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Home , Absolute music, Impressionism in music, Marion Bauer, Serialism

CHARLES GRIFFES AND AMERICAN IN

A THESIS

Presented to the University Honors Program

California State University, Long Beach

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the

University Honors Program Certificate

Kelly Catlin

Fall 2015

1

2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This undergraduate thesis would not have been possible without the mentorship and inspirational guidance of my thesis advisor, Dr. Alicia Doyle. Her endless encouragement helped me to see my own potential for success in researching and synthesizing such a large body of work. Her enthusiasm for research helped me to realize my own passion for , and specifically for the Romantic Era and the Impressionist movement. With her help, I learned that a balanced life of performing, practicing, and academic exploration is not only possible, but also healthy and vital to my success as a well-rounded musician. These lessons have shaped my vision for the kind of musician I want to be in the future.

I am grateful for my parents for their never-ending support, and for helping me see the value in a diverse and well-rounded education. When I doubted whether I could give each of my interests and passions enough attention, they gave me perspective and helped me figure out my plan.

Lastly, I would like to acknowledge the CSULB University Honors Program for providing a nurturing environment for my academic growth. All of the professors and courses I have taken through the UHP have contributed significantly to my ability to understand the world and think critically about issues. My fellow peers in the UHP have challenged me intellectually and continue to inspire me in all of their diverse fields. I am grateful to be a part of this community!

3

I. INTRODUCTION

In many respects, Western European composed at the turn of the twentieth century broke the rules set by composers of previous eras. While it was derived from previous styles, Impressionism as a musical style broke many of these rigid rules of composition and pushed the boundaries of contemporary music of the time. As a movement, Impressionism was largely a French phenomenon, however it eventually spread to other parts of the world.

American Impressionism is distinct from European/French Impressionism in many ways, which will be discussed throughout this body of work; these distinctions manifest themselves in “Poem for Flute and ” by Charles Griffes, the most prolific American Impressionist composer.

Impressionism began as a visual in . A group of French painters around 1860-1900, including Frédéric Bazille, Paul Cézanne, , Edoard Manet,

Armand Guillaumin, , Berthe Borisot, , Auguste Renoir, Alfred

Sisley, and , called themselves “Le Societé anonyme des artistes, sculpteurs et graveurs.” These painters all realized they shared similar ideas on painting style and subject and many studied art together; Manet, Degas, and Renoir studied at the École des Beaux-Arts while

Cézanne, Guillaumin, Monet, and Pissarro worked at the Académie Suisse in Paris. Jules

Antoine Castagnary was the French art critic who first referred to these painters by the term

“Impressionists,” however the critic used the term in a negative manner. He stated that “they

4 render not the landscape but the sensation produced by the landscape.”1 The first painting described by the term was Monet’s “Impression Sunrise” in 1874.

As their title suggests, these Impressionistic painters’ work depicted a vague impression of the subject instead of an exact detailed representation. These painters often depicted landscapes, cities, or everyday life, paying special attention to unique light and atmosphere.

Critics interpreted the painting’s vague nature and broad brushstrokes as a lack of skill or care.2

Some twenty years after Impressionism was established in the , it inspired the

Impressionist movement in music. Claude was the first composer referred to as an

“Impressionistic” composer when the Académie des Beaux-Arts reviewed his work, “Printemps,” composed in 1887. The Académie warned him against composing with “vague impressionism,” which they deemed dangerous to music. Their feedback read, “His feeling for musical color is so strong that he is apt to forget the importance of accuracy of line and form. He should beware this vague impressionism which is one of the most dangerous enemies of artistic truth.”3

While the working definition of Impressionism sometimes lacks specificity,

Impressionistic music demonstrates certain universal characteristics. Most sources will say that

Impressionistic music aims to create a haziness, a vagueness, and a lack of definition. Debussy accomplished this through breaking free of traditional major/minor key systems. He incorporated plainsong and folk-song into his compositions, using unusual scales like church modes for . Debussy also utilized techniques seen in Russian folk music of the Far East, such as

1 Jann Pasler, "Impressionism," Grove Music Online/Oxford Music Online, accessed February

2 Grace Seiberling, "Impressionism," Grove Art Online/Oxford Art Online, accessed April 10, 2015, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.mcc1.library.csulb.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T040015.

3 Ronald L Byrnside, "Musical Impressionism: The Early History of the Term" (The Musical Quarterly 66, no. 4, 1980), 523.

5 composing melodies with pentatonic scales. Another popular non-diatonic scale from the East used in Impressionism was whole tone scales.

Harmony in Impressionism did not simply act as accompaniment anymore, but became part of the itself. Debussy used 7th, 9th, 11th, and 13th chords as dominant and secondary dominant chords, a technique deemed “wrong” in all previous European western music. Added- note chords, chords containing stacked notes of some or all of the notes in the , and chords consisting of stacked fourths or fifths (quartal and quintal chords, respectively) appear in Impressionism as well. Slow chord progressions of these discordant chords are also a cornerstone of Impressionistic music. Debussy also liked composing music in which the strings play open fifths, a practice formerly strongly discouraged because open fifths do not themselves indicate a specific harmonic functionality. These and chords did not resolve in traditional ways at cadences, making their functions vague, contributing to the floating, timeless sensation in the music.

Timbre is one of the most important variables used by Debussy and other Impressionistic composers. In the 18th and 19th centuries, instruments were organized in four groups: woodwinds, brass, percussion and strings. Debussy reorganized the process of in terms of each individual instrument’s . He wanted each instrument to play its own specific role in the entire sound; this goal of Debussy’s causes many musicologists to compare his compositional style to the visual art style of .4

Claude Debussy aimed to represent nature through his compositions and wished his music would bring out “the mysterious correspondences between Nature and the Imagination.”5

4 , (London: Hutchinson & Co Ltd., 1973), 23.

5 Pasler, Impressionism.

6 Louis Laloy’s biography on Debussy included Debussy’s opinion of the definition of

Impressionism: “Sounds used in music have no meaning nor can they represent an object. Music, therefore, among all the arts must originally have been the one which is essentially symbolist and impressionist.”6

Debussy based many of his musical works on literary works; Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem inspired his well-known Prélude à l’Apres-midi d’un Faun, Maurice Maeterlinck inspired

Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, and J.M.W. Turner inspired Debussy’s . Debussy was also attracted to Asian art, as exemplified by a Japanese painting by Katsushika Hokusai on the cover of La Mer. Debussy even stated that “Non-European musicians, like the Chinese, the

Indians and the Sengalese are Impressionists and Symbolists without being aware of it.”7

Similarly, since Impressionism does not adhere to rigid musical forms, this makes it easily susceptible to emulating non-Western music.

