When my father died there were only three symphony orchestras in
America, the New York Symphony, the New York Philharmonic (Thomas formed
his travelling orchestra from this), and the Boston Symphony. The last
of these was supported by Major Higginson, and was the only one whose
members received weekly salaries for a season of thirty weeks, met every
morning for rehearsal, and devoted themselves exclusively to the playing
of symphonic music. It was the first so-called “permanent orchestra”
founded in America. The New York orchestras at that time played only a
very small number of symphony concerts, for each of which they had about
three rehearsals. Their members added to their earnings by playing in
odd concerts, opera, theatre, in fact, in almost anything that they
could find.
To-day the New York Symphony is splendidly maintained as a permanent
orchestra through the generosity of its president, Mr. Flagler. The
Philharmonic is similarly supported by liberal contributions from
various sources, and other orchestras in Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit,
Minneapolis, Cincinnati, St. Louis, San Francisco, and Los Angeles use
from a hundred thousand dollars a year upward, donated by their
respective citizens, over and above the receipts from the sale of
tickets, in order to maintain themselves as permanent symphonic
organizations. Without such subsidies these orchestras could not exist,
as, even though the concerts are crowded, the expenditures are much
greater than any possible receipts.
I wonder how many of the conductors of these orchestras, who all receive
generous salaries and have no personal financial risk in the enterprise,
realize what up-hill pioneer work we had to do in the early days to keep
our orchestras alive and to lay the musical foundations on which they
are now so solidly built.
After my father’s death I was elected, at the age of twenty-three,
conductor of the New York Symphony Society. We used to give six concerts
and six public rehearsals during the winter, and for the seven years
following my election this orchestra was also employed for the German
opera at the Metropolitan. But when German opera was supplanted by
Italian under Abbey, Schoeffel, and Grau, I was hard put to it to find
sufficient work for my men to keep them together. The little subsidy
which was at that time contributed by the directors of the Symphony
Society was only large enough to give the six regular concerts of the
winter season. I had learned the difficult art of accompanying soloists
sympathetically with the orchestra, and the foreign artists who came to
America, such as Sarasate, Ysaye, d’Albert, Joseffy, Paderewski,
Kubelik, and many others, always chose my orchestra to accompany them.
But these concerts were comparatively few, and I had to look for other
ways of giving my men enough work to make it worth their while to stay
with me instead of accepting travelling engagements with little opera
companies, etc. Gradually I developed Sunday-afternoon symphony
concerts, a complete innovation, as up to that time the only music given
on Sundays was in the evening and of the more popular and trivial
character. I argued that Sunday was the one day in the week when men
were not immersed in business cares, and that on that day they and their
families would be more susceptible to the appreciation of a higher and
more serious class of music. I therefore boldly inaugurated a series of
symphonic concerts for every Sunday afternoon during the winter; and my
faith was justified, as not only were these concerts attended by huge
audiences, but the percentage of men was greater than had ever been seen
at symphony concerts before. For several years I enjoyed a monopoly of
my idea, but then other orchestras and soloists perceived its value, and
to-day I have to share Sunday afternoons with two or three other
organizations who also give high-class concerts, all of which are
generally well attended.
I also gradually developed long spring tours with fifty men, which in
those days was considered a travelling orchestra of good size. On these
tours I penetrated the South, the Middle West, and, later on, the Far
West of California and Oregon.
Many of the communities that we visited had never heard a symphony
orchestra before, and for them we did real pioneer work, as I maintained
a high standard of music on my programmes. The classics were, of course,
the foundation; but Wagner very soon became a great drawing power, and
Wagner programmes were often the most asked for.
The general plan of my tours was to have the advance agent organize
three-day festivals with a local chorus which would take part in some
oratorio or concert excerpts from the operas of Wagner, Verdi, etc. I
would also carry a quartet of solo singers, sometimes supplemented by a
“star,” for the average American public dearly loves a “name.” Many of
these stars make their greatest money long after their vocal powers have
diminished, and they are compelled to make up this lack by adventitious
means such as extraordinary costumes, perhaps more decolleté than local
custom would sanction, but which are always considered as quite the
right thing for so exotic a personage as the “prima donna.”
