“Storch, Storch, Steiner, mit de langen Beiner”—
“Storch, Storch, Steiner, mit de langen Beiner”—
“Storch, Storch, Steiner, mit de langen Beiner”—
“Storch, Storch, Steiner, mit de langen Beiner”—
and here was perhaps a descendant of the very bird whom we had greeted so long ago. I was inclined to become sentimental over this interesting possibility, but the stork flew away without showing any reciprocal interest and my mood did not last long.
We returned to Paris the following day, and on the morning of June 4 started in a special train to Fontainebleau, where the entire orchestra were to be guests of the mayor and municipality for the day.
The suggestions which I had made to Francis Casadesus in Paris and Chaumont during our long talks in 1918, while he and I were examining the two hundred bandmasters of the A. E. F., had borne quick fruits.Casadesus had communicated my suggestion of a summer school for American musicians to his very musical friend, M. Fragnaud, the sous-préfet of Fontainebleau. He in turn had interested M. Bonnet, the mayor, and in consequence a quick decision had been reached that the summer school should be placed at Fontainebleau and housed in an entire wing of the historic Palais de Fontainebleau, which would be donated for this purpose by the French Government. I was delighted at this happy outcome, and, as the people concerned evidently wished to signalize it by some special fête, I gladly accepted their invitation to give a concert there with our orchestra and make this, so to speak, the beginning of relations which will, I hope, help materially to bring France and America musically closer together for many years to come.
Many French musicians and dignitaries were on the train to take part in the day’s celebration. There were M. Paul Leon, representing the Ministère des Beaux Arts; Alfred Cortot, distinguished pianist; Mangeot, editor of theMonde Musicaleand founder of the École Normale de Musique in Paris; Francis and Henri Casadesus, Mlle. Boulanger, Albert Bruneau, composer of the opera “Le Rêve”; M. Dumesnil, deputy for Fontainebleau, and many others.
The whole town had been declared “en fête.” Every shop was closed and French and American flags, gaily intertwined, festooned all the principal streets. The street leading to the Mairie was lined on both sides by French troops, and we all tried to look as if we were delegates to the Versailles Conference as we marched to the reception of the mayor, and looked at this martial array.
The luncheon which followed was one of those typical French affairs in which the gay was charmingly mingledwith the more serious and ceremonial. M. Dumesnil proved himself one of the greatest orators I have ever heard and played upon every emotion of the human heart, evoking tears and laughter with the voice and diction of a virtuoso.
He was succeeded by M. Bruneau arising and suddenly addressing me, and at the close pinning the Legion d’Honneur on my coat, after which, to the huge delight of my orchestra, he, in true French fashion, kissed me on both cheeks. It is very agreeable to have one’s orchestra present while such honors are conferred, as their approval demonstrates itself in most noisy fashion, and my boys know that this particular decoration is as much theirs as mine.
As there was no theatre in Fontainebleau large enough to hold the huge audience, the concert was given in the Ménage d’Artillerie, which had been hastily converted into a concert hall. It proved excellent for this purpose, except that as soon as we began playing, hundreds of birds, which had had undisturbed possession of the rafters and of the musical privileges of this building for years, were evidently disturbed and angered by our intrusion. They suddenly flew out from their nests and burst into shrill songs of protest, which mingled, not without interesting results, with the harmonies of the “New World Symphony,” played by special request of the sous-préfet, M. Fragnaud, who is himself an excellent amateur oboe player.
In the front rows of the audience were hundreds of school-children who had been dressed “en Américaine,” with enormous bows and sashes composed of the American stars and stripes. That there were several hundred of these I can testify, as I had to shake hands with every one of them after the concert.
The following day, before leaving for Belgium, I received the welcome news that a rather disagreeable matter concerning our three concerts at the Paris Opéra had been most amicably settled. The Opera House, which is the property of the French Government, had been offered to us by the Ministère des Beaux Arts “free of rent,” but we were to pay for the actual expenses of light, heat, and service incurred. When I first arrived in Paris our local manager informed us that the Director of the Opera, who holds a lease of the building, intended to charge us thirty thousand francs for his “expenses.” This seemed to me excessive, and I remonstrated with M. Leon, the Director of the Beaux Arts. The Director of the Opera, who had lost millions of francs at the opera during the war, was a man of wealth to whom the opera was more or less of a personal toy, but he evidently wished to recoup somewhat on us, for he argued that, inasmuch as he might have given opera performances on the days and hours when we had our concerts, we should be charged with the pro-rata expense of his singers, orchestra, chorus, and ballet. This argument, however, did not seem valid to us, as since time immemorial there had never been any opera performances on those days of the week. I presented our case to M. Leon and told him that as I had never had any dealing or arrangement with the Director of the Opera but only with the Ministère des Beaux Arts, I was compelled to leave the matter entirely in their hands. We were their guests, and if they felt that we should pay thirty thousand francs for “expenses” we would most certainly do so. The results were most satisfactory, but not entirely unexpected by me, and the sum which we finally paid was a perfectly fair amount.
We went to Brussels on June 3 by motor, through a greatpart of the devastated regions and all the horror and misery of destroyed villages, field after field pock-marked by shell explosions and dreary remains of a few stumps of trees where had been acres and acres of forest.