It seems that no single, commonly accepted technical definition exists for Impressionistic music, perhaps because Debussy believed in letting the music speak for itself as opposed to writing and talking about the music. Debussy said, “There is too much writing of music. Too much importance attached to the formula, the craft.”8 This suggests that Debussy was not interested in defining himself through analysis. He was “a man to whom …[has] become utterly abhorrent…there is little if any mention, let alone discussion, of the actual craft

6 Ibid., 527.

7 Ibid.

8 Palmer, Impressionism in Music, 19.

7 of . Debussy would have none of it.”9 Regardless, the Impressionist movement in music is inextricably linked with Debussy.

Many scholars define Impressionism solely as the music of Debussy and those who were influenced by him. The use of the descriptor, Impressionism, started and grew as Debussy’s career developed, even though there was a twenty-year gap between the rise of his career and the start of the Impressionist movement in art. Debussy’s music and Impressionism are so linked that scholars have stated that: “In any case, discussions of Impressionism in music emerged not before but with Debussy’s music.”10

Despite the relationship to Debussy, some composers were referred to as

“impressionistic” before he was. In a letter penned by Renoir in 1882, he spoke of a discussion he had with . He wrote, “We spoke of the Impressionists of music.”11 Renoir might have been talking about Fauré, Duparc, Chabrier, or Chausson, seeing as Renoir did not know Debussy and the letter was written before Debussy had published any of his music. This was a unique usage of the term Impressionism because it occurred before official documentation of the term as applied to music.

Other Impressionistic composers mentioned in connection with Debussy were the French composers Vincent d’Indy, Théodore Dubois, and Gabriel Fauré. In contrast, some controversy surrounds the usage of the term Impressionism when applied to non-French composers; “…we occasionally find a writer who attaches Impressionist to composers other than Debussy.

Significantly, most of these writers were not French. To some British and American authors,

9 Palmer, Impressionism in Music, 19.

10 Byrnside, Musical Impressionism: The Early History of the Term, 524.

11 Ibid., 523.

8 Impressionism seems to have been more or less synonymous with ‘new music…’”12 As mentioned above, some critics believe in a strict definition of Impressionism as solely the music of Debussy; this belief is not widely held however and Impressionism has made its way into popular usage to describe many different composers’ music.

In the 1920s-1930s Impressionism started being applied “retroactively” towards the music such as Luca Marenzio’s madrigals, Galuppi’s and Platti’s harpsichord sonatas,

Beethoven’s sonatas, and the music of Liszt, Delius, Grieg, and Wagner. Chopin has even been described as a pre-Impressionist for many reasons. He demonstrated the Lydian mode with his usage of a sharped fourth scale degree in his “Rondo a la Mazur,” resulting in a Polish folk- music feel. He experimented with non-traditional harmonies and used added-sixth chords before it was fashionable to. Significantly, Debussy loved Chopin’s piano compositions because of his

“atmospheric” use of the piano pedals to create vagueness. Palmer states that “This was one of the earliest manifestations of a concern with timbre which is characteristic of the

Impressionists.”13

By 1910 the term Impressionism was being used regularly to describe music composed by many diverse composers and “Within the span of scarcely two decades Impressionism became a generally accepted term in the field of musicology. The evidence suggests that it was hastily and carelessly brought forward in an attempt to account for the newness and strangeness of Debussy’s music.”14 Debussy pushed the boundaries of contemporary music and unsurprisingly, other composers attempted to recreate this new evocative music.

12 Byrnside, Musical Impressionism: The Early History of the Term, 526.

13 Palmer, Impressionism in Music, 53.

14 Byrnside, Musical Impressionism: The Early History of the Term, 536.

9 The above composers and characteristics comprise French Impressionistic music. Claude

Debussy pioneered a new ground-breaking genre which broke traditional rules of composition and expanded the definition of beauty in music. French impressionistic music gave way to the

Impressionism of other nations, including that of America and the music of Charles Griffes.

II.

In this section, the differences between American Impressionism and French

Impressionism will be explored. These differences will be made evident through discussion of the lives and compositional styles of four main American Impressionistic composers: Charles

Ives, Duke Ellington, Charles Loeffler, and John Alden Carpenter. Each of their styles differed from traditional French Debussian Impressionism.

In general, American Impressionist composers mixed Impressionism with other indigenous styles, such as American popular/folk music and , and they did not avoid compositional “unpleasantness,” or a lack of traditional , as their traditional French

Impressionistic counterparts did. That said, Americans connected to the music of French

Impressionism from the first performance of Debussy’s Prélude à l’Apres-midi d’un Faun in the

U.S. in 1902. After that initial performance and the others that followed, many American composers started going to school in rather than Germany, which influenced American music in a new way.15 Mellers attributes America’s adoption of and fondness towards Debussian

Impressionism to the American people’s “struggle” with the untamed frontiers by saying,

15 Palmer, Impressionism in Music, 227.

10 “Debussy once said that there was more to be gained by seeing the sun rise than by listening to the ‘Pastoral’ Symphony. His desire to lose the personality in submission to the world of appearances found a response in the heart of the American composer: who had little consciousness of tradition: whose will was weary with its attempt to conquer the wilderness.”16

That said, the general consensus among scholars and music critics from this era until the mid-

20th century was that all Americans (and their composers) are unrefined, seeking to steal and copy the music of the original French composers who came before. To many, this idea of

Debussy as the one true Impressionistic composer further cheapened the idea of a true American

Impressionistic composer. A few American composers made respected names for themselves as such anyway.

Charles Loeffler (1861-1935) was one of the few who made a name for himself as an

American Impressionistic composer. Loeffler was born in Alsace in 1861, a territory which belonged to France until it was ceded to Germany in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War ten years after Loeffler’s birth. Due to Loeffler’s father’s political struggles and imprisonment in

German Alsace, Loeffler identified himself with the culture and and completed his musical training both in France and . While he was not born in America, he eventually became a U.S. citizen in 1887. Loeffler felt that America rewarded real musical merit and talent better than . He went on to become the concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra

16 Wilfrid Mellers, Music in a New Found Land: Themes and Developments in the History of American Music (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1964), 146.