During these three-day festivals we would generally give five concerts,
and, as we often booked two festivals in one week, the ten concerts and
necessary rehearsals often proved a great strain on my vitality. But it
had to be done, as the local festival committees were compelled to crowd
in as many concerts as possible to make their expenses. It has always
been fascinating to me to do pioneer work, either by organizing
something new, introducing a new composer, or penetrating into regions
where symphonic music was not yet known. The gratitude of the people was
often very touching, and if my profits at the end of an arduous tour
were sometimes not so large as they should have been, I had at least
kept my orchestra together for eight, ten, or even twelve weeks, and had
enlarged the radius of musical activity by many hundreds—sometimes
thousands—of miles. I marvel now at the courage with which I would
start on a tour in which perhaps only half my concerts were guaranteed,
and these guarantees, alas, not always paid up in full. But for years I
was almost the only one travelling through the country with an
orchestra, and as railroad fares were just half of what they are to-day
I was generally able to end my tour with some profit.
I also began to tackle the question of how to utilize my orchestra
during the summer months, and had the good luck to solve that problem
for many years very effectively. As early as 1885 and 1886 I was invited
by the Southern Exposition of Louisville, Kentucky, to come there with
my orchestra and play the entire summer, giving two concerts a day. I
shall always look back on those two summers with delight and gratitude.
I was very young and it was my first experience of a prolonged stay in a
Southern city. Louisville at that time was a small community, but with
an old civilization which manifested itself in a circle of charming
people of established culture and social relations. They opened their
doors and their hearts to my brother and me. The Pendennis Club, in its
old-fashioned courtesy and hospitality, was like a page out of Thackeray
or Dickens. Most of the people had never heard symphonic music, and as
we played twice a day for about three months, I gave them almost the
entire orchestral repertoire, ranging from the good popular music of
Johann Strauss through the symphonies of Mozart, Beethoven, and the
modern composers, to Wagner, who immediately became their “favorite
composer.” The members of my orchestra were also received with great
cordiality, and several very tender and romantic love-affairs were the
result. I too would gladly have fallen a victim to the charms of these
Southern beauties, but, alas, I was such a hard-worked young man with my
two concerts a day and rehearsals that I could not indulge myself much
in romance.
One evening, during a terrific thunder-storm, the lightning crashed into
the machinery furnishing the electric light of the music-hall, and
plunged it in darkness. It was crowded with thousands of listeners and
for a few minutes there was an awe-struck silence, broken only by the
great crashes of thunder. Gradually hysterical cries from the women were
heard here and there and a rush for the doors began. The darkness was
intense, but I knew the orchestra could play the march from “Le
Prophète” by heart, so I shouted to them to begin this number. I can
still hear old Karl Deis, who had been trombone player under my father,
beginning all alone with the opening theme, followed immediately by the
rest of the orchestra. I was conducting like mad, although, owing to the
darkness, not one of the players could see me, except when the flashes
of lightning momentarily illuminated the hall; but the music immediately
calmed the audience, who sat down and at the conclusion of the march
applauded vociferously. We then started the “Beautiful Blue Danube,” and
in the second bar the electric lights of the hall blazed up again. The
following evening the chief of the fire department and other city
officials appeared, and with several bottles of champagne toasted the
orchestra and its conductor for their “great life-saving act” of the
evening before.
On Sundays there were no concerts, and they became blessed days of peace
and rest. I usually spent them at the country place of a friend—a
roomy, hospitable, Southern mansion, delicious noon dinner, and
afterward a lazy, happy time on the lawn, watching the horses,
beautiful, full-blooded, Kentucky bred, gambolling about without saddle
or bridle, like young puppies, according to the old-established Sunday
custom of the place. To the Kentuckian the love for his horses and pride
in their qualities is part of the romance of his life; at least it was
in those days, long before the automobile had made its appearance.
