When the sailing list of each trans-Atlantic liner reads like the
program of an all-star gala performance, and conductors, managers and
husbands also sail, the small number of the cultured rich who maintain
music in New York go likewise; but the city is not left empty. Then the
Metropolitan assumes a perpetually “morning after” appearance; so, too,
Carnegie Hall; and the new piano emporium will serve as a sounding board
for band concerts across the way. It is to these band concerts—not only
in Bryant Park but in almost every park and pier in the city—that the
reader’s attention is called.
The vastness of New York is one of the greatest problems confronting any
public spirited enterprise which aims to reach that vague, elusive
faction—the people. The problem has been met and fairly solved musically
by the three men who are responsible for the invasion by band and
orchestra of the city’s parks and piers during the past three years. It
is refreshing to meet with a movement which aims toward no tangible
education, moral rescue or poor relief, and to find a department of city
government frankly idealistic enough to organize a force whose only aim
is the presentation of pure beauty. And it is curiously paradoxical that
this movement should have found its opportunity in New York. It is,
nevertheless, true that New York supports more entirely free summer
concerts than any city in the world.
At the beginning of the current municipal administration the park and
pier music in its present form had its birth in the constitution of a
committee consisting of the commissioner of docks and ferries, the
commissioner of parks and a new official designated as the supervisor of
municipal concerts in parks and recreation piers. To the latter is due
the lion’s share of credit for the ideals, the organization and the
practical working of the system. To the commissioners New York owes a
debt for their hearty co-operation, and in some cases, acute personal
interest in the problems of the undertaking.
Not only has the size of the music loving population been considered in
the multiplication of concerts, but the varieties of appreciation and
the national tastes of different neighborhoods have been sympathetically
studied by Arthur Farwell, the supervisor. The $100,000 annual municipal
appropriation is divided between the piers and parks, and provides for a
force of about seventy bands and conductors. Extraordinarily interesting
is the study of neighborhoods in connection with the make-up of
programs. This is especially so among the docks. The long pier at 129th
Street, with an orchestra attracts what the directors are pleased to
designate as the “high-brow” crowd. The call there is for the best in
operatic and symphonic music—two and three movements of symphonies are
often given. Selections from Italian opera flourish at East 112th
Street, and at East 3d Street, all sorts of Jewish religious music is
featured. The only crowd which has given any trouble assembles at West
50th Street, and the largest of the pier audiences is found at East 34th
Street. Probably the most generally representative gathering is in the
Mall in Central Park, where seven concerts a week are given in summer.
In thus cursorily reviewing the facts of the condition of municipal
music in New York, only the smaller part of the situation is discussed.
The movement, under its present impetus, is new, and to a large number
of people, unknown. Although it is beyond the scope of the present
article to consider, in any detail, the ethical aspect of the situation,
it is, nevertheless, appropriate, in view of the comparative untriedness
of the idea, to answer a few questions which are constantly brought up
by those who are interested in the conditions. Even so, it seems that
the time has come when the movement may fairly be said to have passed
the experimental stage, if success may be measured by popular approval.
It merely remains to count the numbers in attendance. And here we find
the answer to the most frequent query as to whether there is sufficient
popular demand to warrant all this effort. The question has been
submitted to a practical referendum. Do the people want it? Although no
formal count of the audiences has been made it has been estimated that
they ranged during the summer of 1912 from 5,000 to 15,000, in the
various localities. In Central Park, every seat in the Mall and on the
terrace was filled by eight o’clock, and stragglers wandered about the
outskirts or stood packed between the benches all the evening. Every
spot within hearing was filled, and it was with some difficulty that
aisles and passages were kept clear. Nor is this audience a casual one.
Any number of habitues are noticeable, night after night, in the same
seats—jealous of their places—and night after night, the same tired
mothers are there, with the same baby carriages. And way off, along the
driveways, or here and there in a street near the docks, a policeman, a
laborer, a little street urchin, may sometimes be seen to stop, and,
“lifting his head in the stillness,” listen—and pass on.
This attention is, with few exceptions, so marked, that it, of itself,
answers another question: Isn’t all this stuff way above the heads of
the people? Again, the size of the audiences furnishes the most
convincing answer. Theoretically, of course, the best, being the most
human, is above no one’s head. But even practically, no genuine
heterogeneous crowd of “street-bred people” trails from the dark places
on a hot night—carrying or wheeling babies, with small children tugging
at the skirts or clamoring to be carried—to hear such things as are
above its head.
The aim of the movement is distinctly not educational in the instructive
sense, nevertheless, the popular interest in the programs has been taken
into consideration by Mr. Farwell in his brief and readable program
notes. These give simple, important facts relating to composers and
compositions, and do not attempt any detailed analyzation such as is
familiar to the average concert goer. That these find a place, would
seem to be proved by the knots of people who gather, program in hand,
under the lights.
Underlying the entire discussion of this, or any purely artistic
movement in this country, there is often the question: What’s the use?
Be the reason what it may—personal gratification, civic pride, or any
other cause—it is almost safe to say that no citizen grudges New York
its parks, its buildings, or its Metropolitan Museum of Art. Why, then,
its public music, which gives innocent pleasure, rest, perhaps
inspiration to thousands? I do not think that this is grudged to the
people. Its neglect is simply a matter of ignorance, rather than
indifference, on the part of many men who regularly pay their opera and
symphony subscriptions, and who have watched with interest the efforts
of several organizations to bring the price of concert tickets down to a
low figure. But this philanthropic effort does not strike at the root of
the matter. Ideally, music should not have to be offered to the people
as a commodity, nor as a charity, nor, primarily, as an education. It
should stand, rather, as a temple, to which they may come gladly and
freely, and from which they may go full hearted, carrying its best with
them.
And this has been accomplished in the piers and parks in the last three
years. But the winter contrast is striking. Fed up all summer, it seems
hardly fair that men should be starved all winter. The daily papers
printed, during September, 1912, a number of letters, asking why these
concerts could not be continued through the winter months. There is but
one solution of the problem—the municipal orchestra—and in this
connection I cannot do better than quote a letter, written by Mr.
Farwell to the New York _Times_, in response to the various suggestions
and inquiries:
“The Central Park concerts have shown once for all that the greatest
in music appeals directly and powerfully to the people when it is
given to them under the right conditions. This is one of the mysteries
of music—its power to short circuit an intellectual by a spiritual
process. To wait until some hypothetical time in the future for the
high gift of music to be given to the people is to be both dilatory
and blind. The time for national initiative is at hand. What the
people of New York really need is a permanent municipal symphony
orchestra.”
Popular response to good music is no longer an open question. The people
have answered it conclusively, and popular demand has become a live
issue.