On our arrival we were welcomed with open arms by our ambassador, Brand Whitlock, and his wife. He told me that but two weeks before he had been suddenly informed that we could not play at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie because a socialist organization of Brussels claimed the right to it for an entertainment of their own. There had been a mix-up because the director of the opera, who had promised us the theatre, had died and the new incumbent claimed to have no knowledge of our coming. They intended to place us in a Flemish theatre, which of course did not have the dignity of the Royal Opera House, and Mr. Whitlock promptly told them that, as we were there by invitation of the Belgian Government and as our coming had an international significance, he could not permit us to be euchred out of our rightful possession of the Théâtre de la Monnaie, and if we could not have that he would telegraph to me urging us to cancel the concert. This evidently produced results. The socialist organization was appealed to, and immediately and courteously said that it would do anything for an American orchestra.
The same lack of what we would call proper management of concerts seemed to exist in Brussels as in many cities of France and Italy. Large advertisements, such as fill the amusement columns of American papers, are hardly ever used. Two lines inserted only once or twice are the rule. Reading notices, giving the programme or other information regarding the concert, are printed only if paid for at so much a line. Small posters, which arepasted on street corners for a week or two, are almost the only advertising indulged in.
Transfer companies—such as in our country meet a musical or theatrical organization at the station with a specified number of trucks to carry the musical baggage or scenery to the theatre—are not known. We had put this important part of our tour into the hands of Thomas Cook and Sons, and their representative, on the arrival of the train, would negotiate with this or that driver lounging around the station and lazily looking for jobs. In Italy the porters again and again simply refused to transport our stuff because the weather was too hot, and they would only begin at six or seven o’clock in the evening, when thirty little handcarts, pushed by as many men, would carry the musical instruments to the theatre. Luckily concerts in Italy begin at nine or nine-thirty, so we always managed in one way or another to get our instruments transported. Several times, however, even soldiers and military camions were bribed into service. This slovenliness, which is maddening to an American, is so universal in Europe, especially since the war, that one marvels how anything can be accomplished; and yet with the exception of places where strikes interfered we got along, even though we were sometimes wild with anxiety and foolishly furious at what we considered to be their national characteristics.
Everybody in Belgium, however, seems to read the posters, for the demand for seats in Brussels was so great that we could have filled the little opera-house twice over. Its acoustics are marvellous, and the strings vibrate like an old Cremona violin. They had specially requested that the concert should be purely symphonic and without any soloist. I therefore gave them the lovely Mozart“Jupiter” Symphony and the César Franck D Minor. Franck had been born in Liège, and I wished to demonstrate to them our love and understanding of this noble musician. I do not think I have ever played before an audience more sensitive to the beauties of music. As a special compliment to Brussels we played an Adagio for strings by Lekeu, a modern, highly talented, young Belgian composer, who unfortunately had died at the age of twenty-four. The Adagio is a work of tender, melancholy beauty, and sounded so exquisite in this building that the players and I were intensely moved by it during the performance. This emotion was evidently communicated to the audience, so that at the close their applause could not be quieted, and I finally had to take the score of the composition from my desk and point to it in silent pantomime.
After the concert, as I was preparing to leave the theatre, two ladies came toward me with an old man who proved to be the father of Guillaume Lekeu. He tried to thank me for our playing of his son’s composition, but broke down completely as the tears poured down his face.
The following day at Antwerp I saw again to my great delight the famous old tenor, Van Dyk, with whom I had given many a Wagner opera during our engagement at the Metropolitan with the Maurice Grau Opera Company. His villa, near Antwerp, had been occupied by a German general and his staff during the four years of the war. They had drunk up his entire wine-cellar, consisting of many hundred bottles of choice vintages, and had also removed every bit of copper from his door-knobs and kitchen. Otherwise they had left his house intact, and, with imperturbable good humor and courage, Van Dyk had taken up again the work of gaining an existencefor his family. Twice a week he went to Brussels, where he had an interesting class in dramatic singing at the Royal Conservatory, and besides this he was busily engaged as a director of an insurance company.
In Antwerp, as well as in Liège and Ghent, we found the same discriminating and educated audiences as in Brussels.
Hardly anywhere did we see the ravages of war, and what little there were were being quickly repaired by the industrious inhabitants.
We left Belgium on June 10, to enter Holland, playing at The Hague that evening and in Amsterdam the day after.
In Holland our American diplomatic representative, William Phillips, Minister to The Hague, had been active in assuring us a welcome. He was an old friend and had invited not only the Queen Mother, who is the only musical member of the royal household, but a distinguished party of nearly one hundred, including all the diplomatic representatives and the highest officials of the court and governments, to be his guests at the concert.
After the first part he introduced me to the Queen Mother, who proved to be very charming and much interested in music, and who also possessed that delightful royal quality of putting you “at your ease.” This consists in asking a question and then not waiting for you to answer, but answering it in all its possibilities and bearings herself. Conversation is thus made rather one-sided but agreeable, even though all the brilliant things one might have said remain unuttered.
After the concert the entire distinguished party assembled at the legation for a delicious supper, at which I met a great many charming Dutch ladies who, fortunately for me, spoke English or French.
The next day Mr. Phillips motored me to Amsterdam. There the members of the local orchestra immediately poured into the willing ears of my men dreadful stories of local jealousy of our coming, that several of the newspapers had been told to criticise us severely, and that all the adherents of the local orchestra had ostentatiously decided to absent themselves from our concert. Very little of this proved to be true. The huge hall in which we played, the Concertgebow, has a stage perched up so high that the people in the parquet literally have to strain their necks to see the performers, and the reverberation of sound is excessive. The hall seats three thousand people, and there were not more than fourteen hundred at our concert. However, they certainly made up in enthusiasm what they lacked in numbers. All previous notions of the phlegm of the Dutch people were completely dissipated. Not being a prima donna, I did not keep count of the many times I was recalled after the “Eroica” Symphony, but, as I had to march down and up a platform of about fifty steps each time, the exercise in connection with it was considerable. The newspapers next morning, in spite of all the dark rumors, were enthusiastic in our praise and generous in their comparison of our orchestra with their own splendid organization.
