As I sat there, the memory of the hollow-cheeked Bandmaster Tyler who had stood next to me at the Fourth of July parade in Paris suddenly came back. I thought to myself that here I was, the only civilian at the table, and that therefore I might say anything I pleased without being put up against a wall at sunrise and shot, for at the worst they could only consider me as very ignorantof army customs. Therefore I watched for my opportunity and suddenly plunged in and spoke of my conversation with Bandmaster Tyler while we were waiting for our marines to march down the Champs-Élysées. I said that in my humble opinion it was a great mistake to use musicians as stretcher-bearers in battle, not that their lives as soldiers were any more valuable than those of any others in the army, but that a stretcher-bearer could be trained in a very short time while it took many months to train a bandsman; that the Canadian regiments had followed the same custom during the first months of the war, but the results had been so dire in destroying the bands and their usefulness, that the soldiers themselves had implored their commanding officers not to let their bandsmen be sacrificed in this way, as there was nothing so terrible as coming back after battle to a silent and therefore desolate camp. After I had finished my rather impassioned peroration, General Bundy and others heartily agreed with me, but General Pershing said nothing at all, and I felt that I had perhaps talked too much andmal à propos. But the following morning, as I was seated with Colonel Collins at general headquarters arranging the details of my examinations, he smilingly handed me an order from the commander-in-chief which had just arrived and which was to be sent to the division commanders, to the effect that “from now on bandsmen are not to be used any longer as stretcher-bearers except in cases of extreme military urgency.”
One of General Pershing’s remarks during the dinner is so characteristic that I repeat it here. He said: “When peace is declared and our bands march up Fifth Avenue I should like them to play so well that it will be another proof of the advantage of military training.” Subsequentdevelopments and meetings with this interesting man further deepened the impression which he made upon me.
I returned to Paris and proceeded to make all necessary arrangements for the examinations of the two hundred bandmasters. Our army had leased a large hotel near the Bastille on the banks of the Seine, and a large room on the ground floor served admirably for my purpose. The band of the 329th infantry soon arrived and was quartered in this hotel, and every morning at 9.30 the examinations began and continued from Monday to Thursday at the rate of about fifty bandmasters a week, who arrived from all quarters of France—from the seaport towns, from the training camps, and some even from the very front line of the trenches. Fridays I would usually return to headquarters and report on my findings and begin recommendations, which gradually assumed greater and greater proportions as the magnitude of the work developed.
To assist me in this prodigious work, I engaged the services of M. Francis Casadesus, brother of Henri and a splendid musician. He examined the men as to their qualifications in instrumentation and in their general knowledge of the various instruments, while I examined them in the actual process of conducting and drilling a band. I would first let them bite their teeth into an overture like the “Oberon” of Weber, or a movement from a classical symphony, and then would let them conduct a composition of their own choice. I found very soon that while most of these young bandmasters were musically talented and ambitious, they had had no or but little opportunity for acquiring what we may call the technic of the baton. They had had no intensive disciplinarytraining such as our young officers from civilian life had received at Plattsburg and similar camps. Many of them did not know how to beat time properly, much less train a band in phrasing or rhythmic accuracy; and I soon saw that unless some opportunity was given them to learn at least the rudiments of their calling, the effort toward improving our bands would be useless. It therefore seemed to me that the quick formation of a bandmasters’ school was the only solution of the problem, and as our army had had the help of French military and aviation officers as instructors, loaned to us by theMinistère de la Guerre, I thought that a similar arrangement could be made, under which we might obtain the necessary musical instructors also from the French army, as nearly all the musicians of France were at that time in uniform.
I also discovered that some of the most important musical instruments which give mellowness and nobility to the tone of a band were almost utterly lacking. We had hardly any oboes, bassoons, French horns, or flügelhorns. I knew that some of the greatest masters of these instruments, first prizes of the Conservatoire of Paris, were serving in the French army, and immediately, through theMinistère des Beaux Arts, obtained their names and the regiments to which they belonged. On the following visit to Chaumont I proposed to General Pershing that we form a music-school at which fifty bandmasters could get the most intensive musical training and discipline for eight weeks, to be succeeded by a new batch of fifty, etc., and at the same time forty pupils each in oboe, bassoon, French horn, and flügelhorn could get a similar training of twelve weeks on their respective instruments.