11 in 1882 and kept the post for twenty-one years. He composed most of his works while living in the US.17

Due to Loeffler’s multicultural education and upbringing, he acted as a link between

French and American Impressionism and was part of the reason people became more interested in Impressionism in America. Upon immigrating to the US, Loeffler found himself amongst

German musicians with German musical educations. He spoke English with a German accent but had a natural affinity for the style that we associate with Debussy. Both Debussy and Loeffler employed loose ABA forms, extension of harmonic relations, the extended usage of dissonances, and similar usage of “exotic” Eastern Asian colors and extensive use of church modes.

Consistent with the opinions commonly held about American Impressionistic composers, certain critics have considered Charles Loeffler as simply an imitator of Debussy. Certain factors differentiate Loeffler from his French counterpart, however. John Tasker Howard has called

Loeffler an authority in the subject of Gregorian plainchant.18 In fact, Loeffler utilized modes in his compositions more often than Debussy, although both drew inspiration from the modes and folk colors in the Hymn of Saint Francis. Due to Loeffler’s studies in Berlin, he also employed certain German compositional techniques rather than French. This melting-pot approach to composition attracted Loeffler and he appreciated how American composers incorporated jazz techniques, even though he, himself, did not try to write in this jazz-inspired American style. In

17 Ellen Knight, "Loeffler, Charles Martin," Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, accessed September 23, 2015, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.ezproxy.library.csulb.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/168 63.

18 Virginia Raad, L’influence de Debussy--Amerique (Paris: Centre National De La Recherche Scientifique, 1965), 217.

12 avoiding rote imitation of previous styles, Loeffler sets himself apart as an American impressionistic composer.

The music of (1874-1954) may be considered Impressionistic as well because it often lacks a tonal center and consists of a collage of different ideas and impressions.19

Wordless are common in Impressionistic music and Ives used this technique in his Fourth

Symphony to create an atmospheric effect. He was concerned with thinking about infinite concepts like time and space and turned to Impressionism to express that in his music. Similar to

Loeffler, Ives’ music is critically compared to Debussy’s by scholars. Palmer voices his and

Mellers’ opinion on the matter by saying “Much of the music written in the Impressionist idiom by American composers more or less contemporary with Ives has been well described by Mellers as ‘genuinely sensitive, but also precious and parasitic.’”20 To call Ives’ music parasitic would be to ignore significant characteristics which set his compositions apart.

Unlike Loeffler, Charles Ives was born into a musical American family lead by his father, the youngest bandmaster in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Charles learned and from his father as a child and was encouraged to experiment with breaking the boundaries of traditional .21 He experimented with bitonal and polytonal harmonizations of popular songs, chords in parallel motion, whole tone scales, and more. Because of this open-minded and experimental background, Ives was not bothered by excessive harmonic clashing or unpleasantness, something that differentiates his style of

19 J. Peter Burkholder, et al, "Ives, Charles," Grove Music Online/Oxford Music Online, accessed September 27, 2015, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.ezproxy.library.csulb.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/A2 252967.

20 Palmer, Impressionism in Music, 232.

21 Burkholder, "Ives, Charles."

13 American Impressionism from traditional French “Debussian” Impressionism. In fact, Palmer states that “Debussy’s philosophy was far less radical than Ives’: there was a certain norm of harmonic dissonance beyond which he would not venture, and every experience, event or sensation which caught his muse’s attention had to be passed directly through the refiner’s fire of his sensibility. With Ives, on the other hand, the raw bleeding chunks of life which served him as inspiration tended to remain raw bleeding chunks in the completed works of art.”22 Charles Ives pushed the boundaries of modern music and incorporated aspects of Impressionism in the process.

John Alden Carpenter (1876-1951) made a well-respected name for himself as another

American Impressionist.23 Bauer states that “Carpenter was ‘distinctly influenced by French impressionism. And yet he exhibited an individuality, a culture, a refinement of technic and maturity of style in these early works, as he has in later compositions.’”24 Carpenter managed to gain the respect of many Debussy enthusiasts while retaining his own style. Like many

Impressionistic composers, he based some of his works on literary texts; his tone poem Sea Drift

(1933) was based on Walt Whitman’s Sea Poem. Howard Hansen wrote in a review of Sea Drift

(1933) that this was his favorite work of Carpenter’s and that “...[There is] translucent sound at the end where muted horns, low strings, and vibraphone combine the sonorities of four keys with

22 Palmer, Impressionism in Music, 227-228.

23 Joan O’Connor, John Alden Carpenter: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1994), 26.

24 , Twentieth Century Music, How it Developed, How to Listen to It (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1947), 159-160. This original source quoted within: Joan O’Connor, John Alden Carpenter: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1994), 117.

14 such delicate beauty that one strains one’s powers of hearing to prolong the sheer ecstasy of the sound…[It is] more profound, more tragic and more mysterious [than Debussy’s La mer.]”25

As a composer, John Alden Carpenter was influenced heavily by jazz. His work The

Concertin (1915) was his first work to include jazz and jazz time signatures. However, he is best-known for his composition of the ballet commissioned/requested by called Skyscrapers. This ballet embodies a mixture of the impressionistic style, Prokofiev’s

Russian style, American pop and American jazz. Diaghilev wanted Carpenter to compose the music for a ballet like Skyscrapers because he was inspired by Carpenter’s Krazy Kat jazz piece.

Diaghilev wanted this ballet to be reflective of American life. The Ballet Russes tour of America never happened, however, and communications dragged on between Diaghilev and Carpenter; in his frustration, Carpenter decided to let the Metropolitan Opera Company produce the ballet.

Before he signed the rights to the premier over to the Metropolitan Opera, he expressed his intention to Diaghilev for the music to reflect some “Bolshevism” and jazz aspects, but the ballet’s choreography was still to be inspired by American dances.26

Reviews of Carpenter’s ballet were largely positive; Bauer writes that “In Skyscrapers ‘is

Carpenter at the acme of this new-found American realism, in which jazz and popular melodies rub shoulders with ultramodern dissonance.’”27 By the time the ballet was premiered, some viewed the music as old-fashioned, but audiences enjoyed the production nonetheless.

