UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI
Date:______
I, ______, hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of: in:
It is entitled:
This work and its defense approved by:
Chair: ______
The Indian Character Piece for Solo Piano (ca. 1890–1920): A Historical Review of Composers and Their Works
D.M.A. Document
submitted to the College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano Performance
August 2005
by
Stephanie Bruning
B.M. Drake University, Des Moines, IA, 1999 M.M. College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati, 2001
1844 Foxdale Court Crofton, MD 21114 410-721-0272 [email protected]
ABSTRACT
The Indianist Movement is a title many music historians use to define the surge of
compositions related to or based on the music of Native Americans that took place from around
1890 to 1920. Hundreds of compositions written during this time incorporated various aspects of
Indian folklore and music into Western art music. This movement resulted from many factors in
our nation’s political and social history as well as a quest for a compositional voice that was
uniquely American. At the same time, a wave of ethnologists began researching and studying
Native Americans in an effort to document their culture. In music, the character piece was a
very successful genre for composers to express themselves. It became a natural genre for
composers of the Indianist Movement to explore for portraying musical themes and folklore of
Native-American tribes. Although there were some common procedures for incorporating Indian themes, many composers had different philosophies about how to create their Indian character pieces. Eventually the enthusiasm for using Native-American material died out and left a large body of piano literature collecting dust, out of print, and virtually unrecognized. Through a perspective of cultural relativism, this study reviews and provides information on every known
Indian character piece for solo piano and their composers from the Indianist Movement. The purpose of this study is to revive the Indian character piece and promote the Indianist Movement as an important part of America’s musical past, which undoubtedly impacted the direction of twentieth-century music.
ii
iii
To Heather and David
iv
A special thanks to all of my family, friends, colleagues, and teachers who have helped me along this journey.
v TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract ii
Dedication iv
Acknowledgments v
Table of Contents vi
List of Examples viii
CHAPTER I: The Creation of the Indian Character Piece 1 Background of American Perceptions 2 Collecting Native-American Folklore and Music 6 Early Adaptations of Native-American Melodies and the 11 Development of the Indian Character Piece Edward MacDowell 12
CHAPTER II: The Era of the Wa-Wan Press 18 The Music of Arthur Farwell 23 Other Composers Published in the Wa-Wan Press 37 Harvey Worthington Loomis 37 Carlos Troyer 42 Henry Franklin Belknap Gilbert 44
CHAPTER III: Beyond the Wa-Wan Press 48 Amy Marcy Cheney Beach 48 Charles Wakefield Cadman 52 Homer Grunn 56 Horace Alden Miller 60 Charles Sanford Skilton 62 Experimental Indianists 66 Preston Ware Orem 66 (George) Templeton Strong 67
vi Ferruccio Busoni 69
CHAPTER IV: The Decline of the Indianist Movement 73 Summary and Conclusion 76
APPENDIX: List of Indian Character Pieces from the Indianist Movement 78
BIBLIOGRAPHY 80
vii LIST OF EXAMPLES
Example 1.1. Edward MacDowell, “From an Indian Lodge,” 14 in Ten Woodland Sketches, op. 51, mm. 1–13.
Example 1.2. Edward MacDowell, “Indian Idyl,” 16 from New England Idyls, op. 62, mm. 17–27.
Example 2.1. Title page to early issues of the Wa-Wan Press. 20
Example 2.2. Arthur Farwell, “The Mother’s Vow,” from American 25 Indian Melodies, op. 11, mm. 1–13.
Example 2.3. Arthur Farwell, Dawn, op. 12, mm. 11–9. 28
Example 2.4. Arthur Farwell, Domain of Hurakan, op. 15, mm. 51–6. 30
Example 2.5. Arthur Farwell, “Navajo War Dance,” in 32 From Mesa and Plain: Indian, Cowboy, and Negro Sketches for Pianoforte, op. 20, mm. 36–46.
Example 2.6. Arthur Farwell, “Laying Down the Peace Pipes,” from 34 Impressions of the Wa-Wan Ceremony of the Omahas, op. 21, mm. 8–13.
Example 2.7a, b. Harvey Worthington Loomis, “Song of Sorrow” from 39 Lyrics of the Red Man, op. 76, Book 1, mm. 1–10 and mm. 20–6.
Example 2.8a, b. Harvey Worthington Loomis, “The Thunder God and the 41–2 Rainbow,” from Lyrics of the Red Man, op. 76, Book 2, mm. 21–7 and mm. 36–8.
Example 2.9. Carlos Troyer, Ghost Dance of the Zunis, mm. 104–8. 44
Example 2.10. Henry F. Gilbert, “In the Kutenai Country,” from 46 Indian Scenes: Five Pieces for the Pianoforte, mm. 1–4.
Example 3.1. Amy Marcy Cheney Beach, “Arctic Night,” from 51 Eskimos: Four Characteristic Pieces for the Pianoforte, op. 64, mm. 1–16.
Example 3.2. Charles Wakefield Cadman, “Return of the Braves: March 55 Fantastique,” from Idealized Indian Themes, op. 54, mm. 75–86.
Example 3.3. Homer Grunn, “Mirage,” from Desert Suite: Five Tone 58 Pictures for the Piano, op. 7, mm. 1–7.
viii Example 3.4. Homer Grunn, “The Flute-God,” from Zuni Impressions: Indian 60 Suite for the Pianoforte, op. 27, mm. 48–57.
Example 3.5. Horace Alden Miller, “From Winnebago Land,” in 62 Four Indian Themes, mm. 25–35.
Example 3.6. Charles Sanford Skilton, “Kickapoo Social Dance,” from 64 Three Indian Sketches for Piano, mm. 49–54.
Example 3.7. Preston Ware Orem, American Indian Rhapsody, mm. 165–80. 67
Example 3.8. (George) Templeton Strong, “Un jeune guerrier,” [A Young Warrior] 69 from Au pays des peaux-rouges: Suite for Piano [The Country of the Red Skins], mm. 76–86.
Example 3.9. Ferruccio Busoni, from Indianisches Tagebuch: Erstes Buch 71 [The Indian’s Diary: Book 1], mm. 59–71.
ix Chapter I
The Creation of the Indian Character Piece
The Indianist Movement is a title many music historians use to define the surge of
compositions related to or based on the music of Native Americans that took place from around
1890 to 1920. Hundreds of compositions written during this time incorporated various aspects of
Indian folklore and music into Western art music. This movement resulted from many factors in
our nation’s political and social history as well as a quest for a compositional voice that was
uniquely American. At the same time a wave of ethnologists began researching and studying
Native Americans in an effort to document their culture. In music, the character piece was a
very successful genre for composers to express themselves. Branching from this idiom,
Romantic composer Edward MacDowell wrote the first Indian character pieces, which
influenced future Indianist composers. 1
1 It should be noted that many of the terms used to describe Native Americans during the Indianist Movement are contextual and may not be politically correct by today’s standards.
1 Background of American Perceptions
In order to understand the creation, progression, and dissemination of the Indian character piece as a genre, it is essential to discuss political and social events that were going on in the
United States at the time. These events had a direct impact on the attitudes of composers and audiences regarding Native Americans and their music.
Native Americans were not granted voting rights until 1924. Prior to that, Americans were divided as to whether or not Native Americans should be considered Americans at all. In the preceding decades, many factors led to this divide. Michael Pisani’s article “The Indian
Music Debate and ‘American’ Music in the Progressive Era” evaluates the impact progressivist ideas had on almost every aspect of American life from 1890 to 1920. Progressivism is a term used to describe the encouragement of progressive change such as from rural to urbanized culture. Pisani attributes American views toward Native Americans partially to Theodore
Roosevelt’s fourteen-volume “Winning of the West” (1885–94) where he described how
American character was defined not only by “victory over adversity, but victory at the expense of the Indian.”2 Political and social progressivism was a sign of advancement in science, economy, and civilization, but also created racial tension and was detrimental to the Native-
American population.3 Pisani cites Henry Longfellow’s book-length poem “Song of Hiawatha”
(1855) as another highly influential contribution to general perceptions of Native Americans.
2 Michael V. Pisani, “The Indian Music Debate and ‘American’ Music in the Progressive Era,” College Music Symposium 37 (1997): 84.
3 Ibid., 83.
2 This very popular poem stirred feelings of empathy as well as superiority by romanticizing the
image of the Native American as a noble, exotic savage that was bound for extinction.4
In 1887 the Allotment Act created the reservation system for Native Americans, and later that year the Dawes Act put restrictions on the performance of traditional ceremonies. As a reaction to government restrictions, people increasingly sympathized with the “plight of the
Indian.”5 In a humanist effort to document and preserve Indian folklore before it became
completely westernized, there was a burst of collecting and mapping. Anthropologists and
ethnologists moved quickly. By January 1888 the American Folklore Society was established
and began collecting lore of the North American Indian.6 Developments in technology, such as
the 1877 Edison phonograph, made it possible to record and conduct the first scientific studies of
this music.
Because of years of German domination in Western art music, many American
concertgoers expected to hear music of German or Austrian composers. The number of well-
trained American composers, who often studied in Europe, increased significantly during the
half-century between the end of the Civil War and America’s entry into World War I. Many
American composers before the turn of the century sought to please audiences by writing music
in the late-Romantic, German style that influenced them most. In contrast, a number of
composers in Europe and Russia began to challenge German musical domination. In Russia, the
“Mighty Five” wrote music based on their national folklore, which inspired the development of
4 Michael V. Pisani, “From Hiawatha to Wa-Wan: Musical Boston and the Uses of Native American Lore,” in Reclaiming the Past—Musical Boston a Century Ago, New England Conservatory of Music Spring Festival, March 4–11, 1999, ed. Joseph Horowitz (Boston: New England Conservatory of Music, 1999), 22.
5 Michael V. Pisani, “I’m an Indian Too: Creating Native American Identities in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Music,” in The Exotic in Western Music, ed. Jonathan Bellman (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998), 239.
6 Pisani, “The Indian Music Debate,” 73.
3 many new schools of composition in France, Spain, and England. A few American composers,
such as Anthony Phillip Heinrich, attempted to write “American” music, but the result was music
that still followed European models. It was not until the last decade of the nineteenth century
that a new generation of American composers emerged, concerned with creating its own unique
compositional voice and ridding itself of European influence.7 As a result, a debate began
between critics and composers about the viability of idiomatic American music and whether its
roots could be found in folk music, including the music of North American Indians.8
The debate was exacerbated when Antonín Dvořák visited the United States and
suggested that American composers draw upon their own folk heritage for inspiration. On 15
December 1893 he wrote in the New York Herald: “Since I have been in this country I have been
deeply interested in the Music of the Negroes and the Indians. The character, the very nature of
a race is contained in its national music. For that reason my attention was at once turned in the
direction of these native melodies.”9 Dvořák’s significance lies not only in his recommendation, but also in his employment of African-American themes in the “Largo” movement of his
Symphony no. 9 in E minor (From the New World). His call to composers offended some and inspired others to search for a music that was uniquely American.
A further influence on composers’ eagerness for drawing upon Native-American music was the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 (which Dvořák attended). The
Exposition displayed a number of ethnic villages from around the world. Indian music and
7 Margaret Osman, “The American ‘Indianist’ Composers: A Critical Review of Their Sources, Their Aims, and Their Compositional Procedures” (D.M.A. thesis, University of South Carolina, 1992), 1–3.
8 Pisani, “The Indian Music Debate,” 73.
9 Quoted in Pisani, “The Indian Music Debate,” 74.
4 ceremonial dances were the hit of the show, and for many composers this event was their first exposure to the music of Native Americans.10
10 Michael Broyles, “Art Music from 1860 to 1920,” in Cambridge History of American Music, ed. David Nicholls (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 251.
