Piano Music of North America (Canada & the USA)

[Scriabinoff]

MERRITT JOHNSON (1902- 1978)
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Merritt Johnson ...
Humble request, any other music by him, see the back matter for a list of his other piano works, which is more than a few!

Thanks for the scan of MJ's piano suite. The only piece of his I have in my library is one of the organ miniatures--I made a scan of it and I'll post it in the appropriate section.

you're welcome man! I will continue to be on the lookout for any of the other pieces and post those as well should any surface on my end. Also, thanks for sharing your organ work.

[Scriabinoff]

Converse, Frederick Shepherd

F.S. Converse.jpg

(b Newton, MA, 5 Jan 1871; d Westwood, MA, 8 June 1940).
American composer, teacher and administrator. He was the youngest of seven children born into a New England family. At the age of ten he began to study the piano, and showed an interest in composition almost from the start. After a good education in the public and private schools of Newton, Converse entered Harvard College in 1889, where he studied under Paine. He received the BA with highest honours in music in 1893, and then tried to carry out his father's wish that he pursue a business career. But his nature was unsuited to commercial life, and after a few unhappy months in an office he decided to devote all of his energies to a career in music. He resumed his study of the piano with Baermann and of composition with Chadwick. Recognizing the need for further study, Converse went to Munich in 1896 to the Akademie der Tonkunst; there he came under the influence of Rheinberger, with whom he studied counterpoint, composition, and organ. He graduated in 1898.

On returning to the USA, Converse soon became active in the musical life of Boston. Around 1900 he moved to a large country estate in Westwood where he farmed, participated in vigorous outdoor sports and brought up a large family. At the same time he continued to compose, study, and teach. From 1900 to 1902 he was an instructor in harmony at the New England Conservatory; from 1903 to 1907 he taught at Harvard College, first as an instructor, later as an assistant professor. While at Harvard, he composed several major works which gained him a reputation as one of the outstanding composers of the USA. In 1905 he was asked by Percy MacKaye to write the music for his play Jeanne d'Arc; this marked the beginning of a long and intimate friendship, and the two collaborated on several major works. Converse resigned from Harvard in 1907 to devote more time to composition.

From 1907 to 1914 Converse was at the height of his career as a composer; he was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1908 and also served as vice-president of the Boston Opera Company (1908–14). He oversaw several performances of his operas, including the Metropolitan Opera Company's production of The Pipe of Desire. Completed in 1905 and first produced in Boston, this romantic opera was presented at the Metropolitan Opera on 18 March 1910, and was the first American opera to be performed there. However, the majority of the critics attacked the undramatic nature of the libretto and criticized the score for its lack of originality; praise was reserved mostly for Converse's skilful and effective orchestration. His second opera, The Sacrifice (1910), was more favourably received when it was first produced in Boston on 3 March 1911. Converse's third and fourth operas – Beauty and the Beast (1913) and The Immigrants (1914), both written in collaboration with the librettist Percy MacKaye – show great promise, but were never produced due to the advent of World War I and the demise of the Boston Opera Company. It is unfortunate that after Converse had secured an able librettist in MacKaye, the results of their collaboration could not have been heard.

During World War I, Converse served in the Massachusetts State Guard and was a member of the National Committee on Army and Navy Camp Music. He returned to the New England Conservatory in 1920 to become head of the theory department. In 1931 he was appointed dean of the faculty, a position he held until 1938 when he was forced to retire because of illness.

Converse was a versatile composer who knew his métier. His compositional style was rooted in late 19th-century, richly chromatic harmony. However, beginning around 1905, he began to include harmonic and orchestral devices of Impressionism in his music. He again modified his style in the late 1920s by employing bitonality, quartal harmonies and dissonant chords. Jazz rhythms and harmonies also appear in American Sketches (1928) and other works written during the 1920s. Despite the radical departure in style that is apparent in Flivver Ten Million, Converse had no desire to be sensational or experimental. However, he believed there was room for everything in music and he did not hesitate to forsake tradition when something new arose, providing it could be assimilated with complete artistic honesty and sincerity.

