Dudley Buck

DUDLEY BUCK.

The first generation of American composers, devoted
to the higher art of music, had for its star members
Gottschalk and William Mason. Wollenhaupt was the
salon composer popular at the same time. Gottschalk
wrote a number of large and showy compositions for
festival occasions, especially in South America. These
consisted generally of an ode, the national air set in a
variety of ways and a closing chorus of original work.
None of them have been published. Otherwise than this
Gottschalk as well as Mason and the rest wrote for
pianoforte, parlor pieces. No one of them wrote sona-
tas or chamber music or in any way sought to ex-
press the kind of musical feeling which lies at the foun-
dation of chamber music and symphony. No one of
them wrote largely for voice, a fact rather remarkable
in the case of Mason, who was brought up as accompan-
ist to his father's choruses, where he had a fine oppor-
tunity to discover the value of choral masses. The whole
ambition of this generation seemed to be met in the pro-
duction of really artistic pieces of the size which alone
at that time stood any chance of finding wide useful-
ness in America.

A few years later all this was changed. A younger
generation arose, of whom Dudley Buck and John K.

164




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166 THE GREAT IN MUSIC: FIRST YEAR.

Paine were the foremost, who took an altogether differ-
ent view of the possibilities open to the American com-
poser. Why this should have been so is not altogether
easy to determine. Neither Buck nor Paine had an
education much if any more thorough than Gottschalk
and Mason. Probably in no respect were they better
schooled or more competent to produce compositions
of ambitious form. Nevertheless they both turned im-
mediately to vocal composition with an emphasis upon
the hitherto unattempted forms in America, the large
cantata, oratorio and opera. In these departments both
Buck and Paine have produced works of distinction,
but alas ! the performances of them have been very
few. Buck has written probably three operas, and
neither of them has ever been performed. It is a shame,
for there is reason to believe that all of these works con-
tain many pieces of excellent value. Both these men
were organists of virtuoso powers. Paine was the first
to make a specialty of playing the great works of Bach ;
but his virtuoso career was terminated briefly, by his
appointment as professor of music at Harvard College
of which later on ; Buck maintained his place as a vir-
tuoso organist for many years; but his fame with the
public turns upon his songs and his church music the
merits and qualities of which will be subject of inquiry
a little later.

Mr. Buck was born at Hartford, Conn., March 10,
1839, and, showing an invincible determination towards
music at an early age, he became the pupil of a teacher
named W. J. Babcock. In 1858 he went to Leipsic,
where he remained two years in the conservatory ; then
he followed Julius Rietz to Dresden and studied com-
position with him and organ with Johann Schneider.



DUDLEY BUCK. 167

After two years of this he spent a year in Paris mainly
in the government organ factory, in order to master the
mechanism of the organ. Returning to America he be-
came organist in Hartford in 1862; in 1869 he came to
Chicago as organist of St. James Church. After the
great fire he went to Boston, where he was organist
of the music hall and St. Paul's. In 1875 he was for
some time assistant conductor to Theodore Thomas ;
he became organist of Holy Trinity in Brooklyn, where
he has ever since remained. He has also been the di-
rector of the Brooklyn Apollo Club for the same period.
During this entire time he has been a diligent composer.
His services for the Episcopal Church number scores ;
his cantatas upon sacred subjects six or eight; a va-
riety of secular cantatas, of which "King Olafs Christ-
mas" and "Don Munio" are the best. In larger forms
the "Golden Legend" and "The Light of Asia." The
most important of Mr. Buck's operas has never been
heard or published. It is called "Columbus," and at one
time had an excellent prospect of performance at the
Metropolitan opera house in German under the late
Anton Seidl, who thought well of the work. If this
performance had taken place (it was given up, as Seidl
and German opera failed at the Metropolitan that year)
it would have been a striking illustration of the extent
to which the American composer, even in his own coun-
try, is at the mercy of foreign musicians and influences.
Mr. Buck was the first American composer to fall un-
der the influence of the Wagnerian ideas. As soon as
the "Mastersingers" and "Tristan and Isolde" were pub-
lished, he procured them and became an ardent Wag-
nerian student, having heard in Europe everything per-
formed up to that time. He had the same sympathy for



168 THE GREAT IN MUSIC: FIRST YEAR.

other vigorous modern music, such as the Thiele pieces.
His own organ music is mainly of a practicable charac-
ter, available for service. His best works in this line
are his two sonatas, of which the first ends with a fugue
upon "Hail Columbia."

On the whole, Mr. Buck's best work is for the voice.
He early adopted Wagnerian principles of writing in
place of formal melodies, a melodious arioso which, while
conforming to the spirit of the text, nevertheless ap-
proached the more formal symmetry of melody. A solo
of this kind often fails of effect upon first hearing, be-
cause the hearer is looking for a "tune" which does not
appear; but, after several hearings, such a passage, if
really well adapted to the text, grows more and more
agreeable and ends by affording a satisfaction far great-
er than any kind of merely pleasing tune. More-
over, this method of writing gives a composer more lati-
tude and promotes continued freshness, since every text
has its own suggestiveness. Mr. Buck's influence as
composer has been in the direction of finer musical
quality and great seriousness. He entered the field of
church music when as yet there were no American com-
posers capable of writing motetts and anthems in this
new spirit. The music most used in choirs was arranged
from operas, or written in a trivial spirit, unsuitable to
the words and occasion. Mr. Buck's compositions
gained an immediate and constantly increasing currency
in choirs not alone of the Protestant Episcopal order,
but also throughout all evangelical denominations. Lat-
er on, with the advent of ritualistic practices, boy choirs
and the plain song, Buck's music lost a part of this cur-
rency, especially as other writers arose in the same line.
But he is entitled to the honor of having changed the



DUDLEY BUCK. 169

style of American church music and of having bettered
it far beyond what it was before his time.