5 Collecting Native-American Folklore and Music
The ethnologists who collected Native-American melodies were as diverse as the
composers who adopted them. Their ethnological sources had a direct impact on the attitudes
and adaptations of composers writing Indian character pieces. The first person to systematically collect Indian melodies was Theodore Baker (1851–1934), who traveled to western New York
in 1880, gathering information for his doctoral dissertation at the University of Leipzig. Baker’s
broad but superficial research reflected many cultural biases of the time.11 He believed the music of Native Americans was in its primitive stages and could offer insight to how European music had evolved.12 His document Uber die Musik der nordamericanischen Wilden [On the Music of
the North American Indians] was not tribal specific, nor did it discuss the melodies’ function and
context. His evaluation focused on scales, poetry, vocalization, rhythms, and performance
practice.13 He also assigned early labels such as “folk” and “primitive” to Native-American
music.14 Despite flaws in Baker’s document, his methodical study began the field of ethnomusicology and was used as a source by Edward MacDowell in his two Indian character
pieces, “From an Indian Lodge” in Ten Woodland Sketches, op. 51 (1896), and “Indian Idyl”
from New England Idyls, op. 62 (1902).15
Perhaps the most influential collector of Native-American music and folklore was Alice
Cunningham Fletcher (1838–1923). Fletcher spent many summers living with an Omaha tribe
11 Tara Browner, “Breathing the Indian Spirit: Thoughts on Musical Borrowing and the ‘Indianist Movement’ in American Music,” American Music 15, no. 3 (fall 1997): 265.
12 Ibid., 271.
13 Ibid.
14 Tara Browner, “Transposing Cultures: The Appropriation of Native North American Musics, 1890– 1990” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1995), 40.
15 Browner, “Breathing the Indian Spirit,” 265.
6 in eastern Nebraska where she met and teamed up with Native-American Francis LaFlesche
(1857–1932), who became the first Native-American ethnomusicologist. Together the two
transcribed, recorded, and eventually published a large body of music. As recording technology
advanced, Fletcher proved that Native-American songs formed a continuous tradition when her
recorded melodies matched those previously transcribed by ear.16
As ethnologists, Fletcher and LaFlesche were limited in their ability to notate songs
musically and sought help from John Comfort Fillmore (1843–98), a theorist and composer
from Wisconsin. In 1893 Fletcher, LaFlesche, and Fillmore published Indian Story and Song,
the most influential and frequently used source for musical borrowing during the Indianist
Movement. Fillmore contributed descriptions about Native-American scales and provided tonal
harmonizations. He focused on commonalities between the music of Native Americans and that
of the European Romantic tradition, concluding that most Indian scales were pentatonic with finals suggesting major or minor keys.17 Fillmore also noted that Native-American scales were
missing the semitone between scale degrees 3–4 and 7–8, explaining that the missing scale tones
signified an underdeveloped sense of harmony. Although the original Indian melodies were
unharmonized, he believed each song had underlying chords and that tonal harmony was an
innate human concept. Fillmore justified his conclusion after receiving approval from a group of
Native Americans when he played his harmonizations. He gave a detailed account of his
findings in an 1894 article “A Study of Indian Music,” writing:
16 Michael V. Pisani, “Exotic Sounds in the Native Land: Portrayals of North American Indians in Western Music” (Ph.D. diss., Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, 1996), 314.
17 John Comfort Fillmore, “A Study of Indian Music,” Century Magazine 47, no. 4 (February, 1894): 616.
7 I sought to harmonize the songs, taking pains to discover the natural harmonies implied in the melodies, I found that no satisfactory scheme of chords could be made without employing the missing scale tones. Miss Fletcher had informed me of the curious fact that, although the Indians never sing otherwise than in unison, nevertheless, whenever their songs are played on the piano or organ, they are not satisfied without the addition of chords.18
Fillmore frequently used the harmonic progression IV—ii6/5—i, which several Indianist
composers later employed.19 Although accepted at the time, Fillmore’s free adjustment of the
original pitches, intervals, and rhythms for the piano is a source of controversy today.20
Fletcher and LaFlesche later published two collections of Native-American songs, the
two-volume Omaha Tribe (1905–6) and Indian Games and Dances, With Native Songs (1916).
Unlike Indian Story and Song, both of these collections present unharmonized Native-American melodies. All three of Fletcher’s books contain detailed descriptions of each melody, its use, and its social-ceremonial context, as well as any pertinent information regarding instrumentation. A new generation of composers such as Arthur Farwell and Harvey Worthington Loomis used her limited but specific collection as a source for Indian character pieces. Due to the popularity of
Fletcher’s publications among composers, many Indian character pieces from 1900 to 1910 were based on one nation—the Omaha.21
The most prolific collector of Native-American music was Frances Densmore (1867–
1957). She published 3591 recordings and over 140 books, gathering music from at least
18 John Comfort Fillmore, “A Study of Indian Music,” Century Magazine 47, no. 4 (February, 1894): 616, quoted in Pisani, “Exotic Sounds in the Native Land,” 319.
19 Pisani, “Exotic Sounds in the Native Land,” 320.
20 Victoria Lindsay Levine, ed., Writing American Indian Music: Historic Transcriptions, Notations, and Arrangements, Publication for the American Musicological Society, Recent Researches in American Music, no. 44 (Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, Inc., 2002), xxiv.
21 Browner, “Transposing Cultures,” 71.
8 seventy-six Native-American tribes.22 “The Teton Sioux Music,” her first publication in 1918,
documented music of the largest branch of Sioux, or Dakota, tribe from the northern plains.
Although Densmore’s status as an ethnographer was great, her impact on the music of the
Indianist Movement was minimal because her documents were published as the Indianist
Movement was already in decline.23
A final ethnographer worth mentioning is Natalie Burlin Curtis (1875–1921), whose
melodies were adapted by Ferruccio Busoni in his Indianisches Tagebuch: Erstes Buch [The
Indian’s Diary: Book 1] from 1915. In her lifetime Curtis was an important advocate of Native-
American rights, appealing directly to Roosevelt to slacken restrictions that prohibited Indians from singing their traditional songs and performing traditional ceremonies.24 Her publication
The Indians’ Book (1907) included 149 songs of at least eighteen Native-American tribes.
Curtis’s philosophy differed greatly from Fillmore’s: She found harmony absent in Indian
melodies and compensated for this characteristic by providing a highly developed sense of
rhythm.25 Curtis also made a noteworthy assertion about the impossibility for our Western
notational system to accurately represent all of the subtleties inherent in Native-American
music.26
Several Indianist composers such as Arthur Farwell, Charles Wakefield Cadman, and
Henry Gilbert also spent time collecting music of Native-American peoples. The simultaneous
22 Levine, ed., Writing American Indian Music, xxv.
23 Browner, “Transposing Cultures,” 54.
24 Osman, “The American ‘Indianist’ Composers,” 12.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid., 13.
9 attraction of both scholars and composers to Indian music suggests a trend that was gripping
America’s musical and political thoughts around the turn of the century.27
27 Alan Howard Levy, Musical Nationalism: American Composers’ Search for Identity (Westport, CT & London: Greenwood Press, 1983), 5.
10 Early Adaptations of Native-American Melodies and the Development of the Indian Character Piece
Appropriation of Native-American melodies began long before the Indianist Movement
was underway. Missionaries and explorers first started writing down Indian songs in European
musical notation as early as the seventeenth century and it was not long before composers began
to arrange these melodies for performances.28 Arranging typically involves adaptation of a
musical notation or transcription for the purpose of performance. This process may entail
orchestration, harmonization, or addition of an accompaniment. The end result frequently
reflects more about the perceptions and motivations of the arranger than characteristics of the
original melody.29
Early adaptations of Native-American melodies would not have progressed into Indian
character pieces without an ideal idiom to cultivate their development. Before the Indianist
Movement emerged, the character piece for solo piano was a very popular and influential
Romantic genre. Ludwig van Beethoven’s Bagatelles are considered the first character pieces, or
piano miniatures, written. Romantic European composers such as Schubert, Chopin,
Mendelssohn, and Schumann elevated it to a highly developed genre.30 Many Romantic
character pieces include extramusical suggestions, ranging from portrayals of poems or stories to
musical depictions of general moods or exotic settings. The structure of a piano miniature varies
from sectional (such as ABA) to through-composed. It was a very successful genre because it
offered composers and performers a satisfying emotional experience at the keyboard as well as a
28 Levine, ed., Writing American Indian Music, xix.
29 Ibid., xx.
30 Stewart Gordon, A History of Keyboard Literature: Music for the Piano and Its Forerunners (New York: Schirmer Books, 1996), 199.
11 convenient way to include programmatic elements, folk material, and legends into serious
compositions. In the Romantic Era the character piece was a practical idiom for composers who
were exploring and attempting to include nationalistic elements.31
Edward MacDowell (1860–1908), who built his reputation on the quality of his piano
miniatures, composed the earliest known Indian character pieces. Although born in the United
States, he began studying piano in Paris at the age of fifteen. Not long after his trip to France, he
went to Germany studying both piano and composition. MacDowell returned to America in
1888 where he was an accomplished pianist, composer, and professor at Columbia University.
His compositional style fits squarely into the German Romantic tradition. As more distinctive
American compositional voices began to emerge later in the twentieth century, such as
Copland’s, the popularity of MacDowell’s music began to decline.32
MacDowell is often regarded as the first American to have success with the European
character piece and his best miniatures draw upon folk legend and fairy tales reflecting a boy’s
“view of the past.”33 He wrote only two works out of sixteen sets of character pieces that borrow
Native-American source material. For both of these pieces MacDowell turned to Baker’s Uber die Musik der nordamericanischen Wilden [On the Music of the North American Indians]. They were written after the initial success of his Indian Suite for Orchestra in 1896, which is considered the first significant work utilizing Indian themes in America. MacDowell’s Indian character pieces are groundbreaking primarily because he was one of the first composers to experiment with incorporating Native-American material into piano works. 34
31 Pisani, “Exotic Sounds in the Native Land,” 327.
32 Gordon, A History of Keyboard Literature, 502.
33 Pisani, “Exotic Sounds in the Native Land,” 327.
34 Ibid., 328.
12 In his first Indian character piece, “From an Indian Lodge” in Ten Woodland Sketches,
op. 51 (1896), MacDowell evocatively sets two themes from the Brotherton Indians, a
Wisconsin-based tribe. His arrangement retains the simple nature of each melody and only
slightly alters the originals, seeking greater symmetry of phrases.35 The introductory theme
adapts a chant performed by women to accompany magical rites of a witch doctor. This section
contains features that will recur in later Indian character pieces, including a recitative-like
melody and a cadence similar to Fillmore’s, v6—iv6—ii6/5—i.36 Also featured in MacDowell’s
introduction are low-range tremolos that sound like the guttural approval of those listening to someone telling a story. The second melody is marked mournfully and accompanied by
unfailing open-fifth drumbeats in the low register on beat two of each bar in a triple meter
(Example 1.1). Many Indianist composers later employ open-fifth harmonies, to varying degrees, as an idiomatic Indian feature.
35 Francis Brancaleone, “Edward MacDowell and Indian Motives,” American Music 7, no. 4 (winter 1989): 362.
36 Pisani, “Exotic Sounds in the Native Land,” 329.
13
Example 1.1. Edward MacDowell, “From an Indian Lodge,” in Ten Woodland Sketches, op. 51, mm. 1–13.
MacDowell’s other Indian character piece, “Indian Idyl” from New England Idyls, op. 62
(1902), was one of his last compositions and shows his maturing style. It is prefaced with an original poem suggesting MacDowell’s interpretation of the piece: “Alone by the wayward
14 flame, She waves broad wampum skeins, While afar through the summer night, Sigh the wooing
flutes’ soft strains.”37 The piece begins with a simple, optimistic theme in F Major unlike the
somber opening of “From an Indian Lodge” in C Minor.38 The mid-section in ABA form uses a drumbeat imitation in open fifths to accompany a flute-like melody taken from a night song by the Dakota tribe, which he adapted from Baker’s book.39 This section shows his growing
experimentation as a composer by indicating the use of both the soft and damper pedals for the entire section. He also creates a metric juxtaposition by notating the right hand melody in a triple meter and the left hand accompaniment in duple (Example 1.2). Because of these unusual features, “Indian Idyl” sounds more highly developed than his initial Indian character piece.
Both of MacDowell’s character pieces are considered Indian in tone—not citation.40
That is to say, he viewed Native-American melodies as raw material that expressed common
human emotions and used them as a musical springboard for his own invention. He was not
concerned with including contextual information about the borrowed Native melodies or
confining them to Indian-based works.41
37 Edward MacDowell, “Indian Idyl,” from New England Idyls, op. 62 (New York: Arthur P. Schmidt, 1902), 127.
38 Pisani, “Exotic Sounds in the Native Land,” 331.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid., 334.
41 Browner, “Transposing Cultures,” 46.
15
Example 1.2. Edward MacDowell, “Indian Idyl,” from New England Idyls, op. 62, mm. 17–27.
