III
In 1873 Anton Rubinstein, greatest of Russian pianists, accompanied by the violinist Wieniawski, came to America by invitation of Steinway and Sons. He dined at our house and expressed wonder that my father had not yet been able to achieve a position in New York commensurate with his reputation and capacity. My father explained to him how difficult the situation was and that the entire orchestral field was monopolized by Theodore Thomas. He told Rubinstein that when he had first arrived in New York he had met Thomas at the music store of Edward Schubert in Union Square and that after the introduction Thomas had said to him:
“I hear, Doctor Damrosch, that you are a very fine musician, but I want to tell you one thing: whoever crosses my path I crush.”
Thomas at that time really believed that America was not large enough to contain more than one orchestra, but he lived long enough to see my father surpass him at the head of a symphony orchestra, as founder of the first great music festival in New York and, above all, of opera in German at the Metropolitan.
In 1881 the first symphony orchestra on a permanent basis had been founded in Boston by Major Higginson, and before Thomas’s death there were half a dozen greatsubsidized orchestras actively operating in the United States, a number which has since then increased to twelve.
Rubinstein said to my father: “Why don’t you begin by founding an oratorio society, and that will lead to other things?”
My father consulted a few devoted friends, and the Oratorio Society of New York was accordingly founded in 1873 and began rehearsals in the Trinity Chapel with a chorus of about eighteen singers, my mother’s glorious voice leading the sopranos and my very humble and little self among the altos. The first performance took place in the warerooms of the Knabe Piano Company the following winter, at which time the chorus had increased to sixty singers. The programme was a remarkable one for that period, containing a capella chorus and accompanied choruses by Bach, Mozart, Handel, Palestrina, and Mendelssohn.
From this small beginning the society developed until it became the foremost representative of choral music in New York, performing, with a chorus of three hundred and fifty voices, under my father’s direction, the older oratorios of Handel, Haydn, and Mendelssohn, and such novelties as the first part of “Christus” by Liszt, the Berlioz “Requiem” and “Damnation of Faust,” the Brahms “Requiem,” Cowen’s “St. Ursula,” the choral finale from the first act of “Parsifal,” and the third act of “Meistersinger.”
Indirectly, but logically, the founding of the Oratorio Society led to the founding of the Symphony Society of New York in 1877, which at last gave my father an orchestra with which he could demonstrate his abilities as a symphonic conductor.
The differences between him and Thomas were verymarked. Thomas, who had educated himself entirely in America, had always striven for great cleanliness of execution, a metronomical accuracy and rigidity of tempo, and a strict and literal (and therefore rather mechanical) observance of the signs put down by the composers. America owed him a great debt of gratitude for the high quality of his programmes. My father had been educated in a more modern school of interpretation, and his readings were emotionally more intense. He was the first conductor in this country to make those fine and delicate gradations in tempo according to the inner demands of the music, gradations which are too subtle to be indicated by the composer’s signs, as that would lead to exaggerations, but which are now generally considered as necessary in order to bring out themelosof a work.
Both conductors had their violent partisans, and, as they were at that time literally the only orchestral conductors in America, feeling ran very high. My father was the last comer, and Thomas was well fortified in the field, with a group of wealthy men to support him. The first years for my father were very hard and a portion of the New York papers assailed him bitterly, continuously, and with vindictive enmity. Again and again dreams of murder would fill my boyish heart when I would read one of these attacks in the morning paper.
It was hard work to keep the two societies going and to enable them to meet the bills for hall rent, soloists, and orchestra. There was as yet but a small public for the higher forms of music, and again and again it looked as if further efforts would have to be abandoned. But my father persevered and struggled on, making a living for his family by teaching violin, composition, and singing, and occasionally getting a fee of “a hundred dollarsin gold” as violin soloist or in a chamber-music concert, officiating as musical director in a church and as conductor of the German male choral society, the Arion.
The first production of Symphony No. 1, in C minor, by Brahms became a subject of intense rivalry between the two conductors. Brahms had waited until his fortieth year before writing a symphony, and the work was eagerly awaited in New York, as the reports from Germany proved that it had made a sensation.
My father went to see old Gustav Schirmer at his store on Broadway and asked him whether the orchestral score of this work had yet arrived. Schirmer told him that it had, but that he was in honor bound to give it to Theodore Thomas as he had promised it to him. My father was very much chagrined to think that this prize should thus have escaped him, and he spoke of this very regretfully to a pupil of his in composition, Mrs. James Neilson, member of an aristocratic old family in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and a woman of great beauty and distinction. Mrs. Neilson said nothing to my father but quietly went down to Schirmer’s and inquired of the clerk whether the orchestral score of the Brahms symphony had arrived, and when he answered in the affirmative, she asked whether it was for sale. “Certainly,” answered the clerk.