KARLETON HACKETT ON THE SONGS OF
DUDLEY BUCK.

No name stands for more in the musical growth of
America than that of Dudley Buck. If Lowell Mason
was the father of church music in America, Buck is his
artistic son and has done more by his musical sincerity
and earnestness than any other to raise the standard oi
our church music.

The secret of his success lies in his feeling for the
voice, for he is a vocal writer par excellence. This is a
gift. One may study the range of the voice and try to
master its capacities, but without the intuitive sensitive-
ness to that which is vocal, the results are but poor ;
the music may be good but it does not fit the voice. This
intuition is his in the highest degree, and his songs are
rich, varied, picturesque and stirring. Among the most
effective are "Sunset," "Spring's Awakening," ""In June"
and "My Redeemer and My Lord." The cantatas, "The
Triumph of David," "The Story of the Cross," contain
fine church and concert arias, but are to be sung only by
such as arc truly singers.

The effectiveness of Dudley Buck's music lies first in
its adaptability to the instrument and then in its direct-
ness. He never seems to be wandering aimlessly in
search of some new harmonic progression which shall
strike us with surprise and often with pain, but he has
a musical thought to which he is giving expression in
a sano fa?hicn. The voice is over the central figure, but
the harmonic setting is in perfect accord with the spirit
of the music, now rich, now full, now simple and sub-



170 THE GREAT IN MUSIC: FIRST YEAR.

clued, according to the mood. He sets a poem to music
and shapes all his means to the end that the ever varying
shades of meaning of the words may find expression,
and, as a thorough master of his art, he does this so
simply that we are unconscious of the mechanism, but
feel the beauty and fitness of the whole. That which
makes music beautiful is ineffable; we feel it but it
eludes our analysis when we would reduce it to words.
Music may be correct and yet say nothing to us. But
when we hear the best of the music of Dudley Buck we
are stirred, we know that we are moved by a living force
and that this is music.

SPRING'S AWAKENING.
(For Mezzo Soprano or Baritone.)

This beautiful song illustrates Mr. Buck's mastery of
the art of creating a mood in the listener as directly as
possible. The poem, by Mary E. Blake, afforded un-
usual opportunity.

"The wind is chill in the street,
As it sighs the bare boughs fret,
Grime of the mire and the wet

Hinder the weary feet.

"But high in the purer air,

High as the heart's desire,

In a passion of longing fire
A bird sings sweet and fair;

Whjle a sunbeam, cheery and strong,

Answers the joy of the song,
And Spring, fair Spring, is coming.

"Soul, art thou still distressed,
By grief and the shadow of death?
By the cold of the winter's breath

Is still thy pulse oppressed?



"Lift up thine eyes and see,
Lift up thine ears and hear,
For the spirit of life is near,



DUDLEY BUCK. 171

And its voice is calling thee.

Over the graveyard sod

Shineth the smile of God,
And Spring, and Spring is coming/'

The composer has sharply differentiated the mood of
the song. The first four lines are in the key of D minor
very slow and disheartened. Then the tonality changes
to D major, the measure to a lilting 12-8, and in this
spirit we have the next stanza.

Again returns the mood of desolation, D minor, with
the words "Soul, art thou still distrest?" and again the
change to D major with the line "Lift up thine eyes and
see." The song is a beautiful study of musical expres-
sion, grateful for the singer, effective for the hearer,
and an excellent example of discreet association of mu-
sic and poetry, in which, despite its obligations to the
poetry, the music remains musical and rational as music.

SUNSET.

(For Alto or Baritone.)

This beautiful and highly effective song is upon words
by Sidney Lanier.

"Look off, dear love, across the sun and sands,
And mark yon meeting of the sun and sea:

How long they kiss, in sight of all the lands!
Ah, longer, longer far than we!"

An equally effective song as the preceding. It has
been much sung and long will be.

STABAT MATER DOLOROSA.
(Duet for Soprano and Alto.)

From "The Story of the Cross."
As an example of Mr. Buck's later church music, the
duet from the church cantata, "The Story of the Cross,"
is appropriate. It is set to the famous old Latin hymn,



172 THE GREAT IN MUSIC: FIRST YEAR.

"See the weeping mother stands" and follows in the
cantata directly after the scene upon the cross, when
the closing words are those of the Jesus, "Father for-
give them," etc.

"At the cross her station keeping,
Stood the mournful mother, weeping."

OTHER EXAMPLES.

If the club finds it practicable to illustrate Mr. Buck's
style more fully, the "Te Deum" in B minor is recom-
mended. Also the motets : "The God of Abraham
Praise," from the Second Motette Collection, and
"Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning," from
the First Motette Collection. The latter is more melodi-
ous, and is a beautiful setting of the famous hymn of
Bishop Heber. It was in fact an impromptu, having
been written on Saturday afternoon for the next morn-
ing, a diligent search having failed to show Mr. Buck
any suitable setting of this hymn. The other, "The God
of Abraham Praise," is upon a noble hymn of the Eng-
lish Wesleyan reformation. It is one of eight or ten
splendid motettes in Buck's second collection. All of his
original compositions in that book were written during
a convalescence from a very dangerous career of ty-
phoid in 1870. In the vigor of returning strength and
in the clear spiritual vision of one who had looked death
in the face these noble contributions to American church
music were written, during about two weeks.