The third movement, in form much resembling a rondo, is borne onward upon a joyous theme in the style of a folk-melody, and retains this rustic character throughout its development (save in the yearning episode towards the end, like an echo of olden sorrow), closing the drama with a smile bright as a rainbow, and a vision of Nature refreshed.

And it is ever thus in the works of Pizzetti; there is always a radiance behind the clouds, serenity after anguish, purification following on evil. Phædra herself, in the musical drama, is purified of her unchaste love, and her death is like an apotheosis wherein all her sin is forgotten and, in her aspiration for a loftier love beyond this life, no longer weighs upon her transfigured mortality. The musician presents the terrible heroine of d'Annunzio in a more human and, I might say, a kindlier light; he reveals how much of generosity and nobility she possessed, at the same time justifying the divagations of her overwrought sensuality.' To this ethos two works form an exception, though possibly not altogether, namely, the Ouverture per una farsa tragica for orchestra, and the Lamento for tenor and chorus. The former was written in 1911, between the first and second acts of Fedra, during a period of most grievous depression; it is, in consequence, to be considered as a transitional work, though none the less highly effective. In fact, as the author once told me, it is "the autobiography of an hour of crisis"—a spiritual and moral crisis; but here, too, towards the conclusion the horizon clears, and the "tragic farce"-life— resolves in a smile. The Lamento, on the other hand, was composed near the end of 1920, directly after the dreadful misfortune that bereft the musician of his faithful partner. It is a page of powerful tragedy; the voice of the tenor pronounces the disconsolate lines of Shelley, and the chorus repeats with grave emphasis the inexorable words of Fate: "No more!-Nevermore!" Anguish unconsolable it was that wrung this cry from the musician's soul; and when I recall that another musician, an illustrious Italian master, Claudio Monteverdi, wrote more than three centuries ago another unforgettable Lamento in which he poured out his poignant grief at the death of his wife, I cannot refrain from comparing the despairful outbursts of Pizzetti after the struggle, with those of Monteverdi, to sum up all in the agonized supplication, "Let me die!"

1I do not understand how d'Annunzio could say with such great sincerity, in an interview granted shortly before the première of Fedra: "I feel that now, for the first time, the profound intent of my work will be wholly revealed and can be wholly comprehended."

The Sonata in F, for violoncello, composed in 1921 and as yet unpublished, portrays in its three movements the cycle of Sorrow invoked by Death. Its construction takes the form of two Adagios between which is interpolated a tempo of anguished agitation. As to its ideal content, three phases of intimate emotion are chiefly made manifest-grief over the broken ties of affection, rebellion, purification. Some of the esthetic features in the Sonata for Violin reappear in it, for example the respective functions of the pianoforte and violoncello, these being, in the former, the evocation and (to employ an expression borrowed from Fernando Liuzzi) narration of events, while in the violoncello there is the actuality of suffering, paralleling with vivid, palpitating touch the outward and inward course of the tragedy. In the second movement we are gripped by the soul's insurgence against sorrow -its desperate struggle with that blind fatality which dominates us: broken phrases on a menacing, sombre background:

But in brief space this sorrow finds assuagement in solitude; the voice of the violoncello soars upward alone to seek words of hope and consolation,

Violoncello

Solo

and the theme of faith intoned by the pianoforte strives with human woe to raise it to its own sphere, to impart to the contrite spirit the germs of a new life, loftier and incorruptible.1

(Translated by Theodore Baker.)

'To be concluded in April with the chapter on Pizzetti's dramatic works.-Ed.

THE AMERICAN COMPOSER AND THE AMERICAN MUSIC PUBLISHER

A$

By O. G. SONNECK1

S if by historical law musically weaker musical nations appear to be invaded by nations musically stronger. The invasion is accepted as a matter of course, until native effort stirs. The revolt grows as quantity and quality of the native product clamor more and more for just recognition and the demand for just recognition is followed by the doctrine of independence. From sensible, reasonable independence to absolute independence is the next step and the extremists advocate it noisily. A reaction towards saner concepts sets in and the very ones in whose behalf the whole movement evolved begin to feel uncomfortable and wash their hands of a boosting propaganda that stipulates as the primary consideration not merit but place of birth.

Something of the kind is happening to the American composer. He has become the subject of a somewhat hysterical propaganda literature. With the monotony of repetition, he is pictured as a genius unduly neglected by the wicked foreign musician and the equally wicked native publisher. He is acclaimed the equal, if not the superior, of living European composers. Occasionally, the voice of a gifted, competent American composer like Deems Taylor is raised in protest against such uncritical patriotic hallucinations. Less often the indiscriminating attacks on foreign conductors, singers, instrumentalists, are reduced to tangible evidence. Even more seldom the wicked American music publisher finds a defender and then, as a rule, one not sufficiently versed in the intricacies of the publishing industry to gain converts.

As a musician who spoke up for our worthwhile American composers long ago when the sport was not quite as fashionable as now and who drifted from educational work as a historian of music in America and librarian into the executive realms of the publishing business, I may be credited with some knowledge of the inside facts. That knowledge imposes upon such a person

'Read before the Music Teachers' National Association, December 28, 1922.

the duty, both agreeable and disagreeable, to help prevent with a timely note of warning a splendid movement from getting out of control and from being turned into a disorderly parade of selfintoxication.

If those who pamper unwisely too many American geniuses with the sweet morsels of martyrdom would draw their data less from inspiration and more from the actual record, they might content themselves with a less vociferous interest in those of us who happen to be native American composers. Again, if they drew up a kind of graded guide to musical genius, setting against the names of European composers the names of American composers of corresponding grade, their disappointment at finding our composers somewhere down the list, might not survive the ordeal. Who, in his right senses, would class Edward MacDowell, remarkable as he is, and still for me the foremost American composer, with Bach, Handel, Rameau, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Brahms, Wagner, Verdi, Liszt, Mendelssohn, César Franck, Debussy?

Supposing we insisted on giving MacDowell, in such a philistine attempt, the grade of a Bizet, that is to say, a grade considerably below the first few classes, where would other American composers fit in who compare in artistic importance with MacDowell, as Meyer-Helmund or Bohm compare with Bizet or Grieg? And, Meyer-Helmund, Bohm, etc., at that, possessed musicianship, and the indefinable sense of métier, to a degree immeasurably above that of the similar type of successful "Kitsch" composers in our country, some of whom, in private, are honest enough to admit their inability to work out their ideas, as ideas often winsome enough, without confidential assistance of better musicians.

For our few composers of the calibre of Horatio Parker, Chadwick, Arthur Foote, Whiting and Mrs. Beach, I have much more respect than have some of our young champions of unpruned self-expression. These American masters of their craft would lose their respect for a critic's balance of judgment, if he were to rate them above or as high as a Rubinstein or Raff. Now place into the forefront of American composers those already mentioned, and them alone, together with John Alden Carpenter, Charles T. Griffes, John Powell, Edgar Stillman Kelley, Henry F. Gilbert, Henry Hadley. Triple the number by adding, according to taste, men like Daniel Gregory Mason, Ernest Schelling, Leo Sowerby, Rubin Goldmark, Henry Holden Huss, Emerson Whithorne, David Stanely Smith, and be careful not to forget the