The many concerts at the Louisville Exposition, coming at the beginning
of my career as an orchestral conductor, gave me enormous routine and
acquaintance with the entire orchestral repertoire.
I found the South exceedingly receptive. New Orleans had, of course,
been a supporter of French opera for years—its opera-house was one of
the most charming I had ever seen—but I also established new centres
for music, one of which developed very successfully in the little town
of Spartanburg, South Carolina. The impulse here came from the Converse
College for Women, which has a high reputation in the South. The young
ladies of this institution formed the nucleus of a large and
well-trained chorus of two hundred and fifty voices. I went there with
my orchestra every spring for over ten years. We succeeded in building
up a great love and appreciation for music there and in other near-by
places, as it was the custom for the alumnæ of the college to return to
Spartanburg for Music Festival week and then to carry back and spread
their musical enthusiasm in their home towns.
Gradually I penetrated farther and farther West. In 1904 I made a tour
as far as Oklahoma City with the orchestra and quite a large group of
solo singers, with whom I gave excerpts from Wagner’s “Parsifal,”
connecting the various numbers with a few explanatory remarks. The tour
was highly successful, as the public had read much about the first
performances of “Parsifal” at Bayreuth and New York, and were keen to
hear the music. I recall an amusing incident in Oklahoma City. Our
concert had been scheduled as part of a course of entertainments under a
local manager. The theatre was crowded and I had just finished the
Prelude to “Parsifal” and was ready to begin the excerpts from the first
act, when suddenly the manager popped up on the stage and addressed the
audience somewhat as follows: “Ladies and gentlemen: I am proud to see
so many of you here to-night and take this opportunity of announcing to
you that I have already made arrangements for next season for a course
which will be in every respect finer than the one I am giving you this
year! I also would like to announce that Stewart’s Oyster Saloon will be
open after the concert for lunch.” (Sic.) This was, however, our only
interruption, and the rest of the music was listened to with evident
interest and enthusiastic approval.
After the concert was over, as I left by the stage door to return to my
hotel, I was met by the crowd of people descending from the top gallery.
A young man who had been lounging against the stage entrance went up to
one of the men who was coming out of the theatre and said: “Well, how
was it, Jim?” and Jim answered: “This show ain’t worth thirty cents.”
The woes of _Amfortas_ and the lilting measures of the _Flower Maidens_
had evidently not appealed to this young Oklahoman!
In contrast to this experience I should like to relate what happened
another time when we were giving a symphony concert, perhaps the first
ever heard there, at Fargo, North Dakota. Efrem Zimbalist, delightful
man and artist, was our soloist on this tour, and after the concert,
when we met for supper, he related with shouts of laughter that while I
was playing the “Lenore” Symphony, by Raff, he was sitting behind the
scenes of the “opera-house”—every Western city has a “grand
opera-house”—listening to the music, when a cowboy, young, handsome, in
flannel shirt, high boots, slouch hat, etc., came on the stage and sat
down amicably next to him. The cowboy was perhaps a little “mellow,” as
this was before the days of national prohibition, but he evidently had a
musical ear, although he had never before in his life heard a symphony
orchestra. Every time that the music developed into a kind of joyous
climax, he would grab Zimbalist’s knee in convulsive delight and shout:
“God damn it, but I like that music!” Then he would sit in rapt silence
until the next outburst, when he would again grab Zimbalist and shout:
“They can go to hell, but they know how to play!” We all envied this
man, because, no matter how much we may appreciate music, we have heard
so much that we can never again experience the thrill of hearing a
symphony orchestra for the first time in our lives.
The story, of course, went the rounds of the orchestra, and for weeks
afterward, if we were seated in the dining-car of our train, the voice
of one of the musicians might be heard above the roar of the cars and
the din of the clattering knives and forks shouting in joyous accents:
“God damn it, but I like this omelet!”
