CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS AND WALTER DAMROSCHFrom a snapshot taken in Paris at the wedding reception of Gretchen Damrosch, July 17, 1920
CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS AND WALTER DAMROSCHFrom a snapshot taken in Paris at the wedding reception of Gretchen Damrosch, July 17, 1920
XII
“At last!” my readers will exclaim. “All these reminiscences about musicians are well enough, but it is their love-affairs that we are interested in. Think of Beethoven and the Countess Giucciardi, of Berlioz and Miss Smithson, of Liszt and the Countess d’Agoult, of Wagner and Madame Wesendonck. Musicians are so romantic, so different from ordinary men. They wear their hair longer; they affect delightful eccentricities of conduct and of clothes; the ordinary humdrum of life does not touch them, and they live only in the higher and rarer atmosphere of art and poetry.” Therefore woman, who is so much more spiritual than man, sometimes thinks in her unguarded moments that true happiness can only be found by falling in love with an artist or, better still, having him fall in love with her.
Without venturing to place myself in the same category as the great musicians mentioned above, I nevertheless propose in this chapter to give a full and detailed account of all my love-affairs—all, or at least of as many as can be crowded into the confines of a chapter. I have lived a great many years and my life, like that of other artists, has been full to the brim of all kinds of interesting and fascinating happenings, and in order that my readers may gain a true picture I shall begin at the very beginning, promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Terrible as it may seem, I have to confess at the outsetthat I began my life as a gayLotharioat the tender age of eight. My family were then living in Breslau, Silesia, and the rear of the house in which our apartment was situated opened on a large courtyard, upon which several other houses faced. This courtyard naturally became the playground of all the children who lived around it. We were particularly intimate with one family, the children of which consisted of an elder brother, already in the university, who affected the appearance and manner of the great German poet, Friedrich Schiller. He was supposed to have great poetical talents, and it was darkly rumored that he had already written two tragedies. I was greatly in awe of him, but his younger brother, who was a boy of my own age, was my classmate in school—the gymnasium, as it was called. And then there was a sister, little Lorchen, seven years of age, with blue eyes and many blond curls. I had played with her and her brother for several months before I suddenly discovered that her curls were beautiful, like spun gold, and that there was something particularly ingratiating in the blue of her eyes. I had an intense desire to put my arms around her, but, strange to say, the consciousness of this filled me with such anger that instead of giving way to it I took the first opportunity to slap this darling little child most unmercifully. To this day I cannot explain my unnatural depravity, and I wish that I could now—over fifty years later—meet little Lorchen again to tell her that this slap was my only way of letting her know how much I loved her. Alas, she never knew, and as we emigrated to America soon thereafter, I never had the time nor the opportunity to overcome my shyness and to place my love at her feet in proper fashion.
I cannot remember any new passions from then onuntil my sixteenth year. Lorchen’s picture soon and completely faded from my memory. I was tremendously taken up, first with learning English, New York school life, my musical studies, playing marbles, flying kites, and building ships to sail on the pond in Central Park. But when I was fifteen a little Frenchman came to New York and presented himself to my father with his two little daughters, Louise and Jeanne, who were both pianist prodigies. Louise was fifteen and little Jeanne only twelve. The latter was truly remarkable, and her playing made quite a stir in New York at the time. But I was singularly drawn toward the older sister, Louise. Their mother had died when the children were very young and Louise had quite taken the mother’s place and watched over Jeanne with a maternal solicitude and tenderness truly remarkable in so young a girl. She played exquisitely herself, and I can still hear the velvety touch of her fingers in the A Flat Etude of Chopin, but in her adoration for her younger sister’s more brilliant talent she completely effaced herself, and it was only with difficulty that one could get her to play if her sister was present. They lived in a little French boarding-house and I used to love to go there in the evening, and while Jeanne would play for us in most brilliant fashion Louise would sit at a table in the centre of the room and, under the mellow light of a centre lamp, would darn stockings or deftly refashion some dress which Jeanne was to wear at her next concert. Louise had the gentlest of brown eyes, and her face and bearing breathed a tranquillity and sweetness rarely found in the agitating nervous life of to-day. She was not talkative, but when she spoke her eyes would smile and crinkle up in very ingratiating fashion.
I had certainly outgrown the slapping age, but had not yet developed the courage to declare my adoration. I seem to have been quite content to sit next to Louise, and to look into her gentle eyes, or watch her deft fingers as they pleated and sewed and did all those clever things which women’s fingers alone know how to do. That spring, alas, the father and his daughters returned to France and I have never seen them again.
But so inconstant is youth that the following year I fell madly in love with Madame Teresa Carreno, of whom I have already written in an earlier chapter. I was sixteen and she was twenty-four, radiantly beautiful, brilliantly educated, and a remarkable linguist, speaking English, German, French, Spanish, and Italian with equal fluency. But for me her eyes spoke a language even more eloquent than her tongue, and it was small wonder that I was bowled over completely. On my first concert tour, her beauty, her exquisite playing, and the languorous half-tropical charms of the South through which we were touring was a combination I could not withstand.
But my schoolboy adoration received a severe shock when, on the last day of our tour, a handsome and very robust Italian barytone, by the name of Tagliapietra, came to meet her and I found that she was madly in love with him. They were married a short time after.
She, too, seems to have been unconscious of my adoration. Thirty-two years later, at a dinner given at the Hotel Plaza in honor of my twenty-fifth anniversary as a conductor, she was present and in my speech of thanks I humorously referred to her as thegrande passionof my early youth. She afterward told my sister: “I never knew that Walter had felt like that about me!”
To proceed with my confessions. The following yearI met—but, alas, this chapter is already overcrowded and I shall have to continue the (to me) so fascinating recital of my various romances in my next book of memoirs, which I expect to publish in about twenty years.
XIII
My father had always considered that a study of the oratorios of Bach and Handel was a highly important foundation for the young musician, and I had spent many hours with him in studying their scores and imitating their form in my own counterpointal work. Bach’s “St. Matthew’s Passion” and Handel’s “Messiah,” “Samson,” and “Judas Maccabæus” I knew virtually by heart. My father also believed the development of amateur choruses to be a very strong factor in the musical growth of a people. Under his inspiration the chorus of the Oratorio Society constantly grew in numbers and technical proficiency; but it suffered from the great dearth of men singers, especially tenors. The terribly one-sided condition of musical development in our country, proceeding almost exclusively on feminine lines, showed itself markedly in this branch of the art. Many of the men singers who in one way or another had been cajoled or coerced into joining a choral society, had often to be drilled in their parts like children, though without a child’s quickness of perception. The result was that the labor of training was incessant and the mistakes of one year repeated themselves inevitably the next. In rehearsing such oratorios as Handel’s “Messiah” or Bach’s “St. Matthew’s Passion,” for instance, a good routined conductor could always prophesy beforehand what mistakes the chorus was going to make.