Although interested in developing a distinctly American musical style, Converse knew it would take time. Musically and programmatically he tried to capture aspects of American life in several of his compositions. For example, historical events provide background material for the plots of The Masque of St. Louis and Puritan Passions; scenic panoramas are depicted in California and American Sketches; and the automotive age was given expression in Flivver Ten Million. For these and other works Converse employed American folksongs, shanties, spirituals, patriotic airs and Amerindian-like melodies. He was a gifted melodist who used the leitmotif technique in all of his operas, several symphonic poems and other works. His leitmotifs most often represent characters or human emotions, especially love.

Converse was one of the earliest American composers to write successful symphonic poems; The Mystic Trumpeter is probably his best work. His music was widely performed during his lifetime. He received the David Bispham Medal from the American Opera Society of Chicago in 1926 and in 1937 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.




Bibliography

R. Severence: The Life and Works of Frederick Shepherd Converse (diss., Boston U., 1932)

R.J. Garofalo: The Life and Works of Frederick Shepherd Converse (1871–1940) (diss., Catholic University of America, Washington DC, 1969)

R.J. Garofalo: Frederick Shepherd Converse (1871–1940) (Metuchen, NJ, 1994)

Robert J. Garofalo

Converse, F.S (1871-1940) - Prelude.pdf

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Prelude-Piano-F ... B0000CUIO0

[fleubis]

A very nice little prelude that develops nicely. Thanks for posting this, Scriabinoff.

[Scriabinoff]

A very nice little prelude that develops nicely. Thanks for posting this, Scriabinoff.

You are most welcome!

Here's another, this is a unique little work in that it is sort of a transcription (not quite, more of an excerpt arranged for piano) but also, unique to this as I have not come across this type of 'solo' before, in that it can also be played as piano + violin, piano +cello, or piano + violin + cello. Includes individual ("optional") instrument parts.

Converse, F.S. 1871-1940 - May Night By The Roadside America's Romance (from Flivver Ten Million for Orchestra).pdf

[Timtin]

As it's America's 237th. Independence Day, here is something perhaps appropriate.
NMS - TYTTOS (WUISL/GML).

Yankee Doodle Arranged with Variations (Balmer & Weber).pdf

This set of variations on the same theme (in the style of various different composers)
is also apposite for today:-
http://imslp.org/wiki/Variations_on_%27 ... Gregory%29

[Alex]

That's very sweet of you, Tim. I'll be sure to check those out and have some fun today on the piano. It's been very rainy in Tennessee today so festivities are minimal this year I believe. I'll be able to get better sleep without the usual fireworks, so it's a good thing .

[Timtin]

Hi Alex - thanks for your message. Hope you all had a fun day yesterday across the pond.
Although not really appropriate to this thread, another nice IMSLP upload, added only this week,
is the following:-
http://imslp.org/wiki/Paraphrasen_uber_ ... _Eduard%29
Regards, Tim.

[Scriabinoff]

Warren, Harry [Guaragna, Salvatore]

Warren.jpg

(b Brooklyn, NY, 24 Dec 1893; d Los Angeles, 22 Sept 1981).
American popular songwriter. He taught himself the accordion, drums, piano and other instruments, and learned the rudiments of music while singing in a church choir. He first worked in 1909 as a drummer in his godfather’s carnival band, then as a member of a vocal quartet at Vitagraph Studios and a pianist in cinemas and saloons in New York. He rose to become the assistant director of Vitagraph before becoming a pianist and song plugger for Stark and Cowan in 1920. In 1924 he joined Shapiro, Bernstein & Co. and began to find success with his own songs, beginning with I love my baby, my baby loves me (1926).