She thereupon purchased a copy of the score and sent it up to my father with her compliments. His astonishment was intense, but she did not tell him until weeks afterward how she had obtained it.
He received the score on a Thursday and the first rehearsal for the next concert was to take place on the following Monday. This left but little time to obtain the necessary orchestral parts and Schirmer naturally wouldnot sell him any. He therefore cut the score into three parts and divided them among three copyists, who worked day and night and managed to have the parts ready in time for the rehearsal. Great was the triumph in the Damrosch camp at this victory over the Thomas forces.
Some years later I gave the first performances in New York of the Third and Fourth Brahms Symphonies, but I had no need to resort to strategem to obtain the scores and orchestral parts.
Orchestral conditions were bad compared with to-day. There was no such thing as a “permanent orchestra.” The musicians of the Symphony Society, for instance, played in six symphony concerts during the winter, each preceded by a public rehearsal. They also officiated at four concerts of the Oratorio Society, and this was almost the extent of their efforts in that direction. The rest of the time they made their living by teaching, playing in theatres, at dances, and some of them even at political or military processions and mass meetings. If a better “job” came along than the symphony concert they would simply send my father a substitute. Small wonder that occasionally their lips gave out and the first horn or trumpet would break on an important note during a symphony concert. And yet, in spite of this disheartening condition, my father succeeded in infusing the orchestral players with such emotional intensity, and in imparting so lofty an interpretation to them, that the audiences of that day were often roused to the greatest enthusiasm; and I would tuck my arm very proudly into his as we marched home from a concert, even though we knew that the subscription to the concert was not more than eight hundred dollars and the single sale at the box-office had not reached the hundred dollar mark.
But all this was changed like a flash in the year 1879 when my father decided to perform “The Damnation of Faust,” by Berlioz, until then unknown in America. This concert, which was held at Steinway Hall, in East 14th Street, necessitated the services of solo singers, the New York Symphony Orchestra, the chorus of the New York Oratorio Society and the male chorus of the Arion Society.
The work and the performance made a sensation. All New York buzzed with it, and during that winter, 1879, it was given five times in succession to crowded houses, creating an excitement such as New York had never before seen in the concert field.
I played in all these performances at the last stand of the second violins, as my father considered it of the utmost value to me as a future conductor to be able to follow the conductor’s beat as one of the orchestra.
IV
In the spring of 1878 Maurice Strakosch, an old concert manager, called on my father and asked him whether he would permit me to go on a Southern concert tour with the celebrated violinist, August Wilhelmj, who was then touring the country under Strakosch management. Mr. Max Liebling, his regular accompanist, had been taken ill and as both Wilhelmj and Strakosch knew that I had accompanied my father a great deal at home, they thought that I could acceptably fill the position at such short notice. I was naturally wild with delight at the idea and prevailed on my father to let me go. I was to receive the, for me, munificent salary of a hundred dollars a week and all my railway expenses.
We set forth the following Monday, the company consisting of Wilhelmj, a soprano singer whose name I have forgotten, and Teresa Carreno, who was then already a great pianist and certainly the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.
Wilhelmj, who was exceedingly lazy, refused even to rehearse with me. Our first concert was in Washington and I was to accompany him, among other things, in the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. I was naturally nervous about it, and to my delighted astonishment, on the afternoon of the concert, Carreno turned on Wilhelmj, reproaching him for not giving me a rehearsal and insisting that rather than put me to such an unfair strain, she would accompany him in the concerto herself. Thiswas a characteristic act of this remarkable artist and woman, and I shall speak more in detail about my immediate adoration for her in another chapter.
In Washington Baron von Schloetzer, the Prussian minister, who was an old friend of my father’s, received me very kindly, and, to my delight, included me in the dinner which he gave in honor of Wilhelmj and Carreno. He was an original and delightful old bachelor and wildly fond of music, although his only accomplishment in that line was a real talent for whistling, hispièce de résistancebeing the “Tannhäuser Overture,” in which he would whistle the “Pilgrim’s Chorus” and the fluttering accompanying violins seemingly at the same time.
At his dinner he treated me somewhat as an older man would a child, and would tell his butler to my great chagrin to only half fill my glass because I was too young to drink as much as the older people. He had several rare vintages of claret standing on the sideboard and some of these I was not allowed even to taste, all for the same reason.
After dinner both Wilhelmj and Carreno played and then the beautiful Mme. de Hagemann, American wife of the Swedish Minister, sang most delightfully. She has since written charming memoirs of her earlier diplomatic life abroad, especially of the Court of Napoleon the Third just before the Franco-Prussian War, entitled “Courts of Memory.”
From Washington we went farther and farther South and my young mind was tremendously impressed by its romantic atmosphere, the luxuriant tropical foliage and the lazy, cheerful life of the “niggers” swarming everywhere.
