian Girl. “My “Nowadays the composers, by telling the name of the classic Alice Blue Gown,” which was the ‘gem’ to use a professional —_oy romantic masterpieces they ‘jazz,’ make the charges of such term, of /rene, had its sinspiration in Chopin. A court of law frank borrowing impossible. Already the music of Schubert, decided that Avalon was a too direct descendant from the ariaof —_ Offenbach, Tchaikowsky, and Chopin has been used for operetta Cavadarossi in Tosca, while I’m Always Chasing Rainbows is _ after it is quite openly declared to be composed of the favorite

another by-product of a Chlopin composition. work of those composers. Some expert might discover that they “It must have taken courage on the part of any composer to —_ aso found their inspiration elsewhere; this is one of the dangers dip into such a well-known tune as Strauss’s Beautiful Blue _ of emphasizing an incident of musical plagiarism. It is not always Danube for material, but according to Mr. Whiteman, such was_gagy to say just where the original begins or stops. Perhaps the the reservoir from which was drawn Jola. Russian Rose has _ composer who makes us hear two tunes we like where there was such a stalwart song as The Volga Boat Song for its source and _ previously only one is after all to be thanked, wherever he may “The Love Nest,” which ran through George M. Cohan’s Mary, _ have gotten his inspiration.”

June ¢ Flutist HOW TO UNDERSTAND AND ENJOY NEGRO SPIRITUALS by James Weldon Johnson Fifty years ago those who loved Negro spirituals, unless they —_ near to being a fad. And today those who love the spirituals, or had the privilege of going South, waited for an opportunity to —_are interested in learning about them, do not wait to hear them hear the famous Fisk Jubilee Singers. A decade ortwolaterthey sung; they buy them, take them home, and play them over. The could hear them sung also by the quartets of Hampton, Atlanta, _ results, however, are not always completely satisfactory; for, in and Tuskegee. Today the spirituals can be heard with frequency __ spite of their apparent simplicity, the spirituals offer some diffifrom the concert stage, given in the programs of both white and _culties for those who are not familiar with them. In fact, it is this colored singers. The spirituals, at the present time, have avogue. | seeming simplicity that is the most baffling thing about them. It

Indeed, they have a popularity that brings them dangerously = may be worth while to say something about the understanding

476

JUNE e FLUTIST 1926 and appreciation of these songs necessary for the fullest enjoy- | The Negro took complete refuge in Christianity, and the spiritu-

ment of them. als were literally forged of sorrow in the heat of religious fervor. To begin with, it is necessary to know something of the ori- | They exhibited, moreover, a reversion to the simple principles of gin and history of the spirituals, and of what they had meantin _ primitive, communal Christianity.

the experiences of the people who created them. It is also neces- The thought that the Negro might have refused or failed to sary to know something of their peculiar characteristics. There | adopt Christianity—and there were several good reasons for such are many persons who have heard these songs sung only on _—_an outcome, one being the vast gulf between the Christianity that the vaudeville or theatrical stage, and have laughed uproari- — was preached to him and the Christianity practiced by those who ously at them because they were presented in a comic vein. preached it—leads to some curious speculations. One thing is Such people have no true conception of the spirituals; they certain, there would have been no Negro spirituals. His musical probably think of them as a new sort of jazz, andhave noideaof _ instinct would doubtless have manifested itself; but is it conceivthe manner in which they really should be sung. And there are _able that he could have created a body of songs in any other form those who err almost as grievously in another direction; they so unique in the musical literature of the world and with such a think the spirituals should be rendered like German leider or — powerful and universal appeal as the spirituals? Indeed, the quesFrench love songs. Either of these conceptions is doomed to _ tion arises: would he have been able to survive slavery in the way

failure, so far as true interpretation is concerned. in which he did? It is not possible to estimate the sustaining Let us first briefly consider whence these songs sprang— _ influence that the story of the trials and tribulations of the Jews as these songs unsurpassed among the folk songs of the world __ related in the Old Testament exerted upon the Negro. This story at and, in the poignancy of their beauty, unequaled. A little over | once caught and fired the imaginations of the Negro bards, and 300 years ago a Dutch vessel landed twenty African natives at __ they sang, sang their hungry listeners into a firm faith that as God Jamestown, Va. They were quickly bought and made indentured — saved Daniel in the lion’s den, so would he save them; as God servants, or slaves, by the colonial settlers. This was the begin- —_ preserved the Hebrew children in the fiery furnace, so would He ning of the slave trade in this country. To supply this trade, —_ preserve them; as God delivered Israel out of bondage in Egypt, Africa was raped of literally millions of men, women, and chil- | so would He deliver them. How much this firm faith had to do with dren. Hundreds of thousands never reached these shores, but the Negro’s physical and spiritual survival of two and a half cenas many as survived the horrors of the passage were immedi- _turies of slavery cannot be known. ately thrown into slavery and held in servitude for approximately Thus it was by sheer spiritual forces that African chants were

250 years. It was from these people in bondage this mass of | metamorphosed into the spirituals; that upon the fundamental noble music sprang; this music which is America’s only folk throb of African rhythms were reared those reaches of melody music and, up to this time, the finest distinctive contribution she __ that rise above earth and soar into the pure ethereal blue. And

has to offer the world. this is the miracle of the creation of the spirituals.

I term this music noble, and I do so without any qualifica- Without these facts in mind these songs cannot be undertions. For example, there is not a nobler theme in the whole _ stood. Of course it is pardonable to smile at the naiveté often musical literature of the world than Go Down, Moses. If the — exhibited in the words; but it should be remembered that in Negro had voiced himself in only that one song, he wouldhave _ scarcely no instance was anything humorous intended. The given evidence of his nobility of soul. When in addition we —— maker of a song, when it came to the use of words, was strugconsider Deep River; Stand Still, Jordan; Roll, Jordan, Roll; __ gling as best he could under his limitations in language, and, I’m troubled in Mind; Walk Together, Children; Ride on, King __ perhaps, also under a misconstruction or misapprehension of Jesus, we catch a spirit that is a little more than mere nobility; it the facts in his source of material, generally the Bible. And, too, is something akin to majestic grandeur. The characteristic nobil- _it ought to be remembered that often, like his more literary poetic

ity which can be felt or sensed in the spirituals is due ina very _ brothers, he had to do a good many things to get his rhyme in. ’ large measure to the fact that their inspiration is spiritual, andin | But almost always he was deadly in earnest. The spirituals have this they are unique among the folk songs of the world. a primitive dignity in which they must be clothed if they are to be Early in the Negro’s history in this country there wasathand _appreciated. the precise religion for the condition in which he found himself Going a little deeper into the subject, true interpretation of all thrust. Far from his native land and customs, despised by those | Negro music depends fundamentally upon the ability to sense among whom he lived, experiencing the pang of the separation _its rhythms; or, in other words, to catch the “swing” of it. In this of loved ones on the auction block, knowing the hard taskmas- _ there is involved the difference between Negro or African music ter, feeling the lash, the Negro seized Christianity, the religionof and the music of western Europe and America. Speaking genercompensations in the life to come for the ills suffered in the —_ ally, the European concept of music is melody (tune), and the present existence, the religion which implied the hope thatinthe | African concept is rhythm. Melody has relatively small place in next world there would be a reversal of conditions, ofrich man African music, and harmony still less; but in rhythms, African and poor man, of proud and meek, of master and slave. The —_ music is beyond comparison with any other music in the world. result was a body of songs voicing all the cardinal virtues of | In my Preface to the Book of American Negro Spirituals, I have Christianity—patience, forbearance, love, faith, and hope— —_ gone more fully into this phase of the subject than space here though a necessarily modified form of primitive African music. _ could possibly allow me. I can here only summarize briefly and

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1926 JUNE ¢ THE NATION say: the spirituals possess the fundamental characteristic of | enjoy singing them; first, no matter how intricate the secondary African music, in that they have the same striking rhythmic qual- rhythms may be, the fundamental beat or surge, which may be ity. Indeed, their rhythm is of their very essence. You may do —_— measured by the swaying of the body, should never be lost; almost anything to the spirituals except fail to catch the “swing,” second, the capacity to feel these songs while singing them is

and not entirely destroy their beauty. more important than any amount of mere artistic technique. In all authentic American Negro music the rhythms may be Something should be said in a general way about the “landivided roughly into two classes; rhythms based on the swing- = guage” in which these songs were written. Negro dialect in ing of head and body, and rhythms based on the patting of | America is the result of the effort of the slave to establish a hands and feet. Again, speaking roughly, the rhythms of the |= medium of communication between himself and his master. This spirituals fall in the first class, and the rhythms of Negro secular —_ he did by dropping his original language and formulating a phomusic in the second class. The “swing” of the spirituals is a _ nologically and grammatically simplified English; that is, an Enrather subtle and elusive thing. It is subtle and elusive because __glish in which the harsh and difficult sounds were elided, and it is in perfect union with the religious ecstasy that manifests the secondary moods and tenses were eliminated. Of course, it ___ itself in the swaying bodies of a whole congregation, swaying _is not necessary to be an expert in Negro dialect to sing the as if responding to the baton of some extremely sensitive con- _spirituals, but most of them lose in charm when they are sung in ductor. So it is difficult, if not impossible, to sing these songs _ straight English. For example, it would be next to sacrilege to sitting or standing coldly still and at the same time capture the _ render:

spontaneous “swing” which, as I have said, is of their very “What kinda shoes you gwine to weah? by

essence. The “swing” is the more subtle and elusive because “What kind of sh ng t 9

there is a still further intricacy in the rhythms. The swinging of ab AINCEOPSHOGS are YOU going to Weak: the body marks the regular beat or, better, surge, for it is some- Let me again refer to the Preface to the Book of American thing stronger than a beat; at the same time the swaying of the | Negro Spirituals, and say that there I’ ve laid down the general head marks the surge off in shorter waves than does the body. __ principles of Negro dialect and its pronunciation. Here I can The Negro loves nothing better in his music than to play with —_ only say that the main thing to remember about the dialect is the fundamental time beat. He will, as it were, take the fundamen- _ that it is fundamentally English and that its distinctness is much tal beat and pound it out with his left hand almost monofo- —_ more a matter of pronunciation than of idiom. It is an English nously, while with his right hand he juggles it. There is aclose that has been softened down and made more musical by cutting similarity between these rhythmic patterns and the beating of | out the harsh sounds and ignoring the troublesome consonants

the big drum and the little drums by African natives. that keep syllables and words from running into the other. For In addition to the “swing” of the spirituals, there are the these reasons, the dialect is a much easier medium for singers curious turns and quavers and the intentional striking of certain _ than is straight English. With a general idea of the principles of notes just off the key with which the Negro loves to embellish the dialect a singer may give even Negro songs written in straight

his songs. These characteristics and peculiarities do constitute | English the proper color. One should always avoid overdoing difficulties in singing the spirituals for those who are not more _ the dialect; that is worse than no dialect. or less familiar with them, but it is not necessary to say that the There are many beauties in the spirituals that will richly repay lack of complete mastery of all these difficulties is not at all fatal those who interest themselves in these songs; beauties of to drawing pleasure from singing these songs. A group does not — melody, beauties of harmony, and beauties of poetry, too. As have to be able to sing with the fervor and abandon of aNegro The New York World in a recent editorial said about the spiritucongregation to enjoy them. Nor does one have tobe aHayesor _als, “Poetry like this, with the music that goes with it, touches a Robeson or a Johnson or a Gordan to give others an idea of __ the stars. Let us doff our hats to the race that brought it into their beauty and power. There are two chief things toberemem- _ being.”

bered by those who are interested in the spirituals and wish to (Southeastern Christian Advocate).

June ¢ The Nation THE NEGRO ARTIST AND THE RACIAL MOUNTAIN by Langston Hughes One of the most promising of the young Negro poets saidtome standing in the way of any true Negro art in American—this once, “I want to be a poet—not a Negro poet,” meaning, I be- _— urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial lieve, “I want to write like a white poet”; meaning subconsciously, _—_ individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to

“I would like to be a white poet”; meaning behind that, “I would _ be as little Negro and as much American as possible.

like to be white.” And I was sorry the young man said that, for But let us look at the immediate background of this young no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself. AndI doubted _ poet. His family is of what I suppose one would call the Negro then that, with his desire to run away spiritually from his race, | middle class: people who are by no means rich yet never uncomthis boy would ever be a great poet. But this is the mountain

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JUNE ¢ THE NATION 1926 fortable nor hungry—smug, contented, respectable folk, mem- _ better classes with their “white” culture and conscious Ameribers of the Baptist Church. The father goes to work every morn- —_can manners, but, still Negro enough to be different, there is ing. He is a chief steward at a large white club. The mother _ sufficient matter to furnish a black artist with a lifetime of cresometimes does fancy sewing or supervises parties forthe rich ative work. And when he chooses to touch on the relations families of the town. The children go to a mixed school. Inthe — between Negroes and whites in this country with their innumerhome they read white papers and magazines. And the mother _able overtones and undertones surely and especially for literaoften says “Don’t be like niggers” when the children are bad. A _ ture and the drama, there is an inexhaustible supply of themes at frequent phrase from the father is, “Look how well awhite man _hand. To these the Negro artist can give his racial individuality, does things.” And so the word white comes tobe unconsciously _his heritage of rhythm and warmth, and his incongruous humor a symbol of all the virtues. It holds for the children beauty, that so often, as in the Blues, becomes ironic laughter mixed morality, and money. The whisper of “I want to be white” runs __— with tears. But let us look again at the mountain. silently through their minds. This young poet’s home is, I be- A prominent Negro clubwoman in Philadelphia paid eleven lieve, a fairly typical home of the colored middle class.Onesees — dollars to hear Raquel Meller sing Andalusian popular songs. immediately how difficult it would be for an artist borninsucha But she told mea few weeks before she would not think of going home to interest himself in interpreting the beauty of hisown __to hear “that woman,” Clara Smith, a great black artist, sing people. He is never taught to see that beauty. He istaughtrather | Negro folksongs. And many an upper-class Negro church, even not to see it, or if he does, to be ashamed of it when it is not. now, would not dream of employing a spiritual in its services.

according to Caucasian patterns. The drab melodies in white folks’ hymnbooks are much to be For racial culture the home of a self-styled “high-class” Ne- _ preferred. “We want to worship the Lord correctly and quietly. gro has nothing better to offer. Instead there will perhaps be |= We don’t believe in ‘shouting.’ Let’s be dull like the Nordics,” more aping of things white than in a less cultured or less wealthy they say, in effect. home. The father is perhaps a doctor, lawyer, landowner, or poli- The road for the serious black artist, then, who would protician. The mother may be a social worker, or a teacher, or she —_ duce aracial art is most certainly rocky and the mountain is high. may do nothing and have a maid. Father is often dark buthe has — Until recently he received almost no encouragement for his work usually married the lightest woman he could find. The family from either white or colored people. The fine novels of Chestnutt attend a fashionable church where few really colored faces are —_ go out of print with neither race noticing their passing. The to be found. And they themselves draw acolor line. Inthe North | quaint charm and humor of Dunbar’s dialect verse brought to they go to white theaters and white movies. And in the South him, in his day, largely the same kind of encouragement one they have at least two cars and a house “like white folks.” Nor- would give a side-show freak (A colored man writing poetry! dic manners, Nordic faces, Nordic hair, Nordic art (if any), and an How odd!) or aclown (How amusing!). Episcopal heaven. A very high mountain indeed for the would- The present vogue in things Negro, although it may do as be racial artist to climb in order to discover himself and his people. §= much harm as good for the budding colored artist, has at least But then there are the low-down folks, the so-calledcommon __ done thins: it has brought him forcibly to the attention of his element, and they are the majority—may the Lord be praised! own people among whom for so long, unless the other race had The people who have their nip of gin on Saturday nights and are —_— noticed him beforehand, he was a prophet with little honor. I not too important to themselves or the community, or too well —_ understand that Charles Gilpin acted for years in Negro theaters fed, or too learned to watch the lazy world go round. They live —_ without any special acclaim from his own, but when Broadway on Seventh Street in Washington or State Street in Chicago and _— gave him eight curtain calls, Negroes, too, began to beat a tin they do not particularly care whether they are like white folks or — pan in his honor. I know a young colored writer, a manual worker anybody else. Their joy runs, bang! into ecstasy. Their religion by day, who had been writing well for the colored magazines for soars to a shout. Work maybe a little today, rest alittletomorrow. some years, but it was not until he recently broke into the white Play awhile. Sing awhile. O, let’s dance! These common people ___ publications and his first book was accepted by a prominent are not afraid of spirituals, as for along time their more intellec- | New York publisher that the “best” Negroes in his city took the tual brethren were, and jazz is their child. They furnisha wealth —_ trouble to discover that he lived there. Then almost immediately of colorful, distinctive material for any artist because they still | they decided to give a grand dinner for him. But the society hold their own individuality in the face of American standardiza- _ ladies were careful to whisper to his mother that perhaps she’d tions. And perhaps these common people will give to the world —_ better not come. They were not sure she would have an evening its truly great Negro artist, the one who is not afraid to be him- gown. self. Whereas the better-class Negro would tell the artist what to The Negro artist works against an undertow of sharp critido, the people at least let him alone when he does appear. And —_cism and misunderstanding from his own group and unintenthey are not ashamed of him—if they know he exists at all. And tional bribes from the whites. “O, be respectable, write about

they accept what beauty is their own without question. nice people, show how good we are,” say the Negroes. “Be Certainly there is, for the American Negro artist who can _ stereotyped, don’t go too far, don’t shatter our illusions about escape the restrictions the more advanced among hisown group _—syou, don’t amuse us too seriously. We will pay you,” say the would put upon him, a great field of unused material ready for © whites. Both would have told Jean Toomer not to write Cane. his art. Without going outside his race, and even among the _—‘ The colored people did not praise it. The white people did not

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1926 JULY 1 ¢ METRONOME buy it. They are afraid of it. Although the critics gave it good _ the spirituals. And now she turns up her nose at jazz and all its reviews the public remained indifferent. Yet (excepting the work = manifestation—likewise almost everything else distinctly racial.

of DuBois) Cane contains the finest prose written byaNegroin She doesn’t care for the Winold Reiss portraits of Negroes beAmerica. And like the singing of Robeson, it is truly racial. cause they are “too Negro.” She does not want a true picture of But is spite of the Nordicized Negro intelligentsia and the —_ herself from anybody. She wants the artist to flatter her, to make desires of some white editors we have an honest American Ne- _ the white world believe that all Negroes are as smug and as near gro literature already with us. Now I await the rise of the Negro —_ white in soul as she wants to be. But, to my mind, it is the duty theater. Our folk music, having achieved world-wide fame, offers of the younger Negro artist, if he accepts any duties at all from itself to the genius of the great individual American Negrocom- _ outsiders, to change through the force of his art that old whis-

poser who is to come. And within the next decade I expecttosee pering “I want to be white,” hidden in the aspirations of his the work of a growing school of colored artists who paint and _ people, to “Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro—and model the beauty of dark faces and create with new technique _ beautiful!” the expressions of their own soul-world. And the Negro dancers So I am ashamed for the black poet who says, “I want to be a who will dance like flame and the singers who will continue to _— poet, not a Negro poet,” as though his own racial world were not

carry our songs to all who listen—they will be with us ineven _as interesting as any other world. I am ashamed, too, for the

greater numbers tomorrow. colored artist who runs from the painting of Negro faces to the Most of my own poems are racial in theme and treatment, —_ painting of sunsets after the manner of the academicians bederived from the life I know. In many of them I try to grasp and _ cause he fears the strange un-whiteness of his own features. An

hold some of the meanings and rhythms of jazz.lam sincere as _ artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he I know how to be in these poems and yet after every reading I — must also never be afraid to do what he might choose. answer questions like these from my own people: Do you think Let the blare of Negro jazz bands and the bellowing voice of Negroes should always write about Negroes? I wish you _ Bessie Smith singing Blues penetrate the closed ears of the wouldn’t read some of your poems to white folks. How do you __ colored near-intellectuals until they listen and perhaps underfind anything interesting in a place like acabaret? Why do you _ stand. Let Paul Robeson singing Water Boy, and Rudolph Fisher write about black people? You aren’t black. Whatmakes youdo —__ writing about the streets of Harlem, and Jean Toomer holding

so many jazz poems? the heart of Georgia in his hands, and Aaron Douglas drawing

But jazz to me is one of the inherent expressions of Negrolife strange black fantasies cause the smug Negro middle class to in America: the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul—the _ turn from their white, respectable, ordinary books and papers to tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a worldof catch a glimmer of their own beauty. We younger Negro artists subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and —_ who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile. Yet the Philadelphia selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are clubwoman is ashamed to say that her race created it and she _ glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful.

does not like me to write about it. The old subconscious “white | And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If is best” runs through her mind. Years of study under white — colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their teachers, a lifetime of white books, pictures, and papers, and _—_ displeasure doesn’t matter either. We build our temples for towhite manners, morals, and Puritan standards made her dislike morrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.

July 1 ¢ Metronome NEVER HAS POPULAR MUSIC BEEN AS CLASSICAL AS JAZZ by Percy Aldridge Grainger It is natural that jazz first broke out in the melting potof America. | which in the course of the last few years have been taken up And just as natural that from there it spread all over the world. a great deal. These orchestra arrangements are often made by As a matter of fact, jazz—according to its nature and its socio- = musicians with an unusual wealth of experience. In my opinlogical import—does not differ from the dance music of allages _ion this form of jazz is the most beautiful popular music which that is spread over all parts of the earth; for it was always the aim = any country has brought forth, in the present or even in the and purpose of dance music to create animation and relaxation. _ past. Its advantages consist mainly in a happy mixture of In this respect jazz does not differ from the music of the Chinese —_ northern wealth of melody with the rhythmical polyphony of or the native Indians, the halling of Norway, the tarantella of | the Negro races, as well as in the great musical refining and Italy, the Vienna waltz, the Spanish dances or the Hungarian _caricaturing which this music has found through the many

csardas. jazz playing sterling musicians of cosmopolitan tendencies. When I speak of jazz, I refer above all to the remarkably § There never has been popular music that was so “classical.” clever jazz adaptations of popular themes with marked rhythm, | One of the main characteristics of Jazz has been adopted

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AUGUST 19 ¢ MUSICAL COURIER 1926 from the improvisations of Chinese and other musicians of _ instruments, like the Deagan xylophones and the marimbas, which the Far East. These elements, called “seductive,” exotic and —__I have required for the score of my symphonic poem The Waranti-social, which musical ignoramuses claim are inherentin —__riors. Instruments have been adopted from Africa, Asia and jazz, simply do not exist. From the musical standpoint, more- | South America, and used in a fixed tone range, so that they can over, the main characteristics of jazz are: unity, power, refine- | now be used in symphonic music also. Most of the ancestors of

ment, feeling, warmth. Taken as music, jazz appears to be _ these new American instruments can be found in the great musimuch less sensuous, passionate or emotional than a good _ cal instrument collections—like the Ethnographic Museum at

deal else. Leiden, Holland, or the Crosby-Brown Collection in New York. What is there new about jazz? All its rhythms have existed The jazz orchestra has shown us how the percussion instrubefore. Only their combination is new. The strong Anglo-Saxon — ments can heighten the clear alignment of the orchestral mass. element mingled with the likewise virile, rhythmic tendencies of | The instruments of the conventional symphonic orchestras lack the Negroes. In a broad sense the Negro at birth is not melodically — the sharp, decided tone quality of the bell xylophones and magifted. His melodies for the most part are merely adevelopmentof — rimbas, which when well played seem to float above the mass of

the airs which he has absorbed from his white surroundings. the orchestral tone colors like oil on the waters. The Russians His musical instinct is primarily one of rhythmic feeling. Added —_have realized the effective possibilities of bells in their orchesto this a certain amount of Asiatic influence was doubtlessly felt tral music. The bells and percussion instruments I have menin San Francisco. Oriental music is distinctly confined to the tioned “cut” through the masses of tone, as it were, without unison form. A great many people play the melody atthe same _affecting them in a disturbing manner, however. They seem to be time, or at least they try to. As a matter of fact they seldom play —_ in a different dimension of tonal space. together in the same key, whereby a very odd effect is brought One other feature that has been perfected in Jazz music is the forth. This gave to the jazz melodies unlimited individuality, al- introduction of the vibrato in the wind instruments. All wind though it did occasion certain inharmonious features. Thus itis instruments should be played with vibrato—at least to the same a characteristic peculiarity of many aboriginal tribes, like the extent as the string instruments. Maoris of New Zealand, that many individuals in unison sing- Jazz will not influence classical music. Musically speaking, ing, always sing a quarter of a tone higher or lower. The effect, | we are in an epoch that is not unlike the time of J. S. Bach. An especially when heard at a certain distance, is anything but | enormous number of musical influences of greatest variety seems uninteresting. There is always a kind of vibrato about the tone. —_ to be pouring in on us. Jazz also is one of these manifestations. This is purposely effected by jazz orchestras in America. But Jazz will hardly affect the classic music very fruitfully. On The musician is interested mainly in the instrumentation of __ the other hand it has borrowed to a large extent from classical the modern jazz-orchestra. This instrumentation is inevery re- music. The public likes jazz because of the brevity of its forms spect significant. To me it represents the progress made inthe _and the slight mental demands on the listener. No music is ever technique of instrumentation, which in its scope can be com- _ popular that is too long or too complicated. On the other hand, pared only to that which took place in another field, between the — lengthiness and the ability to handle complicated forms of muart of instrumentation of a Beethoven and a Wagner. Glorious __ sic are the invariable marks of the really great genius. Consepossibilities lie open. To me it is surprising that the saxophone, quently the laws of jazz can never govern music that has “depth” this perfect creation of the great instrument-maker, Adolph Sax _—_ and “meaning.” It is not my intention to disparage Jazz or any (inventor of the bass-clarinet), had to wait until this late day | other popular music. The world needs popular music, and we before it came into its own through this popular music of America. — should gratefully appreciate is that the ragtime of years past The same genius that Sax showed in regard to the wind instru- —_— was transformed into the Jazz of today; but between the best ments developed in America with reference to the percussion —_ popular music and classic music there will always be the same difference as between a pretty country cottage and a cathedral.

August 19 ¢ Musical Courier THE SPIRITUALS COME INTO THEIR OWN J. Rosemond Johnson dropped in at the Musical Courier office others are equally fine and a great many of them have never the other day and the conversation naturally turned to The Sec- —_ been set down before.” Among them are: Sometimes I Feel Like

ond book of Negro Spirituals, which, following the marked suc- =a Motherless Child, Walk Together Children, I Want God’s cess of the first book which has already sold some 15,000 cop- §_Heab’n To Be Mine, Zekiel Saw De Wheel, A Little Talk Wid ies, will naturally follow. Publication willcome in Septemberfrom § Jesus Makes It Right, Daniel Saw De Stone, Same Train, I Want the Viking Press. The new volume, said Mr. Johnson, will have To Die Easy When I Die, Walk Down De Lane, Members, Don’t more spirituals of a philosophic turn and less prayerful ones, © Get Weary, and That Great Gettin-up Mornin’. Mr. Johnson than the first volume. “I think on the whole it will be betterthan | quoted acouplet from one of the songs in the new book, which the first book.” said he, “It has fewer of the best known spiritu- _has a strikingly poetic beauty: als, most of which were included in the first volume, but these

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1926 SEPTEMBER 18 ¢ MUSICAL AMERICA Death been to my house: didn’t stay long— Johnson. Of course Taylor Gordon occupies a place in the light, Looked in the bed, and my mother was gone. but somehow that crouching figure at the piano and that low, “What started you making this collection of Spirituals, Mr. faint, sepulchral voice chain the thought. This writer knows no

Johnson?’ other artist who can equal Rosemond Johnson in his particular “It was a promise I made to a man who was always very accomplishment, which is not easy to define. He is too young to friendly to me, the late Henry Edward Krehbiel, for many years have known slavery days and conditions. He is an educated critic of the New York Tribune. He said to me once, ‘Johnson I man and a trained musteian. Yet he sings and plays aceompant: think you are more fitted than anybody else to do justice to ments for P iritual s as if he had lived t hrough a whole library of those splendid folk songs, now so rare, which we know as the Uncle Tom's Cabins. But always behind everything he d O88, NO

- matterand how realistic, in some moments elspirituals, I want you toand promise me that when youeven have seemingly an 7 opportunity you will set them down so that they may be pre- emental, there lurks the spirit of the artist. Yes, Rosamond served for posterity.’ I never had the chance till after Mr. Krehbiel Johnson was the foremost personality of the last we ek and ' °-

died.” gether with Taylor Gordon he has revitalized the spiritual, which That Mr. Krehbiel, himself particularly interested in Afro- 2S Pretty nearly drowned under the flood of sophistication. . ; . Laue Their not withwas hand-clapping American music andaudience author of was books oncontent the subject, right in ; ; but time

his feeling that Mr. Johnson was particularly fitted for this work after time burst into vocal APP lause and ones of bravo. Next is proved by the result. He is a thoroughly practical musician, a season they wall be heard my nemerous cities throughout ' he . native of the south, and was for ten years supervisor of music in country, their tinerary including appearances on the pacific

all the colored schools of the State of Florida. Coast. They sing spirituals as they should be sung. There is no

He and his associate, Taylor Gordon, a colored tenor with a sof tening them, or turning them into art Sones: The Bosto n Globe most unusual voice, won striking success in the series of recit- said of one of their programs. « - an evening more spiritual than als of spirituals they gave last winter in New York and other many chur ch services, more drama tic than many P lays, more large cities of the East. W. J. Henderson, writing in the New York trul y musical than most concerts.” Above all their offering 8 Sun of January 2, after their first New York recital, paid the two oma, something new on the concert p latform, with a teeli ng of

men an extraordinary compliment: genuineness that is too often lacking in recital halls. Without

; ; Sor that is already theirs in the East. discovers that the outstanding personality is Rosemond

“Swinging the lantern through the shadows of the week, one doubt they will enjoy the same popularity in the South and West

September 18 © Musical America NEWMAN EXCORIATES JAZZ From his exalted position as dean of the English music critics, Mr. them put together would not fill the lining of Johann Strauss’ Ernest Newman has attacked jazz with as furious alashing asthe _hat. At present, jazz is not an art, but an industry; the whirring

barbaric type of music has ever received since Apollo, the first | of a standardized machine endlessly turning out a standardclassicist, flayed Marsyas, the first practitioner of jazz, for his _ized article... .But the day has gone by when musicians can presumption in challenging established usage. Portions of his | even take a languid interest in the thing, for musical people it is article in last Sunday’s London Times, cabled to The New York __ now the last word in brainlessness and boredom.

Times, contain the essence of his virulent animadversions: “Jazzists flatter themselves that they are the latest thing. “Jazzists make a great point of their rhythmic innovations The truth 1s that they are already the most tedious of backand the freedom of their rhythms. If they had any ideaof what numbers. We all found jazz amusing for a little while—it was rhythm meant, they would know that in comparison with the _ like anew cocktail—but most of us now would walk ten miles rhythms of any of the great composers from the sixteenthcen- _ to escape hearing it. tury onward their own rhythms are merely as the sing-song of “What should we say of a man, who would undertake to make a nursery rhythm to the changing subtleties of a page of | Shakespeare acceptable to the masses by re-writing him in the

Shakespeare. language of a New York Eastsider? For ‘to be, or not to be: that is “Your typical jazz composer or jazz enthusiast is merely a __ the question’ let us say ‘Yer for it or yer ain’t; J’ get me, kid.’

musical illiterate who is absurdly pleased with little things be- “Mr. Whiteman’s ideas on this subject are illuminative. He cause he does not know how little they are. Had he any knowl- ~— would not have Onward, Christian Soldiers jazzed because edge of history, he would know that all thatis now happeningin __ this is a ‘sturdy majestic tune with a religious connection,’ but

jazz happened many centuries ago in vocal music, and thatthe the Peer Gynt suite and the Poet and Peasant Overture, why end in the present case will be the same as in the earlier one. not jazz them? Mr. Whiteman is to be thanked for letting us see “Jazz, in fact, is on the horns of a dilemma. You cannot have so Clearly the constitution of the jazz mind. He would not jazz a music without composers, and at present jazz has nocompos- —_ wretched hymn tune, but he regards Grieg and Suppé and ers in the full sense of the term. The brains of the whole lot of | Chopin and Handel and a few dozen others as fair game.

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OCTOBER 1 ¢ METRONOME 1926 “Argument would be wasted on him and people of his way of _ has been maintained by Musical America. His reference to the thinking. All we musicians can do is to say to him and them: ‘Jazz _ = modernizing of Shakespeare was, in fact, anticipated by Mr.

hymns, ancient and modern in future, as much as you like— = Oscar Thompson, who wrote in our issue of Feb. 13 of this most of them are hardly above your own intellectual level—but _year; “If George Ade had rewritten Shakespeare in the slang of

keep your dirty paws off your betters,’ “ the day he would have approximated the offense of the jazz Mr. Newman’s bitterness would seem to arise more from per- hacks, who, for the sake of a new pot-boiler, take the melodies sonal exasperation than from cool critical judgment. Whatever — of great composers and bring them down to the level of the the cause of his irritation—be it Paul Whiteman’s recent visitto musical ignoramus by means of their jazz restatements.” (See London, Mr. Whitman’s jaunty defense of his methods, ora = pp 428-30.) temporary surfeit of jazz—he has launched as violent a polemic As we go to press, Mr. Whiteman has not yet been heard as though the citadel of musical art were inimminent dangerof from in rebuttal. George Gershwin has stated that Mr. Newman’s being captured and sacked by the syncopating host. The perilis _ criticism “is one of the most important things that has been not so grave as all that. No popular fad has ever yet succeeded _ said about jazz. I think he was talking more about jazzing the in obscuring the beauty of art or in checking its continuous _ classics than about jazz itself. Of course, it is argued that by development, and there is no reason to believe that inthis case §_jazzing the classics you introduce them, even in revised form, to the forces of conservatism will be routed by jazz in acatastrophic § many persons who would not otherwise come in contact with

charivari. them. But let Mr. Whiteman answer that. As for jazz itself, certain His position in regard to the jazzing of the classics, major types are in bad taste, but I do think it has certain elements that and minor, is a sound one, and is exactly the position which —_ can be developed. I don’t know whether it will be jazz when it’s finished.”

October 1 ¢ Metronome AMERICAN JAZZ IS NOT AFRICAN Africa has a jazz investigator of her own—a man whose jobitis _ black people. He tried to set down native songs according to the to examine the relationship of jazz to the music of her jungle — musical principles he had learned, but found that mind and ear tribes. Nicholas George Julius Ballanta of SierraLeone has pen- —_—- would not work together. If he put down what he really heard, etrated the reluctant hinterland of the dark continent’s western _ the result violated all musical principles he knew.

coast and brought out some secrets of its native music; and

from Maine to Florida he has sought what traces of it, having A Different Scale found their way to America, survived slavery to break out with

renewed vigor in this generation. He read every available book in Freetown in search of reasons for Instead of investigating Africa music scientifically, however, this discrepancy. Later he discovered for himself that African music this student remarked the other day, on arriving in New York, is not amenable to Western forms, requiring a seventeen instead that he might merely have been carrying on as asinger of “coon of a twelve-note scale, on which he proceeded to work. He first songs” in Southern cotton fields or as amember of a “spirituals” | came to America, hoping that authorities here could help him from quartet. But for the timely intervention of England, his grandfa- _ their own studies of the music brought over by the slaves. He ther would have been born to slavery on American soil. His | found no satisfactory books, but his articles on African music for great- grandfather, a member of the Eboe tribe, was rescued by an American publication brought friendships with Walter and the British from a Portuguese slave vessel and brought toland, | Frank Damrosch and George Foster Peabody. It also led to his

far from home, in Sierra Leone. working on his theories for two years as a scholarship student at This ancestor presently, became known as Taylor, for the the Musical Institute of America, followed by a year in the SouthBritish missionary who baptized him deemed Ballanta too out- _—_ ern part of the United States and on the islands off the coast, landish a name for a Christian convert; but his descendants, | where he concentrated on the music of the American Negro.

having found many true Christians with names equally odd, Returned to Africa, Ballanta found his way back to the hinter-

have gone back to ballanta. land, where the black tribes had changed little in centuries. Last At the prosperous little coast settlement of Freetown the — year he stayed among them, making intensive studies of their family fared well in a time when England searched diligently for music and bringing away much information never sought betalent among her black dependents and sought to develop it. | fore. Music he found inextricably intertwined with the lives of The grandson of the prospective slave received an education in the people, each variety unmistakable in function according to England as an engineer and violinist. His son in turn was edu- _its particular rhythm. A war song might be played at a festival, cated as a musician. When he was graduated from the Freetown but no one danced. Merrymakers waited for the wonted four branch of Durham University, Nicholas George Julius Ballanta beats of the dance tune, knowing instinctively that the sevendirected his energies toward the study of the music of Africa’s _ beat rhythm is only to stir up the blood for battle.

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1926 , OCTOBER 16 ¢ MUSICAL AMERICA They have songs, handed down from time immemorial, but _ thing and that is African. Over and over again, all along the they also have their popular airs—their own We Have No ba- _ Western coast, you hear it wherever the natives dance. But the nanas and All Alone—as much in vogue as these for a season, rhythm is the only African thing about jazz. The synchroniza-

and equally as passing. tion, the harmony and so on are purely Western. The two forms

The foreigner thinks of African music as little more than the _ do not go together. monotones beating of the ton-tom; but, as a matter of fact, the “American jazz is built on a simple rhythm; African dance chief’s musicians have instruments with as many as twenty-one — music starts out the same way, but soon becomes more and strings and play them elaborately. The art is taken seriously, learned = more complex. The musicians begin, hardly noticeably at first, to

by diligent application, and exhibited with pride. He who would _ introduce another rhythm, then another. The dancer, starting become a musician to the chief when a child enters the hut that —_ out to keep time with his feet to the first, uses his body to keep serves as the music institute of the village, andremains formany _ time with the second, his head with the third. When feet go in years devoting himself entirely to the mastery of drum or flute. — one-two rhythm, body in triple and head in quintuple, you have The teachers work full-time training these boys in the technique —_ something different. American jazz never goes that far. It preof their instruments, imparting to them all the age-old tunes and _—sumes that you have but two things to dance with, your two signals they must know, and teaching students of various instru- _ feet; and the rhythm remains simple. ments to play in collective harmony

Rhythm Only Likeness

A System of Its Own “In everything but that basic rhythm American music is differAfrican music, Balanta found, is not the hit-or-miss expression —_ ent. Your music has been developed so scientifically that it is of noise-loving savages, but a definite painstakingly developed most difficult to understand. Ours has a scientific basis, but it is system rooted in centuries of what might be called a species of —_ altogether more natural. An African dance tune, for instance, culture. From it jazz need not be ashamed to be sprung. Ballanta, _ speaks not only to the African but also to any human being and

however, is not prepared to claim jazz as African. Itis essentially prompts him to dance. But jazz has done this for you; it has Western in everything except its basic principle-rhythm—which — developed the American sense of rhythm. You seem to have

he feels is unmistakably African. much more of the feeling for rhythm than was evident when I Suppose an American jazz orchestra, in a Nigerian forestclear- _ first came to America. ing, produced saxophones and trap drums and struck up some “In America everything is individual; in Africa it is communal. tune that Broadway loves. Woolly heads would be sure to pop} —_ Our music is developed in the group. You always have a director out of huts; and, if their owners were not too astonished or _to stand up in front of your orchestra; but although we have a frightened at the visiting apparition, black feet would soon be _ band leader, giving directions through the beat of the drum, the beating in time with the measures. In other words, the natives _ audience is not aware of him. In singing, you have tenor, bass and would respond to jazz strains and the effect wouldhave muchin _so on, but in Africa no one sings just one part. He may drop from common with an American dance floor. The one-step andthe fox —_ tenor to bass on successive notes, just because he feels that trot are seen in Africa, and the Charleston, or something so like —_ such and such a note is lacking in the whole. He takes it upon it that Ballanta could not tell the difference, he asserts, is Africa’s _ himself to supply what others do not. We know nothing of your own. The African, catching enough of the spirit to go ahead, ‘do, re, me’ but sing all around the scale. Again, Western music would yet feel that there was something wrong with the music, requires balance and form. But African music makes no such desomething he could not explain. Likewise, says the man from —_ mands; it knows nothing of chord progressions and the like, but

Sierra Leone, if some black chief’s band were suddenly trans- _ proceeds in the way the musician judges best. ported to the platform of a New York dance hall and bidden to “The place where you may look for the real survival of Afrigive forth their best, the dancers would continue stepping; but —_ can music in America is not in jazz—that has grown up too much they would have a similar feeling that something had gone wrong. _in the western way—but in the ‘coon songs’ of the South. Many

“If African music had never come to this country,” says _ of the ‘spirituals’ still heard in the South, too, may also be heard— Ballanta, “there would be no jazz. The rhythm is the fundamental _the identical melody—in the jungles of Africa.”

October 16 © Musical America NEGRO WORK-SONGS PROVE TREASURE HOUSE OF RACE CHARACTER by Stuart Mimms On the illuminated page of song the Negro has written the story _ style of his musical speech is changing with the times—just as of his life among us. His is by no means acompleted history, nor he changes. he is spreading his lore all over America, wherever

have the last stanzas of his songful chronicle been flung into he wanders to take up work in factory, furnace, construction the unimpressionable air. The Negro is still singing, and the gang, field, or levee.

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OCTOBER 16 © MUSICAL AMERICA } 1926 It is the workaday songs that make up the diary of the Negro’s —_ popular blues songs of today lie the more spontaneous and

everyday experiences, and they constitute a chain that binds _ naive songs of the uncultured Negro. Long before the blues the present with a past as old as that of the spirituals. They are — were formally introduced to the public, the Negro was creating the alluvial deposit of all the emotions that have possessed — them by expressing his gloomy moods in song. To be sure, the generations of laborers; and they range from religiontoromance. __ present use of the term ‘blues’ to designate a particular kind of In the workaday songs, the complete Negro character is ad- | popular song is of recent origin, but the use of the term in umbrated, for every facet of his volatile spirit is reflectedinone | Negro songs goes much further back, and the blue or melanor another. Sociologically, then, they are of more value thanthe — choly type of Negro secular song is as old as the spirituals

spirituals, and many of them are as rich musically. themselves.” The University of North Carolina, through Howard W. Odum

and Guy B. Johnson, has made an attempt to compile a represen- Lonesome tative collection of this secular music. The gleanings are pub- The blues cover any kind of loneliness or sadness. Many tell of lished by the University of North Carolina Press in one volume, “po” boy long way from home” yearning for his “babe” and a

entitled Negro Workaday Songs. place to lay his weary head. In such sentimentalities a heart-felt All the songs in the book were collected by the authors at = > > >

which is perhaps remembered from Everybody's Doin’ It. Rag- Se Se ee Le Sse

time is much inferior to jazz and musically uninteresting; it con- so sists of old formulas familiar in the classics which were redis-

covered one day and overworked. That is, while the conventional 4/4 bass was retained the

Modern jazz began with the fox trot. For this new dance the = melody was put into 3/4 time. This particular combination of four-quarter bass was used as in ragtime but at aconsiderably — rhythms was probably put to best use by Confrey in his Kitten slower pace and miraculously improved by accenting the least on the Keys: obvious beats, the second and fourth-1-2-3-4 . With this was

combined another rhythmic element, sometimes in the melody $s seg eg be a kind of 1-2-3-4 and is always written

but by no means always there, which is generally supposed to (hil eliclicaneaicatil

This notation, however, is deceptive, as Mr. Knowlton has a a te

pointed out. His article reveals the practice followed by popular SS

music publishers of writing extremely complex jazz compositions ae .

very simply so as to sell them more easily to the musically un- a educated. He was the first to show that this jazz rhythm is in | 496

DECEMBER 1 © THE NEW REPUBLIC 1926 Within small limits jazz had achieved a new synthesis in mu- That is, he varies a 4/4 rhythm with two measures of 3/4 sic. It was so difficult for ordinary ears and so exhilarating to —_—srhythm. Critically, from the standpoint of all music this may be

ordinary sensibilities that the jazz composers, always intent upon counted a step backward, a return to processes already familtheir public, dared not use it for more than a few measures at a iar—in the Russian folk-song for example; but from the standtime. George Gershwin was the composer who took most advan- _ point of jazz it means an advance through the relief it offers from tage of the discovery made with Stumbling His Fascinating the old relentless 4/4 bass. Rhythm iS rhythmically not only the most fascinating but the Polyrhythms are, aS is known, not in themselves an innova-

most original jazz song yet composed: tion. They have been highly developed among primitive races and have made intermittent, momentary appearances in the works

Prk IIR fam ptt pte fed penta tan Png of recent European composers. They have also occurred abun-

a ee dantly in the English madrigals. The madrigal polyrhythms were

Vettt ¢ tee pte yp the result of the madrigal prosody and therefore an intricate deft is pi 3S SS SS ESSE SSS interknitting in which no single downbeat was too definitely | stressed. In a sense, therefore, the madrigal was arhythmic rather than polyrhythmic. In fact, the madrigalists were charged by later English generations with lacking a proper sense of rhythm.

With the introduction of the Charleston the most tyrannical But the polyrhythms of jazz are different in quality and effect element of our popular music—the evenly rhythmed bass—was _ not only from those of the madrigals but from all others as well. eliminated for the space of a few measures at least. The Charles- | The peculiar excitement they produce by clashing two definitely

ton consists of the upper fox trot rhythm: 1-2-3:1-2-3-4-5 used and regularly marked rhythms is unprecedented in occidental below as well as above instead of the formerly unflagging 1-2-3- | music. Its polyrhythm is the real contribution of jazz.

4 bass: This has not been appreciated by modern European compos-

*a i ersee although in other ways our American popular.music has to 0. ee, eee ee ° ee some extentoe influenced them. In the daysone of ragtime, Debussy | op ie and Stravinsky, in the days of jazz, Ravel, Milhaud, Honegger,

SS Hindemith, Jean Wiener exploited it as an exotic novelty. But

with most of them it remained a novelty, a monotonous bass, a This old bondage (the unchanging bass) which has prob- | whining melody, a glissando on a trombone...... These tricks soon ably brought jazz more musical enemies than any other quality, lost their first charm. Meanwhile, however, at least one authenhas been broken in another way by Gershwin in his latest dance tic small masterpiece had been inspired in Europe by America, hit, Clap Yo’ hands. Instead of the 3/4 against 4/4 polyrhythm § Darius Milhaud’s La Creation du Monde—little known, which in the brisk competition of Broadway has now become __ Strangely, in this country. But according to Milhaud himself, jazz

old stuff, he uses this: is now distinctly passé in Europe and not a young composer there is interested in it any longer.

- This is not so in America, nor is it going to be. Since jazz is not

‘ESS SS PEST SS EES ===> == exotic here but indigenous, since it is the music an American has

i 2x Laas ees 3 xis heard as a child, it will be traceable more and more frequently in

3 ee eS SS his symphonies and concertos. Possibly the chief influence of SES Csiazz will be shown in the development of the polyrhythm. This startling new synthesis has provided the American composer with an instrument gaiety but love, tragedy, remorse.