London marked the last lap of our musical race through Europe. We stayed a week and gave five concerts, four at Queens’ Hall on June 14, 15, 16, and 19, and one on June 20 at the huge Royal Albert Hall. The lucky star which had accompanied us during the entire tour shone for us with steadfast light during this last week. The orchestra never played better and the newspapers heartily echoed the reception we received from the public.
I had not conducted in London since a concert mentionedelsewhere in these reminiscences, given at Princes’ Hall by Ovide Musin in 1888, when I was but twenty-six years of age. Since then great changes have come over the musical life of England. At that time music was to a great extent in the hands of foreigners, and one has only to see the old pictures by Du Maurier inPunchto realize that the musician in English drawing-rooms was generally a long-haired German or Italian. Hans Richter was the great popular conductor in London and there were many foreigners in the British orchestras.
Since then the Anglicization of music had been going on rapidly, thanks principally to great music-schools such as the Royal College of Music, under Sir Charles Villiers Stanford and Sir Hugh Allen, and the Royal Academy of Music, under Sir Alexander MacKenzie. These schools educate great numbers of orchestral musicians, and to-day the personnel of British orchestras is composed almost entirely of native-born. Many of us consider Sir Edward Elgar the greatest symphonic composer since Brahms, and his education has been altogether British. A group of English conductors, of whom Sir Henry Wood is the dean and Albert Coates and Eugene Goosens among the most gifted, have made for themselves an international reputation. England has now the material for a strong national musical life. With such conductors as she possesses and her splendid orchestral material, her orchestras would soon rival those of America if her citizens would give them the same generous support which our organizations receive, but in this respect the condition of London is very much what it was in New York preceding and during the first half of my career.
Her orchestras are to a great extent co-operative. Theconcerts are projected and given by the members of the orchestra and they divide the profits among themselves. These profits are exceedingly small and do not really pay them for the time given to the rehearsals and concerts. The London Symphony, for instance, gives only eight concerts during the winter, and rarely has more than three rehearsals to a concert. In consequence of this, while the players have developed a great facility in reading at sight and making the most of the limited rehearsal time, the results cannot be as finely worked out as is possible in the generously endowed orchestras of America, which assemble their players every morning for rehearsal and give more than one hundred symphonic concerts during a winter.
We lay great stress on unanimity of bowing, for proper phrasing can only be secured if the sixteen first violins, for instance, who have to play a phrase in unison, play as one. To the educated ear there is a great difference in the effect if one or two or more notes are played on the same bow or if a phrase is begun with an up or a down bow. Generally speaking, this unanimity in our playing impressed and delighted our London audiences and critics, but one of the latter was evidently annoyed by it as he began his analysis of our concert with the head-line: “Orchestra Too Perfect to be Good.” His eye had evidently been accustomed to the more “free and easy” bowing at some of their own concerts, and he thought that a more emotionally inspired effect was produced if the individual member of the orchestra is not restricted by too much discipline. It must be acknowledged, however, that a good conductor must guard himself from the temptation to make a god out of technic, which should, after all, be merely a means to an end.
Because of our undoubted superiority in orchestras and opera we cannot, however, claim to be a more musical people than the British. Their love and cultivation of choral music is far greater than ours and they have a small group of composers whose work is more important and interesting than the aggregate we can as yet produce.
Augustus Littleton and his friends arranged many affairs for our pleasure, among them a ceremonial luncheon at the Mansion House by the Lord Mayor of London. This luncheon was attended also by the American ambassador, Mr. Davis, Viscount Bryce, and many of the foremost English musicians. My orchestra was hugely delighted and impressed with the quaint mediæval ceremonies, the gorgeous uniforms and liveries, and the prodigal hospitality displayed by our kind host. As a mark of special friendliness toward the New York Symphony Orchestra and its first visit to Great Britain I was made a member of the “Worshipfull Company of Musicians,” founded by James I in 1604, and was presented with the silver medal of that ancient organization.
Our ambassador proved himself just as able to discourse eloquently on the importance of music as on any other theme which might tend to strengthen cultural bonds between the two nations. Both he and his wife had evidently endeared themselves to the English people, and many were the regrets when, with the change of party in Washington, he tendered his resignation.
Throughout the luncheon Lord Bryce beamed his approval of the proceedings, as he had given nearly all of his energies during the later years of his life toward a better understanding between the two English-speaking countries.
The orchestra sailed for America on theOlympiconthe Tuesday following our last concert, and I bade them good-by with my heart in my mouth; they had done such honor to our president, Mr. Flagler, to our country, and to their conductor. During the entire tour of seven weeks there had not been one lapse from perfect discipline, a discipline largely self-imposed. Each one had felt his responsibility and had acted accordingly. Their playing had been at high-water mark continually and they had borne the inevitable fatigues and annoyances of constant travel with unfailing good humor. On the other hand, their delights had been many. They had seen the great art treasures and scenic beauties of five countries, and with that quick perception which is one of the characteristics of American life, they had taken full advantage of their opportunities. If they gave of their best with both hands, Europe certainly returned with equal prodigality, and there is not one of my men who would not jump at the chance to repeat our experiences at the first opportunity, naturally still further extending the tour to include Germany, Austria, Poland, and Czecho-Slovakia. We are still somewhat shy of Russia, however, as the reports which my Russian musicians get from their former country are too dismal and uninviting.