At Macon, Georgia, Wilhelmj and I stopped at an oldramshackle hotel in two rooms en suite. We did not wake up until about eleven o’clock the following morning, feeling very heavy and headachy, and on examination found our trunks rifled of whatever valuables they contained. We had evidently been chloroformed. A burly detective was engaged by Wilhelmj to take charge of the case, but of course nothing happened except that Wilhelmj and I purchased revolvers. His was very large and mine very small and this is about the only weapon that I ever acquired, and of course never used.
New Orleans was a real revelation. It was then still an absolutely French city. I was invited to dinner at several delightful Creole families and French was the language at table. The old Creole restaurants were at the height of their glory, and such delicious crabs, pompano, and shrimps I had never eaten before. Alas, their nice sanded floors have been replaced by dancing parquets, and noisy ragtime bands and wretched cooking are but poor substitutes for their past glories.
THE MUSIC FESTIVAL OF 1881
During the summer of 1880 my father conceived the idea of giving a monster music festival in May, 1881, which was to last a week and for which a chorus of one thousand two hundred, of which the Oratorio Society should be the nucleus, was to be trained in sections during the entire winter. He conferred with some of his friends, outlined his project to them, and a Music Festival Association composed of the directors of his Symphony and Oratorio Societies was formed. Other prominent New York citizens were added and a guarantee fund was provided, ample to protect the project financially.
Although I was only eighteen, my father deemed sufficiently advanced to intrust the drilling of a great portion of this chorus to me, a confidence of which I was very proud.
The entire summer of 1880 I spent in the little New England town of Amherst. A very remarkable Frenchman, Doctor Sauveur by name, had perfected a new system of teaching French and Latin, and Amherst College had turned its buildings over to him for a summer course. It seemed to my father and me that this was an excellent opportunity for me to acquire the rudiments of these two languages.
I accordingly arrived in Amherst armed with a grand piano, reams of music paper, and the orchestral score of the great Berlioz’s “Requiem,” which my father had selected as one of the works to be performed at the Festival. There was no piano score in existence and, to my joy, my father intrusted me with the task of making one from the original orchestral score.
I obtained a lovely bedroom from a farmer on the main street for the opulent price of two and a half dollars a week, and my grand piano was installed in the parlor, of which I had the entire use for four hours a day to practise. My meals I got at the principal little hotel for six dollars a week and when the genial proprietor saw me consuming my first dinner he said:
“Ef I had known you et that hearty I would have charged you more. I won’t make nothin’ out of you.”
The meals were certainly delicious, and at eighteen one’s capacity in that direction is unlimited.
When I arrived in May the college was still in session and I was made welcome by several of the students, among them Lawrence Abbott, now editor ofThe Outlook,and John Cotton Smith, now rector of St. John’s in Washington.
My days were certainly busy ones. In the morning I attended the sessions of Doctor Sauveur in French and Latin and in the afternoon I practised piano and worked hard at the arranging of the piano score of the Berlioz “Requiem.” Incidentally, I seemed to find plenty of time for games and fun of all kinds with a delightful family who had a country place there and where I got my first real glimpse of American country life, which is indeed unique and with which no other country can compare.
As fast as the different numbers of my arrangement of the Berlioz “Requiem” were finished, I sent them on to my father who, after revising them, gave them to the publisher in order to have the piano scores ready for the rehearsals in the fall. He was well pleased with my work, especially the “Tuba Mirum,” in which he thought that I had condensed quite cleverly the four orchestras which Berlioz intended placed at the four corners of the stage to represent the trumpets of the last judgment.
When I returned to New York in September, my father intrusted to me Section B of the New York Festival Chorus, numbering two hundred voices and the Newark Harmonic Society of Newark, New Jersey, numbering three hundred. He himself drilled the chorus of the Oratorio Society of four hundred at which I always played the piano accompaniments, and Mr. Cortada, an old pupil of my father’s, trained a section in Brooklyn and another in Nyack, New York. I hurled myself at my task with such vehemence and enthusiasm that by the time the Festival came along my choruses were letter-perfect, but I had become voiceless. My vocal cordshad quite gone back on me in justifiable anger at my abuse of them.
The choral works to be performed included the Berlioz “Requiem,” Rubinstein’s “Tower of Babel,” Handel’s “Messiah,” Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony,” and shorter selections. The monster chorus and orchestra numbered fifteen hundred, and a special stage and sounding-board were built at the Seventh Regiment Armory at which the Festival took place. The organ from St. Vincent’s Church was transferred bodily, and I was intrusted with the organ accompaniments. An enormous audience of ten thousand people attended every performance, and the public acclaimed my father with much enthusiasm as America’s greatest musician. Such happy, happy days!
