Fall 2000 Volume XXX, No. 1

Life with Fatha by Jeff Taylor Seven Steps to Piano Heaven: The Artistry of Sir Roland Hanna by Mark Tucker Visualizing Modernity and Tradition in Copland's America by Gail Levin Mark Tucker by H. Wiley Hitchcock Local Music/Global Connections Conference by Ray Allen ISAM Matters Reviews Country and Gospel Notes by Charles Wolfe Rediscovering the Sylviad by Douglas A. Lee Seeger Scholarship by Marc E. Johnson Zygotones by George Boziwick ISAM Home

Rediscovering The Sylviad by Douglas A. Lee The first two opus numbers of Anthony Philip Heinrich (1781-1861), The Dawning of Music in Kentucky and The Western Minstrel, have been available for nearly three decades.1 With the reprint of The Sylviad: or, Minstrelsy of Nature in the Wilds of North America, ed. J. Bunker Clark (Conners Publications, 1996; $69.95), we now have access to the major portion of Heinrich’s musical legacy, or at least to those works published during his lifetime. Heinrich was an unusual figure in early nineteenth-century America. Born in Bohemia of German ancestry, he first traveled to America in 1805 for the purpose of furthering his business interests. Following the failure of those ventures, he turned to a musical career. With some early instruction in violin and piano as a background, he directed his considerable energy toward becoming a musical spokesman for the young United States in an itinerant career that led him to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Lexington, Boston, New York, and musical centers in Europe. During his lifetime he was often cited as America’s first professional composer, and from some source he acquired the sobriquet “the Beethoven of America.” If the title did not originate with Heinrich himself (it may have been initiated by John Sullivan Dwight), there is no record that he did anything to dispel the image thus invoked. Without question, he was an enthusiastic American, extolling the wonders of the new nation and attempting to give musical voice to his adopted home. His efforts bore fruit during his lifetime in his wide recognition in musical circles in the United States and abroad, but he ended his days in obscurity. The Sylviad, opus 3, appeared in two parts, printed in Boston by Gottlieb Graupner. The first part (1823) promised on the title page 100 works (in fact there are seven) and was dedicated to the Royal Academy of Music in Great Britain. The second part (1825-26) promises the same number of compositions (but contains only twenty-seven) and carried the same dedication. “The Minstrel’s Catch” (p. 203) is repeated from the first collection, leading to some conjecture about Heinrich’s intentions for the second part. The editor, J. Bunker Clark, discusses these and related matters at length in his thoroughly documented Introduction. Clark has explored this work at even greater length in The Dawning of American Keyboard Music (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), where The Sylviad accounts for thirty-eight pages of an entire chapter devoted to Heinrich. Most of the numbers in both parts of The Sylviad are for piano, a few call for voice and piano, fewer still require multiple voices with piano accompaniment. The music ranges from some pieces that are naively simple to others that require a mature and facile keyboard technique. Heinrich indulges in colorful chromaticism unusual for a self-taught composer, much of it intended to support his programmatic titles. One of the most charming of the smaller pieces is “The Four Pawed Kitten Dance,” a duet in which the secondo plays a two-measure ostinato supporting progressively lively figuration in the primo, the effect best described as an early nineteenth-century precursor of “Kitten on the Keys.” Other titles reflect Heinrich’s determined combination of his European background with elements from his chosen home: “Canone Funerale, an American National Dirge,” “Overture to the fair Sylph of America,” “The Log House,” and “The Western Minstrel’s Recollection of the Wilderness of Kentucky, or a vocal Fantasia” [voice and piano, intended for orchestra]. More specific bits of nationalism come forth with quotations of “God Save the King” (pp. 23, 73) and the same tune coupled with “Yankee Doodle” (pp. 120-21). The most ambitious items in the collection are the “Toccatina capriciosa” and the “Gran Toccata cromatica,” both awash in extended passage-work and orchestral effects. The fruits of any edition of earlier music mature when contemporary musicians bring the music to life in their own performance. Neely Bruce and The American Music Group incorporate two representative items from The Sylviad on their recent compact disc, The Dawning of Music in Kentucky (Vanguard Classics SVC 93, 1998). The “Epitaph on Joan Buff” (no. 11) opens with a contemplative setting of a text by William Staunton. In pseudo-serious mien it describes Joan Buff’s death by sneezing after taking snuff. The musical reply is set for chorus SATB with progressively ambitious piano accompaniment, the whole concluding with a “Coda Morale.” Martha Osborne, a personal friend of Heinrich, wrote the texts for these last two sections, and the piece concludes with the composer’s script of Osborne’s obituary, “There is no Da Capo in Death.” With unexpected subtlety the music moves from a comic exercise to a substantive commentary on death, provocative for all of its verbosity. In “A Sylvan Scene in Kentucky, or the Barbecue Divertimento, Comprising the Ploughman’s Grand March and the Negro’s Banjo Quickstep” (no. 18), we hear a bugle call to action, a march, a section titled “The Banjo” (antedating Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s work of the same title by at least thirty years), and a concluding refrain from The Dawning of Music in Kentucky. In a prevailing two-part texture, Heinrich ranges from sentimental nostalgia to genuine virtuoso passages. To all of this Neely Bruce and his group bring a musical finesse that surely surpasses anything Heinrich, the good Reverend Staunton, or Martha Osborne could have imagined. These performances set a high standard for those who use the modern reprint to expand their own repertory. It is regrettable that the binding of the present edition forestalls its use on a piano rack or any other music stand. The binding is so tight that it can be used only on a flat surface. The high contrast photographic reproduction of the text, both musical and literary, is quite sharp, but unfortunately, some details of typography have faded beyond legibility in the copy at hand. Heinrich often has been regarded as an eccentric, but The Sylviad shows a level of imagination and, above all, an enthusiasm that suggest a creative spirit deserving attention. He was an energetic individualist and an ardent American original who should be saluted for his efforts. –Vanderbilt University Notes Click on note number to return to its place in the text. 1Anthony Philip Heinrich, The Dawning of Music in Kentucky and The Western Minstrel (Da Capo, 1972 [1820]).