During the summer of 1880 my father conceived the idea of giving a
monster music festival in May, 1881, which was to last a week and for
which a chorus of one thousand two hundred, of which the Oratorio
Society should be the nucleus, was to be trained in sections during the
entire winter. He conferred with some of his friends, outlined his
project to them, and a Music Festival Association composed of the
directors of his Symphony and Oratorio Societies was formed. Other
prominent New York citizens were added and a guarantee fund was
provided, ample to protect the project financially.
Although I was only eighteen, my father deemed sufficiently advanced to
intrust the drilling of a great portion of this chorus to me, a
confidence of which I was very proud.
The entire summer of 1880 I spent in the little New England town of
Amherst. A very remarkable Frenchman, Doctor Sauveur by name, had
perfected a new system of teaching French and Latin, and Amherst College
had turned its buildings over to him for a summer course. It seemed to
my father and me that this was an excellent opportunity for me to
acquire the rudiments of these two languages.
I accordingly arrived in Amherst armed with a grand piano, reams of
music paper, and the orchestral score of the great Berlioz’s “Requiem,”
which my father had selected as one of the works to be performed at the
Festival. There was no piano score in existence and, to my joy, my
father intrusted me with the task of making one from the original
orchestral score.
I obtained a lovely bedroom from a farmer on the main street for the
opulent price of two and a half dollars a week, and my grand piano was
installed in the parlor, of which I had the entire use for four hours a
day to practise. My meals I got at the principal little hotel for six
dollars a week and when the genial proprietor saw me consuming my first
dinner he said:
“Ef I had known you et that hearty I would have charged you more. I
won’t make nothin’ out of you.”
The meals were certainly delicious, and at eighteen one’s capacity in
that direction is unlimited.
When I arrived in May the college was still in session and I was made
welcome by several of the students, among them Lawrence Abbott, now
editor of _The Outlook_, and John Cotton Smith, now rector of St. John’s
in Washington.
My days were certainly busy ones. In the morning I attended the sessions
of Doctor Sauveur in French and Latin and in the afternoon I practised
piano and worked hard at the arranging of the piano score of the Berlioz
“Requiem.” Incidentally, I seemed to find plenty of time for games and
fun of all kinds with a delightful family who had a country place there
and where I got my first real glimpse of American country life, which is
indeed unique and with which no other country can compare.
As fast as the different numbers of my arrangement of the Berlioz
“Requiem” were finished, I sent them on to my father who, after revising
them, gave them to the publisher in order to have the piano scores ready
for the rehearsals in the fall. He was well pleased with my work,
especially the “Tuba Mirum,” in which he thought that I had condensed
quite cleverly the four orchestras which Berlioz intended placed at the
four corners of the stage to represent the trumpets of the last
judgment.
When I returned to New York in September, my father intrusted to me
Section B of the New York Festival Chorus, numbering two hundred voices
and the Newark Harmonic Society of Newark, New Jersey, numbering three
hundred. He himself drilled the chorus of the Oratorio Society of four
hundred at which I always played the piano accompaniments, and Mr.
Cortada, an old pupil of my father’s, trained a section in Brooklyn and
another in Nyack, New York. I hurled myself at my task with such
vehemence and enthusiasm that by the time the Festival came along my
choruses were letter-perfect, but I had become voiceless. My vocal cords
had quite gone back on me in justifiable anger at my abuse of them.
The choral works to be performed included the Berlioz “Requiem,”
Rubinstein’s “Tower of Babel,” Handel’s “Messiah,” Beethoven’s “Ninth
Symphony,” and shorter selections. The monster chorus and orchestra
numbered fifteen hundred, and a special stage and sounding-board were
built at the Seventh Regiment Armory at which the Festival took place.
The organ from St. Vincent’s Church was transferred bodily, and I was
intrusted with the organ accompaniments. An enormous audience of ten
thousand people attended every performance, and the public acclaimed my
father with much enthusiasm as America’s greatest musician. Such happy,
happy days!
Among the many memories of this great occasion I can never forget the
first rehearsal of the four orchestras and sixteen kettledrums which
Berlioz used in the “Tuba Mirum” to depict the Last Judgment. This
rehearsal took place in the Foyer of the old Academy of Music in
Fourteenth Street; and as the sixteen kettledrums came in like one man
just as the fanfare of the judgment Trumpets begins, the effect of these
vibrations in a comparatively small room was so tremendous that one by
one the orchestra men arose and a murmur began which grew and grew and
finally relieved itself in a loud shout of enthusiasm. It was several
minutes before my father could continue the rehearsal. I have never
witnessed anything quite like it since. We are now so sophisticated by
Strauss and the later-day dissonancers that so-called instrumental
“effects” neither shock nor stir us. And as regards the dissonances with
which some of the ultramoderns seek to irritate our ears, I have always
claimed that the human ear is like the back of a donkey—if you whip it
long enough and hard enough, it gradually becomes insensitive to pain.
Theodore Thomas and his supporters were much irritated that my father
should have “gotten ahead” of them with so stupendous a musical
demonstration, and they immediately proceeded to copy his idea by giving
a Music Festival the following year in the same building.
For me, the immediate result of the Festival was my election at eighteen
years of age as permanent conductor of the Newark Harmonic Society. This
gave me the long-desired opportunity to produce choral works with
orchestral accompaniment, and for several years I gave three or four of
these every winter, including not only the older oratorios of Handel and
Mendelssohn, but more modern works like Berlioz’s “Damnation of Faust,”
Rubinstein’s “Tower of Babel,” the Verdi “Requiem,” and choral excerpts
from the operas of Wagner. All of these concerts my father attended, and
after each performance he would analyze my conducting, praise freely and
enthusiastically where he thought I deserved it, and also show me where
he considered a tempo wrong or an entrance of instruments or chorus not
properly indicated. My mother and aunt would often lend their lovely
voices in the choruses at the performances whenever I thought I needed
them, but they would always insist in the most blindly partisan way that
my concerts were wonderful and that I was altogether a very remarkable
boy.
This year marked my real beginning as a professional musician, and I
enjoyed my weekly rehearsals in Newark immensely, although horse-cars,
ferry-boats, and trains made the trip in those days a cumbersome one.
But after each rehearsal Mr. Schuyler Brinkerhoff Jackson, the president
of the society, Mr. Shinkle, the secretary, my dear old friend Zach
Belcher, enthusiastic tenor and music lover, Frank Sealey, my pianist
and since then for so many years accompanist and organist of the New
York Oratorio Society, used to go with me to a nice German beer saloon
near the railroad station where, over a glass of beer and Swiss-cheese
sandwiches, we waited until train time and discussed the welfare of the
Harmonic Society and music in general. Alas, the Volstead Law has ended
all such simple and happy foregatherings and the soda-water counter with
its horrible concoctions is but a poor substitute for the gentle and
soothing beer of Pilsen and Munich.
[Illustration: DOCTOR LEOPOLD DAMROSCH AND HIS SON
WALTER AT EIGHTEEN YEARS OF AGE]
V