General Pershing and his staff were delighted with the plan and I offered to procure the necessary instructors from the French army, promising General Pershing that the school would be in complete running order by October 1, provided a proper building could be obtained. The general asked me where I wished to place the school and offered me Longres, where several schools on the strategy of war were already in progress, but I claimed that the surroundings for my music-school should be of a more “peaceful and even academic character,” and suggested Chaumont. General Pershing smiled, but insisted that it was already overcrowded and that I would not be able to find a building large enough to house so great a number of instructors and pupils. He gave me full power, however, to see what could be done, and I set forth immediately with a French liaison officer—member of the French Military Commission at Chaumont, and in G-5, general headquarters, under which department the proposed music-school would come—who proved a most remarkable and valuable assistant in my work. He was Lieutenant Michel Weill, nephew of the owner of the well-known White House in San Francisco, and an enthusiastic musical amateur who, through his long residence in America, had acquired a knowledge of English and a sympathy for America only second to that for his own native land. He belonged to a delightful French officers’ mess at Chaumont, and they immediately made me a kind of honorary member and in most hospitable fashion invited me to their Lucullan repasts. As they were all enthusiastic lovers of music, I endeavored to repay them by pounding out Wagner, their supreme favorite, to their hearts’ content on an old upright piano placed in a little sitting-room next to theirsalle à manger.
Lieutenant Weill and I first paid avisite de cérémonieto theMaireof Chaumont and explained to him our desire. The idea of what he called “un petit conservatoire de musique pour les Américains” in Chaumont appealed to his fancy immensely, and he immediately picked up his telephone and called up an old friend of his, a fellow citizen and mill owner. He explained to him the great honor that was about to befall their town if a proper building could be found, and exhorted him to show himself as a really patriotic citizen of France and friend of the Americans by giving the mill which he owned just outside the city and only a few minutes’ walk from our headquarters for this noble purpose. We motored to this building and met there an elderly, dignified, and courteous Frenchman who told us that anything he had was at the disposal of “les Américains.” We found a huge mill with walls two feet thick, the machinery in disuse, and with large empty spaces that our army engineers could easily turn into sleeping-quarters, practising-rooms, and other needs for a music-school. In one large wing we found a few women and many children playing about. I said: “Of course, we shall need this wing also.” “Then I regret,” answered the owner, “but this wing you cannot have, because I have given it to forty-eight refugees from Verdun with the promise that they shall occupy it until the end of the war.” Naturally Lieutenant Weill and I reconsidered, and concluded that a large tent could be put up in the meadow as an eating-place, and that we could get along without the extra wing. I then asked the owner what rental he would demand. “Oh,” he said, “anything that the American army wishes to pay.” But when Lieutenant Weill informed him that he should fix a fair price, heasked timidly: “Would the American army consider five hundred francs a month reasonable?” I tell this to offset the tales of those people who keep harping on the commercial greed of the French in anything that concerned the needs of the American soldier.
We returned to general headquarters jubilant, and, after a satisfactory interview with the officer in charge of building operations, it was decided to place the school in Chaumont, and I returned to Paris to complete my plans.
My brother Frank had recognized the lack of good schooling for our army bands and bandmasters many years before the war, and had very patriotically placed the entire machinery of his Institute of Musical Art at the disposal of the secretary of war. An arrangement had accordingly been made by which a bandmaster’s school at Governor’s Island, New York, was placed under my brother’s control, and for several years before the war a small number of bandmasters were graduated from it who ranked well on a par with those of other countries. But when we entered the war and our army was organized on a scale of millions these were but a drop in the bucket, and heroic measures were necessary to bring some semblance of order into this musical chaos of hundreds of uneducated bandmasters and thousands of still less educated bandsmen.
During these five weeks in Paris and Chaumont I worked very hard and, while my life has been crowded with affairs of all kinds relating to my profession, I cannot recall any time when the work was so constant day and night or when I was more jubilantly happy in the doing of it. During the forenoons Casadesus and I would examine the bandmasters, discover what they could and could not do, give them, so to speak, “first aid to thewounded” by pointing out their worst failings or their greatest weaknesses. In the afternoons Lieutenant Weill and I would run around to the various French government departments on the track of this or that musician whom we wished to corral as professor for our school. At night I would sit propped up in bed and work out the entire tuition plan of the school, down to the minutest details.
My general recommendations to general headquarters, all of which were subsequently carried out, included classes for the bandmasters’ instruction in the technic of conducting, in harmony, and in orchestration. These classes were put in charge of M. Francis Casadesus and M. André Caplet. The latter was later on succeeded by Lieutenant Albert Stoessel, a highly talented bandmaster in our army, who has returned to civilian life and has now become my successor as conductor of the New York Oratorio Society.
Captain Ellacott, of the A. E. F., became the military head of the school to which he gave most sympathetic assistance.
