HUNEKER: A CRITIC REMEMBERED

Ask any person in the street or any current tiller of the arts, “Who was James Gibbons Huneker?” and you are apt to draw a blank stare. But in his lifetime (1860-1921), Huneker was the most influential and widely read American critic, as highly regarded in Europe as he was in his own country.

Huneker’s principal love throughout his life was music, particularly the music of Chopin. He never gave up writing about music but he branched out early into theater, literature and the graphic arts. In all those fields he eventually became as influential as he was in music. In recent years we have seen music critics double in theater or ballet, but there has been no one of Huneker’s versatility and general authority.

Huneker was born in Philadelphia. He studied piano with local teachers and lived and studied in Paris for a number of years. His lifelong ambition was to play Chopin’s “Revolutionary” Etude, but by his own admission he never fully conquered it. Back in the United States, he taught at the National Conservatory in New York, where Antonin Dvorak was briefly (1892-93) the artistic director. There, too, Huneker cultivated the friendship of Rafael Joseffy, the famous Liszt pupil who had settled permanently in New York.

The association with Joseffy accounted for what is probably Huneker’s best-known writing: the series of introductions he wrote for each volume of Joseffy’s edition of Chopin, published by G. Schirmer. They contain the essence of Huneker’s poetic view of Chopin and must have opened the world of Chopin to countless piano students. Earlier, Huneker had written a biography of Chopin that is still the most perceptive of its kind, needing only a few minor corrections to incorporate the latest research.

Huneker’s journalistic connections were extensive. He started in the late 1880s and early 1890s with weekly columns in the musical magazines the Etude and the Musical Courier. The latter was titled the Raconteur and soon developed a large following for its discreet sprinkling of gossip.

It was not long before Huneker became a regular contributor to a long string of daily newspapers. He was music and drama critic for the New York Recorder (1891-95) and the Morning Advertiser (1895-97). He added art to his interest on the New York Sun (1900-12). From 1906 through part of 1907 he wrote a monthly review of books for the New York Times. He replaced Richard Aldrich as music critic on the New York Times, during the season 1918-19. After that, he became music critic for the New York World, a post he held until his widely mourned death.

All this time, Huneker was contributing heavily to magazines in New York, London, Paris and Vienna. He published a novel, “Painted Veils,” about the Bohemian life of artists in New York, and, such was his nature, must have been pleased when it aroused the ire of the censors.

Year in and out he churned out books of short pieces, sometimes original for the occasion, sometimes reworking of earlier publications in newspapers or magazines. Besides biographies of Chopin and Liszt (not to be compared with the work on Chopin), his books include such titles as “Mezzotints of Modern Music,” “The Pathos of Distance,” “Melomaniacs,” “Egoists,” “Ivory Apes and Peacocks,” and a two volume set of memoirs titled “Steeplejack.”

It is fashionable now to dismiss Huneker’s vivid prose as “purple,” but it is still informative and eminently readable. He could be witty, stringent, gentle, poetic, and dependably factual. He cultivated an allusive style that can at times be irritating, for Huneker was a monument of erudition who did not always bother to explain his references.

The best introduction to Huneker, perhaps the only important work concerning him, is Arnold T. Schwab’s “James Gibbons Huneker: Critic of the Seven Arts,” published by Stanford University Press in 1963 and still in print. After 20 years as professor of English at California State University, Long Beach, Schwab has taken early retirement to pursue his scholarly interests. He is a native of Los Angeles, graduated from UCLA in 1943, and won his doctorate at Harvard in 1950.

Now, after more than 35 years devoted to researching the life and times of Huneker, Schwab has come out with a massive new volume titled “Americans in the Arts, 1890-1920: Critiques by James Gibbons Huneker,” edited by Arnold T. Schwab (AMS Press, 673 pages; $57.50)

Nowadays, nationalism in music is virtually a dead issue. No longer do critics take interest in a performer solely because he is a Landsmann, or encourage composers to produce music that is recognizably native.

Contemporary American composers subscribe almost exclusively to the faceless international formulas ordained by Schoenberg, Berg and Webern, not to mention Boulez and Stockhausen. Nationalism is nowclassed with Romantic as a dirty word. The once sedulously cultivated school of American composition represented mainly by Copland, Harris, Barber and William Schuman is fast becoming only a nostalgic memory.

Huneker was never a chauvinist in any of the arts he espoused. But he gave the work of American creators and performers his consistently warm and caring attention.

Through years of patient research in musty newspaper and magazine files, Schwab has managed to collect impressive evidence of Huneker’s concern with American art and artists. From Huneker’s writing on music, Schwab has culled the critic’s comments on 29 composers, 17 performers, and 11 critics. In theater, he touches on 20 playwrights, 15 actors and actresses, and eight critics. In literature, Schwab quotes Huneker on 20 “fictionists” and 19 critics and essayists. In the graphic arts, he lists 138 painters, with lesser comment on etchers, engravers, sculptors, photographers and critics.

This could result in a dry and cyclopedic anthology, but Schwab’s format enhances the usefulness of the book and diminishes its inherent monotony. Before each entry he writes a brief italicized paragraph detailing the history and biography of the subject. Only rarely does he quote complete reviews; more often, the quotation consists of a well-chosen line or two.

Aside from the historical interest of the subject, the volume permits a close-up view of what and how Huneker wrote in the deadly daily round of reviewing. Such examples are nowhere in Huneker’s published volumes, and to have available such a comprehensive survey of Huneker’s activity in this field is a distinct asset. The book is a noteworthy effort, of value both for reference and entertainment, for Huneker was as skilled an entertainer as any of the people he wrote about.