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There were one or two ambitious orchestra conductors in America; one in Chicago trying to introduce the Wagnerian polyphonic school, and perhaps one or two in New York; but the public clamoured after divas, prima donnas and tenors with temperaments and vocal pyrotechnic skill. For orchestral music there was little demand.
Bruckner's pristine polyphonic manner ever appears in the double strain of melodies, where each complements, though not completes the other. However multiple the plan, we cannot feel more than the quality of unusual in the motives themselves, of some interval of ascent or descent.
It was so common that we are driven to something more substantial than a mere suspicion that Casella and Minuccio employed a similar method and that the domination of polyphonic thought in music had spread from the regions occupied by the church compositions of Dufay and his contemporaries downward into the secular fancies of people whose daily thought was influenced by the authority of the church.
Amy Lowell a patrician a radical her education her years of preparation vigour and versatility definitions of free verse and of poetry Whitman's influence the imagists Patterns her first book her rapid improvement sword blades her gift in narrative polyphonic prose Anna Hempstead Branch her dramatic power domestic poems tranquil meditation an orthodox poet Edgar Lee Masters his education Greek inspiration a lawyer Reedy's Mirror the Anthology power of the past mental vigour similarity and variety irony and sarcasm passion for truth accentuation of ugliness analysis a masterpiece of cynicism an ideal side the dramatic monologue defects and limitations Louis Untermeyer his youth the question of beauty three characteristics a gust of life Still Life old maids burlesques and parodies the newspaper humourists F. P. A. his two books his influence on English composition.
Mahler, we feel again, realizes all the craving that Bruckner breeds for a kernel of feeling in the shell of counterpoint. Though we cannot deny a rude breach of ancient rule and mode, there is in Mahler a genuine, original, individual quality of polyphonic art that marks a new stage since the first in Bach and a second in Beethoven.
They were vocal soloists and often improvisatori, clearly differentiated from the cantori a libro, who were "singers by book and note" and who sang the polyphonic art music of the time. It is pretty well established that the songs of Dante were everywhere known and sung. We have reason to believe that many of those of Boccaccio were also familiar to the people.
The instruments used to support song, that of the troubadour or that of a Casella, or later still that of a Galilei, being of the same lineage, the only novelty was the adaptation to them of the lutenist's method of arranging polyphonic music for one voice with accompaniment. That this offered no large difficulties is proved by the account of Prætorius.
And it is this crying, passionate tone, this directness of expression, this largeness of effort, even in tiny forms and limited scope, that, more than his polyphonic style or any other of the easily recognizable earmarks of his art, distinguishes his work from Debussy's. The other man has a greater sensuousness, completeness, inventiveness perhaps.
After a time he proves faithless to her, whereupon she kills him and throws herself into the sea. This gloomy tale is illustrated by music of extraordinary power and beauty. Although Franck only avails himself of guiding themes to a limited extent, in mastery of the polyphonic style his work will compare with Wagner's most elaborate scores.
I thoroughly believe in the value of polyphonic music as a mental study; it is a necessity. And Bach is such a towering figure, such a rock of strength in musical art. Bach was essentially a Christian, and this element of devoutness, of worship, shines out in everything he wrote. I do not believe that music, without this element of worship, will live.
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