December 1 ¢ The New Republic JAZZ AND FOLK ART by Waldo Frank About a year ago, in a discussion here of what I called The There has indeed been abroad for a full century the curious Comedy of Commerce, I referred to jazz, notinuncomplimentary _ notion that folk art—as once the King—can do no wrong: that terms, but critically as an instance of the artofacommerce and _ folk art is necessarily good art: that the critic who dares to ques-

industry ridden people. Many readers gave protest. So farasI _ tion folk art commits the unpardonable sin. This is a point I could see, the chief point against me was that I had dared be —_ would examine briefly, forgetting jazz as the mere pretext for it. critical at all of a folk art. Jazz, went their sentimental plaint, was §_ The notion, to begin with, seems to be quite modern. Before the expression of a people. (I had not denied it.) Hence, hands — Rousseau, folk art was known, of course; was appreciated; was

off! Hence, down on worshipful knees! indeed taken for granted. It was neither idealized nor despised. 497

1926 DECEMBER 1 ¢ THE NEW REPUBLIC It was the art of the folk: the elite regarded it with the same — (perhaps most races also) to fulfill their spiritual promise. The relative eye with which they looked upon the people. The people —_—s promise universally exists. No child, no child—trace is without it.

was the mass, the soil, the loam, whence they had sprung; the | Only the achievement is rare. And so it follows that the search body, if you will, for the aristocratic spirit. It was indispensable for spiritual values among children will be, by and large, more and it was causally, if not finally, good. No tyrant could think _ fruitful than among men and women. But to say that the artotherwise, without deleting the very substance of his power. | expression of all children gives more than the art-expression of Moliere, in the first act of Le Misanthrope, expressed the com- _all adults, because children all have the germ and adults seldom mon philosophic attitude toward folk art. To excoriate the pre- _ the flower, only this bad logic can lead us to conclude that child cious nonsense of Oronte, Alceste quotes a popular Parisian art and folk art are best, or even always good. Folk art is the seed ditty, and declares it vastly better than the sophisticate’s son- _ of great art; seeds are more numerous than flowers. To cultivate net. He shatters the courtier with a point which today would be _ the seed at the expense of the flower is a defeatism and a folly we altogether lost. For he is uttering a paradox. Here, in our lan- are not yet quite cured of. guage, is the gist of his attack: “This popular Parisian song— But folk art is not naive in its elements, any more than are the you know its class—may not be much but it is sincere, sweet, babblings of the “purest” child. It is, more often, the naive mirlovely. And your sonnet, M. Oronte, which should of course be _roring and mimicry of ideas caught from above. The emotions of an improvement on such primitive traits, shows but their total folk art are childish. Yet they are the result of unconsciously

loss.” inherited ideas, imposed by ruling classes. Take for instance the

The crowning of folk art is a corollary from Rousseau who _ folk arts of mediaeval Christian Europe—the spirituals of the preached a “return to Nature,” as if civilized man were somehow American Negro slave. Did the folk invent the intricate theology miraculously out of nature; and “a return to infancy,” as if his | and philosophy on which they rested? Rather, they vulgarized own doctrines had not been the dream of a weary adult. If you —_ the product of intellectual minorities—Phophets, Plato, Plotinus accept the Rousseauistic premise, the modern notion follows _and the Patrists: made it a pabulum, at last, which later intellectuabout art. The best art, then, will be the least cultured, the most als could reemploy for the creating of more cultivated art. Anprimitive, the most childlike. And poor man, addicted hopelessly other example: Russian folk music reveals traces of liturgical and to beauty, had best pursue his weakness in the art of folk who, — synagogical music. Now, a new group of cultivated artists— thinking least, are least attained. If, however, you reject the creed Rimsky, Stravinsky, Ornstein—reforms this popularized pabuof Rousseau, which does not mean that you deny his value and _—lum of older minorities into a fresh intellectualized music.

his genius; if it seems clear to you that civilized man belongs as Or consider our jazz. Jazz is not so much a folk music—like much to nature as a tree does, and that man’s need to live well, to _— the spirituals—as a folk accent in music. It expresses well a mass

know truth, to aim high, is as healthy and as natural afunction response to our world of piston-rods, cylinders and mechanized as the tree’s to grow good roots and blossom, then this indis- | laws. The response is of the folk and is passive. The nature of criminate adoring of folk art, merely because it is folk art, is | our world itself is due to the work and temperament of minorities

nonsense. alien to the jazz-makers. Jazz expresses a personal maladjust-

Dante was once ten years old. He was aremarkable child.He — ment to this world, right by sheer and shrewd compliance. And babbled sonnets and rondeaus which revealed his nature. Do __ this, doubtless, is why the races at once most flexible and most you put the prattlings he produced at ten before the Divina — maladjusted—the Negro and the Jew—-give the best jazz-masCommedia he composed at fifty? if you are the usual folk-art ters. Since the rhythm of our age is not transfigured in jazz, as in worshiper, why not? Were those lyric works of Dante’s youth _ truly creative art, but is assimilated, the elements of the age itself not the pure Dante? The untrammeled sign and substance ofhis | which we may disapprove will appear also in jazz. In other words soul? Were they not Dante’s folk art? And the Divina Commedia! a folk art—being so largely an art of reaction and of assimilaWhat alien and sophisticate and unoriginal matters dulled the — tion—will contain the faults of the adult minorities that rule the raptures of his early years to this! Aristotle, Aquinas, Virgil, the folk , as well as the pristine virtues of the people. Apocalypses of Jerusalem, the Pseud-Epigraphia of Alexandria; And we have other folk arts. The Rosary—jazzless, Eurothe whole theology and logic of the Schoolmen had to “de- —_— pean, saccharine—is as truly a folk art as any of the Berlin or bauch” the pure Dante, ere he was ready to write his intricate, | Gershwin ditties. Harold Bell Wright’s books—messes of Victo-

ing. millions.

conscious Poem. If you are a real lover of art, surely you willturn —_—srian notions in decay—are also an American folk art. The New

with mild disgust from the Commedia to his childhood’s sing- York Daily News is the daily art of a folk numbering several

I do not think this caricature of the folk art fad is too unjust.to The adorers of folk art in its own divine right need but obsharpen a just point. It is literally true that if greatness beeverin serve what they adore. That will be enough to cure them. Nor aman or a race, it must potentially have been there at the outset. | should they forget that in all culturally early epochs, dissatisTherefore the beginning expressions of that man or race will —_ faction with folk art is one of the incentives for the production of hold the germ of their significance. Most men, moreover, fail great art.

498

DECEMBER 4 ¢ MUSICAL NEWS AND HERALD 1926 December 4 ¢ Musical News and Herald THE SOURCE OF THE NEGRO SPIRITUAL by ‘Scrutator’ It is now more than 300 years ago since a Dutch vessel sailed __ to be translated into the Negro Spiritual. into Jamestown, Virginia, carrying twenty African natives to that A comparison between the structure of these two forms throws country. They were quickly bought up by the colonial settlers _ an interesting light on the whole problem. The following are the there, and thus began the African slave trade in the colonies of | opening lines of a song sung by Negro minstrels of Bornon in

America. The demand being always greater than the supply, _ praise of their chief :

hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children from vari- ; . Give flesh to the hyenas at daybreak oh the broad spears!

ous parts of Africa were shipped across to the Western continent to be sold into slavery. Here they were, like the Jews of old, The spear of the Sultan the broadest—oh, the broad spear! . I behold thee now, i desire to be none other. oh, the broad captive in Babylon, cut off from all they held most dear, and found themselves fact to face with an utterly strange civiliza- spears : ;

tion, with its strange language, and intolerable burden of sla- My horse 1s as tall as a high wall. Oh, the broad spears!

very. from Narrative of travels in Northern and Yet these are the very people from whom the Negro spiritual Central Africa (Denham and Clappertone) originally sprang, and these therefore, are the pioneer folk-song

makers of America. At first sight, this statement may appear This may be compared with the spiritual One mo’ ribber to quite incredible, but it must be remembered that many of these cross: unfortunate natives were not the ignorant barbarians they are Oh, de ribber of Jordan is deep and wide—One mo’ ribber to

often reputed to have been. cross

Itis now generally recognized by students that the majority I don’t know how to get on de other side—One mo’ ribber to

of these Africans were in no sense ‘savages’ but that they pos-

sessed culture andgot civilization left fast—One its mark upon the CBOSS , ysto i oa aOh, you Jesus,which holdhas him mo’ ribber

cross African Negro Art, M. de Zayas goes so far as to say that ‘of all , painting and sculpture of Europe to-day. Indeed, in his book on Oh. better love was nebber told——One mo’ ribber to cross

the arts of the primitive races, the art of the African Negro sav- —_ and with many another of the same type. Most of the spirituals

age is the one which has had a positive influence on the art of | are conceived in this form, a line sung by the leader and the

our epoch.’ refrain by the chorus, and this is the pattern on which most of About African music, on the other hand, not very muchisas __ the native African songs are found to have been written. yet known, possibly because their idea of it is so different from With regard to the melodies themselves, most are cast in ours; for, whereas the West thinks of music chiefly in terms of — pentatonic mould, and many are strangely moving, but they are melody and harmony, the East regards rhythm as its most char- _ not intended to be sung as solos, and much of their mobility is acteristic expression. Now the Negro in America brought with _lost if they are treated in this way. When the solitary voice of him from Africa his native musical instinct and talent, and that the leader is answered by a chorus which surges and swells like was a striking capacity for rhythm. It is not surprising, therefore, the rolling sea, the effect is profoundly inspiring. It is this con-

that the spirituals reflect this characteristic very clearly, but, | vincing contrast between the single voice and the antiphonal both in melody and harmony, they show a marked advance on __ chorus which, more than any other element, makes the renderthe indigenous music of Africa. How, then, 1s this remarkable —_ing so impressive.

development to be accounted for? Why did not the native, even Now, though the actual melodies of the spirituals have much though transplanted into an alien soil, revive there the music of | in common with the folk-songs of other races, they are entirely the drum and tom-tom and continue to revel inthe dances which —_ unique in one respect, being sung for the most part in harmony.

their rhythm evoked in the land of his fathers? The Negro has always had the reputation of being a singer, but It was in Christianity, no doubt, that the Negro found most it must be admitted that if that reputation has been founded complete consolation for the present, and surest hope for the — upon the quality of his voice, it can only be through the enfuture. Despised by those among whom he lived, andexperienc- — chantment that is lent by distance. It is more likely, however, that

ing all too frequently the bitterness of separation from friends __ this popular credit given to Negroes as singers is derived from and loved ones in the slave markets of America, he turned with __ their extraordinary capacity for harmonizing and not from the fervour to the Christian religion as to a mighty deliverer, and it | quality of their voices. Thus, in a very large number of these was in the fire of this fervour that the spirituals were forged. _spirituals is found a triple contrast, produced by alternating the This, it would seem, was the motive power which brought the —_ solo voice, chorus in unison, and chorus in harmony. great majority of these noble songs into being, and without its To many, no doubt, the words of the songs will seem crude, aid it is doubtful whether such melodies would ever have been and sometimes even grotesque, but there was certainly no produced. Thus, by sheer spiritual force, the Africanchantcame humour intended; the singer was in grim earnest indeed. It must

499

1926 1926 © MUSICAL QUARTERLY be remembered, too, that the song-maker, when it came to the _ gested, are beautiful, and both Dvorak and Coleridge-Taylor, to use of words, was struggling with alanguage of whichhisknowl- _—s mention only two notable composers, have shown us how rich edge was limited, and with a religion the tenets of which he _and dignified they sound in more elaborate contexts; is it unreacould not always clearly grasp. Yet there is something about _ sonable, therefore, to hope that in the near future they may be this very crudity and grotesqueness which is noble, dignified, | wedded to religious verse of a more cultured, but not necessarand eminently sincere. Many of the melodies, ithas been sug- _ ily of a more sophisticated, style, and used, as many other less worthy melodies are, periodically in our churches?

December 11 ¢ Christian Science Monitor 1900* by Alfredo Casella

Jazz would be absurd and presumptuous to predict in 1926 what will be the music of 1980 or 2000 (Beethoven would have been very If I were not afraid of being taken seriously—and yetlam speak- auch at a loss if he had foreseen only Tristan and Isolde). But ing very seriously—I should venture to say that the only music —_ractically, I simply mean this: that we live ina singularly tangled that is of the twentieth century, and which in a few years has and chaotic period, in the midst of which it is more difficult than been able to impose itself upon the whole world by its dyna- ever to play the prophet. And that, in this extremely complicated mism, its originality and also by its luster, is undoubtedly jazz. It time, the only form of music that has attained in only a few years is easy to object that this music is of an inferior order. Thatis popularity, a diffusion and a universality such as has not been possible. But it is none the less true that our period seems tobe — seen in our art since the Italian opera of the last century, is, summed up in its atmosphere of jerky resticssness and in that curiously enough, a form of art which has come from a new rhythm whose beats so extraordinarily and submissively con- wor, Must one conclude from this that the scepter of music is form to a basis of unmercifully mechanical regularity. — going to pass from old Europe to adolescent America? I do not Should we conclude from this that jazz is the music of our —_ Know, But in any case, this phenomenon deserves the deepest century, and its style is the one that will represent our period IN attention and study of the musicians of both worlds. the centuries to come? Far be it from me to make this claim. It

1926 © Musical Quarterly VIEWS AND REVIEWS* by Carl Engel If at the end of the present musical transformation our finished home product should bear fewer Negro traits than marked _ instincts. Among these instincts the one for music is the most its noisier beginnings, there is enough real merit, undisputed —_ remarkable. In properly emphasizing the value of this priceless glory left for the colored race to claim an independent and promi- _ gift, it is difficult to know just where to stop; and therefore it nent share in the development of American music. To deny this _does not surprise that we should meet—especially in the writwould be preposterous. To insist upon more would be equally _ings of the Negro himself—with statements which sometimes

senseless. overrun the line of caution so far as to become extravagant.

Unfortunately, the moment that any critical estimate of the In recent years the serious application to the collecting and musical part played by the Negro deviates in the slightest de- —_ recording of Negro melodies has made great strides. After the gree from the path of unqualified praise, itis suspected of being — long and indiscriminate exploitation of the dance-tunes and warped by racial prejudice. There is a very fine, avery plausible “comical” songs of the colored race, the world is learning to reason for the desire to make good some of the many injustices —_ appreciate the deeper and more spiritual side of the Negro’s which the Negro has suffered, by giving him creditfornotonly —_ musical talent. In 1867 William Francis Allen published his Slave all the wonderful things he has done, but more. Yet in the end — Songs of the United States, in the preface to which we find one that method can render a disservice only. For it is apt to retard _—_ of the earliest descriptions of the Negro’s religious songs or still further the sober attitude of self-critical discipline inapeople = “sperichils.” Allen thought that the first reference in print to preeminently endowed with emotional exuberance and artistic —_ these songs appeared in a letter from Lucy KcKim, published in Dwight's Journal of Music, November 8, 1862. Miss McKim was *The opening paragraphs of both these articles are not concerned with the daughter of an agent of the Port Royal Relief Society. But as

jazz and have been omitted. early an issue of Dwight’s as that of November 15, 1856, has an 500

1926 © MUSICAL QUARTERLY 1926 article on the “Songs of the Black,” signed “evangelist,” which inherited conceptions, until they turned into a new, a personal contains the following passage: “It is in religion thatthe African _and inimitable expression of his own? Surely not. pours out his whole voice and soul. A child in intellect, he is a The Negroes of Africa—even those who have been the privichild in faith. All the revelations of the Bible have tohimastar- —_ leged recipients of visits from white missionaries—are not known tling vividness, and he will sing of the judgment and the resur- _to indulge in spirituals, or in any other species of song directly rection with a terror or a triumph which cannot be concealed.As —__ resembling the chants of their Christianized brothers in America.

hundreds assemble at a camp-meeting in the woods, andjoinin — Let us cheerfully admit that no white man could have conceived

the chorus of such a hymn as the words and tunes of the spirituals. Then let us go a step ; Lo, , further and admit that no Negro could have created the spirituWhen I can read my title clear, to mansions m the skies, als without a contact, not only with the Christianity of the white the unimpassioned hearer is almost lifted from his feet by the man. but more especially with the musical manifestations of that

volume and majesty of the sound.” Christianity peculiar to the early Dutch and Anglo-Saxon colo-

, ; ; ; these early settlers were.

The Civil War gave a strong impetus to the interest in any- nists. It is rather important to bear in mind what sort of men

thing that concerned the Negr 0. His music sp read rapidly, thanks Mr. Johnson writes: “The statement that the spirituals are to the Jubilee Songs of Fisk an d the Cabin and Plantation imitations made by the Negro of music that he heard is an absurSongs of Hampton. But not until the beginning of the present dity. What music did American Negroes hear to imitate?” Becentury did his “spirituals” establish themselves as solo songs; hold the orator pause and sweep the audience with a look, of perhaps they would have had to walt longer, had it n ot been for challenge, satisfied that no answer to his question can possibly one of the foremost colored musicians, that accomplished singer, forthcome. One hesitates to break into the discourse at this sap oanaeiae tuals” have acquired a veritable vogue, The dramatic point and remind the pleader that there were few people are now a fixed art of any svellace dered song-propram There. more fervently addicted to psalmody, and all it implied, than fore a wide and eager demand should greet The Book of Ameri. et the Protestant settlers, Dutch and English, who began to

- ; ; ; import African natives about the middle of the seventeenth cen-

can ere Spirituals wien n Viking Press ns recently 's tury. The singing of hymns constituted for a long time the chief

hos rth, One ’ hi wand y¢ eof as Th t i ue he diversion of these pious adventurers. They probably needed all

eauty Onde maelonres an contrast of moo .. “© itor of the the religious “whistling” they could do, to keep up their courage volume is Mr. James Weldon Johnson; the ‘musical arrange- in the face of hardships and perils daily renewed.

eae ene wor ol ine Rosamond 7ohnson and Mr Nobody says that the tune of this or that Negro spiritual can degree of confidence. The editor’s pre baes f forty pages, an be found in Ainsworth or Sternhold and Hopkins. Nobody sug‘mportant feature of the book, starts full of promise. Very soon gests that anything like the often amazingly profound and beau-

the rea der discovers that he ig in court P tiful Negro verses existed in the Bay Psalm Book or its numerous Mr. Johnson’s preface is a plea; it ig intended to support the successors. But the musical prototype was there; and the bewil-

oa . i , dering imagery, the florid circumlocutions of those old hymns

vase of the Negro vs. the White Man mn must’ That in itself is a had a direct bearing on the manner in which the Negro converts

legitimate proceeding. What might be objected to by a thought- sang of their faith and hope in the new God they learned to ful reader—and one thoroughly disposed to decide the case in worship —a God whose heavenly paradise was assumed to make favor of the pleader’s client—is the sort of evidence adduced. up for what the earthly lot of a slave was lacking in cheer and The reader finds himself confronted, not with a clear and logical comfort. The slave’s white master himself was not always a very presen tation of provable facts, bu t with a mixture of popular cheerful person. He indulged at home and in church in a plentitheories and vague or fanciful claims. Instead of being founded ful dose of more or less mournful litany which, notwithstanding upon firmly knit, convincing argumen ts, the success of the case its doubtful musical excellence, Mr. Johnson must allow us to dangles by the loose ends of sp ecrous oratory. At best, the call music. In the nature of things, it would have been infinitely reading jury will disagree. What a pity, for it scems that a cooler more difficult for the early Negro to copy literally this “sacred and shrewder stmnmng UP would have resulted in a unanimous music” and these stilted verses, than it was for him to recreate

vote of vindication with an award of damages. them freely and spontaneously. It was a great good fortune that Mr. Johnson is an able spokesman, a delightful write r; and the Negro did not make of this music another brand of Christian one regrets the more to have ones literary pleasure " his pret- hymns, but enriched it with something he had inherited from his ace spoiled by frequent prompting to check uP his various pagan ancestry, with the potent and not so distant recollections affirmations. Mr. Johnson s main contention 1s of course not of the rituals that accompanied the festivals of the tribe, the new: that the Negro spirituals are an absolutely original creat ‘On increase to the family, the preparations for battle, the advent of of the colored folk and owe nothing to the contact of the African spring. the mystery of death—the whole primitive, fierce life and

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slaves with the white settlers of America. Would it subtract any- ; truggle in the dark continent.

thing from the marvel of these unique songs if we should be Almost simultaneously with Mr. Johnson’s volume, there has content to recognize merely what the Negro has done in modify- been published a collection entitled Mellows by R. Emmett ing and transforming acquired elements, in blending them with Kennedy (A & C Boni). The author of this collection holds that

1926 1926 ¢ MUSICAL QUARTERLY the spirituals are “an original lyrical creation of the Afro-Ameri- _ ethnological exhibit, pure and authentic, but a sociological phecan mind evolved in this country.” This does not prevent Mr. nomenon, hybrid and artificial. Kennedy from remarking, very justly, in connection with sucha Unwittingly Mr. Johnson has laid bare the only fault one tune as Po’ Li’l Jesus, that “the general mold of the melodyisso can find with most of the Negro spirituals as they are being reminiscent of the Gregorian chant that it may not be unreason- _ published to-day, a fault strongly in evidence in the “musical able to assume it is due to the influence of Roman Catholicism, |§ arrangements” which Mr. J. Rosamond Johnson and Mr. the religion of Creole Louisiana, and the religion adopted by | Lawrence Brown have contributed to Mr. James W. Johnson’s

many of the Negroes of the Creole plantations.” own collection. A comparison between the Johnson and Kennedy collec- More accurate and guarded than Mr. Johnson is Dr. Alain tions, so opportunely brought out at the same time, offers food Locke, who, in his book on The New Negro, writes: “At present for salutary reflection. Mr. Kennedy in most cases quotes chap- __ the Spirituals are at a very difficult point in their musical cater and verse, that is, the name of the Negro or Negroes who __ reer; for the moment they are caught in the transitional stage sang for him the different versions of the tunes he records. And —_ between a folk form and an art form.” They are caught, indeed. the reminiscences or anecdotes that accompany each song are And even should they be liberated and seemingly advance,

not the least valuable or attractive part of the book. will they have really gained? Leaving the future to decide that Mr. Johnson, too, is backing his side with quotations from = question, one thing is certain now: that whatever the ultimate “authorities.” Only in fitting the opinions of others into the __ result, it will be obtained at a sacrifice of what is purely and structure of his argument, the statements quoted gain some- _authentically Negro. The very “art-form” into which the spiritimes a little in latitude or change a trifle in direction. Thus Mr. _tuals are being forced to-day are devices, and not always happy Krehbiel wrote in his book on the Afro-American Folksongs __ ones, of the white man. The original spirituals were often marthat the rhythm of the habanera—alleged to be of African ori- — velous, always spontaneous outbursts of a naive but inspired gin—as a dance, “is not vocal, but its form has been used most _ race, endowed with the imaginative power of instinctive and charmingly in vocal music, and in two of its manifestations, _ infallible genius. In their modern transformation and prettified Carmen’s air in the first scene of Bizet’s opera and the Mexican _ adaptation they bear the earmarks of self-conscious uncersong Paloma, it is universally known.” Whereupon Mr. Johnson _tainty, and often sink to the level of groping mediocrity. bravely asserts that a “considerable portion of Bizet’s opera, If anything, the transition—in its latest phase—is headed Carmen, is based on this originally African rhythm? “Which _ the wrong way. Compare some of the elaborate “arrangements” brings to mind a concert given several years ago in Jordan Hall, = of Messrs. Johnson and Brown with the simple but characterBoston, by colored musicians as a testimonial for the family of —_ istic accompaniments of Mr. H. T. Burleigh, and compare them the late Coleridge-Taylor, at which the speaker of the evening,in = above all with the treatment of the spirituals in the Hampton enumerating the men of signal accomplishments whom the col- _ collection. Even a man like Mr. Krehbiel, who could not preored race had produced, gave his hearers to understand that not __ tend to the “Negro-feeling” that Messrs. Johnson and Brown only the violinist Bridgewater was of African descent, butthata | should possess, did infinitely better by Nobody knows the drop of Negro blood flowed also in the veins of the violinist’s —_ trouble I see ... of his book) than did they .... Compare What

great friend, Ludwig van Beethoven! yo’ gwine t’do when de lamp burn down in the Johnson colA number of Negro spirituals have a pathos and beauty which _lection with the version of it given in the Hampton collection.

can not help but move any listener, regardless of color. Mr. That single example would suffice to show what changes the Johnson is right in dwelling on this fact when he speaks of the _ parlorized and “‘transplatformed” spiritual undergoes. Messrs. Negro’s nobility of soul. No one will gainsay him. But when he = Johnson and Brown (in this as in practically all of their ardeclares that “there is not a nobler theme in the whole musical = rangements) deliberately go to work and double the note-valliterature of the world” than Go down Moses, one wonders justa —_ ues of the melody. The nervous, breathlessly inquiring song—

little how much of it he expects his readers to have forgotten. | divided between the leader and the chorus—as it appears in Inaccuracy, however, could not well go farther than when he calls § the Hampton collection, becomes in the Johnonian version a the spirituals “America’s only folk-music, and up to this time, the pedestrian ballad, marked “Slowly, with meditation.” The primifinest distinctive artistic contribution she has to offer the world.” —_ tive, frenzied eagerness of the crowd is perverted into a manHere is an example of how a thoroughly trained mind, ca- _ nered and introspective soliloquy. Compare the Crucifixion in pable of the clearest reasoning, can lose itself occasionally in — the Johnson collection with He never said a mumblin’ word as the fog of partisanship. The Negro spiritual, according to Mr. __ recorded and harmonized by Mr. Kennedy in his Mellows. Johnson, would have accomplished the miracle of combining = _Whichis the more genuinely Negro of the two? Read what Mr. and converting into synonyms, what have heretofore been re- | Kennedy has to say of George Riley, the Baptist Negro—who garded as two very different and strictly opposite types andterms — went out to see the Sun dance on Easter morning—and his of musical expression: the folk-song and the art-song. If itis | way of singing the song with “a feeling of adulation rather claimed that the spiritual is a folk-song, it can not well be atthe —_ than a feeling of commiseration.” Look at Mr. Kennedy’s versame time “an artistic contribution” to music. Ifitis anart-song, sion, with its lilting eighth- and sixteenth-notes—expressive or has come under the dubious influence of the artistic “ar- _ of the loving solicitude for the martyred Lord and of the frank ranger,” it ceases to be a genuine folk-song. It is no longer an —_— astonishment and pride that he should have suffered without

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1926 «© PEABODY BULLETIN 1926 ever saying “a mumblin’ word.” You can almost hear the Negro’s (Harvard University Press), both published in 1925. The book ecstatic chuckle as he glories in the thought of aLord whoisa _ by the Carolina professors contained not a note of music. But it hero, who suffers in silence—as philosophical George himself comes nearest to a scientific treatment of the historical and soperhaps must do occasionally. And then look at the arrange- _ cial aspects of the question. The book by the two ladies is emi-

ment of the song by Mr. J. Rosamond Johnson, dedicated to _ nently feminine, hence caparisoned with charms and graces, that extraordinary artist, Mr. Roland Hayes. Itisintendedtobe though a little more effusive than rigorously methodical. Howdelivered solemnly; the song, in its “art-form,” with its aug- ever it contains many interesting tunes which the authors wisely mented note values, invites dramatization, calls for the intensi- _ refrain from harmonizing. fied presentment on the stage. But it has lost every trace of It is know that colored people, if sufficiently urged by white

simplicity and subtlety. “investigators,” will sometimes seek to shake off their pitiless

Much more could be said about these interesting songs and _inquisitors by jumbling together bits of sundry remembered tunes the changes they are undergoing; about the harmonizations, —_and words, and thus make up “Negro folk-songs” on the spot— reputed to be rich in “bizarre” effects peculiar to the colored | which subsequently are hailed as rare finds of hitherto unknown musician—which is not always a satisfactory explanation ofthe “variants.” The nature of some of these variants (and the num“faulty” harmonies that the white ear detects in the misapplica- _ ber of white “contributors”) leads one to suspect that—in their tion of white formulas or the ignoring of white rules. These feverish desire to enrich the store of a momentarily “fashionharmonies are bizarre in the sense in which ungrammatical speech _—_ able” form of poetry—even white people occasionally, and un-

can strike us as bizarre. consciously, are carried to bardic pinnacles of colored utterThis review does not pretend to be exhaustive. In ordertobe ance. The danger of imitation now is twofold. All the more reathat it would have to do more even than take up, one after the —_ son for cautious sifting.

other, all the debatable points in Mr. James Weldon Johnson’s There is a crying need for an unbiased, scientific research in collection. It would have to draw into the debate such works as__ the wide and fertile fields of American music which have proThe Negro and his Songs by Prof. Howard W. Odum and Mr. ___ duced no fruit of more distinctive savor than the spiritual of the Guy B. Johnson of the University of North Carolina (issued by |= Negro. Not enough of these singularly touching songs can be

the press of that university) and On the Trail of Negro Folk discovered and preserved. When authentic, they are imbued Songs by Dorothy Scarborough, assisted by Ola Lee Gulledge — with what is noblest, most aspiring and characteristic in a great race.

1926 © Peabody Bulletin BROADWAY JAZZ It is customary, of course, to turn up one’s nose a little at the | Had Chopin despised the popular dances of the romantic period music of the Broadway shows. Whether or not he is willing to | we should not now have his waltzes and his mazurkas. To write admit virtue in jazz the average well-trained composer inherits | mazurkas to-day, however, is an anachronism. The comparable from his virtuoso-tradition a feeling that his genius should oper- —_ task for modern composers is to compose fox trots and tangos ate only in a formal opera house sponsored, if not by royalty, at_ §=which musically will be important. least by the rich, or in sedate and refined circles where chamber The career of the virtuoso brought with it the career of the music is understood, or in the reverent concert hall. To such a _critic. If one’s life is to be spent in a competition, however friendly, musician it is inconceivable that his mission may well be to liftthe | with other performers then one needs the satisfaction of an current musical entertainment nearer to the level of great art. Per- |§ umpire to say who is which and which is ahead. Whether there sonally the present writer feels that in the musical comedies of is a permanent career for the music critic may be questioned. Broadway, in such an entertainment as Show Boat, wehavecome _ The verdict of practicing artists on the performance of their nearer to the evolution of a genuine American form of artthanin —_ fellows is usually illuminating. The service of the professional anything yet composed by native talent in drama or in opera. Ifin = music critic is most often of an historical character. He helps to any respect the music of such entertainment falls short of whatit | educate the audience by furnishing information about the music might be, the responsibility rests neither with the public nor with — onthe program, and by estimating the performance on the basis the producers but with the talented composers who decline to _ of the tradition. His lot is not a happy one, and much of his best study what is here needed and supply that need. To look disdain- = work has failed of appreciation largely for the sound reason that fully on the taste of the average man has always been in artasin —_an audience which has enjoyed a performance has got out of it other matters a dangerous form of snobbery. Ithas been fortunate _ all it wants, and an audience which hasn’t enjoyed itself is usufor music that men of the greatest genius acentury and moreago _ally willing to let the matter drop provided it doesn’t have to go did not despise the court dances then popular. Those dances _ again. would mean nothing to us now if Couperin, Rameau, Bach had In America the music critic is horribly overworked. No large not written in their quaint measure certain imperishable suites. | newspaper cares to be without its critic, yet practically no news-

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1926 1926 © POPULAR MECHANICS paper gives him enough assistance to cover all the performances _a few cities, and chiefly on the Atlantic seaboard, attract too and to pronounce mature judgment. As a consequence, few = many of the young students and artists. For music in general we Critics can attend more than the academic kind of performance— —_ ought to develop a state pride. It is no small loss to any commuoperas, concerts, recitals. If there should be a musical show of __ nity when the talents which it produced have gone off elsedistinction, the overworked critic could hardly get to hear it,and = where, and an expenditure of money on the part of each state if you asked him to cover the music of moving-picture houses as — which would result in keeping its gifted children at home would well as that of the musical shows he would probably expire on _syield profit a hundred fold. the spot. We have therefore no good means at present of sur- American music would be advanced more than anyone can

veying the whole musical movement at any one time. measure if each state established a small opera house to be paid Two desirable additions to our music opportunities suggest for out of its tax rates and to be administered in the interests of themselves. Just because the concert touring of famous artists its music talent. Such a house ought to produce modern works is going out of fashion, there is every reason why competent — expressing the drift of our own taste and the needs of our own performers, especially young and enthusiastic ones who are not __ spirit. In such a house the best orchestral players in the state yet weary of travel, should make appearances through the coun- — should find employment and the singers and composers their try and carry good music to places where it has not yet been __ careers. The tickets, as in Europe, should be so cheap that the heard. The machinery for such a distribution of music is ready at entire community could enjoy the performances. hand in the Federation of Women’s Clubs. These influential These two suggestions may seem unrelated to general congroups have long been in the habit of inviting lecturers tospeak __ siderations of the musician’s career, but they follow from what before them, at a few which, though less than that of the great —_ has been said of the musician as craftsman. If the young student concert artists, is still adequate for traveling expenses and for — can envisage his career less as a spectacular triumph on the something over. If the Federation of Women’s Clubs should _ platform than as a life-long labor in the interests of one of the take on their programs each year a number of promising musi- —_ most sociable of the arts, we shall soon have a greater demand cians, at the same fees they now pay to lecturers, they would for good music in such groups as the women’s clubs and a vary and enrich their own entertainment and greatly advance clearer need for houses where the whole community can find the cause of music. These clubs are so widely distributed that | musical entertainment, not only in every state but in every city. they can easily carry music into whole areas where nocommer- § When music is defined not as the expression of the individual cial agency could hope to bring the touring virtuoso. but as the social need of us all, the too-often criticized public will We ought to have in every state of the Union at least one —_— show a prodigal hospitality to the art. focal point for the musical interests of the community. At present

1926 © Popular Mechanics WHERE JAZZ COMES FROM by Earl Chapin May At anational convention of music industries, a piano manufac- —_ sounded by beating. Syncopation is the stressing or accentturer attacked jazz as “a series of animal howls—a yowling of __ing of the after beat in music. It antedates music because the jungle creatures.” About the same time, several thousand lovers _ first drum corps in the winds of Africa went in strong for synof music assembled to hear Eric Delamarter, internationally fa- | copation. The savage who evolved a drum, by stretching dried mous as organist, conductor and composer, interpret his com- _ skin across the end of a hollow log, made “drum talk” by acplete jazz symphony with the aid of one of the largest pipe or- _ centing the after beat. The Kaffir coal miners of the Rand rally gans in the world and eighty-five members of the Philadelphia around their syncopating drum corps to this day. You’ ll find

Symphony Orchestra. syncopation among the Peruvian drummers of the Andes, the

The debate on the question, “Resolved: that jazz is adis- | Siberian drummers with their bone drumsticks, and the Tibettinctive American form of true music,” waxes more violent ans who drum upon human skulls. with its increasing popularity. The violence of the debate is John Sebastian Bach, “father of modern music,” was using equaled only by the argument over its origin. As a matter of | syncopation in his Well Tempered Clavichord and other compofact, the question of where jazz originated finds a parallelin _ sitions before 1750. Ludwig Van Beethoven wrote syncopation that classically moot query, “Which came first, the egg or the —_ into the Scherzo movement of his Opus 18, Number 6, before hen?” Even the origin of the word “jazz” is in doubt, and few 1800. When our south imported slaves, it also imported syncoagree on what style or type of music shall be justly called —_ pation from Africa. When the dives of the old Barbary Coast of jazz. But several years of study and practical experience leadto San Francisco introduced us to the one-step and fox trot they the conclusion that jazz is the offspring of syncopation, plusa | adopted a syncopation, developed in Buenos Aires, Argentina, multitude of nonmusical notes and a wealth of effects by the | whichcame from the tribal dances of Brazil. But the effects by traps and the drums, and other similar instruments that are — which modern jazz is identified originated in our own southland

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1926 « POPULAR MECHANICS 1926 and its Negroes. We first came to recognize them inthe Negro — wolfed his tones, which, no good musician should do. The blues. W. C. Handy an Alabama Negro, put the blues on our — trombonist blatted and sounded many a flat and sharp where musical map. Handy was proprietor and manager of a dance _accidentals should not have been heard. The cornetist achieved orchestra. One night, more than thirty years ago, he was filling blue notes by blowing on his cornet when the water key was an engagement at the little town of Cleveland, Miss. Three local § open. The trap drummer indulged in many a raucous noise Negroes applied for permission to interpolate a selection. This with the aid of cuckoo calls, horse neighs, nose blows, and permission granted, the trio, equipped with mandolin, guitar and —_ other devilish devices. But they made a hit and their fame spread

bass viol, played, over and over again, a mournful primitive _to far-off Chicago. Down from Chicago, in 1914 came a restau-

strain of twelve instead of the orthodox sixteen measures. rateur named James. James came, heard and was conquered. There were just three changes of harmony in this unfinished —he offered the four New Orleans boys the princely sum of symphony, but it made a hit, partly because the guitarandman- _ twenty-five dollars per week a piece and all expenses to play in dolin players slid their fingers along the frets and produced the —_ his Chicago restaurant. The offer was accepted with alacrity. effects we now hear in the Hawaiian steel-stringed guitar and § Mr. James was given no time in which to change his mind.

ukulele and partly because the bass viol played “wolfed” his Half scared and half thrilled, the four members of the Dixieland tones. White folks present showered money upon the local Ne- —_ band opened their Chicago engagement in the Boosters’ club.

groes. They were a riot. Police reserves were called out to keep the Handy sat up and took notice. He studied the new type of — mobs of patrons at bay. And then one night, while the boys were music, which had a melody something like the Negro spiri- —_ catching their several breaths after an unusually enlivening blue

tuals, but encouraged encores because if left the impression number, somebody in the restaurant—it has never been decided that there was something more to come. One result of Handy’s —_just who did it—shouted, “Jazz ‘er up, boys.” study was the composition which has won fame as The Mem- Now there are thousands of jazz orchestras in this country phis Blues. It was a song without words at first, but it went | Almost every town of 5,000 has one or more. Few vaudeville big. Then Handy wrote some verses for it, referring toaMem- —_ programs are complete without a jazz number. Many a student phis election campaign. They were not so good. George _in our institutions of higher learning is completing his educaNorton, a white man, contributed a new set of verses, which __ tion by playing jazz engagements during the summer. From a became permanently attached to the Handy melody praising quartet of cornet, clarinet, trombone and drums, the modern the hospitality of Memphis and the skill of Handy’s orches- —_—jazz orchestra has grown into a mighty force for the perpetuat-

tra. ing of the reign of reeds and rhythm. First the piano was added. The Memphis Blues traveled from coast to coast. There was Then came the moaning, wailing saxophone. Then the oboe an outbreak of blues in every musical quarter. The ragtime craze _ arrived, and finally all the wood wind instruments and the wealth

followed. But jazz was still unborn. It remained for four New _ of imitations to which the trick trap drummer is so much adOrleans white boys to add that word to the world’s vocabulary __ dicted. Nearly twenty years ago, this quartet of youngsters did the The old simple syncopated melodies, such as Irving Berlin’s usual kid tricks in the Crescent City. They followed the street | Alexander’s Ragtime Band, have been succeeded by Vincent bands. They imitated them on mouth organs and “kazoos.” Pres- | Lopez and his jazz versions of The Covered Wagon. Our distinently, and somewhat blindly, the boy named LaRocca found guished pianist and composer, Edward Burlingame, has brought himself the leader of the band of four, and also the cornetist. By | out a Jazz Study for two pianos. The brilliant Texan, Harold the same undefined process, the youth named Edwards began Morris, has composed his Second Sonata in which are incorpoto master the seven positions of the slide trombone. Young _ rated many Negro tunes. Powell’s Negro Rhapsody, Whithorne’s Shields became “one of those grinning fools who suck a stick,” |= Times Square and Carpenter’s Krazy Kat are among the current in other words, a clarinetist. And young Scarboro (Ed.:Sbarbaro) —_ contributions to the literature of American jazz.

became intrigued by the manifold possibilities of the traps and So many of our jazz orchestras invaded foreign fields that instruments of percussion so often now referred to as the “bat- |= the French government made a determined, although not

tery.” wholly effectual, effort to bar them, for they were cutting Without an hour of professional instruction and in total ig- | French musicians out of long-held jobs. But the jazz orchesnorance of notes as written, the boys announced themselves as _ tras, augmented by helicon basses and a terrifying assortment the Dixieland band. The announcement made no immediate sen- of marimbas, chimes, bells, xylophones and whatnots, are sation in New Orleans. The band’s services were notinconstant | sounding the dominant notes in American music. It is nothing demand. In fact, the four boys knocked at the door of opportu- _—for a boy still in high school to be bitten by the jazz orchestra nity for months before they finally forced themselves intoajob —_ bug and to invest $400 in various bird calls, animal imitations at a local dance. The remuneration was six dollars or one dollar and instruments of percussion, while the professionals go much and a half for each budding musician. Other jobs followed. Then _ farther.

fate beckoned them to a popular grill. I once spent an evening with Ross Gorman, of the Paul The Dixieland band made good because, in theirignorance | Whiteman organization, inventorying his stock in trade. Ross is of written music and innocence of technique, the boys com- _ primarily a saxophonist. But all jazz artists must specialize in mitted many atrocities in the name of the muse. The violinist effects. Ross was getting his with equipment valued at $3,540.

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1926 1926 e POPULAR MECHANICS One trap drummer of my acquaintance has more than $1,000 — themes of Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C, Dvorak’s New World invested in his imitations and percussion instruments. But it pays § Symphony, Schubert’s Serenade, Handel’s Messiah, Beethoven’s them well. Ross makes about $400 a week although thatis small | Moonlight Sonata, the Hungarian Rhapsodies of Liszt and even

change compared to Vincent Lopez and his weekly income of | Chopin’s Funeral March and Mendelssohn’s Spring Song.

$5,000. The works of Oscar Strauss have been metamorphosed for

And there is a bit of a joke on those who raise an outcry at _ the dance hall. Wagner’s “Evening Star” from Tannhduser has the increase in jazz music and orchestras. Some jazz players _ its jazz version. Yes, We Have No Bananas was, note for note,

may make the sounds of jungle beats. But the interesting parts of three other pieces, the Hallelujah chorus, I Dreamt phase of the whole situation in that while most of our popu- —- That I Dwelt in Marble Halls, to say nothing of that song of our lar jazz tunes are transcriptions from some classic melody, — youth, Aunt Dinah’s Quilting Party. Melodious trifles from Nevin, many of our modern master musicians, especially those who Delibes, Chaminade, Moszkowski, Grieg, Schumann, Puccini and

live and move and have their being in cultured Europe, are |= Brahms are revamped into super-syncopated jazz tunes and inaccepting these jazz tunes as typically American and are giv- _ terpreted for our tapping feet by trombone, saxophone, helicon ing them what these master musicians regard as classical tran- and drums.

scriptions. Home, Sweet Home, Massa’s in the Cold, Cold Ground and

So you see there is something to the parallel questions of | Carry Me Back to Old Virginny are jazzed in many a supper where did jazz come from and whether the egg orthe hencame __ show palace. Even Rubinstein’s Melody in F and the wedding first. Probably jazz did come from the jungle by very easy stages. | march from Lohengrin do duty as fox trots. But having come from the jungle via Beethoven, Handy, Ber- But, barring the shock this gives the musically expert, I see lin, and the boys from New Orleans, it is becoming refined by _ no harm, in it. Melody is the basis of all true music, and if the

those who sit in the seats of the musically mighty. jazz orchestras familiarize the great American public with Jazz teaches us to keep time to a tune. It also familiarizes us, | melody, much goes must come from it. in theater, dance hall, cabaret or restaurant, with the melodic

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2 1927 January 8 ¢ CSM JAZZ DRESSED-UP AND UNEASY by W. H. Haddon Squire “This is the silliest stuff that e’ er I heard,” remarked Hippolyta to What is known by the generic term “jazz”—jazzers themTheseus in A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, thus summing upina selves draw a sharp distinction between “ragtime,” “jazz,” and sentence the opinion of many earnest musicians and Ernest “symphonized syncopation”—was not a result of the cultured Newman about that which Shakespeare might well have called — musician “going native. It is the one genuine and spontaneous the nightly revels and new jollity of jazz. Some of its detractors, | manifestation of folk art in our period and who knows? our however, appear to find jazz anything but jolly. In fact, to them it | descendants may find it more significant than all the respectis, as the school-boys say, jolly dull. After comparing—uncon- _able or disreputable professional music of the last 10 years sciously, no doubt—George Gershwin’s “latest” with the Ninth put together. Jazz returns to primitive musical logic. It claims Symphony of Beethoven. Bach’s B-minor Mass, and the works _ that “the popular song is no longer written to be sung, but to of Brahms and Schumann, they forthwith hurriedly arm them- _ be played.” The new song-to-be-played rarely has a chorus. It

selves with pens and hunt the wild adjective. is “music which can hardly he whistled and never sung.” And Manchester, in the near neighborhood of the Halle Orches- |= one must admit that when words have been used in syncotra is, by the way, a much advertised hunting ground. The ad- _ pated songs the listener is not much wiser than his brother, the jectives there, it seems, are particularly wild. Itis recorded that aboriginal. George IV really believed that he was at the battle of Waterloo,

because he had so often said that he was. Perhaps some people As a Protest believe the alarming things they say about jazz, simply because

they say them with such enthusiasm. Like the old folk music, jazz is a protest against musician’s An ordinary Sunday concert at the Albert Hall, London, is | music. But although today many people doubt it, the comnot as a rule the most exhilarating of musical entertainments. poser also has ears. Music may be, as somebody has said, the The audience, scattered over those too ample Victorian ex- _ art which is always behind the times; the contemporary companses, sometimes gives the impression that it is there only poser, however, can scarcely escape the conditions and influbecause the cinemas do not open before 6 on Sundays. And, ences which have produced jazz in Stravinsky. For example, incidentally, the cinemas often provide better music than do — we hear both the old-folk lore of music and something that many of the “International Celebrities” who are applauded to _—relates him unmistakably to the jazz period, as the present the well-known echo of this hall. Mr. Jack Hylton and his band __ will no doubt be called. And just as composers like Vaughan drew to Kensington not only a wide-awake enthusiastic audi- _ Williams deliberately exploit the old, so the new will be turned ence, but many critics, who, it must be confessed, show even to account. less enthusiasm for music on Sunday afternoons than they do Eric Coates’ Syncopated Phantasy. “The Three Bears,” reon week-days. The program included two works by English minded us again that the orchestra of convention is a quite composers; a Syncopated Phantasy by Eric Coates, and a _ arbitrary collection of instruments. Frankly descriptive, this Dance Suite, made up of a Fox Trot, Waltz, Blues, and Charles- piece has humors and many patches of delightful color, but it

ton, by Leighton Lucas. is rather too longwinded—the three bears come perilously near Pattern and bright color are characteristics of all primitive art. to being three bores. The Dance Suite of Leighton Lucas was Some curious example of the primitive instinct for musical shape | a2 much more interesting experiment. This extremely talented and rhythm have been collected by the historian, Combarieu.In youth was himself a dancer and spent four years with the Ruscertain tribes the most highly esteemed songs are sung by people _sian Ballet.

who do not understand the words. The same thing happens, of When a year or so ago Jack Hylton offered to pay £1000 course, in more cultured circles, but, unlike many of our own (British money) a year to an English composer who could score singers, these tribal vocalists sacrifice, without hesitation, the lit- and arrange for his band, young men all over England indulged erary sense of a song to its musical form. Australian aborigines, | in golden dreams, but they had overlooked Lucas, who is now again, repeat or transpose the words so as to vary or preserve the the band’s arranger-in-chief. His Dance Suite is an original

rhythm: “Their songs thus become incomprehensible.” In | work and the four movements are based on modern dance Esquimaux songs the text often consists solely in arhythmical rhythms but treated symphonically. It has a connecting theme repetition of an interjection, devoid of sense. Thus, as Grosse which is handled with the greatest ingenuity. There is everysays, we are forced to the conclusion that, before everything else, thing from an imitation of a mouth organ to a free fugue. It is,

primitive logic offers us a musical signification. in fact, a gay and diverting musical adventure. 507

1927 FEBRUARY 2 © THE OUTLOOK When the sophisticated musician teaches rude and rustic _ bar lines, they lose their naively and charm. Is the same thing tunes musical etiquette, makes them wear the tight boots and _ going to happen to jazz? This Dance Suite is a milestone in the collar of unaccustomed harmony and to behave nicely between _ history of syncopation, but the milestone of musicianship may eventually be a millstone for jazz.

