Warren Apple holds a high school diploma and undergraduate degree from the North Carolina School of the Arts. His graduate degrees in organ performance are from the Eastman School of Music. Further studies have been with Anton Heiller and Arthur Poister. Dr. Apple is currently organist and choir director at Mt. Pleasant Presbyterian Church in Charleston, SC, and is associate professor of music at the University of South Carolina-Aiken, where he holds the Pauline F. O'Connell Chair in Fine Arts.
Arthur Homer Bird was born in Belmont, Massachusetts on July 23, 1856. He exhibited precocious musical abilities which were fostered by his father and uncle, both of whom were professional musicians, noted as hymn compilers and writers. When only fifteen years old, Bird succeeded his sister, Helen, as organist at the First Baptist Church in Brookline, Massachusetts.
When he was nineteen years old, Bird went to Berlin for musical studies at the Musikhochschule, where he studied piano with Albert Loeschorn, organ with Karl August Haupt, and composition with E. Rohde. At the St. Georgen-Kirchen in Berlin on April 21, 1876, he gave an organ recital that was particularly noted by critics for his improvisational skills. In 1877 he accepted positions in Halifax, Nova Scotia as organist at St. Matthew's Church and as a faculty member at the Young Ladies' Academy and the Mount St. Vincent Academy; he also founded the first chorus in Nova Scotia, the all-male Arion Club. During a second period of study in Germany (1881-1886), he was a composition pupil of Heinrich Urban at the Kullak School of Music and a close friend and compositional disciple of Franz Liszt, who admired Bird's orchestral Carnival Scene enough to conduct several performances.
Bird's initial major success as a composer occurred on February 4, 1886, when he conducted a program of his own works, including his Symphony in A Major (1885), First Little Suite (1884) and Concert Overture (1885), at the Singakademie in Berlin. Successful American performances later that year included his Symphony in A Major by the New York Philharmonic under Walter Damrosch on June 3 and his Carnival Scene by the Chicago Symphony under Theodore Thomas on July 26.
Bird returned to the United States during the summer of 1886 at the invitation of the North American Saengerbund to become director of the Milwaukee Music Festival for one year. During this period he was active as a piano and organ recitalist and received favorable reviews for performances of his own pieces.
After his return to Berlin in 1887, Bird remained there, with the exception of brief visits to the United States in 1897 for a production of his operetta The Highlanders, in 1907 for medical consultations, and in 1911 to investigate the possibilities of a commission for an opera. All of these visits included organ recitals, and he developed professional friendships in the United States with such organists as Gerrit Smith in New York and Clarence Eddy in Boston.
After he was married to Wilhemine Waldman in Petersboro, England on February 29, 1888, Bird was able to enjoy a luxurious lifestyle due to his wife's considerable means; however, the lack of financial necessity greatly diminished Bird's activities as both performer and composer. The Birds maintained opulent mansions in Berlin and in its Grunenwald suburb. The Grunenwald residence was equipped with a house organ. Although their financial holdings were affected detrimentally by the inflationary spiral after World War I, the Birds continued to live comfortably in an apartment on the Kurfuestendamm in Berlin. Bird died suddenly of a heart attack on December 22, 1923 during a suburban train ride.
Bird received the Paderewski Prize in 1901 and was named to the National Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1898. He has the distinction of being the first American composer of a major full-length ballet, Ruebezahl (1886), and of being the first American-born composer to receive commissions from Germany and France.
Because Bird's compositions were almost exclusively performed and published in Europe, especially in Germany and France, his reputation was never great in the United States; however, contemporary critics, such as Louis Elson and A. Lasser, acknowledged him to be America's foremost living composer, rivaled only by Edward MacDowell. Conductor Arthur Nikisch rated him as America's finest composer. He was especially noted for his melodious, late Romantic style, his colorful orchestration and his facile counterpoint. Bird considered himself a conservative or "conditional modernist" and was especially critical of both Debussy and Richard Strauss.1
Bird published three organ pieces during his lifetime; Three Oriental Sketches, op. 41 (1898, published 1903); Marcia (published 1902); and Concert Fantasia (published 1904). A fourth organ publication, Theme with Variations in d minor, op. 27, was transcribed by W. H. Dayas from the piano two-hand version and published in 1908. Unpublished organ works by Bird include Fugue on August Haupt (1881); three fugues in a minor, c minor and C major (1881); three sonatas in g minor, A-flat major and c minor (1876); and Toccatina (1905).2 An additional unpublished organ piece, Introduction and Fugue in d minor, op. 16, was transcribed from the piano four-hand version in 1891 by W. H. Dayas. The manuscripts for four unpublished pieces, fugues in a minor and g minor of 1891, a canon trio of 1891, and Concert Variations in C Major of 1880, have been lost.3
The earliest of these pieces, the three sonatas from Bird's first German sojourn, were never revised or edited by Bird for publication. In spite of their occasional awkwardness and lack of refinement, these sonatas are fully on the level of Rheinberger's sonatas and are noteworthy for their lyric slow movements and fugal concluding movements. The overall sequence of movements is fantasia/andante/ fugue in the Sonata in g minor, andante/allegretto/fugue in the Sonata in A-flat major, and fantasia/adagio/introduction and fugue in the Sonata in c minor. A fourth sonata in D major is substantially incomplete. (See Example 1.)