Carpenter’s music was occasionally met with the same French impressionistic elitism as our previously discussed American impressionists, however. Duke writes of the American

25 O’Connor, John Alden Carpenter: A Bio-Bibliography, 26.

26 Ibid., 117.

27 Marion Bauer, Twentieth Century Music, How it Developed, How to Listen to It, 160. Quoted within: Joan O’Connor. John Alden Carpenter, 117.

15 impressionist movement and Carpenter, “There existed a fourth genre, no longer held in great esteem by the musical cognoscenti; that was post-post-impressionism, made in U.S.A. The leading champions of the cult were John Alden Carpenter, Charles Griffes,..Louis Gruenberg, and Emerson Whithorne. All four, on occasion, permitted themselves a perilous excursion into the deep jungle of Americana--with French overtones, for safety’s sake. Thus, Carpenter composed a Krazy Kat ballet...and the distinctly urbanistic Skyscrapers…”28 Impressionism found its way into the musical language of the era and Carpenter incorporated it into a uniquely

American sound.

Duke Ellington (1899-1974) shaped the American sound as much, if not more, than John

Alden Carpenter. Ellington is one of the most recognizable names in jazz and American history, and many elements of Impressionism may be found in his music. As has been previously stated above, the boundaries between jazz, pop, and are uniquely blurred in American music. To further corroborate this point, many view Duke Ellington as a Post-Impressionist for his use of 9ths, 13ths, and timbre for coloristic purposes; He titles his compositions after colors and vague scents like Black and Tan Fantasy, In a Magenta Haze, On a Turquoise Cloud,

Perfume Suite etc.; He also uses a lone voice without lyrics in an impressionistic “wordless ” fashion to create a texture and color difference in Minnehaha. Later, Ellington said his favorite “serious” compositions were Debussy’s La Mer, Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, and Delius’

In a Summer Garden.29 Even though he could not have studied these pieces during his formative years in composition, the fact remains that he was somehow influenced by the impressionist

28 Vernon Duke, Listen Here! A Critical Essay on Music Depreciation (New York: Ivan Obolensky, 1963), 43. Quoted within: Joan O’Connor. John Alden Carpenter, 119.

29 Palmer, Impressionism in Music, 238.

16 movement; he probably learned to compose with characteristics of the impressionistic style through Will Vodery (chief arranger for the Ziegfield follies).

While there are many similarities between Ellington’s music and French Impressionism, his music clearly differentiates itself from the tradition. Many of Duke Ellington’s songs allude to the experience of in America, which in and of itself distinguishes his music from traditional French Impressionism. Ellington captures the mood of Harlem and the lively and raucous life there. An example of this idea can be seen in his Blues because it reflects life in a large American city in the 20th century in the bustling feel of the music.

Many who have said Duke Ellington was an Impressionist compared him to Delius.

Burnett claims that there are two kinds of Impressionism: the work of Debussy (“the true impressionist”) and Delius (“the impressionist of mood inspired by natural phenomena”).30 31

Duke Ellington had not heard of at the time, but Delius’ music permeated popular music, so an effect on Ellington was likely. Further, Burnett points out that “Ellington has from time to time made use of a not uncommon impressionist device--that of the human voice itself employed instrumentally in vocalize.”32 An example of this is in his Creole Love Call

30 James Burnett, The Impressionism of Duke Ellington (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1961), 165.

31 Delius was an English-born composer, who lived in America for a while running an orange plantation that his father bought. Delius loved music but was forbidden to pursue a career as a professional musician, so he studied as an amateur at first. He was fascinated by African American slave songs and as a slave-owner, studied the songs of his slaves. Delius’ works include impressions of nature as in his works, Appalachia and A Song of the High Hills. In the ending of Appalachia he also uses a wordless chorus which is common in traditional Debussian Impressionism. Interestingly, the wordless chorus sings the melody of an old African American slave song. For more information, see note 15 above, p. 165-168.

32 Burnett, The Impressionism of Duke Ellington, 168.

17 where Adelaide Hall wordlessly sings with the clarinets, creating a hazy, impressionistic atmosphere.

Palmer makes a case, too, that Ellington is not one of the American “parasitic” impressionistic composers. “...even these brief examples indicate that Ellington’s impressionism is no mere pasteboard imitation of Delius’s.”33 Ellington’s style is different than Delius’ and traditional Impressionism in that he did not simply write unending lines of vague chords, but rather adhered to more harmonic functionality. The musical form Ellington employed in his music differed from that of Impressionists and he used classical forms, usually ABA, a similar practice to Debussy. Burnett concludes that “Although Ellington’s impressionism is of the same order of that of Delius, in that it is predominantly the impressionism of mood, his technique, in its concision and economy of means, is closer to the Debussy of the piano Preludes.”34

These few composers discussed, Charles Loeffler, Charles Ives, John Alden Carpenter, and Duke Ellington, made their mark on Impressionism and differentiated it from European

Impressionism. They contributed to the unique American impressionist movement. One important American impressionist composer has yet to be discussed however: Charles Griffes.

He is arguably the most important, as Mellers has described him with high praise: “There was one composer, however, who--starting from Debussian premises--created music characteristically personal and American. He was Charles Griffes; and he died young, when he had just discovered what he had in him to do.”35 In the next section, the life and compositional style of Griffes will be explored.

33 Palmer, Impressionism in Music, 237.

34 Burnett, The Impressionism of Duke Ellington, 173.

35 Mellers, Music in a New Found Land, 146.

18

III. CHARLES GRIFFES

Charles Griffes was born in Elmira, New York in 1884. He died in 1920, cutting short the potential for a larger collection of boundary-pushing compositional works we would have today had he lived a longer life. He was a gifted visual artist from childhood, so his fondness of the

Impressionistic musical style which he later adopted comes as no surprise. From a young age, he loved color, his favorite of which was orange; in his youth, he would visit his Great-Aunt

Amanda and run to her garden to admire her fields of marigolds. He had a great eye for fashion and even gave fashion advice to his sister.36 He also had quite the eye for arrangements of flowers or anything organizational. Maisel points out the importance of this characteristic of

Griffes’ by writing, “This trait assumes special importance as harbinger of the composer’s preoccupation with color in its relation to music.”37 Interestingly, Griffes associated certain keys in the music with certain colors. C Major, as an entire key, had a white light for Griffes and Eb

Major represented a yellow/golden hue. C Major was Griffes’ favorite key because of its brilliance.38

Griffes had natural musical talent as a child. After hearing a violin while on vacation at a lake, he went to the piano and immediately played the melody back by ear perfectly.39 Even though he presented this innate musical ability, young Charles did not take to the actual study of music at first. Maisel states that when Griffes was “confronted with a definite assignment and the

36 Edward Maisel, Charles T. Griffes: The Life of an American Composer (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 10.