XVII
In Europe music sprang from the ground and it is the folk-songs and folk-dances of the peasant that have gradually—refined and developed in the hands of the great composers—worked their way upward and become the possession and delight of the cultured classes.
In this country we have no peasantry, and what slight remains of folk-songs and folk-dances we possess, apart from the music of the negro, have only recently been dug out of the isolated mountain fastnesses of Kentucky and Tennessee. These are generally of British origin and cannot be considered as having been part and parcel of our national life. As against the rich subsoil of the folk-songs of Germany, Bohemia, Russia, France, and Scotland we can show but the thinnest artificial layer of music, and this has been created and carefully nurtured by a small educated class.
The dreary social life of the early Puritan settlers and their frowning attitude toward the joys of life further retarded the growth of the arts among us.
I do not think there has ever been a country whose musical development has been fostered so almost exclusively by women as America.
Musical education began among the well-to-do classes who could afford to engage the European musicians who immigrated to America to teach their daughters—but not, alas, their sons. A strong feeling existed that music was essentially an effeminate art, and that its cultivationby a man took away that much from his manliness and, above all, made him unfit to worship at the most sacred shrine of business. I am speaking now of fifty years ago. Conditions have improved since that time, but not sufficiently as yet to produce normal and healthy conditions regarding the civilization of our people.
Women’s musical clubs began to form in many a village, town, and city, and these clubs became the active and efficient nucleus of the entire musical life of the community, but, alas, again principally the feminine community. It is to these women’s clubs that the managers turn for fat guarantees for appearances of their artists, and it is before audiences of whom seventy-five per cent are women that these artists disport themselves.
The result of this has been that the cultural life of American women has often been absolutely a thing apart from their relations with their men-folk. It has become accepted that of course men do not and need not share the women’s interest in the arts; and while business does not perhaps monopolize the American man in quite as unhealthy a fashion as in former years, the principal change which has been brought about is the introduction of golf, at least an occupation in which men and women may share. What a pity that the elusive ball is not composed of a little Beethoven and Brahms instead of the mysterious mixture of concrete and gutta-percha, and that family life, which is the very fortress of civilization, cannot make use of the cultivation of music as one of the strongest ties to bind husband and wife, sons and daughters together!
Some of us are too prone to look upon modern plumbing, telephones, and motor-cars as evidences of high civilization or even culture, when they are really onlymore or less agreeable conveniences which minister to our comfort but not to our heart or head.
In Europe men and women share more equally in the love and cultivation of music, and the emotional and personal attitude of the women is offset by the more impersonal and mental attitude of the men. The result of this is shown in audiences in which neither sex predominates and, above all, in the cultivation of chamber-music at home in which professionals and amateurs, men and women, participate to their mutual pleasure and development. Nothing more charming can be imagined than such family evenings of music, during which the players indulge themselves in the string quartets and piano trios of Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms, with perhaps a small audience of enthusiasts composed of other members of the family and half a dozen friends who afterward all join in a jolly supper of bread and cold meats, together with a good bottle of wine or beer.
My father carried this lovely custom into the New World, and I owe almost my entire education in chamber-music to the Sunday afternoons at his house, the tranquil and spiritual atmosphere of which is unforgettable.
A few years ago a meeting was held in the mayor’s office at City Hall at which I had been asked to speak in behalf of good music for the people on Sunday afternoons and evenings. A clergyman from Brooklyn had made a tremendous appeal against any Sunday recreations and wanted the aldermen to revive the old blue laws of two hundred years ago. The room was crowded with people, and when I spoke of what the chamber-music on Sunday afternoons at my father’s house had meant to me as a boy, this audience broke into such enthusiastic applause that there was no mistaking the general attitude,and my Sunday symphony concerts, which I was the first to inaugurate in New York, have only once been interfered with by municipal authorities.
Some American women have realized the false and one-sided condition of musical culture in our country and have sought to remedy it by encouraging their sons to take up the study of some musical instrument, but it has been up-hill work, as the general sentiment of the country has not yet been sufficiently awakened. Plato considered the study and appreciation of music an educational necessity for the young Athenian, but such schools as Groton, Saint Paul’s, and Saint Mark’s, for instance, have not yet admitted music to their regular curriculum, and in so far as it is studied there it is considered rather an outside privilege with which the school course has no official connection. Among the boys the necessity for excelling in football or baseball is so carefully and consistently insisted upon that almost the entire time left from school hours is devoted to these sports, and the boy who wants to continue the study of a musical instrument, which a fond mother has perhaps begun with him before he entered the school, is looked upon by the other boys as a sissy. The standard of personal conduct set in these schools is high, but the tendency seems to be to make the boys as like each other as possible. Many of them, if not discouraged, would develop decided artistic talent, but individuality and independence of thinking, which should be the end and aim of all teaching, is often frowned upon, and the results only contribute still further to the monotony of our social life, in which the courage to be one’s self is submerged in the desire to be exactly like every one else.