During my father’s time the sopranos in the OratorioSociety were of overwhelming power and quality; but this was largely because my mother, when we came to America, gave up all solo singing in public and devoted herself enthusiastically to leading the soprano choir. Her voice was phenomenal in its strength and quality, and when, as in some fugal chorus of Handel’s, the sopranos finally enter on the main theme, her triumphant voice would carry everything along with it. She always sang by heart, her beautiful, deep-set eyes fixed on the conductor, and when this conductor happened to be her own husband or son there was a devotion and a love in them that I can never forget.
To maintain a choral society in a huge city like New York is doubly difficult because of the many temptations and distractions that beset its members in so large a metropolis and threaten the regular attendance at rehearsals. I have always felt, therefore, that the many splendid performances which the society has given, in its long existence of forty-nine years, are especially to its credit. The rehearsals with these amateur singers, however, demand from the conductor ten times the energy, patience, and vitality that are necessary with an orchestra composed of trained professionals. And yet there is a charm in working with devoted amateurs. My father loved it, and even during the harassing labors of founding and maintaining the German opera at the Metropolitan, he always turned to the regular Thursday-evening chorus rehearsals of the Oratorio Society as a change and rest. I confess that I have similarly enjoyed the almost primitive study necessary with an amateur chorus after a day spent with my orchestra, and I look back with the deepest pleasure on the many years during which I conducted the Oratorio Society.
Smaller cities should be able to develop choral societies far more easily than New York. Toronto, Canada, has always been an example of what can be accomplished in that direction. There are four choral societies of high merit there, among which perhaps the Mendelssohn Choir, founded by Doctor Vogt, ranks highest. The English have an inherited love and talent for choral singing, and in Toronto the weekly rehearsal is the one “dissipation” of the week, and is eagerly looked forward to by the singers. I have heard the Mendelssohn Choir repeatedly on their visits to New York and have been thrilled by the beauty and volume of their tone and the precision of their singing.
I have written elsewhere of the great musical festival which was projected and conducted by my father in May, 1881. For the great chorus of twelve hundred, which was its outstanding feature, the four hundred singers of the Oratorio Society formed the backbone, and I was intrusted with the drilling of two other sections of the festival chorus. As I had been the accompanist and organist for years at all the rehearsals of the Oratorio Society and had officiated as conductor of the Newark Harmonic Society for three years after the festival, I was technically well equipped to take over the directorship of the Oratorio Society when it was offered to me after my father’s death in 1885.
I conducted the last concert of that season, Bach’s “St. Matthew’s Passion,” and found that the affection and reverence which the chorus cherished for my father made them help me devotedly in my difficult beginning.
For the following season I cast about to find a new work to mark my entry into this field, and decided that a concert performance of Wagner’s “Parsifal” would interestthe New York public. The sacred character of the work, the importance and beauty of its choral portions, and the fact that as yet its music was almost unknown seemed to me to invite such a performance, even though Wagner had conceived it for dramatic representation and with a stage-setting. He had intended the work for performance only in Bayreuth, but in 1882, when it was first produced there, he himself had given me an orchestral score in manuscript of the choral Finale from the first act to present to my father, so that he might produce it in concert form in New York.
During a visit to London in the spring of 1886 I called on the London representative of the publishers of “Parsifal” and asked whether an orchestral score of the complete work could be purchased. He told me it could, but that its purchase would not entitle me to a performance of the work, and that if I used it for a performance I would have to pay a fine of fifty pounds. I told him I was quite ready to pay such a fine as I wanted it for a concert performance in New York, and promptly bought an orchestral score and had the orchestral parts copied from it.
Owing to my connection with the Metropolitan Opera House I was able to give the work an exceptional cast.Kundrywas sung by Marianne Brandt, who had sung it in Bayreuth at one of the first performances. Max Alvary was cast for the title rôle, and Emil Fischer forGurnemanz. Alvary became ill shortly before the performance and his part was taken by another young tenor of our company, a Mr. Kraemer. The choral portions were sung by the Oratorio Society with thrilling effect.
This was the first performance of “Parsifal” outside ofBayreuth, and it made a sensation but also aroused quite a controversy in the newspapers as to its fitness for the concert room. Good and weighty arguments can be produced on both sides. At a performance in concert a great deal is lost to many people, especially to those whose imagination cannot function without the stimulus of scenery, costumes, and dramatic action; but at that time this was the only opportunity for American music lovers, who could not make the long trip to Bayreuth, to become acquainted with the music. To many listeners the choral portions, especially those centring in the religious ceremonies in the Hall of the Holy Grail, were just as impressive, if not more so, than in a scenic representation. To-day, and generally speaking, I would rather hear the music from “Parsifal” with my eyes closed. My imagination, stimulated by the music, can paint the scenic and dramatic investiture far more idealistically than any actual stage representation, but I do not claim this as a truth for all, but only as my individual preference.
We gave two concert performances at the Metropolitan Opera House (public rehearsal and concert), and over three thousand people listened with rapt attention at each rendition.
Years after, in 1903, when the then director of opera at the Metropolitan, Heinrich Conried, announced his intention of giving a stage performance of “Parsifal,” I received a letter from Madame Cosima Wagner, saying that she had heard that I possessed the score and orchestral parts of the work. She begged me not to give them to Mr. Conried, as themeisterhad left absolute directions in his will that stage representations of this work were to be reserved for all time for Bayreuth. She had heardthat I had given a concert performance and wondered how I had gotten permission.
I wrote to her and explained now I had obtained the score and had sent the “fifty pounds fine” to the publishers, according to my agreement with them. I then received another letter from her, as follows:
Dear Mr. Damrosch:Thank you very much for your kind lines and the expression of your feelings for Parsifal, which, of course, is never to be given out of Bayreuth; but concerning the production at concert, there has been made a very limited choice of fragments, which is not to be extended. The choice, done by the master, is as follows:1. Prelude, close of the first act,—nothing of the second.2. Verwandlungsmusik—close of the third act.3. Amfortasklage4. CharfreitagszauberI am astonished that for £50 you got the allowance (permission) to execute the whole Parsifal in concert and I will ask the publisher (about it).Concerning the performance on the stage, I still hope that the cultivated part of the public at New York won’t agree to it.Receive, dear Mr. Damrosch, with my best thanks, my kindest regards.C. WagnerBayreuth, 6 Juli, 1903.
Dear Mr. Damrosch:
Thank you very much for your kind lines and the expression of your feelings for Parsifal, which, of course, is never to be given out of Bayreuth; but concerning the production at concert, there has been made a very limited choice of fragments, which is not to be extended. The choice, done by the master, is as follows:
1. Prelude, close of the first act,—nothing of the second.
2. Verwandlungsmusik—close of the third act.
3. Amfortasklage
4. Charfreitagszauber
I am astonished that for £50 you got the allowance (permission) to execute the whole Parsifal in concert and I will ask the publisher (about it).
Concerning the performance on the stage, I still hope that the cultivated part of the public at New York won’t agree to it.
Receive, dear Mr. Damrosch, with my best thanks, my kindest regards.
C. Wagner
Bayreuth, 6 Juli, 1903.
Conried, however, obtained his parts elsewhere, and gave a stage performance that winter. Since then the copyright on “Parsifal” has run out and it has been produced all over the world.