There were two professors each for oboe, bassoon, French horn, and flügelhorn, all of whom were graduates and first prizes of the famous Paris Conservatoire. I also recommended that the beautiful B-flat bugles of the French army be adopted by us and that a French drum-major, proficient on this instrument, be appointed as instructor to drill successive classes of fifty for one month each, the graduates to become first buglers of our regiments, in order that they might, in turn, instruct other buglers in their respective drum and bugle corps.
At the examinations I also asked the bandmasters certain questions regarding their position in their respective regiments, the attitude of their colonel toward music,their general treatment, and the hours allowed them for musical practice, and here I came on all kinds of conditions. Some of the commanding officers had no sympathy with music or with the bandsmen, and instead of making them practise their six hours a day, they were put to work as kitchen police and on other fatigue duties. I therefore urged that the commanding officers be impressed with the fact that the primary object of the band is not to fight, but to cheer the fighters, and the better their music, the greater its beneficial effects upon the spirit of the soldiers, and that therefore all bandsmen should be compelled to devote at least five or six hours every day to the practice of their instruments and to rehearsals, and that other duties should be made subsidiary to their musical work and should not be of a character to unfit them for a proper performance on their respective instruments.
I also discovered that there was a terrible wastage as regards musical instruments and that in several instances, preparatory to going into action, the instruments had been thrown away or simply left behind, nevermore to be recovered, and that therefore it might be wise to appoint a travelling inspector of musical instruments whose duties should be to attend to the speedy replacement of missing parts, the repairing of instruments, and the supplying of new music.
A really excellent headquarters band was formed at Chaumont, which became a source of much gratification to the commander-in-chief and his staff, accompanying him on many of his ceremonial visits and functions.
One of my most important recommendations for the school was that every week at least one concert should be given by the professors and such of the bandsmen as werereally competent musicians. The programmes should be made up only of the great master composers, in order that the students—many of whom had come from isolated communities in our country and had had but little opportunity to hear good music—should become sensitive to the finer and more spiritual qualities of music as an art. This was carried out in most remarkable fashion during the entire existence of the school, and the programmes and their performance were worthy of a place in any highly cultivated musical community.
When I returned to Chaumont on a visit of inspection the following year, I heard one of these concerts, which included a quintet of Mozart for oboe and strings and a sonata for violin and piano by César Franck. I sat in delighted amazement as I saw the happy faces of over a hundred students in khaki who were listening to this divine music in rapt silence. What a pity that such a school cannot be founded in every State in America now that the war is over and our soldiers have returned home! This would speedily result in an excellent band for every town and lay a real foundation for the musical development of the people at large.
During these weeks in Paris I also saw a great deal of some of my French musician colleagues, all of whom had refused to leave Paris in spite of the Gothas and Berthas.
When I first called on Charles Marie Widor, the famous old organist of Saint Sulpice, I found him installed, by virtue of his office asSecrétaire Perpétuelof theInstitut de France, in a charming Louis XVI suite of rooms in that building. He showed me a hole in the window of his workroom and told me that a few days before he had just stooped down to pick up a musical score from the floor when a shell from the Big Bertha burst in front ofhis apartment and a piece of it hurtled through his window, missing him only because he was in a stooping position.
His Gallic wit and versatility make him a delightful companion, and I am grateful for the opportunity the war gave me for more intimate acquaintance and friendship with him. Indeed, this applies to all the friends made during that eventful summer. The war brought us more quickly and closely together than would have been possible otherwise, and as I was an American I reaped the full advantage of all the intense gratitude which the French felt for us, some of which was hardly deserved, as our government certainly had shilly-shallied and waited until it was almost too late before they threw our great weight of men and treasure into the balance.