Among the many memories of this great occasion I can never forget the first rehearsal of the four orchestras and sixteen kettledrums which Berlioz used in the “Tuba Mirum” to depict the Last Judgment. This rehearsal took place in the Foyer of the old Academy of Music in Fourteenth Street; and as the sixteen kettledrums came in like one man just as the fanfare of the judgment Trumpets begins, the effect of these vibrations in a comparatively small room was so tremendous that one by one the orchestra men arose and a murmur began which grew and grew and finally relieved itself in a loud shout of enthusiasm. It was several minutes before my father could continue the rehearsal. I have never witnessed anything quite like it since. We are now so sophisticated by Strauss and the later-day dissonancers that so-called instrumental “effects” neither shock nor stir us. And as regards the dissonances with which some of the ultramoderns seek to irritate our ears, I have always claimedthat the human ear is like the back of a donkey—if you whip it long enough and hard enough, it gradually becomes insensitive to pain.
Theodore Thomas and his supporters were much irritated that my father should have “gotten ahead” of them with so stupendous a musical demonstration, and they immediately proceeded to copy his idea by giving a Music Festival the following year in the same building.
For me, the immediate result of the Festival was my election at eighteen years of age as permanent conductor of the Newark Harmonic Society. This gave me the long-desired opportunity to produce choral works with orchestral accompaniment, and for several years I gave three or four of these every winter, including not only the older oratorios of Handel and Mendelssohn, but more modern works like Berlioz’s “Damnation of Faust,” Rubinstein’s “Tower of Babel,” the Verdi “Requiem,” and choral excerpts from the operas of Wagner. All of these concerts my father attended, and after each performance he would analyze my conducting, praise freely and enthusiastically where he thought I deserved it, and also show me where he considered a tempo wrong or an entrance of instruments or chorus not properly indicated. My mother and aunt would often lend their lovely voices in the choruses at the performances whenever I thought I needed them, but they would always insist in the most blindly partisan way that my concerts were wonderful and that I was altogether a very remarkable boy.
This year marked my real beginning as a professional musician, and I enjoyed my weekly rehearsals in Newark immensely, although horse-cars, ferry-boats, and trains made the trip in those days a cumbersome one. Butafter each rehearsal Mr. Schuyler Brinkerhoff Jackson, the president of the society, Mr. Shinkle, the secretary, my dear old friend Zach Belcher, enthusiastic tenor and music lover, Frank Sealey, my pianist and since then for so many years accompanist and organist of the New York Oratorio Society, used to go with me to a nice German beer saloon near the railroad station where, over a glass of beer and Swiss-cheese sandwiches, we waited until train time and discussed the welfare of the Harmonic Society and music in general. Alas, the Volstead Law has ended all such simple and happy foregatherings and the soda-water counter with its horrible concoctions is but a poor substitute for the gentle and soothing beer of Pilsen and Munich.
DOCTOR LEOPOLD DAMROSCH AND HIS SONWALTER AT EIGHTEEN YEARS OF AGE
DOCTOR LEOPOLD DAMROSCH AND HIS SONWALTER AT EIGHTEEN YEARS OF AGE
V
In the spring of 1882 I sailed for Europe. My father wanted me to know his old friend, Liszt, and to hear the first performances of “Parsifal” in Bayreuth. My throat was also still bothering me and the doctor thought that a cure at Ems would be a good thing.
I was naturally overwhelmed at the idea of seeing the great Liszt face to face. His name had been, ever since I could remember, a household word in our family. My father and mother had told me so much of his friendship for them, his genius and his triumphs as a piano virtuoso, and of his voluntary relinquishment of all this to devote himself exclusively to creative work, and toward helping the entire modern school of young composers. My father had kept up a desultory correspondence with Liszt during the years he had spent in America, and as soon as I arrived in Weimar I went to the little gardener’s cottage in which he lived to pay my respects to the old master. I entered his room in great trepidation, and when I managed to stutter a few words to tell him that I was the son of Doctor Leopold Damrosch, I was amazed at the kindness of his reception. He immediately spoke of my father and mother with such love that I forgot some of my timidity. He asked me about an opera on Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” which my father had composed in the old Weimar days but which he had subsequently destroyed as he was dissatisfied with it. He then asked me how long I expected to stay in Weimar. I said twodays and that I was then going to Ems for a cure and then to Bayreuth to hear the first “Parsifal” performances.
A curious change came over Liszt as I spoke. He repeated several times, “Two days, ha, yes, ‘Parsifal,’ of course, Bayreuth.—‘Parsifal,’ of course,” and then he picked up a box of cigars.
“Well, at least you’ll take a cigar before you leave Weimar?”
I said: “No, master, thank you very much, I do not smoke.”