Speaking of dining-cars, on one of our Western tours during the first
years of the war we had heard much about the sad conditions of the
Belgians, whose territory had been so ruthlessly overrun by the German
armies. Our entire orchestra had just responded unanimously and
generously in contributing toward the Belgian Relief Fund, and in the
dining-car at the table opposite mine were seated our second flute
player, a Belgian, together with his son, who was one of our talented
violoncellists. Their plates were heaped with turkey, cranberry sauce,
and potatoes, and there was an apple-pie in the offing. I said: “I
thought the Belgians were starving!” “Oh,” said Barrère, the ever-ready
and ever-witty, “ils mangent pour les autres.”
How much we have owed on these tours to George Barrère! He has always
been for me a model member of an orchestra. He is a great
artist—perhaps the greatest on the flute that I have ever heard—but no
rehearsal is too long for him, and the inevitable contretemps of travel
are accepted by him with imperturbable good nature. I have described
elsewhere with what difficulty I was enabled to import him from France
seventeen years ago, owing to the opposition made by the New York
Musical Union, but he has more than justified his claims to American
citizenship since then, not only by his artistic work, but by the group
of American pupils whom he has gathered around him, who are devoted to
him and have received and made their own much of his artistry. He is a
delightful mixture of Gallic wit and American humor. He was asked once:
“If you were not a musician, Monsieur Barrère, what would you like to
be?” and he promptly answered: “An orchestral conductor!” A wicked
remark, but as he has since then become the conductor of Barrère’s
Little Symphony Orchestra I can give him tit for tat.
When the war broke out I found that as we had thirteen nationalities in
the orchestra, including all the nations at war, relations might often
become strained, especially on our long tours when the men are forced,
in the sleeping-cars and at the concerts, into constant and close
companionship. I therefore gave them a little talk in which I explained
that as they were gaining their living in this country and as they were
artists for otherwise they would not be in the New York Symphony—their
first duties were toward their art, toward me, and toward their families
whom they were supporting in honorable fashion, and that therefore for
the time being it was for the good of all to sink their political
differences and their various attitudes toward the war, and to live in
harmony with each other. This talk had good results, as during the
entire four years of war I cannot recall any serious difference or
quarrel between them.
There were, of course, serious discussions and sometimes good-natured
raillery. At that time Rudolf Rissland was the leader of my second
violins and had charge of the orchestra during the long tours. He has
been with me a great many years and I value him highly as a man of
character and loyalty. He is of German birth, and, although he had
become a patriotic American, he always wore his blond moustache combed
upward in German fashion. We had been informed before our Canadian tour
that no players of German birth would be admitted into Canada, but,
thanks to the British ambassador, Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, an old friend
of my wife’s family, we received a special permission for the few
German-born who had not yet received their second citizen papers, to
enter Canada, as I gladly made myself responsible for them. We were the
only orchestra that gave concerts in Toronto and Montreal during the
war. On this particular trip, after our train had left Toronto, the
orchestra began to twit Rissland unmercifully, accusing him of having in
most cowardly fashion combed his moustache downward before coming on the
stage for the concert. At first he denied this absolutely, but finally
confessed that he had combed down the side turned toward the audience,
but had kept the other side defiantly turned upward!
The idea of venting their feelings against a nation by maltreating the
music of its composers at rehearsals or concerts never entered the minds
of our players. Our Frenchmen would play a symphony of Beethoven or an
excerpt from a Wagner music-drama with the same care and enthusiasm as a
work by one of their own composers. The same was true vice versa of our
German-born members. To the good musician art is international, although
each nation has its own standards and traditions of interpretation, and
it is interesting to note how sharply opposed these sometimes are. There
is often a curious racial antagonism between the French and Italian
musicians. The Frenchman will insist that the phrasing of the Italian is
sloppy and hypersentimental, while the Italian will retort that the
Frenchman’s is academic and rigid. Every nation has its excellent
qualities, and the finest orchestra in the world is one composed of the
best of the different nationalities moulded into one harmonious whole by
a master conductor without racial musical prejudice.