37 Maisel, Charles T. Griffes, 10.

38 Ibid.. The fact that Griffes associated different keys with corresponding colors would indicate that Griffes had synesthesia. No known sources explicitly state this, however.

39 Maisel, Charles T. Griffes, 14.

19 niceties of formal instruction, however, this interest seemed to evaporate at once. In the practice of art, the boy applied himself with more immediate success.”40 The fact that Griffes did not succeed in his musical studies at first indicates a certain aversion to learning and doing things

“by the rules.” Impressionism inherently breaks many “rules” of composition, explaining his affinity towards that genre later in life.

At eleven years old, Griffes became sick with typhoid fever. Bedridden, he had no choice but to listen to his sister, Katherine, practicing the piano. He fell in love with the music of

Beethoven, which intensely motivated him to pursue and succeed in learning the piano.

Katherine initially taught him, but he soon exceeded her teaching abilities. Within two years of her instruction, he grew out of her teaching and it was decided that he would study directly with

Katherine’s teacher at Elmira College, Ms. Mary Broughton.41

Mary Broughton was Griffes’ first piano teacher and his mentor for a long time thereafter. An orphan, she was born in New Zealand, and was taken care of by relatives there.

She then moved to England to live with other relatives, after which she moved to Berlin to study piano with Karl Klindworth, a former student of . Piano performance was considered one of the few respectable professions for a woman of her class, but was not her passion from an early age. However, she was amazingly talented and after her studies she accepted a piano teaching position at the Music Department at Elmira College in the . There, she came to know Charles Griffes, who became her protégé.42

40 Maisel, Charles T. Griffes, 14.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid.

20 Since Broughton received her musical training in Berlin, Griffes was extensively influenced by the German musical tradition. Miss Broughton’s teacher in Berlin, Klindworth, provided a connection between the Liszt/Wagner “New German School” and Griffes. However,

Miss Broughton also schooled Griffes in the traditions of the Classical Era. Walton states the advantages of this musical upbringing by stating, “It is fortunate for Griffes that his teacher helped him to avoid the limitations of close followers of Wagner, or the equally limiting style of the classicists. By having familiarity with a broader repertoire and an openness to different kinds of music, Griffes could later draw upon Wagnerian as well as classical and more exotic traditions to evolve his own style.”43 The one, true overarching theme to Griffes’ music is that he gleans inspiration from many sources, not simply one. Miss Broughton encouraged this characteristic in her student, which ultimately shaped his compositions.

Many at Elmira College, however, did not know why Miss Broughton spent so much time and energy teaching Charles, then a high school student. He had small hands and was not the most talented student in attendance in the music department.44 Miss Broughton nevertheless encouraged his compositions, paintings, and gave him reading to complete. Interestingly, “...he had an unnatural preoccupation with harmonic structure and a tendency to read eccentric design into his pieces.”45 This fascination with harmonic structure coupled with his love for visual color led him to find ways to express color acoustically through his compositions. These are the signs of a future Impressionistic composer.

43 Peggy Marie Walton, The Music of Charles Tomlinson Griffes; Harbinger of American Art Music's Transition into the Modern Age (Rice University, 1988), 12.

44 Maisel, Charles T. Griffes, 22.

45 Ibid.

21 Upon Charles Griffes’ graduation from the Elmira Free Academy where he attended high school Miss Broughton insisted upon sponsoring his continued musical studies abroad at the

Stern Conservatory in Berlin, as his family could not afford the price of sending him themselves.

His first private piano studies at the Conservatory were with Dr. Ernst Jerdliczka, who had studied with Nicholas Rubinstein and Pyotr Tchaikovsky. During his first year in 1904, Dr.

Jerdliczka died, so Griffes continued his studies with Gotfried Galston. Griffes was one of the only first year students to be an honored soloist at the year-end recital at the Stern Conservatory.

This was an honor and demonstrates Griffes’ ability to perform on the piano.46

In Griffes’ second year at the Conservatory, he started to focus more on composition rather than performance. He studied composition at the Conservatory with Philippe Rüfer, although he was not fond of this teacher and wanted to study with someone more modern in their compositional style.47 Griffes began to teach himself orchestration during this time period. He found this very challenging and in a letter, wrote that “With me, who never heard an orchestra in my life but three times in Philadelphia and twice in New York and who didn’t know one instrument from another, it takes a long time…”48 These orchestration explorations would reveal their usefulness later when he began orchestrating his piano works for orchestra.

Due to his dissatisfaction with the resident composition professor, Griffes left the Stern

Conservatory in 1905 and started studying with Englebert Humperdinck shortly thereafter.

Griffes was very excited about this development because, as a famous composer, Humperdinck’s

46 Walton, The Music of Charles Tomlinson Griffes.

47 Ibid., 24.

48 Walton, The Music of Charles Tomlinson Griffes, 24-25. Walton quoted this original source: Edward Maisel. Charles T. Griffes: The Life of an American Composer. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 59.

22 recommendation could catapult Griffes’ burgeoning career. Humperdinck was a well-known vocal composer and was influenced by German folksong. Thus, according to Walton, “In their lessons Griffes worked on counterpoint, on free composition, and on chorales, in which he had to set text to each of the voices, so that they could be singable.”49 Griffes’ ability to compose for vocalists and set text to each voice is evident in later works such as his “Three Works for Fiona

McLeod,” Op. 11.

Griffes met Gerruccio Busoni while still residing in Berlin, at a tea. Busoni introduced

Griffes to the music of Debussy, Ravel, Fauré, Elgar, Sibelius and Bartók. Busoni actually conducted the first performance of Prélude à L’Apres-midi d’un faune by in

Berlin in 1903. To describe Griffes’ admiration for Busoni and consequential introduction to the music of Debussy, Walton states, “Griffes was considerably impressed with Busoni’s intellect and cosmopolitan sophistication and made it a point to familiarize himself with the composer’s music.”50

Griffes returned to the United States in 1907 and started teaching at the Hackley School in New York, which was a preparatory school for wealthy boys. He taught piano, directed the choir, and played organ for Sunday chapels. Griffes always intended for this job to act as a stepping stone career, however he taught here until he died in 1920.51 During these years he kept in contact with many important musicians including, , Gerruccio Busoni, Edgar

Varèse, and Marion Bauer.