February 2 © The Outlook AMERICA’S FOLK MUSIC When Gershwin’s Concerto in F was first performed, The Out- —_unassimilated to America even when they consist of Amerilook welcomed it for its “freshness, vitality, and audacious origi- cans. . . The reason for all this is that the majority of those who nality.” Now The Outlook welcomes Mr. Buchanan’s apprecia- establish the musical standards of this country are not really in

tion of it, expressed elsewhere in this issue. sympathy with the average American’s musical inclinations. There is nothing new in the theme of Mr. Buchanan’s ar-_ _—‘ They are looking for American music in every direction except ticle. What is new and distinctive in itis the vigorand pungency — where there are Americans. They will search through the puebwith which it is developed. Before jazz was named, American _los of the Hopis, and never once think of Broadway. They will characteristics found musical expression. It has taken years, how- _ study the musical tastes of the Black Belt, and ignore altogether ever, for American composers of serious purpose to see inthose the musical tastes of the Loop district.

characteristics material for creations worthy of the name of art. The really distinctive folk music of America is not anonyIn 1913 The Outlook concluded an editorial on “Ragtime” —=§ mous... It is folk music nevertheless. . . Its most distinguishwith these words: “Whatever its origin and however much ithas _ing characteristic is what is called ragtime. . . Perhaps the edubeen vulgarized, ‘ragtime’ is as distinctive as the rhythmic char- cated musician has become too sophisticated to let this music acteristics of Spanish or Hungarian music, and is as capable of — of the American people flow through him. Perhaps the outstanduse in musical art as any other primitive musical material.” ing musical genius of America may be found in the musical In November, 1917, in another editorial, The Outlook said: |= Nazareth of Broadway.” Is Gershwin to fulfill this prophecy?

“Our American musical circles, as a matter of fact, are

February 2 ° The Outlook GERSHWIN AND MUSICAL SNOBBERY by Charles L. Buchanan A vote of thanks should be tendered Mr. Walter Damrosch and There is grave reason for assuming, however, that this work the Symphony Society for their courage in having recently given —_ will fail to obtain the high measure of praise and encourageus another chance to hear George Gershwin’s Piano Concerto. | ment it deserves. Mr. Gershwin, as most people know, is a highly This composition, written for the Symphony Society, and per- — successful writer of “popular” music. He is implicated in that formed for the first time by Mr. Damrosch last season, shows — monstrous thing, jazz. He has supplied tunes for those adroit an increasingly clear title to be ranked the one composition of and entertaining shows Lady, Be Good, Tip Toes, Oh, Kay. As a indubitable vitality, originality, and authentic progressiveness __ result, he is already “placed,” “labeled,” “tagged,” so to speak.

that this country has produced. In other words, the chances are that if Mr. Gershwin gave this Hearing this work the other day made me wish to abase my- _ country a superlatively fine piece of music (and, for my part, I self and retract the nonsense I wrote about it last season. Atthat think he has already done so in this Concerto), he would nevertime it had seemed to me self-conscious, tongue-tied, partially theless remain unfavorably associated in the average conscioussterile; although even at a first hearing the unprecedented, queer _ ness with the dubious activities of the White Light district. beauty of the second movement made itself felt unmistakably. I Itis for the purpose of directing attention to the absurd fallaam now inclined to assert that this work can hold its own with —_ ciousness of this very general attitude of mind that this article is the finest examples of this form of composition that we have. written. There is a comfortable and convenient notion, old as Given a fair trial (which is precisely what one fears it will not the hills, that, in the last analysis, intrinsic merit will obtain be given), its second and third movements will go miles ahead _ recognition. “Water finds its level” and “You can’t keep a good of such outstanding and popular works as the Tchaikovsky B- |= man down” are popular crystallizations of this easy-going phiflat Minor Concerto or the Rachmaninoff C Minor Concerto. — losophy. This erroneous assumption 1s a part of that superficial The persistent hammer and thud of the last movement, with its | and slovenly sort of optimism which is more often than not a fascinating thematic material, and the grotesque, devious beauty = smoke-screen thrown out to cloak inertia and indifference. Preof the second movement make for a point of view andakind of eminence is possibly eight times out of ten a question of cir-

sound for which there is no exact parallel. cumstance, precedent, propinquity. The work of art, for instance, 508

FEBRUARY 2 ¢ THE OUTLOOK 1927 is usually accepted in so far as it approximates astandard upon __ event in the history of music. When Gershwin is alleged to have

which consensus of respectable opinion has set its seal of ap- | done the same thing in his Piano Concerto, something is said proval. If it deviates from this standard, it is usually viewed about Tin Pan Alley, and the matter is dismissed as of negliwith suspicion. Professional critical opinion, even, does not _—_ gible importance. venture far from the rules of artistic deportment sanctioned by As a matter of fact, the Gershwin Concerto has no more to the “best people.” Your average critic knows that itis saferto go | do with jazz than the Grieg concerto has to do with Norwegian with the tide of conventional opinion than it is to take up the —_— folk music. It is not to be viewed condescendingly, as an inter-

cudgels for anything outside the beaten path of standpattism. esting experiment or a freak exhibition; it is an assured accomWe see this tendency already at work in the case of Gershwin. _ plishment; and, as Mr. Walter Damrosch pointed out in converLooking over the next morning’s reviews of his performance, _ sation with the present writer, it can hold its own with universal we note an evasiveness on the part of our critics. Mr. Lawrence competition. Emphasis should be laid upon this point. Let us Gilman took the curiously negative attitude of dismissing the — forget jazz and Tin Pan Alley (wherever precisely that is), and affair with a more or less perfunctory gesture, delicately and _ the fact that Mr. Gershwin wrote Oh, Kay, and judge this comtactfully witty, and then proceeded to a lengthy discussion ofa —_ position as we would judge a composition of Honegger’s or Sibelius tone poem which followed, and which appealedtohim —_ Stravinsky’s or some one else’s. It may then become clear that as disappointingly boring and negligible. Mr.Olin Downes went — Gershwin has given us one of the few gestures of vivid, entica little farther, and conceded that we may have “underestimated” — ing sound that music has had to offer since Stravinsky’s Sacre the work; but he, too, perpetrated the absurd inconsistency of | du Printemps. giving Gershwin one paragraph to the three paragraphs given Plain speaking of this sort may be looked upon as evidence the Sibelius tone poem. Mr. Henderson refused to commithim- __ of a critical instability on the part of the writer. But some one self, and Mr. Peyser shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. —_ has got to come out in the open, whole-heartedly and fearlessly, Many of the members of the orchestra were frankly antagonis- —_if music in this country is to be saved from the deadening influ-

tic to the composition, even to the point of reviling it. ences of class distinction, of conventionality, of academic snobWhy, one asks, must this perverse attitude of resistance to ___ bery and hair-splittings. It is a fallacy to believe that a genuine the new persist in human nature? For years we have been striv- =‘ musical beauty will survive on its merits alone. Grieg, one of the ing to encourage, develop, produce an American music. When — most penetratingly beautiful harmonists of all time, is seldom, if some one gives us a music which may or may notbe American __ ever, played by the professional musician. Grainger, one of the (whatever that is or ought to be), but whichis beyond the shadow __ most fervent, potential, natural musical talents we have to-day,

of a doubt a new, vital, propulsive kind of sound, musical snob- _is still tethered to his reputation as the composer of Country bery is up in arms against it, and the old deadly steam-roller of | Gardens or Irish Tune. Shall we allow this inequitable kind of classical routine goes over the achievement and extinguishes it. fate to impede Gershwin? In one breath our intelligentsia are deploring the fact that our Unfortunately, there is every reason to predict that Gershwin art is a mere sterile replica of European standards, and then __ will not receive sufficient encouragement to “carry on,” as we when we produce something that is individually spicy andracy say. We shall probably continue our fulsome habit of overlookand partially indigenous, the same intelligentsia throw up their —_ ing a genius in the hand while we are searching for problematic hands in holy horror because the affair does not approximate —_ geniuses in the bush. It is a way we have. Only a short time ago European standards. “This is all right in so far as it goes,’ they —__I read in one of our prominent magazines an article consisting sat; “but keep it in its proper environment. Segregate jazz; it | of elaborate surmises as to the inception and growth of some belongs to the cabaret; how dared it knock at the doors of the — problematic future American music; and a little later on Mr.

sacred temples of sound!” Henderson quoted the article with eulogistic comment. What

It is time someone had the courage to call emphatic attention the writer of the article was driving at is more than I know; for to the counterfeit quality of this attitude. It is not genuine. Itis | I could find nothing but a series of highly theoretical and philobogus. It is the attitude of artistic social climbers, not sure of | sophic speculations, without a single concrete and specific refthemselves. The blue-blood, to-the-manner-born musical aris- | erence or recommendation. I move that we let the future take tocrat should be able to enjoy jazz in its proper proportion ashe _ care of itself, and give our attention to the present. Then we enjoys the third act of Tristan in its proper proportion. Unfortu- | may come to appreciate the vivid aptness of a cinema score nately, most persons are incapable of independent reactions. such as that supplied for The Big Parade, for example, or the They cannot estimate a thing for whatever degree of particular twang of akind of raw, harsh beauty that we hear in Gershwin at intrinsic merit the thing may possess. They are dependent on _his topnotch. signposts and preconceived ideas. Their opinions are formed In conclusion, it is hardly necessary to point out that no one through a sort of social register, so to speak, of the artistic pro- _—in his sober senses suggests that the Gershwin Concerto should prieties. When Chabrier’s Espana is played at Carnegie Hall, it | be placed on a par with Bach or Brahms or Beethoven. The is “good” music. If the tunes upon which it is based were heard —_ claim is made, however, that if you were to hear Gershwin’s

at the Biltmore, they would be “popular” music. When Rhapsody in Blue or this Concerto with an absolutely unprejuStravinsky adroitly exploits anumber of ordinary Russiantunes __ diced pair of ears, you would concede that this music is rattling in his Patroushka, [sic] the affair is hailed as an outstanding — good fun, to begin with, and fascinating, at times exquisite music,

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1927 FEBRUARY 15 ¢ LIFE, LETTERS, AND THE ARTS to end with. It is not going too far to say that, evenincluding the — have touched the summit of his talent in his exquisite and enRachmaninoffian melody in the strings, there is nothing in all _—strancing, if somewhat sophisticated La Valse, Stravinsky has

music quite like the second movement of this Concerto. Not done nothing of significance since his memorable Sacre du beautiful in the classic or romantic sense, it yet possesses a pe- = Printemps, which work, incidentally, appears more and more culiarly hoarse, tart, stunted charm that touches at least the ex- to have been the outcome of a fortuitous experimentation rather clusive finger-tips of an alien loveliness. One may notsoonfor- __ than the inevitable expression of a consistently unfolding geget its far-off stuttering trumpet, and the spruce, jaunty piano _ nius. I cannot agree with those persons who look hopefully to-

passage that follows. wards Bloch; his /srael Symphony seemed to me to be merely Here is a piece of music generated, if you will, by jazz, but —_—in line with music’s tiresome modern tendency in the direction

valuable intrinsically as a thing in itself. Its virtues are three- of extreme and illegitimate inarticulateness. Music, I believe, is fold: it has charm, it is technically expert, and it has used jazz —s going to seed. Preoccupation with tonal and harmonic commerely as a spring-board from which to project itself into the —_ plexity has rendered it an alien and artificial thing. It must be mystical areas of a distinct individuality. It is not essentially | taken out of the sacrosanct confines and super refinements of American in the sense that Thanksgiving Day or Fourth of July —_ philosophic theory, of technical hair-splitting, and given an air-

are essentially American. It is not American in the sense thata _ ing. It is in need of revitalization. Never a believer in the nasong of Stephen Foster’s is American. It is music of the pave- —_ tional music idea to the fallacious extent to which some perment rather than of the soil. In so far as it at times affiliates with — sons carry it, I yet suggest the advisability of a blood transfuthe jazz spirit, it is the Negro exploited by the Jew. But itis,in —_ sion, so to speak, and recommend for this purpose a recognicompany with the collective popular music of our time, the one tion of the merits and importance of so-called popular music. unmistakably live impulse in contemporary music. And thereis In the case of Gershwin, I do not know whether he has the culgrave reason to believe that such an impulse, from whatever _tural inheritance, the artistic morale, to grow largely and finely. source it comes, is indispensable to the present well-being of | But by all means let us give him his chance. It is to be hoped music. Scan the entire musical horizon to-day, and no single __ that progressive musicians like Mr. Stokowski, Mr. Sakoloff, vital, dominating figure is in sight. Ravel, in France, appearsto §_ Mr. Reiner, and so on will interest themselves in this work.

February 15 ¢ Life, Letters, and the Arts

NEWMAN ON JAZZ | Mr. Ernest Newman, who last winter fluttered the dovecotes of The success of his last assault, however, determined our Britmusical New York as ‘Guest Critic’ on a local journal, again ish detractor to take up the cudgels again. So many letters poured swims into our ken with a fierce attack on Paul Whiteman that in from unknown American admirers, praising his anti-jazz must have strengthened still further that stout virtuoso’s hold _ stand, that he determined to carry the highbrow citadel of Mr. on people who think that jazz is the expression of the American | Osgood just as he had demolished the lowbrow pretensions of spirit. How much musical knowledge and taste Mr. Newman Mr. Whiteman. really possesses is an open subject. As an Englishman, appear- “Mr. Osgood,” announces Mr. Newman, “pleads in one place ances are against him; and the fact that he cut quite a swath in that these jazz perversions are on all fours with the variations Manhattan means little enough, for even Boston supports two ——_ written by the classical composers on each other’s themes—to musical critics superior to any in Gotham. One thing, however, | which I would reply that there is no analogy whatever. If the Mr. Newman can do, and that is write effective English. Having | jazzers would do for Chopin and the others what Brahms did, disposed of the vulgar Whiteman, he now turns his gunson Mr. _—‘ for example, for Haydn in the St. Anthony Variations, or for H. O. Osgood, assistant editor of the New York Musical Cou- _ Paganini in another set and Handel in another, we should be rier, and staunch champion of jazz. ‘The origins of jazz,’ re- ‘only too grateful to them. What we object to is not the charmmarks Mr. Newman, ‘seem to be lost in the mists of American ing conversation of one great composer with another, but the antiquity.’ The legend that most appeals to our English friend is | defacement of beautiful things by hopeless vulgarians.”

that of ‘a blind black musician—one’s thoughts run back to In demolishing our own Mr. Carroll’s version of Chopin Homer—in New Orleans, a newsboy who rejoiced inthe name = Fantaisie Impromptu, known to the American public as I’m AIof Stale Bread. He gathered round him five good men and true | ways Chasing Rainbows, Mr. Newman says, among other things, after his own heart, and the holy association was known locally —_—‘ that “Carroll has substituted for Chopin’s final phrase an in-

as Stale Bread’s Spasm Band.’ The first time Paul Whiteman — eptitude of his own that merely makes us realize the gulf it played jazz from printed music was in 1920—which, after all, has pleased Providence to place between one mind and another.”

does not give Mr. Newman much time to argue in. In order to safeguard one of our leading infant industries, we feel that we should say no more.

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MARCH 26 ¢ THE LITERARY DIGEST , 1927 March 26 ¢ The Literary Digest DEBUNKING JAZZ When the jazz composers were recently told “to keep their dirty “Roger Kahn, for example, who saddened a whole bright paws off their betters,” the jazzists of this land were ina high | Autumn day for me by saying that he had read my article ‘with state of indignation. The provocateur was Mr. Ernest Newman, __ great indignation,’ also ‘exprest himself,’ to an interviewer, ‘as the English music critic, who served for a season two years ago — opposed to the jazzing of classical music,’ I myself would not as guest critic of the New York Evening Post. His freedom of _ goas far as that. If any jazzist will write me a musical commenspeech in handling some of our musical darlings might have _ tary on something of Chopin’s or Grieg’s that is as witty as, say,

led us to expect what we got when he turned his attention to J. C. Squire’s parodies of Byron and Wordsworth, or Mr. jazz. Some of his critics over here asked him, “with an airofan § Sidgwick’s of W. B. Yeats’s Innisfree, or Brahms’s treatment at American dragon that had got St. George down and was biting —_ certain points of a theme by Paganini, no one will be more him hard in a tender spot,” why, if jazz is “adead thing fromthe _ pleased with his effort than I. All I object to is the practice of a

neck up”—which was his phrase—he should take so much very difficult and subtle art by thick-fingered bunglers. trouble trying to kill it? Mr. Newman now explains in the New “Paul Whiteman thought he had convicted me of inconsisYork Times that of the two aspects—the musical and the terpsi- tency when he said that ‘Strauss took other men’s themes and chorean—he was considering only the former. He goes onto —_ developed them characteristically’ Newman hails him. We bor-

tell us that, in England at least, “musical people have mostly — row themes and develop them in our style, and Mr. Newman ceased to take it seriously as music.” Here is adirect messageto objects.’ Quite so; the difference is simply that Strauss is Strauss

us: and ‘we’ are ‘we.’ ‘There is no protest’ said another jazz apolo“Whatever may be the case in America, ! beg to assure the _ gists, ‘when Dvorak puts a Negro melody into a symphony.’

American public that in England the thing, regarded as music, _— Precisely; for Dvorak is Dvorak. The Negro melody is bettered is dead. We all found it amusing for a little while at first; it was | by Dvofak’s treatment of it; but the cantabile melody of Chopin’s

like a new cocktail. But when the novelty of it had worn off, | Fantasie Impromptu is decidedly worsened by Harry Carroll’s musical people became sick and tired of it. 1 doubt whether a treatment of it in ’m Always chasing Rainbows. He has simply single musician of any standing could now be foundinmycoun- —s made the poor tune commit, so to speak, hari-kari on Chopin’s try to say a good word for it. As music the thing has simply __ doorstep. Let the jazzsmith, it he can, give a new turn to the smile become an infernal nuisance and an unmitigated bore. Itissolely | of Mona Lisa; but for heaven’s sake don’t let him set the lady’s its popularity for dancing purposes that keeps it in the public | charming mouth moving mechanically to the slow conquest of a eye and ear; it is still unequaled as a medium by which fair _ piece of chewing-gum.”

women may perspire in the arms of brave men. “Have the jazzsmiths,” asks this critic, “any composers in “My ‘case against jazz,’ then, is purely and simply amusical _ the full sense of the term, and will jazz ever evolve a composer case. It is as a musician that I object, for one thing, to the ordi- —_ of that kind?” He thinks, indeed, that the probability is very nary jazzing of the classics. Not that I would ever object toa remote that the jazz orchestra will have any influence on the clever musical parodist exercising his humor at the expense of — ordinary orchestra. For: any master. But to do this acceptably he has to be a master him- “The colors of the former are at once too pronounced and self; there is nothing more delicious than first-rate parody, but —_ too limited for that, I imagine. It is dangerous to prophesy, of it takes a first-rate mind to do it. The jazzsmiths, however, speak- —_ course, but I doubt whether the saxophone can ever be made to ing generally, are not clever enough to make their manipula- _ play more than a subordinate part in a concert orchestra; it is an tions of the classics tolerable. They are not artists in the sense | admirable medium for the saying of certain rather obvious things that the great literary parodists have been; they are merely hearty, in music, but a very tongue-tied instrument for saying most of

grinning chaw-bacons. the things that a genuine composer wants to say. It is admirable “Tt is one thing to have a good picture turned into athing of | in its own way, and the brilliant jazz scorers are to be

harmless fun by some one who is himself a quick-witted artist; _ complimented on finding out that way and exploiting it to the it is quite another thing to have it scrawled over by a moron. _ full, but is still not the way of the concert orchestra, and I doubt The average jazzsmith , in his would-be humorous treatment of _ whether its characteristic jazz scoring has much future outside. a classic, is merely a street urchin who thinks he has beensmart —jazz. when he has sidled up to a poster when no one was looking and “But will jazz work out its salvation on its own orchestra? added a mustache to the upper lip of the beautiful lady who _—_ Shall we find it, that is to say, developing an art of its own that figures in it. My gentle exhortation to the jazzers to keep their —_ will be able to bear comparison with what we generally mean dirty paws off their betters has been grievously misunderstood; — when we speak of ‘music’? I take leave to doubt this also for to get the true sense of it, it should be read with the accents on _ the following reasons:

‘dirty,’ ‘paws’ and ‘betters.’ “ “There is not, and never can be, a specifically jazz technique Neither does Mr. Newman hold the classics sacrosanct, and of music, apart from orchestration. We might as well suppose the agreement of some of his critics was not at all to his liking: — there can be such a thing as Modhammedan mathematics, or

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1927 APRIL ¢ THE SACKBUT Buddhist biology, or Peruvian psychology, as suppose that there but did we possess it we should find, I fancy, that the trouble can be, in the last resort, such a thing as jazz music as distinct with it was that the information did not really combine. So with

from ordinary music. Mr. Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. We say of one passage, “This

“There is only one way of writing music on the large scale: _is China,’ of another, “This is metaphysics,’ but hardly anywhere you must have ideas, and you must now know how todevelop _ do we find ourselves saying, “This is Chinese metaphysics.’ them logically. Now, in both these respects the jazz composer is “So long as Mr. Gershwin is exploiting the usual jazz tricks, seriously hampered. If he writes too obviously in what we call _ he gets hardly any further than the average of his fellow crimithe jazz style, he will not get very far, for the ideas and the __ nal; and when he launches out into ‘straight’ piano concerto devices are too stereotyped. If, on the other hand, he moves _—__ music, we begin to ask ourselves what all this has to do with very far away from these devices he will not be recognizable as — jazz. The work was, in fact, tho Mr. Gershwin may not have a jazz composer. Jazz is not a ‘form’ like, let us say, the waltz or | known it at the time, a commendable effort to shake himself the fugue; that leaves the composer’s imagination free within jazz-free. Mr., Gershwin is a gifted young man with an envithe form; it is a bundle of tricks—of syncopation, and so on. able facility in producing catchy, piquant, pungent tunes. But Tie a composer down to these standardized tricks and he can __—- when, musically speaking, he wanted to become a man and put not say much in them that has not been said already; let him = away childish things, all we got was a series of reminiscences depart from the tricks, and his music will no longer be jazz. Itis of the ‘straight’ music he had played on his piano and heard in an instrument on which little men can play a few pleasant little | the concert room—Liszt, Chopin, Debussy, César Franck, and tunes; but if a composer of any power were to try to play his _ others. It was a creditable first attempt to do something bigger

tunes on it, it would soon break in his hands.” than jazz, but it ceased to be jazz as soon as it tried to be big; I Of course, the big answer of the jazzists is George Gershwin, | would guarantee that if I placed the majority of the pages of and his “Symphony in Blue.” But this composition to Mr. __ this score before any musician, hiding from him the name of Newman is not jazz, but a mechanical mixture of jazz andthe — the composer and the title of the work, it would never occur to

right music: him that it was anything else but an attempt at a piano concerto “IT am confirmed in this opinion by the more ambitious ef- —_ of the ordinary kind. And I gather that Mr. Gershwin is now of forts that have been made in America to expand jazz. Deprive —s my opinion on the main point involved. Mr. Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue of its jazz orchestration, study “ As for jazz itself,’ he recently said to an interviewer, ‘cer-

it in the black and white of the piano score, and you will be __ tain types of it are in bad taste, but I do think it has certain surprised how little jazz there is in it. Mr. Gershwin, itseemsto elements that can be developed. I don’t know whether it will be me, in the attempt to sit on two stools at once has fallen be- —jazz when it is finished.’ tween them. His work is not a chemical combination of jazz “Precisely; that is what I have been contending all along. and ‘straight’ music but a mechanical mixture of the two. He The further jazz is ‘developed,’ and the more musical talent there reminds me of the gentleman in Pickwick Papers who, having __is inthe composer who ‘develops’ it, the less like jazz will it be.

to write an essay on Chinese metaphysics, read up first ‘China’ But I should not call such a process ‘development’; I should and then ‘metaphysics’ in the encyclopedia and ‘combined the __ call it the abandonment of all that makes jazz jazz.” information.’ That essay was never given to an expectant world

April ¢ The Sackbut THE AMERICAN INTOXICANT by Eric Blom (London) ) The excellent journal, Modern Music, published by The League —_ calm and collected. But there is one article that reels under the of Composers in New York, devotes its issue of January-Febru- intoxication of the pernicious drug which now holds America

ary, 1927, wholly to music in the U. S. A. I opened it fully in its thrall and shows how mankind, forcibly deprived of one prepared to make due allowance for a good deal of chauvinism __ vice, will speedily substitute another. It is wholly fantastic to in a series of articles written by Americans about their own see more than an accident in the curious fact that, as alcohol music, just as one expects to find a certain amount of log-roll-_ —_ was kicked out at America’s front door, so jazz whisked up the ing in a paper obviously dedicated to the interests of contempo- _ back stairs? At any rate, it was eagerly welcomed as a stimulant rary musicians, some of whom are themselves on the Executive _ likely to prove equivalent to the intoxicant of which the nation Board. It was the more refreshing to find, instead, much honest _ was officially cheated. It was a new allurement with a certain criticism, and no particular reluctance even among the mem- _—_ quality of dangerous headiness that made it for dry America

bers of the Board to execute anybody. what whisky 1s to wet Britain.

On the whole the tone of this American number is distin- Mr. Aaron Copland, in his article entitled ‘Jazz Structure and guished by sobriety, and even the stylistic fireworks of Mr. Pitts | Influence,’ is certainly anxious to impress it upon his readers Sanborn proceed from a mental attitude that is fundamentally that the true American regards jazz, which is undoubtedly one

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APRIL ¢ THE SACKBUT 1927 of the world’s minor vices, as his rightful heritage. Unfortu- In fairness to Mr. Copland, it must be said that he only incinately he is so badly under the evil spell of the narcotic thathe — dentally falls into this dogma of his that it is the patriotic duty believes with a touching readiness in the reality of the vaporous of American creative musicians to embrace jazz. What he redreams it produces. It is in the nature of drugs to dispel any _ally attempted in his article was an analysis of the structure of doubts in their victims, however weird and extravagant their jazz, presumably intended to prove its superlative originality, delusions may be. Thus Mr. Copland sees only that jazz is an _and it is the belief in this originality which he thus induces in American product, but not that it is an insidious and deceptive himself that makes him ‘fall for’ jazz as the would-be expresproduct. He glories in the intoxication the spectacle of which __ sion of the U.S.A.’s national genius. Quite naturally, before inmakes nothing like the same pleasant impression on the __ vesting one’s country with a new and exclusive property, one undeluded spectator who has not tasted of the draught with the must first make sure of its value. Mr. Copland does this as only

same immoderation. a willing victim of self-delusion could. he adopts an ingenious

Just as for the devotee to or the manufacturer of whisky— —_and ingenuous method of writing out a few extracts from poputhey are not necessarily identical—this liquor has the signifi- lar and up-to-date jazz pieces, of which he deliberately alters cance of a British national asset, whereas to the normal Briton the notation in such a way as to show rhythmic complexities it may mean variously a pleasant occasional drink, a palliative | which seem to him staggering in their novelty. If it be asked to a cold in the head, or a provocation to a bilious attack, so why in the name of commonsense composers who are capable, certain American composers in search of a national banner for —_ and who ought to be mightily proud, of such ultra-refinements which they might lay down their lives, fixed their hopes onthe should be at pains to disguise them, Mr. Copland has his anfirst musical Rag that was bright enough and waved agitatedly — swer pat. On the authority of Mr. Don Knowlton he states that enough in the wind of publicity to make them fancy that they ‘this deceptive notation reveals the practice followed by popusaw stars and felt stripes, while the wiser composers just went —_lar music publishers of writing extremely complex jazz compoon in their own way and accepted jazz as an agreeable pleas- _ sitions very simply so as to sell them more easily to the musiantry. Let us see if we cannot wake the former from their de- _ cally uneducated.’ This, then, Mr. Copland would have us belirium and make them see what it really is that they defend with _ lieve, is the aim of the American nation’s musical heritage; to such misguided valour as the true standard representing them _ present its polyrhythmic masterpieces to the uneducated in sim-

in the sight of the nations. plified editions. In that case, the sooner the U.S.A. stop spendFirst of all, where does the racially American quality of jazz ing another cent on the most extensive system of musical educome in? The question cannot be answered better than by aquota- —_ cation in modern times, the better. The popular publisher will tion from another and very judicious article in the same number of __ see to it that the people understand the treasures of the national Modern Music. The author, Miss Henrietta Straus, sees the fun of — school without any of the magnificent training on which Ameri-

what she call the comedy of jazz exactly as responsible musicians can musical institutions, if the Knowlton-Copland theory be in Europe—and surely in America too—see it. ‘Only the Ameri- _ correct, now waste their money. can Negro, excluded from our education and economic scheme Anyone who refuses the theory in question must, I am afraid, during those years of expansion’ (i.e. the period preceding the as- — gain the impression that it is not the publishers who simplify tonishing outburst of musical activity in America) ‘daredtomake _ the hair-raising complexities of jazz, but Mr. Copland who, in music an integral part of his daily life. Unashamedly he expressed his innocent delusion, complicates it by his capricious notahis sorrows in the Spirituals and Blues, and his joys in syncopa- _ tion. Unfortunately for him, it is quite easy to make the mild tion. And equally unashamedly—because of European approval— —_ jazz occasionally found in the classics look at least as ‘subtle’ we have taken from him.’ Very well: there is no reason why any- _as anything he has to show. thing that contains even the germs only of a new asset to an art “Ah,’ I fancy I can hear Mr. Copland retort, ‘it is true that the should not be adopted by it. Nobody denies that the Negro contri- —_ classics now and then hit upon polyrhythmic ideas, but they are bution to music—to American music if you will—is such an asset. at the most flashes in the pan, passing conceits with no settled But for any representative of a nation like the U.S.A. to accepta conviction behind them,’ Precisely. To invent a passage that is few rudimentary principles from arace it makes nosecretofdeem- interesting in a certain way, and then to pass on to so many ing vastly inferior, and to set them down for the rest of the world as others which are arresting in a multitude of different ways, is a national heritage, this simply will not do. Either the Negroisthe one of the abilities that distinguish a great composer from a rightful heir to America, and his music the national Americanmu- — mediocrity. The jazzer, once he has got hold of an intriguing sic, or else the Anglo-Saxon race (to use aterm thatismoreconve- device, pounds away at it until another occurs to him, which is nient and current than accurate) settled in the U.S.A. is the true __ rarely in the course of the same piece. Even when there is a American people, in which case it must make its own music asit good deal of diversity of pattern, as is the case with jazz music has made its own constitution. No critic who keeps his eyes open __ of the better sort, it is only by a deliberately loose phraseology would deny that many American composers have begun todothis — that one may speak of rhythmic diversity. The variety which in all seriousness; it is precisely because this is an indisputable fact jazz does at times achieve is metrical, not rhythmic, for the rigid that Mr. Copland’s desire to bring them under the subjection of _ pulsation of this music studiedly destroys the free breathing of Negroid influences strikes one as so odd. Would he have them a __ the musical phrase, which is what is properly understood by the

breed of musical mulattoes? term ‘rhythm.’ Jazz is the least, not the most rhythmic music

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1927 MAY ¢ THE ETUDE yet invented; it is merely the most strictly metrical, or better, | overworked.’ Jazz, being superior, consists of Negroid musical

metronomical. elements, similarly rediscovered and overworked.

As for the polyrhythm of jazz, this amounts to scarcely more But the supreme joke is yet to come. Mr. Copland becomes than an innocent fiction. Mr. Copland himself shows, by quot- —_ more and more entranced by the fascination that obsesses him, ing from the well-known song, Stumbling, from Confrey’s Kit- _—_ and in his dream of the glorious American future he sees in its ten on the Keys, and from Gershwin’s Fascinating Rhythm, that _ national adoption, gives it completely and finally away quite

the melody, in whatever time it may move, is placed over a _ openly and quite unawares. Gershwin in his latest dancing hit, foursquare bass. This is by no stretch of the imagination | Clap Yo’ hands, we are told, ‘varies a 4-4 rhythm with two meapolyrhythm, but at best bi-rhythm—which differs from similar sures of 3-4 rhythm’ instead of using ‘the 3-4 against 4-4 classical examples only by the fact that, once discovered, itis | polyrhythm which in the brisk competition of Broadway has hugged with a maddening persistence and that the bassisamere now become old stuff.’ Once more, we note the headlong ad-

marking of the beat. vance. Not content with letting us tumble to it of our own acNow let us watch how, according to Mr. Copland, even the — cord, Mr. Copland enlarges on it with this crowning naiveté: ‘old bondage (the unchanging bass)’ is being broken. It is the ‘Critically, from the standpoint of all music this may be counted Charleston which has effected this magnificent enfranchisement. a step backwards, a return to processes already familiar—in the We are told that the Charleston consists of the upper fox-trot | Russian folk-song for example; but from the standpoint of jazz rhythm; 1-2-3: 1-2-3-4-5, and lo, and behold! this is now ‘used _ it means an advance through the relief it offers from the old below as well as above instead of the formerly unflagging 1-2- _ relentless 4-4 bass,’ So this is where jazz now stands in its furi3-4 bass.’ The advance, then, consists in the timid knuckling _ ous progress: it is so destitute of new sensations already that under of the bass to the melody and the abolishing of the bi- | even what in music at large would mean a retrograde moverhythm in favour of a parallel motion of all the parts. This so- —_—s ment is still an advance for the jazz composer. I imagine that, if called forward is analogous to that from ragtime to jazz, which —_a few self-respecting American composers of serious music still is thus described by Mr. Copland: “Ragtime is much inferiorto believe in jazz as a useful accession to their national music, it jazz, and musically uninteresting; it consists of old formulas __ will not be long now before they find out that they have been familiar in the classics which were rediscovered one day and _ strangely bedazzled by a fascinating but valueless intoxicant.

May ° The Etude MORE “HOT AND DIRTY” BREAKS Some time ago we good-naturedly reprinted an advertisement notes, and so on indefinitely. Incidentally, it shows in an un_ from one of the theatrical trade papers, in which some of the — usual manner how a great deal of piquancy and stimulating jargon of the modern jazz music was introduced. We confessed — rhythm, almost to the point of tremens agitans and outright that we did not know the meaning of such words as “hot,” — epilepsy, has been added to modern dance music under the “dirt,” “gliss,” “blue,” “break,” “weird,” and soon, as applied broad caption of “jazz.” to music; and we know that in none of the musical dictionar- Who has been able to resist the exciting, irritating, intoxicaties of the world could these words be found. They are the __ ing, nerve-flaying influence of modern jazz? In fact, the music patois of the newly rich in the apparently highly lucrative field = has been made to act like a million whips upon human emo-

of dance music. tions. If it does not lash our nervous systems into new thrills, it

With the beginning of the jazz era, people with uncontrol- —_ does not succeed as jazz. Just how is this done? Mr. Daley tells lable tootsies have created a demand for dance rhythms the like us that it is done by virtue of “breaks.” The “break” comes at of which the world has never hitherto known. There was the _—_ any place in a “chorus” (usually a half cadence or whole cademoralizing epoch of the waltz, the polka and the saucy French — dence) of a popular song, where the performer may improvise can-can, which seem like kindergarten processions compared — upon the chord employed in harmonizing the measure where with the modern dance and all that goes withit.Some are blam- __ the “break” 1s introduced. In a thirty-two measure piece, the ing the dance on the intoxicating rhythm of jazz. We shall not “break” would come in the seventh and eighth, in the fifteenth attempt to adjudicate this question. However, it will be interest- | and sixteenth, in the twenty-third and twenty-fourth, and in the ing to readers of The Etude to know the angle of the jazz _ thirty-first and thirty-second measures. it might be introduced musician’s mind, as he views his own music. Arecent worken- __ in other places as the nature of the chorus permitted. The author titled, “Sure System of Improvising for All Lead Instruments, of this book provides several hundred rhythmical forms which Especially Adapted to the Saxophone, Clarinet, Violin, Trumpet __ the player of the particular instrument can introduce, employand Trombone,” by Samuel T. Daley, published at $3.00isamost ing the notes of the chord needed where the “break” comes. illuminating book. It should be of immense value to anyone _‘ This is known as “hot” playing. whose chief concern in life is how to make “hot breaks,” play If he introduces certain kinds of chromatically altered notes, “dirt” choruses, create ‘’ weird” blasts, “chromatic runs,” “blue” —_ instead of playing the straight notes of the chord, itself, this is

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MAY/JUNE ¢ MODERN MUSIC 1927 called “blues.” Under other conditions, these notes are known _ they will realize that out of this enormous amount of experias “gliss” notes. “Gliss” evidently indicates a note sliding one = mentation (the author says he has provided four thousand

half tone up into the principal note. “breaks” in the book, which are only a limited number when “Dirt Playing” is the result of embroidering a rhythmical _ the possibilities are considered) there has come a certain kind pattern around the harmony of each measure throughout the —_— of spontancity, akin only to the old Italian “improvisatore,” those

entire composition. This “dirt” (sometimes known as “sock”) _ itinerant Mediterranean minstrels who would improvise both pattern bears little resemblance to the original theme, except = words and music for any event from a funeral to a wedding, or for the fact that it employs the same harmony in each measure. from a christening to a coronation, for a few pieces of copper. There are “chromatic” runs and “weird” notes, in which the After reading this book, we understand the origin of some of harmonies are varied. In fact, the author goes so far as to say “a __the terrible and destructive cacophony that sometimes comes very weird break is the whole tone scale.” At the beginning, he — from a jazz band. On the other hand, it explains how some of admits that his system differs from the strict rules of harmony, __ the very interesting effects are achieved through an accidental but explains he is dealing with improvising and not harmony, —_ improvisation upon the part of ingenious wind instrument playalthough harmony plays a great part. Many of our teachers of __ ers, after the manner of the improvisations of gypsy performers harmony will read the book with surprise, but at the same time — in Hungarian bands.

May/June ¢ Modern Music COPLAND’S JAZZ CONCERTO IN BOSTON by Edward Burlingame Hill Assuredly Mr. Koussevitzky manifested courage and the sin- —_ wards radicalism. But this is not meant as an assertion that he cerity of his convictions when he introduced Copland’s Piano _has confined his analysis to the music of today. His technical Concerto to the conservative audiences of the BostonSymphony skill bespeaks a far wider scope of research. He has been interconcerts early this year. His courage is the result of an admi- —_ ested in Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Honegger, Hindemith and othrable perception that contemporary music, even of aradical type, — ers, just as the youth of earlier generations were attracted by has a right to figure on programs of an avowedly educational Debussy, Strauss, Brahms, and if we go far enough back, Wagner. institution. Despite the preference of his public for pieces of | Aaron Copland is no phenomenal exception, no pitiable aberestablished or even waning repute, Mr. Koussevitzky has con- _ ration; he is psychologically normal and his music contains the tinued to present new music which, in his opinion, was worthy average percentage of derivation. But the sources of these der1to be made known. In Aaron Copland’s case, the performances __ vations are largely unknown to the reactionaries. in 1924 of his Symphony for Organ and Orchestra and in the Even a brief study of the Concerto discloses a sense of forfollowing season of his Music for the Theatre justified the ac- —_—_ mal balance, fertility of resource and economy in development.

ceptance of a new work. The dignified introduction is constructed with a free but logical

The Concerto delighted Mr. Copland’s younger listeners. polyphony. Succeeding episodes for piano and for orchestra Those of an older generation were aghast at its audacities and, grow naturally out of preceding material. The main Allegro, disregarding the right of the conductor to exercise a free hand __ with its subsidiary themes, is handled with firmness and flexin the selection of programs, would gladly have taken steps to __ ibility. A longish cadenza for piano leads back to a re-statement secure immunity from such music in the future. Even profes- _ of the opening mood and a vigorous close. From the standpoint sional musicians, too often vaguely aware of the actual drift of of construction, there is no denying the thoroughness and the present-day musical thought, seemed to consider this work a _— poise of Copland’s workmanship. unique example of musical depravity which should be sup- To many the stumbling block lies in its uncompromising dispressed, if necessary, by the District Attorney. In musical circles sonant idiom. Most of these aspersions arise from a sweeping the Concerto as a topic of conversation became taboo; the mere ignorance of Copland’s models. Had the conservatives assimimention of it dulled sociability and even threatened to alienate —_lated the latter, much light would thereby have been shed on the friends. Yet when this redoubtable piece was performed in New —s young composer’s fell purposes. In his zeal to assert a kinship York, Mr. Lawrence Gilman, whose perspicacity, sense of pro- _— with the radical style, Mr. Copland may have overdone matters. portion and sympathy with innovative tendencies should be a —_‘ The dissonance habit demands increased doses as do narcotics.

source of pride to America, reviewed the work withacalmand But the listener is not always in the same predicament. In suc-

just appraisal of its merits. ceeding works Copland may discover that restraint is more conA knowledge of Copland’s previous works enables one to _ vincing than over-emphasis; that even in music the “unspoken diagnose his musical derivation. The pupil of an extremely dis- | word” is the more eloquent. On the other hand it is equally tinguished teacher, Mlle. Nadia Boulanger, he seems to have _ possible that without abating one whit of his harmonic acidity, found his normal musical diet in the works of contemporary | Copland may convert us to his viewpoint, that his individuality composers who have suffered no constitutional inhibition to- _ need not trifle with compromise to attain its expressive end.

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1927 — JUNE © THE ETUDE A notable feature of this Concerto and one which empha- _and scintillant symphonic style. In this respect he has far transizes its originality consists in the truly alchemic manner in __ scended all previous similar essays known to the writer. As a which Copland has transmuted the dross of jazz into a fantastic © whole, Copland’s Concerto, despite any possible reservations, re-affirms his talent and marks an advance over his earlier works.

June ¢ The Etude WHAT EFFECT HAS JAZZ UPON PRESENT DAY MUSIC AND COMPOSERS? by Walter Spry

To put the above question to a teacher of classical music may World Music seem beside the mark; and still such a person should be a keen observer, for he has under his charge the young people who are = When we hear an inspired work we recognize it the world over, the musicians of future generations. Jazz is a result of exuber- 4nd I feel sure that as a nation we have reason to believe that we

ant spirits expressed in the popular musical idiom of the day. are doing our share in the output of musical composition toThe present-day American idiom has been greatly influenced day. It took the older countries centuries of development to proby Negro folk music, and there are three elements that charac- duce their masters and we can afford to be patient with the strivterize this music: it is melodious, its rhythm is strongly synco- _ 1Ng young composers of our generation.

pated, and its harmony very primitive. And what I say of composers applies to students. We cannot keep them from going to the movies and hearing the often insipid effusions of the jazz organist and orchestra. It will not

Deadly Monotony hurt them if, coupled with this, they pursue the study of stanThe first element above named is not against jazz when the | dard music with a serious teacher. tune has beauty, as it often has; but the syncopated rhythm which On a certain occasion, I was at lunch at the Cliff Dweller’s persists so continuously becomes tiresome to those of us who — Club and sat at the same table with Superintendent of Schools look for variety in a work of art. The same may be said of the | McAndrews. ... Mr. McAndrews stated that he believed that harmonic structure of present-day jazz music, for it is for the one who studied violin, for example, with a reputable teacher, most part the result of amateur musicians without learning. should have credit for this work in the high school. And he This seems like a condemnation, but it is not so altogether, added, “It will be of practical value to a musical talent to have for being a product of the soil, jazz, like the early folk songs, this study and much more so than if he were forced to study

must be simple and comprehensible to the people. Latin or Algebra.” My point in mentioning this is to emphasize the fact that if more people were of Supt. McAndrews’ views,

A Higher Music serious musical educators would accomplish much more with

their students. We must have the support of the schools and But music has a higher mission than simply to make people _ parents also. Then we could promise in time a musically intellihilarious. Take, for example the immortal nine symphonies of __ gent nation who will know how to discriminate between good Beethoven which will be given by the Chicago Symphony Or- and poor music. Otherwise they remain as ignorant in music. chestra this season in memory of the master’s centennial. We | Otherwise they remain as ignorant in music as was the old colfind all the feelings of man expressed—joy, sorrow, hope, ten- ored mammy of present-day theology, when she told the world derness, strength coupled with scholarship of the master musi- _her idea of heaven: “When I gits dem dazzlin’ gospel shoes an’

cian. shakes y haid beneath dat crown o’stars, I’s a goin’ to raise dis I do not expect the large majority of jazz writersto compose __ voice lak fine peals o’ thunger an’ showers o’ rain. yaas lawd! music comparable with the great masters of classical music, | An’ won’tall be dere to see me, but de world will hear me sing.” and still I feel that there is arising now in our country a younger But we need not fear, for we already have quite a group of school of composers which has been influenced by this very |§ young composers who, first of all, are scholars, and, added to exuberance i have spoken of as found in jazz music. We even __ their learning, they are not ashamed to put in their music a little have one colored composer who has written some lovely music __ real fun of the American flavor. that is very typical of his race, and it complies with the canons of the art.