Our visits to California were perhaps enjoyed the most of all. These
began long before the earthquake and fire had destroyed the old San
Francisco, and when the city had all the romance of earlier days and
Chinatown was still an exotic and fascinating region of mystery. The
society of San Francisco was different from that of any other city in
the United States. It was composed largely of restless pioneers from the
East and from other countries who, having “worked their way” across the
continent, had finally stopped and settled in San Francisco because the
Pacific Ocean prevented them from going still farther, and also because
in California nature opened both arms wide in welcome, and gave of her
bounty so freely that life and the necessity of supporting it became an
easy matter. Many of the well-to-do sent their sons and daughters, not
to New York and Boston, but to Paris and London, for their education.
Society was international in that it comprised Americans, Germans,
French, and Italians. They all loved music instinctively, and gave it
enthusiastic acclaim, much as in a city of Italy or the Midi of France.
Few trained symphony orchestras had penetrated so far West, and my
orchestra was a revelation to many of our hearers.
For me there were also pleasant visits to San Mateo and other beautiful
places near by, where one could see a good game of polo or tennis and
have one’s gastronomic needs delightfully ministered to by Chinese cooks
and Japanese butlers. In those days Los Angeles was but a small city and
no one then dreamed of the unique and lightning-like development which
has made it in a few years one of the most important cities in America.
In continuing our tour farther north we came under the management of two
very remarkable women, under the firm name of “Steers and Coman,” who
virtually control the musical field from Oregon and Washington as far
east as Denver. Miss Lois Steers and Miss Wynne Coman live in Portland,
Oregon. By dint of their organizing genius and enthusiasm for music, and
an absolute integrity in all business dealings, they have not only won
the highest respect and confidence of the communities to which they
minister but have built up a very effective organization. Under their
auspices every great artist who has ever visited this country has
appeared not only in the larger cities of the States which they control,
but in many of the smaller university towns and farming communities in
which the Misses Steers and Coman have been able to develop an interest
in music. They are not only business women of superior qualities, but
ladies of such fine sympathies and breeding that I have always felt
particularly honored by their friendship.
On our tours, Miss Steers usually attended to the local needs of the
cities we visited—the music committees, the hall managers, and the
newspapers—while Miss Coman travelled with us as general railroad
manager, baggage despatcher, and “committee of one,” to smooth out all
difficulties, adjust any disputes and, in general, to “oil the wheels.”
As soon as we came into their territory everything moved like clockwork.
I remember one agonizing day, however, when we had to make Salt Lake
City from the West and terrible floods had disarranged all railroad
schedules. The final jolt came when, at some station on the way, John
Drew’s two cars containing his dramatic company and scenery were added
to our already over-heavy train because the floods had compelled him
also to change his route. All hope of reaching Salt Lake City in time
for our concert seemed gone. Miss Coman hopped onto the engine and sat
down next to the engineer and stoker. I did not know whether she used a
woman’s wiles or brute force or a combination of both, but we arrived in
Salt Lake City at nine P. M. on a lovely summer evening. An audience of
two thousand had been notified that we would be late and were calmly
promenading up and down in front of the theatre. Trucks were in waiting
at the station to rush our baggage to the auditorium, our men had put on
their evening dress in the baggage-car, and I began the opening overture
with all the instruments properly tuned at ten minutes before ten.
Symphony concerts were so few and far between in Salt Lake City that the
audience did not mind this long wait one little bit.