MacDowell wrote several other piano works that are not considered Indian character pieces, yet they reference Native-American material. Sonata, op. 35, no. 1 (Tragica); Sonata, op.
51, no. 2 (Eroica); and Sonata, op. 57, no. 3 (Norse) all contain Indian melodies in one or more movements. MacDowell also includes Indian melodic fragments in other pieces of his character
16 set New England Idyls, op. 62, but their titles do not suggest any further connection to the Indian
character piece.42
Although MacDowell’s Indian character pieces are limited in number, he was one of the
earliest composers to experiment with “American” material. He reacted negatively to Dvořák’s
challenge to use folk music as sources for composition, resenting a Czech telling American
composers how to be American.43 MacDowell held that there could be no American
compositional school because music was universal. His adaptations exclude any details about the melodies, thus separating Native music from its social and cultural context. Generally,
MacDowell’s attitude can be compared Baker’s, the author of the source from which he drew:
“His position was entirely in keeping with social Darwinist theories as well as with the concepts
of ‘cultural evolution,’ whereby aboriginal peoples around the globe existed in the present as
representatives of the European past.”44 Like Baker, he did not view Native-American music as
a continuous tradition with its own peculiarities.45 Nationalism was not MacDowell’s priority
when he adapted Native-American material, but his Indian character pieces served as a model for
the next generation of American composers who made use of Indian subjects in their character
pieces.
42 Brancaleone, “Edward MacDowell and Indian Motives,” 360–1.
43 Browner, “Breathing the Indian Spirit,” 272.
44 Ibid., 270.
45 Browner, “Transposing Cultures,” 49.
17 Chapter II
The Era of the Wa-Wan Press
MacDowell’s works inspired a new wave of American composers and many Indian
character pieces were written over the next decade. Several composers developed close
relationships with ethnographers and sought to create Indian character pieces that retained
various aspects of their original melodies. Indian character pieces were greatly advocated in the
Wa-Wan Press, a music printing press designed to foster aspiring American composers and the
creation of a national music.
The creator of the Wa-Wan Press and a pioneer of the Indianist Movement was Arthur
Farwell (1872–1952), who became an avid promoter of adapting Native-American material.
Born in Minnesota, Farwell began electrical engineering studies at M.I.T. in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, where he became close friends with musician Rudolph Gott. When Farwell found himself spending much more time attending concerts and practicing the violin than working on his engineering studies, he began taking lessons in theory and composition. Like many composers from this time, his musical studies led him to Germany and France. He even received compositional advice from Edward MacDowell.1 Farwell was initially drawn to
Native-American music because he identified with the “spiritual vitality of the role of music in
Indian culture and religion and mythos that connected with his own spiritual sensitivity.”2
1 Gilbert Chase, “The Wa-Wan Press: A Chapter in American Enterprise,” introduction to The Wa-Wan Press, 1901–1911 (Newton Center, MA: The Wa-Wan Press, 1901–11; reprint, ed. V. B. Lawrence, New York: Arno Press & The New York Times, 1970), x (page citation is to the reprint edition).
2 Evelyn Davis Culbertson, “Arthur Farwell’s Early Efforts on Behalf of American Music,” American Music (summer 1987): 158.
18 When Farwell was unsuccessful securing a publisher for his first Indian-based work,
American Indian Melodies, op. 11 in 1901, he became frustrated with the state of American
music. He accused American publishing companies of taking interest only in European
composers and late-Romantic, German-influenced works. The determined twenty-nine-year-old
took matters into his own hands by founding the Wa-Wan Press in Newton Center,
Massachusetts in 1901, initially in his father’s home. The title Wa-Wan means “to sing to
someone,” and represents an important ceremony to the Omaha Indian tribe, demonstrating
peace, fellowship, and song. The press, active from 1901 to 1912, printed music by
contemporary American composers and promoted the use of American folk material as sources
for composition. In the beginning, subscribers were offered two volumes quarterly (one vocal
and one instrumental issue), but due to popular demand, the press began monthly publications in
1907. Farwell stated the objective of the press on the title page of its second issue (Example 2.1 and transcribed below).
The Wa-Wan Press, at Newton Center, Massachusetts, is an enterprise organized and directly conducted by composers in the interest of the best American composition. It aims to promote by publication and public hearings, the most progressive, characteristic, and serious works of American composers known or unknown, and to present compositions based on the melodies and folk-lore of the American Indians.3
3 Arthur Farwell, introduction to The Wa-Wan Press 1, no.2 (Newton Center, MA: The Wa-Wan Press, 1901; reprint, ed. V. B. Lawrence, New York: Arno Press & The New York Times, 1970), 1:22 (page citation is to the reprint edition).
19
Example 2.1. Title page to early issues of the Wa-Wan Press.
It was not long before Farwell expanded his concept of American folk music to include Afro-
American, Creole, and cowboy songs. Although he held German music with high regard, he believed that “the first correction we must bring to our musical vision is to cease to see
20 everything through German spectacles, however wonderful, however sublime those spectacles
may be in themselves!”4
Throughout its short but productive existence, the Wa-Wan Press presented musical
works by thirty-seven American composers, nine of whom were women. Many of the
composers were in their twenties and just beginning compositional careers. Each issue contained
lengthy, passionate introductions by Farwell discussing philosophical topics such as the direction
American music was headed and how audiences and composers should break away from
European musical influence.
In addition to founding a publishing press, in 1905 Farwell also created the American
Music Society, whose purpose was to study all folk music that affected American life. In 1907 he took the organization a step further by co-founding the Wa-Wan Society of America. A corresponding newsletter, The Wa-Wan Press Monthly, was printed with music by the Wa-Wan
Press. Farwell’s outspoken advocacy of American composers and music must have had an
impact on concertgoers because over the next year, concerts of exclusively American composers
were performed countrywide.5 In 1909 Farwell moved to New York to become an editor for the
journal Musical America, which eventually left him too busy to run the Wa-Wan Press. He
signed the rights over to G. Schirmer in 1912 and quickly thereafter the Wa-Wan publishing venture came to an end.6
Beyond Farwell’s involvement with the publishing company and organizational
committees, he toured the country beginning in 1904, giving well-attended lecture recitals. An
early recital, “Music and Myth of the American Indians,” discussed how to incorporate Native-
4 Farwell, introduction to The Wa Wan Press 2, no. 15, 2:65.
5 Chase, “The Wa-Wan Press,” xi.
6 Ibid.
21 American melodies into Western compositions, using his own music for demonstration. With his enthusiasm for the subject matter, he quickly established himself as an authority on Indian music.7 Farwell also collected and transcribed Native-American music in 1904, working with
Charles Lummis for the Southwest Society of the Archaeological Institute of America. By the
time he finished, Farwell had recorded and transcribed over 300 melodies.8
Farwell’s sincere aim for genuine adaptation fell in line with the respectful approach
taken by Alice Fletcher in her publications, his favorite source from which to draw.9 Like
Fletcher, Farwell believed when harmonizing Indian melodies composers should consider the melodic structure, poetic inspiration, and legend behind each song. In the first issue of the Wa-
Wan Press he stated: “It must be understood . . . that these songs are entirely dependent upon
mythical or legendary occurrences which they qualify or interpret, or upon religious ceremonies
of which they form a part.”10 In all of his adaptations Farwell makes an honest attempt to
remain faithful to the spirit of the original melody.
7 Michael V. Pisani, “Exotic Sounds in the Native Land: Portrayals of North American Indians in Western Music” (Ph.D. diss., Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, 1996), 338.
8 Culbertson, “Arthur Farwell’s Early Efforts on Behalf of American Music,” 146.
9 Tara Browner, “Breathing the Indian Spirit: Thoughts on Musical Borrowing and the ‘Indianist Movement’ in American Music,” American Music 15, no. 3 (fall 1997): 276.
10 Farwell, introduction to The Wa-Wan Press 1, no. 2 (1901), quoted in Culbertson, “Arthur Farwell’s Early Efforts on Behalf of American Music,” 159.
22 The Music of Arthur Farwell
Farwell’s first Indian character set, American Indian Melodies, op. 11, which prompted
him to start the Wa-Wan Press in 1901, contains ten Native-American melodies taken from
Fletcher’s Indian Story and Song. In a long introduction he states his intention to harmonize the
complete melodies rather than freely compose from them. This is an accurate assertion because
the melodies are only slightly varied from their original versions, which John Comfort Fillmore
had already harmonized. Each piece in the set takes an entire melody and its title from Fletcher’s
book. Farwell’s introduction provides detailed cultural information about each melody, also
taken from Fletcher’s book, as well as a short, poetic motto preceding each piece.
“The Mother’s Vow,” the fifth piece of American Indian Melodies, op. 11, has many
exemplary features. It utilizes a Dakota melody from Fletcher’s book, retaining the original key,
meter, and most of the embellishments.11 An informative introduction gives the listener and
performer more meaning to the melody by describing a “wail or sigh” implied by the opening
octave leap, representing a mother whose child was taken by the Thunder God (Example 2.2).12
Farwell adds: “Despite the rubato quality, the melody should proceed flowingly, without halting, the harmonies dissolving one into the other in an unbroken flow. A deep feeling for the underlying idea will contribute more than anything to the effective expression of the song.”13 An
introductory poem reads:
11 Browner, “Breathing the Indian Spirit,” 276.
12 Farwell, introduction to The Wa-Wan Press 1, no. 2, 1:26.
13 Ibid., 1:27.
23 Behold! On their mighty pinions flying, They come, the gods come once more Sweeping o’er the land Sounding their call to me, to me their own. Wa-gi-un! Ye on mighty pinions flying, Look on me here, me your own, Thinking on my vow As ye return once more, Wa-gi-un!14
The structure of Farwell’s adaptation is AA', while other pieces in the set employ sectional forms such as AB and ABA. Most of the pieces in American Indian Melodies, op. 11 are very concise;
this particular work is only twenty-five measures long. It may take longer for the performer to read Farwell’s descriptive notes than to play the work.
14 Arthur Farwell. “The Mother’s Vow” from American Indian Melodies, op. 11 (Newton Center, MA: The Wa-Wan Press, 1901; reprint, ed. V. B. Lawrence, New York: Arno Press & The New York Times, 1970), 1:40 (page citation is to the reprint edition).
24
Example 2.2. Arthur Farwell, “The Mother’s Vow,” from American Indian Melodies, op. 11, mm. 1–13.
“The Mother’s Vow,” like other pieces in the set, has simple, diatonic harmonies built primarily on i, iv, and V. Clear cadences frame a simple melody in E minor with a sparse accompaniment. The texture is primarily homophonic with occasional linear or chromatic writing and the rhythmic structure is taken directly from Fillmore’s original version, which changes freely between 3/4 and 2/4.
Although many pieces in American Indian Melodies, op. 11 are diatonic, a few unusual pieces, such as “Song to the Spirit,” make use of open chords, blurring the lines of major and
25 minor tonality. While “The Mother’s Vow” employs free meter changes, others in the set
maintain a fixed meter throughout, such as “Approach of the Thunder God.” Farwell’s
additional “harmonizations” in American Indian Melodies, op. 11 include: I. “Approach of the
Thunder God,” II. “The Old Man’s Love Song,” III. “Song of the Deathless Voice,” IV.
“Ichibuzzhi,” VI. “Inketunga’s Thunder Song,” VII. “Song of the Ghost Dance,” VIII. “Song to
the Spirit,” IX. “Song of the Leader,” and X. “Chorale.”
Farwell adds greater personal expression in his next Indian character piece, Dawn, op. 12,
which he published in the Wa-Wan Press in 1902. Its unique setting attracted great pianists such
as John Kirkpatrick, who performed and later edited the six-page work.15 In the introduction,
Farwell justifies his adaptation by pointing out how “purely musical art-works of the great
composers of all nations, Josquin in the Netherlands, Bach and Beethoven in Germany, Dvořák,
Grieg, Tchaikowsky, in their native lands, drew their diverse qualities . . . in many cases the
actual arrangements of the notes of their themes, from the simple songs of the people.”16
The formal structure of Dawn, op. 12 is a continuous development and transformation of two themes with varied accompaniment for each repetition. Double bar lines clearly define each section and Farwell suggests a slower tempo for the mid-section. The primary theme is an
Omaha melody, “Old Man’s Love Song,” which he previously set as the second piece of
American Indian Melodies, op. 11. He discusses this theme in the introduction:
15 Alan Howard Levy, Musical Nationalism: American Composers’ Search for Identity (Westport, CT & London: Greenwood Press, 1983), 367.