The public schools of our country, however, show amuch more intelligent attitude than formerly; and, while the time allowed for singing and the study of the beginnings of music is still all too short, music is taught to the boys as well as to the girls. The singing of the children has greatly improved, and in many cities school orchestras have been formed, which the boys and girls enjoy immensely and in many of which music of good character is studied.
In Los Angeles and Berkeley, California, I heard some excellent school orchestras, and in Dayton, Ohio, Mrs. Talbot has interested herself personally in this movement with great enthusiasm and excellent results.
In New York, my brother Frank, while supervisor of music in the public schools, effected a complete reform in the teaching of the children and succeeded in interesting the authorities to give music a more important position. The singing improved immensely and since his retirement Mr. Gartlan, his successor, has continued the good work. I have several times used choruses of a thousand school children at the music festivals of the Oratorio Society in the production of such works as Pierné’s exquisite “The Crusade of the Children” and “The Children of Bethlehem,” and the children sang the three-part harmonies of their music with such purity and exquisite quality of tone as to bring happy tears to the eyes of the audience.
School orchestras have been formed all over the city, and once a year I take my entire orchestra to one of the large auditoriums of the public high schools and for two thousand little would-be orchestra musicians we play a programme composed of the music they have been studying during the winter. We never play before a more enthusiastic and delightful audience.
Thirty-one years ago I gave the first orchestral concertfor children, and twenty-five years ago my brother Frank founded the Young People’s Symphony Concerts, which were designed to introduce the beauties of orchestral music to children, and in a short explanatory talk to unravel its mysteries of construction and demonstrate the tone colors of the different instruments of the orchestra. These concerts have proved an enormous success and of great importance for the education of the coming generation. When my brother retired from public work in order to devote himself exclusively to the direction of the Institute of Musical Art I took over these concerts, and have since added another course intended exclusively for little children from seven to twelve years of age. The audiences are truly remarkable. The faces of the children are aglow with interest and excitement, and when I sit down at the piano after playing an overture with the orchestra and, repeating some melodic phrase from it, ask them, “Which instrument played this melody?” their little voices ring out from all over the hall in high, shrill accents, like little pistol-shots, “The oboe! The oboe! The trumpet!” Then I let all those who think it was the oboe raise their hands, and if they are right great is their triumph, and if they are wrong equally great is their chagrin. Generally they are right!
On my orchestral tours I have several times given such children’s concerts on the afternoon preceding the regular evening symphony, and while two such concerts in one day are a great exertion, the children’s especially demanding a great output of vitality in order to keep their interest, I have felt more than repaid by the results; in many of the cities my work in this direction has been continued by the local orchestras or musical clubs (again the women!), and with the happiest results.
In New York also women devoted to music have greatly contributed toward its development, but occasionally the result of their efforts has not been so beneficial. Not so long ago a handsome but incompetent foreign musician (I will not disclose any name or dates in this story) came to New York and enlisted the sympathies of a few enthusiastic women. As many women need some personality on which to centre their devotion to art, they decided that New York should have this particular gentleman to direct its symphonic future. The American business man is proverbially good-natured to his womenkind and ready to pour out money for music provided he is not compelled to listen to it, and so these ladies gathered a huge fund with which to give a series of orchestral concerts. The amount was large enough to maintain a good symphony orchestra in proper hands for an entire winter, but in this instance was to be expended on six concerts only. The handsome young foreigner gave his first concert, which was a failure so complete and dismal—he being not only without any reputation but with hardly any experience in work of this kind—that even his little group of adorers became appalled and proposed to cancel the rest of the concerts. One lady, however, who had her own special favorite conductor, suggested that a complete disgrace might be averted if her protégé were invited to conduct the remaining concerts. As he was an excellent artist and thoroughly routined in the handling of orchestral players the results were so good and, above all, such a contrast to the dire tragedy of the first concert that the enthusiastic lady devotee saw her opportunity and suggested that a new orchestra should be formed for the following winter, the concerts of which should be conducted by the man who had saved the situation forthem. New York had already an average during the winter of a hundred and fifty symphonic concerts by the New York Philharmonic, the New York Symphony, the Boston Symphony, and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and it would seem from this that the symphonic needs of our public were already more than amply supplied; but an enthusiastic woman, especially when driven by devotion for some pet artist, refuses to recognize practical conditions, and so this little group proceeded to gather more funds, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars, in order to put the new orchestra properly on its feet.
Their first difficulty was to find good players. There are never very many first-class symphonic players to be found. Not only do the two old-established New York orchestras employ about a hundred players each, but the orchestras of other cities come to New York to fill their vacancies. For years the Philharmonic, the New York Symphony, and other out-of-town orchestras had a gentleman’s agreement that they would not steal each other’s players, but this new organization immediately proceeded to take thirty-seven from the Philharmonic by offering them immensely higher salaries. They did not take a single player from the New York Symphony Orchestra because, as they vowed, of their great personal respect for me, but I think it was partly because we happened to have a two-year contract with all our men which bound them to us very effectively for another season. They filled their ranks further from members of the Boston Orchestra and from other out-of-town organizations, and then proceeded on their first regular season as a New York Orchestra with loud protestations that New York at last had an organization worthy of the metropolis. This orchestra carried on its existence fortwo years, at the end of which it came to a dismal close with an expenditure for the three seasons over and above the receipts of the box-office of nearly a million dollars, which their surprised and chagrined men guarantors had to pay. This is but one of several such irregular ventures, each one of which has swallowed hundreds of thousands. One would think that the inevitable failure of these efforts would deter others from undertaking them, but such is not the case. Hope springs eternal in the breast of the musical woman devotee and I have just heard of a new orchestra now being formed in order to enable still another foreigner, whose interpretations will of course be a revelation to our public, to wield his stick in this country as his own has refused to accept him at his own valuation.