Of course all these difficulties could not have been so happily solved
had I not always had devoted and efficient heads of the different
departments of our organization. George Engles is the most careful of
business managers; Rissland, the orchestra manager, has always been
tireless in his efforts to keep the men in good discipline and spirits
and to look after their welfare; and Hans Goettich, who has been my
baggage-master and librarian for over twenty-five years, is a perfect
marvel. I remember seeing him flag an entire train because he had
suddenly noticed that our baggage-car, containing all our music and
musical instruments, had been hooked on to it by mistake. As this train
was going to New Orleans, while we were headed for Chicago, we would
have had to stop giving concerts for several days until that baggage-car
had been traced and sent back to us! On Goettich devolves the entire
responsibility for the library, which is packed in dozens of boxes and
kept according to a system of his own. On these long tours our
programmes are changed more or less every day, partly to avoid the
monotony of repetition for us and partly because each community has its
own needs according to its stage of musical development, which I try to
gauge very thoroughly when making up my programmes. This means incessant
work for the librarian and mistakes might easily occur, but during all
these years I cannot recall a single concert when, through fault of
Goettich’s, an orchestral part has been lost or misplaced. This is a
remarkable record.
I remember giving a symphony concert in William J. Bryan’s town of
Lincoln, Nebraska. I found a typical Middle Western community, living in
nice houses with green lawns, with neatly bricked streets and concrete
sidewalks, and roomy large-windowed schools. The theatre in which we
played was thoroughly modern, clean, and well lighted, and the audience
well dressed and appreciative. One of my double-bass players told me
that he had played there thirty years before with Theodore Thomas. In
those days Lincoln was but a frontier town and the theatre and the
public who had come to hear the Thomas Orchestra were of a more or less
primitive character. My double-bass player told me that with a
colleague, whose head was devoid of hair, he had stood directly below a
proscenium box in which a group of cowboys were seated. While the
orchestra was playing Beethoven’s “Fifth Symphony,” one of these
cowboys, who was chewing tobacco violently, amused himself by spitting
frequently and always aiming for the bald head of the bass player, who
had to keep one agitated eye on the conductor and the other on this
horribly resourceful listener, in order to avoid his only
too-well-directed shots.
Our orchestra always enjoyed the long spring tours, although now and
then uncomfortable happenings would mar their pleasure. Nothing makes a
musician so ill-natured as to be deprived of a good square meal, and
sometimes our dining-car would not connect properly or we would be so
delayed as to arrive in a town only just in time to rush to the theatre
and give our concert. Then I would have to exert all my powers as an
orator to induce them to go directly to the theatre instead of
“loitering by the wayside,” and I would quickly order large quantities
of ham and swiss-cheese sandwiches to be distributed behind the scenes
just before the concert.
At present our players while on tour receive so much per day above their
salaries for meals and beds, but in the early days I used to pay their
hotel expenses, my manager engaging rooms and arranging the rates “on
the American plan” before we arrived in the city in which we were to
play. This system, however, never worked well because there was always
intense jealousy among the musicians as to the quality or conveniences
of their respective rooms; and if the first oboe found that his room did
not front on as agreeable a locality as that of the first horn, he would
perhaps sulk and consider that he had been unfairly treated. The newer
arrangement proved much better, as it enabled some to save from the
money allowed them and permitted others to “splurge” by spending more.
I remember that once in those early days we had to fill in a date in a
small New York State town on our way to Canada. The principal hotel had
room for only about twenty, and the other members of the orchestra were
quartered in four other hotels. Naturally the unfortunate five who were
put into the last of these had a terrible story to tell of their
sufferings when we met the following morning at the station. To be sure,
the manager of the hotel had charged only a dollar for each person, and
this included his supper, bed, and breakfast, but their rooms had been
dismal and the beds hard. The climax was reached in the morning, when,
as a frowsy waitress began to serve them their breakfast in the
fly-specked dining-room on a table covered with the inevitable dirty red
and white checked cloth, the manager, putting his head in at the door,
shouted: “Lizzie, no eggs for the band!” This phrase became a catchword
in the orchestra, and whenever my manager or I refused anything to our
men, the cry immediately resounded: “Of course, no eggs for the band!”