16 Farwell, introduction to The Wa-Wan Press 1, no. 4, 1:76.
26 It is an old man’s song to the dawn, and has been taken here in the sense of an invocation, to which the second melody is the response. The old man ceases his song, and slowly the dawn rises over the horizon until the heavens are resplendent with dazzling light. The miraculous moment of dawn passes, and in the simple daylight the old man continues his song. The new-born day floods the world with light.17
The secondary theme is a melody from the Otoe, a tribe based in the Midwest; however, Farwell did not know its ceremonial usage.18 With a composition containing both Omaha and Otoe
melodies, evidently Farwell had no problem mixing material from different Native-American
tribes.
The tonality of Dawn, op. 12 emphasizes third-relations by briefly modulating from G major to E major. Its harmonic treatment is generally more chromatic and Romantic sounding than his previous Indian character set. The two melodies are set in mostly homophonic textures and he experiments with placing them in middle voices, as in m. 13, as well as the top voice
(Example 2.3). This work is much more rhythmically complex than Op. 11 with accompaniment patterns constantly moving through duple, triple, quadruple, and quintuple. Large leaps in the left hand, octave runs, trills, hand crossing, and thick chords make Dawn, op. 12 a much more demanding work than Farwell’s previous Indian character set.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid., 1:77.
27
Example 2.3. Arthur Farwell, Dawn, op. 12, mm. 11-9.
Farwell’s original harmonizations from American Indian Melodies, op. 11 must have stayed with him because in 1902 he rewrote another piece from the set, Ichibuzzhi, op. 13. This
Indian character piece musically portrays a celebrated mythical warrior. Its revised adaptation is more elaborate than Op. 11, seeking to “retain the characteristics of rhythm, and certain melodic characteristics of the original melody . . . and at the same time to develop it into a more highly organized form.”19 Farwell achieves a more organized form by writing a scherzo and trio, which
is clearly marked by a modulation, change of tempo, and followed by a coda. The first theme, an
Omaha melody, is a call to action by a respected leader who is expected to bring victory in the
forthcoming battle.20 Farwell describes the melody as: “A song characterized by vivacity and
19 Ibid., 1:109.
20 Evelyn Davis Culbertson, He Heard America Singing: Arthur Farwell Composer and Crusading Music Educator (Metuchen, NJ & London: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1992), 361.
28 energy, and its element of humor is enhanced by its abrupt termination.”21 The second borrowed
melody is a Rallying Song and it is “sung by an Indian on the war-path when immediate death is,
or seems, inevitable.”22 Harmonies in Farwell’s adaptation are diatonic, modulating between E- flat major and A-flat major. He freely composes and develops the first theme using additional non-chord tones, sequences, and sudden changes of melodic direction. The texture of Ichibuzzhi,
op. 13 is primarily homophonic and its rhythms are very accented and steady throughout.
Later that year Farwell wrote Domain of Hurakan, op. 15, his largest Indian character
piece, which received many accolades. This thirteen-page score mixes three themes from
varying tribes in his most virtuosic Indian character piece yet. Op. 15 musically portrays
Hurakan, the god of wind and sea who created the earth.23 The introduction states: “Over the
Waters passed Hurakan, the mighty wind, and called forth the earth.”24
Farwell calls the structure of Domain of Hurakan, op. 15 a “rhapsodic treatment of
certain Indian melodies for their own sake.”25 He combines Vancouver and Pawnee game songs
from tribes of the Pacific Northwest and Nebraska. Also included is a fragment of a Navajo
night chant from the Southwest. To aid in portrayal of the story, Farwell places quotes
sporadically into the music such as: “Proud music of the Storm, blast that careers so free,” in m.
51.26 Generally, the harmonies are more chromatic than in his previous Indian character works,
frequently employing descending chromatic lines, notably in the middle nocturne-like section.
21 Farwell, introduction to The Wa-Wan Press 1, no. 4, 1:39.
22 Ibid., 1:109.
23 Pisani, “Exotic Sounds in the Native Land,” 344.
24 Farwell, introduction to The Wa-Wan Press 1, no. 4, 1:183.
25 Ibid.
26 Arthur Farwell, Domain of Hurakan, op. 15 (Newton Center, MA: The Wa-Wan Press, 1902; reprint, ed. V. B. Lawrence, New York: Arno Press & The New York Times, 1:186 (page citation is to the reprint edition).
29 Thick sonorities occur, such as in mm. 51–69, where forte C-sharps are reiterated every few
measures and filled in with busy melodic and rhythmic activity (Example 2.4). Farwell also
includes an unconventional modulation from tonic (A major) to B major in the mid-section.
Example 2.4. Arthur Farwell, Domain of Hurakan, op. 15, mm. 51–6.
The homophonic texture of Domain of Hurakan, op. 15 is varied with many different accompaniments ranging from arpeggiated, harp-like writing to thick, chordal textures. Meters alternate freely between 2/4, 3/4, and 4/4 and some of the rhythms suggest elements of tango and ragtime.27 This impressive Indian character piece contains large, leaping chords (written for both
hands), octave chromatic runs, and voicing difficulties attributed to thick textures.
A few years later Farwell wrote From Mesa and Plain: Indian, Cowboy, and Negro
Sketches for Pianoforte, op. 20 (1905). It was the first and only Indian character set in which he
27 Pisani, “Exotic Sounds in the Native Land,” 344.
30 added non-Indian folk material. He wrote the following in the introduction to the first piece
“Navajo War Dance,” one of three Indian-based works in the five-piece set:
Too many People think of the American Indian only as a ‘savage.’ I had in my Indian music depicted many phases of Indian life that were far from savage, but true to its quaint, poetic and picturesque aspects, as well as to its mythological conceptions. Being criticized because of these matters . . . I wrote the “Navajo War Dance” in 1905 in hope of gratifying my critics in this respect . . . I have employed bare fourths in the work. 28
The percussive accompaniment to “Navajo War Dance” is made up of ostinato figurations in
fourths and fifths that are sometimes dissonant.29 Farwell handles harmonic tension by manipulating the dynamics, creating two sections that rise to their own climax. He adds a
hypermeter in m. 39 as a transition from the first to the second section marked “with savage
abandon” (Example 2.5). Although this work is not as technically difficult as his previous Indian
character piece, it is highly effective.
28 Farwell, introduction to The Wa-Wan Press 4, no. 28 (1905), quoted in Culbertson, He Heard America Singing, 384.
29 Pisani, “Exotic Sounds in the Native Land,” 340.
31
Example 2.5. Arthur Farwell, “Navajo War Dance,” in From Mesa and Plain: Indian, Cowboy, and Negro Sketches for Pianoforte, op. 20, mm. 36–46.
The second piece in the set, “Pawnee Horses,” shows some experimental harmonic treatment with two whole-tone scales sounding an eighth-note apart.30 A galloping
accompaniment continues throughout, alternating freely between 9/8 and 6/8. The third Indian
character piece, “Wa-Wan Choral,” is an additional example of Farwell’s recycling and rewriting
material from his initial Indian character set.
30 Culbertson, He Heard America Singing, 382.
32 As Farwell gained confidence with his Indian character pieces, he grew more comfortable
composing works that were freely inspired by their original melodies. This freer style is
demonstrated in Impressions of the Wa-Wan Ceremony of the Omahas, op. 21 (1905). In the
introduction Farwell clearly states his intentions:
The pianoforte sketches . . . have been called “Impressions” since they depend, in feeling, largely upon early memories of the Indian of the west and his surroundings, and since they are, as it were, conceived at a distance, and make no pretense of bringing us face to face with the larger mythical elements and emotions of these events, which are never absent from the consciousness of the Indian himself. They aim to reflect in some measure the peaceful nature of the ceremony.31
A unique feature of this Indian character set is the employment of melodies from a single tribe—
the Omaha. They were all taken from Fletcher’s Study of Omaha Music.
In the introduction to the fourth piece, “Laying Down the Peace Pipes,” Farwell writes about this part of the ceremony: “ . . . the pipes are brought to their resting place . . . There are no
words to the songs referring to the laying down of the pipes, except ‘Hung-ga’.”32 Like other
pieces in the set, the form is brief and sectional (AA'). In general, the melody is not as clearly
defined as in his earlier Indian character pieces and Farwell liberally interweaves his own
extraneous musical ideas.33 His harmonies show increasing experimentation by obscuring the tonic, which is not clearly established until the last chord of the piece. The entire opening suggests E minor rather than the tonic (C major). Accompaniment patterns vary throughout a primarily homophonic texture.
31 Farwell, introduction to The Wa-Wan Press 5, no. 38, 3:229.
32 Ibid., 3:228.
33 Culbertson, He Heard America Singing, 376.
33 Impressions of the Wa-Wan Ceremony of the Omahas, op. 21 continually features more
complex writing than many of Farwell’s previous sets. In “Laying Down the Peace Pipes,” there
is a technically difficult tremolo, beginning in m. 8, to be played on a single note in the bass,
simulating a characteristic Indian drum (Example 2.6). Throughout the piece Farwell
experiments with duple-against-triple patterns as well as multiple layers of rhythm. Measure 12
shows a rhythmic juxtaposition between quadruple in the right hand and sextuple in the left hand
accompaniment.
Example 2.6. Arthur Farwell, “Laying Down the Peace Pipes,” from Impressions of the Wa-Wan Ceremony of the Omahas, op. 21, mm. 8–13.
The titles of other works in Impressions of the Wa-Wan Ceremony of the Omahas, op. 21 evoke images of this traditional Omaha ceremony. In the first two pieces, “Receiving the
34 Messenger” and “Nearing the Village,” Farwell employs duple-against-triple rhythms similar to
“Laying Down the Peace Pipes.” He favors arpeggiated accompaniment patterns in “ Song of
Approach” and “Raising the Pipes” and turns to chordal accompaniment textures for the final three pieces “Invocation,” “Song of Peace,” and “Chorale.” His fascination with this ceremony influenced the title of Op. 21 as well as the title of his printing press.
Farwell’s extensive output of Indian character pieces also included a rearranged version of his “Navajo War Dance” (1904) and Indian Fugue Fantasy, op. 44 (1938), which he revised from an early version for strings. He also arranged several of his piano works for the
Westminster chorus including: “Navajo War Dance,” “Old Man’s Love Song,” “Pawnee
Horses,” and “The Mother’s Vow.” Farwell reset Dawn, op. 12 for orchestra and later his student Roy Harris arranged it for piano and strings.34 Another piece that received some success
as an orchestral arrangement was Domain of Hurakan, op. 15.
In all, Farwell wrote seven sets of Indian character pieces, more than any other Indianist
composer. He may have been dissatisfied with the simple harmonizations in his initial Indian
character set American Indian Melodies, op. 11, because he rearranged several of the same melodies in later works, always creating more elaborate versions. From 1901 to 1905 Farwell’s comfort with the genre grew, demonstrating expanded imagination and technical difficulty with each new work. The breadth of his Indianist output establishes him as a leading composer of the
Indianist Movement.
From a twenty-first century perspective, it appears that Farwell may have been given too much credit as an authority on Native-American music in his time. Although he did collect and transcribe some Indian melodies in 1904, Farwell greatly exaggerated his expertise on Native-
34 Ibid., 367.
35 American music in his articles and lecture recitals. Most of the contextual information Farwell included with each Indian character piece was taken directly from Fletcher’s publications. Due to the wealth of details Farwell provided, American audiences in his time may have mistaken
these late-Romantic sounding works for accurate representations of Native-American music.
Another noteworthy trend in Farwell’s Indian character pieces is his inclusion of melodies from
different Native-American tribes within a work. Impressions of the Wa-Wan Ceremony of the
Omahas, op. 21 is the only Indian character set Farwell wrote utilizing melodies from a single tribe. Mixing tribal material may indicate a perception on Farwell’s part, and the Nation as a whole, that all Native-American music was alike regardless of tribal differences.