In recent years chamber-music in New York has received great encouragement and intelligent support from women. Mrs. Frederick S. Coolidge has proved a veritable godmother to this lovely branch of musical art, and every fall the festivals of chamber-music which she gives in Pittsfield in the Berkshire Hills bring together notable gatherings of musicians and music lovers as her guests. For several years she has offered generous prizes in competition for various forms of chamber-music. But to me the most encouraging thing that she has done is the commissioning of certain composers to write compositions for these festivals. Neither string quartets nor violin sonatas can ever become profitable to the composer in the ordinary way of commerce, as the number of copies which can be sold of such works is necessarily limited. Even young American composers must live, and if they are to devote their time to the creation of serious forms of art they should be assured of at least some financial recompense for the time they must give to it.
Mrs. Ralph Pulitzer has entirely maintained an excellent string quartet for the past three years, and I should like to see such excellent examples followed by others among our well-to-do, as chamber-music is essentially written for performance in the home and loses much of its charm and intimacy if given in a larger hall and before hundreds of people.
For some time to come the initiative for a more general musical education of our people will have to come from the women. If American mothers will demand and obtain for their sons the same musical privileges and opportunities which their daughters now enjoy America will speedily become the most musical country in the world.
So much has already been done, but much remains, and I should like to live a hundred years longer just to watch this development and to rejoice in its results.
XVIII
In 1887 I visited Boston for the first time professionally. I had begun my Wagnerian lecture recitals in New York a year or two before, and they had spread like wildfire in all directions. The enthusiasm for Wagner, which had been kindled into a bright flame by my father’s founding of German opera at the Metropolitan Opera House, had produced a wide-spread desire for better acquaintance with Wagner’s music and his theories regarding the music-drama.
I received an invitation from a group of Boston women, including Mrs. John L. Gardner, Mrs. O. B. Frothingham, Mrs. George Tyson, and Mrs. Henry Whitman, to give my lecture recitals on the “Nibelungen Trilogy.”
Boston at that time occupied a unique position as the only city in America which possessed a permanent orchestra, maintained by Major Henry Lee Higginson, for the cultivation of symphonic music. A small group of highly educated and socially prominent Bostonians, belonging to the oldest New England families, made this orchestra almost the focus of their social life. The weekly concerts were the great events, the programmes eagerly discussed, and its conductor, Wilhelm Gericke, was alternately cursed or blessed according to their attitude toward some novelty which he had just produced.
Among this group I was made heartily welcome. The atmosphere was intensely local, if not provincial, and as against the searching, feverish life of a great metropolislike New York, with its many conflicting interests and racial currents, the tranquillity and purely American quality of Boston life, as it presented itself to me, was a complete contrast. I am speaking of Boston of thirty-five years ago and of conditions that have to a certain extent disappeared, for to-day even the young descendants of the New Englanders of that era seem to find their pleasures in different and more restless fashion.
In the group of which I have spoken, Mrs. Gardner was among the most original and fascinating. She was certainly the leaven in the Boston lump and sometimes shocked the more staid element by her innovations and interest in more modern currents in art and literature than had hitherto rippled its calm Emersonian surface. Boston was at that time perhaps the best example of that typically American musical culture of which I have spoken elsewhere, which instead of growing upward from the masses was carefully introduced and nurtured by an aristocratic and cultivated community through symphony concerts and lectures on music. Its original impulse sprang perhaps more from the head than the heart, but it would not be fair therefore to say that New Englanders approached music only from the intellectual standpoint. I have seen very emotional outbursts among Boston audiences, both at my Wagner recitals and years after when I returned with the Damrosch Opera Company to give the Wagner music-dramas. While it is possible that they felt heartily ashamed of these enthusiasms afterward, and exclaimed, “Is this Boston?” the fact remains that even a Bostonian is human, like other Americans, and needs only to be encouraged to prove that he too has a heart which can beat warmly and respond to the emotions kindled by art.
Their capacity for friendship in the finest sense of the word is wonderful, and I achieved many of my dearest friends at that time. We have all grown much older since then, with the exception of Mrs. Gardner, on whom the years leave no imprint and whose enthusiasms for life and art flame just as brightly to-day as then.
I was certainly very young in those days, and remember, after one of my lectures, which had gone off with great enthusiasm, walking along Boylston Street toward my hotel, thinking in my young conceit that I was evidently a good deal of a personage, when I saw that the street was filled with crowds of people and the police were making a passage with difficulty so as to allow an open carriage, drawn by two horses, to pass through. In it sat a rather stout, smooth-shaven gentleman with a very shiny high silk hat, and the people were cheering him like mad. “Who is this?” I asked a bystander. He gave me a contemptuous look and stopped cheering just long enough to say: “Don’t you know John L. Sullivan when you see him?” I accepted the rebuke meekly and entered my hotel a much more modest man than I had left it a few hours before. John L. Sullivan, “Boston’s greatest citizen,” had just come home from a fight in London, but I do not know to this day whether he had won or lost.
