CONTEMPORARY COMPOSERS
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
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MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
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MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
Vincent d'Indy
CONTEMPORARY COMPOSERS
BY
DANIEL GREGORY MASON
AUTHOR OF "BEETHOVEN AND HIS FORERUNNERS,"
"THE ROMANTIC COMPOSERS," "FROM GRIEG TO BRAHMS," ETC.
NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1918
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Copyright, 1918,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1918.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
PREFACE
"We live," wrote Stevenson toWill H. Low in 1884, "ina rum age of music withoutairs, stories withoutincident, pictures withoutbeauty, American wood-engravings that shouldhave been etchings, and dry-point etchingsthat ought to have been mezzo-tints....So long as an artist is on his head, is paintingwith a flute, or writes with an etcher'sneedle, or conducts the orchestra with a meat-axe,all is well; and plaudits shower alongwith roses. But any plain man who tries tofollow the obtrusive canons of his art, is buta commonplace figure.... He will have hisreward, but he will never be thought a personof parts."
What would Stevenson say, I wonder, couldhe witness the condition to which this confusionof aims, rapidly spreading since hewrote, has now reduced all the arts, and perhaps[vi]especially music? "Painting with a flute"hardly sounds fantastic any longer, now thatsymphonies have given place to symphonic"poems," orchestral "sketches," and tone"pictures," and program music has taken theplace of supremacy in the art of tones thatmagazine illustration occupies among graphicarts. Anyone who tries nowadays to writemere music—expressive of emotion throughbeauty—is more than ever "a commonplaceperson." The "persons of parts" are thosewho give it the quaint local color of folk-songs,like Mr. Percy Grainger; or who make of itan agreeable accessory of dance or stage picture,like Ravel and Strawinsky, or of coloredlights and perfumes, like Scriabine; or whospin it into mathematical formulæ as a spiderspins web, like Reger; or who use it as a vehiclefor a priori intellectual theories, like Schoenberg,or