During my search for modern works I endeavored also to keep alive the interest in the old oratorios. I owed much to them, and their dignity and genuine expression of religious feeling had been a most important factor in my early and earliest education. As a boy I sang alto in the Oratorio Society chorus and at sixteen was promotedto the dignity of accompanist at rehearsals. At this work I became quite an expert, and if my father stopped at a certain place to correct the chorus, I would, of course, know beforehand what he wanted, and would hammer out the right note for the altos or the tenors—it was usually the tenors—or would resort, even while they were singing, to all manner of expedients, such as playing the critical intervals an octave higher in order to keep up the pitch or to define them more clearly. As both my mother and Tante Marie sang in the chorus, there would be the four of us going home together after a rehearsal, discussing this or that point which needed more drilling, or a weakness that needed bolstering up, or we would express mutual enthusiasm over some chorus particularly well sung that evening. Naturally the refrain after almost every rehearsal was: “How can we get ten more first tenors?” America did not seem to grow them, and as even basses were not as plentiful as they should have been, it seemed almost as if the future American composer should write choruses for women only. If at the voice trial of new applicants, which usually took place before or after rehearsal, thatrara avis, a tenor, was found, we glowed with delight and speculated as to whether he would really turn up at the next rehearsal and become a regular member. It cannot be claimed that tenors are to be found in profusion even to-day, but there has been an immense development in the quality of choral singers. Their voices are better trained, they read better at sight, and the general increase of interest in music manifests itself very strongly in this direction.
In 1892 I gave a Handel festival in honor of the one-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the first performance of Handel’s “Messiah” in Dublin under his own direction,in 1742, followed by the one which King George II and his court attended, and when the crowd was so great that the management requested the gentlemen not to wear their swords nor the ladies their hoop-skirts, in order to enable as many as possible to hear the work of “Mr. Handel.” At this performance, when the Hallelujah chorus began, with its mighty climax, “King of Kings, Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” King George, overcome with emotion, arose and remained standing until the end. Naturally the entire audience rose in imitation of their royal master, and Great Britain has continued this custom ever since. As this was a fitting homage both to the Almighty and to the composer who in this chorus so marvellously voiced man’s adoration for him, my father introduced the custom at his own first performance of the “Messiah,” in 1874, and the Oratorio Society audiences have followed it to this day.
An interesting account of the kind of orchestra Handel may have employed is given in a description of a memorial service of the “Messiah,” sung in Westminster Abbey shortly after his death. I decided to reproduce such an orchestra as far as possible at our festival performance. The main characteristics consisted in the doubling up of the string parts in the choruses with oboes and bassoons and in duplicating the trumpets and kettledrums in the choral climaxes. The effect of this was most remarkable. I had placed an additional oboe with every three violins and an additional bassoon for every three violoncellos, with a few contrabassoons and contrabass clarinets to strengthen the double-basses and to take the part of the serpent—an instrument which has become obsolete. The doubling up of trumpets and kettledrums in the climaxes did not make them sound louder, but more full.For the first time in my experience the sound of the orchestra was not completely buried in the avalanche of tone from a large chorus of three hundred and fifty voices. The orchestral accompaniments supported and supplemented the chorus in a way that perhaps only a very large and mellow church organ might.
In Handel’s time he himself usually sat at the organ and filled in with masterly improvisations many of the harmonies for which in his score he had written only the bass, with figures indicating the harmonies which the organist should improvise. Since then various musicians have endeavored to supply these harmonies in permanent fashion by writing them for other instruments in the orchestra, principally for clarinets and bassoons. As most concert-halls are but poorly supplied with organs, these arrangements offered a kind of substitute, and the one most in use was that of Robert Franz. He was a German composer of very lovely songs, and a great admirer of Handel, but, curiously enough, his arrangements were very bad and not in keeping with the Handelian spirit. Mozart also had written accompaniments to supply the missing harmonies for a performance of the “Messiah” in Vienna at a hall in which there was no church organ. His additions, especially in the air “The people that walked in darkness,” are of such transcendent beauty that when I proceeded in my work of restoring the Handelian orchestra to its original form my courage failed me completely as I came to this air. It was as if one master had found a painting by another and had encircled it in a frame of such beauty as to enhance the value of the original picture. I could not bear to disturb it, but the clarinets and bassoons of Robert Franz were thrown out by me with great gusto.
Another novel and interesting feature of our festival was a scenic stage performance of a charming pastoral of Handel’s “Acis and Galatea.” This proved to have dramatic qualities which in their appeal seemed way beyond that of the many Italian operas which Handel has written. The cast was excellent. The part ofGalateawas sung by Madame de Vere, a charming coloratura singer; the shepherdAcisby William Rieger, one of our best young concert tenors; andPolyphemus, the giant, by that master artist, Emil Fischer. The scene represented a landscape of classic beauty, and all the participants were clad in very charming Greek shepherd costumes. The scene in whichPolyphemus, coming upon the shepherd lovers, lifts a huge rock and in jealous rage kills Acis, was done with such dramatic intensity as to thrill our audiences. The performance was a real event, as this work had perhaps not been given in its dramatic form since the time of Handel; but, curiously enough, it roused but little interest, for, whereas all the other performances of the festival were crowded to the doors, we had but half an audience at our two performances of the pastoral. It came about twenty years too early, and I think that to-day, especially if given under the auspices of the Metropolitan Opera, it would arouse wide-spread interest.
This spring (1922) I was in Munich and the town was in great excitement over the approaching performance of Handel’s “Acis and Galatea” in dramatic form. Their conductor, Bruno Walter, said to me: “We are very proud of this stage performance, as it is the first since Handel’s time.” He was amazed and, as he told me, much chagrined when I informed him that I had given it in New York nearly thirty years ago. He gave it a beautifulperformance. I had costumed my singers in classic Greek, but the Munich stage director had given the work an additional and rather piquant flavor by dressing the singers and dancers as in Handel’s time, when all performers, in no matter what age their plays were supposed to take place, wore the costumes and huge periwigs of their own period.
In the summer of 1898 we were much excited by the dramatic accounts of Admiral Dewey’s victory in Manila Bay, and it seemed to me fitting to celebrate it by composing a “Te Deum” for soloists, chorus, and orchestra. In order to give my “Manila Te Deum” an appropriate character, I used several of the bugle-calls of the American army and navy as acantus firmus, around which I wove the fugal developments of the voices of the chorus. In the last chorus, “O Lord, in thee have I trusted; let me never be confounded,” I used the “Star-Spangled Banner” in similar fashion.
The work received its first performance at a concert of the Oratorio Society, December 3, 1898, and marked the introduction of my brother as regular conductor of the society. The following spring I was invited to conduct it at a Dewey celebration in Chicago, and on February 6, 1900, I directed it again at a special performance given in Carnegie Hall, the proceeds of which were to be used toward the building of an arch in honor of Admiral Dewey. This arch, however, was never built, and the several thousand dollars which resulted from our concert were finally donated by the Dewey Arch Committee to a philanthropic purpose. Our two guests of honor at this performance were Admiral Dewey, in a box on one side of the hall, and Theodore Roosevelt, at that time Governor of New York, in a box on the other side. Roosevelt wasto make an appropriate address, and as the victor of Manila Bay was present and the entire occasion was one of jubilant admiration for our navy, we expected one of Roosevelt’s most flaming patriotic addresses on the glories of the American navy. But, alas, that evening his mind was completely occupied with things nearer home, and after a few very courteous remarks about my music, he launched forth into a terrific speech on the Street Cleaning Department of New York and the “duty of every citizen to vote at the primaries”!