Warren favoured writing for revues on Broadway, including several co-authored or produced by Billy Rose. But after the Hollywood film studio Warner Bros. bought the Remick Music Corporation, which Warren had joined as a staff composer in 1928, he was called to California to write for early musical films. His first assignment was to provide six new songs for the film version of Richard Rodgers’s Spring is Here (1930). After a period during which he spent intervals in New York, Warren settled permanently in Hollywood, where he became the most successful composer of songs for American films. He contributed songs to more than 75 films for such singers as Dick Powell, Carmen Miranda, Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly and Bing Crosby. Between 1932 and 1957, 42 of his songs reached the Top Ten on popularity charts, and three received Academy awards (Lullaby of Broadway, You’ll never know, and On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe). At Warner Bros. he joined the choreographer Busby Berkeley and the lyricist Al Dubin to create the lavish musical films of the Depression era. Almost all of his approximately 250 songs were published and performed. His own publishing company, Four Jays Music, controlled the songs published by Harry Warren Music and other companies.

Warren’s prolific output and the wide dissemination of his music through the medium of film made him one of the most influential of all 20th-century songwriters. He was extraordinarily versatile and wrote successful songs in many genres. His tunes have remained in the repertory of all branches of the popular-music industry, from jazz to television and even ‘muzak’.

The Harry Warren Collection of 200 musical-comedy folios is in the Archive of Popular American Music at UCLA, recorded interviews with Warren are in the libraries of ASCAP and Southern Methodist University, and the American Film Institute has transcriptions of interviews with Warren in the Louis B. Mayer oral history collection.

Bibliography

T. Thomas: The Hollywood Musical: the Saga of Songwriter Harry Warren (Secaucus, NJ, 1975)
R. Hemming: The Melody Lingers On: the Great Songwriters and their Movie Musicals (New York, 1986)
D. Ewen: American Songwriters (New York, 1987)
A. Forte: The American Popular Ballad of the Golden Era, 1924–1950 (Princeton, NJ, 1995)
G. Lees: Singers and the Song II (New York, 1998)
Deane L. Root

Warren, Harry (Arr. Jeff Sultanof) - The Best of Harry Warren.pdf

[Scriabinoff]

Rogers, James H(otchkiss)

James H. Rogers.jpg

(b Fair Haven, CT, 7 Feb 1857; d Pasadena, CA, 28 Nov 1940).
American organist, composer, teacher, music publisher, and music critic. Rogers studied with organ virtuoso Clarence Eddy in Chicago, followed by further study in Berlin and Paris, 1875–82. He worked for a year in Burlington, Iowa, before establishing himself in Cleveland as an organist of various churches, as well as the Euclid Avenue Temple, which he served for 50 years. He was a prolific composer, a teacher at the Cleveland School of Music, a critic at the Cleveland Plain Dealer (1915–32), and a publisher of his own works and those of others. He wrote about 550 pieces, and his more than 130 songs (issued between 1878 and 1933), organ pieces, and church music were widely performed in their time. For the organ he left three sonatas, two sonatinas, three suites, and many one-movement genre pieces. He also wrote secular partsongs, cantatas for both Christmas and Easter, several settings of the Latin Mass, and both a Sabbath Morning Service for the Synagogue and a Temple Service for the Evening of the New Year. He issued numerous pedagogical volumes for the piano, and he also edited and published several volumes of organ pieces drawn from a variety of sources.
Bibliography
R. Hughes: Contemporary American Composers (Boston, 1900), 411–14
R. Smith: “James H. Rogers/Cleveland Composer,” The Tracker, liii/2 (2009), 33
William Osborne
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Rogers, James, H. - Wonderland Folk (Five Piano Pieces) II. Giants; Op. 50, No. 2.pdf

Would love to have the other 4 pieces from the set up eventually, if anyone has any scans or can locate and post that would be great. I'll be on the lookout for more myself and will add if/when I find one/them.

[Jim Faston]

Here's one of JHR's many teaching pieces. (NMS) There's a nice little list of others on the cover.

Rogers_Alla Marcia, Op53 No1.pdf