“You should then go to-night to the theatre to hear the first performance of Calderon’s play ‘Above all Magic is Love,’ for which your father’s old friend Lassen has written the music and which he will conduct.”
I assured the master that I would certainly go, but sensing a certain frigidity in the air, and feeling that so unimportant a person as myself must not take any more time of the great Liszt, I withdrew.
That evening I went to the historic little theatre doubly hallowed by the productions and ministrations of Goethe, as well as the memorable times in the fifties when Liszt officiated there and conducted the first performances of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” in which my mother had sungOrtrude. The theatre was so small that you could almost see every person in it as in a drawing-room, and to my astonishment, in the first intermission, one of the servants of the theatre came to me and asked me if I were Herr Damrosch. When I answered in the affirmative he said that Kapellmeister Lassen wished to see me. I followed him to the stage and was immediately accosted by Lassen whom I had not met before, but of whom I knew, because he and my father had been close friends for many years.
He said: “What did you do to the master this morning?I came in just after you left and found him in tears. He said, ‘a young son of Damrosch called on me this morning, I thought of course he would stay here and study with me, but instead of that he told me he was only going to stay two days. The young generation have forgotten me completely. They think nothing of me and they have no respect for us older men of bygone days. Am I a hotel in which one takes a room for a night, then to pass on elsewhere?’ ”
Needless to say, I was overcome at such a dreadful development of a perfectly innocent remark of mine. I could not conceive it possible that so small a person as myself should have unwittingly brought about so tragic a result, and I implored Lassen to tell me how I could efface it. Lassen, seeing my unhappy state, advised me to go the next morning at eight o’clock to see Liszt again and to explain everything to him. I sat through the rest of the play but actually did not hear a word of it or a note of Lassen’s music; I was too occupied with my own misery. I did not sleep all night, but tossed about restlessly and at six arose and wandered about dismally until seven when a frowsy waiter in the dining-room of my hotel, the “Russische Erb Prinz” gave me a cup of coffee.
Punctually at eight o’clock I knocked at Liszt’s door and as I entered I saw this wonderful-looking old man with his splendid white hair and deep-set eyes, already at his work-table. As he saw me his eyebrows arched and said:
“What, still in Weimar?”
I came forward and tried to speak, suddenly burst into tears and then managed to stammer out my great admiration for him, how my father had always held him up as the ideal musician of our times, and how he must havemisunderstood my words of yesterday if he thought that I intended any lack of respect or reverence for such a man as he. As I reread this it seems quite articulate, but as I told it to Liszt it must have sounded very ridiculous, but nevertheless I suddenly felt his arms about me and a very gentle furtive kiss placed upon my forehead. He led me to a chair, sat down by me and began again to talk and reminisce about my father and mother. He then invited me to come that afternoon to his piano class and I left very much relieved at the outcome of my visit.
I then called on another old friend of my parents and also of Liszt’s, Fräulein von Schorn. I found at her house a friend of hers, Baron von Joukowski, a Russian painter of distinction and a highly interesting man, who had become very friendly with the Wagner family and who had designed the Hall of the Holy Grail for the “Parsifal” production at Bayreuth. When I told them of my experience with Liszt they explained to me that Liszt had grown very old, that he felt the modern musical world was forgetting him and that in choosing a sacred text like “Parsifal,” Wagner had been, so to speak, encroaching somewhat on his domain. Perhaps even a latent jealousy of Wagner’s all-usurping powers was slightly clouding a friendship and self-sacrifice which Liszt had so abundantly given to Wagner all his lifetime. They also told me that Liszt was now surrounded by a band of cormorants in the shape of ostensible piano students, many of whom had no real talent or ambition, but who virtually lived on the master’s incredible kindness, abusing it in every way and altogether making the Weimar of that day a travesty on former times.
Bülow confirmed this to me several years later and told me how he had once “cleaned out” Liszt’s rooms andbade this unsavory crowd never to return. Liszt had thanked him, but next morning they were all back again.
I attended the audition in Liszt’s rooms that afternoon and found that there was indeed a pitiful crowd of sycophants and incompetents assembled, but there were a few exceptions, notably young Eugene d’Albert who was then perhaps fifteen or sixteen years of age and who played wonderfully and to Liszt’s great satisfaction. There were a few others who, however, did not play on that afternoon. But another one who shall be nameless, sat down to play the Beethoven sonata in E flat, Op. 31, No. 3, and botched the introduction so horribly that Liszt gently pushed her off the chair and sat down himself saying, “This is the way it should be played,” and then the music seemed to just drop from his fingers onto the piano keys, and such a heavenly succession of sounds ravished my ear that I did not think it possible human hands could evoke it. He then said to her: “Now, try it again.” And she did, and, if anything, played even worse than before. Again Liszt played the opening phrases, and then, somewhat irritated, he said:
“So, blamieren Sie sich noch einmal.” (Now, make a fool of yourself again.) By that time to our relief she felt that both she and we had had enough.