In 1892 I gave the first performance in America of Saint-Saëns’s opera of “Samson and Delilah.” This work is admirably adapted for concert performance, and many portions of it are far more effective in this form than on the stage. The music is lovely and of great melodic simplicity, and many of the choruses are written in oratorio form. At stage performances the dramatic climax of the second act, in whichDelilahappears jubilantly at the door of her palace, shakingSamson’sred wig triumphantly at the admiring high priest and soldiers, is really an anticlimax, and excites our risibilities much more than our sorrow that the God-given strength of the mighty soldier has left him.
From my father I have inherited a deep admiration for Hector Berlioz and have conducted many performances of his greater works—the “Damnation of Faust,” the “Requiem Mass,” “Romeo and Juliet,” and the first rendition in America of his “Te Deum.”
Another novelty which I produced with the Oratorio Society in 1889 was the “Missa Solemnis” of Edward Grell. This work created a sensation. Its composer was virtually unknown except locally in Berlin, where he had been a teacher of counterpoint and composition in thefirst half of the nineteenth century. He had lived himself so completely into the style of the Italian masters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that modern harmonies simply did not exist for him, and his “Missa Solemnis” is conceived absolutely in the manner of the early masters of ecclesiastical music. It is written for four choruses of four parts each and four solo quartets. There is absolutely no accompaniment, and the purity of these sixteen-part harmonies without any admixture of instruments produces truly celestial effects. The four choruses which are generally used antiphonally with the solo quartets, produce thrilling climaxes, and theBenedictusespecially gives an impression of ecstatic beauty.
I have written elsewhere, of my first performance of the “Christus,” by Liszt. I also produced “St. Christopher,” by Horatio Parker, distinguished American musician and composer. This work, however, did not prove as effective as his “Hora Novissima.” It seemed to fall between two stools, as it was neither an opera nor an oratorio.
I gave, of course, many renditions of the oratorios of Handel, Haydn, and Mendelssohn, and inaugurated the custom of an annual performance of Bach’s “St. Matthew’s Passion” during Holy Week. I am happy to say that I succeeded in “popularizing” this mighty work, so that now it draws a huge and devout audience whenever it is given. But, generally speaking, the interest in the older oratorios is waning, not only in New York but all over the country. The ears of our audiences have lost pleasure in the simpler harmonies of Handel and Haydn, and, accustomed to the richer orchestration of to-day, find the accompaniments of the Handelian orchestra thin and archaic. Something of the simple and naïve religiousfaith that inspired the old oratorios has also gone, and the composer has not yet been found who can voice the faith and aspirations of to-day. It is a pity that the old oratorio form should therefore be neglected. I think, however, that it is not dead but only sleeps, and will awaken again.
In 1898 I retired as conductor of the Oratorio Society, owing to the pressure of my operatic and orchestral work, and my brother Frank was elected as my successor. He is two years older than I and has always shared my love and enthusiasm for music in an equal degree. He studied the piano as a boy, but had always insisted that his talent was not great enough to warrant making music his profession; and therefore, at the age of seventeen, he with great courage determined to go out West and begin a business career. Arrived in Denver, Colorado, with one hundred dollars in his pocket, he proceeded, in the manner of our American young men who have no intention of becoming a burden on their parents, to earn his own living.
He began at the very bottom and slowly worked his way upward, but suffered intensely during his first years in Denver from the almost total lack of music there. He had drunk of it in such generous quantities in New York that it had become a larger part of his very life than he had realized; and in order to satisfy his need he founded a choral society with which he gave some of the old oratorios, and with characteristic audacity he supplemented this with an orchestra composed of a handful of professionals then playing at the Denver theatres and a few amateurs. The citizens of Denver, realizing that he was a real musician in spite of his modest estimate of himself, urged him to give up business and turn altogether to music.
At the time of my father’s death Frank had become virtually the moving force in all the higher musical enterprises of Denver. It seemed to me that the time had come to urge him to return to New York and together with me continue the work my father had begun. He was promptly engaged as chorus master at the Metropolitan Opera House, and also became more and more active in pedagogic work, for which he had a special enthusiasm which has never waned.
His activities extended in many directions. He founded the Young People’s Concerts at Carnegie Hall, and became supervisor of music in the public schools of New York, completely reforming the teaching of music. The good effects of this are felt to this day. He also founded the People’s Choral Union, in which working men and women were taught singing and the rudiments of music and then promoted into a chorus of twelve hundred voices which studied and performed the old oratorios of Handel and Haydn.
He officiated as conductor of the Oratorio Society from 1898 until 1912, and during this period conducted first performances in New York of Edward Elgar’s “The Dream of Gerontius” and “The Apostles,” Anton Dvořák’s “Stabat Mater,” Gabriel Pierné’s “Children’s Crusade,” Johannes Brahms’s “Song of Fate,” and Wolf-Ferrari’s “La Vita Nuova.”
His interest in the pedagogy of music culminated in the founding of a music-school—the Institute of Musical Art—which was liberally endowed by James Loeb and others, and which has developed into one of the few great music-schools of this country and Europe. This school soon began to assume such proportions as to demand all of his time and vitality. He therefore retiredfrom other public work, with the exception of the conductorship of the Society of Musical Art, a unique chorus of sixty-five professional singers, giving only two concerts during the season, representing the highest that can be attained in choral singing. For its programmes he drew upon the rich and partly unknown treasures of thea capellachoruses of such masters as Palestrina, Orlando di Lasso, Cornelius, and Brahms; and as this chorus was composed of the very elect of New York’s church and concert singers he obtained results ravishing in their beauty.
When we were boys together we quarrelled dreadfully and outrageously. Frank would try to assert his two years’ seniority over me and I would resent this with both hands and feet. I remember my mother resolutely separating us and giving me a little room to myself, as that seemed the only way to achieve peace between us. But I am happy to say that since 1885, when Frank returned to New York, we have lived and worked together in absolute harmony and mutual helpfulness. In fact, the unity between us has been so complete that we are now inclined by contrast to consider each other as having been exceptionally devilish and nasty during those early boyhood years. I know, of course, that the blame was entirely his, as he was so overbearing and presuming because of the accident of his earlier birth, while he is equally convinced that I was altogether too cheeky for my age and it was absolutely necessary for my own good and future welfare to put me where I belonged.
In 1919 I was again asked to assume the direction of the Oratorio Society. Their affairs had not prospered after my brother had relinquished the conductorship. A huge debt threatened to engulf them, and, while I wasoverwhelmed with work in connection with the New York Symphony Orchestra, with which I gave over a hundred concerts every winter, I could not resist their appeal and promised to stay by them until they could find a permanent conductor to their liking.