Bird's Fugue in a minor on August Haupt of October 1881 and fugues in C major and c minor of December 1881 are also student works from his second Berlin trip. They rival Mendelssohn's op. 37 fugues in craftsmanship and reveal Bird to be an extremely skilled contrapuntist. These works amply support the admiration of contemporary critics for Bird's contrapuntal skills. Although Bird generally avoids such devices as stretto, augmentation, diminution and inversion, rhythmically animated subjects are given rigorously contrapuntal treatment that never dissolves to homophonically dominated episodes.
The Theme with Variations for piano two-hand, op. 27 of 1889 was transcribed for organ by W. H. Dayas and published by G. Schirmer in 1891. The variations, in order, include an eighth-note poco allegro; a staccato eighth-note poco più allegro; a moto perpetuo sixteenth-note allegro; a triplet più moderato; sixteenth-note arpeggiations marked allegro moderato; a chorale-like andante ma non troppo; thirty-second note arpeggiations; and a moderato fugue of one hundred measures. The style of the music is quite reminiscent of Mendelssohn's Variations Serieuse for piano, and the transcription is quite organistic, although one may occasionally wish for fewer octave doublings and a transfer of less of the left hand bass line to the pedal. (See Example 2.)
The Introduction and Fugue in d minor, op. 16 is unquestionably Bird's finest organ work. Bird himself must have held the piece in high regard, because it exists in several versions. It appeared in print for piano four-hands in 1887, in an unpublished manuscript for orchestra, in an unpublished manuscript for organ and orchestra, and in an unpublished transcription for solo organ (dated 1891) by W. H. Dayas with corrections by Bird.4
The introduction is in free form and must be indicative of Bird's improvisational style. The substantial fugue is reminiscent of the fugues that conclude Liszt's "Ad Nos" fantasy and Reubke's organ sonata, with a second section that introduces rapid passagework against the principal fugue subject. Also similar to the Liszt fantasia is the final peroration which includes a recall of the initial thematic material of the fantasie. (See Example 3.)
Written in 1898, the Three Oriental Sketches were copyrighted in 1902 and published in 1903. They are extremely attractive pieces that easily evoke a Middle-Eastern atmosphere through drones, ostinato bass patterns, open fourths and fifths, chromaticism, and grace note figuration.
The Marcia in A-flat of 1902 is a ternary-form piece that retains much of the charm and character of Bird's many piano salon pieces. It is well written and falls easily under fingers, but does not show an overabundance of inspiration.
The Concert Fantasia in f minor is clearly the best written and most exciting of Bird's printed organ opuses. It is a large ternary structure of 235 measures in which unbroken sixteenth note figuration in the outer sections gives the same propulsive rhythmic energy as a French toccata or organ symphony finale. The central section also shows the influence of Dubois' toccata and the finale to Guilmant's first sonata with its alternation between a chorale-like theme and sixteenth-note figuration from the outer sections. (See Example 4.)
The Toccatina of 1906, dedicated to Clarence Eddy, maintains a moto perpetuo repeated chord figuration throughout, but seems to be closer akin to a Mendelssohnian scherzo than the élan of a French toccata. Its relatively limited amount of thematic material does not maintain interest readily during the piece's 235 measures.
When considered as a group, one is impressed with the compositional quality and musical attractiveness of Bird's organ works. Although none of the pieces are currently in print and manuscript sources are relatively inaccessible, they certainly merit further research and performance.
Notes
1. The two most extensive sources of biographical information in this article are W.C. Loring, Jr.: "Arthur Bird, American," Musical Quarterly, xxix (1943), 78 and W.C. Loring, Jr.: The Music of Arthur Bird (Atlanta, rev. 2/1974). Other sources for biographical information are D. Ewen: American Composers: a Biographical Dictionary (New York, 1982); L.C. Elson: The History of American Music (New York, 1904, enlarged 2/1915); W.T. Upton: "Bird, Arthur," Dictionary of American Biography (New York, 1928-36; 7 suppls., 1944-81); and Walter Lueckhoff: "Arthur Bird. Einiges ueber sein Leben und Schaffen," Das Harmonium, vii (1901/02), 74-75.
2. The only known manuscript copies of the Fugue on August Haupt, Fugue in a minor, Fugue in c minor, Sonata in g minor, Sonata in A-flat major, Sonata in g minor, Introduction and Fugue in d minor, op. 16, Theme and Variations in d minor, op. 27 and Toccatina are all currently housed at the Library of Congress. LOC also has copies of the published versions by G. Schirmer of the Concert Fantasia, Three Oriental Sketches, Marcia and the Theme with Variations in d minor, op. 27. Additional copies of the printed edition of Theme with Variations, Three Oriental Sketches, Marcia, and Concert Fantasia are in the collections at Music Library, Harvard University and Music Room, British Museum. The author especially wishes to thank William Parsons of the Music Division of the Library of Congress for his assistance in preparation of this article.
3. The four sonatas are in a single manuscript sheaf, which contains the fragmentary Sonata III in D major. The cover of the manuscript sheaf which contains Fugue in a minor, Fugue in c minor, and Fugue in C major also lists Fugue in a minor, Fugue in g minor and Canon Trio, which are either missing or were never composed. The Concert Variations in C major were performed at concerts in Boston and Halifax in 1880 and have since been lost.
4. These manuscripts are housed in the collection at the Library of Congress.