Taken in the context of his time, Farwell’s aims were forward-looking. Although many
of his statements are not politically correct by today’s standards, he was a pioneer in the Indianist
Movement because of his enthusiastic advocacy of Native-American music and the Indian
character piece. He attempted to use melodies in a way that related to their original context as
well as to educate the performer and the audience. Some of his music is very appealing to play
and would add variety to any piano recital. From a perspective of cultural relativism, Farwell’s
aspiration to establish, in both his writing and music, a new direction for American composition
was an admirable endeavor and he influenced many composers.35
35 Tara Browner, “Transposing Cultures: The Appropriation of Native North American Musics, 1890– 1990” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1995), 72.
36 Other Composers Published in the Wa-Wan Press
While Farwell’s output was the largest, several other composers wrote Indian character pieces that were published in the Wa-Wan Press. Similar to Farwell, these composers provided contextual information about each borrowed melody. In varying ways, their Indian character pieces added imaginative settings to the Wa-Wan Press and to the genre as a whole.
One such composer was Harvey Worthington Loomis (1865-1930), who had two
Indian character sets published in the Wa-Wan Press. With a total of over five hundred compositions, he wrote only a few Indian-based works. Most of his output consists of incidental music for plays and dramatic recitations and he wrote many songs. Initially, Loomis was encouraged to use folk material by his teacher Antonín Dvořák. Beyond the incorporation of
Native-American music, Loomis’s works also demonstrate an interest in ragtime and music of the orient.36
Like Farwell, Loomis borrowed melodic source material from Fletcher’s publications.
His Lyrics of the Red Man, op. 76, Books 1–2 were written in 1903 and 1904, and published by the Wa-Wan Press. In a preface to the first book Loomis wrote:
In general, these Indian sketches embody entire melodies transcribed literally from Miss Fletcher’s “Peabody Museum Report” on the music of the Omahas. While secondary figures and contrapuntal devices have been introduced, the composer has sought to construct a frame about the original motives in such a manner as would bring into relief their individual beauty or peculiarity.37
To make this point clearer, the original Indian melodies were published at the top of each piece.
In general, Loomis uses sectional forms and a fairly simple harmonic language, often focusing
36 Pisani, “Exotic Sounds in the Native Land,” 344.
37 Harvey Worthington Loomis, introduction to The Wa-Wan Press 2, no. 12 (1903), quoted in Pisani, “Exotic Sounds in the Native Land,” 345.
37 on idiomatic open-fifth sonorities.38 Throughout the two books, he increasingly experiments
with complex rhythms, frequent contrasts in tempi, and varied textures. These works are more
imaginative and technically demanding than Farwell’s early Indian character pieces and they
show a lot of variety between and within each piece.
The second short piece, “Song of Sorrow” from Book 1, has a declamatory opening
reminiscent of MacDowell’s “From an Indian Lodge.” A melody in m. 7 containing several fourth and fifth leaps with a simple accompaniment follows the mournful introduction in octaves.
Like other pieces in the set, the form is a sectional AA' with an introduction and closing. He harmonizes the melody clearly in an uncomplicated, diatonic setting. Loomis uniquely employs layered melodic and rhythmic material in this piece, featuring a borrowed tune above two different levels of accompaniment. The bass line reiterates a tonic pedal throughout most of the piece in B-flat minor while an accompanying rhythmic layer, consisting of three staccato sixteenth-note chords, persists in the middle range (Example 2.7a). The texture is homophonic, but toward the end, he includes some chromatic inner voices. Loomis shows some experimental piano writing in the final bars, where he sets up an authentic cadence but does not articulate the last tonic note. Instead, he relies on the vibration of a tonic pitch, sounded four measures earlier, to complete the cadence (Example 2.7b).
Other pieces in Lyrics of the Red Man, op. 76, Book 1 are written in a similar style, featuring drum imitation and layered melodic or rhythmic material. These pieces include: I.
“Music of the Calumet,” III. “Around the Wigwam,” IV. “The Silent Conqueror,” and V.
“Warriors’ Dance.”
38 Ibid., 349.
38
Example 2.7a. Harvey Worthington Loomis, “Song of Sorrow,” from Lyrics of the Red Man, op. 76, Book 1, mm. 1–10.
Example 2.7b. mm. 20–6.
39 Loomis expanded his Indian character set the following year, writing Book 2 of Lyrics of
the Red Man, op. 76. “The Thunder God and the Rainbow,” the seventh movement of the set,
presents a pictorial narrative with fast, violent passages, full of dissonance to represent the
Thunder God. A lyrical passage represents the appearance of the Rainbow with diatonic
harmonies and mixed meters (Example 2.8a, b). Its form, a sectional ABA, is similar to other works in the set. Harmonies are primarily diatonic, but Loomis frequently makes use of augmented-sixth chords and linear chromaticism. This piece adapts an Omaha melody in a homophonic setting, although it is hidden by thick accompanimental textures in the Thunder God section. As in “Song of Sorrow,” he rhythmically layers an accompaniment with long tones in the bass, a melody in the middle range, and glissando-like flourishes in a high range. In particular, this piece shows Loomis’s maturing style and growing imagination between 1903 and
1904. It is more technically demanding than any works from his earlier set, utilizing the full range of the piano and dynamics. Generally, Loomis was less concerned with creating
informative adaptations than Farwell, but successfully established unique sounds and textures for
the Indian character piece, aiming to frame Indian material artistically.39 His Indian character
pieces are attractive to both performers and listeners.
39 Margaret Osman, “The American ‘Indianist’ Composers: A Critical Review of Their Sources, Their Aims, and Their Compositional Procedures” (D.M.A. thesis, University of South Carolina, 1992), 45.
40
Example 2.8a. Harvey Worthington Loomis, “The Thunder God and the Rainbow,” from Lyrics of the Red Man, op. 76, Book 2, mm. 21–7.
41
Example 2.8b. mm. 36–8.
The oldest composer published in the Wa-Wan Press was Carlos Troyer (1837–1920).
Although he has only one Indian character piece represented in the Wa-Wan Press, he wrote
additional Indian-based works that were published by Theodore Presser from 1904 to 1918.40
Like Farwell, Troyer gave lecture recitals on the music of Native Americans and its adaptation.
In 1888 he lived with the Zunis, a Native-American tribe based in New Mexico and Arizona,
recording and transcribing many of their songs. Troyer’s effort to remain true to the original
material equaled, and may have even surpassed, Farwell’s. Throughout all of his compositions
Troyer added very little artistic embellishment to the original melodies and harmonized them
very conservatively.41
Troyer’s most prominent Indianist work, Ghost Dance of the Zunis (1904), depicts a
ceremony he had witnessed and it is exemplary of his conservative compositional style. Farwell
writes in the introduction to its Wa-Wan Press publication: “Troyer has knit a form closely
following the significant features of the dance, the melodies, motives, calls and rhythms which
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
42 he recorded on the spot. The harmonic treatment is for the most part conservative.”42 Instead of
lengthy introductions like those of Farwell, Troyer’s Indian character pieces have short
comments scattered throughout the music to let the performer know what he is portraying. In m.
104 he includes the text: “Echoes of the dance, as the spectral forms pass away and the fires are
gradually dying out.”43 He also adds to the piano timbre by suggesting the use of a gong at various climactic moments in the piece. The form of Ghost Dance of the Zunis is through- composed with seven sections. The harmonies are very tonal, but he adds chromaticism and uses some irregular harmonic resolutions to portray a frenzied scene in the climactic part of the work, where he also employs the gong effect. With the exception of this chaotic climax, most of the piece is written in a homophonic texture. Measures 104–8 show Troyer’s copious use of drum imitation, here in the tonic key of G major (Example 2.9). In general, Troyer’s conservative
harmonic and rhythmic style make his Indian character pieces less appealing than works by other
Indianist composers such as Loomis. Troyer’s additional Indian character pieces focus on melodies of Southwestern tribes. They include: Kiowa-Apache War Dance (1907), Apache
Medicine-Chant (1914), and Midnight Visit to the Sacred Shrines: A Zunian Ritual (1918).
42 Farwell, introduction to The Wa-Wan Press 3, no. 20 (1904), quoted in Osman, “The American ‘Indianist’ Composers,” 46.
43 Carlos Troyer. Ghost Dance of the Zuni’s (Newton Center, MA: The Wa-Wan Press, 1904; reprint, ed. V. B. Lawrence, New York: Arno Press & The New York Times, 1970), 2:189 (page citation is to the reprint edition).
43
Example 2.9. Carlos Troyer, Ghost Dance of the Zunis, mm. 104–8.
Henry Franklin Belknap Gilbert (1868–1928) was a student of Edward MacDowell
and a very good friend of Farwell. Reportedly, Gilbert introduced MacDowell to Theodore
Baker’s book Uber die Musik der nordamericanischen Wilden [On the Music of the North
American Indians]; MacDowell used it as a source for his Indianist works. Like Farwell, Gilbert
played violin and shared an interest in promoting an American compositional school through the
use of folk music. Although he had several works published in the Wa-Wan Press, he did not
write any Indian character pieces until after the press had stopped printing.
Gilbert’s interest in utilizing folk material may have begun in 1893, when he attended the
influential Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition. There he met a Russian prince who told him
of nationalistic trends in Russia where composers were drawing on folk music.44 After that,
Gilbert began to employ Native-American music into his compositions and he became the first
44 Osman, “The American ‘Indianist’ Composers,” 50.
44 composer to incorporate spirituals and ragtime into orchestral works. He wrote extensively
about a national school of music in publications such as the Wa-Wan Press, Musical Quarterly,
and New Music Review. In support of an American compositional school he wrote:
One always feels that music by an American is not wanted, especially if it happens to be American music. It is merely tolerated with a sort of good-natured contempt. It is true that American music as such is still very much in its infancy. But an unwelcomed child always has a very hard time and sometimes fails to grow up.45
He also transcribed Native-American melodies collected by Edward Curtis, who wrote a six-
volume book in 1911, The North American Indian. Gilbert’s Indian Scenes: Five Pieces for the
Pianoforte (1911) borrows themes from this book and demonstrates his evocative style. The title
page notes that the pieces were initially written as incidental music to Curtis’s lecture “The Story
of a Vanishing Race.” Preceding each piece, Gilbert publishes a picture associated with its
program.
Throughout the set Gilbert varies and elaborates themes. Each brief work is essentially diatonic with some non-functional harmonies occurring in transitional and developmental passages. The third piece, “In the Kutenai Country,” references a Native-American tribe that originated in the northwestern part of the United States. It is written in the key of C minor and the form is an example of sectional variation (AA'A). This work is peculiar because the tonic is slightly obscured. An opening melody begins with a B-natural and moves to a B-flat over an accompaniment in C minor. As this melody finally reaches the tonic, the accompaniment moves to F minor.46 The piece ends inconclusively because the final pitch is an E-flat, the third scale
45 Musical Quarterly 1, (1915), quoted in Nicholas E. Tawa, Mainstream of Early Twentieth-Century America: The Composers, Their Times, and Their Works (Westport, CT & London: Greenwood Press, 1992), 107.
46 Osman, “The American ‘Indianist’ Composers,” 54.
45 degree, instead of the tonic. Textures alternate between a homophonic melody in the right hand with a rocking triplet accompaniment and a thicker, chordal texture. Rhythms throughout the set remain clear cut and in this piece the meter moves freely between 4/4 and 6/4 (Example 2.10).
Several more pieces written in similar, evocative settings comprise Indian Scenes: Five Pieces for the Pianoforte including: I. “By the Arrow,” II. “The Night Scout,” IV. Signal Fire to the
Mountain God,” and V. “On the Jocko.”
Example 2.10. Henry F. Gilbert, “In the Kutenai Country,” from Indian Scenes: Five Pieces for the Pianoforte, mm.1–4.
The era of the Wa-Wan Press impacted the Indianist Movement greatly. Not only did it provide an outlet for new American composers to have their works published, the press also actively sought out ways to create a national music. Of the Indian character pieces printed around this time, Farwell’s output was the largest, but Loomis and Gilbert added more colorful
46 and imaginative settings. The press printed much more vocal and piano music than the Indian- based works presented in this study, and not all of these works were of the highest caliber, but the Wa-Wan Press did receive national attention from both American audiences and publishers.
47 Chapter III
Beyond the Wa-Wan Press
Although the Wa-Wan Press was a prominent publishing firm during the Indianist
Movement, it was not the only place where Indian character pieces were printed. Farwell’s press must have inspired American publishers, because after its establishment, more companies began to print music of American composers and works based on American folk material. Many composers had their works published by newly supportive firms such as White-Smith Music
Publishing Co., Theodore Presser, Arthur P. Schmidt Co., and the Boston Music Company.