I am glad to say that the man was found in Albert Stoessel. He had been a bandmaster in the A. E. F. during the war, had been chosen as teacher of conducting at the bandmaster’s school in Chaumont, which I had founded for General Pershing, and had become my assistant conductor at the rehearsals of the Oratorio Society. The chorus were delighted with him, and he was elected as regular conductor of the society in 1920. He has already conducted two highly successful seasons, and I think that our beloved old society will have many years of life and success under his direction.
XIV
When my father died there were only three symphony orchestras in America, the New York Symphony, the New York Philharmonic (Thomas formed his travelling orchestra from this), and the Boston Symphony. The last of these was supported by Major Higginson, and was the only one whose members received weekly salaries for a season of thirty weeks, met every morning for rehearsal, and devoted themselves exclusively to the playing of symphonic music. It was the first so-called “permanent orchestra” founded in America. The New York orchestras at that time played only a very small number of symphony concerts, for each of which they had about three rehearsals. Their members added to their earnings by playing in odd concerts, opera, theatre, in fact, in almost anything that they could find.
To-day the New York Symphony is splendidly maintained as a permanent orchestra through the generosity of its president, Mr. Flagler. The Philharmonic is similarly supported by liberal contributions from various sources, and other orchestras in Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, St. Louis, San Francisco, and Los Angeles use from a hundred thousand dollars a year upward, donated by their respective citizens, over and above the receipts from the sale of tickets, in order to maintain themselves as permanent symphonic organizations. Without such subsidies these orchestras could not exist, as, even though the concerts are crowded,the expenditures are much greater than any possible receipts.
I wonder how many of the conductors of these orchestras, who all receive generous salaries and have no personal financial risk in the enterprise, realize what up-hill pioneer work we had to do in the early days to keep our orchestras alive and to lay the musical foundations on which they are now so solidly built.
After my father’s death I was elected, at the age of twenty-three, conductor of the New York Symphony Society. We used to give six concerts and six public rehearsals during the winter, and for the seven years following my election this orchestra was also employed for the German opera at the Metropolitan. But when German opera was supplanted by Italian under Abbey, Schoeffel, and Grau, I was hard put to it to find sufficient work for my men to keep them together. The little subsidy which was at that time contributed by the directors of the Symphony Society was only large enough to give the six regular concerts of the winter season. I had learned the difficult art of accompanying soloists sympathetically with the orchestra, and the foreign artists who came to America, such as Sarasate, Ysaye, d’Albert, Joseffy, Paderewski, Kubelik, and many others, always chose my orchestra to accompany them. But these concerts were comparatively few, and I had to look for other ways of giving my men enough work to make it worth their while to stay with me instead of accepting travelling engagements with little opera companies, etc. Gradually I developed Sunday-afternoon symphony concerts, a complete innovation, as up to that time the only music given on Sundays was in the evening and of the more popular and trivial character. I argued that Sunday was the one dayin the week when men were not immersed in business cares, and that on that day they and their families would be more susceptible to the appreciation of a higher and more serious class of music. I therefore boldly inaugurated a series of symphonic concerts for every Sunday afternoon during the winter; and my faith was justified, as not only were these concerts attended by huge audiences, but the percentage of men was greater than had ever been seen at symphony concerts before. For several years I enjoyed a monopoly of my idea, but then other orchestras and soloists perceived its value, and to-day I have to share Sunday afternoons with two or three other organizations who also give high-class concerts, all of which are generally well attended.
I also gradually developed long spring tours with fifty men, which in those days was considered a travelling orchestra of good size. On these tours I penetrated the South, the Middle West, and, later on, the Far West of California and Oregon.
Many of the communities that we visited had never heard a symphony orchestra before, and for them we did real pioneer work, as I maintained a high standard of music on my programmes. The classics were, of course, the foundation; but Wagner very soon became a great drawing power, and Wagner programmes were often the most asked for.
The general plan of my tours was to have the advance agent organize three-day festivals with a local chorus which would take part in some oratorio or concert excerpts from the operas of Wagner, Verdi, etc. I would also carry a quartet of solo singers, sometimes supplemented by a “star,” for the average American public dearly loves a “name.” Many of these stars make theirgreatest money long after their vocal powers have diminished, and they are compelled to make up this lack by adventitious means such as extraordinary costumes, perhaps more decolleté than local custom would sanction, but which are always considered as quite the right thing for so exotic a personage as the “prima donna.”
During these three-day festivals we would generally give five concerts, and, as we often booked two festivals in one week, the ten concerts and necessary rehearsals often proved a great strain on my vitality. But it had to be done, as the local festival committees were compelled to crowd in as many concerts as possible to make their expenses. It has always been fascinating to me to do pioneer work, either by organizing something new, introducing a new composer, or penetrating into regions where symphonic music was not yet known. The gratitude of the people was often very touching, and if my profits at the end of an arduous tour were sometimes not so large as they should have been, I had at least kept my orchestra together for eight, ten, or even twelve weeks, and had enlarged the radius of musical activity by many hundreds—sometimes thousands—of miles. I marvel now at the courage with which I would start on a tour in which perhaps only half my concerts were guaranteed, and these guarantees, alas, not always paid up in full. But for years I was almost the only one travelling through the country with an orchestra, and as railroad fares were just half of what they are to-day I was generally able to end my tour with some profit.
I also began to tackle the question of how to utilize my orchestra during the summer months, and had the good luck to solve that problem for many years very effectively. As early as 1885 and 1886 I was invited by theSouthern Exposition of Louisville, Kentucky, to come there with my orchestra and play the entire summer, giving two concerts a day. I shall always look back on those two summers with delight and gratitude. I was very young and it was my first experience of a prolonged stay in a Southern city. Louisville at that time was a small community, but with an old civilization which manifested itself in a circle of charming people of established culture and social relations. They opened their doors and their hearts to my brother and me. The Pendennis Club, in its old-fashioned courtesy and hospitality, was like a page out of Thackeray or Dickens. Most of the people had never heard symphonic music, and as we played twice a day for about three months, I gave them almost the entire orchestral repertoire, ranging from the good popular music of Johann Strauss through the symphonies of Mozart, Beethoven, and the modern composers, to Wagner, who immediately became their “favorite composer.” The members of my orchestra were also received with great cordiality, and several very tender and romantic love-affairs were the result. I too would gladly have fallen a victim to the charms of these Southern beauties, but, alas, I was such a hard-worked young man with my two concerts a day and rehearsals that I could not indulge myself much in romance.
One evening, during a terrific thunder-storm, the lightning crashed into the machinery furnishing the electric light of the music-hall, and plunged it in darkness. It was crowded with thousands of listeners and for a few minutes there was an awe-struck silence, broken only by the great crashes of thunder. Gradually hysterical cries from the women were heard here and there and a rush for the doors began. The darkness was intense, but Iknew the orchestra could play the march from “Le Prophète” by heart, so I shouted to them to begin this number. I can still hear old Karl Deis, who had been trombone player under my father, beginning all alone with the opening theme, followed immediately by the rest of the orchestra. I was conducting like mad, although, owing to the darkness, not one of the players could see me, except when the flashes of lightning momentarily illuminated the hall; but the music immediately calmed the audience, who sat down and at the conclusion of the march applauded vociferously. We then started the “Beautiful Blue Danube,” and in the second bar the electric lights of the hall blazed up again. The following evening the chief of the fire department and other city officials appeared, and with several bottles of champagne toasted the orchestra and its conductor for their “great life-saving act” of the evening before.