I have already spoken of Mlle. Nadia Boulanger, who played the organ for me at the performance of Saint-Saëns’s “Third Symphony” on July 14. Among women I have never met her equal in musicianship, and indeed there are very few men who can compare with her. She is one of the finest organists of France, an excellent pianist, and the best reader of orchestral scores that I have ever known. Again and again I have seen her take up a manuscript orchestral score, sit down with it at the piano, and brilliantly read it at sight, transcribing it for the piano as she played along. When we first met, she and her dear mother were in the greatest grief. A younger sister, Lili, had died only a month before at twenty-four years of age. Beautiful, exquisite, and marvellously talented, she had won the much-covetedPrix de Romethree years before—the first woman to have gained it. A mortal illness had slowly sapped her strength, and as she had been the idol of her mother and sister, her losswas to them a tragedy almost beyond endurance. Nadia, besides keeping up her professional duties—she was substitute organist at the Madeleine during the war—hurled herself into war work and more especially the care of the students of the Conservatoire who were at the front. She knew all their names and the numbers of their organizations and founded a kind of musical gazette, mimeographed copies of which were sent out every month to the students. All kinds of musical news and musical questions were published in it, so that these boys, in the midst of their military duties or while convalescing from their wounds in the hospitals, could have something to think about more immediately connected with their own profession. It is interesting to note that, in answer to the question, “Should German composers like Brahms and Wagner be played at our concerts during the war?” out of fifty-eight, forty-seven answered unequivocally “Yes” for Wagner and Brahms, three “Yes” for Beethoven and the classics, two were undecided, and six said “No.” These answers were accompanied in many cases by highly interesting essays on art and nationality of art, and, altogether, the judgments thus expressed reflected the high intellectual standard of these young French artists at the front.
I saw many instances of how keenly the French separate their artistic from their political convictions. One night my friends of the French Military Commission at Chaumont had come to Paris and one of them, Captain Guegnier, invited me to dinner at his apartment. His wife and the wife of one of his colleagues had come to Paris from the country especially for the occasion. We sat down, a very jolly party of six, to a most delicious dinner such as only the French can devise and properlyexecute. As all the party were musical we naturally had a good deal of music after dinner. The ladies sang charmingly and I had to play excerpts from their beloved Wagner—“Tristan,” “Meistersinger,” “Parsifal,” and the “Trilogy.” My hostess sang songs of Fauré, Chausson, and Debussy, and just then the sirens boomed out their disagreeable message that the Gothas were taking advantage of the moonlit night to make one of their raids over Paris. At the same moment the taxi-cab man, who had come to take me back to my hotel, announced that he had arrived. Would he like to come up-stairs? Oh, no, he would just sit inside the cab and wait till I got ready. “Then let us have some more music,” said my hostess, and simply drew the curtain over the windows. And, while the Gothas were scattering their shells over Paris, she turned to me and said: “Now let me sing for you this lovely song of Schubert.” There was my French hostess singing German songs, and it was not until about one o’clock in the morning that Lieutenant Weill and I turned homeward.
The vast difference in attitude between the French and certain of my compatriots regarding the proper stand to be taken in time of war toward the art of an enemy nation was very striking. I had myself decided that the New York Symphony Orchestra should not play the works of living German composers, and that the German language should not be sung at our concerts during the war. There seemed to me good and valid reasons for such a course. But Beethoven, Mozart, and Wagner I considered as classics, belonging to us just as much as to Germany, and their divine message had naught to do with the political and military leaders of Germany who had plunged the world into this horrible bath of blood.There was, however, in New York a small but noisy group led by a few women who sought to demonstrate their “patriotism” by hysterical outbursts and newspaper protests against the performance of all music composed by Germans, no matter how many years ago. Some of these women, through the curious psychosis of war, really thought that they were serving their country by their protests. In the winter of 1918 the orchestra of the Paris Conservatoire made a tour through America under their conductor, André Messager. When I called on him the day after his arrival he showed me a letter he had just received from one of these women protesting against his performing a Beethoven Symphony during his stay in America. He was white with anger, and when I asked him how he would answer it, he said: “I will answer it as a French artist should.” I said: “The best way to answer would be to put Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Symphony on your first programme.” “I will,” he said; and he did.
The opposition to Wagner was based on very amusing premises. Because some of his heroes were wont to appear on the stage in very blond wigs and beards, these lady sleuth-hounds seemed to perceive some evil and subtle connection betweenSiegfriedin the “Nibelungen Trilogy” and Nietzsche’s “blond beast,” which, according to his prophecy, was eventually to control the earth. Their studies of Wagner were too shallow to enable them to realize that the whole philosophy of life as expressed by Wagner in the “Nibelungen Trilogy” was in direct contrast to the desire of the modern militaristic German to rule and control the world by force. Wagner depicts a prehistoric world in which the gods of greed, lust, and power rule, carrying, however, the seed of their own destruction within them because of the materialistic qualityof their desires. As their power wanes and the old gods perish, a new religion is born, the religion of self-sacrifice through love, as symbolized byBrunhildein her self-immolation on the funeral pyre ofSiegfried.
But all this is already ancient history, and I for one confidently believe that the racial spirit which created the Germany of Bach, Beethoven, Goethe, Kant, and Wagner will soon return again to brighten and ennoble the world.