49 Walton, The Music of Charles Tomlinson Griffes, 25.

50 Ibid., 27.

51 Ibid., 31.

23 In his compositions, Charles Griffes did not simply follow the “Franco-Germanic” tradition or try to follow in the American nationalist style of composers like Edward MacDowell.

Rather, he “drew inspiration from the international ‘melting pot’ of ideas in his cultural milieu, and his work became a harbinger of a new direction in American music that could draw on any or all of the cultural systems of the world.”52 He may have learned to draw inspiration from many different sources starting with his studies with Ms. Broughton, as proposed earlier.

Despite having this culturally diverse training, at first Griffes actually did not like French music. After attending a recital in which pieces by Bizet, Debussy, Fauré, Saint-Saëns, and

Chabrier were performed, he wrote to Miss Broughton of how he thought the pieces were a waste of time.53 After he came back to America in 1907 though, he had changed his mind and became familiar with French music. A catalyst for this change of mind occurred while Griffes was living in Berlin; he stumbled on the music of Ravel, Debussy, and other Impressionist composers. In a true story recounted by Marion Bauer, she tells that “...[Griffes] was attracted by an unfamiliar piece that was being practised in another pension [apartment]. It struck Griffes as being different from any music he had heard….Impulsively he rang the bell of the apartment from which these novel sounds were coming and asked to speak to the pianist. A somewhat surprised young man appeared, and in reply to Griffes’ unceremonious question answered that it was Ravel’s d’eau....As a result, Griffes tried to find all the available music by Ravel and, incidentally, by Debussy and other impressionists.”54

52 Walton, The Music of Charles Tomlinson Griffes, 148.

53 Ibid.

54 Walton, The Music of Charles Tomlinson Griffes, 36-37 as quoted from Marion Bauer, Charles Griffes as I Remember Him (Musical Quarterly, July 1943).

24 By 1915 and 1916, French Impressionism had become popular in America and Griffes’ participation in composition in this style marked the first time he ventured out of a strictly

German style. His skill in composing in this style even earned him the title of “American

Impressionist” with many. Walton states that “Griffes’ pieces in this style represent his first break with the German tradition, and they are of such high quality that he has often been called an ‘American impressionist.’”55 In the years 1910 through 1913, Griffes merely incorporated

Impressionistic characteristics into his compositional style, thus mixing the German style with

Impressionism. However, in 1914 and 1915, Griffes started composing exclusively in the

Impressionistic style. His first Impressionistic pieces were “Three Tone Pieces” (1910-1912),

“Fantasy Pieces” (1912-1915), “Three Tone ” (1912-1914) and “Two Rondels” (1914).

The first three of these pieces are in loose ternary form, contain whole-tone scales and employ added tones (sixths, added minor seconds, added ).

Other influences upon Griffes were less cultural, and more based on the work of individuals. Walton states along these lines that “Although Griffes’ roots were in the romantic tradition of Liszt, both the impressionistic pieces and the sonata reflect the innovations of the most progressive international composers of the early twentieth century: Debussy, Ravel,

Scriabin, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg.”56 Even when writing in the Impressionistic style, his work differentiated itself from traditional French Impressionists in that he was influenced by all of these composers while still retaining his essence of romanticism. Regarding the influence of

Stravinsky, Griffes first heard the music from Stravinsky’s score “” in 1915. He and

Percy Grainger, who had been long-time friends, had tea together after Griffes requested a copy of the score. They played pieces of the ballet together and Griffes liked the music so much that

55 Walton, The Music of Charles Tomlinson Griffes, 40.

56 Ibid., 148.

25 he participated in a production of the American premier of “Petrushka” scored for two rather than orchestra.

The following discussion will focus on specific pieces of Griffes’ which together paint a representative picture of his compositional practices and tastes. The White Peacock from Griffes’

Roman Sketches, Op. 7 (1915) is one of his best-known Impressionistic pieces that started out as a piano work in his set of four “Roman Sketches,” which he then orchestrated after becoming proficient at that practice. As the inspiration to the piece, Griffes first saw a white peacock during his stay in Germany and from that point onward he always collected the pictures he found of white peacocks.

This piece set Griffes apart from other American composers writing in the

Impressionistic idiom. Palmer reflects this when he remarks on the subject of The White

Peacock, “Wilfrid Mellers has claimed that ‘only a certain wildness at the climaxes sounds personal, American rather than French’, and this ‘wildness’ seems a natural outgrowth of the conventional type of Romantic red-bloodedness which is found in the central section of L’Apres midi d’un Faune.”57 In fact, it seems as if Griffes is somehow exempt from the usual judgement that American composers are simply parasites of European/French Impressionistic music.

Mellers corroborates this point when he writes that, “The piano piece The White Peacock (1915) could be by any post-Debussian, post-Ravelian composer, European or American.”58

Technically, The White Peacock sets Griffes’ pieces apart for numerous reasons. The piece demonstrates rhythmic complexity through its unusual rhythms and many meter changes.

57 Christopher Palmer, Impressionism in Music (London: Hutchinson & Co Ltd., 1973), 235 as quoted from Wilfrid Mellers, Music in a New Found Land: Themes and Developments in the History of American Music (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1964).

58 Wilfrid Mellers, Music in a New Found Land: Themes and Developments in the History of American Music. (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1964), 146.

26 His rhythmic complexity in this piece make it unique from Impressionistic pieces which came before. For example, Figure 1 shows how Griffes writes rhythms in which groupings of 7 notes are played against 3 as seen in measures 1 and 2. Figure 2 shows Griffes’ usage of groupings of

3 notes played against 8, and groupings of 3 notes played against 10 in measures 41 and 42 respectively.59

Figure 1: Charles Griffes, “The White Peacock,” in Roman Sketches (New York: G. Schirmer, Inc., 1917), 1.

Figure 2: Charles Griffes, “The White Peacock,” in Roman Sketches (New York: G. Schirmer, Inc., 1917), 5.