On Sundays there were no concerts, and they became blessed days of peace and rest. I usually spent them at the country place of a friend—a roomy, hospitable, Southern mansion, delicious noon dinner, and afterward a lazy, happy time on the lawn, watching the horses, beautiful, full-blooded, Kentucky bred, gambolling about without saddle or bridle, like young puppies, according to the old-established Sunday custom of the place. To the Kentuckian the love for his horses and pride in their qualities is part of the romance of his life; at least it was in those days, long before the automobile had made its appearance.
The many concerts at the Louisville Exposition, coming at the beginning of my career as an orchestral conductor, gave me enormous routine and acquaintance with the entire orchestral repertoire.
I found the South exceedingly receptive. New Orleans had, of course, been a supporter of French opera for years—its opera-house was one of the most charming I had ever seen—but I also established new centres for music, one of which developed very successfully in the little town of Spartanburg, South Carolina. The impulse here came from the Converse College for Women, which has a high reputation in the South. The young ladies of this institution formed the nucleus of a large and well-trained chorus of two hundred and fifty voices. I went there with my orchestra every spring for over ten years. We succeeded in building up a great love and appreciation for music there and in other near-by places, as it was the custom for the alumnæ of the college to return to Spartanburg for Music Festival week and then to carry back and spread their musical enthusiasm in their home towns.
Gradually I penetrated farther and farther West. In 1904 I made a tour as far as Oklahoma City with the orchestra and quite a large group of solo singers, with whom I gave excerpts from Wagner’s “Parsifal,” connecting the various numbers with a few explanatory remarks. The tour was highly successful, as the public had read much about the first performances of “Parsifal” at Bayreuth and New York, and were keen to hear the music. I recall an amusing incident in Oklahoma City. Our concert had been scheduled as part of a course of entertainments under a local manager. The theatre was crowded and I had just finished the Prelude to “Parsifal” and was ready to begin the excerpts from the first act, when suddenly the manager popped up on the stage and addressed the audience somewhat as follows: “Ladies and gentlemen: I am proud to see so many ofyou here to-night and take this opportunity of announcing to you that I have already made arrangements for next season for a course which will be in every respect finer than the one I am giving you this year! I also would like to announce that Stewart’s Oyster Saloon will be open after the concert for lunch.” (Sic.) This was, however, our only interruption, and the rest of the music was listened to with evident interest and enthusiastic approval.
After the concert was over, as I left by the stage door to return to my hotel, I was met by the crowd of people descending from the top gallery. A young man who had been lounging against the stage entrance went up to one of the men who was coming out of the theatre and said: “Well, how was it, Jim?” and Jim answered: “This show ain’t worth thirty cents.” The woes ofAmfortasand the lilting measures of theFlower Maidenshad evidently not appealed to this young Oklahoman!
In contrast to this experience I should like to relate what happened another time when we were giving a symphony concert, perhaps the first ever heard there, at Fargo, North Dakota. Efrem Zimbalist, delightful man and artist, was our soloist on this tour, and after the concert, when we met for supper, he related with shouts of laughter that while I was playing the “Lenore” Symphony, by Raff, he was sitting behind the scenes of the “opera-house”—every Western city has a “grand opera-house”—listening to the music, when a cowboy, young, handsome, in flannel shirt, high boots, slouch hat, etc., came on the stage and sat down amicably next to him. The cowboy was perhaps a little “mellow,” as this was before the days of national prohibition, but he evidently had a musical ear, although he had never before in his life heard a symphonyorchestra. Every time that the music developed into a kind of joyous climax, he would grab Zimbalist’s knee in convulsive delight and shout: “God damn it, but I like that music!” Then he would sit in rapt silence until the next outburst, when he would again grab Zimbalist and shout: “They can go to hell, but they know how to play!” We all envied this man, because, no matter how much we may appreciate music, we have heard so much that we can never again experience the thrill of hearing a symphony orchestra for the first time in our lives.
The story, of course, went the rounds of the orchestra, and for weeks afterward, if we were seated in the dining-car of our train, the voice of one of the musicians might be heard above the roar of the cars and the din of the clattering knives and forks shouting in joyous accents: “God damn it, but I like this omelet!”
Speaking of dining-cars, on one of our Western tours during the first years of the war we had heard much about the sad conditions of the Belgians, whose territory had been so ruthlessly overrun by the German armies. Our entire orchestra had just responded unanimously and generously in contributing toward the Belgian Relief Fund, and in the dining-car at the table opposite mine were seated our second flute player, a Belgian, together with his son, who was one of our talented violoncellists. Their plates were heaped with turkey, cranberry sauce, and potatoes, and there was an apple-pie in the offing. I said: “I thought the Belgians were starving!” “Oh,” said Barrère, the ever-ready and ever-witty, “ils mangent pour les autres.”
How much we have owed on these tours to George Barrère! He has always been for me a model member ofan orchestra. He is a great artist—perhaps the greatest on the flute that I have ever heard—but no rehearsal is too long for him, and the inevitable contretemps of travel are accepted by him with imperturbable good nature. I have described elsewhere with what difficulty I was enabled to import him from France seventeen years ago, owing to the opposition made by the New York Musical Union, but he has more than justified his claims to American citizenship since then, not only by his artistic work, but by the group of American pupils whom he has gathered around him, who are devoted to him and have received and made their own much of his artistry. He is a delightful mixture of Gallic wit and American humor. He was asked once: “If you were not a musician, Monsieur Barrère, what would you like to be?” and he promptly answered: “An orchestral conductor!” A wicked remark, but as he has since then become the conductor of Barrère’s Little Symphony Orchestra I can give him tit for tat.
When the war broke out I found that as we had thirteen nationalities in the orchestra, including all the nations at war, relations might often become strained, especially on our long tours when the men are forced, in the sleeping-cars and at the concerts, into constant and close companionship. I therefore gave them a little talk in which I explained that as they were gaining their living in this country and as they were artists for otherwise they would not be in the New York Symphony—their first duties were toward their art, toward me, and toward their families whom they were supporting in honorable fashion, and that therefore for the time being it was for the good of all to sink their political differences and their various attitudes toward the war, andto live in harmony with each other. This talk had good results, as during the entire four years of war I cannot recall any serious difference or quarrel between them.
There were, of course, serious discussions and sometimes good-natured raillery. At that time Rudolf Rissland was the leader of my second violins and had charge of the orchestra during the long tours. He has been with me a great many years and I value him highly as a man of character and loyalty. He is of German birth, and, although he had become a patriotic American, he always wore his blond moustache combed upward in German fashion. We had been informed before our Canadian tour that no players of German birth would be admitted into Canada, but, thanks to the British ambassador, Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, an old friend of my wife’s family, we received a special permission for the few German-born who had not yet received their second citizen papers, to enter Canada, as I gladly made myself responsible for them. We were the only orchestra that gave concerts in Toronto and Montreal during the war. On this particular trip, after our train had left Toronto, the orchestra began to twit Rissland unmercifully, accusing him of having in most cowardly fashion combed his moustache downward before coming on the stage for the concert. At first he denied this absolutely, but finally confessed that he had combed down the side turned toward the audience, but had kept the other side defiantly turned upward!