In five weeks all necessary arrangements for the school were completed and notices were sent by the General Staff to the bandmasters of the entire A. E. F. who had not come up to the necessary qualifications during the examination which I had given them, to report to the Chaumont School in batches of fifty every eight weeks, beginning on October 1, and to start their studies. Students for oboe, bassoon, French horn, and flügelhorn were also selected from the hundreds of applicants. At first we had great difficulty in finding the necessary instruments for them. France is famous for its wood-wind instruments, but the various factories had long since ceased operations, as all the workmen were in the army. The ever-ready and ingenious Lieutenant Weill, however, succeeded in scraping together enough oboes and bassoons to start the classes, and I cannot say enough for the willing assistance which was accorded me by every United States army officer with whom I came in contact. From the commander-in-chief down to Lieutenant Kelley, who sat in the anteroom of General Dawes’s office in the Champs-Élysées, and whose principal duty seemed to be to ward off disagreeable or tiresome callers who wished to rob General Dawes of his valuable time, all made me feel as if the improvement of the army bandswas the one thing necessary to win the war. It was high time for me to leave France and “get back to earth,” as I no longer walked on anything but air and with my head projecting far above the clouds.
During my last visit to Chaumont I motored down to Domrémy, the birthplace of Jeanne d’Arc, and found the little village in just about the same state it must have been when she was born in the little house next to the church, both of which have been carefully preserved for the worshippers of to-day. The open space in front of her house, the trees surrounding it, and the monument in the centre seemed to me to form a natural stage on which a peace pageant could well be enacted, and as I sat there and the bell began to toll from the little church in which Jeanne had whispered her prayers, I began to dream of a possible peace celebration in which a company of American soldiers, a company of French soldiers, an American and a French military band, singers from the Opéra Comique, and a children’s chorus should take part; the climax to be the joyous meeting of the military forces around the monument and the awakening of Jeanne from her sleep of centuries, opening the door of her little house and standing there looking with astonishment at the unwonted sight of American soldiers in khaki as brothers of her beloved countrymen.
On my return to Chaumont I outlined this idea to several officers of the Staff and of the French Commission, who received it with enthusiasm and promised every assistance, but, alas, nothing ever came of it. When I returned to France the following spring the armistice had been arranged and the Versailles Conference was dragging its weary and dreary deliberations toward an unsatisfactory conclusion. There did not seem to beenough illusion or enthusiasm left to celebrate anything international connected with the war.
On my last visit to Chaumont I gave a little dinner to Colonel Collins, secretary of the Staff, whose constant interest had been invaluable and whose mind seemed to be capable at a moment’s notice of turning from the consideration of some intricate military problem to the great advantages to be derived from the introduction of the French B-flat bugle into our army. Over a very good magnum of champagne I rose and made him, Colonel Boyd, and Lieutenant Weill solemnly swear that for the rest of the war and as long thereafter as necessary the bandmaster’s school at Chaumont should be to them as the apple of their eye, and this oath they faithfully kept. The school flourished from October, 1918, until June, 1919, when it was discontinued owing to the return of our army to America. The relations between the French professors and our boys, all living together like a happy family, became so sympathetic and intimate that the results may truly be said to have been remarkable. The soldiers realized that they were receiving an education in music equal to that of the foremost schools of France or America, and the French professors entered into their duties with an enthusiasm which was touching. Casadesus told me that many of his pupils worked at their musical problems twelve hours a day and I urged him, in some way or other, to continue these pleasant and important international musical relations by founding a summer school somewhere in France, preferably near Paris, to which American men and women, already sufficiently advanced in their study of music, could repair for three months every summer in order to acquaint themselves with French art and French methods ofteaching. Until the war began, hundreds of American students had gone to Germany every year, and it seemed a pity that, owing to the Frenchman’s lack of propaganda for what his country could offer to our students, some of this stream could not be diverted to France. Our talks eventually led to the founding of theConservatoire Américainat Fontainebleau, of which details are told in another chapter.
By the courtesy of General Pershing I received permission to leave for home on the army transportAmerica. This ship sailed from Brest, and I was anxious to go there in order to see my daughter, Alice Pennington, once more. She and her friend, Miss Letty McKim, had been there for a year and had founded the naval Y. M. C. A., to the great satisfaction of Admiral Wilson and our navy stationed there. My daughter’s enthusiasm and vitality, together with that of her equally able friend, had created an atmosphere which our sailors greatly relished, and I was keen to see some of her work.