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JULY ¢ THE CHESTERIAN 1927 July ¢ The Chesterian JAZZING UP THE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA by Tadeusz Jarecki The time has come to reinstate that colorful array of robust sounds Musical puritans might object that the trumpet is a noble banished one by one, from the symphonic orchestras as awk- _ instrument destined for fanfares and imposing utterances, but ward, uncouth, rustic and barbarian. For the lasttwo centuriesthe that is untenable, for an instrument is good for any effect that it strings have held supremacy, jealously permitting butafew stray | can successfully create. The modern way of playing depends members of each woodwind and brass family to survive the disre- | on strongly developed face and mouth muscles rather than the pute into which their timbres have fallen. But fortunately the high- — old fashioned pressure of lips upon the mouthpiece—not to brow devotion to pseudo-dignity and solemnity of color in or- — mention the blown cheeks—and by these means will cornet and chestration seems to have passed together with crinolines, trumpet players increase the high range of their instruments and corseted nymphs and anemic virgins. To-day musicians are not _—‘create new colour nuances. Besides this, there are many new satisfied with the mere samples of woodwind material provided, § ways of muting, such as putting the hand in the bell, covering but tend toward a more extensive usage of the virile specimens of __ the bell from outside (with a hat) or placing it on the knee. But

oboe, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet and trombone. the most original innovation is a distinctly comic assortment of In America, side by side with the mighty symphonic organi- __ throat and tongue tricks which almost equal the scope of exzations representing and cultivating the European tradition, the —_ pression in the human voice. There is the sound of gurgling, of instrumental music of the people has grown up freely and abun- _—ihoarseness and so on. dantly in the villages and towns, in the army, the schools, jazz Similarly developed is the technique of the jazz band trompalaces and ballrooms. A tower of Babel, the American mass __ bone player. His lips in combination with his right hand can with its different languages and cross temperaments has been, __ produce a palpitating vibrato and even quite fast smooth runs by its very nature, unable to create one homogeneous folk-lore —_as well as portamenti, growls and wails and the glissandi charand folk-song. But its vital energy has found an outlet andcre- _acteristic of his instrument. There is no reason why a trombonated a new movement in an individual interpretation of that —_ist should not play scales with agility just as a good pianist can compiled, commercial and made-to-order music known as jazz. achieve light and rapid octaves. In both cases the accomplishIt is amazing that the majority who speak of jazz do not see that = ment depends upon the wrist. And as for carrying the melody, the vitality of American popular music does not lie in the con- __ there is real magnificence in a melodic line reinforced by the coctions themselves of the Broadway speculators—for the most trombone in unison with the euphonium and tenor saxophone part Germans, Hungarians and Russian and Polish Jews, but in band marches. But a symphony orchestra trombone rarely reveals itself in that peculiar skill in the rendering, which Ameri- __has a fast line, let alone runs which are quite taboo. can, African, European and Semitic have developed in combi- The brass group in the orchestra should be augmented in nation; it is manifest in the “ivory ticklers,” saxophone cooers, —_ proportion to its technical capacity and importance. Rimskytrombone howlers, and their triumphant translation into music —__ Korsakoff tried to create a self-sufficient group of trumpets by of the shuffling feet and glib tongues of the eccentric entertain- | adding the bass trumpet. To-day, considering the size of our ers. This technique of the popular orchestra has assumed al- _ concert halls it would be well to use one or two Eb or D trumready the proportion of a tradition, even though it has scarcely _ pets, two in C and two cornets in Bb because of their facility and

yet found its musical notation. brilliance and their soft tone, and one bass trumpet (an octave Concomitant with this curious and unexpected development, —_ lower). Of the trombone family, one alto, two tenors, one bass

are the red face and blown checks of the trumpet player, the = and one contra bass will be a formidable group complete in Laokoon grimace of the trombonist, the starched and pompous __itself, especially if we add to it a slide trumpet and one contranotes shaping angular, zigzag lines so foreign to the character _ bass tubas in C. Used in their full technical capacity the above of the modern phrase, phenomena that may be observed in al- |= mentioned groups present an unexploited and colorful material most any symphony orchestra of to-day. Ina band of which the —_ surpassing any other instrumental family in range of expreswriter was for some time the leader and teacher were two school __ sion, dynamics and purity of sound.

boys who never in their lives attended a symphony concert. One There is no doubt that the American jazz player has made a of them, a trumpet player, was able to reach not only high C, —_ decided contribution to the instrumental technique of to-day. either forte or pianissimo with perfectly relaxed facial expres- | Although there is not much to be gained in introducing saxosion, but to go a few tones still higher without apparent effortor | phones into the symphony orchestra, the technique of the saxoshrillness of sound. Another boy, a cornet player, had a won- _ phone player will not be without an influence upon the clarinet derful vibrato, a legato and soft tone reminding one of the high _ family, that will finally extend to other reeds. In fact those inregister of Casals’ cello. They were by no means exceptions, for struments cry for a certain spirit of irreverence that would recornet players are to be heard in almost any jazz orchestra, ac- _ sult in the limbering up or “jazzing up” of their flexibility. The companying singers with that soft vibrato, violin mellowness oboe is rather unwieldy and even elephantine when it comes to

and facile technique. rapid passages, with shakes and runs quite out of the question.

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1927 JULY ¢ THE CHESTERIAN In slow movements some of the reeds become rather inexpres- —_ enlarge the present range by two octaves, thus carrying up that sive and monotonous which might not be true if the player pos- — watery ‘natur-ton” to the region of the flute.

sessed an ability such as the violin virtuoso who has to sing The strings of the full orchestra offer a problem because of and warble on a string. There is no theoretical reason for accept- the number of players necessary to contribute a solid volume. ing the idea that a gut string should be a more expressive me- _ Even at best their pizzicato is easily overwhelmed by the forte dium than a piece of wood. The difference lies in the technique of other instruments, and the results of the most vigorous sawof the player and in his conception. Of course the matter of ing are simply annihilated by the fortissimo of the brasses. Many impossible shakes reverts to the more automatic action of in- examples of this can be found in the literature of the past. For serting the extra keys to facilitate such passages, athing thatis —_ instance in the overture Vitava by Smetana, the splendid figuradone with present-day clarinets and oboes. But the question of __ tive work of the quartet simply cannot be heard because of the plastic tone, glissando effects, poignant expression is stillto be | brasses. Nor can one lay the blame altogether upon the deaf solved and accomplished by the future generation of musicians. composer who in his inner musical consciousness sensed an It is obviously up to the brasses and reeds to give us new _ideal string tone free from dynamic limitations. By increasing surprises and developments. One cannot expect so much from __ the number of instruments, the “static” that comes from bowthe string family, developed up to the peak of its possibilities | ing would also be augmented, so it seems that the only solution through the efforts of the most brilliant virtuosi and greatest of | practicable, which would dispose of the idea of crowding more musicians. Nor can one expect them from the flute, for like the players on the concert stage, would be to apply to the strings violin, the flute has long been one of the most capable instru- | some new device of doubling their resonance. This is not so ments. But the neglected reeds and lately perfected brasses _ fantastic as it at first might seem, when we consider the imshould continue to command attention until they attain their | proved loud speaker mechanism, the radio and phonograph

finished forms. microphones of to-day. Such a drastic reform would allow us to The woodwind section of to-day’s orchestra presents anun- _ limit this section to 12, 10, 8, 6, and 4 instruments, making congenial conglomeration of colours, tone volumes and shift- —_ possible at the same time the re-organization of other groups on

ing dynamics which often defy the composer’s co-ordination a greater scale than that now existing. Otherwise, taking the instinct. It is not only for the sake of expansion, but for the best orchestras for example, the equilibrium of sound is not purpose of obtaining greater balance that brilliant orchestrators satisfactory unless the strings number 24, 20, 16, 12, and 10, like Szymanowski, Strawinsky and Prokofieff have introduced _ but there is no justifiable reason for so great a number of double extra woodwind, giving at the same time more independence to _ basses in the modern orchestra in case each group possesses its each individual family of timbres. The modern scores contain —_ own basses. The grouping employed by the writer is not only in usually from five- to eight-part writing, so in order to feature _ relation to the sonority of different strings but is arranged with

each woodwind colour as those of the strings and brasses are _ the intention of allowing the composer to subdivide into perfeatured, the modern orchestra would have to augment its flute manent ‘divisi” groups which now are used only occasionally. family to say two piccolos, two flutes in C and two alto-flutes Thus the scribe would divide the 24, 20 ,16, 12 and 8 into two in G. To complete this family without infringing upon other —_ groups, copying for each group 6-6, 5-5, 3-3, and 2-2, counting timbres, there should be still a new instrument—a bass-flute —_ one part for each two players. Instead of writing then for quinwhich would sound in C or G an octave lower. The oboe group _ tet, the composer would have the normal facility of writing for could include by twos or threes besides the known species of _ ten, or by sub-division even twenty voices. oboe, the oboe d’amour, English horns, the hardly known bari- The most anachronic element of the modern orchestra is the tone oboe (an octave lower) and the contrabass oboe (two oc- _ percussion. Here the jazz bands have a great advantage in cantaves lower) which would emancipate this group from thecom- __ didly using anything that might give an illusion of life. But the promise now existing with the bassoons. Employing the mutes _ classic orchestra has dealt with theory and as a result has been then, one receives still other shades of colouring which, con- —_ burdened with instruments of doubtful value from the standsidering the number of these instruments used, can be quite —_ point of both music and imagination. The kettle drums, aspir-

expressive. ing to a fixed pitch, in reality have a strange talent for blurring

The clarinet has been more fortunate than the oboe, as al- —_ and depreciating any musical timbre. There is something tinny most all species of this family are already in use. The Eb,Bband and extremely vulgar in those rumblings masquerading as muA, the bass-clarinet and the contra bass give anenormouscom- __ sic but having neither the strength nor the individuality of a real pass of sound and the weak medium notes of the Bb andAclari- _— bass drum or of a snare drum. The kettle drums are at their best net have rich synonyms in the small clarinet’s low notes andthe — when following a rhythmical or a melodic design, although the

bass clarinet’s high tones. latter is scarcely possible, being against the nature of the instru-

As for the bassoon, more appropriately called by the Ger- —_—s ment. Astriking use of them occurs in the scherzo of Beethoven’s mans Fagott, the question is the same as with the flute family. | Ninth where a sequence of exclamatory octaves is imitated by This agile group needs to be extended in the high register,asdo solo drums. But their occasional entrances provide very poor the flutes in the low, by the addition of one ortwo smallermem- _— “thunder” which as a matter of fact bars greater resemblance to bers. The most satisfactory plan would be to have two entirely the throaty noises of a scared sheep because of their peculiar new types of fagott, one alto, another soprano, which would _tessitura. They would be more interesting instruments if they

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AUGUST 11 * MUSICAL COURIER 1927 had a permanent chromatic range of one octave, but thatis too _ bring out the enchanted archaic mysteries of the harp. Here is an

much to expect, and even then, the results would be of little | instrument which besides its colour has a deep rhythmical sigmore importance than the claquebois. The rankly thunderous __ nificance. As in the dance orchestra, the banjos with piano stir utterances of the bass drum do not caricature, but support the — the emotions by means of their incessant accents, so in the relative colors in the orchestra. Some composers are already _ great orchestra, the quick successions of plucked sounds in arusing a bass drum of large dimensions that lies horizontally and —_ peggio or glissando, evoke the very pulse itself of music. Even is treated exactly like a kettle drum, being struck with two sponge __ one harp could be of vastly increased effect in the modern orheads or drum sticks. It would be better to supplement this with — chestra if assisted by more subtle, significant and appropriate a second bass drum struck upright with one sponge mallet only —_ instruments of percussion, for stronger even is the power and and exempt from rolls. The same differentiation should be ob- _ persistence of rhythm than that of dynamics. There are loud served with regard to the clashing and striking of the cymbals. _ noises that amuse or irritate, but there are whispers that chill the These two effects are distinctly different and should beexecuted human heart. Our percussion should be carefully studied in reby two performers, allowing a simultaneous use of both. The _lation to its psychological effect upon human nature and with horizontal cymbal should be Chinese, capable of the long sus- _ regard to the associations different noises have for us. Although tained vibration especially expressive in pianissimo, and sensi- —_a horse may maintain perfect composure before the crack of a tive to any means of execution, sponge heads, drum sticks or — whip, a part and parcel of a horse trader’s guile for generations the metal stick of the triangle. A perfect example of the trillon —_ is the fact that the animal will fall into frenzy at the sound of a a horizontal cymbal is found in Prokofieff’s Scythian Suite. Derby hat played upon the head in imitation of the hollow noise The Chinese have specialized in noise and one realizes what _ of galloping hoofs far away. hybrid and trivial instruments of percussion we have when lis- From all the musicians of the past and present there was one tening to a small Chinese drum with its soft, mysterious reso- —_ genius who not only understood the psychology of sound, but nance rising to a forte like the howling of a pack of dogs, and —_— who refused to accept the limitations imposed upon the orchesagain to a pair of cymbals which when struck produce an actual tra by material considerations and who imagined gigantic sound crescendo of vibration. The only Chinese instrument the or- | combinations involving hundreds of players and hug choral bodchestra possesses—the gong (tam-tam) argues well for the con- ies. geniality of this sort of percussion to our music and its adapt- It is the spirit of Berlioz that is needed to-day to bring about

ability to our needs. the revitalization of that antiquated instrument, the symphony

What we want, in short, is more vibrant percussion, arefine- orchestra of today, and to make it expressive of life and of hument of noise which would be as interesting as our new color _=manity as jazz is expressive of the American vivacity and ca-

combinations in tone. price. The percussion that has a musical foundation will help to

August 11 ¢ Musical Courier A MEDICO ON JAZZ The other day a conversation took place in a New York social _at one time, in one epoch or decade, may fail entirely to satisfy club upon the subject of jazz. The conversationalists were not —_at another time. The gradual decline of the minuet, the lancers, musicians. They were mostly professional men of one sort or __ the quadrille, the waltz, and other such obsolete or almost obanother—architects, lawyers, doctors—and all of them college — solete dances was due, in the opinion of this physician, not to men. They got on the subject in the course of idle time-passing, — what one ordinarily calls change of taste, but to a purely pathoand soon took it seriously and discussed it from all its angles, —_ logical nervous condition—a general state of nervous fatigue.

mental, moral and physical The idea seems to be that, at times, people have danced lust-

What was said was not worth much until, finally, a medical _ ily for the delight that healthy animals take in rhythmical physiman was induced, evidently against his will, to offersome sug- _cal exercise. Such people are in a state of nervous tranquillity— gestions. He said he offered the suggestions unwillingly and __ their nerve are at rest. They are no more excited than children at hesitatingly because he knew nothing about music and was not _ play. From this sort of peasant dance to the romantic waltz or fully able to see the connection between the thing that is called the stately minuet one must trace the gradual development of jazz music and our so-called jazz age. However, he was aspe- — mentality and manners; and for the decline of the waltz and Cialist, a neuropath, and he had formulated some ideas in re- _— other quiet dance forms and the rise of the two-step and foxgard to the present popularity of jazz that, though not, so-to- _ trot to jazz, one must seek motives in gradually exhausted nerve

say, official, are, nevertheless, valuable. centers.

His thought seemed to be, primarily, that humanity seeks its The waltz today fails to satisfy. Why? Simply because the pleasures according to its nervous condition. As the nervous __ nerves of the present generation are in such a state that they are condition changes the pleasures change. Pleasures that satisfy | soon bored by slow motion, just as they are bored by silence. A

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1927 SEPTEMBER 10 ¢ CSM healthy, normal animal, whether human or not, is not bored by —__ where that is unusual, and it gets on the motorists nerves. Yes, tranquillity, rest, silence. Aman in a normal state can sit all day says the doctor, but not if the motorist’s nerves are in good shape. fishing or drifting along with a small breeze. When his nervous —‘ The reason the poorly acting motor gets on the motorist’s nerves health begins to fail he takes to tobacco, to fast motors, toexcit- is because he is depending upon the rhythmic beat for stimulaing sports; and for those who cannot indulge in such things jazz —__ tion. When the beat fails in its perfect regularity it is as if the

furnishes the substitute. motorist were deprived of his dope. Thus also with the jazz

Jazz is rhythmic in the sense that a motor is rhythmic. It is | lover. The more jaded the nerves are the more rapid and rhythall very well to talk about cross rhythms and syncopations in —_ mic the beat must be to soothe them. jazz, but these only serve to accentuate the absolute, unchang- This doctor failed to take the matter seriously or to become ing regularity of the beat, maintained by the banjo in most jazz excited about it. He evidently had no intention of trying to reorchestras. Jazz devotees resent any irregularity of beat. They | form the world, and was interested in the matter purely as a want no retards. If there is expression it must be purely dy- _ scientific problem. “But what will be the end?” he was asked. namic or the result of varieties of orchestracolor. Therhythmic “End?” he replied. “Why, the world will go on worrying along beat must be fixed, unchangeable, mechanical, andthe jazzlover _as it always has. The weak ones will die off and the strong ones will be just as annoyed by any deviation as amotorist willbe by _ take their place. Then music will get back or go forward to other any irregularity in the beat of his motor. We have all seen absent forms. What sort of forms? Who can tell? Who could have preminded motorists. A cylinder is missing, there is aclick some- —_ dicted jazz? Who can predict what will follow?

September 10 ° CSM MUSICAL HOPE FOR MUSICAL COMEDY By Eric Blom The species of stage entertainment to which music is constrained —_ with all other musical comedy composers, is to achieve variety

to lend her name for an adjective shows too often not the least of tone-color whenever the whole orchestra plays at once. A compunction in treating her literally as a negligible adjunct with = master of orchestration can achieve incredible variety in his tutti which any liberty might be taken. The musical comedy scoreis alone by anumber of devices of distribution and spacing. Elgar, as a rule composed without love, rehearsed without respect, | who in his symphonies and elsewhere keeps the whole orchesand performed without care, while every other element of the tra going for long stretches on end without making the hearer production receives the most lavish share of attention, though —_ conscious of the fact, might well be taken as a model. not necessarily of discrimination. In short, for the discerning It is true that the traditional constitution of the musical comlistener musical comedy is, more often than not Music’s trag- | edy band has something to do with this deep-rooted fault, and

edy. here is much scope for reform. The use of the single trombone

Since the retirement of Drs. Franz Lehar and Leo Fall, the —_—is especially pernicious, for trombones are truly effective and only hope seems to be America. Several specimens have infact impressive only when playing in harmony; nor is the use of the come over from the United States to London recently which _ horn desirable except in pairs, for it is not an instrument to sufhave at any rate shown a distinct improvement. The latest, Peggy- _ fer celibacy gladly. To increase the trombones to three is by no Ann, when it appeared at Daly’s Theater, presented a distinctly | means necessary; the better plan would be to eliminate them promising aspect, and others, such as The Desert Song and The _ altogether. The average musical comedy orchestra is too large Vagabond King, also showed signs of advance in one way or _and far too noisy. What is enough for Mozart’s Figaro, the great-

another. est comic opera, should be enough for feather-weight opera,

In Peggy-Ann Mr. Richard Rodgers is exceptionally careful though the harp might be added for the sake of color-variety over his orchestration, which is always refined, often original, | and the second flute, oboe and clarinet players might be given and sometimes striking. he therefore effects at once areform piccolo, English horn and bass clarinet as alternative instruwhere it is most needed. Of late years musical comedy com- _ ments, while cornets might be retained in the place of trumpets posers, if we except the Viennese operetta school, had always —_ on account of the greater scarcity of adequate players on the been notoriously bad at scoring, and in fact often had notlearned _latter. to score at all, considering the instrumentation a matter of so

little consequence as to leave it in the hands of some techni- Influence of Jazz cally efficient but artistically unscrupulous hack musician.

But here we come to another point. The composer must learn

Lack of Variety how to write for cornets with some regard for their true charac-

ter, as he must in fact learn to write for all the instruments of his Mr. Rodgers changes a great deal for the better in this respect. _ orchestra. In musical comedy most of them are made to cling to

The one thing that he seems incapable of doing, in common __ certain conventional styles of playing and never given anything

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SEPTEMBER * AMERICAN MERCURY 1927 else to do. The oboe is always tearful, the bassoon always face- I have insisted on orchestration because it seems to me the tious, the clarinet always sentimental, and the familiar trick of | means whereby the public can first be accustomed to attune its making the cornet play the melody in octave unison with the _ sensibilities to a more delicate art of musical comedy. The curitrombone produces one of the most objectionable noises that _ ous fact is, of course, that the audiences of the one stage enter-

can possibly be obtained from an orchestra. tainment specifically styled “musical” is not a musical audiWhenever a change for the better has been observed recently ence at all, but has yet to learn how to list to any finer shades in the matter of musical comedy orchestration, it has nearly underlying a superficially striking melodic top-layer. A more always been in productions of the kind coming from the United _ translucent manner of scoring will facilitate appreciation of what

States. There is no doubt that the experiments of the jazz band _is going on below the actual tune which, too often at present, have induced American composers, even when they use the _ assaults the ear with the directness of a bludgeon and stuns it “straight” orchestra, to give their attention to possibilities of | into inattention to every other feature of the music. new color. Not so, perhaps, to variety achieved by different per- Such harmonic felicities as Mr. Jerome Kern, for instance, mutations of choral combinations and densities of tone, forthe | occasionally borrows from the more highly organized modern jazz band so far has not come within the outskirts of what it music, it is safe to say, escape all but at the most half a dozen might achieve in the way of effects dependent on the musical |= members of any audience. But half a dozen every night come to texture rather than on the instruments. The rhythmically fasci- | a goodly number at the end of a few months’ run, and a number nating. No, No, Nanette, for instance, which was scored in the — whichconstitutes the kind of public which it is ultimately worth jazz style, grew monotonous in color after a few numbers, and _ the musical comedy composer’s while to work for, it is for him the “voluptuous cater-wauling,” as Mr. Aldous Huxley so hap- _to increase it by refining his small but potentially admirable art pily calls it, of the saxophone, became exasperating inthe course —_ in the way there are now a few hopeful signs of its being done

of the evening. in America.

September ¢ American Mercury AARON COPLAND AND HIS JAZZ by Isaac Goldberg We speak of jazz as if it were a product of the Negroalone. True —_ pated free counterpoint, they have become musical desperaenough, its primary associations, like its rhythms, are black, does. But jazz is really born as well as made. Most of it, whether deriving ultimately from the African Southland, butinthe course naturally born or created by the obstetrics of the laboratory, is of its filtration from the South to a small but noisy point called |= downright bad. When it is good—and with comfortable freManhattan Island it has undergone something decidedly more — quency it manages to be good—it is so because it expresses, than a sea change. It reaches from the Black South to the Black —_—_ successfully, an attitude toward living. The college professor

North, but in between it has been touched by the commercial |= who would refine jazz, and the conservatory composer who wand of the Jew. What we call loosely by the name is thus no — would make it speak in grammatical accents, write music with longer jet black; musical miscegenation set in from the begin- —_a false bottom. They never say “ain’t” and they always answer ning, and today it would be a wise son if it knew its own father. “It’s I.” Thus they are victims of the great fallacy in jazz—that Perhaps there is something more to this racial blend than the _it is, from its very nature, a vehicle for jest only. With jazz as instinct of commercialization; it may be that the ready musical __ they apprehend it, it is as with marriage on the Nordic stage: amalgamation of the American Negro and the American Jew _ thou shalt not treat it seriously. goes back to something Oriental in the blood of both. The Nor- Yet this is precisely the problem with jazz. Its rough-house dic audience of these States has always been content to take its piquancy, its musical cockneyism, its exotic accent, have lost musical passions at second-hand, and in diluted measure; much __ their superficial appeal. They have been heard a-plenty on the of its thinly disguised, bovine love-making is manufactured for _ street-corner and in the dance-hall; what we want to know now it, words and music, in Tin Pan Alley. Without Irving Berlin, | is whether jazz has a voice for the formal concert, which is Jerome Kern and George Gershwin, to mention butafew whose —_ another way of saying whether it can reach under the skin and Negro ancestry is certainly questionable, the technique of con- — above the feet. To think so is still to “insult” a respectable portemporary love among hoi polloi would be sadly lacking inlight —_ tion of our symphony audiences. The greatest of these “insults”

and shade. has naturally been offered by the young man who seems to hold A goodly part, then, of what we know as jazzis Jewish.When ___ out the greatest hopes for a jazz that shall be music as well.

staid university professors flirt with the hussy they produce only Aaron Copland is well on the sunny side of thirty and has, a highbrow hybrid; it is no more jazz than root-beer is whisky. for several years, enjoyed a reputation on both sides of the AtConservatory composers, nurtured in the hothouse of academi- _lantic. A Brooklynite by birth, a New Yorker by residence, he cism, condescend to the fashion of the hour and imagine that grew up in the very midst of our musical capital during the by flatting a third here and there, and introducing alittle synco- —_—s period when our popular song was tearing through its race from

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1927 SEPTEMBER ¢ AMERICAN MERCURY rag-time to jazz. This was his folk music and his cradle song. He _ be resolved.

does not come to it from the background of a millennial culture; The important compositions of Copland, thus far, are his therefore, not even unconsciously does he condescend to it. He | Symphony for organ and orchestra; his Music for the Theatre weaves it into his writing as naturally asoneemploystherhythms _—__(an orchestral suite); his Concerto for piano and orchestra; and and accents of one’s childhood. And just as naturally does he use — an unpublished ballet, Grohg, consisting of three dances. As a the contemporary blend of tonalities and rhythms. This is notto favorite composer of Serge Koussevitzky, he has figured promisay that he proceeds without the consciousness of experimenta- _nently on the programmes of the Boston Symphony Orchestra; tion, or that he has willfully severed the lines that link him to _his star, in the ascendant with Music for the Theatre, was—for a tradition. he is a transition composer as certainly asis Mr.Gershwin — few critics and many of the public—considerably dimmed with in his more serious attempts, and shows all the faults that imper- —_ the Piano Concerto. In New York a critic who wrote in his favor fect assimilation produces. He gropes; he finds evident difficulty | was accused of bribery; Boston, for weeks after the Concerto, in welding his material; he is, like so many of his young fellows, | echoed with remonstrance and rage at what was repeatedly redaunted by the structural problems that are inherent in his me- _ ferred to as an insult to its public. Yet the Concerto is a brave,

dium. But he has an individual voice and outlook. original score, in which particular effects are subordinated to He has, too, a sound conception of jazz as polyrhythm, or an ambitious general design. It has the abandon, but also the what we might call counterpoint of rhythms. He hasexpounded _ supplication, of its Negro and Jewish origins; its first section his views on this subject both as a theorist and as a composer. almost grasps at mobility, even as its second scrapes against About polyrhythm itself there is surely nothing new; Copland __ vulgarity. It is no thug in evening dress, however. In this comhas shown its contemporary application, however, more clearly _— position, as in Roger Sessions’s Symphony, the music that has than any other commentator on jazz rhythmics. The contrast of | grown out of jazz—and, incidentally, outgrown it—achieves a double and triple rhythms, as well as their combination in the _ status as a means of genuinely artistic expression. same instrumental line, fascinates him quite as much as the con- Copland’s Music for the Theatre is a music of nervous tics, current employment of different keys. This peculiar rhythmic of harsh plangency, of adolescent unrest. Of his ballet dances dissonance liberates a new vitality in the music as surely as _ the first and the third (“Dance of the Adolescent” and “Dance does the use of contrasted tonalities. But if Copland empha- _ of the Street- Walker”) are something more than interesting exsizes the polyrhythmic nature of jazz, his chief contribution to —_— periments in polyrhythm and polytonality. They are, to the

it has actually been a deepening of its emotional range. trained, unprejudiced ear, essentially a simple music. The ConThis does not mean, necessarilty, a harping on unrelieved __ certo, on the other hand, is a highly complicated work. After sobriety. Copland’s symphonic jazz has humor and vigor, sting __ the press riots that greeted it in Boston and New York, I was and splash. It loses itself and finds itself. But it is more than _ privileged to examine the orchestral score. It is a precise, careshiny surface, and across section reveals dark grains inthe wood. —_ ful document. Happening to discuss symphonic Jazz with a leadAt first blush, jazz for the organ is musical as well as technical —_ ing Italian composer,—a man of considerable experience as a blasphemy, yet Copland’s symphony for organ and orchestra —_ conductor in Europe and the United States,—I showed it to him.

| has more than one moment of grandeur. He is not here ham- “This follow is no amateur,” was his comment, “He knows what pered by a sense of incongruity, and he does not, like some, he wants to say and how to say it. Most jazz composers are parody because he can neither paraphrase nor create inthenew _ illiterate.” idiom. Copland is a serious youth; his jazz, even at its liveliest, If jazz is to find its place in the more permanent repertory, is as earnest as a spiritual. And there we have the proper phrase; —_ the way seems to lie appreciably along the path over which he has introduced into jazz a spiritual content. His frenzied per- © Copland’s experiments have taken him. It was appropriate that cussion, his long melodic reaches, his orchestral blatancy, are —_ he should have been chosen, together with Henry F. Gilbert, to not mere clamor. A young man is speaking, not in an adopted —__ represent the United States at the International Musical Festival

tongue, but in the only language he knows. this year. Gilbert, long before the Gershwin- Whiteman regime, Jazz, always voluminous in breath, is congenitally short- | was using Indian and Negro themes in the production of a nawinded; Hence the failure, thus far, of musicians like Copland __ tive music; Copland, ignoring totally the commercial and the and Roger Sessions to solve the problems of form that are raised § more consciously nativistic aspects of the new style, made of it by their material. Genuine expression they have achieved, but a personal idiom and at once gave new dimensions to the mode. not a convincing coherency. The fact that they have achieved —§_ He may still be regarded as an aim rather than an accomplishthis expression in the deeper, slower movements of their work = ment, but he clearly has direction and momentum. Among the seems to promise that the formal difficulty, too, willeventually | youngest of our composers, he is also among the most original.

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SEPTEMBER * THE CHESTERIAN 1927 September ¢ The Chesterian THE INFLUENCE OF JAZZ by Poldowski Paradox is reason in action, constantly moving, now advancing, The jazz kings have wandered far from the Negro, and, in now retreating, guarding its position nevertheless, by subtle | doing so, what do they offer us? Bureaucratic rhythm. Despite tactics. Without it, arguments are of no account. Itis the advan- _ the variety they may seek to introduce in that rhythm, it merely

tage of so called paradoxical natures, to be aware at any rate, | serves to demonstrate its “unvariableness,” its monotonous that they have not said the last word—the last word in argu- —_ egoism. You cannot divorce it from itself. In vain does the jazz ments is often the first word in stagnation. SoIdonotclaimthat king seek development and expansion; he falls a victim to the my point of view on the influence of jazz is irrefutable. first European influence handy, and submits to it gladly in the So many writers on musical subjects have put forward atheory hope that what he has borrowed and adapted in rhythm, can be as to the influence of jazz on orchestration, composition, andon —_ added unrecognized and presented as a whole, a type, an influ-

the new music, that it is worth consideration from every angle. ence, a personality. But it is not so. The development of music, oddly enough, is dependent on Let us now consider whether the influence will be in orchesthe freedom from artificial local rhythm. Nations which have __ tral effects and colour. Certainly by a series of tricks it is postheir characteristic national rhythms, have contributed less to _sible in the orchestra to imitate an entire farm yard, human laughthe literature of music than any others. It is therefore necessary ter, almost any sound, but does anyone seriously believe that to draw a line of demarcation between the value of rhythmic | European composers, who through the sheer domination of mind sense, which subordinates rhythm, and uses it as ameans, and _— over matter, have or could have produced these effects through the rhythmic sense of those whom rhythm subordinates. The — musical genius if they wished,—as compared to mechanical first are undoubtedly the masters of the situation; the second —_ contrivance and trick—are going to subordinate this gift of “efare at a distinct disadvantage, for they are hampered in their _ fect” through will, to the effects offered in the jazz orchestras, utterances by what might be termed “a trick of speech” com- —_ ready made? Never, in this world. If we consider the descripmon to all who know their country. They are inevery instance, tive music that exists for a solo-instrument, and that, a forced into the position of being adaptors and translators, but —_ piano, which the modern French school has given to the world, never creators. In the circumstances therefore, they contribute | wecan afford to smile at the bare thought of it, Jeu d’eau, Poismuch that is picturesque, effective, and attractive, but rarely | son d’or, Jardins sous la pluie.

anything constructive Compare these masters of colour rhythm, design and effect, The picturesque is undoubtedly the easiest part of creation, | compare the aesthetic sense developed to the highest degree, with the most difficult to rid oneself of, and the most sterile. The French, the obvious “stunt-hunter;” compare their freedom and variety of German, and British have no national rhythms, consequently their — rhythm, with the encircling local rhythm. How can jazz open up

development is unfettered and their creations are largely influ- | new horizons? How can the cinema influence the painter or the enced by literature, painting, architecture, andevenindustry.Now _ sculptor with its lighting effects, rapidity of change or illusions of when we use the word “influence” we must likewise be certain __ reality? No painter wishes to be a conjurer, or a photographer, no that we mean “to use influence” and not to let ourselves be influ- _—s sculptor a “Madame Tussaud.” No composer wishes really to imienced. In the former instance we are again masters of the situa- _ tate human laughter or the cackling of geese, he wishes to suggest, tion, in the latter, the slaves of a situation. I look upon jazz asthe not copy. Wagner, in developing his orchestra did so, not by trick, reaction, and indeed a nervous reaction of the “Negro spirituals.”’ but by his own technique. Stravinsky is no “stunt-monger” but a The latter is an equally artificial form of lament, a borrowed ex- —_ genius, who has discovered how to get better effects from an inpression, or musical “patois.” In themselves, “spirituals” are of- _ strument with one string than a jazz orchestra can.

ten very beautiful, very moving, but a “patois” is of necessity “Effects” are so numerous, and so easily obtained in these limited. It is not a language—and it is not capable of develop- _—_ days, that there is not the slightest reason to imagine that they

ment, but merely of adaptation and translation. open new horizons to anyone but those who are otherwise inefIf we can imagine what the Americans call “an urge” (self fectual in production. To admit the influence of jazz on music, expression)—the urge therefore of the Negro to express him- _is to admit the influence of cocktails on vineyards, or the cinself, and being obliged to do so, in a borrowed language in — ema on painting! A composite American device is not a new alien conditions—we get a better idea of the Negro spirituals. creation, or any sort of creation, it is a stimulant, and a very Imagine that “urge” hemmed in by soda fountains, overhead — good and healthy one, if kept in its own sphere. It has mercirailways, snatches of European melody as thick as particles of fully put a stop to a tendency to consider the folk song as a dust, accumulative in their effect, imbibed daily with the con- revival and basis of music of the present day. It has shown us tents of the soda fountain, and chocolate “Sundaes,” and you __ the error and weakness of considering national characteristics

get you hybrid reaction—the jazz. in any other light than as a deterrent in music: they do not develop, but become a hopeless medley.

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1927 OCTOBER ¢ THE METRONOME The only thing that saves the human race is that its tendency __ tional sense is singularly lacking in nationalists, likewise the is undoubtedly to develop its own character through events _ international understanding in internationalists, and brotherhood beyond its control, and not through local bureaucracy. The na- _in families, but, this is all the better, as without this, there would be no paradox, and without paradox, no reason in action.

October 22 « CSM THE STANDARDIZATION OF JAZZ by Adolf Weissmann In Germany music is always accompanied by literature. It is, It is very amusing to hear about the commercial side of jazz. therefore, not surprising to see that jazz has found its literary | The author leads us into the part of New York called Tin Pan interpreters, though, of course, the character of Negro musicis Alley, where thousands of workers contribute to the manufaccontrary to anything like literature. From the fact, however, that —_ turing of jazz, which he compares with that of shoes or similar books on jazz exist already, it may be gathered thatithas become __ things. For melody, of course, is the meanest element in jazz. It an element of higher music. Perhaps those who write books on _ forms a kind of raw material that is submitted to special treat-

jazz are mistaken in this respect, for the belief in the future of | ment by practical musicians who, of course, have to forget all jazz, so far as serious music is concerned, has become doubtful, —_‘ that is reminiscent of inspiration and so on.

for most of the composers of our time have returned to a new Though jazz manufacture as a branch of commercial life

kind of romanticism. cannot be denied, Bernhard is convinced that jazz is destined to

However it may be, the moment has come to treat jazzfrom _ play its part in great music. He believes that the jazz orchestra, the aesthetic point of view. This, of course, should be done not —_~which he describes in a very interesting manner, may give new by a dull and dry scholar, but by a musical writer closely con- —_— impulses to symphonic music. On this point he seems to me nected with everyday life, for it is that which breathes in jazz. _—srather extravagant. For though the influence of jazz on the in-

Among the many essays and articles on jazz I find a book by strumental side of our music cannot be contested, and is proved Paul Bernhard under the title Jazz, that is equal to its task. The — by certain works of Stravinsky and others, yet it is certain that author of this book has not only acquired a practical knowledge _ this has nothing to do with the essence of music itself. It must of jazz and of all the elements constituting it, but goes back to _ be said, on the contrary, that jazz renounces that part of the the source of this phenomenon, which was destined to arouse —- music, which has always been considered the most important,

so great an interest in post-war Europe. 1.e., melody. For this it shows a real disdain. It may be very Bernard, who writes in an excellent and stimulating style, flattering for modern music that jazz cannot help employing tells his readers how in 1915 a Negro, Jasbo Brown, entertained |§ contemporary composers, but this adds nothing to its value. Jazz the guests of a cafe in Chicago by his primitive songs, seasoned —= remains dance music. It is even on the point of losing its exuby jokes, and how these beginnings gave rise to many imita- _ berant character by the cultivation it had to undergo in wandertions and, after some time, to amovement more influential than —_— ing through the world. It has become almost a sport. any other in our time.

October ¢ The Metronome SOME ENGLISH OBSERVATIONS UPON A FIRST HEARING OF A JAZZ BAND CONCERT by Francesco Berger

Not many weeks ago I had my first experience of a jazz band, A Strange Experience

while taking afternoon tea in a well known West End tea room. I ,

. . ;there It wasinone of the strongest and strangest had ;not of the band, so that whenexperiences stri-listened ; . .;I have ; orgone undergone inquest an extended life, during which Iits have to

,amuch that was good,surprise to more that was bad, and to. most that was and was complete to me. ge , ; es , indifferent. It produced an impression that was not quite pleasIn describing its effect (not much modified by subsequent ,; ; dent noise burst upon my unprepared ears, it fell on virgin soil,

, . ant, Ibut not entirely unpleasant, a sort of comical of hearings) need scarcely affirm that I am not an agent, paid tomixture ; bars, ae and «boom” er ; ; this both. Not being a frequenter of American drinking of having entertainment. is already far toodrink, popular , ; only guess - ; ;class never tasted aItNeither real American I can to needaoe advertising at my hands. have I any desire to ,concocted , ; , what a copious draught of one of their cunningly exclaim against it, onwould the ground of like its being or unmu- hot ,,, ; eae iced drinks taste on acoarse, swelteringly sical or inartistic.

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day. But I

OCTOBER « THE METRONOME 1927 imagine that it would produce on the palate sensations akin to _—gant coloring, or in noisy exuberance. When, on other occathose produced on the ear by a jazz band. Pleasurable though __ sions, I have had cherished ideals shattered by novel experistaggering, making it difficult to recover one’s breath, defying —_ ences, it was the music or the performer that thrilled and overanalysis, repellent at the outset, but magnetically fascinating. powered. But this jazz business is quite foreign to anything else, quite unique. The piano and violin music is full of prominent

The “Go” and “Spirit” of the Band accents and plaintive syncopations, the banjos, give to it a pen-

etrating buzzing accompaniment, and the eruptions from the This jazz band played remarkably well, with exaggerated col- _— “utility man” are so unexpected, that the ensemble becomes a oring, it must be owned, but with tremendous spirit and “go,” —s medley of recognizable and unrecognizable rhythm, a blend of accompanied by a perfectly incongruous row, produced froma —_uncongenial elements, bewildering, exasperating, and yet apnumber of noise-emitting articles which cannot be called musi- _pealing. Your sensations are being “brushed by machinery.” Your cal instruments. Its members comprised a very clever pianist,a familiar codes and laws are defied and upset. Your terra firma clever violinist, two excellent banjoists, a concertina player,a is withdrawn. You are adrift on an unexplored ocean. The ancornet player, and a “utility man” who performed onasidedrum, __ chor of your traditions, by which you held so reliantly, has failed a big drum, cymbals, triangle, a tinkling hand-bell,adeep-toned = you. Whether you will ever reach sunlit meadows and shady large one, dinner gong, arattle, arailway whistle,amotorhooter, groves, whether you will ever again safely tread the highroads

and a few more deafening things. which your forefathers trod before you, is a question which They play a tune which may or may not be transatlantic, but — only Time, the inscrutable, can solve. is always of a popular type, and they play it two or three times

over, varying it occasionally by ingenious fioriture on piano or A Question of High Art

violin. And a remarkable feature of their performance is the abrupt transition from noisiest fortissimo to softest pianissimo, Having occasion to speak of a jazz band to an American friend, or vice versa, with very little, if any, intermediate crescendo or __I thought I was flattering his nationality when I described it as diminuendo. During the soft parts the “utility man” is silent, “an admirable performance of profaned Art.” He promptly reand you begin to hope he has gone home; but, with the first _ plied: “I do not claim for it that it is what has hitherto passed for recurrence of a tutti he is back again, and, like a giantrefreshed § high Art. But you must admit that it has one quality in which by rest, resumes his labors with redoubled energy. He appears = much old-world music is sadly wanting, and that is ‘character.’ to have little respect for rhythm, but strikes, hits, blows, bumps, _It is thoroughly representative of Americanism; as free from rings, and bangs whenever “he darn chooses.” Yet, whatever —_conventionality and from ‘schools’ as my country is free from his vagaries may have been during a piece, however much he _ancient history and slavery. Better stuff would probably be tamer. may appear to have “set up business on his own,” he is never _It is out of material such as this, brimful of spontaneous nabehind-hand nor before at the finish. And I noticed that the tea- tional manner, that your refined methods and artificial mannerdrinking audience applauded all the more when the Finale was __ isms have been evolved. If you take from it what is so obvithe maddest of all mad orgies or row. They would not feel they —_ ously its own, including its crudity, you rob it of its distinctive had been sufficiently “jazzed” if a piece ended without ahurri- — quality; it becomes ordinary, often-told, undesirable.” And he

cane and a thunderbolt. was not far wrong. The unanimity of accord which, in spite of ear-splitting noise,

this band is able to maintain, is one of the marvels of it all. Not Drawbacks of the Legitimate

one of the players loses his head, not one of them is careless of his part, each is as conscientious a performer as though playing a — The pianist in this particular jazz band is so accomplished an Concerto in Queen’s Hall. And when, after the final crash of a _—_artist that I remarked to him: “But you are far too good a musipiece, you look round for the debris, and are preparing to count —_—cian to be doing this sort of thing. How is it you are here?”

the dead and wounded on the ground, you find the players men- “IT suppose,” he replied, “you mean that I ought to be doing tally, if not physically, as cool as cucumbers, tuning their instru- ‘the legitimate.’ Well, I tried that when I first married. I played ments for their next encounter or exchanging with one another __ in public, I accompanied singers, and I gave a lesson when I critical remarks on Puccini or Debussy. I fancy, by their smiles, | found a pupil who would come and take it. And I earned thirty that they occasionally indulge in delicate stories from club land. —_ schillings a week. Then I took to this. When my afternoon’s work is finished at six o’clock, I have a similar engagement

Excellence of the Ensemble somewhere else from nine to eleven. And I earn twenty pounds a week. [have a wife and two children to support. Do you blame I am not certain whether this particular band is better than, or © me? When I shall have saved enough to afford myself the luxury, inferior to, others now before the public, but Ican scarcely imag- —_I shall go back to ‘the legitimate’ and to—starvation.”

ine one that could excel it in precision or ensemble, in extrava- I could not answer him, for there is no answer. O tempora, O

mores. |

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1927 1927 e MUSICAL QUARTERLY December 14 ¢ New Republic A NEW YORK DIARY* From the musical standpoint the evening is saved by the late take a few themes, and so skillfully juggle about and disguise appearance of Ted Lewis’ orchestra, which, for those who ask —_ them in the numberless intuitive rhythms of his race, that they no apologies from jazz, is about the best of its kind. Among —_ have come to compose something approaching a Yamekranian other things it plays (as it played for a Columbia record) Lewis’ —_ anthology. Although the themes are melodically his own, these version of the St. Louis Blues, the most interesting jazz arrange- —_ rhythmical figures go back to the Charleston, back to The Ala-

ment since Grofé’s of the Rhapsody in Blue. bama Blues, to The Maple Leaf Rag, to Under the BambooTree, The curious name “Yamekraw,” which may have puzzled _ the pat-dance Sail Away Ladies, the spiritual called Who Is Dat readers of one of the poems in James Weldon Johnson’s God’s_ —- Yondah in Miss Jessye’s collection, to the coon-songs, the “Bal-

Trombones, belongs to the negro settlement in Savannah. Ithas _lets,” and back to the war dance; and as one after another melts just bobbed up again, as the title of an equally curious “Negro _ into the next, we come to realize sharply than they are all of one

Rhapsody” by and insufficiently known colored composer of fabric. Moreover, these blues are blues, and chirpy and mean popular songs. The latter’s compatriot and publisher, Perry ones; the “spiritualistic” portions are graceful and melancholy; Bradford, shall have the first word here on the subject of this — the jazz is hot; the sardonic solo passages, torturing the flat

musical outburst: seventh in their leaps and convolutions, are in character, as are

“We are announcing the latest work or opus of the renowned _ the triple grace notes, the descending tenths and the bounding jazz pianist, John P. Johnson. This artist has endeavored to as- _ octaves in the bass; and it is not the composition’s least achieve-

semble all of the rhythmic phrases that deal strictly with ne- = ment that, except for the prefatory gesture toward Gershwin, it crology and with no spared efforts we have tried to compile the —_ ignores the existence of the white race. It asks for no ponderous

same in twenty-six pages. The treatise chants spiritualistically, judgment that it has reconciled jazz with the Muse. It might also embraces the common rhythms known as blues, spirituals have written its motto in the poet’s words: and jazz, then modulates to its destiny, and many sequences ane You can keep your attics, take the roof or the air if you choose,

may boast of this as a wholly American theme.” Unless the passage beginning at page eight represents the In short, it is interesting, and it is genuine. It is available at

to be found uncommon to the popular type of music. . . . We But my highest aspiration in the basement blues

movement of rubber-tired hearses, diligent search of Mr. _ present only for the piano, and at the speed with which its comJohnson’s opus uncovers nothing dealing with necrology; but _ poser takes it, it calls for galloping fingers. Fletcher Henderson with this exception Mr. Bradford talks gospel. “It is not,” he — should orchestrate it, deposit Mr. Johnson at a twenty-foot concontinues, “a Rhapsody in Blue, but a Rhapsody in black and __ cert grand all clustered about with saxophones, and show the white. (Black notes on white paper.) We hope it will meet with — white folks what a thoroughly aroused town named Yamekraw your approval.” It does. What its writer has done has been to __ cari Say for itself

1927 © Musical Quarterly Music, alas, does not as arule obligingly disappear when disap- |§ Sunday columns of one of my friends, the excellent music critic

proved—no matter how vigorous and widespread the objec- _ of a great daily paper. The following Sunday these quotations tion. Otherwise the disappearance of jazz, so often prophesied = were quoted by another and most estimable critic of a great and ardently wished in our day, would have long been effected. | contemporary—or is it “great neighbor”—but apparently with Instead, the American jazz school continues to flourish, and _less satisfaction than had been the case on the previous Sunday. there is no telling but that it may beat the forty-year-record of | Some innocent reference of mine to “the learned arbiters of the the English madrigal school. Meanwhile the ink is flowing copi- _ press,” in connection with their judgment about the work I was ously pro and con—or betwixt and between, as it does right discussing, met with stinging rebuke. In fact, I was subjected to

now under my own pen. the most humiliating procedure imaginable, to public psycho-

Not long ago, in these pages, I permitted myself some ob- _—_ analysis! Psychoanalytic dissection in camera is bad enough, servations on jazz in general and on a work by a certain com- but when performed coram publico it might well bring blushes poser belonging to the American jazz school in particular. These _to the palest cheek. observations earned the distinction of finding their way into the I have always steered clear of psychoanalysts, because the little insight I have gained into the lower strata of my consciousness has made me convinced that they are best left unplumbed.

