James Huneker
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
music writer and critic.
Huneker was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
. He studied piano in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
under Leopold Doutreleau and audited the Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
piano class of Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....
's pupil Georges Mathias
Georges Mathias
Georges Amédée Saint-Clair Mathias was a French composer, pianist and teacher.Mathias was born in Paris. He studied at the Paris Conservatory with François Bazin, Auguste Barbereau, Augustin Savard and Fromental Halévy, composition with Friedrich Kalkbrenner and piano with Frédéric Chopin. He was...
. He came to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in 1885 and remained there until his death. In the USA he studied with Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
's student Rafael Joseffy
Rafael Joseffy
Rafael Joseffy was a Hungarian pianist and composer.-Life:Raael Joseffy was born in Hunfalu in 1852. His youth was spent in Miskolcz , and there, at the age of 8, he began his study of the piano. He studied in Budapest with Friedrich Brauer, the teacher of Stephen Heller...
, who became his friend and mentor.
Huneker wrote the analysis and commentary on the complete works of Chopin for Schirmer's
G. Schirmer
G. Schirmer Inc. is an American classical music publishing company based in New York City, founded in 1861. It publishes sheet music for sale and rental, and represents some well-known European music publishers in North America, such as the Italian Ricordi, Music Sales Affiliates ChesterNovello,...
music publishing company. His analysis of all the piano solo works of Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene...
, written shortly after that composer's complete works were published after his death, is highly regarded.
He was the music editor of the Musical Courier
Musical Courier
The Musical Courier was a 19th and 20th century American music trade publication which began publication in 1880 and became noted as preeminent in its field....
and for two years was music editor of the New York paper The Sun, and a frequent contributor to the leading magazines and reviews.
His books include:
- Mezzotints in Modern Music (1899)
- ChopinFrédéric ChopinFrédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....
: The Man and His Music (1900) - Melomaniacs (1902)
- Overtones (1904)
- IconoclastsIconoclasmIconoclasm is the deliberate destruction of religious icons and other symbols or monuments, usually with religious or political motives. It is a frequent component of major political or religious changes...
(1905) - Visionaries (1905)
- Egoists: A Book of Supermen (1909)
- Promenades of an Impressionist (1910)
- Franz LisztFranz LisztFranz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
(1911) - The Pathos of Distance (1913)
- Old Fogy (1913)
- Ivory, Apes, and Peacocks (New York, 1915)
- New Cosmopolis (1915)
- Unicorns (1917)
- Bedouins (1920)
- SteeplejackSteeplejackA steeplejack is a craftsman who scales buildings, chimneys and church steeples to carry out repairs or maintenance.Britain's most famous steeplejack was Fred Dibnah, who became a television presenter and minor celebrity as a result of his craft....
(1921) - Variations (1921)
- Painted Veils (1930)
Huneker is mostly remembered now for his music criticism. He was a music critic who familiarized Americans
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
with then modern Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an artistic movements and wrote in a highly subjective style, full of metaphorical descriptions.
Huneker was equally proficient in his knowledge of art and literature, and was one of the first to write of Gauguin
Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...
, Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
, Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
, Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
, France
Anatole France
Anatole France , born François-Anatole Thibault, , was a French poet, journalist, and novelist. He was born in Paris, and died in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire. He was a successful novelist, with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters...
, van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
, and George Moore
George Moore (novelist)
George Augustus Moore was an Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist. Moore came from a Roman Catholic landed family who lived at Moore Hall in Carra, County Mayo. He originally wanted to be a painter, and studied art in Paris during the 1870s...
.
Vance Thompson
Vance Thompson was an American literary critic, novelist and poet. The son of a Pittsburgh pastor, he was educated at Princeton University and graduated in 1883. He later studied in Germany, and worked as a dramatic critic in New York City from 1890 to 1897...
. While this was a remarkable magazine in many ways, its written content and its illustrations occasionally express the casual anti-Semitism of the period, but these could not have been written by Huneker (most likely they flowed from Thomson's pen), for Huneker was well known for espousing the opposite view, that the Jews were perhaps the most talented race in the world. The most authoritative reference on Huneker is the 1963 biography by Arnold T. Schwab, James Gibbons Huneker Critic of the Seven Arts published by Stanford University.
Following Huneker's comment in reference to Chopin's Études
Études (Chopin)
The Études by Frédéric Chopin are three sets of solo studies for the piano, There are twenty-seven overall, comprising two separate collections of twelve, numbered Opus 10 and 25, and a set of three without opus number.-Composition:...
that "Small souled men, no matter how agile their fingers, should avoid [them]," Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Richard Hofstadter is an American academic whose research focuses on consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics...
, in his book I Am a Strange Loop
I Am a Strange Loop
I Am a Strange Loop is a 2007 book by Douglas Hofstadter, examining in depth the concept of a strange loop originally developed in his 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach....
, named the unit by which "soul size" is measured the huneker (lower case).