My train was to leave Paris in the evening, and my faithful friend and companion of the last five weeks, Lieutenant Weill, came to the station to bid me good-by. There were no regular sleeping-cars on this train but only what the French call “couchettes”—four bunks in each compartment, two on each side. The names of the occupants were carefully written on a slip of paper and pasted on the outside of each door, and Lieutenant Weill informed me that a French general occupied the lower bunk opposite mine. Sure enough, a handsome, youngish-looking general presently appeared and, politely touching his cap, entered our compartment and seated himself in his bunk. Weill, in French fashion, kissed me good-by on both cheeks, and as I had still ten minutes to spare, Istood outside and saw an American naval commander coming toward me with rather unsteady steps. He told me that he had had thirty-six hours’ leave and that he and his two aides had decided to spend it by going to Paris. As the train took twelve hours each way this gave them only twelve hours in the city of delights and he had evidently taken full advantage of every minute of it. He told me that his two aides had not yet turned up, that they had all the tickets and all his money; he also confided to me that one of them was so rich that he could have bought the entire train. I finally found his name on the list of our coupé, his bunk being directly over the French general’s, and as it was getting late, I advised him to enter. Just at that moment two handsome young naval lieutenants rushed up, and he received them with enthusiasm, for they had his railroad tickets. I helped him into our compartment, where he presently sat down right next to the general, who wrapped his cloak about him and cuddled up into his own corner. I said to my compatriot: “I think you are in the French general’s bunk. Yours is the one above.” Whereupon he said: “The French general can go to hell!” I was frightened out of my wits, as I expected an immediate international encounter which might have the most serious consequences. Luckily the general understood no English, and I finally induced my new naval friend to climb up into his own bunk, but I made a solemn vow that I would never again try to interfere where the army and navy of two different countries were concerned.
I turned into my own bunk and slept well until next morning, when I found the commander also awake and possessed of a thirst which knew no bounds. There was, of course, no drinking-water on the train, but I rushedhim to the restaurant of the next station where we stopped, and he seized a carafe of water and put it to his lips with such avidity that you could almost hear the water sizzle as it passed down his throat. He turned out to be a delightful fellow. He was commander of a destroyer and had spent dreary and terrible weeks in his little craft watching for submarines. The monotony and discomfort of such a life cannot be imagined, as these ships are so small that their motion is incessant and they have to go out in the dirtiest of weather. There is hardly ever a chance to cook meals, and those on board must eat what and how they can. For weeks and weeks nothing happens, but my commander had had the good luck on his last trip to get a sub, and had received his thirty-six hours’ leave in consequence. Small wonder that he and his colleagues sought some relief in honor of the great event!
At the next station my French general and I got a cup of coffee. Sugar was at that time taboo, and as, thanks to my army friends, I had my pockets full of this precious stuff, I offered him some in place of the awful saccharine, which he accepted gratefully and then told me that he was going on his first vacation in two years to spend with his family in a little watering resort this side of Brest. Sure enough at the next station, as he got out, a charming boy and girl, browned by the sun, rushed up to him and fairly smothered him with kisses. It looked for all the world like a scene at a Long Island station in August, when the various New York fathers commute on a Friday afternoon to spend Saturday and Sunday with their families by the sea.
I found my daughter Alice waiting for me at the station in Brest, and on the way to the little apartment which she and Miss McKim occupied together, she toldme that Admiral Wilson wanted to meet me before my departure on the transport the same evening. She begged me to support her if he denounced jazz music, against which he had a particular hatred, for she had always insisted to him that the sailors loved it and that in time of war they certainly should have anything they wanted.
In the afternoon the admiral’s band gave a concert in the public square, and I, of course, attended it and met the bandmaster and his players, who did very good work, several of them having been members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. They begged me to conduct them in one of the numbers, and I took up the stick and solemnly played through the “William Tell Overture” with them. At the end I saw Admiral Wilson on the balcony of his apartment applauding vociferously, and he presently came running, bareheaded, across the square to greet me. Almost the first thing he said was: “Doctor, don’t you think jazz music is horrible? It destroys all taste for real music.” “Indeed I heartily agree with you,” I answered. Whereupon my daughter Alice turned on me and said, “Coward!” implying that as the admiral was the autocrat of Brest I did not wish to brave his wrath even in order to please my daughter. But indeed I was thoroughly in accord with him; and I wish that either some popular substitute could be found for the interminable jazz that is ravaging not only our country but all Europe, or that a genius would come along who would pour into this very low form of art some real emotion which, welling from the very heart of man, might give life to what is at present but a nervous excitement.