The Boston orchestra was at that time conducted by Wilhelm Gericke, who had brought it to a remarkable state of proficiency. I found him to be a very likable man, a thorough musician, and always gentle and friendly in his attitude. I used to envy him because, while I had to maintain my orchestra at that time by my own exertions, he had a great philanthropist behind him. His orchestra was engaged by the year, played under no other conductor, and assembled every morning at 9.30, likeclockwork, for rehearsal. Gericke brought the orchestra up to a high standard of virtuosity. His sense of values was absolute, and under his training and greatly assisted by Franz Kneisel, his concert master, the strings soon acquired great unanimity and a ravishing quality of tone. His readings were always musicianly, although I felt occasionally that they were too reserved. He had a horror of the exaggeration of the brass instruments, and perhaps erred on the other side in subduing them too much; but when he returned, years after, for another five years in Boston his readings had gained in freedom and elasticity, and the balance of the different choirs seemed perfectly adjusted. Boston, and indeed the country, owes him much. He was fortunate in his opportunities, but he proved himself worthy of them.
Rightly or wrongly, Major Higginson had made it his rule to engage none but German conductors for his orchestra. He had gained his first enthusiasm for symphonic music as a young man in Vienna, and had got the idea firmly in his mind that only Germany could give his orchestra the leaders which it required. Among the long line of conductors who came and went, not all, naturally, were of equal worth. A few were distinctly second-raters, and I remember one whose blustering incompetence and conceit finally so enraged Major Higginson that, as the gentleman would not resign when requested because his contract still had another year to run, Higginson sent him a check for the entire amount and dismissed him. Curiously enough the impetus which the reputation of having been conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra gave was so great that it landed him in two other American orchestras, one of which he brought to the very verge of ruin and the other he ruined altogether, sothat the city which had founded it and lavished hundreds of thousands upon it is now without any symphony orchestra and seems to have lost the courage to begin again.
But among the conductors of the Boston Orchestra two stand out as among the best that Europe has sent over. These are Arthur Nikisch and Doctor Karl Muck. The one died last winter, beloved and mourned by the musical public of all Europe and of North and South America; the other was sent from our country back to Germany after the war in deserved disgrace, after having been interned as prisoner of war at Fort Oglethorpe.
When I first met Arthur Nikisch in 1887 he was conductor at the Leipsig Opera House. I had gone there to attend an annual meeting and festival of the Tonkünstler-Verein, an association of which Franz Liszt had always been the president and which had originally been formed by a small group of Liszt-Wagner-Berlioz adherents, of whom my father was one. One of the features of the festival was a stage performance of Berlioz’s “Benvenuto Cellini,” given in honor of Liszt. The work fascinated me, and its performance under the young Nikisch delighted me beyond words. In appearance he already had the same characteristics which his enemies decried but which among his friends only aroused a delighted chuckle when he appeared on the platform, and which quickly changed to a hurricane of enthusiasm after he had demonstrated his marvellous skill as an interpreter. I refer to the long black lock which always hung low over his forehead and his still longer white cuffs which more and more enveloped his little white hands as the performance progressed.
Gericke had developed the orchestra into a perfect instrument,and when Nikisch arrived he played upon it like a virtuoso. I have always maintained that Nikisch achieved still greater mastery during his years in America, because until then he had had no such orchestra at his disposal. The much-vaunted Leipsig Gewandhaus and the Berlin Philharmonic, which he conducted, suffer from the troubles common to all co-operative organizations. Their members outstay their period of usefulness and retain permanent places in the orchestra after they should give way to younger and better men.
The readings of Nikisch were distinctly personal and therefore, because they reflected his own nature, so ingratiating that I have often enjoyed certain of his interpretations although I considered them wrong and contrary to the intentions of the composer. Nikisch made them convincing for the moment.
Doctor Muck, who became conductor of the Boston Symphony some years later, was less personal in his readings. His principal work in Germany had been the conducting of opera, and occasionally a lack of routine in symphonic work showed itself in badly combined programmes, but only in that one respect. As a conductor of the symphonies of Beethoven and Brahms he was a master, and to me his interpretations of Brahms rank among the finest that I have heard. It was a tragedy that this man, who had gained not only the confidence and respect of his patron, Major Higginson, to a greater degree than any other of the Boston conductors, who was admired not only in Boston but in every city which the orchestra visited, and to whom America had given unbounded acclaim, should at the crucial moment have proved himself a supercilious, arrogant Prussian of the worst Junker type, ungrateful toward the man to whomhe owed his many successful years in America, and finally even an abject coward and renegade toward the country to which he owed national allegiance.
The story in its entirety is too unpleasant to be told, but as after Muck’s return to Germany he saw fit to indulge in the most violent diatribes against America and its treatment of him, it is justifiable to tell a little of the truth in these pages.
In order to understand the story properly it is necessary to recall the excitement which swept through the country when we finally entered the Great War. Wars arouse prejudice as well as patriotism, and suspicion as well as faith. One of the curious, almost pathological, results of the psychosis of war is the spy mania, and this manifested itself in the years of 1917 and 1918 to a remarkable extent—in America as well as in Europe. One need only recall the many stories of concrete tennis-courts which were discovered and vouched for by reputable people as having been built years before by German army officers, who, disguised as “rich American financiers” (!) had constructed lavish country places along the Atlantic seaboard, all of which possessed these remarkable concrete tennis-courts. These were to support great guns which at the proper moment were to put the American navy out of existence! There were also wonderful stories of secret wires discovered in private houses, and of strange beacon-lights suddenly flaming up at regular intervals along the coast in order to signal messages to some mysterious German submarine.
