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Philip Hale, a resident of Boston, has produced a number of songs and piano works, the latter under the pseudonym of Victor René. Stella Prince Stocker is another well-known song-writer. Mrs. Theodore Sutro, a pupil of Dudley Buck, has also composed songs, besides piano works and a four-voiced fugue.
This fiery composition is followed by a four-voiced "real" fugue. The subject is genuinely interesting, though the counter-subject is as perfunctory as most counter-subjects. The middle-section, the stretto-work, and the powerful ending, give the fugue the right to exist. The last movement is the best, a quaint and lively rondo.
This exercise can be played the full length of the keyboard, in all keys, and also chromatically. It can be played in the same fashion, using four-voiced chords instead of octaves. When such an exercise can be prolonged for twenty minutes at a time, octave passages in pieces have no terrors for the pianist.
I have witnessed children lay aside their games to listen thereto. It appears like some fairy tale that has become music. The four-voiced part has such a clearness withal, it seems as if warm spring breezes were waving the lithe leaves of the palm tree. How soft and sweet a breath steals over the senses and the heart!"
This Dante Gate, begun more than twenty years ago, not finished yet, and probably never to be, is an astounding fugue, with death, the devil, hell, and the passions as a horribly beautiful four-voiced theme. I saw the composition a few years ago at the Rue de l'Université atelier.
Of the women who have attempted large choral works, there are several besides those already mentioned. Baroness Bertha von Bruckenthal has received high praise for her "Grand Messe Solennelle," and for some four-voiced numbers with organ accompaniment. She has also written pieces for violin, 'cello, voice, and piano.
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