After the dispersion of the Wa-Wan Press, the style of Indianist compositions shifted toward freer treatment of Native-American melodies. Composers such as Charles Wakefield
Cadman wrote Indian character pieces with greater virtuosity that appealed to American concert audiences. By 1910 Indian-based works had become so popular that many composers were inspired to write at least one or two experimental piano compositions incorporating Native-
American themes.
A well-known composer whose Indian-based works were published outside of the Wa-
Wan Press was Amy Marcy Cheney Beach (1867–1944), who became the first woman composer to gain widespread recognition in America. Beach, a child prodigy, was born in New
Hampshire and gave her first piano concert debut in Boston at the age of sixteen. She, like many other Indianist composers, was motivated by the trend to utilize Native-American melodies in serious compositions, writing five Indian-based works in several genres. She was influenced by
Antonín Dvořák’s challenge and Edward MacDowell’s colorful use of Native-American themes in his Indian Suite. Like other Indianist composers, Beach attended the Chicago World’s
48 Columbian Exposition in 1893 where she was exposed to the music of Native Americans.
Farwell, an acquaintance of Beach, must have liked her Indian character set, Eskimos: Four
Characteristic Pieces for the Pianoforte, op. 64, because he used it for demonstration in one of
his lecture recitals.1
Beach’s opinion of borrowing folk music was forward thinking. In an interview published in American Music on 28 May 1893 she said: “It seems to me that, in order to make the best use of folk-songs of any nation as material for musical composition, the writer should be one of the people whose music he chooses, or at least brought up among them.”2 This opinion
did not hinder her adaptation of Native-American material, but it suggests a more objective
approach to her Indian-based compositions.
Her Indian character set Eskimos: Four Characteristic Pieces for the Pianoforte, op. 64
(1906) is a simple adaptation, yet it is colorful and interesting to play. The four-piece set draws
themes from Franz Boas’s groundbreaking collection The Central Eskimo (1888).3 In the
introduction to the first edition Beach writes a unique disclaimer to her musical adaptation:
These songs are sung by the Eskimos in their own language and upon various occasions. Some of them are dance tunes, some associated with games, and some are descriptive of events in their past or recent history . . . The titles of the piano pieces are the composer’s own with the exception of “The Returning Hunter” which is the genuine name given by the Eskimos . . . All the harmonies, modulations, interludes, and general form [are the composer’s].4
1 Adrienne Fried Block, “Amy Beach’s Music on Native American Themes,” American Music 8 (1990): 145–7. 2 Amy Beach, interview in American Music (May 28, 1893): 23, quoted in Block, “Amy Beach’s Music on Native American Themes,” 144.
3 Franz Boas was one of the first ethnographers to document music of the Eskimos. The term Eskimo is generally used to describe peoples inhabiting the coastline from the Bering Sea to Greenland. Boas found their music similar in style to Native-American music printed in other ethnological collections that were published around the same time.
4 Amy Beach, introduction to Eskimos, op. 64, quoted in Block, “Amy Beach’s Music on Native American Themes,” 147.
49 Beach was not the first person to freely adjust the Native-American melodies she borrowed, but she was the first Indianist composer to openly admit it in the score. From a twenty-first-century perspective, her disclosure is very admirable.
Originally, Eskimos: Four Characteristic Pieces for the Pianoforte, op. 64 was intended as teaching pieces for children, written in a style similar to Indian character pieces from the first four years of the Wa-Wan Press.5 Interestingly, they are the only Indian character works presented in this study that include “character piece” in the title. Other Indianist composers favored titles such as “tone pictures” or “sketches.”
The first piece in the set, “Arctic Night,” borrows three themes from Boas’s collection.
In general, they have a limited harmonic range, repeated notes, incomplete scales, and some metric shifts.6 Beach sets these melodies in a simple ABA' form in the key of C minor. The opening theme is monophonic with an open-octave texture similar to the beginning of
MacDowell’s “From an Indian Lodge.” She later arranges the melodies in homophonic textures accompanied by chromatic, late-Romantic harmonies peppered with augmented, diminished, and extended seventh and ninth chords (Example 3.1).7 The meter remains a steady 3/4 throughout the piece. Additional pieces in this set continue to portray Eskimo scenes and have similar compositional features. They include: II. “The Returning Hunter,” III. “Exiles,” and IV. “With
Dog Teams.”
5 Block, “Amy Beach’s Music on Native American Themes,” 147.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
50
Example 3.1. Amy Marcy Cheney Beach, “Arctic Night,” from Eskimos: Four Characteristic Pieces for the Pianoforte, op. 64, mm. 1–16.
Beach wrote another Indian character piece for piano called From Blackbird Hills: An
Omaha Tribal Dance, op. 83. It was published in 1922 and is known mostly in its orchestral version. The work borrows melodies from Fletcher’s collection and Beach experiments with greater dissonance, non-chord tones, and heavier chromaticism than in her earlier Indian character piece, even employing a drone-fifth accompaniment.8
8 Ibid., 150.
51 Charles Wakefield Cadman (1881–1946) was a very influential Indianist composer.
Unlike other composers of the Indianist Movement, Cadman was a self-taught musician who
came from a poor family. Early on, his compositions sought to entertain and satisfy the average
concertgoer rather than appeal to elite musicians. From 1909 to 1923 he gave a series of lecture
recitals. In the first recital, “Indian Music Talk,” he collaborated with Native-American soprano,
Tsianina Redfeather.9 That same year Cadman became friends with Francis LaFlesche and
together they recorded songs of Omaha and Winnebago tribes. Later in his life, Cadman
collected additional Native-American melodies in the Southwest.10
Cadman had a different opinion regarding borrowing Native-American material than
earlier Indianists and became known as an “idealizer” of Indian melodies. He believed that
indigenous musical elements were only ingredients in music, and could not be used to solely
represent an American national music.11 His style remains rooted in the European harmonic
tradition. It is sentimental, melodic, and often has a parlor-like quality. Cadman calls himself
an “idealizer” in a Musical Quarterly article from 1915 stating: “ . . . if a composer has not
something to express musically, aside from the thematic material he employs, if he can not
achieve a composition that is aurally pleasing and attractive, it is better that he abstain from the
idealization of Indian themes.”12 Interestingly, Farwell did not approve of Cadman’s views on
“idealized” Indian melodic adaptation and refused to publish any of his works in the Wa-Wan
Press, causing Cadman to advertise his sheet music in journals such as Musical Courier and
9 John F. Porte, “Charles Wakefield Cadman: An American Nationalist,” The Chesterian 39 (1924): 224.
10 Ibid.
11 Nicholas E. Tawa, Mainstream of Early Twentieth-Century America: The Composers, Their Times, and Their Works (Westport, CT & London: Greenwood Press, 1992), 92.
12 Charles Wakefield Cadman, article in Musical Quarterly 3 (July, 1915): 390.
52 Musical America.13 Cadman was sometimes criticized for his exceedingly Romantic-sounding
Indian character pieces. In defense of his style, he responded:
In my lecturing over the country and in my circularizing and writing, I am eternally meeting with the idea that it is not aesthetic or artistic to objectify Indian musical utterance. Some go so far as to say that the moment a composer touches a native melody . . . it lose[s] its original character . . . If this is true then you might as well put many of the successful works of the Russian composers who have employed barbaric Czek or Tartar themes into the same category. And all those French and Italian composers who have employed the wilder oriental and semi-barbaric tunes for which little or no accompaniment, harmonically speaking is used!14
Despite criticism, Cadman’s eleven works utilizing Native-American melodies written from
1904 to 1920 caught attention and won affection from American audiences.15
Like many other Indianist composers, Cadman drew material from Alice Fletcher’s
publications for his Idealized Indian Themes, op. 54 (1912). The second piece in the set, “From the Land of Sky-Blue Water,” is a piano arrangement of an earlier version written for voice and piano. This early version was Cadman’s most famous song and arguably the best-known work of the entire Indianist Movement. In both of his arrangements the melody is set to a richly
Romantic and sentimental accompaniment.
“Return of the Braves: March Fantastique,” the fourth piece in the set, is a virtuosic adaptation of two war songs. The second melody, presented in the mid-section, was previously adapted by Harvey Worthington Loomis in “Song of Sorrow.” In contrast to Loomis’s somber setting, Cadman’s version is optimistic, employing descending chromatic harmonies, large leaps
13 Tawa, Mainstream of Early Twentieth-Century America, 91.
14 Charles Wakefield Cadman, introduction to Thunderbird Piano Suite, op. 63 (Boston: White-Smith Music Publishing Co., 1917), 5.
15 Margaret Osman, “The American ‘Indianist’ Composers: A Critical Review of Their Sources, Their Aims, and Their Compositional Procedures” (D.M.A. thesis, University of South Carolina, 1992), 75.
53 for the left hand, and thick chords throughout. The melodic texture remains homophonic throughout the piece in ABA' form, and it is marked by persistent, steady dotted rhythms. In the final section, Cadman adds to the piece’s difficulty level by indicating the performer to play
“with increasing time and tone.” Additionally, the last four bars of the piece contain such dense chords, they sound like tone clusters (Example 3.2). The result is an exciting, crowd-pleasing ending to the four-piece character set. Two additional works in Idealized Indian Themes, op. 54,
“Pleasant Moon of the Strawberries” and “The Sadness at the Lodge,” are exemplary of
Candman’s lyrical and melodic style.
54
Example 3.2. Charles Wakefield Cadman, “Return of the Braves: March Fantastique,” from Idealized Indian Themes, op. 54, mm. 75–86.
55 Cadman wrote another Indian character work for piano in 1917: Thunderbird Piano
Suite, op. 63 was originally composed as incidental music for a play about the Blackfoot Indian
tribe written by American architect and scene designer Norman Bel-Geddes. The initial work
was a five-movement orchestral score freely adjusting Blackfoot Indian themes collected by
ethnologist Walter McClintock and some melodies from Fletcher’s collection. Cadman’s piano
version is slightly varied. Original melodies from the Canadian and Montana-based tribe are
printed at the top of each piece in the score in a similar fashion to Loomis’s Lyrics of the Red
Man, op. 76. Thunderbird Piano Suite, op. 63 is highly Romantic and Cadman “idealizes” the
Indian themes more imaginatively than in his previous work by employing remote modulations
and freer rhythmic treatment.16
Another composer who contributed multiple Indian character sets to the genre was
Homer Grunn (1880–1944). The Wisconsin native studied in Chicago and Berlin and later lived in Phoenix and Los Angeles. Grunn, a pianist and teacher, held particular interest in the
music of Native Americans living in desert regions.17
Grunn’s first Indian character set, Desert Suite: Five Tone Pictures for the Piano, op. 7
(1913), shows his simple, yet evocative style that is comparable to many Indianist compositions published in the Wa-Wan Press. Some of his most effective writing is in the fourth piece,
“Mirage.” To set the atmosphere, each piece is preceded by a poem written by William Hooper
Howells. The poem for “Mirage” reads:
16 Ibid., 71.
17 Oscar Thompson. The International Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 294.
56 When the sky is like to a brazen bowl, And the desert throbs in the heat, And a scorching stillness wrings the soul, And the hot sand burns the feet— When the traveler turns in his last despair To look for a spot of green, And views through the torrid quivering air, The world and the sky between— A mirage of enchantment fair, A vision of wood and wave; And his heart leaps up at a sight so rare, But he little knows ’tis a cruel snare, The lovely lure to a grave.18
Double bars clearly define an ABA structure with a coda. Grunn presents the melody in an ornamented homophonic setting and depicts Howells’s poem through ambiguous harmonies, showing evidence of bitonality in the mid-section. Although some pieces in the set have
modulations to unrelated keys, “Mirage” modulates rather predictably to the parallel minor. In
the beginning, Grunn avoids a clear statement of the tonic until m. 7, where he then approaches it
with a suspension. Chromaticism is included throughout the piece and a whole-tone scale can be
found in m. 21. Unlike the opening, the tonic is clearly established in a frantic coda marked piu
vivo with an accelerando to the end. Although the meter remains in 3/4, Grunn frequently
employs duple-against-triple rhythms (Example 3.3).
18 Homer Grunn, Desert Suite: Five Tone Pictures for the Piano, op. 7 (Los Angeles: Southern California Music Co., 1913), 16.
