Page:Czecho-Slovak Student Life, Volume 18.djvu/443
of Friml at the time his “Auf Japan” was produced in the Dresden Royal Opera in 1903. The Ballet master, a Czech and a friend of Friml, now with the Metropolitan Opera Company of New York, said one night to Friml: “To-morrow we go to the opera where you will play your manuscript for the director and officials, all of whom are eagerly anticipating it.” Friml at once realized that there was no manuscript and that he had never so much as given it a thought when so many things were to be done in art loving Dresden. “You must go”, insisted the Ballet master, “write something tonight, your contract calls for it.” “How can I?” ejaculated Friml, “I have an ulcerated tooth.” However, the powers that be must be respected, and thus on the following day Friml appeared before the committee, smiling blandly, to announce that he had not yet completed the manuscript. Then seating himself at the piano, he began to improvise the overture. “Fein! Ausgezeichnet! Famós!” came from the committee in glee. Scene followed scene, the words of which Friml had never seen before, but he proceeded through the entire work improvising the music to order and to the decided pleasure of the committee. The following week he brought the manuscript to the musical director, who carefully went over the work and said, “the music is lovely; but somehow it seems a little different from what you played last week”. “Yes”, remarked Friml, “I made a few changes”.
He needs no peculiar setting to help him compose, for many of his compositions have had their inception on a train going sixty miles an hour: yet he finds that ideas come to him better and faster at two o’clock in the morning than at any other time, and this is easy to analyze, for, as he himself says: “Then everything is quiet. There are no street rumbles, no callers, no telephone. It is the only time one can get solitude in the great metropolis. I have no place to go at that hour unless I want to go to bed. My mind is clear. Give me a clean sheaf of music paper and a piano and I am gloriously happy . . . Often in the middle of the night I play for hours in a room entirely without light. The neighbors? Oh, they couldn’t mind, because I have a detached home on Riverside Drive, where I can play without disturbing them.”
Many of his greatest song hits have been composed at this time of the night. While bathing at the seashore, Friml invariably carries along a notebook and pencil, which he hides in the sand that he might have it on hand to jot down sketches that never fail to come to him at the ocean-side, for according to him: “A good musical idea is a practical asset. I have long since learned to value them and I endeavor never to let one escape. They are likely to vanish like the diamond dew on the cobweb, unless they are caught in the trap of staff, clefs, bars and notes”.
Friml is most widely known in America as a composer of comic opera and musical comedy scores, though there is still quite another type of clientele to which he is very familiar through his many and interesting compositions for the piano alone, which, being of a refined character, are most valuable for teaching purposes. Few people also know of his ability as a composer of music of an entirely serious nature.
In our estimation the following piano compositions of Friml may be rated among his best: opus 32 (Awakening of Spring), op. 33 (Poetic Song), op. 34 (Sentimental Romance), op. 35 (Suite Mignonne), op. 36 (three compositions), opus 55 (three concert compositions), opus 56 (Bolero and the Gondolier), opus 57 (California, six numbers), opus 60 (Fantastic Etude), opus 61 (four compositions) and Songs of Záviš.
His success as a composer is so well established and so outstanding that little is made of his art as a piano virtuoso; playing Chopin is for him a jollity, while giving recitals is just another mode or channel through which he can give expression to his great musical talent.