After this I met Liszt several times and he always treated me with uniform cordiality, but every once in a while the memory of our first meeting would come to him and he would make some gently malicious remark, such as “Oh, here comes our young American; like lightning he flashes through the world!”
From Weimar I went to Ems and dutifully took the “cure” for five weeks, drinking the three glasses of the more or less miraculous waters while the band playedbefore breakfast, and watching little girls dressed in white smilingly presenting bouquets of bachelor’s-buttons, popularly supposed to be his favorite flower, to old Emperor William, who, accompanied by an adjutant or two, used to take the cure at Ems every summer.
To strangers like myself the place on the promenade at which the French Ambassador, Benedetti, had “insulted” the King of Prussia in 1870 was always pointed out, but this was many years before Bismarck’s famous and cynical confession that it had all been a put-up job by him in so altering the famous telegram relating to the King’s meeting with Benedetti that, according to Bismarck’s memoirs: “It will be known in Paris before midnight, and not only on account of its contents but also on account of the manner of its distribution, will have the effect of a red rag upon the Gallic Bull.”
Two summers ago, after an absence of thirty-eight years, I revisited Ems with my wife and daughters. We had motored from Paris to Coblenz on a visit to General Allen, then in command of our Army of Occupation in Coblenz, and from there to Ems was but a short motor ride. We found the town occupied by French troops from Morocco, and our officer guides pointed out with some amusement the stone which marks the place where Benedetti and King William had met in 1870.
In July I went to Bayreuth in high expectation, to hear the first four performances of Wagner’s “Parsifal.” To a young musician from America such an experience was especially new and exciting. I arrived there a week or two before the first performance, hoping to gain admission to some of the rehearsals. I found this impossible, but I met scores of artists by whom I was cordially received because I was my father’s son. Many of his oldfriends were there for the “Parsifal” performances and I remember with much pleasure the kindly, refined and gentle Herman Levi, General Music Director of the Munich Opera, who had been chosen by Wagner to conduct the Bayreuth performances.
I received an invitation for the first reception held by Wagner and his wife, Cosima, at Wahnfried and dutifully presented myself there with some nervousness, which was allayed somewhat when I found Liszt almost at the door as I came in. He immediately recognized me and not only introduced me to Cosima, but when she said, “Father, you must introduce this son of our old friend, Doctor Leopold Damrosch, to the Meister,” he took me into Wagner’s workroom where I beheld Wagner surrounded by musicians and in front of him the giant tenor, Albert Niemann, well known later on to Wagner lovers in America as a member of the German company at the Metropolitan for a number of years, and also as the creator ofTannhäuserin Paris at the tragic and disastrous performances of 1861.
As we came in, Wagner was joking Niemann unmercifully, saying:
“Look at this man! I invited him to create the part ofParsifalfor me and he refused because I told him thatParsifalmust be a beardless youth and he said he would not cut off his beard for any man.”
“Why, Meister,” answered Niemann, “you know that is not true; I would cut off my nose if it were necessary to sing one of your rôles properly.”
Wagner greeted me with kindness, asked about my father, and a few days later sent me, through his publishers, for my father, a manuscript copy of the finale from the first act of “Parsifal” (no orchestral score wasat that time engraved) for performance in New York by the Symphony and Oratorio Societies. This was a remarkable act of friendship on his part and I was very proud to be able to carry the precious score back to my father.
It was to me indescribably touching to note the way in which Liszt sought to efface himself at Wagner’s house, in order that Wagner’s glory should stand forth alone. When I first saw Liszt there I, following the custom of the young musicians at Weimar and elsewhere, sought his hand in order to kiss it; but, with a force incredible in so old a man, he pressed down my hand, saying with his gentle smile: “No, no, not here.”
I doubt whether there ever was a musician who worked so incessantly for the benefit of other musicians as he. He was constantly seeking, either with his ten magic fingers as pianist or with his pen as musical critic or propagandist, or with his own money, to save others from want or to help them to obtain the recognition which he thought they deserved. It is impossible to name the hundreds whom he thus benefited—Berlioz, Saint-Saëns, César Franck, Schumann, Cornelius, and so on, and of course above all Wagner himself, whose friendship with Liszt has become historic. Like most friendships, the one gives much more than he receives, and that one was Liszt, who, in his admiration for Wagner’s genius minimized himself and what he had accomplished as composer to an exaggerated degree. In those personal qualities that make up a man’s character, Liszt was infinitely the superior. Wagner’s genius as a musician was the greater, but this brought in its trail an overwhelming egotism and a vanity which made many of his relations with his fellow men unfortunate. Liszt gave up all worldly glories and honorsand riches which he might have acquired if he had continued his career as perhaps the greatest piano virtuoso that ever lived, in order to devote himself absolutely to composition and musical propaganda, without any thought of pecuniary rewards. He literally, like his patron saint, Francis of Assisi, took the vows of poverty. When I saw him he lived in most simple fashion, always travelled “second class” and gave what little money he had to others who seemed to him to need it more. Without his never-ceasing support and encouragement, his absolute faith in the eventual triumph of Wagner’s music, and without continual financial support from Liszt and from those he constantly urged to help, Wagner could never have carried on his struggle toward the triumphant completion of a Bayreuth and an almost complete realization of his ideals.