The idea of venting their feelings against a nation by maltreating the music of its composers at rehearsals or concerts never entered the minds of our players. Our Frenchmen would play a symphony of Beethoven or an excerpt from a Wagner music-drama with the same careand enthusiasm as a work by one of their own composers. The same was true vice versa of our German-born members. To the good musician art is international, although each nation has its own standards and traditions of interpretation, and it is interesting to note how sharply opposed these sometimes are. There is often a curious racial antagonism between the French and Italian musicians. The Frenchman will insist that the phrasing of the Italian is sloppy and hypersentimental, while the Italian will retort that the Frenchman’s is academic and rigid. Every nation has its excellent qualities, and the finest orchestra in the world is one composed of the best of the different nationalities moulded into one harmonious whole by a master conductor without racial musical prejudice.
Our visits to California were perhaps enjoyed the most of all. These began long before the earthquake and fire had destroyed the old San Francisco, and when the city had all the romance of earlier days and Chinatown was still an exotic and fascinating region of mystery. The society of San Francisco was different from that of any other city in the United States. It was composed largely of restless pioneers from the East and from other countries who, having “worked their way” across the continent, had finally stopped and settled in San Francisco because the Pacific Ocean prevented them from going still farther, and also because in California nature opened both arms wide in welcome, and gave of her bounty so freely that life and the necessity of supporting it became an easy matter. Many of the well-to-do sent their sons and daughters, not to New York and Boston, but to Paris and London, for their education. Society was international in that it comprised Americans, Germans, French,and Italians. They all loved music instinctively, and gave it enthusiastic acclaim, much as in a city of Italy or the Midi of France.
Few trained symphony orchestras had penetrated so far West, and my orchestra was a revelation to many of our hearers.
For me there were also pleasant visits to San Mateo and other beautiful places near by, where one could see a good game of polo or tennis and have one’s gastronomic needs delightfully ministered to by Chinese cooks and Japanese butlers. In those days Los Angeles was but a small city and no one then dreamed of the unique and lightning-like development which has made it in a few years one of the most important cities in America.
In continuing our tour farther north we came under the management of two very remarkable women, under the firm name of “Steers and Coman,” who virtually control the musical field from Oregon and Washington as far east as Denver. Miss Lois Steers and Miss Wynne Coman live in Portland, Oregon. By dint of their organizing genius and enthusiasm for music, and an absolute integrity in all business dealings, they have not only won the highest respect and confidence of the communities to which they minister but have built up a very effective organization. Under their auspices every great artist who has ever visited this country has appeared not only in the larger cities of the States which they control, but in many of the smaller university towns and farming communities in which the Misses Steers and Coman have been able to develop an interest in music. They are not only business women of superior qualities, but ladies of such fine sympathies and breeding that I have always felt particularly honored by their friendship.
On our tours, Miss Steers usually attended to the local needs of the cities we visited—the music committees, the hall managers, and the newspapers—while Miss Coman travelled with us as general railroad manager, baggage despatcher, and “committee of one,” to smooth out all difficulties, adjust any disputes and, in general, to “oil the wheels.” As soon as we came into their territory everything moved like clockwork. I remember one agonizing day, however, when we had to make Salt Lake City from the West and terrible floods had disarranged all railroad schedules. The final jolt came when, at some station on the way, John Drew’s two cars containing his dramatic company and scenery were added to our already over-heavy train because the floods had compelled him also to change his route. All hope of reaching Salt Lake City in time for our concert seemed gone. Miss Coman hopped onto the engine and sat down next to the engineer and stoker. I did not know whether she used a woman’s wiles or brute force or a combination of both, but we arrived in Salt Lake City at nineP. M.on a lovely summer evening. An audience of two thousand had been notified that we would be late and were calmly promenading up and down in front of the theatre. Trucks were in waiting at the station to rush our baggage to the auditorium, our men had put on their evening dress in the baggage-car, and I began the opening overture with all the instruments properly tuned at ten minutes before ten. Symphony concerts were so few and far between in Salt Lake City that the audience did not mind this long wait one little bit.
Of course all these difficulties could not have been so happily solved had I not always had devoted and efficient heads of the different departments of our organization.George Engles is the most careful of business managers; Rissland, the orchestra manager, has always been tireless in his efforts to keep the men in good discipline and spirits and to look after their welfare; and Hans Goettich, who has been my baggage-master and librarian for over twenty-five years, is a perfect marvel. I remember seeing him flag an entire train because he had suddenly noticed that our baggage-car, containing all our music and musical instruments, had been hooked on to it by mistake. As this train was going to New Orleans, while we were headed for Chicago, we would have had to stop giving concerts for several days until that baggage-car had been traced and sent back to us! On Goettich devolves the entire responsibility for the library, which is packed in dozens of boxes and kept according to a system of his own. On these long tours our programmes are changed more or less every day, partly to avoid the monotony of repetition for us and partly because each community has its own needs according to its stage of musical development, which I try to gauge very thoroughly when making up my programmes. This means incessant work for the librarian and mistakes might easily occur, but during all these years I cannot recall a single concert when, through fault of Goettich’s, an orchestral part has been lost or misplaced. This is a remarkable record.
I remember giving a symphony concert in William J. Bryan’s town of Lincoln, Nebraska. I found a typical Middle Western community, living in nice houses with green lawns, with neatly bricked streets and concrete sidewalks, and roomy large-windowed schools. The theatre in which we played was thoroughly modern, clean, and well lighted, and the audience well dressed and appreciative.One of my double-bass players told me that he had played there thirty years before with Theodore Thomas. In those days Lincoln was but a frontier town and the theatre and the public who had come to hear the Thomas Orchestra were of a more or less primitive character. My double-bass player told me that with a colleague, whose head was devoid of hair, he had stood directly below a proscenium box in which a group of cowboys were seated. While the orchestra was playing Beethoven’s “Fifth Symphony,” one of these cowboys, who was chewing tobacco violently, amused himself by spitting frequently and always aiming for the bald head of the bass player, who had to keep one agitated eye on the conductor and the other on this horribly resourceful listener, in order to avoid his only too-well-directed shots.
Our orchestra always enjoyed the long spring tours, although now and then uncomfortable happenings would mar their pleasure. Nothing makes a musician so ill-natured as to be deprived of a good square meal, and sometimes our dining-car would not connect properly or we would be so delayed as to arrive in a town only just in time to rush to the theatre and give our concert. Then I would have to exert all my powers as an orator to induce them to go directly to the theatre instead of “loitering by the wayside,” and I would quickly order large quantities of ham and swiss-cheese sandwiches to be distributed behind the scenes just before the concert.