*Excerpts from column in New Republic.[KK] I fear these murky depths would produce little that I should be 526

1927 e MUSICAL QUARTERLY 1927 proud of. But perhaps my apprehensions are exaggerated.Some- _ prepared to retract my remark about “the learned arbiters of the times it does seem that the psychoanalyst is worse than the psy- _— press”’-and I will substitute for it “the musical psychoanalysts choanalyzed, and that he endows the latter with all sortsof dread- of the press.” That appellation would seem all the more mer-

ful crimes, repressions and whatnots, born wholly of the _ ited, since my friend and colleague of the first Sunday column, psychoanalyst’s very own and very special brand of imagina- —__ who started all this trouble, let his imagination “interpret” my tion. Be that as it may, my misgivings have now beenconfirmed text. What he actually did was to MIS-quote me, to apply my by my recent experience: I stand accused of “not reading the —_ observations to a work he was writing about, but not I. That is papers!” By Bacchus of yore, this is too much—more, at any __ the subtle humor of the thing. Also, it teaches us the advantage rate, than my native meekness can bear with. To think that itis | of psychoanalytical methods: that whatever you think you think, my pleasant duty to scan—for purposes of indexing—some 130 _it ain't.

Current music journals, domestic and foreign, and then to be But to return to jazz, whence we proceeded: let me recomtold by a psychoanalytical colleague that I “should read the pa- = mend to you Henry O. Osgood’s So this is Jazz (Little, Brown pers.” Oh, bitter irony! No, I do not wish to peruse any more &Co.). It will make you rise and cheer, or writhe and jeer—all papers than it is now my happy lot to do. (If there be anythingI depends upon how old you feel. The book contains a lot of data should read more carefully, it is the copy and the proofs of my —_ which it was well to collect while they were fresh and had the

own “papers” in order to spare myself the perpetual vexationof savour of actuality. Mr. Osgood has not written a history of being confronted with blunders and misprints which a slower _jazz, it is too early for that—nor could he have done so had he and more vigilant procedure might have eliminated.) No, I po- _ tried; for his is essentially a critic, not an historian, and his perlitely refuse to read any more musical criticisms than I have __ sonal opinions, crisp and voluntary, break constantly through to—although a third colleague (not on a Sunday, but on some _ the crust of his narrative to enliven his style. Mr. Osgood’s subother day of the week) came out strongly in support of the psy- _—ject is engrossing. Jazz characterizes a generation, perhaps a choanalytical confrere and rapped me, metaphorically but snap- _—_— century. And ever since I finished Mr. Osgood’s book, I have pily, on the wrists that are weak from turning the pages of mu- _ been looking for that writer of the 19th century who based his sical weeklies, fort-nightlies, monthlies, quarterlies, once-in-a- weighty tome entitled So this is Rococo! upon Playford’s Dancwhiles, and once-and-never-agains. But if it will help any, Iam ing Master, Philidor’s collection of ballets, and Ballard’s books of Chansons pour danser et pour boire.

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2 1928 & February 22 ¢ Outlook GEORGE GERSHWIN AND JAZZ by George Newell For many empty years serious creative music in America wasa __ calling the personalities of Lincoln, Bret Harte, and Blakelock sort of catch-as-catch-can affair. The muse of the lyre was looked ~—_ we are tempted to ratify the Englishman’s definition. That is, upon as the anemic sister of the American arts, those robust arts | we would be so tempted if we had met George Gershwin.

which had produced Walt Whitman and Sargent. Somehow Eu- Every inch of this tall young man is that of a gentleman. He rope had us musically buffaloed. There was talent, to be sure, _is poised, quiet, and well-mannered. He is genuinely polite, kind, but they could not get their composing machinery to function —_and considerate. He is always willing to listen to the work of

_ originally. any other composer and advise him. The names of the men and They would pilgrimage to Paris or Berlin. There they would =women whom he has helped along the barbed road to success study, drink beer, and affect Flying Dutchman hats, soontore- — would give our typesetter a dizzy morning. Yet he is not a rail-

turn to their native land neatly done up ina French orGerman _ splitter, nor has he the arrogant, temperamental qualities of a bandbox. They would write just that sort of music too, the only Wagner or a Debussy.

difference being that it was then called “American.” As a man, I should say he is more like that kindly, naive But was it? Listen to the ten bars of the Rhapsody in Blue | composer Mozart. Mozart, you will recall, was that fastidious before you answer. George Gershwin seems to be at last the — gentleman so patently at home in either the glittering Court of American who can express his native land and its life in terms | Vienna or the smoky cottage of a roadside peasant.

of notes, trombones, or what have you? [sic] If any harassed process-server ever has occasion to search But you will say, “Is this African stuff any more American __ out the presence of Mr. Gershwin, I advise him to look either at than the imitation European music?” The way itis done by Mr. _—— Mrs. Astor’s or “Pop” Connolly’s lunch-wagon. If he is at the

Gershwin, I believe it is. wagon, Mr. Gershwin will be the only diner whose elbows do

For that matter, what European school is free from foreign —_ not garnish the counter! influence? The music of Spain is a volatile blend of Moorish, George Gershwin was born twenty-nine years ago in BrookBasque, and gypsy. The profound influence of Hungarian-gypsy — lyn. He was no child musical prodigy. He assures us that he music on the work of the German composer Brahms is well __ played nothing during his first thirteen years—nothing except known. The similarity of the wild glamour so red-headedly ex- —_—shhooky or precarious one-eyed-cat around the fire-plugs and the

istent in Celtic folk-songs is startling in its Slavic resemblance. — neighborhood pushcarts.

“Very well, then; but tell me, what is this jazz, anyway?” That he might possess musical talent never occurred to his Some say jazz is this, some say jazz is that. The name itself was hard-working mother and father. There had never been any found by Lafcadio Hearn in the Creole patois of New Orleans. —_—s musicians in the family. What would they do with a musician,

It meant “to speed up,” particularly in reference to syncopated § anyhow. music. In Africa the word “jas,” or “jazz,” has a corresponding At the age of thirteen, however, the affairs of the father took meaning among the natives. But I say fiddle-de-dee for allthese a turn toward the near-prosperous. A piano was acquired—an learned definitions. Jazz is American, and that’s that. Now let’s —_—supright of uncertain vintage. Still, the varnish was nice and shiny

hear you define America. and the keys pushed up and down beautifully.

Difficult, isn’t it? Some of the components of America may Ira, George’s elder brother, was to take piano lessons—the be more or less defined though: nervous energy, joy, humor, — same Ira who is now one of Broadway’s cleverist lyric writers. youth, lack of repression, freedom of expression. It is because —_ He will enter our story farther on.

the spirit of jazz so admirably paints this musical picture of Ira was to take lessons at fifty cents an hour from a “lady America that the coming of George Gershwin at this time isso —_ teacher.” The younger brother was never considered, but one

propitious. day he climbed upon the stool and proceeded, in his usual exA bumptious English wit of the nineteenth century said: perimental fashion, to see what made the thing go. He found “American musicians are at present too gentlemanly to faith- _—out. fully portray their motherland. When a good husky rail-splitter It was immediately apparent to his mother that the fifty-cent comes along and turns to music, you will then have aman suf- —_ investment would not be wasted on George. He could become a ficiently equipped by experience and character to write Ameri- —_ doctor, maybe.

can music.” For four months the marvelous musical absorptive qualities One needs the copious probing of the figurative thumb nail § of George’s quick mind kept the “lady teacher” in a state of to scratch through the veneer of this false statement. For inre- breathless pedagogy. And at the end of ten dollars’ worth of

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FEBRUARY 22 ¢ OUTLOOK 1928 lessons, she was “all taught out.” nist was fired.) George could put lots more pep into his work. But George was anything but “all taught in,’ so he went to |= He could play the music up in the treble, down in the bass, and study with a funny old Dutchman who used to be a bandmaster. _in countless original ways of his own invention, to the great He taught the young Gershwin such musical pastries as the Wil- _—_delectation of the chorus and the dancing director. liam Tell Overture with wedding-cake variations and other brassy “You can’t make up new dance steps to a lot of melodious

favorites of bandmasters reduced to teaching piano-forte. opium,” was the dancing man’s comment. Thanks to a few discerning friends and his own intuitive in- “That tip of Vodary’s got me a $35-a-week job.” Stincts to gravitate in the right direction, he soon left this har- And now came another friend in need, Vivian Segal. At the

binger of the brass band. Sunday night concerts of the Century Theatre she sang two of

He then went to study with the late Charles Hambitzer. | Gershwin’s songs. The success of these two songs was the beGeorge was fifteen then. To this day he speaks of this teacher —_ ginning of an easier trail for George. The firm of Harms & Com-

with genuine awe and affection, “He was a fine musician—and pany, who control ninety per cent of all the American show

I really began to learn something.” music, signed him on the dotted line—the first man to be so These piano lessons of the first few years were about the contracted since Jerome Kern. And soon, in 1919, came his first only lessons (in the common meaning of the word) thatGeorge __ big success, La La, Lucile.

Gershwin ever had. For the most part his facility for brilliant Since then he has written all or some of the music for twenty-

piano playing has been self-taught. five shows. At present he has music in two shows on BroadSelf-taught is surely the correct term for his technique asa = way, Funny Face and Rosalie; one, Oh, Kay, on the road; ancomposer. Like Wagner and Schubert, he seems to have studied — other company in London, and one in Australia.

with no one in particular, preferring to abide by the counsel of In almost all of these shows his lyrical collaborator has been this own ear. He is decidedly an aural musician. He listens to _his older brother, Ira, the one George side-tracked from the fiftyeverything, attending concerts religiously, that hisearmay bea __ cent lessons. true teacher. No formulae-bound academician ever superim- The family really had tried to make a doctor out of Ira. He posed his agglutinized conventions upon the soul of George —_ even got to the “pre-medic course” at City College. But he had

Gershwin. too much of his brother’s spirit to stay where he was not happy. To be sure, he did treat himself to the luxury of a few har- — So he too “walked out on them” to be treasurer and secretary of mony lessons (weekly inoculations from a text-book of correct “Colonel Lagg’s Greater Empire Shows”—a Mid-West tent

church harmonies). carnival to which a hamlet of a thousand inhabitants was a big When he was seventeen, he began to earn his living. He __ stand. started in as a song-plugger for the popular music firm of “TI was lucky to get that job,” Ira told me; “the other treasurer

Remick. had absconded. And I got $35 a week, too, only $5 less than the Do you know what a song-plugger is? He is the anvil-cho- —_ highest-paid man in the show—the wire-walker. But I had to rus, high-pressure, robot-like salesman of the ragtime music _ put up my own tent, and that title, secretary-treasurer, is just a publisher. All day long. often for ten hours, he must sit and _lot of hokum for ticket-seller.” “swat out’ syncopated ditties on a piano—a sort of musical George had already won his spurs as a musical-comedy comdemonstration to “the trade” of the latest “hits.” Fine for the poser before Ira entered the field. And rather than be known as

nerves and the piano tuners’ union. the brother of a famous brother who got his job via the conveI forgot to mention that the song-plugger was paid $15 a _ nient alleyway of fraternal politics, Ira wrote his first lyrics under

week for his musico-gymnastic efforts. the name of Arthur Francis. For a long time he insisted that his In the evenings, if he had any energy left from his work in —_—s musical brother refer to his lyrics as the work of “‘a college boy the music iron foundry, George composed—but nothing of much I know, who isn’t so bad.” consequence. As a composer he was still going through the in- Arthur Francis had quite achieved success in his own right cubator stage; soaking it up—blues, spirituals, nigger ballads, | before he collaborated officially with George, though the plan and mixing them with the Chopin and Beethoven of his piano _ that Ira become a lyric writer was first sponsored by his brother.

lessons. But Ira had fully cut his teeth on the show Two Little Girls in Two years of this song-plugging, and then one day he quit. Blue before he dropped the pen-name. He and George then wrote

“T just walked out,” he said. “It wasn’t what a wanted. Lady, Be Good. “No, I didn’t have any other job in view. That $15 was all I It was in the year of Lady, Be Good (1924) that George

was making.” Gershwin wrote the epochal Rhapsody in Blue. Here was someThe same intuitive instinct that sent him from the poorteach- __ thing truly new in music. Jazz had indeed come into its syncoing of the bandmaster to the door of Hambitzer was againevi- —_— pated own.

dent. This time it took him to “Will” Vodary, that dynamic Ne- In commenting on this work Walter Damrosch said: “Vari-

gro musician and orchestrator. ous composers have been walking around jazz like a cat around The kindly “Will” got him to try out for pianist at the re- =a plate of hot soup, waiting for it to cool off . . . so they might hearsals of Miss 1917, a Jerome Kern-Wodehouse show. lift it to the level of musical respectability. ... George Gershwin It was a fortunate try-out. (For George, that is; the other pia- | seems to have accomplished that miracle.”

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1928 MARCH 17 ¢ THE LITERARY DIGEST So confident of this fact was the conductor of the New York __ Very few of even the liberated popular-song writers ever bother Symphony that the next year, 1925, he commissioned Mr. __ to write their own harmonies. Gershwin to write a jazz Piano Concerto. Gershwin accepted The success of the Concerto, while not as sensational as that this commission the day before sailing to England to producea _ of the Rhapsody in Blue,” was very solid indeed. show. “I didn’t have any idea if I could write one, of course,” he Since the Concerto a one-act operatic sketch, 135th Street, told me, “but I’d heard a few concertos at concerts”! ! ! has been produced. It was written long before, however. He returned from England, and in one month he wrote the I saw Mr. Gershwin a few weeks ago, following the New Concerto—fully scored by himself for one hundred andtensym- —- York opening of Rosalie, and I can best characterize his present

phony players. condition as imminently volcanic. Something is going to hapPractically no other jazz composer orchestrates any of his _ pen soon. He is so calm outside that his insides must be seethwork. Many of them, the “‘one-finger composers,” musthavea — ing. Something big is coming. Is it another Rhapsody in Blue?

professional arranger to write the notes down on paper for them. No one can say but George Gershwin himself, as he writes high up in the sound-proof studio at the top of his New York home.

March 17 ¢ The Literary Digest WHEN EUROPEAN COMPOSERS JAZZ Foreign composers affect to scorn jazz, but can not keep away Mr. Ravel’s “kind words” occur in Mr. Downes’s article, and from it; also they apparently can not master it, but use asubsti- _ lead out of some observations he makes on composition in gentute which they doubtless think just as good. La Press (Paris) eral here in America: asserts that a class in jazz has been determined upon for the “In the field of composition I have found my earlier impresConservatory of Frankfort, but that Frankfort musicians have __ sions of American music confirmed. I think you have too little protested, declaring that the accursed thing shall have no place _ realization of yourselves, and that you still look too far away in an art school. Kind words were spoken of it by Maurice Ravel, over the water. An artist should be international in his judgthe French composer, who is now a visitor here. Here isa pen —s ments and esthetic appreciations and incorrigibly national when picture of the famous composer by Olin Downes of The New __ it comes to the province of creative art. I think you know that I

York Times: greatly admire and value—more, I think, than many American

“Mr. Ravel is neither young nor robust. His mentality, which = composers—American jazz. I have used jazz idioms in my last is acute and highly developed, is not that of a youthful, ebul- —- Violin and Piano Sonata, but from what point of view? That, of

lient people, or, perhaps, of any modern civilization. Like his course, of a Frenchman. Fascinated as I am by this idiom, I can art, he is delicately and fastidiously organized. Living can not _ not possibly feel it as I would if I were an American. It is to me be easy for him. Yet his qualities maintain him. The rapier with- _—_—a picturesque adventure in composition to develop some ideas

stands the onslaught of the bludgeon. suggested by American popular music, but my musical think“Other European visitors, with more physique than Mr. Ravel, _ing is entirely national—unmistakably so, I fancy, to the most and apparently better geared to the exigencies of the young civi- _ casual listener. I am waiting to see more Americans appear with lization, have not withstood it so well. But that is Mr. Ravel’s _ the honesty and vision to realize the significance of their popuquality. He has traveled America under the auspices of the Pro _lar product, and the technique and imagination to base an origi-

Musica Society from coast to coast. Americans in large num- _ nal and creative art upon it.” bers have examined him. Mr. Ravel has courteously and curi- When his interviewer remarked that this was an astonishing ously returned the examination—this without rancor or misun- opinion from a classicist and the inheritor of an ancient culture, derstanding, but, on the contrary, with cognizance of the rich- = Mr. Ravel raised his eyebrows: ness of a future that contrasts formidably with the boundaries “No, it isn’t strange. It is only logical. It is not the developed of his present and past. The thought would make some artists of artistic culture which fails to comprehend the significance of a Mr. Ravel’s years and sensibilities uncomfortable; buthe istoo — culture and civilization different from itself. On the contrary, a sure and aware of himself and his background for that. Achar- developed artistic consciousness implies such appreciation. If acteristic product of ideas refined and re-refined by centuries of — we in France, for instance, listen to German music, we wish it an aristocratic culture, he has been watching with coolness and _ to be fundamentally German. The thing we are inclined to recuriosity the formation of a new and cruder society andits group- —sject is the German music which leans toward that of the French. ings in the field of an expressive art. He has surely felt the pres- —_—iIt is precisely the same with the good German criticism. Criti-

sures, the potencies, and the swirling forces of ayoung, impul- — cism in that country, when it is not a matter of prejudice or sive people. But he has stood against other inundations thanthe — chauvinism, is the criticism that recognizes immediately, and one which now sweeps against his defenses, and for the present, _ appraises at its full value what is essentially the expression of

at least, he holds his own.” the spirit of another race. You are most courteous and receptive 530

MARCH e¢ THE CHESTERIAN 1928 to the ideas of your neighbor when you are most certain of the be entirely abreast of the progressive movement in the treatquality and the value of your own. There are musicians, am —_—_ ment of harmony, cross rhythms, atonality, polytonality and inhappy to say, who feel that way in Germany and in France. A _strumentation. It also showed us a native of Utrecht in the act of world brotherhood of art should include—must, indeed, imply— _ struggling to assimilate jazz. And there was no difficulty in perthe confident affirmation by the creative spirits of national and _— ceiving that the music jazzed originated in the creative recesses racial consciousness. It is surely time for the American to look __ of the soul of one Debussy.

about him and found his own art traditions.” “Try, kind reader and lover of the tonal art, to conceive George Mr. Ravel is not mentioned by Mr. Henderson of The Sunin Gershwin or Zez Confrey aiming to make a jazz piece out of a his article on “modernism” and “jazz.” Having expressed all few pages from Pelléas et Mélisande’ or L’Aprés-midi d’un there is to say, or nearly all, in the modernistic formula, certain | Faune. Can you see either of them making such a blunder? Yet Europeans turn to jazz. “Why let Brother Jonathan have all the = over and over we find the European musicians, who are strivfun?” Mr. Henderson “would be the last in the world to be so _—sing to be up to date, and who believe that jazz is the high sign of vulgar as to intimate that European composers don’t know their _ the spirit of this age, endeavoring to transform melodic mateopinions. He honestly believes they do. But they certainly do _rial rooted in their own soil into jazz by the mechanical process

not know their jazz.” He shows us why: of tacking some syncopations to the beginnings of phrases and “On Tuesday evening last Pierre Monteux, conducting the § muting the trumpets and trombones. Philadelphia Orchestra, produced in Carnegie Hall the third “What they all fail to grasp is that the basic substance of jazz symphony of Willem Pijper, a Dutch composer highly recom- _is the tune. If the tune is not suitable to jazz treatment, the result mended by Willem Mengelberg and also Rudolf of the same __is just musical nonsense. And the tunes which belong to the name. M. Monteux was engaged in the discharge of a pious domain of jazz grew in this country. Think of a spectacled Gerduty in presenting the work because it is dedicated to him. man gentleman trying to compose ‘blues.’ What does he know “Authoritative information declares that Pijper is the most about the half-desperate laughter of the Negro torn by grief?” radical of the Holland composers. His Symphony proved him to

March ¢ The Chesterian THE FIRST JAZZ OPERA AND OPERETTA by Hugo R. Fleischmann With Johnny Strikes Up Ernst Krenek has created the first jazz Ernst Krenek, who made such a lucky stroke with the first jazz opera, just as George Edwards originated jazz operetta with Lady opera, is of Czechoslovak descent. His home is that of such X. Almost simultaneously, therefore, two composers of genius, § men, as Dvorak, Smetana and LeoS Janaéek, but his cradle was whose exceptional qualities were so far known to a confined — Vienna, where he was born in 1900. He himself described the musical circle alone, have proved to the world at large that musi- —_ stages of his early life in an autobiographical sketch. Having cal tradition and jazz need not by any means be irreconcilable — begun his musical studies under Franz Schreker in 1916, he opponents, but may get to be on excellent terms on closer ac- —_— followed his master to Berlin in 1920. His schooling included a quaintance. The new spirit of our time, as expressed in jazz, tri- careful training in the traditional curriculum, but he was not umphs over tradition; not however in such a way as to obliterate = unduly burdened with complacent scholasticism. The first of it, but in order to draw it into a new relationship of which the —_ his more important chamber works, including string quartets, world gladly takes possession to-day. Jazz infuses something into belong to this period, also orchestral music containing three the petrified formulas of our European music which notevenour = symphonies. They attempt to approach what is known as “atoradicals, such as Schonberg, Stravinsky, Casella or Bart6ék are __nality” in their musical idiom. The stage too, attracted his atable to impart to it: the electrifying rhythms of alien races,ape- _ tention and his works in that direction were the scenic cantata, culiar type of construction that mercilessly rends the framework § Zwingburg, first performed at the Berlin Staatsoper in 1924 of regular phrase-periodicity asunder, and forces of expression under Erich Kleiber, and the comic opera, Der Sprung uber den which revolutionize our world of feeling, leave our minds no _—— Schatten, to a libretto of his own, produced at Frankfort o/M. In time for reflection, but take hold of us, carrying us away .. . into 1923 Krenek left Germany and lived for two years in Austria reality with its sweeping motion, its gigantic buildings and its |§ and Switzerland, save for the interruption of visits to France inventions that take our breath away. The musician will hence- _and Italy. This period not only widened his outlook, but gave a forth take his share in the progress of mankind and no longer _—_ decidedly new turn to his intellectual attitude. New influences lead a comfortable life of contemplation in cloistered seclusion. are unmistakable in his opera of Johnny. Krenek discovered an He places his technique, his fancy and his talent at the service of — entirely new relationship between art and life and found a dipresent-day ideas and seeks to give them musical expression: it rect association between artist and public to be not only posis thus that we have to regard jazz as presented to us in the stage __ sible, but in the highest degree desirable. This popularization of

works by the two composers in question. art is one of the most remarkable features of his opera. In 1925 531

1928 MARCH ¢ THE CHESTERIAN Krenek was appointed conductor to the Prussian State Theatre to make use of American dance forms which every musically at Cassel by Paul Bekker, the patron of modern composers. It —_ cultivated person had previously regarded as unholy. His opera was there, accordingly, that his now famous work, Johnny Strikes _is dominated by jazz: it contains the delicious blues, “Leb Wohl, Up, was finished on June 19th, 1926, as we are informed by a _— mein Schatz, ich geh”; a tango, “O reverie”; a shimmy, “So hat

note in the vocal score. uns Johnny aufgespielt” and even a Negro spiritual in Johnny’s Johnny Spielt Auf, as the original title runs, is a stroke of song of triumph. Whatever one may think of Krenek’s audacity genius. It is a declaration of war directed against the false phrase- _— in introducing these hits into the world of opera, there is no

ology and the torpid ideology of European artistic creation, to | doubt that they enrich the forms of that art and impart to it a which the composer opposes the free American world-percep- _—_—s new and gay aspect which it had hitherto missed. That Krenek

tion, cut loose from tradition and unbiased by antiquity and _is capable of other things as well he proved sufficiently by the medievalism. Krenek here proclaims a new art. Whether it will § magnificent concerted numbers in the same work and especially make its way and prove capable of opening up anewepochin _ by the powerful, deeply serious and strongly affecting dialogue music will depend on whether there are a sufficient number of | between Max and the glacier, which sings in mysterious female talented and above all unprejudiced composers who have really voices and moves us to our depths. It is here particularly that grasped the spirit of our time and possess strength enough to _—‘ Krenek reveals the rich treasury of his extraordinary gifts and take their share in this gigantic subversion. Everything that ap- _ the wealth of his ideas. peals to our generation finds its place in Johnny: the cinema, George Edwards, the composer of the jazz operetta, Lady X, the film, broadcasting, loud speakers, jazz, the fox-trot, exoti- _ the production of which was recently greeted with tempestuous cism, revues, luxurious hotels and express trains. It is not diffi- applause in Vienna, is a Russian domiciled in the United States, cult to imagine with what enormous difficulties this work con- —_ who has already given a brilliant proof of his gifts in his free fronts the theatrical promoter and the stage manager. But all § arrangements of Negro spirituals. His Lady X, the libretto of these unheard-of stage effects are by no means the essential —= which was written for him by Dr. Ludwig Herzer, is not an opfeature; they are merely the fanciful framework fora stage en- _eretta of the stereotyped kind usually cultivated on the classical tertainment the like of which operatic history has never before Viennese soil by musical comedy kings like Kalman, Lehar,

experienced. Oscar Strauss and Leo Fall; it is an entirely new departure, as

Strictly speaking, there are two actions, which run parallel —§ regards both the play and the music. It unites the style of the to each other and occasionally overlap. Action I: Johnny, nigger, | operetta to that of the revue, administers to the theatre a strong jazz musician, fiddler, banjo player, trombonist and saxophon- _ dose of the cinema, and lets the sentimental Viennese song alist, robs the violinist Daniello of his valuable Amati instrument. — ternate with vigorous orgies of jazz. Sterling musician that he

Daniello, whom Krenek describes as a “cheapjack, southeast- is, Edwards employs, even for an operetta, a highly polished ern male beauty”—we think of the Roumanian grease-painted —_ technique and a brilliant orchestration, thus lifting musical comdandies—follows the clues to arailway station, where heisrun — edy on a level where it no longer remains a mere amusement over by the train that is just arriving. Johnny vaults upon the _—‘for a certain limited public. The score of Lady X is cultivated, station clock, which transforms itself into the globe of the world, — pure-bred operetta music with an incredible wealth of happy and while he plays his dance music on the noble master-violin, | invention and cut according to American Jazz patterns. And it is

humanity gyrates in a mad whirl to the rhythms of American _ curious to note how the composer contrives to give a most rejazz. Action II: The protagonist is a composer, Max, a serious _ fined character to all his blues, fox-trots, Charlestons and tanartist, but weak and without power of resistance. The moun- _ gos. tains allure him and he holds dialogues with the glacier, which Needless to say, the basis of Lady X is a love story, but one he idealizes as “the symbol of tangible form, of perfected na- __ that take a truly dramatic course and retains its interest to the ture, of life fully grasped.” He falls deeply in love withthe singer _last fall of the curtain. Edwards, whose real name is Louis Anita, the leading lady in his opera, whom however he is un- —_ Gruenberg, proves, like Krenek, that the exotic music of peoples able to captivate. Anita yields to the passionate seduction of the and races of an inferior culture may be purified and rendered violinist Daniello (see action I.) and Max, in despair, is onthe profitable to our own art. Much as with the modern methods of point of committing suicide. But in the nick of time he finds the rejuvenation, its youthful, fresh and not yet fully developed way back to life and to his beloved, a way which, itis true, isby glands may yield their contents and infuse them into the old no means smooth and free from perils, for it leads to exciting | and enfeebled formalities of European music with the happiest pursuit of criminals, dizzy avalanches and headlong motor-car _ results. In this respect Edwards-Gruenberg must be regarded as races, things which are all seen on the stage and whose realism —_ a Voronoff of creative music. It is to be hoped that Lady X will

eclipses everything of the kind ever attempted before. soon begin a triumphal progress from one international centre Let us now consider the music of Johnny Strikes Up. It is of musical culture to another. above everything significant that Krenek for the first time dared

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MAY ¢ NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW 1928 May 9 ¢ New Republic A NEW YORK DIARY* ... The bright urn that crowns the tower of New York’s Para- _ the jazz concert was a regular thing. At last the exigencies of mount Theater now has a significance. It is afuneral headstone __ the dance hall were gone, and the musical idiom of the Amerifor Paul Whiteman. Five years ago Whiteman’s orchestra car- can city could take on large form. But what resulted? A thing ried a torch, and Paul had a message. Two years ago, Whiteman’s Called the “Rainbow Rhapsody Revue.” Six sheiks sing sylorchestra was still the best of its kind. Now Paul has gone Para- _!ables through megaphones. Then a high tenor sings syllables

Jazz orches peop g O §

mount, and the orchestra is just another cheap band. through a megaphone. Then the orchestra takes up its megaAj hestra that people might hear without dancing was phones, for more singing of unintelligible words. Ten ladies with shapes, dressed in alhambras and tortillas and such Spansomething new once. It was this Whiteman who started it. It . , ; ; . . ; ; ish things, raise their legs in a line. A comedian makes wise-

was he who gathered and trained the best jazz players to be cracks with Whiteman. Henry Busse, he who can make a trumfound. It was he who invited all and sundry to contribute jazz pet talk like nobody’s business, achieves the ultimate height pieces in concert style for his programs. Gershwin, Sowerby, —_ of humor. He walks across the stage wearing a derby too small Carpenter, Whithorne, Grofé, Joslyn and other talented menre- —_— for him. Then a concert piece. Sixteen bars of this old tune sponded. The torch was lighted, and the kinetic message went _and eight of that. At the end appears a rainbow of the ten with out that something new and big and exciting and importanthad the shapes, but this time without Spanish or any other coshappened and would continue to happen for a long, long time. tume. It seems impossible that the man who talked the talk of Thus it was that we came to listen to jazz. Then the orchestra the Paul Whiteman of five Years ABO should have planned this

, utterly cheap display, which not only is not music, but isn’t

went into the popular theater, where it belongs, and where its

best efforts and spiciest experiments could be set forth. At last even Jazz. Paul has succumbed to the Paramount, at the very time when the Paramount is ready and eager to take up what he has to offer.

May ¢ North American Review JAZZMANIA by Sigmund Spaeth “Jazzmania” has become practically a geographical term cover- Jazz, therefore, may be practically defined as the distortion ing the whole territory of modern extravagance, absurdity, exas- of the normal or conventional in music; or in anything else, for peration and distortion of values. While based upon a species _ that matter. A caricature is a jazz portrait, and a burlesque is of musical technique, the application of the slang coinage, “jazz,” | _jazz drama. “Jazzmania” is simply the habit of thinking and has become general, fitting almost every abnormality of the age. acting in distorted terms; a manner of life consistently at war Our murders, our trials, our welcomes toChannel swimmers and — with conservative tradition. transatlantic flyers, our sports, our conventions, our best sell- The reasons for this state of affairs are not hard to find. it is ers of literature and their authors, our drama, our concert and _—_a part of human nature to rebel against anything orthodox after operatic stage, our elections, our social gatherings, our chari- it has been so long established or so strongly emphasized as to ties, our painting, sculpture and architecture, even our ethics | seem burdensome. The whole history of art, and of civilization and religion, have all fallen into the idiom of jazz. Along normal, —_in general, shows merely a series of revolutions. There has al-

conservative lines they could not possibly succeed. ways been a reason for form or technique of any kind, but once Whether this condition is deplorable or admirable is a mat- __ that reason was forgotten, and formality became an end in itter for argument. It is at least interesting; and an analysis of its _ self, the rebellion of the Liberals was inevitable.

musical basis may serve to clarify its fundamental and most In the field of music, the blame for jazz (if it is indeed cul-

significant properties. pable) may be placed squarely upon the shoulders of the Con-

The origin of the term itself need not cause any sleepless _servatives, the hidebound, intolerant scholars, artists, critics, hours. No one knows exactly where it came from, although its highbrows, self-appointed guardians of taste and standards, who Negro parentage is fairly obvious. No matter what the explana- _—s+ihave insisted that music is a matter of rules, regulations and tion of the slang phrase, its meaning is clear enough. Jazzisnot formulas, and refused to admit the significance of any opina musical form; it is a method of treatment. It is possible totake ions, responses and reactions but their own. These reactionary any conventional piece of music and “jazz it up”. The actual — formalists of music have had their parallels in all other lines of process is one of distortion, of rebellion against normalcy. *Excerpts from a column. [KK]

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1928 MAY ¢ NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW art and life, and the immediate effect of their activities today is constantly taken by the “serious” composers of music. Tonal

Jazzmania. coloring also has been revolutionized by the development of The self-sufficient “expert” of music is a familiar figure, and muted brass, of virtuosity in the wood wind, and of a neveralways has been. Most of the “artists” belong in this class. They ending variety and versatility of percussion. Here again the jazz surround their trade with an ectoplasm of mystery and crownit band is merely presenting in an obvious and insistent form the with a halo of transcendental hokum. They are afraid to admit — whimsical individuality which is characteristic of all ultra modthat they make their living through perfectly intelligible abili- | ern music. ties, shrewdly developed to a point of commercial value, and Jazz effects are, in truth, nothing new in the musical art. Dismaintain the pose of ineffability chiefly to avoid embarrassing __tortions of some sort have figured in composition of all kinds investigations. Within their own fraternity, their methods are _ for several centuries. Every revolutionary composer has started well known and discussed, but not for the benefit of the public. | with apparent distortions which to a later generation seemed There is some excuse for this, but far less for the attitude of entirely logical and necessary. (From this, however, it by no the mere parasites of music, those who have not the creative or | means follows that all distortion is logical and necessary.) interpretive ability to rank as artists, but nevertheless, with the Monteverdi, putting a deliberate dissonance into Ariadne’s help of second-hand information and an often hypocritical en- | “Lament” to express its tragedy, becomes perhaps the first of thusiasm, constitute themselves a stern judiciary of what the _all jazz composers. Beethoven definitely jazzes the choral average listener shall like or not like. Too often their dicta are § melody in the Finale of his Ninth Symphony when he orchestreated with awe through mere lack of information or experi- trates it for a combination of brass, bassoons, cymbals and trience, and even when they are unquestionably right, and in ac- _ angle, and at the same time breaks up the tune into a sprightly cord with the sympathetic understanding of all qualified judges, | skipping rhythm. Schumann’s love of syncopation is continutheir intolerance is a menace and a deterrent to aesthetic progress. ally apparent, and this is accentuated in his greatest follower, When the average man or woman, the potential music lover, | Brahms. Chopin uses jazz rhythms, jazz melodies (many of ventures occasionally to express an honest opinion ora sincere — which have been stolen by modern popular composers) and jazz enthusiasm, he or she is almost sure to meet the rebuff ofone of harmonies, actually finishing one of his Preludes on a “blue” these contemptuous traditionalists in the stock formula of dis- | chord (containing the interval of the minor seventh). Liszt was approval: “Your taste is terrible.” Driven back into his shell, the | a jazz composer par excellence, and a good showman to boot. business man decides that it is “all over his head” and that “Jazz = Along conventional lines he would hardly have been noticed. is good enough for him,” while the housekeeping woman reit- — Neither would his son-in-law, Wagner. Tschaikowsky and Dvorak erates her own formula, “I don’t know anything about music, both introduced jazz effects into their most popular sympho-

but I know what I like.” nies. Debussy’s harmonies are the very essence of modern jazz,

Jazz has found millions of such disciples because it offered and in such a piece as the familiar Golliwog’s Cake Walk he not only an escape from the conventional but actually repre- distorts melody and rhythm as well. Stravinsky and all the ultra sented also the line of least resistance. Jazz rhythms are based = modernists revel in jazz instrumentation. Most of them have upon the universal human instinct to keep time, aninstinct which _ tried to write jazz in the American style, but without much sucactually seeks to lighten physical effort by a rhythmic accom- _ cess. Stravinsky’s Rag Time and the jazz movement of his Piano paniment, and has succeeded in doing so, from the folk song of | Concerto cannot compare with the work of Gershwin, Souvaine the reapers and the strain of the Volga boatmen to the modern __ or Grofé; on the other hand, the jazz effects in Petroushka are

daily dozen, assisted by phonograph or radio. thoroughly delightful. (One of the best bits of modern jazz, inciEven the complications of syncopation or “rag time” cannot __ dentally, is in the Scherzo section of Schoenberg’s operetta of obscure the regularity of the fundamental beat, and to the jazz = Blossom Time, and The Miracle represents a jazzing of all kinds lover “keeping time,” mentally or physically, becomes a game _ of material, musical, pictorial, literary and religious.)

in which the reward is the personal satisfaction of overcoming Jazz painting and sculpture have become so common that an invisible enemy. “You can’t fool me,” says the jazz hound __ their distortions are almost accepted as normal. The artist who on the trail of rhythm, coming down on the beat with the same — wishes to emphasize color generally does so at the expense of feeling of triumph that was the psychological secret of cross _ form. If there is some detail of outline that he considers particu-

word puzzles and “Ask Me Another.” larly important, he does not hesitate to exaggerate, quite in the Jazz melodies have been mostly simple and obvious, easily —_jazz spirit of the cartoonist. Ultra-modern statuary is full of the remembered after one or two hearings. “Popular music is fa- | same kind of distortion. Sometimes it is all head, sometimes all miliar music,” and when recognition is made easy, it is atre- legs, sometimes merely a combination of curves or angles to mendous asset. Again the distortion of melody serves as anin- __ give the effect of motion or rest. centive, an encouragement to individual attention and a stimu- The jazz architecture of New York is a practical one, rising

lator of personal pride in its mastery. literally out of the necessity to build for height alone, since upThe distortions of jazz, however, are not merely rhythmic — ward is the only direction in which any space is left. The reand melodic. They also deal with harmony and tone color. sults, however, have a distinctive beauty quite aside from their Jazz harmonies are quite in line with the freedom of modern _utility. harmonizing in general, and actually fall short of the liberties Nature also expresses herself occasionally in the jazz manner.

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JUNE ° THE BOOKMAN 1928 In most cases a landscape or a mountain or a sea view is as- | phenomenon in that it has sprung from a fully established and, sumed to be normal merely because it is obviously natural. But} —_—on the whole, a highly civilized nation. It exhibits all the char-

the bizarre coloring of a sunset generally partakes of distortion, acteristics of primitive folk-music, but in a complex and diswith a consequent shock of pleasant surprise, while the strati- _ torted form. It has essentially a monotony of rhythm, a simplicfied rock formations of America’s western canyons are assur- _ ity of melody, a neutrality of mode (neither major nor minor), a

edly an overwhelming jazz of geological traditions. distinctive tonal coloring, and, most important of all, the spirit It cannot be argued therefore that distortion is fundamen- — of improvisation; and all these traits are to be found in naive tally unnatural and illogical. Its spirit enters in some degree into —_— folk-music the world over.

every art and beauty to which the elements of selection and If the normal processes of the past are to repeat themselves, composition contribute at all. Even the photographer consciously as has always been the case, then the best elements of this new folk applies the principles of emphasis and accent in selecting his —_— music will survive in the art music of the future, and the worst will

subjects, his light and his angles. be eliminated, by the simple law of evolution. To be afraid of Basically, the new jazzmania need not be considered amen- —_jazzmania in any form is to deny the very principles of human life. ace to civilization. The powers of truth and universality are not = “Whatsoever is good, whatsoever is honest’ must somehow ento be denied for long. Ancient Greece delivered her drama __dure, and if it does not, then it was not true to begin with.

through absurd masks and in stilted, artificial phrases, but they It would not be fair to dismiss jazzmania as a passing fad, have given way to natural, human expressions of face andlan- _for it is far more than that. But it would be equally unfair to guage. The honest, normal painting of Rembrandt, Raphaeland __ classify it as merely destructive and to group its various distorother great masters of the brush survives today, as does the mu- _ tions under the general head of aimless irresponsibility. The sic of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms and the — weakness of jazz is that it has been embraced by so many who poetry of Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Goethe and Schiller. have not taken the trouble to find out what is behind it, in music “The good, the beautiful, the true,” they are all essentially | or any other art. Lazy minds are inclined to ask merely “What’s the same, and no distortion of real values can continue indefi- the latest?” and let it go at that. The whole ultra-modern movenitely unless it has a permanent significance in emphasizing — ment actually receives its chief support from those who have such values. This has been the case with every radical change _ not the slightest conception of the traditions of any of the arts. in the conventions of all art, and particularly of music. The mere But this again is a fundamentally untrue state of affairs and fact that such changes have met with contemporary opposition — therefore cannot survive. Those who have supreme faith in the does not prove that distortion as such is an admirable thing, or great masters of beauty are not troubling themselves unduly that the opposition to change is always wrong. Time alone can __ over the jazz menace. They are even interested in it as a disshow what contains the elements of permanence and hence of __tinctly entertaining phenomenon of human nature. It is only

truth and beauty. . childlike ignorance that interprets a grimace as a permanent Jazz seems to be the modern folk-music of America, aunique — disfiguration.

June ¢ The Bookman “BALLADS, SONGS AND SNATCHES” by Abbe Niles What was it in jazz that so infuriated some people and started = writing in connecting passages between repetitions, changing others to rashly identifying it as the music of the future? Just keys, and so on. The result is refined, but still dull. two qualities; a little strangeness and a little humor. Both had Whiteman has made sweet jazz the Established Order. When been absent from most pre-jazz popular music, and neitheristo I sniff at it, I become a pelican of the wilderness (Psalms, xii).

be found in the so-called “sweet jazz” of 1928. Nine out of ten other leaders cherish as their main ambition to “Sweet jazz,” a matter of orchestral technique, represents a —_ sound just like Whiteman. The trouble is that they succeed only revolution of which Paul Whiteman (in this day of its success) in sounding just like each other, and that—as you may know by is the Will Hays. This revolution was primarily directed against —_ pressing a button—is nothing to get excited about. In reviewing a third and quite dispensable quality of the early jazz, which = popular phonograph records, I propose to confine myself to was its appalling noisiness, but it ended up by throwing out the work about which one can excusably get the least bit excited. baby with the bath. The “sweet” technique, hardly connected § That, by the way, includes Whiteman, because he is a leader, with true jazz save by its employment of saxophones and ban- _ not a camp-follower. joes, consists principally of hiring expert arrangers. These gentle- The music of the streets and music-halls is not something men proceed to take a given song, and do what they can to _ serene and sublime. It need not duck its head to make way for relieve the monotony of its fox-trot rhythm and its usual lack of the clouds. Not all of it should be jazzed in its presentation inspiration, by assigning successive choruses to different voices, _ helps, Oh, such a lot. [sic]

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1928 JUNE ¢ THE BOOKMAN These qualities do not depend on the splitting of ear-drums. = Kansas City Blues, has now spread over both sides of two records Unsweetened jazz need not be noisy. I cite the Columbiarace —_ (Brun.), just the same tune over and over again to thirty or more

record of Bessie Smith singing Pickpocket Blues. In her ac- _ verses sung by Jim Jackson. Thus:

companiment, in the little jailhouse glooms that sit suspended When my good gal quite me, she sure threw...

in the dank atmosphere and mock poor Bessie’smin’ sad cries, there . I wouldn’t so much, butane it’ssy all over town;

are stangeness and; humor, but not stridency. There is not much ; . ; but ; She done gone to Kansas City .(etc.). beauty,tstocebe sure, neither is beauty irreconcilable with ;do: ase . . , Im gonna tell all you men what you mustn’t

real, even with “hot” jazz. I cite the haunting middle portion , ;

; , . She’ll call Iyou Honey, she’ll you Pie, (Victor). Finally, while painsgit toan’ get the factslawd, . call , , , But shetake letthese things a-loose, on the sly;

of the Coon-Sanders Orchestra’s fox-trot record of Sluefoot Don t never love one woman like she says s he loves you. straight, give me a jazz record with strangeness and humor, or Then she’ll move to Kansas City with wit, or with honest slapstick, and while it revolves, I'll

lump the noise and do without the sweetness. A fat comedian, Al Bernard’s record of St. Louis Blues and Beale Street Blues bouncing downstairs on a banana peel, is worth a thousand _(Brun.) is worth knowing, though I don’t hold with all this tootsie rolls. Therefore I shall holler for such fox-trot records — singer’s devices; white people when singing Negro character as Columbia’s recording of the raucous, ginny voices andthe — songs almost universally become roguish, causing, if the rogufelonious fiddling of Peg Leg Howell and his Gang in Joo Tight __ishness is carried far enough, severe pains in the neck. I seem to

Blues. detect a trace of this cuteness in Frank Crumit’s record (Vic.) of Two more excellent recent hot records, both Brunswick: East the great Civil War song Kingdom Comin’ (with Bohunkus on St. Louis Too-dle-oo, fox-trot, Duke Ellington’s orchestra; and __ the other side), but Crumit is good, for all that. A real bluesZelma O’ Neal, who is only half the size of her voice, with breath- —_ singer, Alberta Hunter, has recently sung Beale Street Blues and

less intensity explaining Varsity Drag. Hear also Red Nichols,a —_ Pinkard’s Sugar to “Fats” Waller’s organ-jazz accompaniment famous trumpeter, in Riverboat Shuffle (Brun.); Ted Lewis in —_—(Vic.). One more vocal record: you may hear Paul Robeson sing Mary Ann and Cobblestones; Waring’s Pennsylvanians in Who’s Old Man River with the Whiteman Concert Orchestra and a Blue Now? backed with Coon-Sanders in Stay out of the South mixed chorus, for twelve inches, in Vic. 35912. The song is too (Vic.); and none other than Whiteman in Mississippi Mud, the |muchcut up, and its unusual range a bit beyond Robeson’s, but

best of his significant warmings-up (Vic.). what a bass, and what a song! Save in the show, with Bledsoe If you will dance to sweet jazz, try Jan Garber’s in] Wish I _and all the fixings, I have not yet heard justice done it. Could Shimmy like my Sister Kate, or the Radiolites in Forever The same applies to Gershwin’s The Man I Love, which is and Ever and Rain or Shine (Col.); or Shilkret’s in Can't Help __ either dragged out with sentiment or knocked down with jazz. Lovin’ that Man and Why Do I Love You (Vic.). But [leave jazz = The best record of The Man I Love which I have heard leans to flat to give Whiteman his due for his absolutely final versions, —_ the sentimental, but is a beautiful piece of work by the Victor in one record, of the sensational Brazilian modinka Ko Ya Yaand _ Salon Orchestra (12 inches). On the other side is an interesting

of the Parade of the Wooden Soldiers (Vic.). new composition called Manhattan Serenade, by Louis Alter. Excellent waltz records, slow enough for dancing teachers, _It is not so turbulent as Manhattan and it is not without traces of are Columbia’s Waltz Cavaliers in Moonlight Lane and After | Gershwin, MacDowell and Kreisler, but it is worth listening to. We Kiss, and Eddie Thomas’s Collegians in twelve inches of — This is arecord to turn on during tea time to wallow in this way; Victor Herbert Waltz Medley and Beautiful Ohio (both Col.). there are the old songs, and there is the sheet music. First, I note A few unusual singers should be mentioned: the powerful, |§ down that after many years the complete score of a musical colored contralto Bessie Brown and her passionate singing of | comedy has been printed; that of Show Boat. The music of this that strange song Chloe (Brun.); Blind Willie Johnson’s vio- —§ magnificent show is almost continuous, and what has been lent, tortured and abysmal shouts and groans and his inspired __ printed separately occupies about a tenth of the 260 pages of guitar in a primitive and frightening Negro religious song __ the score. You will want it, five dollars worth, to keep with The Nobody's Fault but Mine (Col.); Ruth Etting caroling through = Chocolate Soldier. Now, as to the new fox-trots.

her nose in J Ain't Got Nobody (Col.); Ethel Walters in a highly Ballad fox-trots: Mammy is Gone is ballad first, but unusual song—in spite of its title—Home, Cradle of Happi- _—_ danceable. Its lyric, and its heavy minors suggesting the spiriness, in which her voice at the end takes a slur that makes one tual Go Down Moses, will knock ‘em stiff, and they’ Il lay where jump (Col.); Barbecue Bob (Col.) whaling his guitar and singing they fall. In My Bouquet of Memories will draw its salt tears

Motherless Chile Blues, which commences: too. Rising Sun might be adapted for dancing purpose. There is

,I;mistreat ; a tendency toward sweet simple old fashioned tunes:,examples Ef you, gal, Isho’ don’ mean no hawm, ] RineI’m a motherless chile, an’ don’ know right f’um wrong. are Sweet Sue, In the Evening, and The Church Bells are n8

ing for Mary (and they’re ringing the heart out of me), which It is generally pretty hard to make out what the blues singers —_ was written as a joke by three eminent gents under a nom de sing—an exception is Lillian Glinn, a very pleasing contralto, plume, but the public took it seriously, as publics will. (This is a for whom hear All Alone and Blue” (Col.). One of these songs, —_—_ waltz, by the way, and out of place where I’ve put it.)

