Ethelbert Nevin
Ethelbert Woodbridge Nevin was born in Edgeworth, Pennsylvania, on November 25, 1862. A precocious child in music, he wrote his first piano piece when he was eleven. A year later he wrote and had published a song that became exceedingly popular, “Good Night, Good Night Beloved.” After studying music with private teachers, he went to Berlin in 1884, studying for two years with Hans von Buelow and Karl Klindworth. He returned to the United States in 1886. Soon after that he made his formal American concert debut as pianist with a program on which he included some of his own compositions. By 1890 he decided to give up his career as a virtuoso and to concentrate on being a composer. In 1891 he completed Water Scenes, a suite for the piano in which will be found one of the most popular piano pieces by an American, “Narcissus.” In 1892 and again 1895 Nevin traveled extensively through Europe and Morocco. In 1897 he settled in New York City where he wrote one of the best-selling art songs by an American, “The Rosary.” In 1900 Nevin went to live in New Haven. During the last year of his life he was a victim of depressions which he tried to alleviate through excessive drinking. He died of an apoplectic stroke in New Haven, Connecticut, on February 17, 1901.
“Mighty Lak a Rose” and “The Rosary” are Nevin’s two most famous art songs; they are also among the most popular art songs written in America. “Mighty Lak a Rose” was one of Nevin’s last compositions, written during the closing months of his life. He never lived to see the song published and become popular. The song is a setting of a poem by Frank L. Stanton, and is described by John Trasker Howard (Nevin’s biographer) as “probably the simplest of all his songs... [with] a freshness and whimsical tenderness that make its appeal direct and forceful.”
“The Rosary,” words by R. C. Rogers, was an even greater success. From 1898 to 1928 it sold over two and a half million copies of sheet music. When Nevin had finished writing this song in 1898, he invited the singer Francis Rogers to dinner, after which he handed him a scribbled piece of music paper. “Here is a song I just composed,” he told Rogers. “I want you to sing it at your concert next week.” Rogers deciphered the notes as best he could while Nevin played the accompaniment from memory. The little audience listening to this first informal presentation of “The Rosary” was enthusiastic, but one of its members insisted it would be impossible for Rogers to memorize the song in time for the concert the following week. The guest bet Nevin a champagne supper for all present that the song would not be on Rogers’ program. He lost the bet. The following week, on February 15, 1898, Rogers introduced the song at the Madison Square Concert Hall.
The Water Scenes, suite for piano, op. 13 is remembered principally because one of its movements is “Narcissus,” often considered one of the most popular compositions ever written in this country. Nevin himself provided information about the origin of “Narcissus.” “I remembered vaguely that there was once a Grecian lad who had something to do with the water and who was called Narcissus. I rummaged about my old mythology and read the story over again. The theme, or rather both themes, came as I read. I went directly to my desk and wrote out the whole composition. Afterwards, I rewrote it and revised it a little. The next morning I sent it to my publishers. Until the proofs came back to me I never tried it on the piano. I left almost immediately for Europe and was surprised when a publisher wrote to me of the astonishing sale of the piece.” During Nevin’s lifetime, the piece sold over 125,000 copies of sheet music, and was heard throughout America both in its original piano version (a favorite repertory number of piano students and budding piano virtuosos) and in transcriptions. It went on to circle the globe. As Vance Thompson wrote: “It was thrummed and whistled half around the world. It was played in Cairo as in New York and Paris; it was played by orchestras, on church organs, and on the mouth harps of Klondike miners; it became a mode, almost a mania.”
The other movements of Water Scenes are: “Barcarolle,” “Dragon Fly,” “Water Nymph,” “At Twilight,” and “Ophelia.” Each is a sensitive piece of tone painting, as lyrical and as unashamedly sentimental as the beloved “Narcissus.”