The first performance of “Parsifal” made a tremendous impression on me. I was much moved by the noble allegory and the music accompanying the sacred rituals of the Christian Church as presented upon the stage in the scene during the uncovering of the Holy Grail. But I must confess that with each succeeding performance this feeling lessened. The fact that it was not a devotional ceremony but an imitation of one which had been carefully drilled and trained into the performers whose gestures of devotion repeated themselves each time with automatic regularity, gradually began to affect me disagreeably. I was at that time too young to analyze this feeling properly, but, as the years went by, I gradually arrived at the belief that such ceremonials should not be presented on a stage, for if we see a group of Christian Knights partaking of the Lord’s Supper, we should have the full conviction that it is a real ceremony and not animitation. The foot-washing scene betweenParsifalandKundryalso affected me disagreeably. It was too direct an imitation of Magdalen washing the feet of Christ. On the other hand, the Good Friday scene betweenParsifalandGurnemanzmoved me and many others in the audience to tears because it was a lovely and lovable presentation of the divine mercy through the self-sacrifice of the Saviour. Old Scaria, the Vienna bass, who took the part ofGurnemanz, sang and acted this scene with convincing tenderness.
I was naturally much interested in the invisible, subterranean orchestra of the Bayreuth auditorium, and as the first noble theme of the prelude literally floated into the darkened hall, the great advantage of an invisible conductor was manifest. The division of the music into bars, which are an essential of the conductor’s beat, should be seen only by the orchestra, and I still wish it were possible to educate the public to listen to music with their ears only and not with their eyes. But this theory of mine would find violent opposition from the small but select company of “prima donna conductors” who, at that parting of the ways which comes to every conductor, whether he shall make himself an interpreter of the composers’ works or a perverter in order to demonstrate his own “tricks of the trade,” have chosen the primrose path because a large part of the public are easily gulled and more easily moved if the conductor “dramatizes” the music through his gestures. By the skilful manipulation of his arms and hands, his hips and his hair, he gives the impression that when the ’cellos play a soulful melody, it really drips from his wrists, and when the kettledrums play a dramatic roll it is really the result of a flash of his eye. There are many people, especiallyamong the gentle sex, to whom admiration for one conductor entails a deep hatred of all others. It would be interesting to note how many of them could pick out their favorite if half a dozen of the prima donnas of the baton were to perform invisibly with an invisible orchestra in quick succession to each other.
The strings of the Bayreuth orchestra were noble and rich in tone, but I was disturbed by many inaccuracies and false intonations of the wind choir, which surprised me all the more as the orchestra was supposed to be composed of the best of every kind from the different opera-houses of Germany. These faults were not noticed or acknowledged by my German friends, and I think that the years have brought more and more of a cleavage in this respect between their orchestras and ours, and that to-day American orchestras obtain, especially in the wind-instrument choirs, greater purity of tone and, without sacrificing elasticity, a greater precision of ensemble.
I have always had a penchant for French wood-wind players and have given them and their Belgian cousins a preference in my orchestra. Generally speaking, a conductor can safely engage a first prize from the Paris Conservatoire in flute, oboe, or bassoon without giving him any further examination.
Where else can one find a flute of such ravishing tone quality as that of George Barrère, who has been first flute of the New York Symphony Orchestra for seventeen years and who was first recommended to me by his great teacher, Tafanel, in Paris? I am happy to say that he is developing many American players and giving to them something of his own luscious and spiritual tone quality, so that he, as well as Mathieu, our first oboe, andLettelier, bassoon, are continuing the great traditions of the Paris Conservatoire in this country and imparting their qualities to a group of young American pupils. Germany has produced some great clarinet players, of whom Muhlfeld, for whom Brahms wrote his beautiful “Quintet for Clarinet and Strings,” was a fine example. Mr. Lindemann, first clarinet of my orchestra, is another, and his tone is of a peculiarly pure quality. I prefer the tone of the German trombonists to that of their French colleagues. The Germans cultivate a darker and more noble tone quality.