That evening I went on board the transportAmerica, and sailed for home. I found the voyage exceedingly interesting.The ship had been a Hamburg passenger liner, theAmerika, taken over after her internment by our navy; the “k” having been carefully removed and an American “c” substituted. Various German signs had been scratched out, but the table and bed linen, as well as the knives and forks, still bore the mystic initials,H. A. P. A. G.—Hamburg Amerika Paketfahrt Actien Gesellschaft.
I was the proud occupant of a cabin and bathroom of the so-called “Roosevelt” suite, which the ex-President had occupied during his trip around the world, and the faucets over the bathtub still bore the signs “Kalt,” “Warm,” and “Gemischt.” The various luxurious furnishings of the ship showed the wear and tear of army-transport usage. The marble was cracked and the electric bells did not ring.
The first-class cabins were occupied by several hundred officers, a curious mixture of men, some returning on leave or to become instructors in the officers’ camps, or being mustered out of service, either for ill health, drunkenness, or incompetence. For days I was pursued, even into my cabin, by a man from a Western city who had enlisted as a dentist. He was evidently out of his mind and was to be mustered out of the service on his return home. He had conceived the mysterious idea that I could influence the powers that be to have him reinstated, and I finally found the glitter in his eye so ominous that I reported him to the colonel in command and he promptly had him put under medical observation. Two days later his companions in the hospital ward, whom he had already annoyed and frightened by suddenly grabbing their legs at night, found him in the bathroom with his throat partly cut by his razor; and I confess thatI was glad when I heard that he had been put into a cabin by himself, with a soldier guarding the door.
We were, of course, under army regulations and in many respects life was much stricter than on the passenger liners. We were compelled to wear life-preservers almost the entire voyage and no lights were permitted after sundown. We were not told at which American port we were to land, and I was much astonished one morning to find our ship anchored in Boston Harbor alongside the old 1812 frigateConstitution, whose broadside-guns looked delightfully picturesque and inefficient compared with the modern monsters I had seen in France.
During the following winter my wife and I often received visits from navy officers and sailors bearing greetings from our daughter Alice in Brest, and I remember one red-cheeked youngster who made so agreeable an impression on my wife that she invited him to return the following day, which was Sunday, for luncheon. On that morning the telephone rang. It was our old friend, Admiral William Rodgers, who asked whether he could come to luncheon. My wife said we would be delighted, but my youngest daughter Anita, who was well versed in the etiquette of the navy, called out: “Oh, we can’t have the admiral lunching with us to-day. An admiral can’t sit down at the same table with a gob!” My wife repeated this to the admiral, who insisted that it made no difference and that in war time everything was possible; that he certainly wanted to come and would be very glad to meet the “gob” who had brought greetings from Alice, of whom he was very fond. The sailor boy arrived first, and when we told him that our other guest was to be an admiral he grew pale as death, but when Rodgers arrived he was so kind to the boy that luncheon passed off fairly well,except that the boy became rigid at attention whenever the admiral spoke to him. During the luncheon Admiral Rodgers said to him: “You have just seen Mrs. Pennington in Brest?” “Yes, sir.” “And what was she doing when you saw her?” “She was selling postage-stamps, sir,” was the answer. And I have no doubt this was true, as Alice in her capacity of naval “Y” worker not only took the sailors out to picnics with swimming contests, arranged vaudeville entertainments and concerts, but in between times sold them chocolate, cigarettes, postage-stamps, picture postal-cards, lemon-drops, and ginger ale.
After luncheon my daughters discreetly took the young sailor into the front parlor in order to relieve the tension a little, and Rodgers asked me about an orchestration of the “Star-Spangled Banner” which I had made at the beginning of the war and which had aroused some attention. I had always felt that this good old English tune had a fine ring to it, provided it was played in the proper tempo, and I had given it an orchestration which developed into quite a climax on the last two lines of each verse. I sat down at the piano and played it for him, explaining the difference between this version and the old one which had been generally used before the war. He was much interested and wanted to introduce it in the navy.
The sailor boy finally took his departure, and my daughters came smiling into the music-room and told us that while they were sitting talking with the sailor, he suddenly jumped up from his chair and stood at rigid attention. He had heard the strains of the national anthem coming from our room and, remembering the admiral, knew his duty! Who shall, after that, deny the power of music in peace or in war?
LIEUTENANT WALKER BLAINE BEALEKilled in the St. Mihiel drive, September 18, 1918
LIEUTENANT WALKER BLAINE BEALEKilled in the St. Mihiel drive, September 18, 1918
XVI
In the spring of 1919 I received a letter from M. Lafere, thenMinistre des Beaux Artsin France, which interested the directors of the New York Symphony Society and myself exceedingly. In this letter he referred to the services of the New York Symphony Orchestra and myself to French art in America and invited us to make a professional visit to France the following year. He promised every assistance from the French Government and assured us of a warm welcome.