57
Example 3.3. Homer Grunn, “Mirage,” from Desert Suite: Five Tone Pictures for the Piano, op. 7, mm. 1–7.
Grunn wrote two more Indian character sets based on the music of Southwestern tribes:
Song of the Mesa: Tone Picture of the Desert for Piano, op. 22 (1916) and Zuni Impressions:
Indian Suite for the Pianoforte, op. 27 (1917). Like Farwell’s Impressions of the Wa-Wan
Ceremony of the Omahas, op. 21, Grunn states in the introduction to Op. 27 that these pieces are
“impressions,” not authentic reproductions. The final work in this set, “Kor’kokshi Dance,” is the only piece containing a melody Grunn personally transcribed.
“The Flute-God” is the first of three pieces in Zuni Impressions: Indian Suite for the
Pianoforte, op. 27. A descriptive introduction states:
58 The gods of war, while strolling about the country near Zuni, were attracted by very sweet music, and they proceeded to learn its source. On approaching the Mesa, they discovered that the music is issued from a spring, the entrance to which was guarded by a rainbow. Here they found Payatamu playing on his flute, while eight beautiful maidens ground corn and sang.19
At the beginning of this piece Grunn also writes: “like the great spaces of the Desert Country,” which he portrays through many open-fifth sonorities. “The Flute-God” is in ABA form and modulates from tonic (F minor) to the dominant, although it is unclear at times whether the dominant is in C major or minor. Grunn presents the “flute-like” melody in a diatonic, homophonic setting over an accompaniment pattern that transforms to an arpeggiated texture in the mid-section. The meter of this piece remains straightforward, moving from 6/8 in the outer sections to 4/4 in the B section. In mm. 52–3 he indicates an “Indian drum effect,” utilizing several scotch snap rhythms for the left hand in open-fifth intervals (Example 3.4). Grunn continues to employ open-fifth sonorities and ambiguous modulations in the next two movements of Zuni Impressions: Indian Suite for the Pianoforte, op. 27, “A Mysterious Story” and “Kor’kokshi Dance.”
19 Homer Grunn, Zuni Impressions: Indian Suite for the Pianoforte, op. 27 (Boston: The Boston Music Company, 1917), 1.
59
Example 3.4. Homer Grunn, “The Flute-God,” from Zuni Impressions: Indian Suite for the Pianoforte, op. 27, mm. 48–57.
Horace Alden Miller (1872–1941) was an Illinois native, but spent much of his life in
Iowa. He is known for his forward-thinking textbook New Harmonic Devices: A Treatise on
Modern Harmonic Problems (Philadelphia: Oliver Ditson, 1930) that discusses the use of modality in folk music, which does not fit into the Western tonal norm.20 Miller’s two Indian
character pieces are closely associated with his modal philosophies. He wrote an early character
set, Melodic Views of Indian Life, in 1910 and Four Indian Themes in 1917, as the Indianist
20 Michael V. Pisani, “Exotic Sounds in the Native Land: Portrayals of North American Indians in Western Music” (Ph.D. diss., Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, 1996), 353.
60 Movement was loosing steam.21 Four Indian Themes borrows Native-American meldoies from
Natalie Curtis’s The Indians’ Book and Frances Densmore’s “Chippewa Music.”22 Throughout
the four-piece set Miller demonstrates his harmonic theories regarding folk music, indicating in
the score that he has supplied “suggestive harmony.” Modal implications are evident in each
piece as well as pervasive open-fifth sonorities, notably in accompanimental lines.
“From Winnebago Land” is the only piece in the set where Miller does not cite a source
for melodic borrowing. The form is ABA' with double bar lines delineating sections. Miller’s
rhythms are static throughout and his harmonies are somewhat ambiguous. The key signature states A major in the outer sections and E minor for the B section, but an eight-measure
introduction features G-sharp minor chords in predominantly open-fifth sonorities. Finally when
the tonic is established in m. 10, it is fleeting and tonic chords appear only sparsely in the rest of
the section. Another unique feature in this piece is that the B section does not make a clear
distinction between E major or minor. It has several leaps from B to E, but due to the unison
octaves and many open chords, a tonal center remains unclear (Example 3.5). The homophonic
texture of this piece is similar to other works in Four Indian Themes including: I. “To the Sacred
Bow,” III. “In the Fire’s Glow,” and IV. “Eniwube’s Vision”.
21 Melodic Views of Indian Life was published by Clayton F. Summy in Chicago. Pisani's “Exotic Sounds in the Native Land,” discusses a movement from this set, “Ghost Dance,” in great detail on pp. 359–64.
22 Densmore’s “Chippewa Music,” was published in the Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin, No. 53. The Chippewa remain one of the largest tribes in the northern United States and southern Canada.
61
Example 3.5. Horace Alden Miller, “From Winnebago Land,” in Four Indian Themes, mm. 25–35.
A composer writing toward the latter part of the Indianist Movement was Charles
Sanford Skilton (1868–1941), a New Englander who received his education at Harvard and studied briefly at the Berlin Hochschule. He was first exposed to the music of Native Americans when he went to teach at the University of Kansas. Once there, he met and became friends with a tribal chief, Robert R. DePoe. In exchange for free lessons in music theory, DePoe taught
Skilton tribal songs. Like Farwell and Cadman, Skilton also gave lecture recitals on the music of
Native Americans and its adaptation.23 Skilton shared Farwell’s interest in and connection to the
spiritual aspects of Indian music and sought to create respectful settings.24
23 Osman, “The American ‘Indianist’ Composers,” 56–7.
24 Michael V. Pisani, “I’m an Indian too: Creating Native American Identities in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Music,” in The Exotic in Western Music, ed. Jonathan Bellman (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998), 247.
62 In the introduction to Three Indian Sketches for Piano (1919), Skilton describes the meaning of each title, gives cultural background of each melody, and provides pertinent details regarding original instrumentation. The first piece in the set, “Kickapoo Social Dance,” has features that recur in the other two pieces. The Kickapoo are a migratory tribe that originated near the Great Lakes and settled in the Southwest and northern Mexico. The form of this work is a variation and elaboration of phrases with an introduction and closing in F major. Skilton’s harmonies sound more late-Romantic than many of the Indian character pieces described thus far. He remains within a tonal framework, but obscures the tonality by using extensive chromatic dissonance. He employs augmented and diminished chords as well as whole-tone scales, such as in mm. 49–54 (Example 3.6). The texture is primarily homophonic, but full of thick accompanimental elaborations that grow more intense as the work progresses. Skilton portrays an Indian drum throughout, using eighth-note low F’s in the left hand. This steady drumbeat provides rhythmic stability during the elaborate melodic variations. He even writes a rhythmic ritard for the drumming left hand in the piece’s final measures.
63
Example 3.6. Charles Sanford Skilton, “Kickapoo Social Dance,” from Three Indian Sketches for Piano, mm. 49–54.
The rest of Skilton’s character set includes a lyrical “Sioux Flute Serenade” and “Winnebago
Revel,” the latter of which was arranged from an earlier orchestral work, “Moccasin Game,” in his Suite Primeval.
Skilton composed another Indian character piece, “Shawnee Indian Hunting Dance”
(1929), based on themes of the Oklahoma-based tribe. This virtuosic piece was arranged for violin and piano and later for orchestra.25 Generally, Skilton’s adaptations of Native-American material are similar in style to Cadman’s. Although he respected the Native-American music he borrowed, he also viewed his settings as “idealized” versions of their originals.26
As the Indian character piece progressed, it moved toward more “idealized” and free
treatment of Native-American material. Composers such as Cadman and Skilton were inspired
25 Osman, “The American ‘Indianist’ Composers,” 60.
26 Ibid., 62.
64 by the melodies they borrowed and did not feel the need to create strict reproductions. They regarded their sources highly, as did Farwell, but also found that appealing adaptations, to both performers and audiences, were a necessary step for the Indian character piece to continue.
65 Experimental Indianists
By 1910 the use of Native-American melodies had become popular and many composers
experimented with incorporating Indian themes into a composition. Those who wrote more than
two Indian-based works are generally considered Indianist composers. To a certain extent, all of
the Indianist composers discussed thus far were experimental, but at this juncture the term
applies to composers who were motivated to incorporate Native-American material into only one
or two of their pieces. Most composers who dabbled with the inclusion of Native-American
material did so through the Indian character piece for solo piano.
Preston Ware Orem (1865–1938) was one of many composers to experiment with
Indian themes in a serious piano composition. In his American Indian Rhapsody from 1918, he
borrowed ten harmonized themes “recorded and suggested” by ethnographer Thurlow Lieurance
from tribes all over the country, including chants of the Cheyenne, Kiowa, Sioux, Chippewa,
Pueblo, and Cree tribes. Orem does not provide contextual information, but he indicates the
location of each melody in the score. This work is a dazzling showpiece in late-Romantic, neo-
Lisztian style with trills, arpeggios, broken chords, heavy chromaticism, and plenty of bravura.
Orem’s virtuosic Indian character piece has nothing to do with characteristic elements of its
original source material.27 The form is episodic and in many ways the Native-American themes are handled in a way similar to Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies, featuring romanticized melodies
and many changing moods. Orem even includes a fictitious, stereotypical imitation of Native-
American drums in the low range of the left hand (Example 3.7)
27 Ibid., 81.
66
Example 3.7. Preston Ware Orem, American Indian Rhapsody, mm. 165–80.
Also written in 1918 was Au pays des peaux-rouges: Suite for Piano [The Country of the
Red Skins] by (George) Templeton Strong (1856–1948). Strong was born in the United States, but moved to Geneva, Switzerland in 1911 and lived there for the rest of his life. He was a friend of MacDowell’s, and wrote in the impressionistic and late-Romantic styles that influenced
67 him most. His five-piece Indian character set demonstrates exoticism more than American
nationalism because he spent the majority of his compositional years in Switzerland. The second
piece, “Un jeune guerrier” [A Young Warrior], modulates from F minor to the dominant in ABA form. It shows his style with extremely chromatic harmonies and numerous augmented-sixth chords. If a melody is present, it is treated homophonically, but much of the passagework is non-
melodic. At times Strong’s writing sounds slightly impressionistic, such as from m. 81 where a
pedal indication blurs low open-fifth harmonies with a high-range melody. He also employs
many extended chords and creates irregular phrase lengths. This virtuoisic setting includes
extensive sixteenth-note patterns played by the hands together or alternately at a fast tempo. The
quick pace in 2/4 throughout is interrupted at m. 81, where he indicates Andante and changes the
meter to 6/8 until the end of the piece (Example 3.8).
68
Example 3.8. (George) Templeton Strong, “Un jeune guerrier,” [A Young Warrior] from Au pays des peaux-rouges: Suite for Piano [The Country of the Red Skins], mm. 76–86.
Additional pieces in Strong’s exotic set include: I. “Les Montagnes-Roucheuses” [Rocky
Mountains], III. “Une jeune Indienne” [A Young Indian], IV. Le Cow-Boy humoriste” [The
Humorous Cowboy], and V. “Chant de guerre” [Battle Song]. This set is imaginative and its impressionistic inflections provide a unique contrast to other Indian character pieces.
The Indianist Movement and the adaptation of Native-American material must have made an impression on foreign composers, because in 1913–14 Italian composer Ferruccio
Busoni (1866–1924) wrote the concerto Indianische Fantasie fuer Klavier mit Orchester [Indian
69 Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra]. Busoni became interested in adapting Indian themes when his
former American student, Natalie Curtis, presented him with a copy of her collection The
Indians’ Book. The exotic pentatonic melodies and Native-American folklore intrigued him.28
After the success of Busoni’s Fantasy he wrote his only Indian character set Indianisches
Tagebuch: Erstes Buch [The Indian’s Diary: Book 1] in 1915. This set is a solo piano arrangement of his Fantasy transformed into four separate pieces. Unlike many other Indian character sets, none of his pieces have descriptive titles. In the first piece, Busoni arranges two melodies of the Southwestern tribes Hopi and Laguna in a unique, virtuosic setting reflective of
his later compositional style. No key signature is indicated, but its opening chords imply an F- sharp minor tonal center. Although his harmonies are essentially tonal, they are intensely chromatic and contain excessive augmented chords. Remote key relationships thwart a definitive tonic and the work ends surprisingly on a single C-sharp (dominant) instead of the tonic. Due to the cadential pattern Busoni prepares, it is not apparent to the listener that the piece ends in a different key than it began (Example 3.9). This piece consists of irregular rhythmic patterns and has a cadenza-like section marked accelerando. Tempo changes and frequent ritardandos give the 2/4 meter a free, improvisatory feeling and help to create an original and effective setting.
