Deems Taylor: Suite Through the Looking Glass Two British Reviews

I thought it would be a good idea to quote two short of British reviews of this work.  The first two refer to a performance of the Suite, which had been given at that year’s Leeds Music Festival.

S.L. writes in The Guardian: - Of an entirely different nature was the orchestral suite ‘Through the Looking Glass’, by Deems Taylor, music critic of the New York World.  Mr. Taylor seems to have as pleasant a fancy as our own Roger Quilter. He is content to delight and amuse, and he is well able to do both. His music runs along with a perfect security of invention and handling. It follows the ingenious invention of Lewis Carroll as gleefully as if the music had been born for no other purpose. The American taint is only seen in the fact that the humour has learned from the jazz band a licence that is carried too far. The joke is told out to the end, as if it were in the band, when the little less would have been ever so much more.  Yet we should always be glad to hear tis delightful composer.

Manchester Guardian 12 October 1925 (with minor edits)

Certainly, listening to this piece at a remove of some 90 years we do not feel quite so intimidated by the ‘jazz’ element in the music.

A short note in The Times about the same concert:-

‘Through the Looking Glass’ by Deems Taylor, also an American composition, [1] by avoiding a false profundity does succeed in being amusing. It does not aim, it is true, at expounding Lewis Carroll’s ‘contrariwise’ logic, but it illustrates the fragments of text which were printed in the programme –and not as at a recent London performance, recited from the platform. The bassoon cadenza describing the death of the Jabberwok is not only funny, but really descriptive, [2] and other effects are no less happy and to the point.  It is all done with a light touch and – O, blessed virtue – its texture is free from mud'.

The Times 12 October 1925 (with minor edits)

Notes

[1] Howard Hanson’s Lux Aeterna had also been heard at this Festival.

[2] I have never heard a Jabberwock being slain. Have you? 

Deems Taylor: Suite –‘Through the Looking Glass’. Contemporary Review in the New York Times.

The New York Times review began by noting the absence of a symphony in the New York Symphony Society’s concert at the Aeolian Hall on 11 March 1923.  However it pointed out that there was the first performance of Deems Taylor’s new orchestral suite ‘Through the Looking Glass.’  Taylor’s skill as an orchestral player has been previously witnessed at a Philharmonic Society performance of his tone poem ‘The Sirens.’

The reviewer is concerned to emphasise that Mr Taylor is no ‘modern.’  ‘He is not in the new movement.  He not only can write melodies, but does, and his score is all compact of them. He can and does write intelligible and finely effective harmonies. He has skill in orchestration; and altogether he fills his music with a feeling for beauty as well as with humorous descriptive touches.’

‘The opening movement is intended to recall Lewis Carroll’s verses of dedication to the ‘Child of the pure unclouded brow’ charming in its suavity and poetical grace. The movements descriptive of the ‘Garden of Live-Flowers,’ the fight with the Jabberwock, the Looking-Glass insects and Alice’s meeting with the White Knight are all written with a genial humour and with an elaborate ingenuity in the invention of themes and the use of them for descriptive purposes that have musical value and a potency of musical development.

The epic of the ‘Jabberwocky’ and the episode of the White Knight are the most elaborate of the five. They are all very descriptive and, it may be feared, would not make all their effect if listened to ‘purely as music,’ as some distinguished programmatic musicians have wished their music to be. So Mr. Damrosch [1] announced that he would give a three-minute intermission for everybody to read the program notes: everybody having read them diligently for three minutes, the performance went on.

‘The piece was received with great pleasure and evidently missed none of its points in the minds of the listeners’.

‘Mr. Taylor was present in the audience instead of taking a Sunday holiday, as all well-regulated music critics should do, [2] and was called to the front of the platform to bow and shake Mr. Damrosch by the hand.’

Richard Aldrich, New York Times 12 March 1922 with minor edits

Other works in the 11 March Concert included Erno von Dohnanyi’s Violin Concerto with Albert Spalding as soloist.  The program began with Johannes Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture and concluded with ‘admirable finish and spirit’ with dances by Josef and Johann Strauss.

Notes:-

[1] Deems Taylor was at this time a regular music correspondent and reviewer for the New York World.

[2] Walter Damrosch (1862-1950) American (though born in Breslau, Germany) conductor and composer. He studied in Germany but settled in the United States in 1871. He became the conductor of the New York Oratorio and Symphonic Societies in 1885. He was director of the Damrosch Opera Company (1894-9).  In 1891 Damrosch brought Tchaikovsky to America and suggested that he compose the ‘Pathétique’ Symphony.

Deems Taylor: Suite, Through the Looking Glass

I know that Deems Taylor is not British, but I feel that the new release of his Suite, ‘Through the Looking Glass’ on the Naxos CD label is so important that it deserves a little bit of creative license. Besides there could be no-one more British than Lewis Carroll! I have been helped in this short essay by the programme notes devised by Felix Borowski and  Deems Taylor himself.  I hope to write some more about Taylor and this piece in later posts.  

In spite of a course of musical lessons from a certain Oscar Coon, Deems Taylor was a self-taught composer.  His earliest achievements were in journalism where was a reviewer for the New York World. He resigned from that post in 1921 to concentrate on compositions. The Suite ‘Through the Looking Glass’ was originally written during the Great War – 1917-19 and was then scored for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, piano and strings.  This arrangement was first heard at a concert of the New York Chamber Music Society on 18 February 1919.  After this the composer rescored the work for full orchestra and it was heard in this form at a New York Symphony Orchestra concert under Walter Damroach on 10 March 1923.  

The composer wrote in the programme notes that ‘the suite needs no extended analysis. It is based on Lewis Carroll’s immortal nonsense fairy-tale, ‘Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There,’ and the five pictures it presents will, if all goes well, be readily recognizable to lovers of the book. There are four movements, the first being subdivided into two parts.’

The opening movement begins with a ‘Dedication’. Deems Taylor has musically described the author’s preface to the work – ‘Child of the pure, unclouded brow and dreaming eyes of wonder!’  This leads straight into ‘The Garden of Live Flowers ‘which is descriptive of the Looking Glass Garden flora which spoke to each other. The next movement is a little bit more sinister. The ‘frightful’ beast the Jabberwock is described. Here a little march heralds the approach of the hero.  The ensuing fight is musically represented with a short fugue.  Taylor has noted that ‘his vorpal blade (really the xylophone) goes ‘snicker-snack’ and the monster impersonated by the double bassoon, dies a lingering and convulsive death.’  

The third movement is The Looking Glass Insects. The composer has cleverly portrayed all these ‘favourites’ - the Rocking-Horse Fly, the Gnat, the Bee-Elephant, the Snap-Dragon Fly and the Bread-and-Butterfly. Deems Taylor has suggested that there are several themes running through his movements but advises against trying to allocate theme to fly!   Finally, the last movement is a brilliant portrayal of The White Knight.  Taylor has made use of two themes here; he suggests that ‘the first [is] a sort of instrumental prance, being the knight’s own conception of himself as a slashing dare-devil fellow.  The second is bland, mellifluous, a little sentimental –much more like the knight he really was.’

Deems Taylor’s Suite, Through the Looking Glass has been released on NAXOS 8.559724. However, if you cannot wait to purchase this, the music is available on YouTube in an early recording.  Part I and Part 2