It was all like a war novel of Oppenheim, and as some of our ladies joined the secret-service in an unofficial capacity, they together with others—who conceived it to be the height of faithlessness to our country to enjoy asymphony of Beethoven or an opera of Wagner while we were at war with Germany—had a beautiful time in the happy illusion that they were doing real war work.
Doctor Muck immediately became a centre of suspicion. He had taken a cottage at Seal Harbor, Maine, for the summer of 1917, and of course he was immediately accused of having a wireless outfit and signalling to a whole fleet of German submarines which were cruising off Mount Desert Island and whose immediate object was, of course, to capture all the millionaires of Bar Harbor and hold them captives for huge ransoms.
According to others he had placed a telephone receiver in the cellar of his house in Boston which skilfully tapped the wire of the telephone of the lady next door, and she, to her horror, had one morning on lifting her telephone, in order to call up her butcher, heard his “guttural” German voice conversing with some mysterious German at the other end about a shipment of dynamite, which was to be used, of course, to destroy Faneuil Hall and the birthplace of Henry W. Longfellow in Maine.
There was not a story so wild that it did not gain credence, but it was not so strange that many of these preposterous rumors should centre around Doctor Muck. His attitude toward us had become more and more supercilious. That he should sympathize with his own country was perhaps natural, but that he should use some tact and reticence in this respect was equally to be expected. He might have taken example from Fritz Kreisler who, as an Austrian citizen, served at the beginning of the war in the Austrian army, but was retired and returned to this country before we entered the conflict. From then on he acted with such dignity and tact, giving up all playing in public during that critical period, that he retainedthe personal respect and affection of all right-thinking Americans.
As the war situation became more and more serious, Doctor Muck seemed to become more and more supercilious. In response to a perfectly natural impulse, the public demanded that our orchestras begin or end their concerts with the playing of the national anthem. This had become the symbol of our patriotism, and as millions of our young men began to gather in the camps and to be sent abroad in the transports, “The Star-Spangled Banner” was beginning to awaken in every heart emotions that were hardly known to our generation before the war. Doctor Muck refused to play the anthem. Not from Boston nor New York, alas, but from Providence, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh angry mutterings began to be heard. These cities insisted that an orchestra which in time of war was not willing to play our national anthem should not be permitted to play at all. Doctor Muck’s answer to this, in a newspaper interview, was that he conducted an artistic institution, that “The Star-Spangled Banner” is not a work of art, and therefore “only fit to be played by ballroom orchestras and military bands.”
Up till then I had upheld Doctor Muck in so far as it seemed just as bad taste for him, as a German, to conduct our national hymn in time of war with his country as it was for our public to insist that a German should do so. He could have said: “I am a German; my country is at war with yours. I am your guest because in 1915 Major Higginson insisted that I should return to America as he thought that the orchestra could not exist without me. I am now in an unfortunate position. Let me retire from conducting here during the war, or at least let your national anthem be conducted by the concert master.”
But this interview was a flippant evasion of the real point at issue, and when the reporter of theNew York Tribunebrought it to me, I exclaimed that I did not believe Doctor Muck could have said anything so outrageous, whereupon the reporter told me that his editor had expected me to say this and had therefore telegraphed to Boston and obtained a confirmation of the interview. I then expressed myself in very plain language regarding Doctor Muck’s attitude, but his only answer was a new interview in which he declared that it was all a mistake, that he was not a German but a Swiss! This belated claim, which was based on technicalities and contrary to the facts, was promptly denied by the Swiss minister in Washington, and then suddenly Doctor Muck proceeded to conduct “The Star-Spangled Banner,” but in listless fashion, although half a dozen cities by that time barred their doors to him and the concerts of the orchestra had to be cancelled.
In the meantime the secret-service men of the government had been patiently following every rumor and clew regarding Muck’s supposed spy activities, and while they discovered that his attitude toward us was absolutely inimical and that he was therefore decidedlypersona non grata, there was no foundation of truth in the rumors connecting him with wires, wireless, beacon-lights, dynamite, or German submarines. The secret-service men, however, discovered other disagreeable things in regard to him which had no connection with the war but which made him liable under the laws of our country. An incriminating package of letters was shown to him, and on his acknowledgment that he had written them he was given the choice of internment as a prisoner of war at Fort Oglethorpe or of being arrested on another chargeand brought before the civil courts for trial. He naturally threw up his hands and accepted the former as the lesser evil. As he was released after the war on condition that he return to his own country, I cannot see that he has cause for anything but gratitude toward this country and its lenient treatment of him.
The whole affair was a terrible shock to Major Higginson. He was an old man and the discoveries regarding Doctor Muck, in whom he had placed such confidence and for whom he had vouched so absolutely, were unendurable to him. He had expected to continue his support of the orchestra, and it was generally assumed that he would leave the organization an endowment sufficient to maintain it after his death. Instead of this, he announced his determination to withdraw altogether, and left the decision whether they wished to continue the orchestra with a group of music lovers whom he had called together. For a time its future was in great doubt. Thirty of the players were discharged because of their German nationality, but money was subscribed by various Boston citizens to rebuild the orchestra, and to-day, under the leadership of Pierre Monteux, it is fast regaining its old excellence. It will never again occupy the unique position it held twenty-five years and more ago, because since then so many other symphony orchestras have been founded in America on similar lines and with similar generous endowments. But to Major Higginson will always belong the glory of having blazed the trail. He set the standard, and America will give his memory loving reverence and gratitude.