The summer of 1886 I returned again to Germany. I had been invited to conduct some selections from “Sulamith,” a cantata of my father’s, at the annual meeting of the “Ton-künstler-Verein” which took place at the beautiful Thuringian hill town of Sondershausen, the residence of the princely house of Schwartzburg-Sondershausen, where the prince maintained a good permanent symphony orchestra.
Liszt, as venerable founder and president of the Ton-künstler-Verein, an association of musicians the original purpose of which was the production and cultivation of the modern school of composition, again received me very kindly and expressed himself as much pleased at hearing my father’s work.
At the close of the Festival I accompanied him, together with Baron Joukowski and Fräulein von Schorn, back to Weimar. During the trip Liszt was in a very gay mood and kept us in gales of laughter with a number of outrageous puns and amusing comments on certain phases of the Festival, especially on a long debate between Doctor Rieman, an eminent musical theorist, and another man whose name I have forgotten, on certain theoriesregarding the science of harmony. This debate, which was wholly technical and very “gründlich” lasted for two hours, during which poor Liszt had to sit in the front row in a room crowded to suffocation and with not a door or window open. I can still see the venerable head of Liszt drooping and dropping every now and then from sheer fatigue, and then the Meister raising it again with that ineffable smile on his face in order to show an interest in the discussion.
When we arrived in Weimar, Joukowski invited us all, together with Lassen, to dinner at the Hotel “Zum Russischen Hof.” It was a jolly affair. Champagne was served immediately after the soup and Liszt reminisced so brilliantly and beautifully of the old Weimar days of which Fräulein von Schorn and Lassen had been a part and with which I, too, could claim some connection through my parents, that we all sat spellbound.
During the dinner Liszt asked me if I knew anything of a portrait of his which had been painted under interesting conditions many years before. Liszt occupied rooms at the old Villa d’Este at Tivoli, near Rome, for a month or two every winter. It then belonged to his old friend, Cardinal Prince Hohenlohe. One evening his bell rang, and as his servant had gone out, Liszt took a candle and opened the door. His visitors were Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the American poet, who had brought a painter friend, Mr. Healy, to introduce to the maestro. Longfellow was so struck with the picturesque appearance of Liszt as he stood in the old doorway in his long black soutane, holding a lighted candle, that he asked Liszt for permission to have Healy paint a picture of him, and he consequently gave Healy several sittings. Longfellow took the painting back with him to America.
I had never heard of or seen this picture, but thirty years later, when Ernest Longfellow, a nephew of the poet, was lunching at our house I remembered the incident and asked him if he knew anything of the whereabouts of the picture. He told me that he remembered it very well and that it was still hanging in his uncle’s house in Cambridge. Through the courtesy of the present occupants I was permitted to take a photograph of it and it is reproduced in this book.
It was not until midnight that we accompanied Liszt through the park and the lovely Goethe Garden back to his house. It was a gentle summer night with a hazy moon giving an indescribable glamour to the trees and bushes, and suddenly Liszt laid his hand on my shoulder and said “Listen!”
From the bushes came the song of a nightingale. I had never heard one before and stood spellbound. It seemed incredible that such ecstatic sweetness, such songs of joy and sorrow, could come from the throat of a little bird, and to hear it all at twenty-four years of age and standing at the side of Liszt! Dear reader, I confess that to-day, thirty-five years later, I still thrill at the memory of it.
Alas! That was almost the last time that I saw Liszt. In July I went again to Bayreuth to hear the first “Tristan” performance, and one morning I met him, looking very old and worn, coming all alone out of the church from early mass. A few days later, July 31, he had followed his dearest friend, Wagner, into the beyond.
The following winter, in Liszt’s memory (March 3, 1887), I gave the first complete performance in America of his oratorio, “Christus.” This work made so profound an impression that I repeated it the following year.
I am sorry that “Christus” has not been performedsince then by our choral societies, as I consider it to be Liszt’s greatest work. Many of its themes are based on the Gregorian modes. The choruses are set in sonorous harmonies and breathe a tranquillity which can only be achieved by a perfect mastery of the subject and the form in which it is treated. There are two orchestral numbers—a Pastorale, indicative of the shepherds and the annunciation, “Angelus Domini ad Pastores ait,” and the March of the Three Kings, “Et ecce Stella quam Viderant”—which are brilliantly orchestrated. The march depicts the three kings of the Orient with their mighty retinue, the star guiding them to the manger in Bethlehem being indicated by a sustained high A flat in the first violins in an organ point around which the processional continues. The trio, or middle part, in a beautiful unison of the violins and violoncellos, depicts the kings opening their treasures and presenting gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the little Jesu.
The entrance of Christ into Jerusalem is characterized by an atmosphere of exalted, joyous acclaim, and the setting for baritone of the prayer of Jesus,