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JULY «¢ FORUM 1928 Surplus energy: Hello Montreal (think hard and you’ ll know I’m ready for the river, The shivery river, the river that goes what it’s like), Waitin’ for Katy, and That’s My Mammy. Socio- down to the sea

logical note: mammies no longer need be black. Want to drown my trouble, and leave just a bubble, to indiSmooth fast fox-trot: Happy Go Lucky Lane by the writer of cate what used to be me.

Blue River. Made my will, wrote some notes, gonna keep a-walin’ till Cullud fox-trot: Bottomland. my straw hat floats. March: “Roustabouts’ Song” from Rain or Shine. Ready for the river, the shivery river, so get the river ready Other production fox-trots: Imagination, Crazy Rhythm, and for me. Life as a Twosome from Here’s How; You Took Advantage of

Me, Blue Ocean Blues, and Do I Hear You Saying --and about anything else from Present Arms. Best Sellers in Popular Music Waltzes: Moments with You, Little Mother and Dear Little The following list in order of popuarlity as of May 7th (1928) is

Girl. ae furnished by the courtesy of Crown Music Co., New York jobG erman Jazz. judgi ng by the selections from the opera Jonny bers. Although you will not hear a waltz in ten nights at a cabaSpielt Auf, there isn’t any, save a few tricks lifted from our own set, half of the list (marked W) are waltzes.

Spencer Williams. . .The following (copyright 1928 by Villa Ramona (W),Chloe, Together (W), Was it a Dream? (W)

Moret, Inc., reprinted by permission) is Gus Kahn’s chorus to Without La ‘oe TW ugh, Clown, Laugh (W), I Can’t Do You» (W), My the fox-trot song Ready for the River. Neil Moret, whose tune is Ohio Home, ,Beautiful, Mary Ann, Cabiof Dreams , Mary Ann, LittleLittle LogLog Cabin

up to the words, twenty-eight years ago wrote Chloe: (W), There must be a Silver Lining and So Tired.

July ¢ Forum Jazz Is Music George Antheil Jazz is not a method of rhythmically distorting any music buta —_I think that no one will question the fact that jazz has added music capable of development into a serious art. Itcanbetaken a whole encyclopedia of rhythms individual only to itself. The apart and reassembled symphonically and still remain jazz.The — two beats of “Charl!—ston!” is only one of these many exmost common accusation against jazz is that itis not music but amples. An interesting book indeed could be compiled of them, a method; and the jazzists themselves have unwittingly sup- _ to say nothing of real melodic and harmonic developments that ported this statement, apparently trying to imply that their seri- come from jazz itself and not from Debussy or Rimskyous attempts have been the purest and highest of music. Their —_ Korsakoff. own peculiar method, they asserted, was their business and their Melodically it is inevitable that the oftentimes tawdry and choice. This method they explained and again explained. stolen melodies, or melodies of any kind whatsoever (but, mind But viewed without their explanations this music was imme- _—you, melodies, otherwise they would have no sales value) should diately detected to be in the “parade-form”—that is, a stream of develop very special kinks of their own. They could not have melodies which follow one another without meaning, top or bot- | been forced to weave in and along these very individual new tom. Attempts at thematic development only tended to expose — rhythms for all these years without doing so. Be these kinks the complete ignorance of those who tried their hand at it, and _— only four notes in length, they are as inevitably associated with musicians were forced into the view that if jazz were excused as_ = New York or San Francisco as a similar four-note fragment of

only the method, then the music beneath it was nothing. Grieg’s brings the fiords of Norway to mind. Beethoven orgaI must, therefore, from the beginning abandon the assertions _ nized his great symphonies upon just such fragments. from my own camp, I will state a new case. Is jazz really music I must admit that lately jazz has slipped harmonically and instead of a series of melodic and harmonic thefts, ground into | become dangerous. Perhaps this danger can be removed a modern dance rhythm? Let us examine the definition of mu- _‘ through a thorough understanding of it. The whole-tone scale sic. A music, whether that of a race, a nation, or a greatcom- —_— harmonies jowl-to-jowl with blue Negroidian sevenths and poser is composed of very highly individual elements ofrhythm, _ ninths is an old and rather depressing story which has been harmony, and melody. A great composer differs from a great | adequately told in all of the French music of the last decade. race only in that he adds another element—more extended de- _ For instance, when a certain American jazz work in a longer velopment and in general a more sophisticated use of the origi- | form came over to France and the young French composers— nal elements. In other words, a more organic and usually longer — then infatuated with jazz—heard its middle section with its presentation is the serious composer’s gift to his nation orrace. |§ almost pure Debussy accents, they looked at one another in Let us first see whether jazz possesses the first three ele- | dismay. As a result, there is to-day literally not a young com-

ments of this definition: rhythm, melody, and harmony. poser in France writing jazz. 537

1928 JULY e LIFE AND LETTERS But strip away the recent Debussy influence and one finds —_and Russia, have given us great composers. the true harmonic elements that have developed gradually from It will take patience to tear apart the elements of jazz and the earliest Negro music to the present harmonies. This alone stamp and reorganize them with one personality. A good healthy should interest us combined with those harmonies which are _ skepticism will do no harm. Areal reception of jazz can only be often obtained in contemporary jazz by startling rhythmic and _—spaved with an understanding of the elements and difficulties to melodic juxtapositions, which in themselves generate a new ___ be encountered. If jazz is sophisticated and difficult to redis-

color instead of borrowing one. tribute, ours is also a sophisticated and modern age; and our Here you have your three elements. But is this musica mu- _artists will throughout the centuries rise to comprehend the situsic that will not be destroyed should one try to reorganize these — ation. Jazz belongs to America and if it is abandoned everyelements into an edifice more lasting? Or, more simply, is it | where else on earth, still America cannot abandon it. She should

organically capable of producing a great composer? not want to. Jazz is her way out to the future. But until jazz When I was first asked, “Is jazz music?” I was tempted to _finds its way a little more clearly, let us not take it into the conreply “What is music?” I believe that these three words alone __ cert hall. A fair understanding of the situation will give sincere are a sufficient answer. However, the development of a great and daring effort a chance. But the patronizing by business men composer out of jazz is the only really clinching argument. But —_ of cabaret music as though it were a symphonic concert cannot one thing is certain: if one attempts really to organize jazz and _—ihelp but make one suspect that—inasmuch as they must pamake a symphony out of its prime elements, it cannot help but —_tronize native effort—they are trying to make as bright a job of be jazz—but it may also be a symphony. An idealization of any _it as possible. The term “tired business man” seems even to music should be attained by heightening all or any one of its | apply to our musicians, who are glad even temporarily to run

original effects. That will be superjazz. away from their daily grinding out of respectable music, whether The heel of Achilles! Point to Hungary, Spain, and Ireland, _it be from the conductor’s desk, or the music-teacher’s studio. all of them countries like America with a supersophisticated The concert hall has often been the scene of bitter and bloody folksong and folk dance. Throughout the centuries they have conflict. But within the years this must attain a dignity that the not succeeded in disentangling their rhythmic, melodic, and —_ mere serving out of a parade of clever and popular melodies in harmonic elements. They have never produced a composer of __ trick orchestral garb can never attain. Revolution is dignified, the first magnitude. On the contrary, countries with a lesser so- severe, and haughty. Do not fear it, but support it, if you want to phistication in their folksong, such as Germany, France, Italy, clinch the final argument in favor of jazz—the only final and clinching argument—a composer.

July ¢ Life And Letters JAZZ There are few more popular fallacies than the widely spread __ the extraordinary pungency of the Facade recitations came the conception of jazz as an art at once ‘crude, barbaric, and ca- —_ songs of to-day—politely melancholy, humourless, slightly lascophonous’, to mention only a few of the epithets constantly —— civious. Yet this is the music that is described as a ‘return to the applied to it by our more high-brow critics and our more low- —‘ tom-tom’! One sometimes wishes it was. brow judges. This fallacy is perhaps due to the fact that jazz, The point is that jazz has long ago lost the simple gaiety and whatever it may be at the present day, has its origins at leastin sadness of the charming savages to whom it owes its birth, and Negro folk-music, and probably that is why anessentially deca-_ _is now, for the most part, a reflection of the nerves, sex-represdent and over sophisticated art is credited with the crude vigour _ sions, inferiority complexes, and general dreariness of the modand high spirits of its progenitors. To realize the inherent nos- — ern world. The nostalgia of the Negro who wants to go home talgia and civilized melancholy of jazz music one has only to __has given place to the infinitely more weary nostalgia of the compare it with the popular music of an earlier day or of a | cosmopolitan Jew who has no home to go to. The Negro assopurely European tradition such as the marches of Sousa or the __ ciations of jazz have become a formula of expression only, as Catalan sardanas; no piece of classical music could provide a | empty and convenient as any other art formula. greater contrast to the average fox-trot than the splendid Lib- The importance of the Jewish element in jazz cannot be too erty Bell of Sousa or El Vica del Casa of Morera. The curiously — strongly emphasized, and the fact that nine-tenths of the jazz quiet and refined vulgarity of jazz was strongly, though nodoubt __ tunes are written by Jews undoubtedly goes far to account for unconsciously, emphasized by an entertainment devised by the __ the curiously sagging quality (admirably described by Wyndham B.B.C., in which jazz songs of the present day were performed — Lewis as ‘the depressed line’ ) so typical of Jewish art, the alin the same programme as the Victorian songs popularized by —= most masochistic melancholy of the average fox-trot. Were the Harold Scott and Elsa Lanchester, and a selection from the _ passage not too long I should like to quote in connection with Facade of Edith Sitwell and William Walton. Between the de- __ this pp. 110-112 from Blaise Cendrars’s remarkable book lightfully vigorous humour and sentiment of the ‘eighties’ and §Moravagine. Even the outwardly cheerful tunes have a melan-

538

JULY ¢ LIFE AND LETTERS 1928 choly basis: they seem merely an effort to escape from a con- the speaking tone employed in the execution of saxophone passtant depression, reminiscent of Tchaikovsky marching withthe _ sages has its counterpart in other ages and countries, an exact band or riding on a roundabout in a vain attempt to rid himself _ parallel to this particular device being provided by the Japanese of the self-pity which rides on his back like some lachrymose __ method of playing a flute.

Old Man of the Sea. Orchestration and performance apart, though, the best jazz The pleasures of just letting oneself sag are familiar to all, often displays rhythmic and harmonic ingenuities of the greatest and no doubt it is this negative charm, either consciously or interest. The most striking feature of the harmony is its curious unconsciously realized, that makes jazz so acceptable to most —_ resemblance to that of Delius, the least barbaric composer of people of the present day. (There are contributory factors, of | modern times, and though some people may not at first see anycourse, but with these I shall deal later.) There are times when it thing in common between The Sleepy Hills of Tennessee and The seems that even the most important artists of to-day are nega- — First Cuckoo In Spring, \et us say, there is no denying a certain tive in spirit, and it is hardly to be wondered at if this bleak, yet |—_ technical and spiritual similarity which it is of great interest to at the same time subtly alluring, outlook should find its expres- | examine in view of the light it throws on the origins of Jazz.

sion in popular art as well. The somewhat sentimental Negro propaganda of the last few Apart, though, from its psychological qualities per se (and, years has always tried to make out that the folk-music of the of course, its suitability for dancing), jazz has an amazingly |§ American Negro is a purely savage, unspoilt African product. rich store of associations that must not be discounted when we =Amere glance at the savage art of to-day might have sufficed to are considering its popular appeal. Association is nearly always show that no tradition has less force and staying power than a a part of our musical appreciation, but with jazz it is often the —_ barbaric tradition. This is particularly true of folk-music which major part, for it is rarely that we hear a tune without recalling | depends on an aural tradition and has not, like sculpture, the some revue or other, fixed in our minds, perhaps, by the attrac- _ steadying influence of past work actually before its eyes. Percy tions of one of the stars, or by the innocently promiscuous sex- | Grainger, in an extremely interesting pamphlet entitled The appeal of the whole entertainment, and even if the tune recalls § Imprint of Personality on Unwritten Music, has pointed out how no actual production, it conjures up a pleasantly alluring vision —_ the folk-music of Raratonga has been influenced, to a large exof ‘ideal scenes’, slightly tawdry maybe, but none the less at- tent, by the introduction of the harmonium, and there is no doubt

tractive. that a similar influence has taken place in America. It is Hymns Jazz, in fact, is just that sort of bastard product of art and life © Ancient and Modern that is responsible for the richly sentimenthat provides so acceptable a drug to those incapable of really _ tal harmony, both of the Negro spiritual and the music of Delius. coping with either. As with all drug habits, one dare not stop for | This statement may seem strange to those who do not realize fear of the reaction, and it is no rare experience to meet people — that Hymns Ancient and Modern was the first real populariza-

whose lives are so surrounded, bolstered up, and inflated by tion of what is generally known as ‘juicy’ harmony, and that the jazz that they can hardly get through an hour without its col- _— best tunes of, for example, the Reverend John Bacchus Dykes laboration; with no doubt unconscious logic they make up for = must have possessed at the time they were written an extraordithe threadbare quality of their own emotions by drawing onthe _ nary sensual appeal. The reaction of the sentimental and opwarm, capacious reservoir of group-emotion so efficiently pro- pressed Negroes to the rich and unctuous melancholy of the

vided by the American jazz kings. music was, of course, enormously enhanced by the religious If we narrow our view from the social side of jazz to its nostalgia of the words, the oft-repeated desire to escape from purely technical side, we find qualities of so high an order that _ this vale of woe into a better and happier land. it is hardly surprising if many people are inclined to form rather This nostalgia and desire for escape is equally present in the exaggerated hopes of its possible future development. The vir- —_ music of Delius, whose work, though completely and delibertuosity displayed both in the orchestration and performance of _ately irreligious in intention, is, nevertheless, influenced by the jazz is, indeed, little short of amazing, and at a time when the —s more sentimental English church composers, sometimes, as in more serious forms of music seem gradually to be sinking into — the Wanderer’s Song’ and The Splendour Falls, quite flagrantly. a slovenly amateurishness, the thoroughly slick efficiency of __ It is true, of course, that Delius himself may have been slightly popular music cannot be too highly praised. It is no exaggera- _— influenced by Negro singing during his early days in Florida, tion to say that if one wants a really perfect ensemble, whether _ but as his individual harmonic style did not develop until much in dancing, singing or orchestral playing, one should gotosuch _later, and as his tunes and rhythms appear to be completely an entertainment as Blackbirds, rather than to the Ballet, the ©§ unwayed by Negro music, it is only logical to suppose that these

Opera or the Queen’s Hall. harmonic resemblances are due to a common influence. The The orchestration, though at times it has atendency toover- —_ texts chosen by Delius, the hymn writers and the jazz compos-

emphasize the more grotesque timbres, is for the most partex- ers have an extraordinary emotional similarity. “There is a ecuted with the greatest dexterity and charm, and is, perhaps, —_ blessed home beyond this vale of woe’, Delius’s setting of Fiona

the most intrinsically pleasing instrumental sound since the |§ Macleod’s Hy Brasil, and Geo. Meyer’s Way Down South are Haydn orchestra. The piano writing, in particular, is of the ut- _—_ alll an expression of the same nostalgic melancholy which, one most brilliance, and marks the greatest advance in piano tech- _ suspects, is more of a consolation to the composers than would nique since Albeniz. Like many so-called innovations in jazz, _ be the unexpected realization of their dreams.

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1928 AUGUST 11 ¢ THE LITERARY DIGEST An attempt is made by jazz composers to palliate this dead- |= more depressing mannerisms of jazz with all the formlessness ening nostalgia by a somewhat excessive use of rhythmic de- _ of the nineteenth-century fantasia. The nineteenth century has, vices which rarely succeed, however, in spite of their ingenuity | as a matter of fact, had very much more influence on jazz than in disguising the essentially four-square metre of the tunes. These —_is generally supposed; both technically and spiritually the foxrhythmic devices, charming though they may be, are by no __trot is, to a great extent, the somewhat common and profligate means as recent as is generally supposed, nor, with the possible — child of the Chopin mazurka and the Tchaikovsky valse, and exception of the Charleston, are they exclusively of Negroid can no more be considered the foundation of a new tradition origin. Putting aside the syncopations of Schumann and ___ than the building in Regent Street. Tchaikovsky, examples of jazz rhythm can be found as far back There seems to be a slight tendency to-day amongst comas the English composers of the Henry VII period (the works of _ posers of all countries to drop their exaggeratedly national charEdmund Turges being particularly interesting in this respect), acteristics and to write in a more or less stereotyped jazz style. and there is a charming example of ragtime in Dibdin’s The — Depressing as the adoption of a jazz formula by all countries

Ephesian Matron or A Widow's Tears. may sound, it would at least supply what has been lacking in The chief interest of jazz rhythms lies in their applicationto music for the last hundred years—an international standard of the setting of words, and although jazz settings have by nomeans _ criticism.

the flexibility or subtlety of the early seventeenth-century airs, Unfortunately, the European essays in jazz have been disapfor example, there is no denying their lightness and ingenuity, pointing. The French have too keen a sense of satire to approach and it is to be hoped that their influence may free the setting of it with sufficient seriousness, while, on the other hand, the GerEnglish words from the somewhat lumbering rhythm of the — mans have approached it with a kind of earnest depravity and German lied. English words demand for their successful musi- — sense of sin that is not without its humorous side. Krenek’s cal treatment an infinitely more varied, and syncopated rhythm Johnny Spielt Auf, the principle example of Teutonic jazz, may that is to be found in the nineteenth-century romantics, andthe | seem daring to those whose previous standards have been a best jazz songs of to-day are, in fact, nearer in their methods to | Munich cafe-band ploughing through a ‘shimmy-fox’, but its the late fifteenth-century composers than any music since. Jt —_ attempts to rival the school of Gershwin are singularly inept, has been unfortunate that those composers who have sought _and the main body of the work is as turgid and vulgar as anyinspiration in jazz have not only made use of its exhilarating thing that has come out of Germany for some years. The failure rhythmic qualities, but have incorporated also the more obvi- —_— of composers to produce jazz works of any importance or proous harmonic clichés, the circumscribed form and the flat and _fundity is in reality due to the fact that jazz is itself an essenuninspired melodic line that not even the utmost arabesque can _ tially decadent and derived art—at its best an ironic comment save from deadness. There have naturally been exceptions, and = on Romanticism; at its worst a sentimental expression of a negacertain sections of Stravinsky’s Les Noces and Walton’s Ports- _‘ tive emotion—it is worst a sentimental expression of a negative mouth Point show a most interesting use of jazz rhythms adapted § emotion—it is neither a vigorous nor an essentially new form to a purely individual melodic and harmonic basis; but for the of music, and any attempt to use it as a folk-tradition on which most part any attempt to produce ‘symphonic jazz’ has resulted —_ to form a style is about as intelligent as using plaster swags and

in some such mélange as the Rhapsody in Blue, combining the | ornamental ironwork for the foundation of a cathedral.

August 25 ¢ Musical America JAZZ GETS A NATIONAL TWIST by Irving Weill (Garmisch, Bavaria) A German typewriter (meaning, of course, | But the music critic on a holiday is not to be held too strictly to the machine and not the more or less charming bubikopfed young —_ account; and, besides, it has seemed to be far more interesting,

women who rattle its keys) is as distracting as the exclamatory |§ and more fun to observe the curious foreign evolution of scenery of the Bavarian Alps hereabouts. Allowing fora key- | America’s greatest gift to the Old World than to listen to Igor board full of umlauts, and Zs and Ys, as well as for aninhibitive | Stravinsky conducting his Sacre du Printemps in Paris, or 8,000-foot wall of rock looking like an Urban backdrop—al- —- Vincenzo Bellezza conducting Madama Butterfly in London, lowing for these and perhaps still other distractions, one never- _ or Fritz Busch conducting anything whatever in Dresden or— theless can think coherently enough to realize that these two _fill out the alternatives for yourself, you can’t go far wrong. months since leaving New York have become chiefly acompen- _ Pop into almost any place of any consequence over here and,

dium of European jazz. musically, you will hear one or another of the lads you have

That doubtless is a dolorous confession for the thing calleda |= known in New York doing much the same thing over again— music critic to make, and its effect on his supposed mental equip- —_ and in quite the well known old way. But jazz is different. Also,

ment may at least be slightly gauged by the sweetly confused § and how! (If that pleasant little bit of slang isn’t altogether outapproach we appear to be making toward what is on our mind. —§moded on Broadway now).

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AUGUST 25 ¢ MUSICAL AMERICA 1928 For something has happened to jazz in Europe in the last due to the fact that Mr. Tiller of London has a dozen and a half of couple of years. It is no longer a ludicrous imitation of the thing —_ his young prancers in every revue in Paris. as we know it in America. You can, of course, find that sort here

and there but very largely it has ceased to be a mere imitation. A Find among Comedians From having been something exotic which the Frenchman and the Briton and the German indiscriminately got pretty wild about There ought to be a digression for a moment to permit a few

and then tried his own hand at, it is now by way of being ab- words about this lad, Chevalier, for it seems inevitable that sorbed, of getting a genuine national stamp, at least in France — Florenz Ziegfeld or Charles Dillingham or someone will shortly and Germany. The animal still speaks in the same rhythmic ac- _ hear about him and incorporate him with Broadway. Indeed, on cents but the inflection has changed. something Frenchhas slyly _—_dif (as that piquant Gallic flaneur, Hollister Noble, would say)

crept into the syncopated melody that, in Paris, makes it ex- _ that the American movie world has already found him good ceedingly French; whilst in Germany they now often enough — enough for a rather fabulous offer beckoning him to Hollywood.

make it as German as Ach, du lieber Augustin. But he is too good for the movies and it is unlikely, once in Of course when you know the French or the Germans at all | America, that he himself will be quite satisfied with them alone. well, you realize that their absorption of jazz for theirown pur- _—-For he has an excellent voice and sings a song as though it were poses was bound to happen. At heart, the Frenchman really ab- _—a delightful improvisation. And his patter is just as spontane-

hors the exotic; at best it only tickles him. And when it becomes _ous. Also, he is an actor, with a delicious sense of humorous threatening he simply gathers it in, puts a very high and very _— effect and an imperturbable bonhomie that no audience can restiff and very shiny collar on it, fits it out with yellow gloves, a sist. very tight coat and a very thin walking stick and, presto, it 1s as

French, in spite of its name, as an omelette Richmonde. And U.S.A. Jazz Can Be Found your German, at heart, and often enough on the sleeve as well, abhors the exotic even more; at best it makes himenvious. And | However, to get back to something like the main idea of these

when to him it likewise becomes threatening, he goes at the | jazz researches, Chevalier’s account of I Gotta Get a Girl was

thing with that tuchtichkeit for which he is famous. not only fetching in itself, but was an excellent example of what is pretty generally to be observed about the American brand of

Oh, Oh, Oh, Ah, Ah, Ah jazz as now practiced in Paris. For, aside from the fact that the French are beginning to manufacture genuine French jazz, they And so, in a way, we were not so tremendously surprised when, _have also finally caught the trick of making the U.S.A. sort sound in Paris some weeks ago, and later in Stuttgart, in Munich and _ genuinely Whitemanesque. You have doubtless heard how much

even in such smaller places as Nuremberg and Wurzburg (and of a joke a French jazz band is, but it isn’t so any longer. They even right here in this lovely little town of the Bavarian Alpine can pump the stuff at you now so well that if, for instance, you country)—we were not altogether surprised when we discov- _ should taxi quickly from the Cafe Anglais to the Ambassadeurs ered the new national twist that had been given to jazz over and compare the Parisian jazzists of the one with Waring’s Penn-

here. sylvanians at the other, you wouldn’t want to go back to the We were inveigled by it first one evening at the Casino de — Anglais and throw things. Paris where the revue (Les ailes de Paris) really had some funny But here in Germany it is rather different, so far as reproducmoments as well as the customary pneumonia-immune ladies _ing the American article is concerned. Very likely that is because of the chorus. The thing popped at us in the form of a perfectly = American jazz in Germany is still a kind of recalcitrant waltz. senseless, but fetching little affair with the profound title of Oh/ Doubtless that is one of the numerous reasons spurring them Oh! Oh! Ah! Ah! Ah!, for which Jose Padilla, the Parisian equiva- —__ on to fabricate a true German substitute. This latter has now lent of Vincent Youmans and Zez Confrey (but scarcely that become something recognizably indigenous. Moreover, it has good) was responsible. The rhythm was the old 4/4 ofthe Ameri- _its own attractions. Acouple of engaging examples of the thing can fox trot, but the syncopated melody winking at you above _ have swept over the country, from Berlin southward. They have the rhythm was as French as the once-famous pre-war Viens _ penetrated even this fastness of ancient Bavarian folk song poupoule. Moreover, the syncopation was given apeculiarturn _— where the schuplattl, or stamping country dance still very sucof rubato that cleverly emphasized the lilt of the air, touched off cessfully resists the invasion of the foxtrot. You hear these two

its provocative effect. German jazz affairs every time you stop somewhere in the counThe whole matter was all the more apparent when, shortly _try round about for afternoon kaffee, or, if you prefer, a tall one afterward, the particular star of the show, acomely youngcom- — of Lowenbrau. bination of, say, George M. Cohan and Willie Collier, named

Maurice Chevalier, came along and sang that unmistakable bit Approachin g the Mock-Sentimental

of American jazz, I Gotta Get a Girl. (He very nearly sang it in English, too—still recognizable as “I goat tear gait ay geerl.”) | One of these German jazz songs (for they are also sung, ad lib— “Geerl,” by the way, is now a perfectly acclimated French word, —_ indeed, may be sung, ad lib, in Germany) is a lively bit called

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1928 AUGUST ¢ FORUM Benjamin, ich hab nichts anzuziehn. One may perhaps translate —§ cocted German variety—still has the effect of the recalcitrant itas “Benny, dear, I haven’t a thing to wear”—that being aboutas ——_ waltz. For very nearly every German Jazz band we have heard

near as we seem to be able to come toward maintaining therhyme. _is only half what it seems. If, for instance, it happens to consist The air and orchestration (the latter being arranged for anything of, say, five men—pianist, violinist, banjoist, saxophonist and from a fiddle and a couple of zithers to what have you) are the = traps—the last three will suddenly put down or turn away from brain child of Jaro Benes. He seems to be half Czechoslavakian _ their instruments, the traps will pick up a second fiddle, the and half Hungarian, but the Germans hail him as theirown. And _ banjoist a cello and the sax a clarinet (indeed, anything may his song proves it well enough. For, with the time changed, the —_ happen), and all five will then break out in a rash of Mozart or melody could successfully masquerade as one of the old /dndler. | Beethoven. But mostly it will be Johann Strauss, with a sensual The effect in jazz rhythm, with a trap drummer getting abitexcited — tear squeezed from every bar.

on his job, is something very like the flavor of that spicy but Of course, you can’t dance to Mozart or Beethoven—not on essentially Teutonic cheese-melange known as Liptauer.Alitreof this side of the ocean, at any rate—but, then, the Germans don’t

beer, of course, always goes with it. mind these interludes for sentimental refreshment. As a fact, The other piece of now prevalent German jazz (and it they really expect them. We have heard, for instance, a staid wouldn’t be astonishing if either or both were to find their way | enough looking hausfrau of indeterminable age, ask a jazz band to New York, either by pirate craft or as regular copyrightcargo) for a potpourri from Madame Butterfly between dance numbers.

is a nonsense-weight affair out of a Berlin revue. It bears the = Puccini, for obvious enough reasons, is enshrined right up frothy title, Ich reis dir eine Wimper rausund stech dich damit among the national musical gods in Germany. tod. That, as Broadway might relish it would run, “I'll nip an German jazz bands are thus, as we have said, only half what eyelash from your eye and stab you with it till you die.” Thisis | they seem. But that is why they play their own newly-created the nearest to anything approaching the mock-sentimental we |= German jazz as well as they do. The German melody in it is like have discovered since the beginning of oursummerinGermany. __ the scent of the quarry to the pack. They immediately recognize For the mock-sentimental is scarcely in the Germans’ line; they |= what they know something about, and they are after it with

revere sentimentality too much—yes, even in the year 1928. spirit. But the American article they still regard with distaste. It is for that reason that ordinary jazz—not the newly con- — The French, on the other hand,have amusedly overcome prejudice in the matter.

August ¢ Forum JAZZ IS NOT MUSIC—A reply to George Antheil in the July Forum by Sigmund Spaeth Jazz is not a form of music. It is a treatment applied to music, _and Strauss, who are still living, this has actually happened to and, incidentally, to all the other arts, and to modern life in gen- _alll the composers mentioned—all of them arch-heretics in their eral. The jazz treatment, in brief, is a distortion of the conven- _—_ day.

tional, a revolt against tradition, a deliberate twisting of estab- If jazz effects are recognized as mere distortions of the conlished formulas. As such, it is thoroughly characteristic of the —_ ventional, it is easy to see that there is no such things as jazz per

civilization of to-day. se, but that all music may be subjected to a jazz treatment. The It is human nature to rebel against orthodoxy, particularly | conventions of music deal chiefly with rhythm, melody, har-

when the underlying reasons for its laws and forms have been _— mony, and tonal color. Jazz may therefore be applied in any of forgotten. All through the history of the world there have been _ those directions. The distortion of regular rhythm (syncopation climaxes of rebellion in every phase of life and art—rebellion _or “rag time’”’) is the most familiar manifestation of jazz in modern

against an established aristocracy, rebellion against political | popular music. But this is only one phase of that rebellious tyranny, rebellion against traditional ethics, rebellion against _ activity. The conventional outlines of melody may be distorted, the formalism of literature, painting, sculpture, architecture,and _as they are in the incoherent, helter-skelter jumps to unrelated

music. intervals made by our hypocritical ultramodernists. Orthodox Every rebel in art has “jazzed” the formulas of his predeces- _—_ harmony may be distorted, as it has been all the way from Debussy

sors. In fact, “jazz” is a verb rather than a noun. Beethoven, _ to Schoenberg, with varying effect. As for tonal coloring, its Schumann, Chopin, Wagner, Strauss, Debussy, and Stravinsky _ possibilities of caricature and burlesque have been the mainall represent a jazzing of musical conventions, for they all, in _ stay of the jazz band. Nobody knows who first hung a derby hat some degree, distorted what before them had been accepted as __ over the end of a trombone, but certainly it looks better there conventionally correct. If their revolt proved constructive, their than anywhere else. The sound of muted brass thus produced novel ideas became traditional, and served as established for- | has become a recognized necessity in the instrumentation of mulas for the next generation. With the exception of Stravinsky | modern orchestral music of the most serious type. Jazz instru-

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AUGUST ¢ FORUM 1928 mentation is already a commonplace on the concert stage and = absolute music yet composed by a native American. If it has a the search for new and strange noise makers still goes on. weakness, it is in the orchestration, which is Gershwin’s own. In Beethoven definitely jazzes the great choral melody of his _at least two places his climaxes fail to come off, simply because “Ninth Symphony” when he breaks it up into askipping rhythm _he is not sufficiently familiar with the resources of the symand hands it over to a combination of trumpets, bassoons, tri- | phony orchestra. The basic musical ideas, however, sparkle with angle, and cymbals. In fact, the whole conception of that great individual genius and the jazz treatment is always legitimate. last movement is jazzy in the extreme, with the kettledrumsinter- | One almost wishes that the composer had completely thrown rupting the repeated efforts of other instruments to start asatis- off the burden of the Liszt tradition, particularly in the Finale, factory melody and the final entrance of soloists and chorus to —_ which is not quite up to the first two movements. put a stop to the orchestral bickering. Schumann was fond of A mere jazz treatment of music already composed in some

slow syncopation and cross rhythms, as was his disciple, | other form, such as is now common with every conceivable Brahms. Chopin delighted to ornament his melodies with all kinds —_ classic and near-classic, cannot possibly create the feeling of

of frills, and the tunes themselves have proved a treasure to —_ permanence. Neither can the commonplace, banal melodies of eclectic popular composers. Incidentally, he ends one of his _ the average popular composer, no matter how skillfully treated, Preludes with a distinct blue chord, unresolved. Debussy’s |= make any more than a transient impression. Jazz remains a method whole-tone scale was a jazzing of the conventional progression, of arranging (or disarranging) music, not a form of composition. and the resultant harmonies (technically chords of the ninth) The question then arises whether the jazz method of treating now figure prominently in our popular music, from “Moonlight — musical materials is likely to have any permanent effect upon the on the Ganges” to the “Rhapsody in Blue.” The “Golliwog’s —_ art. The final answer to that question can be given only by Cake Walk” is an honest attempt at jazzing melody andrhythm __ posterity. The law of evolution has functioned consistently in as well as harmony, apologetically included in a “Childrens’ music, and mankind has somehow grown accustomed to deCorner,” Richard Strauss cleverly makes use of the most outra- —_— pending on the survival of the fittest. Thus far it has worked geous distortions in order to emphasize, by contrast, his simple — with surprising fidelity, and the chances are that it will go right and often banal melodies. “Til Eulenspiegel” is aclassic of jazz = on working. This means that if the revolt of jazz is in any sense treatment applied to one of the jazziest of characters in music. constructive, instead of merely destructive, it will leave its mark The jazz treatment, therefore, is by no means confined tothe — upon the music of the future. Beethoven’s innovations became so-called jazz composers. Nor is it limited to the field of music. traditions because they were fundamentally sound. Wagner’s The impressionists, post-impressionists, pointillists, cubists, and revolutionary music drama triumphed overwhelmingly because futurists have all taken their fling at the conventional methods _it had qualities far in advance of the conventional “grand opof painting. We have had strange, formless pieces of sculpture —_ era.”” Debussy has already become orthodox, and the world is that jazzed every tradition of the human body. Architecture rapidly adapting itself to the far more severe dissonances of his proudly displays its monstrosities, some utilitarian,some merely successors. perverse. Gertrude Stein and the vers librists have their unor- The weaker elements of the jazz method are gradually disapthodox way with the conventions of literature. Even naturehas = pearing, which makes it perhaps a question whether even the occasionally expressed herself in the jazz manner, particularly in | stronger elements will survive. The monotony of the foxtrot

the distortions of the western canyons of America. rhythm has become distinctly tiresome, and relief is constantly Jazz, then, has never in itself been music, and perhaps never —_ sought in all directions, even that of the old-fashioned waltz, the

will be, but simply a method of treating the material ofmusicor tango, and the square dance. But this is a restless age, and for any other art. The popular composers have only inafew cases _ physical reasons the foxtrot will be hard to kill. invented their melodies, generally borrowing this essential foun- Certainly the day of merely noisy jazz is already over. There dation and then “jazzing it up.” The real artists of jazz in the | was a time when this treatment implied merely a raucous and popular field have been the arrangers and masters of orchestra- _—inarticulate shouting of hoarse-throated instruments, with each tion—men like Ferdie Grofé, Bodenwald Lampe, Domenico __ player trying to outdo his fellows in fantastic cacophony. The Savino, and Frank Black. The one great creative genius of jazz _— pianist pounded out the fundamental rhythm, with a suggestion thus far is George Gershwin. His Rhapsody in Blue wasepoch- __ of tune, to which the others added their indiscriminate variamaking, for it showed that the jazz treatment could be appliedin _ tions other ways than for the mere complication of dance music. He Paul Whiteman changed all that when he insisted that jazz used every type of musical distortion—rhythmic, melodic, and musicians must read their music from regular parts and play the harmonic—and the unconventional tone colors were supplied same piece twice in the same way. Under his baton—as well as by Grofé, who did the jazz orchestration. But the whole thing —_ those of Lopez, Bernie, Golden, Olsen, and others—there develrested upon a foundation of honest invention and individual oped. a “sweet jazz,” which produced soft, dreamy, subtly exotic self-expression. The Rhapsody in Blue, therefore, is musicrather effects, often presenting real beauty of tonal coloring. The old, than jazz, and thus occupies a niche ofits ownin Americantonal _ raucous noises, the jugglings, gesturings, and absurd posings,

art. are now almost forgotten, and a good jazz band has become on Gershwin’s “Concerto in F,” for piano and symphony or- __ the whole a serious and dignified assemblage. Such musicians chestra, is even more significant. It is perhaps the best piece of | as Maurice Ravel, Stravinsky, and Koussewitzky have gone on

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1928 SEPTEMBER ¢ THE BRITISH MUSICIAN record as saying that the rhythmic patterns and instrumental Jazz, then, is not yet music, but thus far only a method of colorings of American jazz constitute our most significant con- _— distorting music, with its bad effects, perhaps, still overbalanctribution to musical literature, and they are probably right, sim- —_ing its good. But, like everything revolutionary, it may in time ply because America has contributed nothing else that was not _ prove its solid foundation and emerge with a real contribution to purely imitative or completely commonplace. (This, of course, the permanent materials of music. Meanwhile its influence will does not include the Negro folk music, nor that of the Indian, — continue to be considered chiefly destructive. If the jazz ele-

neither of which properly belongs to us.) ments ever become a part of recognized music, as is quite posBut even Messrs. Ravel, Stravinsky, and Koussevitzky would _ sible, they will enter into it so subtly and imperceptibly as to not go so far as to call jazz music. They recognize its effect upon | seem no longer a distortion but a normal expression of estabthe established formulas of the art, and they recognize also the _ lished orthodoxy. In that case, even as now, it will be impossible characteristically American spirit of this treatment. But musicis to say definitely, “This is jazz, and this, on the other hand, is the organization of sound toward beauty, and thus far jazz has = music.” For the jazz will remain a treatment rather than an elemerely distorted the organizing factors of rhythm, melody, har- = ment, even when disguised by the veneer of respectability, and mony, and tone color. Whether these distortions have produced _against its on-slaughts the mighty fortresses of Bach, Beethoven, or will produce something that adds to the permanent beauty of | and Brahms are fairly sure to stand impregnable. music, time alone can tell.

September ¢ The British Musician A SYNCOPATED APOLOGY (Part I) by Neville D'esterre The director of a famous band has told us lately all about his | twenty years or more. The dull fellow! We can picture him in our conversion to the ways of truth. For many years he was groping —__ minds, as with scratching pen he creates his lucubrations, girt around

and floundering in the darkness of classicism; but one day a _— with medieval silence at the dead of night, hopelessly out of touch sudden noise descended upon him, and at the sound of it his | with supper-clubs, and all else that brings home to us the tremensoul was bathed in light. From that day he has never turned his —_—_dous stir and purpose of life. We can imagine him in the light of day, back, but marched breast-forward and he is now supreme among — when honest folk are abed, still invironed with his monachal appur-

the exponents of Jazz. tenances, and grubbing about in the depths of Grove’s Dictionary Having witnessed, in the picture theatres, the conversion of to discover an excuse for classical music. Now, you can go right innumerable heroes from the ways of darkness and penury tothose — through Grove’s Dictionary from A to Z, and you will not find a line

of light and expensive suites in the best hotels, I am disposed to | of Attaboy in the whole work; and if there are any swear-words

treat these human documents with the greatest respect. Though there, such as every well-bred young lady uses to express her obsessed, myself, with the paltry things of the mind, I refrain from feelings, that are all translated into Italian, so that only the Fascists greeting with light-hearted jest the great thoughts which emanate can understand them. The compilers of this Dictionary even disfrom the stunt-projector. Without the stimulus of stunt where should _ play a prejudice against dashes and asterisks; and when they diswe be? Pouring over newspapers without headlines; walking on agree with anybody, they go to great pains to explain why they do our feet instead of hurling ourselves across the country in motor- _SO, instead of just firing at that person a volley of abusive epithets. cars; fingering keyboards instead of pressing buttons; going to _—- But to criticize Grove is not our game. Suffice it to say that no selfchurch instead of switching off the lights and talking to Mary Queen —_—‘ respecting stunter would be seen, even in a state of sobriety, in the

of Scots. In a stuntless world we might even be driven by sheer | company of such a publication.

ennui to read Wordsworth and listen to Bach! Faint echoes of Well, that is the sort of stuff this musical critic studies; and it ancient fatuities might reach our ears, and we might go about telling leads him to pronounce the most abominable errors. He declares, one another that ‘a simple maiden in her flower is worthahundred _ for instance, that music can never be permanently interesting to coats of arms,’ quite forgetting that all the choicest fragrance of an intelligent listener, unless it bears plain evidence of being the field and forest could be bought at a shilling a bottle from the | Outcome, directly or indirectly, of habits of profound and ordered

nearest chemist, and that a hundred coats of arms would costa thought. He says also that the great bulk of jazz music bears no hundred guineas in license fees alone. It will be manifest toevery such evidence, and is hopelessly uninteresting in consequence. schoolboy (though less clear, perhaps, to his befogged olders) that The error lies, not in the terms of these statements, but in their the stunt is the very embodiment of common-sense, and that there implications: in the supposition, briefly, that there is any particuis more pure wisdom in the voice of the klaxon, shrieking through —_ lar good in profound and ordered thought. The average stuntthe silence of the night, than in all your philosophies from the age of _ projector seldom, if ever, think profoundly, or arranges his thoughts

Plato to the age of Pip, Squeak and Wilfred. in any especial order. On the contrary, he just lets them rip; and We may give our attention now to a certain musical critic, who _—‘ that saves him no end of trouble. Unless forcibly restrained (as,

has been writing essays, treatises, and articles about music for for example, by antiquated laws) he never fails to obey the clarion

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OCTOBER ¢ THE BRITISH MUSICIAN 1928 call of caprice. And he proves to us, not so much by preceptasby thought and feeling. But of course it is! And what could be more example, that the really serious things of life are those which —_ desirable? How can anybody make a business of pleasure withprovide the most immediate gratification; this being, indeed, the —_ out first becoming thoroughly demoralized? How can youth and

criterion by which is estimated the material importance or __ beauty turn their backs on duty while their systems are yet poiunimportance of everything which we say or do. The otherwise —_ soned by the virus of morality? If the choirmaster had told us that attractive personality of Nelson is disfigured, as we all know, by —_ jazz gave him a headache, or prevented him from enjoying his his incurable addiction to a morbid craze called duty; and we find — cigar, we could have treated his plea with some respect. But this this heroic figure constantly abandoning the cosmeticised pres- _ talk about the demoralizing music of the jungle—what is it, but a ence of Emma Hamilton, in order to indulge this peculiar vice. The _ first-class advertisement for Symphonic Syncopation, for which

only excuse for Nelson is, that in his time a widespread belief the mass-producers across the water ought to be duly thankful? existed (due to the abysmal ignorance of the period) thata man _—- For the caveman and the squaw, whether they are shuffling across ought to do his duty, no matter how uncomfortable he felt about _ the floor of a Palais de danse, or dining on caviar and champagne it. Any stunt-projector, male or female, can tell you how utterly —_—in the middle of the night, or, with a sterner grip of life’s tremen-

ridiculous this notion is. As Wilde said, at the dawn of the stunt | dous purpose, doing their seventy miles an hour along the public age, duty is something which we expect others to perform. Let —_ highway, what can be more appropriate than to have the jungle all

them perform it, then: that is plain sense. around them, and to hear incessantly in their ears, or echoing in Clearly the musical critic is cutting no ice, whenhe suggests _ their thoughts, the bark of the drum, the snarl of the saxophone that jazz is defective, as music, because it is unintelligent. That —_ and the fierce growl of the grand piano?

is precisely the virtue of jazz, as anybody versed in the new But yet another apologist for the classics steps out into the philosophy can tell you. For, what is the intelligence? Anincu- _ limelight. And this one tells us that jazz is nothing but a bundle of bus, a parasite upon the human system, an interloper upon the —_— conjuring tricks, and that if you did away with the conjuring tricks,

parquet floor of life. And if you allow this thing todevelop and _ there would be nothing left but thin melodies and commonplace take hold of you, you may find yourself doing your duty before harmonies, as stale as ditchwater. In short, the same story over you know where you are. The obvious way to avoid such a _again. Let us consider it through the medium of an analogy. Take disaster is just to stifle the intelligence, to smoke or gas itoutof the National Gallery, now, a building suitable in every way for dancthe system. If you never order your thoughts coherently, you _ing, and for supper parties, but retained, through the improvident can live the whole of your life in a state of inbecilic self-satisfac- stupidity of our ancestors, for the exhibition of pictures. And what

tion; and then, of course, you never need bother your head _ pictures! There are no captions to tell you what the people are about anything. You reach, in that case, what Meredith called doing, and the figures never move and the trees never wave— ‘that highest pinnacle of wisdom, whence we can see that the _ clearly one-man jobs, the whole lot of them. How can you expect world is well designed,’ by which he meant a fortieth story case- any rational person to spend an afternoon looking at them, with ment overlooking Central Park, New York, where the flappers _ half a dozen up-to-date picture shows within a radius of five hunride their ponies in the morning, and so keep themselves fit to | dred yards of the place? You stare at two brothers by Reynolds, tackle the serious business of the thé dansant and the cabaret. and they just stare back at you. For all the excitement you are likely Inspired, perhaps, by this musical critic, there presents him- _ to discover, you might just as well be looking at a lamp-post. And, self next to our notice a choirmaster from the North of England, _ then, all this highbrow talk about Bellini’s Madonna! . .. You should

who has lately averred that jazz music has a deteriorating effect just see Gloria Swanson rolling her eyes! And for action, a silly upon the moral sense of the young people, who allow themselves _ thing of aclergyman called Peter Martyr being murdered, without to become immersed in its characteristic sentiment. Here we are any sequel whatever—no detective, no penitentiary, no trail at the again—another flagrant instance of petitio principii! Let us see | Old Bailey—nothing! Well, just in the same way you can listen to how the choirmaster pursues his argument. Jazz, he says, is at | Bachor Haydn all day long without being conscious of any excitebottom the music of savages, and to cultivate a taste for jazzisto | ment, whereas jazz music is simply full of it—excitement the whole turn traitor to culture, and to all that culture stands for, and to _ time, nothing but excitement. Musical conjuring tricks! In terms of revert atavistically to a barbarous standard. You produce, he says, _ sound the very ideal towards which massed humanity is shaping this non-moral music in an atmosphere of garish material luxury, _ its course, the ‘hors d’ oeuvre before the feast. The feast, we under-

calculated in itself to soften the moral fibre; and the inevitable _ stand is likely to take the form of toxic gas bombs—a supremely result is utter demoralization, and a descent toalower standard of _ thrilling experience.