In addition, this piece reflects the influence of Scriabin in that Griffes uses a deconstructed chord in the opening of the piece, which when constructed is characteristic of

Scriabin. This chord/string of notes essentially suggests two , an F# augmented triad and a C major triad. Faubion Bowers calls this chord “a characteristic six-tone Scriabin chord.”60

59 Walton, The Music of Charles Tomlinson Griffes, 53.

60 Walton, The Music of Charles Tomlinson Griffes, 78 as quoted from Faubion Bowers, The New Scriabin: Enigma and Answers (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973), 148.

27 Like The White Peacock, The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan also started out as a piano composition which Griffes later went back and orchestrated in 1916. Griffes was inspired to write this piece after reading Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem which described a “sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice.”61 This piece proved different from Griffes’ other

Impressionistic pieces in that he explored even more exoticism and music of the Far East and experimented heavily with the use of augmented seconds. It took three years to compose the piano version, which demonstrates that the piece was important to Griffes. He revised the piano edition many times as well, before orchestrating it.

Griffes’ last work, the (1917-1918), characterizes how his work distinguishes itself from Debussy and traditional French Impressionism. The technique of composition resembled that of Scriabin rather than Debussy because of “a kind of harmonic .”62 It was based on the Indian raga scale system; these scales form tritonal and augmented chords like the whole tone scales Debussy mainly relied on. These chords did not function as part of a harmonic progression. Demonstrating Griffes’ love of exotic music, Mellers states of the Piano Sonata, “The quasi-pentatonic melody, in level crotchets over a drone, is incantatory: Oriental with a Russian (Mussorgskian) flavor…”63

Along those Russian lines, this piece especially showed similarities to the works of

Scriabin. Griffes had never used augmented seconds, , perfect fifth intervals and pentatonic scales to this degree before and the tonal center in the Piano Sonata was more ambiguous than any piece he had written up to this point. Interestingly, this piece was not as

61 Walton, The Music of Charles Tomlinson Griffes, 53.

62 Mellers, Music in a New Found Land, 147.

63 Ibid.

28 much an Impressionist piece as it was a composition of the neoclassical school that was blooming in Paris. This school ventured out of the bounds of romanticism and expressive, programmatic Impressionism and back into the realm of with exact rhythms and a restrained style. This work hints at where Charles Griffes may have gone artistically had he lived longer.

Lastly, Clouds was written explosively in three days and Griffes himself describes the finished product as “very highly colored.”64 The ‘American wildness’ that Mellers talks about in regards to The White Peacock is also seen in Griffes’ Clouds, the last in the series Roman

Sketches for piano. At the climax, there’s a unique use of parallel-chords which sounds more wild than Debussy would have written. “At ‘piu mosso’ on p. 4 there begins to break through that wildness of which Mellers speaks in connection with ‘The white peacock’ and just before the main climax there is a strange and intriguing use of the parallel-chord technique…”65

Griffes liked to compose with a text in mind or woven into the vocal part of a piece, in a semi-programmatic fashion. The text that inspired Clouds was: “Mountainous glories,/ They move superbly;/ Crumbling so slowly,/ That none perceives when/ The golden domes/ Are sunk in the valleys/ Of fathomless snows.”66 Making it a truly Impressionistic piece, the piece begins with a series of chords with added sixths and sevenths and rhythmic complexity, which Walton describes: “In this first section the 7/4 meter, the freely moving chord progressions, and the non-

64 Walton, The Music of Charles Tomlinson Griffes, 103.

65 Palmer, Impressionism in Music, 235.

66 Walton, The Music of Charles Tomlinson Griffes, 103.

29 harmonic tones create a dreamlike ambience that resembles the music of Debussy.”67 These freely moving chord progressions are shown below in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Charles Griffes, “Clouds,” in Roman Sketches (New York: G. Schirmer, Inc., 1917), 1.

All of these pieces demonstrate the unique aspects of composition which Charles Griffes brings to his American Impressionistic pieces. His early life and musical upbringing, as has been discussed above, in hindsight point to characteristics of his which mark him from the beginning as an Impressionist. These characteristics will be explored in the next section as they relate to

“Poem for Flute and Orchestra.”

III. “POEM FOR FLUTE AND ORCHESTRA” ANALYSIS

Poem for Flute and Orchestra was premiered in 1919 by the New York Symphony

Orchestra with Georges Barrère performing the flute part. 1919 was a very important year for Charles Griffes as it brought the premier of Poem, the premier of The Pleasure-Dome of

Kubla-Khan by the Boston Symphony, and the premiers of Notturno, Clouds, The White

67 Ibid., 105.

30 Peacock, and Bacchanale by the Philadelphia Orchestra.68 This year was arguably the most successful one in Griffes’ career; unfortunately he died in the following year from influenza complications. The following section will focus on the Far Eastern influences on Poem, compositional Impressionistic characteristics unique to this piece, and the preparation process for the piece’s premier.

Barrère and Griffes had been long-time friends before Barrère requested a piece for solo flute and orchestra. Griffes and Barrère rehearsed Poem extensively before the premier of the piece. Griffes and Barrère worked so closely on the preparation of the piece that Barrère wrote in a letter to Griffes: “I am working hard on the Poem which I will play in Aeolian Hall with the

N.Y. Symph. on Sunday afternoon, Nov. 16th. Help!! Am back in town.”69 They worked together to ensure that the piece’s performance was true to Griffes’ wishes and to perfect every detail of the piece.

Poem reflects the height of Griffes’ interest in the music of the Far East. Corroborating this fact, Howard and Bellows said, “‘...this is the most mature of his works; it starts in a gray mood and merges into a movement of strange tonality, with a suggestion of Oriental and color.’”70 Many aspects in the piece reflect the exoticism that Griffes favored, including instrumentation choices, unusual playing techniques, and non-functioning harmonies.

Audiences and critics loved the piece after attending the premier. Reviews were so positive that

68 Peggy Marie Walton, The Music of Charles Tomlinson Griffes, 24-25, as quoted from: Edward Maisel. Charles T. Griffes: The Life of an American Composer. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 69.

69 Edward Maisel, Charles T. Griffes: The Life of an American Composer, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 289.

70 Walton, The Music of Charles Tomlinson Griffes, 66, as quoted from: Howard, John Tasker and Bellows, George Kent, A Short In America (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1957).

