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Of the other "Water Scenes," there is a shimmering "Dragon Fly," a monody, "Ophelia," with a pedal-point of two periods on the tonic, and a fluent "Barcarolle" with a deal of high-colored virtuosity.
This is the best part of it a fugal Gloria, ending with a pedal-point. Here you are, you see a tonic pedal-point, this D flat, the very last raised note in my new pedal-board, held down right through." And he set his left foot on the pedal. "What do you think of that for a Magnificat?" he said, when it was finished; and Westray was ready with all the conventional expressions of admiration.
Angelus bells in pedal-point continue through a period of hope and prayer; but remorse again takes sway. The ability to obtain this fine solemnity, and follow it with a scherzo of extraordinary gaiety, proves that a genius is at large among us. The Scherzo displays a thigh-slapping, song-singing abandon that typifies youthful frivolity fascinatingly.
While the modern piano sonata is to me anathema as a rule, there are none of MacDowell's works that I like better than his writings in this form. They seem to me to be of such stuff as Beethoven would have woven had he known in fact the modern piano he saw in fancy. The free fantasy is full of storm and stress, with a fierce pedal-point on the trilled leading-tone.
Background in decoration is like a pedal-point in music; it must support the whole fabric, whether you are planning a house, a room or a table.
What could it be? What could anyone be doing in the church at this hour of night? He was in the north porch now, and then he knew what it was. It was a low note of the organ a pedal-note; he was almost sure it was that very pedal-point which the organist had explained to him with such pride.
His book "In Arcady" contains pastoral scenes, notably an infectious romp that deserves its legend, "They danced as though they never would grow old." The next year his opus 20, "A Book of Songs," was published. It contains, among other things of merit, a lullaby, called "Sleep, Little Tulip," with a remarkably artistic and effective pedal-point on two notes (the submediant and the dominant) sustained through the entire song with a fine fidelity to the words and the lullaby spirit; a "Nocturne" in which Nevin has revealed an unsuspected voluptuousness in Mr. Aldrich' little lyric, and has written a song of irresistible climaxes. The two songs, "Dîtes-Moi" and "In der Nacht," each so completely true to the idiom of the language of its poem, are typical of Nevin's cosmopolitanism, referred to before. This same unusual ability is seen in his piano pieces as well as in his songs. He knows the difference between a chanson and a Lied, and in "Rechte Zeit" has written with truth to German soldierliness as he has been sympathetic with French nuance in "Le Vase Brisé," the effective song "Mon Desire," which in profile suggests Saint-Saëns' familiar Delilah-song, the striking "Chanson des Lavandières" and "Rapelle-Toi," one of Nevin's most elaborate works, in which Alfred De Musset's verse is splendidly set with much enharmonious color. Very Italian, too, is the "Serenade" with accompaniment
"It is not bad, is it?" Mr Sharnall asked; "but the gem of it is the Gloria not real fugue, but fugal, with a pedal-point. Did you catch the effect of that point? I will keep the note down by itself for a second, so that you may get thoroughly hold of it, and then play the Gloria again."
The fact that in the coda the very suspicious octave pedal-point and trills may be omitted so the editorial note urns leads one to suspect that out of a fragment Janotha has evolved, Cuvier-like, an entire composition. Chopin as fugue-maker does not appear in a brilliant light. Is the Polish composer to become a musical Hugh Conway? Why all these disjecta membra of a sketch-book?
A dominant pedal-point of fifty-eight measures, in the last movement, is worth mentioning. In a "Danse Négre" and a "Caprice Négre," he has evidently gone, for his Ethiopian color, not to the actual negro music, but to the similar compositions of Gottschalk. Kroeger was born in St. Louis, August 10, 1862. At the age of five he took up the study of the piano and violin.
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