October ¢ The British Musician A SYNCOPATED APOLOGY (Part II) Finally, our attention is drawn to a writer of books, who dis- _is whistling to-day will be forgotten in twelve months’ time, cusses the matter in this wise. The peculiar thing, he says, about —_ while in ten years’ time nobody will remember that itexisted.In popular music (meaning jazz) is that, although itis always with —_ contrast with this peculiarity he points out that classical music us, it is always new; and that the music which every errand boy _is being regularly performed to-day, which was composed more

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1928 } OCTOBER ¢ THE BRITISH MUSICIAN than two hundred years ago. But what does this prove? It just ing but school text-books, or, as we might aptly term them, schoolproves that the classicists are two hundred years out of date. It | master-pieces. Take Goethe’s Faust, for example. Wherever Gerjust proves that their pedantry is only matched by the unre- _—man is taught this essay in dramatic versification figures in the

lieved dullness of their wits. Novelty is the very salt of life. If standard curriculum, and is extensively employed for the pureach successive year is to be merely a repetition of the last, one pose of familiarizing the pupil with German grammatical conmight just as well be dead and buried, or, at any rate, working for struction. The words:

a livelihood. And, in any case, if you come to study jazz, you will Das Unbeschreibliche

find that it is produced on an organized carry-over system, so ae

; . ; Das Ewig-Weibliche ; ; Zieht uns hinan

that the new stunts of this season become the old stunts of next Hier ist . gethan;

season, and so on. Jazz, in fact, is not a multitude of separate . ; works, as is commonly supposed, but an endless series of varia-

tions, by a multitude of separate composers, on one original —§ were written only to be parsed. And yet more composers of theme. So there you are again. The alleged deficiency is afirst- | music have been inspired by this work than by any other:

class virtue all the time. Schubert, Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner, Gounod, Boito—this name is

Thus far the overwhelming case for Symphonic Syncopation —_ legion. Another writer of educational text-books, Schiller, prohas been expressed in general terms. It behooves the writernow —_ vided Beethoven with inspiration. Mendelssohn, Nicolai, to particularize. First, however, let us clear the airalittle more. | Sullivan, Tchaikovsky, and several others fell back upon The point which we are striving to establish is this: that jazz, far | Shakespeare, yet another producer of scholastic publications. from being an inferior species of music, is in reality the very | Schumann cultivated Byron, who falls into the same category. highest, noblest, and most significant form that the genius of | More recently Richard Strauss, casting aside all disguise, has man has ever divised. This can be demonstrated by means of | composed music based upon Sophocles, a tragedian as notorithe simplest and most effective of tests—the dollar sign. Which __ ous in the classroom as he is unknown in the newspaper office. does it pay the better to create, music in the ‘form of jazz, or | When we consider the matter in this light, it is a wonder to us music in the form of symphonies and sonatas? Which type of __ that none of these composers ever found inspiration in Hamblin art, diligently pursued, holds out the higher reward to the pro- = Smith’s arithmetic, or Henri Bue’s French Grammar. (But perducer in the shape of something really desirable—say, the suite haps they did, and passed off the results as abstract music.) of rooms, already mentioned, at the most expensive hotel? Their And there is another thing, too, in this connection, that strikes innate modesty, or some other reason less obvious, prevents us _us with particular force—I mean the amazing progress of socifrom knowing familiarly the names of those who shower the __ ety in the short space of a hundred years. This writer of schoolblessings of Symphonic syncopation upon an enchanted world; —_ books, Lord Byron, who supplied Schumann with some of his but how do Senor de Falla and Professor Dohnanyi compare _ inspiration, spoke of the schoolmiss of his own day as smelling with any two of them in the vital matter of boodle? Adelicate and —_ of bread and butter. What wonderful advancement is shown by personal question; but there can be no doubt about the answer __ the modern schoolmiss, who lurches across the dancing-room, to it. The jazz merchants have it all along the line. If jazz music _fairly reeking of gin-sling! When we recollect that most of the were not the best, it could not command the best prices; thatis | classical music was composed in the days when people actually a first principle of political economy. Even if all the powerful —_ ate bread and butter, without so much as sprinkling it with cayreasons, deducible from the foregoing arguments, were to fail |§ enne pepper, we can hardly wonder that it is what it is. us, we should still have this ultima ratio, the mathematical proof. It remains, therefore, only to consider the poetry upon which When you see your jazz merchant occupying a suite de luxe at_ | symphonic syncopation takes its stand; and of this poetry it is Porridge’s or the Blitz, while your classicist has to endure a __ perfectly safe to say that none has ever been used, or is ever single bedroom at a railway hotel, you can gauge, with the _ likely to be used, in aclassroom as an element of education. It is micrometrical accuracy of a modern snap journalist, the relative poetry, in short, for people who have finished with education,

value of the two forms of art. and know everything—as you will soon discover when you talk Now, music, as we all know, is a species of poetic expression; — to them. Now, the classical poetry, like the classical music, has and it is generally inspired, either by direct contact, or by indi- —_ never been able to stand on its own legs, but has always needed

rect association, by some sort of poetry in the form of words; the support of the author’s irrelevant name, to hold it up, and this, of course, being the principal reason why poetry (whichis _ provide it with a sort of meretricious gravity. The superiority of but an archaic word for bunk) continues to exist. Over and over __ the poetry which inspires jazz is demonstrated by the fact that it again the classicists have pointed out to us that the bedrock of — stands quite comfortably by itself, and that the names of the classical music is the superb poetry from which it has taken authors are perfectly unknown to anybody. The titles of these birth. Even where the poetic inspiration is not acknowledged, it jewels of the poet’s art speak for themselves. Let me quote a few is presumed to be there, tucked away somewhere among the _ of them: The Cat’s Whiskers, I’ve Got a Girl, Whose Baby Are semiquavers; but in a great many cases it is fully acknowledged, You?, Every Night I Cry Myself to Sleep Over You, Did Tosti and we discover in nearly every case that it is some ‘master- Raise His Bowler Hat?, If You Knew Susie Like I Know Susie, piece’ in whole, or in part. Singular how readily the intellectual | There’s Yes! Yes! In Your Eyes. But perhaps it is putting it too groper deludes himself! These so-called masterpieces are noth-_ _— mildly to say that such titles speak for themselves; it is doing

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OCTOBER ¢« FORUM 1928 them and their secretive authors an injustice. Consider that pure — pated music is inspired, we can no longer feel astonishment at

gem, the last but one on the list. Observe the boldness with _its triumphant progress, or at the fact that its penetrating strains which the poet employs the adjective, like, as an adverb, and _ reveal to the souls of bandmasters, and others, the blinding say whether you can discover anything in Milton or Keats to _ light of truth—that same light, which in rainbow colours, flashes match it. Think of the romance if I’ve Got A Girl. Thatcharming, — its messages nightly across the seething circuses of Central assertive little word, got! The reference (Iam unable todiscover — London, bidding us drink Frothington’s Ale, or reinforce our the context) is manifestly to some lady-killer of distinction, who —_—internal machinery with Cod’s Emulsion.

had got the girl, either alive in a packing-case, or chopped up Having thrown all this off the chest, and established the small in a car trunk. And then again, Every Night] Cry Myselfto _ genius of jazz exactly where it ought to be established, I rise Sleep Over You. How our sympathy wells forth towards the — from my seat, and turn for solace and recreation to my piano. unhappy recipient of these lachrymal attentions, kept awake = And what I intend to play begins with this theme: into the small hours by the rain of tears upon his head. As for I leave it to the reader to identify the composition, but he has There's Yes! Yes! in Your Eyes I know that expression well.[have — my full authority to accept it as the concluding and conclusive often seen it in the eyes of a harassed railway porter, asked bya — word of the whole argument.

a . EE” ee ee 62 hs,

dozen people at once whether the Beckenham train starts from f) a ~ platform number ten. In short, when we cast the analytical eye

upon the exquisite lyrics (or bunk) by which symphonic synco- =

October ¢ Forum JAZZ by George W. Howgate, Pitman, N.]. (When asked whether or not jazz is music, Mr. Irving Berlin

counter-questioned “What is Jazz?” The following letter may patterns, which is what Mr. Antheil claims for jazz, and which

perhaps answer both questions.) would make it distinctly music.

Editor of The Forum: It is perhaps easiest to attack the prob- What then is jazz? Here again we must guard against making lem of whether or not jazz is music by pointing out what seems to |§ amythical or metaphysical entity where none exists. The method me a fault in both the Forum articles on that subject. In spite of their | of empirical philosophy furnishes an interesting analogy. An

intrinsic interest both articles display a vagueness, or perhaps a _ object to an empiricist is nothing but a concatenation of sense fear of becoming too technical in the presence of the average reader. § impressions whose contiguity is always recognized by the mind.

Thus Mr. Antheil says that jazz contains melody, harmony, and Why then is not jazz merely a concatenation of certain rhythmic, rhythm, but he fails to indicate clearly the particular and distinctive | melodic, and harmonic forms which must occur together to prokind of each which differentiates jazz from other music. Likewise Mr. | duce what we experience as jazz? The elements, it is true, are Spaeth makes jazz identical with a general revolutionary tendency — very subtly blended (Mr. Antheil attest to the difficulty of disin all art, which would not distinguish George Gershwin, for in- tinguishing them), but there is no supra-sensuous demon lurkstance, from Schoenberg, to say nothing of Gertrude Stein, Matisse, ing in them. Even what a real devotee of jazz would call its spe-

or even Beethoven. Jazz would express no more than the idea of cial flavor is merely this blend plus the emotional reaction it innovation. In the music of one of the most radical of innovators, — effects within him. Paul Hindemith, with its contrapuntal texture, there is a greater re- _ The basic element of jazz is unquestionably the foxtrot rhythm

semblance to Bach than to Irving Berlin. with its four fundamental beats to the measure. The first and In deciding whether jazz is music or a method of treating __ third receive a primary accent, the second and fourth a secondmusic, I must say that I prefer Mr. Antheil’s position to that of | ary, sometimes heavier than the primary, and in the orchestraMr. Spaeth, though I suspect that their disagreement is largely tion usually given to other instruments. Between these beats verbal. For after all, what is meant by “treatment” or “applying” — sparkles the melody, introducing minor accents and syncopated jazz to rhythm, melody, harmony, or tone color? Atheme canbe __ rhythms, furnishing a rattling crossfire to the foundational “tumtreated in the form of variations, folk songs canbe wovenintoa | tum-tum-tum.” Melody and harmony are much less aboriginal, rhapsody, but to “treat” rhythm, melody, etc., suggests that the former being frequently borrowed from the classics, the latthey are metaphysical entities in aclass with medieval “univer- —_ ter from the modernists, but, as Mr. Antheil says, distinctive sals” or “Platonic ideas.” They are what George Santayanacalls forms have sprung up to fit the rhythm. Instrumental buffoon“concretions in discourse” not “concretions in existence” and __ ery and the well known vocal “do-de-yo-do,” imitative of the are arrived at by a process of abstraction from what are the real, _ former, are the external paraphernalia of jazz. individual rhythms, melodies, harmonies, etc. This treatment When one of the ingredients is missing, the result is not jazz. would be only making new rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic —_ Pure jazz can seldom be made out of unadulterated classical melo-

547

1928 DECEMBER ¢ FORUM dies, an instance of genuine “treatment.” Standard composers — emy of Music by playing Henry Eicheim’s Burma, a piece utilizing

generally fail when they attempt jazz because they omitsome of _ native percussion instruments imported for the occasion. The the basic ingredients and concentrate on the trappings. The late barbaric abandon of this piece was emotionally the nearest thing Victor Herbert used to write in his own vein, then sprinkleonafew to jazz that I have heard from a concert hall, yet in other respects jazz garnitures. Leo Sowerby’s Synconataisahideouscompound _ there was no similarity. I quite agree with Mr. Spaeth that the only of all the more blatant and cacophonous jazz instrumentation with- —_ authentic jazz of lasting merit has been produced by George out the inherent redeeming graces. Even John Alden Carpenter’s | Gershwin, a composer schooled and steeped in the jazz tradition Skyscraper achieves jazz only for moments at atime. Nor can _and familiar with all its aspects. Perhaps he will rise to the occaemotional appeal alone make jazz. Mr. Stokowski not long ago __ sion of Mr. Antheil’s demand for a composer who will make an drove away a score or so of staid Philadelphians from the Acad- —_ honest woman out of jazz.

December ¢ Forum (A DISCUSSION OF THE DEBATE—“TS JAZZ MUSIC?”— IN THE JULY AND AUGUST ISSUES OF THE FORUM) by George Antheil, Vienna, Austria Editor of The Forum: If jazz is only amethod, as Mr. Spaethsays, |= masters were extremely methodic and systematic, in spite of why cannot Europe imitate it? Jazz has never been conquered _ their genius. Mr. Spaeth, in the technical domain, comes to some by a European. Thousands have tried. If itis a method of music — very remarkable conclusions. He concludes that because he that can only be written by Americans, does it not begin, spiritu- | wrote in the whole-tone scale, Debussy was “jazzing” the nor-

ally, to rise above a mere method? mal scale. Till Eulenspiegel—that profound rascal of the Middle In my July article I pointed out that jazz has individual | Ages—becomes for him “one of the jazziest characters in murhythms, harmonies, and melodic fragments which are notfound __ sic” because Strauss in his admirable symphonic poem makes a in any other music, and therefore give it an individual quality |= number of grotesque skips and jumps. which immediately places it in the category of a folk music. Mr. The works of Vincent Youmans are pure, clear, and extremely Spaeth denies we have a folk music. He says one finds the same __ beautiful examples of jazz that is a pure music. Many of the thing in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Brahms, Chopin, all of | Negro blues cannot in any case be confused with any other muthem have written pages of real jazz, he says. Still I must point — sic. The day when composers stole melodies from the old mas-

out that a great deal of music has been written within the past ters (I’m Always Chasing Rainbows and similar mediocrities) centuries and of necessity a great many “treatments” must oft —_is slowly but surely passing, but Mr. Spaeth writes as though find themselves repeated. Surely a critic and musician such as__that day were still in full swing. Jazz no longer needs to steal, to Mr. Spaeth does not wish us to think that the same chord, rhythm, distort. It is coming into a pure, simple, sincere expression of

or sequence always has the same intention. its own, and each year sees this fact more established. The Atonality is certainly a method, if there ever was one, and Chopin-Liszt-Debussy borrowing of Gershwin, which Mr. one cannot claim that the great master, Schoenberg, has never § Spaeth so much admires, is on the wane, but his mention and written any music. Beethoven, Mozart, and the rest of the great | admiration of them account for his conviction that America has no music of its own.

548

2f 1929 tx January 26 ¢ Musical American THIS QUESTION OF SPIRITUALS by R. H. Wollstein John Powell, home from an extended European tour, is planning “You have often heard the orchestral trick of playing some to satisfy a wish of long standing—to take time from hisconcert well-known theme—Home Sweet Home or Dixie—in the man-

routine to complete several compositions. ner of this or that well-known composer. You know how a An ardent Virginian, Mr. Powell is extremely interested in _ fixed and familiar theme can take on entirely different characthe music of the South. His best known composition, perhaps, _ teristics by such adroit manipulation; and you know also, that is the Rhapsodie Negre, which has an interesting history. Pre- —_ such artful manipulation ceases to seem like trick work, and sented for the first time in 1918 by the Russian Symphony Or- _actually sounds like an integral part of the finished piece. That chestra under Modest Altschuler and with the composer at the —_is what has happened in the growth of the spiritual. Upon a piano, the Rhapsodie was selected by Walter Damrosch as best —_ well organized foundation of musical form, the Negro has and most typical American work to be played by Mr. Powell — superimposed variations that suit him and express his needs.

and the New York Symphony Orchestra, when he took that en- ae tire body on its good will tour of Europe, in 1920. Primitive Humming

Since then, the Rhapsodie has had forty-nine performances, “Let me give you an instance from my own experience, in both here and abroad, in something less than eleven years. Its f of this. Some vears azo—-when I was working on m fiftieth performance is scheduled for Jan. 28, with thetoAmeriRha, i y 6to Le 6 on my apsodie, be exact—I happened visitpe friends in Richcan Orchestral Society. Mr. Powell played the forty-sixth per- mond, and through the door that led from the kitchen to the formance this summer with the Concertgebouw at Amsterdam room where we were sitting, there came the sound of someunder Pierre Monteux; the forty-seventh at Rugby, under Adrian one humming. There was something so primitive, so passionBoult, and the forty-eighth and forty-ninth under the direc- ate, so subtly stirring about the muted minor cadences and the tion of Donald Francis Tovey in Edinburgh. He was invited to pulsing tom-tom beats of this humming, that I couldn’t put give the fiftieth performance in Germany, but, in atypical John my mind to anything else. Powell gesture, preferred to celebrate the anniversary by play- “Quietly, at last, I tiptoed to the pantry, and there was black

ing this distinctly American work in America. ea. Pauline, piling glasses on a tray, and humming or singing softly In regard to Negro music in general, and the SP aritual in pat- at her work. When she saw me, she was so startled that she let ticular, Mr. Powell upholds the thesis that the spiritual is by no slip her tray, glasses and all; because darkies guard their primimeans a pure example of African music, nor even of distinctly tive songs and incantations from white ears as carefully as they African tendencies. The Negro spiritual, he contends, proceeds do their voodoo rites. At last, after a great deal of adroit coaxing, directly from the old German folk songs and hymn tunes brought I got her to tell me what it was she was humming; what was this to America in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries thing of primitive allure that had reached and riveted me, on the

by non-conformist Baptist and Methodist mint Sters. other side of the door. Her song had been her own version of a These melodies, kept as pure hymns at first, gradually de- common gospel hymn, called Make Me Ready, Oh, Lord.

veloped into the exhortative “gospel hymn” of insistent

rhythms and many repetitions. In this form, they were intro- Converted Street Song duced into camp meetings and revivals, where not alone a fixed

congregation heard them, but where outsiders of all ranks and Now, as she shifted from her own version and sang the hymn backgrounds grew familiar with them as well. And there it | Proper, a great many things became evident. She had consiswas that the Negro, inherently religious and distinctly musi- tently converted the original major intervals into the minor,

cal, heard the hymns and took them for his own. completely changing the character of the tune, and on top of “The Negro spiritual,” says Mr. Powell, “is nothing more __ that, she had added to each cadence a wild little tom-tom-like than the result of primitive Negroid embroideries superim- _ tail beat that hadn’t come into the original at all. Finally, what posed upon well-established and regular European musical § 40 you suppose the tune of the ‘regular hymn’ turned out to forms. The regularity and balance of the spiritual clearly shows _ be? It was the tune of Sally Get Your Hair Cut Short, an unima form sense that cannot be primitive. Examples of pure Afri- | portant and unmeaningful street song of thirty years ago. By can musical forms have come down to us, to be sure; the weaving this commonplace tune over with unconscious emrhythms on which jazz is based—not jazz itself—are African. broideries out of her own Negroid background, Pauline had

But the spiritual is not, except in an adapted way. created a ‘spiritual’ of stirring beauty. 549

1929 FEBRUARY 13 © THE NATION “T have used Pauline’s spiritual for the second climax of my Turning again to the growth of the spiritual, after this . ,; making-over ofitthe gospel hymn tunes, next and Rhapsodie; represents a great deal. the It Foster stands as égreatest a; ., . factorand is to theme, distinctly external Stephen influence,

the epitome of the colored race, seizing haphazard upon stray hereby the spirit of the N killfull ted b

elements of an alien culture, and making them over into an wneredy me Spi Ol © BTO Was SME uny Tecreated by a

; . total Thus, it seems to of metheir that the spiritual entirely new andoutsider. different expression own. - ggis, properly speaking, not at all purely Negro music. January ¢ Journal of Education THE AGE OF JAZZ by J. W. Studebaker There is nothing new in jazz. Every age has its extravagantsym- mance that generates disgust and resentment. The same selecbolisms, its bizarre manifestations of youthful spirit, its exu- _ tion played by a first-class orchestra takes on a definitely difberance of uncontrolled inventive genius. It is a sort of mob _ ferent aspect, and under these circumstances has its own place psychology that marks the trend of the youth toward extremes __ in the scheme of modern music. in dress, speech, art and music, any of which come readily un- Jazz has had a spectacular career in the fifteen or more years

der the general head, “jazz.” of its popularity, It has risen from the levee atmosphere to the conThree decades ago it was the trashy sentimental ballad, the cert hall, from the cheap, almost impossible rendition in the lowest Big Son figure, the enormous pompadour that indicated so _ of dives to the expert execution by the most famous symphony graphically the feminine self-expression of the times. Five years _ orchestra playing for cultured audiences in great auditoriums.

ago, in the opinion of many, the woman with bobbed hair was With the advent of jazz came the realization that the thing guilty of a flippant impropriety. Some capable school teachers _had “caught on” and that orchestra leaders were making money found themselves without positions because they dared to ad- —_— playing the fantastic sounds and incredible harmonies wher-

venture into this land of “flapperdom.” Now this generation __ ever there were ears to listen. wants to wear “keen” clothes, make “snappy” conversation and Then there came into the field musicians of high calibre who “hear slick” music. And so—it does! But through the orienta- — saw possibilities in the strange combinations that had started tion of education the crude and grotesque will slough off and —_—‘ the world humming, and who set about to make jazz respectthe new idea born of creative imagination will add a pleasing § able and acceptable. Among these were John Alden Carpenter

variety to custom and art. and George Gershwin, whose melodic compositions of this

One of the most deeply imbedded of human instincts is |= modern type are recognized and played constantly. rhythm. Primitive man demonstrated this with his crude drums The Des Moines school music department, in the face of and other instruments invented to satisfy his natural craving for existing conditions, says practically nothing about jazz. Instead meter or cadence. The main interest in music is rhythm, and all __ there is a carefully planned program including orchestra trainof us are susceptible to its charm: Modern jazz employs adis- _ ing, glee club practice and definite music appreciation instructinctly monotonous meter, which is its own worst enemy, and _ tion which seems to offset the tendency to the crudities of jazz which does much to surfeit the taste of the habitual listenerand —§ madness. In fact, the students, in making choices of musical

turn him automatically, to better types of music for relief. numbers to be played or sung in their groups, choose, almost The jazz rhythm, in itself, is not so objectionable. It is the | without exception, the best. atrocious execution of this music, augmented, as it sometimes Jazz isn’t going to make an appreciable difference in the muis, by the unspeakable inane words accompanying the perfor- _ sical education of the young if we surround him from early childhood with the finest examples of the art—antidotes if one wishes

February 13 ¢ The Nation A NOTE ON GERSHWIN by Abbe Niles A little while past it was vulgarly considered safe to praise light | as many Negroes have felt that they must apologize for the foreign music, Viennese waltzes, Spanish folk dancing, and even spirituals. The distinction between “classical” and “popular” the scores of English musical comedies; but American popular —_ was, in short, felt necessarily and in all cases to coincide with music (by which is meant music of a recognizably native flavor, the one fundamental distinction between good and bad. written for publication and sale, and exhibiting the technique Snobbery, of course, partly accounted for this fallacy, but it which then meant most likely that the sale would be large) was__—ihad acertain amount of excuse. From about the end of the Civil considered something to be enjoyed only with apologies, just | War to the late nineties, American popular music had suffered a

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FEBRUARY 13 © THE NATION 1929 dismal slump. The unconscious humor of the lyrics had been _ labeled a jazz opera, suggested little new save, for a moment the redeeming feature of the songs. With the rise of ragtime and —_ during the Pagliacci burlesque which formed its prologue, the various more capable composers there came an improvement, _ possibilities of the more savage and wry-mouthed jazz for conbut the music, judged by unsentimental standards, remained —_ veying a sense of tragedy. pretty bad. Ragtime, the most convenient purely American It is not to be imagined that by An American in Paris (prepopular technique, was conceived and set down so astobe play- | sented December 13 by Mr. Damrosch and the Philharmonic able by virtual illiterates. Its thick stock harmonies, for instance, | Symphony) Gershwin darkly planned to damage fallacies and might almost be numbered on one’s fingers, and where the tunes — confute snobs. Obviously he had immensely enjoyed working showed inventive ability it tended to be canceled by the despi- _ out his little story of a Yankee, as simple in his peculiar way as cable poverty of their apparel. But these facts merely went to § Mallarmé’s faun, harmlessly trotting the streets, eluding the taxis - demonstrate the more clearly that the fallacy needed knocking and the museums, sitting down for a look at a boulevard table,

down. getting the homesickness blues, getting over them, and toddling It was Jerome Kern who struck the first blow by producinga _ happily off again. That, and the anticipation of exciting a sym-

series of songs, many of them recognizably American in spirit pathetic pleasure in the conceit, probably measured the and treatment, which, besides having good tunes, exhibited | composer’s main motive for putting his American on paper; sound, self-respecting, and musicianly workmanship. The sec- _and his hope was justified by the joy with which the audience ond blow came with the rise of jazz, concerned, in its most | welcomed his creation. prominent aspect, with technique. This necessitated Tin Pan But it is as important to the purposes of the present article to Alley’s importing trained musicians as arrangers; the success _ point out that An American in Paris represents an advance in of jazz resulted in its invading the musical comedies, thus bring- | Gershwin’s ability both to get what he wants out of a symphony ing popular music into an atmosphere where work is expected, orchestra (no mean problem), and so to transform and combine or at least tolerated, than in songs written sclely for the trade. _ his themes as to make a living organism of the sum total. It has But more than any other one person, George Gershwin has re- _a personality apart from Gershwin’s own, which his Concerto minded his hearers that the division between good and bad cuts _ had not; the Rhapsody had one, but it was partly the gift of the across all others. This, itis submitted, is a valuable reminder. If | arranger, Grofé. It is questionable whether the brilliant concertthe fallacy to the contrary was a vulgar one, it was—and toa _ notes supplied by Mr. Deems Taylor were as much a blessing as

less degree still is—powerful. a curse at the christening; not only did they supply a far more It is not that Gershwin has written good music; the present _ elaborate, and so distracting, “program” than the composer had writer thinks it good, but the point is that, good or not, it is | suspected to be applicable to his piece, but by doing this, Mr. American, in the popular idiom, and good enough to show that _—‘ Taylor enabled the critics to sit back and relax, comfortable in first-rate music, even in the longer forms, can be written in that the knowledge that they could fill their space in next day’s edi-

idiom by anyone with the requisite training and natural gifts. tions with a rehash of Taylor. Most of them did, even to the This demonstration Gershwin has achieved, in the first place, | extent of repeating Mr. Taylor’s obvious error in identifying a by perhaps 150 songs. Not all of them are good ones.Some that certain music-hall piece, quoted in the score, as a maxixe. The present their writer’s inspiration at its height suffer from the __ ill-disposed critics, who are still numerous, added a rebuke to real or fancied necessity of writing, for musical comedies, only _ the conductor for including this light (and American?) work in

in the narrow forms desired by dance orchestras. Yet they are | the same program with Franck’s D-minor Symphony; the engagingly cast in their constricted mold and so widely appeal- —_ unshocked added a kind word or so; but scarcely anywhere was

ing as to make it unnecessary to cite the titles of the best, from it pointed out that Gershwin had gained considerably in his I Was so Young to The Man I Love. They show a pride of work- knowledge of how to write long compositions for large orchesmanship, an attention to detail (vide the invention spent ontheir —_ tras. Assuming that he knows more of musical theory than many introductory measures and on the two bars at their close), and _— professional theorists know of jazz, he is largely self-taught, an avoidance of harmonic clichés, qualities which were unknown _and is under no financial necessity of continuing his education. to popular music a few years ago, and which are being emu- _ Every proof that he is, nevertheless, taking the trouble to do so,

lated by others to the general good of the art. is highly important evidence for critics to take into considerIt is, however, through his adventures in the concert halls _ ation in attempting to anticipate what he may yet accomplish. that this composer has done most to discredit the vulgar fallacy, Such a prediction is difficult. That he will write great music, because these adventures were not only well, but spectacularly, his work to date does not promise. Its spirit is vital but not procarried off. The Rhapsody in Blue demonstrated in fifteen min- found; not elevated, but humorous, witty, ribald; on occasion, utes that jazz is independent of the fox-trot rhythm and form, _ pathetic or of a cool, blue melancholy, but not tragic. It is the and is therefore available for experiments in the longer forms. —_ product of an immense gusto for life, work, and appreciation, This lesson was driven home by the Piano Concerto in Faless — which, it may be expected, will not quickly fade. It will concompact and balanced work, less happy in its orchestration __ tinue to arouse pleased surprise in the minds of intelligent hear(Gershwin’s first attempt), but rich, if not too rich, in pleasing __ ers, including serious if not solemn musicians, over the world; themes. It reveals a unity that signifies the same devoted care __to raise the general level of American popular music, and to and thought as do the best of the songs. 135th Street, wrongly obliterate a snobbish, vulgar, and potent error.

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1929 MARCH 10 ¢ MUSICAL AMERICA March 10 © Musical America HITCHING JAZZ TO A STAR by Hiram Motherwell Not many years ago someone discovered that jazz, when itis —_ not to answer back. good jazz, is good music. This self-evident observation would Now assuming (what is yet unproved) that jazz can be sucperhaps never have reverberated in Carnegie Hallhadnotsome- __ cessfully manipulated in the large forms (Mr. Gershwin has alone else, at the same time, discovered that jazz is our native —_ ready aroused our hopes), what, it has been asked, is the point folk-music, the “spontaneous expression of the American spirit.” in doing so? Why take tunes which are primarily meant for cerIt then became a kind of patriotic duty to prove that entire sym- _ tain types of dance, and certain simple song patterns lasting phonies and operas could be made out of jazz. Indeed, believe —_ two or three minutes, and puff them up to the length of one to that several gentlemen offered prizes for something of the sort. three hours? There is only one reason: a jazz symphony may be Although none of them has yet been obliged to pay up, the __ no better intrinsically than another kind of symphony, but if the subject is still a live one, especially with the performance this _ pleasure it gives is of a particular sort it is artistically justified. spring of Gershwin’s symphonic farce, An American in Paris _ It is not mere differentness that we want, of course, but authenby the Philharmonic and Krenek’s alleged jazz opera, Jonny __ ticity. Jazz has shown (again, by the subjective test) that it can

Spielt Auf at the Metropolitan. evoke a distinct order of aesthetic emotions; if these emotions The moral or patriotic imperative alleged in connection with —_ are capable of being heightened and intensified by more elabojazz has of course falsified the whole subject. There is no rea- —_— rate development, the result justifies itself. It merits neither con-

son why any American composer “ought” to write jazz sym- | demnation for its shoddy origins, nor commendation for its “paphonies, any more than he “ought” to write battle songs to win _triotism.” the next war, or mammy songs to preserve the home, or, for that It is because jazz seems to me (or rather feels to me) to have matter, any music whatever unless his ideas seem to him so __ so much authentic charm and vitality and such a variety of important that he can’t help it. I don’t mean that jazz sympho- — moods, and because this potential vigor seems unfairly cramped nies and operas shouldn’t be written. What I mean is (I don’t __ in the rigid mould of the sheet-music song, that I am so eager to know how else to say it) that they shouldn’t ought to be written. _see it get its chance to tell its story untrammeled. For jazz at its But if by artistic compulsion they are written and turn outto be —_— best is, 1 am convinced, capable of symphonic development; it

good, then let us heartily give thanks. is, if I may coin a German word, symphoniefahig. Jazz is more But what is this I see? A myriad accusing fingers pointing at_ —_ than adance type; more than a rhythmic trick. You cannot imag-

me while an anvil chorus of indignant voices challenges: ine a waltz symphony, or a mazurka symphony; but you can ‘What do you mean by jazz? Define your terms..” imagine a jazz symphony—we are imagining it right now. Well, if it is definitions you want, you can have half a dozen What makes a theme symphoniefahig ? It is vitality combined of them, one about as unsatisfactory as another.Onecouldmen- — with capacity for development. There are some tunes which tion the misplaced accent, the anticipated cadence, the alterna- bore you on second hearing. There are other tunes, good ones, tion of major technical matters. But this business of definition | with which youcan do nothing but repeat them. Waltz tunes are in terms of objective characteristics is just as unscientific as | such; youcan vary them, but you cannot develop them. A symdefinition in terms of subjective feeling—no, more so. For by _ phonic theme must have hidden germs of beauty, unsensed rethe one, specialists can never reach a conclusion; while by the _ serves of vitality which only the composer can nurse into life. other enthusiasts can rarely agree on what they are talking about. |§ My favorite example is the second theme of the last movement My small daughter has just taxed me for a definition of jazz of Schubert’s C major. songs, and when I said they were “wiggly songs” she was satis- At first hearing it seems but a fragment (and not an espe-

fied. And, I think, very rightly. cially attractive one) snatched from the middle of some lively

The truth is that everyone knows perfectly well what jazz is. song. But as Schubert insists on this or that or the other aspect It is all that body of American popular music (most of it bad) _ of its pattern it begins to accumulate epic vigor and at last the written in 2-4 or 4-4 time which has those rhythmic or melodic — gods themselves are marching gloriously to battle beneath its characteristics that we feel to be native to America. For me, _ flaming banner. personally, jazz is that music which makes me want to dance Is any jazz theme, while preserving the true jazz quality, cajazzy. And that is the quality in it which distinguishes it, forme, | pable of unfolding such hidden magical beauties? Take, for ex-

from all other music. ample, the theme in eighth notes from Gershwin’s Rhapsody (I

But I want to get away from pedantry and dispute in this _ think it could be called the second theme): matter, as well as from patriotism, because there are so many Is this theme symphoniefahig ? I do not know. Gershwin does sorts of charming and vitalizing aesthetic experiences to be had _ not know. For in his free rhapsody form he was not attempting from jazz that I itch to speculate on what could be done with it true development, but merely effective juxtaposition. My perin the larger forms. Those who don’t get such pleasure from it | sonal guess would be that this theme would prove admirably are naturally not interested in the matter, and will be kind enough symphonic; I can pick, off hand, four features in it which tease

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MARCH e MUSICIAN 1929 me out of thought to know their hidden eloquence. And my _felt than heard; the gentle tune, a tear of gratitude in its eyes, fumbling imagination can half hear a coda in which an entire —_— pulsating ever between major and minor.

world is dancing a new hymn to joy in that complex polyphony You need not take this seriously if you don’t want to. It is of rhythm, song and bodily motion which is the genius of jazz. | only my whim. It is not of any importance until some capable I once started to compose a jazz mass. There was no irrever- | composer thinks it is. ence in the idea. (After all, Liszt composed his Hungarian Mass Gershwin’s larger jazz pieces, the Rhapsody and the Amerion gypsy fiddlers’ tunes and dance rhythms.) Rather, I was fas- = can, are to me wholly charming, but I think they have not yet cinated by the intuition that jazz, expressing itselfinadozenof proved that jazz contains the germs of elaborate development. its moods, would generate a religious eloquence far more au- They have only suggested that this is not impossible. Yet as thentic than the facile pedantry and sentimentality of the con- |= Abbe Niles, who is unfailingly right in his judgment on popular ventional masses which are still being derived from the issue of | music, points out, the American shows considerable developStainer, Parry, et al. The Kyrie would have something of the — mental flexibility.

quality of a spiritual, wailing in ever descending intervals, an- Jonny Spielt Auf is only in a superficial sense a jazz opera; ticipated cadences being repeated, endlessly repeated as the _its style is foreign and even its specific jazz episodes are but harmony deepened, over the changeless Jargo pulse of the un- |§ Bohemian echoes of Broadway dance-halls. There is no objecderlying rhythm, until a whole nation had joined in the prayer __ tion to that, if the music is interesting (as it is). But the jazz for mercy. The Gloria would be simple in the extreme—chiefly | opera which I should write if I could would be unmistakably an allegro molto—made of that tireless insistence on the first jazz in feeling; it would be as palpably authentic in its mode of beat of the measure (perhaps derived from the Negroes’ reli- | expression as Boris Godunoff is in its. gious orgies) which jazz can do with such conviction; the epi- But all these speculations as to the possibility of using jazz sodes would be intoned by bass or tenor against antiphonal re- _—in the large forms are of no importance. What we say or think sponses of the Gloria theme by the sopranos. The Credo, alle- —_ about the matter will not affect the result, or the desirability of gro moderato, would have that robust conviction, farremoved __ the result, one way or the other. No one, I believe, has the right from cloistered piety, that kind of physical joy and certainty, to assert that jazz cannot say more to us than it has already said. which some great dance tunes have; its tragic episodes would — But whether it will or will not depends not on anybody’s opinnot be set apart, but proclaimed with a kind of vengeful inten- —_ion. it depends on one other trifling detail:

sity over the continuous pianissimo repetition of the rhythmic If a genius turns up and feels he must do the job, we shall credo theme in the bass. The Benedictus, my favorite, would be have splendid symphonies and operas in the jazz idiom. If he almost a lullaby, the steady throb of syncopation being more —_ doesn’t, we shan’t.

March ¢ Musician JAZZ KNOCKS IN VAIN AT OPERA’S DOOR by Herbert F. Peyser In this part of the world the reverberations of Jonny [Jonny Compared with all this and even with the sibilations of a Spielt Auf] and his jazzifying outfit have already subsided. Eu- _ tourist-ridden Paris at about the same time, Jonny’s recent enrope was much slower to recover. In fact, some of the Continen- _ try into the Metropolitan [Opera] was little more than a piece of tal capitals have not recovered yet. Last summer—that istosay | weekend spoofing. The thing seemed to amuse some people about a year after Krenek’s slapdash fancy embarked onitsca- —_ and to annoy others. To my present confusion I confess that I reer of hectic conquest—it struck Munich and almost precipi- = allowed myself to be goaded into a state of irritation. This, I tated bloodshed. The National Theatre, the Residenz Theater __ realize, was highly absurd as Jonny Spielt Auf is too frothy, tranand the Prinzregenten Theatre (the bona fide operahouse of the _ sient and piffling a business to grow wrathy or apoplectic over. city) averted defilement by simply shutting their doors in its —_I am inclined to believe that those who found it diverting in the face and Jonny had perforce to accept the plebeian hospitality | opera house would have found it rather dismal in a theater deof a house on the Gaertner Platz shabbily devoted to operettas. | voted to burlesques or high-priced revues. In Mr. Gatti-Casazza’s The opening night was magnificently tumultuous. Philistines | Broadway tabernacle it both profited and suffered by a distincand revolutionaries smote each other hip and thigh. There were _ tive psychology of environment. In Germany, pundits like Adolf defiances and hysterics. Someone hurled stink-bombs and some- Weissman have solemnly descanted on Krenek’s adaptation to one else let loose a flock of white mice. When the performance __ operatic ends of the technic of the revue. Yet a Follies audience ended the departing audience encountered on the street athreat- | confronted with an unmitigated Jonny would probably perish

ening mob which muttered imprecations on the Schwarze of boredom, technic or no technic.

Scham, seasoned with dark assurances that “Euch wird In Hamburg last fall I spoke at some length about Jonny

furchtbares geschehen.” (which IJ had just heard in Berlin) with Intendant Leopard Sachse,

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1929 MARCH e MUSICIAN of the Stadttheater. Herr Sachse eventually cut short the discus- extensively on the form of the piece and on Krenek’s adaptasion with the query: “Why should you want Johnny, anyway? __ tion to operatic ends of the technic of the music hall and the It’s not for Americans, it’s for Europeans.” For the untraveled — revue. Granting the use of such a technic, what of it? It promulContinental the piece is, indeed, a representation of those _ gates nothing of importance. It emphasizes rather than conceals “American” influences which are supposed to be conquering __ the fact that the author was dealing in certain matters he underthe Old World. The average German does not pause for a mo- stood only partly or else not at all. And the harder it toils and ment to question the accuracy of young Herr Krenek’s ideas or _—_ sweats to establish a new esthetique and a new psychology of representations—even when by way of local color he makes _ lyric drama the more it finds itself up a tree and beset by immeJonny sing about Alabama and the Suwanee River! InGermany — morial obstacles.

they consider this touch a shrewd bit of realism, not to say There are all kinds of quotidian landmarks in Jonny Spielt “Americanism.” And it is not surprising that they should. For Auf. Folks dress in the frocks, the smocks, the dressing gowns, there are still thousands of Germans who harbor gorgeously __ the golf clothes, and the traveling outfits of our own precious exotic notions of America and who candidly believe that you — generation. They sing into telephones, ride in motor cars, listen cannot walk down Third Avenue or up Murray Hill without stub- —_ to radio loud speakers, hoard trains and tear up and down sta-

bing your toe against thousand dollar gold pieces. tion platforms with all the impediments of a railway journey. It It follows, therefore, that the Metropolitan had onitshandsa_ _is all an extraordinary confrontation and a challenge. It asks us very different problem from that which confronted the __ to believe that opera is at last become something of, by and for Staatsopern, the Stadttheatern of the Reich. Ihave not adoubt __ the people; that opera is now in a fair way to come down from that if Michael Bohnen, for instance, had exhibited on Broad- _its Olympian perch and, condescendingly, reflect our little lives, way such a Negro as I saw Ludwig Hoffmann do in _ our problems, our aspirations, our environing circumstances; Charlottenburg the old house would have sunk into the subway _ that there is reality and pertinence where there has been hereto-

and Mr. Gatti-Casazza would have been instantly translated to fore convention and artifice. some remote corner of our planet. As it was, Mr. Bohnen pre- It is an interrogation of the old, old aesthetic principle of sented about as credible a gentleman of color (evenifthe man- _lyric drama and it brings with it the old, old answer. Does there agement took pains to save us all from sin by assuring us that —_ exist any plausible reason why you can’t sing about a motor car the color was make-believe) as the naive dictates of Herr Krenek —_— in an opera or show it on the stage as we sing about and display

would permit. Hence certain jazz features were accentuated, |§ an Egyptian or a Roman triumphal chariot? None at all except certain details enhanced, certain Americanisms attempted (that —__ the bare, immutable reason that you can’t! When in the second

terrible George Cohan finale, with Star-Spangled Banners and _act of Jonny Max chanted “Ich hor’ ein automobile,” the audiWoolworth Towers is a purely Thirty-Ninth Street inspiration). | ence at the Metropolitan howled. When he took off the teleAnd the entire keynote of the interpretation was kidding. The _ phone receiver, asked Central for the “Bahnhof” and said some-

brush of burlesque was laid on thick. thing like “Wie viel Verspatung hat der Zug von Paris,” the lisAs a result, a number of learned Thebans presently discov- —_ teners roared. A hundred years from now it may be quite as ered purposes of irony and satire in the entertainment of which, _ possible to sing these things without raising the ghost of a smile, I feel fully convinced, Krenek never dreamed. In the episodes of _let alone a gale of mirth, as it is now to vocalize the irreproachMax and the singing glacier the composer was supposed to _—_able words “I love thee.” But its present penalty (and especially

have mocked and pilloried the idealist of the ages; in the easy- in Anglo-Saxon surroundings is mockery) is the laugh which going intrigue of the unmoral prima donna and the fatuous vir- | devastates even when it does not outright slay. It is very easy to tuoso, Daniello, we were invited to recognize in full exposure § adduce the example of Louise, with its family ironing and its the absurdity of conventional operatic amours; in the awful — family soup. But if Louise survives it is in spite of these things, “Suwanee River” episode was prodded the slushy “mammy __ not because of them. What caused opera goers last January to song”; and so on and so forth. Well, if the scene amongst the = guffaw when they saw this pageant of their everyday equipsnow drifts and the frozen wastes of the high Alps is satirical, | ment and experience moving across the Metropolitan stage was the joke has sadly turned on its perpetrator. For satire and dull- —_— not the propriety of it, but the incongruity. You can sing with

ness are devastatingly incompatible, and anything deadlierthan serious intent about a motor car or a telephone just about as Krenek’s interminably yodeling ice pack can be imagined only _ successfully as you could talk about them in blank verse or in

by painful, laborious and protracted cogitation. rhymed Alexandrines. And if you think that possible, try it on The pontifical grandees of German musical criticism dis- _ your friends and see! played no such flair for chargeful irony as their colleagues this Of Krenek’s music the reader will notice I have said nothside of the earth, and it does not appear that the young Czecho- _ing, simply because there is nothing to say, and as “nothing will Slovakian blade of a modernist was at pains to enlighten the = come of nothing,” the score of Jonny is magnificently null. And ignorance of his compatriots. On the other hand, they dilated —_if the composer truly believes that salvation lies in jazz, he needs somebody else to prove it.