28 Ibid., 83.
70
Example 3.9. Ferruccio Busoni, I, from Indianisches Tagebuch: Erstes Buch [The Indian’s Diary: Book 1], mm. 59–71.
Busoni’s Indian character set is an example of exoticism. His interest in experimenting with Native-American material demonstrates that composers in other countries recognized what was going on in America during the Indianist Movement. He did not include cultural
71 information and freely altered the borrowed melodies, even using fragments for motivic development. The result is a poetic concert work that will likely stand the test of time.
Orem, Strong, and Busoni represent a number of composers who were inspired to incorporate Native-American material into one or two of their character pieces. Their experimentation attests to the prominence of the Indianist Movement and its underlying aims to create a national music. Although these works differ greatly from Farwell’s initial concepts, they signify some success in the genre’s perpetuity.
72 Chapter IV
The Decline of the Indianist Movement
Many factors led to the decline of the Indianist Movement and the omission of virtually
all Indian character pieces from standard piano literature. Early collectors of Indian lore showed
cultural biases because they did not consider Native-American music equal to that of Western
composers. Composers drew from these ethnological sources, and, in order to make them
appealing to the public, changed them to fit the Western musical system, which could not
accurately notate nuances in their originals. As a result, “accessibility degraded authenticity”—
the very reason many composers sought out native songs to begin with.1 Extensive cultural
information provided by Farwell and other composers may have caused concertgoers to accept
these Indian character pieces as authentic representations of Native-American music, rather than
the European-like depictions they really were.
Another factor that hindered continuance was that many people were divided on whether
to accept Indian material as American folklore. In 1921 John Tasker Howard, Jr. wrote in the
Musical Quarterly:
It is not probable that the impress of the Indian music will be strongly felt. The race itself is dying out, and the exotic flavor of their wild songs and dances is too far removed from the comprehension of the rest of us to ever become vital to our artistic expression . . . [Although] Indian melodies and modal idiosyncrasies have been woven into fascinating and interesting compositions of larger dimensions, it does not seem possible that such use will ever become general among American composers.2
1 Tara Browner, “Breathing the Indian Spirit: Thoughts on Musical Borrowing and the ‘Indianist Movement’ in American Music,” American Music 15, no. 3 (fall 1997): 280.
2 John Tasker Howard, Jr., “Our Folk-Music and its Probable Impress on American Music of the Future: Casual Remarks By Way of Survey,” Musical Quarterly 7, no.2 (April 1921): 168.
73 Gilbert Chase dismisses the movement as a whole:
[Indian music] attracted a number of composers who were looking for something indigenous, something that could immediately and unmistakably be identified as “American.” But the fallacy of attempting to create representative American music out of Indian material soon became apparent. Indian tribal music was not part of the main stream of American culture. It was an interesting, but essentially exotic branch that one could follow for a time as a digression . . . from the European heritage. But if followed to its source it would lead to a primitive culture that had nothing in common with prevailing norms and trends of American civilization.3
In many ways Native Americans did remain separate from America’s cultural heritage. A
contradiction was created when Indianist composers were adapting Native-American songs and
at the same time the United States government was trying to break up reservations and outlaw
traditional practices, codified in the Dawes Act of 1887. Composers were elevating Native-
American culture as the government was destroying it.4
A final reason for the decline of the Indianist Movement was that many composers were
striving to break away from German musical influence. None of the Indian character pieces written during this time completely rejected traditional concepts; consequently they were attacked by critics and more experimental composers, who were on the brink of atonality.
Essentially, this body of piano literature is more closely linked with late-Romantic program
music, nationalism, and the character piece than with the groundbreaking trends that took place during the twentieth century. These criticisms led to the elimination of Indianist works from
3 Gilbert Chase, America’s Music: From the Pilgrims to the Present, 1st ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955), 400–01, quoted in Michael V. Pisani, “The Indian Music Debate and ‘American’ Music in the Progressive Era,” College Music Symposium 37 (1997): 74.
4 Browner, “Breathing the Indian Spirit,” 280.
74 serious consideration in American musical history.5 Indianist composers were searching for
something new and found innovative subject material, but they did not reach far enough
harmonically, which in hindsight, was the direction twentieth-century music was going.
5 Nicholas E. Tawa, Mainstream of Early Twentieth-Century America: The Composers, Their Times, and Their Works (Westport, CT & London: Greenwood Press, 1992), 7.
75 Summary and Conclusion
The Indianist Movement from around 1890 to 1920 developed essentially out of
ethnological and nationalistic interests. A primary genre from this time was the Indian character
piece, which took many paths in its development. Edward MacDowell introduced the idea of using Native-American material in character pieces, although he had no concern for the context
of the original melodies. He saw them as raw material expressing universal human emotions
rather than a compositional device defining a national music and he absorbed them into his own
style. Indian material was Arthur Farwell’s answer to the creation of a non-German national
music and he vehemently advocated its use through his compositions, publications, and lectures.
He made a sincere attempt to create adaptations that were respectful to their original sources by
providing extensive information to the performer and audience about when, where, and how the
original melody was used. Farwell also raised national consciousness to the difficulties
American composers faced getting their works published. He founded the Wa-Wan Press, which
served as an outlet for achieving his enthusiastic goals. Other composers who published in the
Wa-Wan Press, such as Harvey Worthington Loomis, Carlos Troyer, and Henry F. Gilbert,
remained close to their original source material; but each composer added his own unique style
of pianism and harmonic interest. Although published outside of the Wa-Wan Press, Amy
Beach’s and Homer Grunn’s Indian character pieces fall into a similar style of adaptation.
Native-American themes were “idealized” by Charles Wakefield Cadman into lyrical,
song-like adaptations with accessible harmonies. His character pieces mark a turning point in
the Indianist Movement, moving toward greater freedom in melodic treatment. He turned the
Indian character piece into an entertaining genre that earned him recognition and popularity.
Charles Sanford Skilton’s Indian character pieces were an extension of Cadman’s style with their
76 liberal treatment of Native-American material. A number of composers were inspired to write
one or two experimental Indian character pieces during this time. Preston Ware Orem presented
themes with virtuosity while (George) Templeton Strong added impressionistic suggestion.
Foreign interest in Indian-based composition is represented by Ferruccio Busoni’s high-quality
Indian character piece. Although the Indian character piece had differing styles throughout its
brief existence, composers frequently employed several features, including drum imitation and open- fourth and fifth harmonies.
Taken in the context of their time, Indianist composers should be given more
acknowledgment for their efforts in creating an American national music. If this trend had taken
place two decades earlier when nationalism was in its earlier stages, the Indianist Movement may
have been perceived as a revolutionary point in music history. The Indian character piece is a
relatively large and varied body of piano literature and most Indianist composers wrote at least
one work in this idiom. An examination of this genre offers a glimpse of each composer’s style
and a look into musical and social issues America was grappling with at the turn of the century.
“Every movement in art, science or literature while in the process of making, must be fired with
an idea and an art-purpose mirrored for the moment or for all time in the history of mankind.”6
6 Charles Wakefield Cadman, introduction to Thunderbird: Suite for Piano, op. 63 (Boston: White-Smith Publishing Co., 1917), 6.
77 Appendix
List of Indian Character Pieces from the Indianist Movement
Beach, Amy Marcy Cheney (1867–1944) Eskimos: Four Characteristic Pieces for the Pianoforte, op. 64 (1906) From Blackbird Hills: An Omaha Tribal Dance, op. 83 (1922)
Busoni, Ferruccio (1866–1924) Indianisches Tagebuch: Erstes Buch [The Indian’s Diary: Book 1] (1915)
Cadman, Charles Wakefield (1881–1946) Idealized Indian Themes, op. 54 (1912) Thunderbird Piano Suite, op. 63 (1917)
Farwell, Arthur (1872–1952) American Indian Melodies, op. 11 (1901) Dawn, op. 12 (1902) Ichibuzzhi, op. 13 (1902) Domain of Hurakan, op. 15 (1902) From Mesa and Plain: Indian, Cowboy, and Negro Sketches for Pianoforte, op. 20 (1905) Impressions of the Wa-Wan Ceremony of the Omahas, op. 21 (1905) Indian Fugue Fantasy, op. 44 (1938)
Gilbert, Henry F. (1868–1928) Indian Scenes: Five Pieces for the Pianoforte (1912)
Grunn, Homer (1880–1944) Desert Suite: Five Tone Pictures for the Piano, op. 7 (1913) Song of the Mesa: Tone Picture of the Desert for Piano, op. 22 (1916) Zuni Impressions: Indian Suite for the Pianoforte, op. 27 (1917)
Loomis, Harvey Worthington (1865–1930) Lyrics of the Red Man, op. 76, Book 1 (1903) Lyrics of the Red Man, op. 76, Book 2 (1904)
MacDowell, Edward (1860–1908) “From an Indian Lodge,” in Ten Woodland Sketches, op. 51 (1896) “Indian Idyl,” from New England Idyls, op. 62 (1902)
78 Miller, Horace Alden (1872–1941) Melodic Views of Indian Life (1910) Four Indian Themes (1917)
Orem, Preston Ware (1865–1938) American Indian Rhapsody (1918)
Skilton, Charles Sanford (1868–1941) Three Indian Sketches for Piano (1919) Shawnee Indian Hunting Dance (1929)
Strong, (George) Templeton (1856–1948) Au pays des peaux-rouges: Suite for Piano [The Country of the Red Skins] (1918)
Troyer, Carlos (1837–1920) Ghost Dance of the Zunis (1904) Kiowa-Apache War Dance (1907) Apache Medicine-Chant (1914) Midnight Visit to the Sacred Shrines: A Zunian Ritual (1918)
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Scores
Beach, Amy. Eskimos: Four Characteristic Pieces for the Pianoforte, op. 64. Boston: The Arthur P. Schmidt Co., 1943.
Busoni, Ferruccio. Indianisches Tagebuch: Erstes Buch [The Indian’s Diary: Book 1]. New York: Breitkopf & Haertel, 1916.
Cadman, Charles Wakefield. Idealized Indian Themes, op. 54. Boston: White-Smith Music Publishing Co., 1912.
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______. Dawn, op. 12. Newton Center, MA: The Wa-Wan Press, 1902. Reprint, New York: Arno Press & The New York Times, 1970.
______. Ichibuzzhi, op. 13. Newton Center, MA: The Wa-Wan Press, 1902. Reprint, New York: Arno Press & The New York Times, 1970.
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84 ______. From Mesa and Plain: Indian, Cowboy and Negro Sketches for Pianoforte, op. 20. Newton Center, MA: The Wa-Wan Press, 1905. Reprint, New York: Arno Press & The New York Times, 1970.
______. Impressions of the Wa-Wan Ceremony of the Omahas, op. 21. Newton Center, MA: The Wa-Wan Press, 1905. Reprint, New York: Arno Press & The New York Times, 1970.
Gilbert, Henry F. Indian Scenes: Five Pieces for the Pianoforte. New York: Novello, 1912.
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Loomis, Harvey Worthington. Lyrics of the Red Man, op. 76, Book 1. Newton Center, MA: The Wa-Wan Press, 1903. Reprint, New York: Arno Press & The New York Times, 1970.
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MacDowell, Edward. Ten Woodland Sketches, op. 51. New York: G. Schirmer, 1896.
______. New England Idyls, op. 62. New York: G. Schirmer, 1902.
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______. Four Indian Themes. New York: Breitkopf & Hartel, 1917.
Orem, Preston Ware. American Indian Rhapsody. Philadelphia: Theodore Presser Co., 1918.
Skilton, Charles Sanford. Three Indian Sketches for Piano. New York: Carl Fischer, 1919.
Strong, (George) Templeton. Au pays des peaux-rouge: Suite for Piano [The Country of the Red Skins]. Geneva, Switzerland: Edition Ad. Henn, 1918.
Troyer, Carlos. Ghost Dance of the Zunis. Newton Center, MA: The Wa-Wan Press, 1904. Reprint, New York: Arno Press & The New York Times, 1970.
85