Mr. Flagler immediately decided that this invitation must be accepted inasmuch as it was the first time a foreign government had extended such a courtesy to an American musical organization. He also thought that our visit coming so soon after the war and including possibly the countries of the other allies in the war, such as Belgium, Italy, and England, would not only make a good impression but would help to establish musical relations with Europe on a more equal basis. Up till then the current had been all the other way. European singers and instrumentalists had been coming to America in a steady stream for many years, but in the meantime America had developed several orchestras of her own which could compare favorably with those of Europe; and he was very proud that the organization of which he was president and supporter should have been singled out for so great an honor and opportunity.
I sailed for Europe in the spring of 1919 to confer with the Beaux Arts about arrangements for our visit to Paris and other cities in France, and at the same time I also received invitations from the governments of Belgium and Italy to visit their countries with the orchestra. In London Augustus Littleton, the publisher, head of the old house of Novello & Co., also received me very cordially and insisted that our visit to Europe would not be complete if we did not include London. As England, like our country, has no Ministry of Fine Arts and can therefore take no official cognizance of musical affairs, he immediately and energetically set to work to form a committee of invitation, headed by King George and composed of all the foremost composers and conductors of Great Britain.
Affairs began to shape themselves very favorably, and our manager, Mr. George Engles, began to map out a tour of seven weeks, during which we were to visit five countries and play, in all, twenty-seven concerts. But in the meantime foreign exchange sank lower and lower and reports of transportation conditions in Europe were so gloomy that I began to be seriously doubtful of the possibility of the proposed tour in the spring of 1920. I finally decided in January to send our manager to Europe personally to look over the ground, and at the same time I expressed my fears to Mr. Flagler.
I told him that we would have to pay enormous sums for travelling expenses, the item of steamer passage alone amounting to fifty thousand dollars, and that while we would have to pay our orchestra salaries in American dollars, our receipts in Europe would be in francs, lire, etc. The dollar was then selling for seventeen francs in France and for twenty-three lire in Italy. I suggestedto him to postpone the tour until a time when war-torn Europe would be economically in a better condition and when her transportation system would again be more nearly on a pre-war basis.
Mr. Flagler listened to me and said: “I do not see how we can possibly postpone the acceptance of these official invitations from four countries to a later period. Now is the psychological moment to do it. How much do you think the tour will cost?”
I had made a kind of general calculation and mentioned the amount, which seemed to me large.
“Isn’t that curious?” he answered. “That is exactly what I thought it would cost. Go right ahead with your preparations.”
I was naturally delighted at his decision. I knew that American orchestras had achieved a perfection of ensemble which but few, if any, European orchestras could equal. I was proud of our organization and anxious to demonstrate it as a standard of American musical culture.
The members of the orchestra were wild with excitement at the marvellous news. Many of them had been born in America and had never seen Europe. It was the wonderland of their imagination. Others had been there as soldiers during the war, and still others had left Europe years before to found their fortunes and families in the New World and had not been back since. They immediately appointed a committee to agree upon a minimum salary schedule which, while giving them a fair recompense for their time, would yet make that part of it not too difficult for us. To this sum, however, Mr. Flagler later added ten dollars a week more for each player, as he thought that their hotel expenses might be greater than we had calculated.
The managerial work of constructing the tour was beset with many difficulties, as the war had disorganized many of the regular concert organizations in Europe under whose auspices we would have played under normal conditions. The railroads, also, made much slower time than formerly. But gradually the tour began to assume shape and the first concert was scheduled to be given on May 6 at the Grand Opera in Paris, which theMinistère des Beaux Artshad offered to us, and the last concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London on June 20. In order that this tour might be representative in every way of the best in American music, Mr. Flagler suggested that we take along two young American-born soloists of distinction—Albert Spalding, violinist, and John Powell, composer-pianist. I immediately set to work to prepare a series of appropriate programmes which should serve the double purpose of demonstrating the fine qualities of our orchestra and soloists, and also pay proper tribute to the great composers of the countries we proposed to visit.
We were to open with three concerts in Paris, and as I was conversant with all the details in connection with Paris especially, I preceded the orchestra and arrived there April 22. At my hotel, the “France et Choiseul,” I found a letter from my old friend, Robert Underwood Johnson, who had just left Paris to go to Rome as American ambassador to Italy. He said: