As with many if not all ARS releases, the scores were shipped over to Vienna for recording. The conductors were Meinhard von Zallinger for Skyscrapers and Walter Hendl for The Happy Hypocrite. The anonymous orchestra is the Vienna Symphony, per A Classical Discography, with both sessions taking place in 1952.
Carpenter (1876-1951) was about the same age as Frederick Converse, whose The Mystic Trumpeter recently appeared here. But while that example of Converse's music looked back to the age of Wagner, Carpenter sought his inspiration in 1920s America.
| Skyscrapers backdrop by Robert Edmond Jones |
Here is a depiction of the Skyscrapers opening scene, as captured in a contemporary review by Oscar Thompson:
With the parting of the curtains, blinking red lights at either side of the stage represent traffic signals and are "symbols of restlessness." The backdrop is an "abstraction of the skyscraper." Girders in abstract confusion; workmen in overalls go through the motions of violent labor while human shadows move meaninglessly by. Suggestions in the music of fox-trotting - rhythms of industry, of building, of working - urgent haste and confusion of city life. Whistles blow, workers emerge and dance toward "any amusement park of the Coney Island type" with its Ferris wheels, street shows, fun-mad, dance-addled crowds – swirling through rhythmic gestures, glorifying American girls’ nether extremities.
This was not the first time the composer had used contemporary American life as a subject. In 1921, he had written a ballet score based on a comic strip - Krazy Kat: A Jazz Pantomine. (I should mention that Frederick Converse too was fascinated by the American scene, writing in 1927 an orchestral piece called Flivver Ten Million in honor of Henry Ford's Model T.)
| John Alden Carpenter |
So Carpenter was composing jazz-influenced works even before George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue premiered at Aeolian Hall. But while Carpenter wrote Skyscrapers in 1923-24, it was not heard until 1926. Here is the background, per Maureen Buja:
The actual motivator behind this extraordinary ballet was, unexpectedly, Serge Diaghilev. He asked Carpenter to write a ballet "on the theme of the chaotically energetic American metropolis." This wasn’t Diaghilev looking forward as much as he was looking over his shoulder. The up-and-coming Ballets Suédois, performing at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, whose ballets looked at contemporary life through dance, was causing Diaghilev concern. The Ballets Suédois had started the race with their 1923 ballet to Milhaud’s La creation du monde.
But when the impresario received the Carpenter score, he put it aside, possibly because it called for a chorus, which he did not want to pay for. (Neither did ARS - the choral sections are dropped from this recording.)
The Metropolitan Opera took up the ballet in 1926, slotting it into a bizarre triple-bill with Puccini's comedy Gianni Schicchi and Leoncavallo's verismo Pagliacci.
| Herbert Elwell |
While John Alden Carpenter is remembered today, Herbert Elwell (1898-1974) is not - a shame because his music is worthwhile. His most frequently performed composition is the ballet The Happy Hypocrite, based on a 1896 short story by the English writer Max Beerbohm (1872-1956), who was famous then, less so today.
The LP's liner notes are inadequate, so let me present a description of the Beerbohm work, whose full title is The Happy Hypocrite, a Fairy Tale for Tired Men. Here is Jonathan Rogers:
The Happy Hypocrite tells the story of Lord George Hell, the worst of the rakes who stalked Regency London. He is a spendthrift, a gambler, a glutton, a drunkard, a cheat, a liar, a philanderer, and a fop. His one "virtue" is that he doesn’t smoke, but that is only because he considers smoking to be unfashionable. His life of debauchery has left him bloated and purple - a terror to all who see him.
| Lord George Hell, as seen by George Sheringham in the story's 1918 illustrated edition |
Lord George Hell has never loved anyone but himself. But one day he meets a beautiful and saintly girl named Jenny Mere and loses his heart to her immediately. He makes a fool of himself - or, in any case, a different kind of fool - expressing his love to the girl on their first meeting. But she rejects him flat. She can see his wickedness in the lineaments of his face. She is saving her love, she says, for a man who has the face of a saint - a face that is a true mirror of pure love.
| Lord George catches sight of Jenny on stage |
Lord George is heartbroken. But he is also rich. He is so rich, in fact, that he has made it his practice to get whatever he wants. He goes to the most gifted mask-maker in London and has himself fitted for a mask of a saint’s face. When he presents himself to Jenny Mere, she sees the face of the man she has been waiting for. She loves him and marries him. George leaves the debauched London scene behind to live an idyllic country life with his little wife.
Idyllic, that is, until the Lord's former consort, "La Gambogi," tracks him down and rips off the mask, only to find that Lord George's actual face has been transformed by true love into that of the saint.
So this fairy tale is indeed for the "tired men" who want to believe that they could live happily ever after with a young beauty. And the hypocrites are them, Sir George and even Beerbohm, who has concocted this immorality tale of money (and love) transforming the ugly and repellent into a saint.
Charles Weidman choreographed the ballet for the Humphrey-Weidman Company in 1931. That performance, however, used a piano reduction. It was not until 1932 that the orchestral version was heard, conveniently for the purposes of this post on a program with Skyscrapers. Both were part of a four-day Festival of American Music presented by Howard Hanson with Eastman School and Rochester Philharmonic forces.
The New York Times reviewer, John Martin, was none too happy with the stagings by Thelma Biracree and was of two minds about the music. His verdict on Skyscrapers:
Here is a composition that is not essentially choreographic for all that it has a valid pulse and in many spots utilizes actual dance rhythms. Lacking unified basis for action in its scenario, it becomes an assignment for a theatrical genius only. It proceeds on the simple fact, according to the program note, "that American life reduces itself essentially to violent alternations of work and play." This is an objective thesis, but remains to be dramatized. Lacking this creative dramatization, it sounds a good deal of the time like imitation Broadway.
The Happy Hypocrite was more to his taste, in part because he liked Beerbohm. He first complains that Elwell's music has not captured the author's "suave brilliance." He adds, however:
[Elwell] has succeeded eminently, however, in translating the Beerbohm mood into music. All the pseudo-rapture of this tongue-in-cheek moralizing is there, couched in the cleanest form and enlivened by instrumental color. For once we have an orchestral score for dancing that is neither too ponderous nor too self-contained to be danced to.
* * *
Skyscrapers has been recorded several times, which has helped me to cut the score into tracks (not done on the record). To my knowledge, The Happy Hypocrite has only been recorded otherwise in excerpted form by Louis Lane and the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, an LP that is available here. I was not able to track the Elwell piece for this reason.
Elwell taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music for many years, then at the Oberlin Conservatory. He also was the music critic of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. A private recording of his Blue Symphony is also available via the link above, coupled with Bloch's Piano Quintet.
The performances on the ARS disc are good, more so for the Elwell than the Carpenter. Skyscrapers lacks dynamic range, which gives the performance a relentless quality. Otherwise the sound is fine, and the Viennese performances are lively.