31 Griffes wrote to Marion Bauer in 1919 that: “I was very happy about the kind reception in the press. Such universal favor doesn’t happen every day, does it? I doubt if ‘Kubla Khan’ will be so well received. But then, why worry?”71 Griffes enjoyed the positive reception, and had planned to capitalize on it before he fell ill in 1920.

Before Griffes died, G. Schirmer Inc. had agreed to publish his Poem for Flute and

Orchestra. Griffes did not arrange the flute and piano version, but had had plans to do so after his recovery. In the second week of January, 1920, he wrote in a letter to Schirmer’s publishing that “I leave tomorrow for Loomis Sanatorium, Loomis, New York. Any important information you can send me there, but as yet I cannot write myself nor do any work at all so please don’t send me any more proofs. I don’t know how long I shall be there but probably several weeks.

Will have to let the piano version of the flute piece go for a while as it is absolutely impossible to do anything. It will be one of the first things I shall do when I can work at all again.”72 Sadly, that day never came, but it is fortunate that Barrère’s version should be the arrangement published for flute and piano since Griffes and Barrère worked so closely on the original orchestral premier of the piece. After his death, Schirmer decided to publish a flute and piano version first because it would have more of a market with the amateur flutist. This piano reduction was arranged by Georges Barrère and published in 1922.

The orchestral version of Poem for Flute and Orchestra, was scored for solo flute, 2 horns, harp, percussion, and strings. The gong and tambourine percussion parts in particular demonstrate the exoticism present in the piece. Griffes wrote this piece in a loose rondo form

(ABACADAEA), harkening back to Classical ideals. Griffes was highly trained in the German

71 Donna K. Anderson, The Works of Charles T. Griffes: A Descriptive Catalogue (Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1983), 320.

72 Maisel, Charles T. Griffes, 312.

32 school of music, so his use of such a traditional musical form in Poem acts as evidence of his training. Figure 4 below outlines the form of the piece by measure.

Figure 4: A B A’ C A’’ D A’’’ E A’’’’

1-52 53-74 75-115 116-166 167-170 171-194 195-208 209-258 259-end

The beginning section, titled “Andantino,” marks the start of the A section. This section contains the statement of the theme in its entirety, both in the orchestra and in the solo flute and also contains a “tranquillo” melody. The restatement of the theme by the and basses in measure 49 ushers in a new section, the B section, at measure 53, featuring a contrasting melody from the main theme. Starting at measure 75 a restatement of the “tranquillo” melody of the opening section occurs as a transition to the C section, which begins at measure 116 in a lilting

6/8 meter. Halfway through this C section, the strings add texture to the orchestral sound through pizzicato. Following this, the horns, playing a syncopated rhythm on a divisi perfect fifth interval, usher in a new, more lyrical D section. The harp adds color in an ostinato underneath the solo flute’s sustained and lyrical melody. A variation on the A theme returns in a climactic frenzy at “Con Fuoco” at measure 195. The flute sings the theme in a rhythmically augmented variation an octave higher than the original theme. A new dance-like melody comes in at measure 209 in what we will label the E section. Here, the tambourine adds exotic color in prominent occasional punctuations. The piece then starts its conclusion at measure 260 with another statement of the first tranquillo portion of the A theme in the solo flute accompanied by muted and sustained strings. The piece ends with a low sustained line in the flute, which dies to nothing after the muted, pianissimo strings cease.

33 The piece opens with a portion of the theme stated in the first four bars by the cellos and the basses, shown in Figure 5. They are then joined by the violins and the violas as they all play a rhythmically augmented version of the same theme fragment. Following this, the solo flute enters and plays the first statement of the entire theme, shown in Figure 6. Straightaway, the flute demonstrates a decidedly impressionistic quality in its inclusion of an augmented second interval.

Figure 5: Charles T. Griffes, Poem for Flute and Orchestra (New York: G. Schirmer Inc., 1951), 1.

Figure 6: Charles T. Griffes, Poem for Flute and Orchestra (New York: G. Schirmer Inc., 1951), 1-2.

Griffes utilizes characteristics of Impressionism in Poem for Flute and Orchestra, such as parallel chromatic motion, added-note chords, non-traditional harmonic movement, textural effects, and the use of volume and tempo changes for functional purposes. Figure 7 provides an example of how Griffes utilizes rising chromatic parallel minor thirds in the French horns in measure 35 to act as harmonic functionality. Griffes does not employ traditionally functional

34 chords to escalate the mood in this instance, but rather chromatic parallel motion to fulfill the same purpose.

Figure 7: Charles T. Griffes, Poem for Flute and Orchestra (New York: G. Schirmer Inc., 1951), 4.

Figure 8, depicting mm. 36 through 39, further demonstrates Griffes’ unconventional and characteristically Impressionistic use of parallel motion and chords which do not function harmonically in the standard subdominant-dominant-tonic way. The third beat of m. 37 is a D

Major chord with an added ninth in the first violins. This chord moves in largely parallel, chromatic motion to the chord on beat one of m. 38, which then seems to resolve to a vague chord on the downbeat of m. 39. This chord is really only a doubled perfect fifth.

35

Figure 8: Charles T. Griffes, Poem for Flute and Orchestra (New York: G. Schirmer Inc., 1951), 5.

“Poem for Flute and Orchestra” represents one of the finest pieces Griffes composed and one of the best examples of late Impressionism in America. Griffes employed his extensive classical training, creativity, and love for exoticism in this piece and lived to see the wide recognition and success of his work. By breaking many “rules” of traditional harmonic function and utilizing all tone colors available to him in the orchestra, Griffes left a lasting legacy.

IV. CONCLUSION

Charles Griffes made a name for himself as a unique American Impressionist. He combined the extensive classical training that he received from his first private piano instructor, his time at the Stern Conservatory, and from his personal studies with Far East-inspired techniques and a love for harmonic color. He used non-traditional harmonic motion, unusual and complex rhythms, and creative tone colors to differentiate himself historically from other

American Impressionists, as shown through discussion and analysis of “Poem for Flute and

Orchestra.” Griffes distinguished himself from the daring and rebellious Charles Ives, the jazz

36 Impressionist Duke Ellington, the plainchant-inspired Charles Loeffler, and the popular music- inspired John Alden Carpenter. Claude Debussy introduced a new genre of music and opened the door for these American composers to compose with greater harmonic, metric, and rhythmic freedom.

37

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