At present our players while on tour receive so much per day above their salaries for meals and beds, but in the early days I used to pay their hotel expenses, my manager engaging rooms and arranging the rates “on the American plan” before we arrived in the city in which wewere to play. This system, however, never worked well because there was always intense jealousy among the musicians as to the quality or conveniences of their respective rooms; and if the first oboe found that his room did not front on as agreeable a locality as that of the first horn, he would perhaps sulk and consider that he had been unfairly treated. The newer arrangement proved much better, as it enabled some to save from the money allowed them and permitted others to “splurge” by spending more.
I remember that once in those early days we had to fill in a date in a small New York State town on our way to Canada. The principal hotel had room for only about twenty, and the other members of the orchestra were quartered in four other hotels. Naturally the unfortunate five who were put into the last of these had a terrible story to tell of their sufferings when we met the following morning at the station. To be sure, the manager of the hotel had charged only a dollar for each person, and this included his supper, bed, and breakfast, but their rooms had been dismal and the beds hard. The climax was reached in the morning, when, as a frowsy waitress began to serve them their breakfast in the fly-specked dining-room on a table covered with the inevitable dirty red and white checked cloth, the manager, putting his head in at the door, shouted: “Lizzie, no eggs for the band!” This phrase became a catchword in the orchestra, and whenever my manager or I refused anything to our men, the cry immediately resounded: “Of course, no eggs for the band!”
Orchestra players through experience become remarkably routined travellers. They know the good hotels and restaurants in every city of the Union, and during thelong railroad jumps, especially west of the Mississippi, where distances between important cities become greater and greater, they know how to amuse themselves, each one according to his fashion. There are, of course, a few groups who play poker violently from morning till night. Others are equally constant to pinochle or bridge, while a few are perfect sharks at chess. The Frenchmen, as well as the Russian Jews, are great readers of serious literature, and books on history, philosophy, and music are in great demand among them. Whenever the train stops, even for a few minutes, a dozen jump off to play ball. As a rule, during the day we have two cars, one of which is given up to the smokers, where indeed the air becomes so thick that one could cut it with a knife. At night three or four sleepers are necessary to take care of us comfortably. The old days, when I travelled with fifty men, have gone long ago, and now we should not think of touring with an orchestra of less than eighty-five.
The time for spring tours seems to be passing, however, as the Western cities are beginning to minister to the needs of their respective communities with their own excellent orchestras.
For many years I accepted long summer engagements with two concerts every day, first at Willow Grove near Philadelphia, and then at Ravinia Park, on the North Shore near Chicago. The former became a great educational factor, as Philadelphia at that time had no orchestra of its own. Willow Grove Park is situated seventeen miles from that city and was built by the Rapid Transit Company in order to stimulate travel on their trolley lines. The first season, for which a military band had been engaged, had not proven a success, and I was invited the following year in the hope that a symphonicorganization might do better. I began by giving them popular programmes of good music with a regular symphony night every Monday and a Wagner programme every Friday evening, with excellent results. Our audiences usually numbered from fifteen to twenty thousand. The Rapid Transit Company, realizing the importance of the concerts, promptly built a huge open-air auditorium after my own design, consisting of only a roof on pillars connecting with the shell in which the orchestra was placed. The acoustics proved exceedingly good and the out-of-doors atmosphere was preserved.
I continued these concerts for seven seasons, thereby developing an audience for symphonic music which eventually and inevitably demanded a resident orchestra of its own. To-day the Philadelphia orchestra, under the leadership of Leopold Stokowski, ranks as one of the foremost of our country. Its concerts are crowded to the doors and I like to think that our seven years of pioneer work in Willow Grove have helped to lay its foundations.
I also conducted a series of concerts at Ravinia Park, organized by the Chicago and Milwaukee Electric Railway to serve a similar commercial purpose. Chicago had, of course, enjoyed for years the splendid winter concerts of the Chicago Orchestra, first under Theodore Thomas and then under his successor, Frederick Stock, but this was the first time that symphonic concerts were given during the summer amid such charming surroundings on the borders of Lake Michigan. These concerts proved exceedingly popular, the audiences consisting not only of the North Shore residents but of thousands who came out from Chicago on trains and trolleys.
After several years of this work, however, the incessantdaily concerts, coming after an arduous winter season, began to pall on my musical nerves. I ran a real danger, if I continued, of becoming nothing but a musical routinier, with an inevitable loss of the enthusiasm and freshness which is an absolute necessity for the interpreter. I therefore gave up all conducting during the summer months.
I founded the Damrosch Opera Company in 1895, and the harassing question of how to maintain my orchestra seemed solved, for, during the first year, my opera season lasted thirteen weeks and during the following three years, from twenty to thirty weeks each. This not only enabled me to maintain a beautifully trained orchestra for the Wagner operas, but also gave to my symphony performances a greater finish. The orchestra was now under my exclusive control and could rehearse as often as the endowed orchestra of Major Higginson. But as it was the opera that enabled me to give my men such a long engagement, its needs had to control all other arrangements, and gradually the regular sequence of my winter concerts in New York began to suffer. I could not keep my opera company in New York except for a limited period each year, and therefore had to fill in much of my time in Philadelphia, Boston, and the larger cities of the South and Middle West. In 1899 I was therefore finally compelled to give up the regular subscription series of our New York concerts and the New York Symphony Orchestra became a part of my travelling operatic organization.
I made this sacrifice with a heavy heart, but at that time it was the only solution. An orchestra devoted only to concerts could not be maintained without an endowment, and that I did not have at the time, while thelength of my Wagner opera season enabled me not only to give my men a good engagement but to have the pick of the best musicians in New York.
From then on until 1903 most of our playing of symphonic music was only on our spring concert tours and at irregular intervals in New York.
In 1900 Maurice Grau asked me to conduct the Wagner operas at the Metropolitan, and in the spring of 1902, at the close of my second season with him, I received an invitation from the New York Philharmonic Society to become its conductor. This invitation was a great surprise to me, as the Philharmonic had been, ever since my father’s day, the rival orchestra. In many ways it seemed a flattering proposition, as it was the oldest organization of its kind in America and had had an honorable history. Under the leadership of Theodore Thomas and later on of Anton Seidl, the audiences had been large and its affairs had prospered. It had always been a co-operative association, composed of the members of the orchestra, who had complete control of its affairs, receiving no salaries, but dividing the profits equally among themselves at the end of each season. I accepted the conductorship, but found very soon that my acceptance was a blunder. The society had come upon evil days, and under its last conductor attendance had dwindled to less than one-half. Of the membership of the orchestra only the skeleton remained, and I found to my amazement that of the hundred players at the concerts, less than fifty were actual members of the organization, the rest being engaged from outside, and often changed from one concert to another. Some of the members were old men who should no longer have played in the orchestra at all; but they were devoted to the concerts of the society, andas the orchestra was regulated by their votes, they naturally would not vote themselves out of it. Many of them had been excellent musicians and were personally upright men, but age, alas, is no respecter of technic, and the fingers of the left hand and the muscles of the bow arm gradually stiffen with advancing years. Most of the wind instruments were outsiders and therefore could not be properly controlled regarding their attendance at rehearsals and concerts, while, on the contrary, nearly all of the first violins were old members, several of whom were no longer fit to play first violin.