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MARCH ¢ REVIEW OF REVIEWING 1929 March ¢ Review of Reviewing JAZZ ARRIVES AT THE OPERA by Alfred V. Frankenstein. Jazz has found its way to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera _ taining all the elements of variety, plays its part in the score. It House, and the cause of it all is a young man who has never _is not a great opera, because Krenek’s is an amusing rather than been in the homeland of jazz. Here is an instructive paradox. a great talent. It is amusement raised to a high degree because Ernst Krenek is his name, and he is an Austrian, twenty- _ skill and imagination have gone into the making. Krenek comeight years old. Son-in-law of Gustav Mahler, the last of the pares to Schoenberg as Gilbert compares to Browning. But stack Brahmins, pupil of the totally jazzless Schreker, native of Vienna, § Jonny alongside of the Rhapsody in Blue and it towers, the city of waltzes, symphonies, and romantic opera, he has Johnny makes a prophecy. At one place in the opera he cries:

taken an idiom quite foreign to his training and heredity, and Da kommt die neue Welt ubers Meer Gefahren mit Glanz,

given it a breadth that those to the manner born have not Und erbgt das alte Europa durch den tanz

achieved. The opera’s house name is Jonny Spielt Auf, which is :

translated “Johnny Strikes up.” In English this might read: “Glittering, the new world crosses Asketch of the plot will be of interest: Anita, an operasinger, the sea, and inherits old Europe by means of the dance.” newly married to a composer named Max, leaves their home in He cries this aloud, with full lungs. Perhaps he prophesies Germany to sing in one of her husband’s operas in Paris. Ina —_—‘ too much. Perhaps the new world would be better off without hotel there she is pursued and conquered by a violin virtuoso, _— inheriting old Europe. And it is a son of this old Europe who one Daniello. Johnny, the colored musician who leads the jazz_ _—ihas given Johnny his depth of lung and breadth of phrase and

band at the hotel, covets Daniello’s violin, steals it, and hides it range of vision. in Anita’s baggage. Anita returns to her husband, followed by The jazz of Broadway is a small, shallow affair compared to Johnny, leaving Daniello to think that Anita has, to use the only § Johnny. Once, when instrumental jazz was intended only for appropriate phrase, made a monkey of him to obtain the pre- —_—s performance in the ballroom, there was no need for a form big-

cious instrument. ger than the sixteen-bar verse and the thirty-two bar chorus that Johnny succeeds in extricating the violin from Anita’s banjo —_—ihas become law in Tin Pan Alley. Now that celebrated jazz orcase, where he has hidden it. The singer and the composer quar- _chestras perform daily in every house in the land, and in every

rel, and Anita declares she will go on aconcert tourof America. revue, a growth into something intended for the delight of the At a resort in the Alps Max and Daniello listen to the radio. __ ear is in order. It is worth doing. The jazz orchestra is a gorFirst Anita sings one of the composer’s songs, and the com- geous instrument. But no development of the resources of jazz, poser, hearing the beloved voice, resolves that she is, after all, as such, has taken place. the only girl for him. Johnny also broadcasts, and the violinist That the public will rise to such music is apparent. Witness recognizes the tone of his beloved instrument, and sets detec- _ the sensational success of the Rhapsody in Blue, a piece none

tives on the jazz player’s trail. too original in itself, but indicative of what can be done. The

There ensues a grand scramble in a railroad station, Max —jazz concert music, such as it is, that has followed Gershwin’s after his wife, to join her before she can leave for Amsterdam __ piece has been spineless, passive, devoid of the punch of and the steamer to America, and Johnny to elude Daniello and = Gershwin and Krenek. It has bent the knee to the ossified tradithe police. Johnny “plants” the violin in Max’s baggage, and _ tions of Broadway. the composer is arrested. But realizing that Max is a friend of The man who breaks through those traditions will create a Anita’s maid, with whom he has had a love-affair in Paris, | popular music in America that will drive away our blushes at Johnny jumps into the cab with the police and their prisoner, — the names of Arthur Sullivan and Johann Strauss. It will not be and succeeds in knocking out the officers. Max makes the train _— great music. No great space in future editions of Grove’s Dicby the skin of his teeth. In the confusion Daniello falls under —_ tionary will be given its creator’s name. But it will make the the wheels of a locomotive. The colored man mounts tothe top —_—s most satisfying and most complete use of the materials given,

of the great station clock, and there, with the coveted violin in as the artist uses his substance, rather than the easiest and most his hand, Johnny strikes up, while the crowd below dances. obvious use of them, as is the manner of our present writers. It is a typical movie plot, with the scenarist’s ticks and meth- Meanwhile Copland and other American composers make ods. The music, too, contains all the elements of popular enter- | of jazz asymphonic medium, which is a horse of quite a differtainment. But Krenek has also succeeded in mingling, toacer- ent color. In the purely popular, humorous, and theatrical field tain extent, a degree of true novelty with these elements of jazz = we must admit that an Austrian has stolen a march on us. There a la mode. The persistent vigor of the new German music, con- _is something in Johnny’s veins beside gin and cigarette smoke.

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1929 MAY 18 ¢ CSM May 18 ° CSM

STRAVINSKY, WEILL AND JAZZ The program of Otto Klemperer’s first concert at Moscow this —_ both scores hear the name of Weill, no one would ascribe them

season consisted almost entirely of dances. It included J. S. _ to the same pen Bach’s B-minor Suite, the little Suite from Kurt Weill’s

Dreigrochenoper, and Stravinsky’s Petrushka Suite, that is to Rapid Evolution

say, German dances of the seventeenth and eighteenth centu- |

ries, modern European-American dances and Russian folk § The evolutionary process in Weill’s case has been as rapid as dances, rather archaic in style. We are thus enabled to form a _ that of the early Stravinsky, and of Ernst Krenek, the composer manner of interesting compositions and contrasts, especially if of the jazz opera Jonny Spielt Auf. This speeding-up of the evowe remember that Weill’s Suite is scored in the modern jazz _ lution of contemporary composers is extremely characteristic idiom, and is, therefore, the last word in the technique of con- —_ of our age, which is inconstant in its artistic views; it promptly

temporary orchestration. rejects the achievements of the past and aims at the production Jazz did not become widespread in Europe until after the of brilliant and easily assimilated music. The composers of the war, but we find in Petrushka (which Stravinsky wrote in 1911, old school wrote music for their domestic or private diversion long before his Rag Time and Piano Rag Time) several instru- _ (I have in mind the polkas, quadrilles, and other playful commental effects which were independently invented by him, and _ positions produced in collaboration by the members of the sowhich afterward (also independently) became characteristic ef- called new Russian School), but these modern musicians, infects in jazz scoring. Among them are the extensive use of the | cluding Stravinsky (in his Miniature Suites, for instance), turn trumpet as a solo instrument, and the employment of the or- out similar things for widespread use and for the concert platchestral instruments singly, in contradistinction to the funda- | form. Thereby they gain largely in the opinion of the so-called mental practice of composers of the romantic school, who treated § “general” public as compared with those composers who prefer the various groups as tonal masses. A striking example of to maintain a serious air and are scornful of any invasion of the Stravinsky’s handling of the solo trumpet is to be seen in the | concert room or the operatic stage by the music of the street. Ballerina’s Dance from Petrushka, in which it vies with the Are these serious composers right? The great J. S. Bach shows flute in the performance of ingenious melodic fioritura on a _us that they are not altogether so, and that even the most serious background of figurational passages played by the bassoon. of the serious are sometimes justified in good-naturedly amusing themselves and others. He writes his Coffee Cantata, in

Russian “Breaks” which he pleasantly satirizes a fad of the day. Then we have his Peasant Cantata, the innumerable dances for his Suites, and Another of Stravinsky’s methods is the use of saxophones and _ such enchanting trifles as the first number of the B-minor Suite other wind instruments to play original passages between the — played by Klemperer. individual sections of the melody passages closely reminding

us of the so called “breaks” in jazz. An instance of such Russian Realistic Depictions breaks will be found in the Nurse’s Dance from Petrushka. Later

on, in scoring his ballet, Pulcinella, written on themes from Stravinsky is one of the very few Russian composers to underPergolesi, Stravinsky deliberately adopted the technique of jazz stand that gay artistic music has the same right to existence as instrumentation, the trombone and double-bass duet, and so the so-called “serious” music. As a result of this we have his forth, but its employment had already been anticipated in _ ballet, Petrushka, one of the most brilliant compositions of the Petrushka, which, as I have said, was composed before anyone —_ twentieth century, in which he stooped to a realistic depiction in Europe had thought of applying to orchestration the method —_in music, not only of a “vulgar” popular carnival, but also of a

of American jazz. barrel-organ. In this respect he has found as imitator in the per-

Kurt Weill has approached the subject from quite a different | son of Kurt Weill, who also gives an excellent imitation of a direction. Influenced by a desire to produce a popular style of | barrel-organ in one of the numbers (the “Di moritet”) of his music, he has intentionally abandoned the complexity displayed Suite from the Dreigroschenoper. in his opera, The Protagonist, and through the simplified style From these instances, and from examples which might be of his other opera, Der Zar ldsst sich photographieren, has ar- _ cited from other composers, we learn that there is a definite rived at the Dreigroschenoper, which is none other thanamod- tendency to democratize music, and to adapt it to serve the purern German version of the old English Beggar’s Opera. The _ poses of recreation and amusement as well as if serious things. music of the Dreigroschenoper, which has enjoyed immense _ This applies not merely to the art of the present day, but also to popularity in Germany, is based on the employment of contem- _ that of the past, even of the great J. S. Bach, whom we are acporary dance forms and jazz methods of instrumentation, andis | customed to regard as a particularly elevated and serious comso unlike the music of The Protagonist that, but forthe factthat poser.

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JUNE ¢ BRITISH MUSICIAN 1929 June ¢ British Musician PAUL WHITEMAN—tThe Reformer of Music

by A. L. H. Moore . What is ‘jazz’? I am afraid that hereon opinions differ widely. —_ the impression of an homogeneous art. But this does not mean These will probably say: “The heartbreaking and ear-deafening _ that there is not enormously much that is admirable in this mixnoise made by three to six “men with musical instruments”—not ture. I am not a musical expert, so I cannot enter too much in

to be called “musicians”—to which the entire deteriorated details, but this may be stated: I—and with me many others younger generation, and now the older generation too, for that © who are experts—were cured from their prejudice with regard matter, fox-trot, Charleston, and tango.’ Those with more histori- —_ to and reconciled with Paul Whiteman’s aspirations. They were cal knowledge, state just as appropriately: ‘Jazzis the Western, taught by him that jazz actually does offer many possibilities, consequently more cultivated and more refined, interpretation even if it be only in the demonstrating of technical ability.

of the drum-music of the Negroes.’ Whiteman’s musicians are wonderful men who are far supePaul Whiteman, “The American King of Jazz,’ proclaims as _rior to the players in dance-halls and the like. Every one of them his explanation, no contradiction-allowing opinion: ‘Jazz is the is a master on his instrument—often he can play four or five; it new American form of art music which originated from the in- _is marvelous what they can do with them. Take his first saxofluence exercised by the musical cultures of the various races _ phonist: he gets sound out of his instrument which we had never living together in the new world. It gives an unequaled rhythm — dreamt were in it. And the pianists: they syncopate against each and offers scope for a more intensified and complete perfection | other, demonstrate a technique which rouses the hall to enthusiof a theme than any other music whatever. Jazz is, now that sym- asm, and this without the least effort. There are also singers phony and church music are bygones, the music of the future.’ among the musicians: they sing some simple songs, but in per“Whether he is right?’ Many a lover of music asked himself fect harmony with the music. when the fame of Paul Whiteman spread over the world. He is Beside those whose virtuosoship always remains ‘art,’ there drawing full houses night after night, and the big noises of the are also members of the band who show their abilities in mad musical world in all countries are enthusiastic with what he __ eccentricities, for instance by playing two instruments simultabrings; he has intoxicated cool heads of people who formerly — neously—one in each corner of their mouth—or by playing,

used to condemn jazz. What?—A bicycle pump! Such stunts are really more suitable

In this to be regarded only as a whim of fashion? Most cer-_ _ for music-halls; they do not belong to Whiteman-the-artist; at tainly not! Whiteman is no charlatan, not a head circus-clown, least if we judge in accordance with the (now already rather leader of a number of clowns. He is a man with an ironenergy, old-fashioned) principles that art, however gay it may be, has with an extraordinary sense of music and a positive belief that to adhere to certain restrictions. But it is not impossible that jazz can be beautiful, provided that it is relieved of the blame |= Whiteman thinks different in this respect, that he sees in art thrown upon it in cabarets and dance halls. Only, and in conse- — education as well as pure amusement. And then we will have to quence hereof we find the gaps which undoubtedly exist in his | submit ourselves to his point of view, if he gives the most touchart, he has to make most of the few means which he has athis —_—ing sounds in combination with the shrillest dissonants, in a

disposal, to bring jazz on a higher plan. double sense.

It is established fact that in the dramatic art a new idea will Whiteman’s art is like himself; jolly round, of a kindhearted never emanate from the actor; the latter is only the reproducing — simplicity, but at the same time sharp like the point of his musartist. He needs a play which enables him to express himself. —_ tache above the firm lips, and of an exciting infectiousness like Without such a ‘new’ play he can never demonstrate his ‘new’ ___ the abrupt hopping-movements with which the leader spurs or way of acting. The same applies to Whiteman. As long asthere __ reins his men.

are no composers who create jazz music and nothing but jazz Whiteman is the ‘businessman-like’ Yankee with the soul of music from inherent impulse, Whiteman will not be able to give _an artist; that is how he brings the calculative art of entertainus jazz art; till then his work will remain a parasitising on the —= ment with its deeper origin which drives the public half-mad spurned old values. It is true that Whiteman has had already § and makes the applause rattle, roar, flare, resound from audisome numbers specially composed for him, but one can still | ence to stage and from stage to audience. On the platform howcount them on one’s fingers. Among the best are: Rhapsody in ___ ever, everything remains quiet and disciplined. One moment a Blue by Gershwin, Circus Day by Deems Taylor, Monotony — musician puts his whole heart into a solo, the next moment he is and Synsonate by Sowerby, Mississippi and Broadway at Night | amodest part of the compact entirety which is led by Whiteman’s by Ferdie Grofé, and Four American Pieces by Eastwood Lane. springy movements, by a single gesture of his hand or a tick of He further completes his programs with popular songs, paro- —_—ihis conductor’s stick. dies and adaptations from classical music. As a whole his con- Although Whiteman may not be the ‘aristocratic’ conductor certs therefore are still a mixture, which is never able to give | of ahigh-class symphony orchestra, but the jolly waddling leader

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1929 AUGUST ¢ BRITISH MUSICIAN of a jazz band, with his hands in his pockets, yet he has that As regards his men, they like to remain with him; not only mysterious gift which typifies the born great musical leader, —__ because he pays splendid salaries—500 dollars per week is noth-

which, notwithstanding much that is wild and unceremonious, ___ing out of the ordinary—but also because an animation ema-

immediately makes a deep impression on the audience. nates from him which makes work pleasant. Whiteman’s education has certainly had a great influence The reader will have learned from this short sketch that on his personality. After he had been dismissed as unsuitable | Whiteman is more than a charlatan, his orchestra more than a from a symphony orchestra, where he had played too many _jazz band, and the favour of the public more than a whim. There musical tricks, he joined a dance band. There he grew conscious is something in the striving of this American. In the new world of the possibilities of jazz. He put himself an aim and did not __ they have no time to hear a symphony being gradually built up. start by trying to reach this aim gradually, but took immedi- —_ Everything has to be condensed, firm of build and clearly outately the whole decisive step, by forming a band—although small _lined, so that an entirety is created after only a few notes. Jazz at first—which was to interpret his jazz. First the music and __ can provide for this. And would it be so ridiculous to suppose dance halls were still the field of his operations, buthe soon left —__ that, as times have also changed in Europe, as here too time has these, enlarged his band, and started his starring tours which become money, and the brains want to work faster, jazz in its won him his world-fame. A remarkable fact, and typical for his higher form will have a reason of existence? If this is so, and character, is that Whiteman is still working with several musi- — everything points in that direction, there is nothing regrettable

cians with whom he started years ago. in it, on the contrary; that is to say: 1f Whiteman can give us in course of time jazz art of jazz composers.

August ¢ British Musician JAZZ In the June number of the British Musician and Musical News, very much out-of-date. It embodies the ancient ideas of quite ... it is something of a surprise to come across Mr. A. L. H. three years ago. Since those ideas were formulated, jazz has Moore’s article on “Paul Whiteman, the Reformer of Music,” — enlarged itself and tried to vary its movement. In other words, in which the author revives a lot of the nonsense written and _—ijazz has got tired of being so much with itself and has tried to talked about jazz some years ago when that genial showman come out a bit into the general world. Some of the great jazz was on the point of undertaking a concert tour through Great —_ bands are actually playing potpourris of songs from the 1890’s. Britain. Mr. Moore tells us, in all seriousness, of Mr. Whiteman’s —_ Before long they will turn to the Strauss waltz and the Sousa desire to establish jazz upon a higher plane of art, and of his = march. And they will give us topping performances of the muinability to do so because of the continued failure of jazz com- sic. But musicians are still justified in speaking against jazz posers to provide him with good enough material, and he en- _‘ from the high and lasting platform of pure art, whether popular thuses over Whiteman’s “wonderful musicians” who can play ___ or ‘classical’; and the following is a good specimen of the critinot only “on two instruments at once, one in each corner of the —_cism it deserves and receives. The writer quoted from is Anton mouth, but on a bicycle pump.” Jazz art, indeed! He alsoquotes § Rovinsky, an American pianist. Mr. Whiteman: “Jazz is, now that symphony and church music I1]—The greatest danger which music faces to-day is that of are bygones, the music of the future.” Since that was written, | becoming standardized and mechanized. The extent to which however, jazz appears to have abandoned its claim to be con- _—s popular music has become dominated by jazz is a danger signal sidered on equal terms with real music, and, returning to its | which should be heeded. Melody, the humanizing element, is place in the dance hall, has assumed an air of amiable respect- —_ being subordinated to rhythm, the impersonal element. And what ability, while the “bygones” do not appear even yet to lack ei- —_— is more, one particular rhythm has become the type rhythm of

ther performance of appreciation.’ (Sheffield Telegraph, June __ our age. The waltz, once so popular, never exercised a tyranny

24th.) so powerful as the beat of jazz. One has only to listen to jazz for II—The article on Paul Whiteman and Jazz was publishedin —_ an hour on end to realize the deadening effect of its trip-hamthis paper so that the British Musician should preserve in its — mer regularity. It is robot music, or at least the abumbration of

. ‘staid’ pages a record of what jazzites thought. The article is | what perfect robot music would be—not the pulse of a living body, but the throbbing of a machine.

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SEPTEMBER ¢ THE ETUDE | 1929 September ¢ The Etude THE JAZZ BARRAGE America’s next barrage, the sixth aimed toward the helpless world, — certo, which he has played with leading American orchestras.

was “jazz,” which, born in a brothel, gradually emerged into Finally, in an all-too-restricted fashion, we have sent forth semi-respectability by way of the ballroom floor. Attributedto the works of Edward MacDowell, Mrs. H. H. A. Beach, Charles Negro composers, it is really far more the scum of the melting- | Wakefield Cadman, Ethelbert Nevin, Thurlow Lieurance, pot of America, a conglomeration of the rhythms and melodies = Horatio Parker, Reginald de Koven, George W. Chadwick, of peoples of all lands fighting for existence inthe new world. | Deems Taylor, Edgar Stillman Kelley, John Alden Carpenter, The Negro has had his part in the introduction of distinctive | Henry K. Hadley, James H. Rogers, Ernest Kroeger, and a group rhythmic patterns; but on the whole he had far less todo with — of other composers, whose works in larger and smaller forms “jazz,” save for the performance of a few “jazz” tunes by Negro _ have found their way to some of the leading concert halls of bands, than most people realize. The Negro deserves farmore | Europe. We are immensely proud of the recognition they have credit for the evolution of spirituals than he does for “jazz.” | gained. They have put into currency many enchanting melodies The most famous “jazz” music has come direct from the hands —_ and some remarkable works of broad dimensions. In many inof composers of Russian Jewish birth or background, to whom __ stances their musicianship has risen to magnificent peaks of America has given vocal liberty. I refer to Berlin, Jolson, and = mastery. I will not court journalistic suicide by attempting to Gershwin. When one considers the struggles of these men, _ indicate a preference for any one of these composers.

and many like them, to rise from the social depths to their It is not in this area, however, that we are to find the highest present position in the field of poplar music, it must be real- | evidences of Musical Idealism in the New World. Nor are we to ized, in all fairness, that in no other land could such sensa- _find it in some of our symphony orchestras which have received tional advances have been possible. Surmounting unthinkable —_ world acclaim. Nor are we to discover it in our heavily-endowed obstacles and enduring terrific privations, they have found _ musical institutions. Nor will we see it in the fine standards of original idioms and humantistic forms of expression which are — the Metropolitan Opera Company of New York or the Chicago so elemental that their works have now and then distinctive art | Civic Opera, nor in our far-reaching American musical indusvalues. Our subject is musical idealism in the New World. Surely _ tries; but we will find it rather in a most extraordinary and highly it is an idealism which led George Gershwin to fight his way exalting outlook upon music as a broad highway to a finer and from the lowest rungs of the musical ladder to the piano con- happier existence.

September ¢ The Etude JAZZ—WHITHER BOUND? by Gordon Balch Nevin As a professional musician this jazz thing interests me intensely, And what of it? Did not one of the greatest musical geniuses though my musical background and training have been very __ of all time, Schubert, pen song after song amidst the simple distant from the paths of jazz. I have no intention of placing —_—_ surrounding of the beer gardens of Vienna? The strength of all before the reader either a paean for jazz nor yet a tirade against it. arts lies in their being firmly rooted in the raw, elemental things As asample of the latter attitude I quote acomment, carried by _ of life. Jazz has drawn strength from just such foundations. From a recent musical journal, from a woman of some prominence: — the more humble walks of life it has sprung; now they are talk“When anybody asks me what I think of jazz musicI reply that —_ing of dressing it up in Paquin gowns and taking it to the opera there is jazz and that there is music, but that there is no jazz house! We may hope to foretell the result through a series of music.” (The italics are mine.) This attitude, Isubmit,is wrong.A _ parallels. form of musical activity that has reached perhaps one hundred

and fifty millions of people in the land of its inception and has The Watermelon Patch been welcomed in many other lands can scarcely be dismissed

with a contemptuous gesture. Let us try to understand just what is meant when we use the In constructing an anatomy of jazz music, one is struck first term “jazz.” Mr. Paul Whiteman, I believe, is authority for the of all by its origin. Its decriers tell us that the cradle of jazz was oft quoted dictum that jazz is not a particular type of music in the brothel. Its advocates say that it sprang from the sidewalks _ itself but rather a method of playing music. Even the most suof our great cities. Probably the truth lies somewhere between _perficial observation will substantiate this statement. Have not the two: the dance-hall, the restaurant, perhaps the saloon— the jazz men regarded the classics as one great watermelon-

these had their place in the genesis of jazz. patch, and emulated the Ethiopian by filching the choicest me559

1929 SEPTEMBER * ETUDE lodic bits from that patch? The method of playing, you see. _ thing is absolutely without parallel in this or other lands. We Not the thing played. The artisans of jazz also borrow freely —_— look in vain for those simultaneous spurts of development which from each other, but here again there is classical precedent, __ the historian usually discovers in various parts of the world when for it is a matter of record that the great Handel appropriated, —_ he analyzes the growth of any art of science. The format of the

in a most unabashed manner, ideas that pleased him. And no _jazz orchestra (or band, as it is usually called) was created here less an authority than Mr. Irving Berlin has stated that traces —_in these United States, and its present more or less standardized of reminiscence are a distinct asset in producing a smashing make-up is peculiarly American. popular success.

Strict originality regarding melodies must therefore be elimi- It Takes “Nerve” nated in any attempt to analyze the elements and future of jazz music. There is a distinctive quality to much of the best of the = _In what other land could have been found, the sheer “cheeky”

later jazz composition and a quite individual flavor to some of nerve that would have thrown together a brass choir (three to the melodies, but it is my opinion that the greater part of this | six men), a saxophone choir (three to five men), a violin or two, flavor must be charged to the inherent rhythmical construction _ a piano or two, a banjo or two, and, laboring under the term rather than to the melodic outline proper. To this rhythmic con- | “drummer,” a versatile performer on divers sound-producers of

sideration we shall shortly come. a percussion nature? Multiply this number of men by the jazz In the chord-work or harmonic-web employed by the present factor for “doubling,” that is, the playing by each man of more inhabitants of Tin Pan Alley, we find considerable of interest. than one particular instrument, plus the wholly original use of Here the progress of recent years has been fast and furious. | countless devices (mutes) for changing the tone of each instruCompare, if you will, the type of harmony employed in the — ment, and we begin to grasp the chief points of departure from popular songs which were in vogue fifteen or twenty years ago _classical “instrumentation.” Hence the truth of the statement with those of today. Take that popular hit of other years, In the from one of the crowned-heads of Jazz that the thing is a method Good Old Summer-Time, and place it beside any recent song of playing music. hit. In the old-timer we find a chorus using barely six different Briefly, then, we have a musical manifestation embracing: chords, and practically devoid of “chromatics” or passing notes. 1. melodic lines of no great originality; 2. harmony of considerAnd this song is typical of the period in every respect. able sophistication rather than inherent newness; 3. rhythm of a complex nature superimposed on a basic beat of utmost mo-

Many Hued Harmony notony; 4. a technic of instrumentation peculiarly individual.

Before venturing an analysis of these facts and attempting a Select a modern example, for instance, Persian Rug, and you __ glance into the future, I wish to confess openly that, despite my have a thing fairly bristling with chromatics, using many pass- _ training along strictly “classical” lines, my years of labor in the ing notes, and making use of not less than three times as many field of church music and pedagogy and my writings in the field different chords as were found in the older song. These propor- — of organ music and pedagogical material, I frankly enjoy jazz tions will vary, of course, but one is safe in stating that there is _ of the better type, when played by first-rank organizations. Third at least a one-hundred per cent increase in harmonic variety in and fourth-rate “bands” are something entirely different, and I the bulk of today’s popular music. The sources of this com- am considering only the better class of jazz as produced by the plexity are obviously the classics, but that is another matter. leading exponents of the art. So, by the route of inverse progression, we reach the main- This confession is a bit courageous for, as the English critic, spring of the “music of the millions”—its characteristic and Francis Toye, says, “We Anglo-Saxons show a marked preferindividual rhythmic construction. Here we must grant that the — ence for light music, and, for this very reason, are loth to bejazzists have created more than they have borrowed. Upon a__lieve that it can possess merit equal to that of music more diffiprimitive “ostinato” rhythm insistently proclaimed by the drums _ cult to appreciate.” We find it difficult to reconcile our like with they have super-imposed a mass of uneven groupings, split beats, the things we have been taught. As Toye adds, “One cannot back-time, flutter-tongue effects, and so forth, not to mention have Puritan ancestry with impunity!” “nodding,” “dirt,” “hot-stuff,” and similar terms taken from the There has been much be-fogging of the real issues, and to weird but descriptive argot of the trade. Hardly asinglerhythm _ this be-fogging the jazz propagandists have materially contribis brand new; it is doubtful if there is at this late date such a —_ uted. Ernest Newman has neatly called attention to an importhing as a new rhythm. But the jazzists have woven some novel _tant point: “Jazz has two aspects—the musical and the terpsipatterns with the rhythmic threads, and they deserve credit for chorean. It is still unequaled as a medium by which fair women some of the patterns they have put together. In the ceaseless = may perspire in the arms of brave men.” This is a bit harsh in alternation of various rhythmic groupings and the kaleidoscopic _ that it implies too-severe limitations. speed with which the groupings succeed each other lies one of

the characteristic qualities of the jazz of today. Jazz by the Dose Part and parcel of the whole creation is the extraordinary

combination of instruments employed and the even more ex- —_ Jazz is also a medium by which the digestion may be aided and traordinary “scoring” or employment of these instruments. The — by which the cares, worries and monotony of this nerve-taut

560

SEPTEMBER ¢ THE ETUDE 1929 age can be temporarily forgotten. For the present-day theater, the end, jazz! East is East, and, West is West and never the twain especially for the musical show that has so nearly destroyed the shall meet! operetta of other years, it is nearly ideal. At the banquet it may So we reach the conclusion that this child of the sidewalks serve as a narcotic to the boredom which formerly was assuaged = (of New York, for the most part) is a practically fully developed by the juice of the grape. In an age that prays above all thingsto | youngster, smart, pert, sophisticated, a bit hard, a bit wistful at be spared the tortures of quiet thought jazz has its sure position. times, not an art form, not susceptible of much development When conversation, that lost art, languishes and dies:—“turn beyond its present status But it is a manifestation of the Ameri-

on the radio, let’s have some jazz!” can temperament and background—that background which, as We have indicated that the strength of jazz music lies, ina _‘ the Constitution so bravely states, offers to everyone the chance diminishing scale, within these qualities: its orchestration, its for the “pursuit of happiness.” It is a music short-lived because rhythmic individuality, its ventures into sophisticated harmony _ of its highly commercialized distribution, designed to catch two and its melodies. Reduced to the essence this means that the — hundred million cars as quickly as possible, to be briefly entechnic is stronger than the motivation. Were jazz the prop- _—joyed, and then to make way for other examples of the same erty of the few, this would spell its early sentence to death, but —_ general pattern, it is a music demanding no concentration from jazz is not the property of the elite and hence it means nothing _ the listener—it may be heard in a state of mental relaxation, of the kind. What it does indicate is approaching fixation, the yes, even inattention! And does this not justify existence? Do case-hardening of a well-worn groove, a condition of stan- |= we not need, in our strenuous civilization, just such a soporific,

dardization. such a hypnotic?

Everything considered, the past year has shown less devel- But when the claim is advanced that out of jazz will come

opment than did any three months of the five years previous. The |= symphonies and operas, I, for one, must decline to agree. The bigger bands, using thirty to thirty-five men have come and, for _ suspicion will obtrude that he who advances this claim has his the most part, gone; the usual number is now between twelve and _ tongue in his cheek. Even at its best, or, shall we say, at its most twenty. This does not spell retrogression. Rather, as M. Montague- = complex jazz harmony is always more ingenuous than classical Nathan has said (in discussing the symphony orchestra), “Big- harmony, that is, its progress can be more nearly anticipated by

ness as an end and even as a means has little to recommend it, a musician. and the future of the orchestra must be with those who know full

well that simplicity is not incompatible with beauty.” The Moan of the Saxophone ““ There mee ne i. we a ae eit honies and The instrumentation of jazz is its strongest weapon. Anyone jazz offen Vee ° he h, aM ; "i een . 1 Sos y it tL who heard the almost pitiful attempt made by one of the New press-pu pind bt hack © heavily Bat nei i. fe atl A we" York Orchestras (symphony) to play a re-scored form of Rhapdora ne Te t nas me hati ut " 4 om 7 iy. 4: cone sody in Blue (originally written and scored for the big Whiteman - aad it © t us hort pheg ie Jaze . unt ath ‘ * a none Band) will grant this point. In its scoring and method of playing OFM, ane Wis & S ort-phrase orm © music a that. Ms phrases ies the glory of jazz; in them, too, one may read its statute of are almost invariably of four or eight measures’ length. No great limitations

ee hom 1¢ OF ane techie can be developed from as ste- If the protagonists of jazz remain within their idiom, their

reotyped a construction as this. place in the sun will be secure. If they are content to give us

; . b do. ive t leasi

oo pleasant tunes, neat harmony, clever rhythmic and tonal effects,

Quick-timing a Great Melody all will be well with them. This their more astute workers apProbably the greatest single theme ever created in jazz—the pear to be resigned to do. Should they strive 0 push a pieasing

; ;E-major dance-form into thethe scope of portion an art-form, with all complexisonorous theme from latter of Mr. George : ; by 5 oo ties—spiritual, constructional and expression—they will7.;end Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, a theme that pulls to a big cli; ; Loge gs ; discovering that the qualities that make jazz what it really .isaare max, perhaps the biggest climax ever attained in light music— , , arphrase more vaporous thanobviously. the perfume Mr. of a flower and that has such a short line inthat, Gershwin didthe; flower . .Jazz: ae ; has crumbled their hands. Let me close with a definition not knowep what to do with it after he had once stated it, and so ee ; . as tt tt gy a dance form plus a distinctive vehicle of expression, so fully

fell on the as pitiful ineffectiveness “quick-timing” a ; .back developed to suggest already aofstate of fixation.or play- ; , ing it at about double its original speed. . ; As I failed complete these what lines,aattremendous the end of tune a strenuous day, the He. either to realize he had rarer ; ; radio islikely, bringing towas my so earsdeeply a celebrated Jazz-ensemble in. ;New created or, and more he bedded in the , sae ae ; tags of York City. Clean-cut, artistic playing,seemed melodies ofonly ear-pricking tricks the musical revue that quick-time the Lae .; , charm,onneat tricks in But harmony, colorwill effects of surprising varichange possible a restatement. the suspicion oba . , ety, a general and espirit! And you ask me whetherane I really trude that had a great, composer ofverve classic training manipulated :; enjoy it. Of course I do, and so do you! There, dear readers, is

that theme the result might have been a better treatment, a bet- eer , . , .

ter development. but that it verv likely would not have been.in 7 ou justification of jazz and estimate of its place in the scheme

P , "y y , of things musical. Profundity, get thee behind us!

561

1929 SEPTEMBER ¢ MUSIC TEACHER September © Music Teacher GEORGE GERSHWIN’S “RHAPSODY IN BLUE Detailed analysis by Ronald Cunliffe

studied or known. a a eee George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue is already aclassic. Like | Example].

most classics, it is admired and talked about more than it is A Pas! PS One

This work, which is in essence a piano concerto, witha“jazz” 0 SO oe SOSCS—S CT CU OY

orchestra in place of the classical orchestra as the medium for sil bream (TNTG Rae

accompaniment, is available to the student in two forms. The Sigh form from which I shall quote is the two-piano arrangement, 9. Tne eee eee

having the authentic solo part on one pair of staves, and the oo, condensation of the orchestral accompaniment below. The other beginning in bar 2 of the example. The final note of the theme is version is for one piano only, and, to my mind, is most unsatis- followed by a kind of “tail,” which I show here, not as it occurs

factory; it makes very poor use of the material. Harms, Inc., of 1 bar 6, but as it subsequently appears, in its most-used harNew York, were the publishers. In this country Chappell’s are onic form

the agents: the price of each version is twelve shillings. Example 2.

Composer's Aim ——— To begin with, one should endeavour to see Gershwin’s point of ome | 4a

view in this work. Himself an accomplished pianist and a suc- Eo ——

cessful student of composition upon established classical lines, | |

but thoroughly of the age in his appreciation of the intrinsic — This “tail” becomes very important in the later reaches of the value of modern tendencies in syncopation and “jazz” orches- —_—_ work.

tration, his work is an attempt to present these apparently con- A few bars later we reach the second main theme flicting streams of musical thought mingled each with the other. The task is not an easy one, for it demands a two-sided talent, if Example3.

not a two-sided genius; but granted the talent, there is nothing ’

inherently unsuperable in the problem. All the devices now re- (i 3 >== SSS garded as classical were once novel, and once thought hereti- ITT TT PPPPT TT CLL TUTE 1...

cal, all that wasvalue keptin in the musical treasureee ted house.but Similarly all was that isvaluable of permanent modern synco- (a Ts TN. Se Ege | ee

pation and colouring will eventually be absorbed into musical Ss a es eee a een ee clock. All honour, then to Gershwin, for his pioneer work.

Rhapsody in Blue follows the form of the classical concerto. Then the first theme (Ex. 1) is stated again, in the key of Ab, Although it is in one continuous stretch, we can easily mark the and while the brass holds the final note (Eb) the solo instrument divisions between the four movements. It follows modernsym- modestly enters with an elaborated version of the “tail” shown phonic practice in that material of the earlier movementsis used —__in Ex. 2. This leads to a new statement of the second theme in again, a transformation, in the last movement. Looking over __ the tonality of Gb, richly harmonized, as the final notes show. the work as a whole, the sequence of the movements is ordered and convincing, and apart from a tendency to undue length and Example 4.

surfeit of thematic material in the first movement, the work is om

shapely and well-proportioned. » i es ¥ ee Oe

vo ata te aco eon ao aa Ca wae Sn Sas mean cas Ones Onion

(e's at oe oe oe ee eo ae oe a Ts os Sn a a on

The work opens in a classical manner, with orchestra minus I ee ee on oe —n NS. piano. The pace is very moderate. Abit —i— deg ge ee ee ee After a shake and scale on the clarinet a saxophone announces re Fo | ‘ni ~~

the first theme ~ 562

SEPTEMBER ¢ MUSIC TEACHER 1929 In the very next bar the elaborated version of the “tail” reap- _ five, has an irresistibly humorous effect. The piano figuration at

pears. this point is of the “two-handed break” type.

The pace since the beginning has been distinctly moderate

Example 5. (J =80 M.M.), but a change to a quicker speed is shortly coming. A. yd ld | PR PP a The change is heralded by a cadenza-like passage for the solo Pit Fo| QHRS | Ss instrument, beginning immediately after Ex. Beginning 1600Pte ‘Ochi GERCURINERS CESTRSNS CAE CEEETIEEN i: GN7.CE ee ee . . . * °witha

ee. °Example 8. a . Cw 4 nis Taye Yili ves FSS Pee we al pad whimsical statement of Ex. 1, it proceeds to this interesting pas-

Wie fara . 2h GS CEE ERS OR" CG Se ee -e Ge Se A ee. ae

ea. i M™. FR CR "T rT le | “

Note the violent change of key, and the increased interest pro- Fort fe —— SS

vided by the semiquavers, as compared with Ex. 2. pce } | beteat [ot

nificent tonal blaze = 3 ¥ At this point the piano has the matter in its own hands, and Y. 1%, batewrtent —foudenfnens | [9 all

. ° . into * PU? & Seeof OR Gay Gan leading awe aan,toSsthe aefollowing OD eet anemagpp ftEE a fo—— plunges a series sequences Example 6.

a et) sage.

wa hus a de ae aeies i Soaspermeeaemcores: (Notice in the first two bars the reappearance of the Ex. 5 figure).

obey een! esapar iii eet a—étyte, This three-bar phrase is repeated sequentially, and thereafter Pin TT “4 - add PPPPpres PD three bars of two-handed contrary-motion figures lead to an

f murttiiehs - | imposing re-statement, with octave-size chords in the right hand,

re}‘ »2sCSREES of Ex. 6. Then to play) leads to the Sip Othe CEfollowing Gas Cee bar YP(intriguing .

ee ee | A Hea — o/s oe tempo giusto. Example 9.

This passage, considered under the scheme of classification _¢9#4——-=55 a ep lpg spd od 3

in my August article, makes superb of the “repetition” eeee SeSoSeae device. The sheer splendour ofathis effectuse surpasses anything in oy

my experience; in performance it demands all that the player FS a de can give it of sharp attack-and-cessation on each of the ten E

repeated chords in the bar. (Later it appears in magnified form). A

few more sequences, followed by a scale similar to the opening

one on the clarinet bring us to Ex 7, The pace is now that of a brisk fox-trot (according, at any rate, to Gershwin’s own performance with Paul Whiteman’s Band

Example 7. on a H.M.V. record).The subject-matter is as before, plus a new theme-fragment of characteristic type. ne sm eS yf abt od Lt) ES OS Te ane 3 aan SERRE 130 al SE as i OG eae — 7. —tS Die! Giey on eo + le ame £ Fle, eee eee Example 10.

nee Cantey NS TT) C een aN BN ’ s- + sem ae 60 Se Eb ED OOS an EO. Nene (as oe Seo

SSS Se ~~) | be an\ be

= Pile Pid ¢ Ble (3 22 ee 5 So SS 23 2 Se Dit en ole te ee PE mpSSGU GA SA So uk 8 2! aes Se see SSE SSS SS pre SF % — ED, SP ATOLL § CLT NO a aes

.——— => aoe oa Depeee hh EPee ee ee aae “$i pe ed ea ve ° . eli e °% 6 | a” rp

(I have shown the bass saxophone on separate stave). The Peete at oa Pat Pel Pe ea oe Pe first three bars of this example show Ex. 1, and the bass saxo- -§-- a=ekcee er Sa ee ee oo phone version of the “tail” in staccato notes, in bars four and

563

ae

1929 SEPTEMBER ¢ MUSIC TEACHER The piano accompaniment here is also very characteristic. This is quickly worked up to a fairly strong climax, to the As this tune concludes, we get Ex. 3 in a new and vigorous | accompaniment of vivid arpeggios on the piano. A scale pas-

guise. sage in major seconds leads to a scherzando piano solo passage which deals in turn with variants of Exs. 11,1, 12, and 5. This

Example 11. section contains not a few real keyboard problems. Space is ' (Octave loner throng hout) becoming severely taxed by my desire to quote as fully as posPes BE a sible, but I cannot refrain from instancing a real brain-twister

Bch ° z AL Te and finger-breaker.

> 4 Pd < am... 8... ga ' 2 Sve cua. ee? 7° . fore cmcceercomecesacmeccoacevesvenn~- '

, otSmears an Te o-4tn aohtamane SS ss ees eSB CSSfiatasa tae ea.eres si lpiia teed eee at O° GGT, AiesCT, A ee aFE 24... wit oe.aa pert ty ot ta Sonn pumas 0 gaan.

14 Or eeWSS ae es ee| seen hg 888 S- “~~ ise eesem was . een / ”1 OU bier sCe =oeh hesWw, att&on thee aKG Bee 0) See eee eee Be fo) am:mF dag ag *é Ry ——_ ——— ++ 6-6 —— 6 roo _paaeee. ee '— og. ae. WE . om

eae cae CYal pr IL eal of

Example 12. . an at lot - AT tp} —o oy PTT +1 . . . ii :

A few bars later appears another theme-fragment, Notice here, how the right hand has the theme of the “odd” bars of Ex. 12, and how the left hand has the theme of the “even”

pecs cence er en me cee come ese me teesen enn ____ bars of that example. A little later the piano has a very awkward

Ay) o an - ’ figuration over the orchestra’s plays of Ex. 1. At the pace which

‘estasaeaenseelpigig toa oles gusasemese is in force at this point (about d =96 M.M.) the passage is very

hier rererere FebGrUnY afinare arene difficult, and I confess that short of regarding the grace note

petted hh oh and principal note as together forming a minor second, and playy= he? — =~ Fv [ a—- but a virtuoso to play the passage

Fabs en' Smowey wanda ry: wy Pass’, _ (soe wane } ing them as such, I can see no practical method of getting any

cITi >irryal > 7 >ew > >> > >ralay Example 15.

allied to Ex. 10. It is worth quoting, as it appears again. Shortly Wee Pott sweets mee cece sv

after this we reach a point which is obviously the end of asec- |. §}-_ yy hep pe pe

tion, so that all the foregoing may quite properly be considered ate oe as the material forming a colossal, composite first subject. pm gett | The true second subject now appears; it is strongly synco- iaaae Sia SiS Sa SS SS

. pated a%O a A Ae a —— > _ a | emend

ich wd . : . — y seq

Example 13.

The figuration continues, in various keys, for twelve bars. I

, (Crue em menaghowt) have placed dotted phrase-marks to suggest the points where

ISataoOfinger-patterns begin and end.in more . 38 From this point the might first movement merely repeats,

|

L and more glowing form, the thematic material above stated. Af-

1 eS ae ae Se ee ene NE a ter Ex. 15 the piano is heard alone for the remainder of the moveyw “SE =< ae downward drive in double octaves followed by sequences of

6-9 ie te ee = ment, which culminates in a brilliant cadenza. A magnificent

> movement. |

i aS ns oie

the final bar of Ex. 13, link the first movement with the [second

‘cas (oe © Cam sano we Gos oo er

es APO Sf Ot OO SO BT oe vas Second Movement , > amare This movement, like the third and fourth is quite brief.

Re — i a ttt te re The orchestra quietly and with rich colouring, announces a tq OD A” CD 18 GR” OP 6 A Ve 8 OE RS SN 8 Gb WOON 6? “an ne Forres

M6 ° CREE A ETE 6S CNR A AS © «| = = moma & — new theme 564

SEPTEMBER ¢ MUSIC TEACHER 1929 Example 16. Example 19,

Fae St tt Fe if Ra ai| Lf meeee SS Se Se aa ees td > = 3 7s Has ee

= a i a eS

esprennivwe | . Bg 2 be » ST Anduaytina eS OE ES A smedterao LL AST PAns SRT é a | B ‘ omoe - : yt ‘. art 4 ry; algh.

on 2s oc? cee ns Scat) resem ro sracerepscerenre so reps ccm Pome nouns epee Lae 6 Oe o 86 oe mw oe ans oe eee ah? oe

Poe Fa Oy ey SAE ee") Fr is =Stgeli: see 0ae. Oe 8 9 0 ame 6) me eee Lt amma CY SB i =. a eee ig — (4° _——> pompose

‘ . . . 2 new > = = ” CB ep ED ee . « wn

In full the theme occupies 16 bars. It ends, this time, incon- —— oe byt oe ——— —_-ss

clusively in a violin solo of only four bars, after which the or- : is | J /

chestra thunders out the theme again, to the accompaniment of

Staccato piano chords. A whole-tone version on the tuned per- For twenty-four bars this is kept up. Then the key shifts, cussion instruments succeeds, after which the piano takes up blockwise, into C major, and the piano begins, in double octhe theme in a form both romantic and strong. The movement taves, a white-key version of Ex. 16, increased gradually in end with the piano tailing off into the whole-tone version of the speed, and finishing on a discord, of the type in Ex. 11, which theme, and with amusingly lazy syncopation between the two shatters the tonality completely. Orchestra and piano now be-

hands. gin an agitato, using the material in Ex. 8, to which is added a reference to Ex. 5, after which a thrilling contrary-motion in

Example 17. chromatic chords brings us to our final summing-up of the mat-

a . . ° ° oe

ae 2 an se OS OS Y-e , Sues Genees on ee 2... ter.

(So a ee ae co es Sa a oe Se os In a superb, grandioso passage the piano, accompanied by

gg es cs sétee ee 3 the band, plays the theme of Ex. 3 in double octaves; then in the ot oe i}? Oe oe A. pate a ee same medium hear Ex.©12, and wea a/ 2 ee 0 enrooeMb ee358 ee 212 ee ee LT hd powerful QS Ga @ ¢ ’ @we GP fees Oe e again . e Ex. 3 in fullLt ed tt tot tod to | pe — ttt size chords for both hands. The ritenuto in the E’, very imposing, is still not the finish. The key changes tokey B’.af(see Ex.

lock figure ar | ‘ er 4 7 7 Example 18. et ee] a

, 20 and the orchestra, fff, molto allargando, plays for the last

Third and F ourt h Movement(s) time the theme of Ex. 1, and the piano clinches the matter with a

An opening is immediately made with a repetition-and-inter- noble final statement of Ex. 5.

fiestas mule lp, |p f «a ” — » he Dts —$