Daniel Gregory Mason

Born right into a noted lineage of American music artists and composers, this composer, musicologist, and educator, who have initiated the analysis now known as music understanding, was a self-described “music humanist” and among the ardently conservative college generally known as the “Boston classicists.” He frequently defended the “common man’s” viewpoint and flavor in music; for instance, in his content “Life Being a Composer,” he championed Tchaikovsky being a writer of incredible melodies and emotionality over critics who deemed his functions as easy and hopelessly eclectic. His Birthday Waltzes for piano, Op. 1, was constructed while he was their studies at Harvard (1891 – 1895). Afterward, he continued his composition research with Chadwick and Percy Goetschius. Mason’s initial reserve, entitled From Grieg to Brahms, was released in NY in 1902. In 1905, he became a lecturer in music at Columbia College or university and was marketed to assistant teacher in 1910. Throughout that period, he authored five even more books: Beethoven and His Forerunners (1904), The Intimate Composers (1906), The Understanding of Music (1907, with T.W. Surette), The Orchestral Musical instruments (1908), and HELPFUL INFORMATION to Music (1909). He also constructed several piano parts (Op. 2 and Op. 3), Four Tracks for low tone of voice, Op. 4 (1906), and a Sonata for violin and piano, Op. 5 (1907 – 1908). These functions show Mason’s major impact from Brahms. Mason researched in Paris in 1913 with Vincent d’Indy, who became another solid influence. This is noticed in Mason’s Symphony No. 1 in C Small, Op. 11 (1913 – 1914), the Prelude and Fugue for piano and orchestra, Op. 12 (1914), as well as the Intermezzo for string quartet, Op. 17 (1916). Among Mason’s most broadly played functions was the celebratory event overture Chanticleer for orchestra (1926), a function that presents a cheerful comparison to Mason’s generally moody — and in composer Randall Thompson’s terms, “sinister and foreboding” and “pessimistic” — tendencies. In 1929, Mason was called MacDowell Teacher and offered as head from the music division at Columbia University or college until 1940. Mason’s released books up to the time add a Neglected Feeling in Piano Playing (1912), Great Contemporary Composers (1916, with M.L. Mason), Modern Composers (1918), Brief Research of Great Masterpieces (1918), Music Like a Mankind (1920), From Song to Symphony (1924), and Creative Ideals (1925). Despite his classicism that declined programmatic music (combined with the Impressionists) and his criticism of several American composers as “polyglot parrots” (in The Issue of American Music and Additional Essays from 1928), Mason integrated some folk materials and topics in such items as Tunes from the Countryside for chorus and orchestra, Op. 23 (1923), Three Nautical Tunes, Op. 38 (1941), the String Quartet on Negro Themes, Op. 19 (1918 -1919), Fanny Blair, a folksong dream for string quartet, Op. 28 (1927), Yankee Doodle for piano, Op. 6 (circa 1911), and specifically with the favorite 1860s melody Quaboug Quickstep which happens inside a Lincoln Symphony, Op. 35 (1935 – 1936) in four motions: The Applicant From Springfield, Massa Linkum, Aged Abe’s Yarns, and 1865 — Marcia funebre.