Orchestra players through experience become remarkably routined
travellers. They know the good hotels and restaurants in every city of
the Union, and during the long railroad jumps, especially west of the
Mississippi, where distances between important cities become greater and
greater, they know how to amuse themselves, each one according to his
fashion. There are, of course, a few groups who play poker violently
from morning till night. Others are equally constant to pinochle or
bridge, while a few are perfect sharks at chess. The Frenchmen, as well
as the Russian Jews, are great readers of serious literature, and books
on history, philosophy, and music are in great demand among them.
Whenever the train stops, even for a few minutes, a dozen jump off to
play ball. As a rule, during the day we have two cars, one of which is
given up to the smokers, where indeed the air becomes so thick that one
could cut it with a knife. At night three or four sleepers are necessary
to take care of us comfortably. The old days, when I travelled with
fifty men, have gone long ago, and now we should not think of touring
with an orchestra of less than eighty-five.
The time for spring tours seems to be passing, however, as the Western
cities are beginning to minister to the needs of their respective
communities with their own excellent orchestras.
For many years I accepted long summer engagements with two concerts
every day, first at Willow Grove near Philadelphia, and then at Ravinia
Park, on the North Shore near Chicago. The former became a great
educational factor, as Philadelphia at that time had no orchestra of its
own. Willow Grove Park is situated seventeen miles from that city and
was built by the Rapid Transit Company in order to stimulate travel on
their trolley lines. The first season, for which a military band had
been engaged, had not proven a success, and I was invited the following
year in the hope that a symphonic organization might do better. I began
by giving them popular programmes of good music with a regular symphony
night every Monday and a Wagner programme every Friday evening, with
excellent results. Our audiences usually numbered from fifteen to twenty
thousand. The Rapid Transit Company, realizing the importance of the
concerts, promptly built a huge open-air auditorium after my own design,
consisting of only a roof on pillars connecting with the shell in which
the orchestra was placed. The acoustics proved exceedingly good and the
out-of-doors atmosphere was preserved.
I continued these concerts for seven seasons, thereby developing an
audience for symphonic music which eventually and inevitably demanded a
resident orchestra of its own. To-day the Philadelphia orchestra, under
the leadership of Leopold Stokowski, ranks as one of the foremost of our
country. Its concerts are crowded to the doors and I like to think that
our seven years of pioneer work in Willow Grove have helped to lay its
foundations.
I also conducted a series of concerts at Ravinia Park, organized by the
Chicago and Milwaukee Electric Railway to serve a similar commercial
purpose. Chicago had, of course, enjoyed for years the splendid winter
concerts of the Chicago Orchestra, first under Theodore Thomas and then
under his successor, Frederick Stock, but this was the first time that
symphonic concerts were given during the summer amid such charming
surroundings on the borders of Lake Michigan. These concerts proved
exceedingly popular, the audiences consisting not only of the North
Shore residents but of thousands who came out from Chicago on trains and
trolleys.
After several years of this work, however, the incessant daily concerts,
coming after an arduous winter season, began to pall on my musical
nerves. I ran a real danger, if I continued, of becoming nothing but a
musical routinier, with an inevitable loss of the enthusiasm and
freshness which is an absolute necessity for the interpreter. I
therefore gave up all conducting during the summer months.
I founded the Damrosch Opera Company in 1895, and the harassing question
of how to maintain my orchestra seemed solved, for, during the first
year, my opera season lasted thirteen weeks and during the following
three years, from twenty to thirty weeks each. This not only enabled me
to maintain a beautifully trained orchestra for the Wagner operas, but
also gave to my symphony performances a greater finish. The orchestra
was now under my exclusive control and could rehearse as often as the
endowed orchestra of Major Higginson. But as it was the opera that
enabled me to give my men such a long engagement, its needs had to
control all other arrangements, and gradually the regular sequence of my
winter concerts in New York began to suffer. I could not keep my opera
company in New York except for a limited period each year, and therefore
had to fill in much of my time in Philadelphia, Boston, and the larger
cities of the South and Middle West. In 1899 I was therefore finally
compelled to give up the regular subscription series of our New York
concerts and the New York Symphony Orchestra became a part of my
travelling operatic organization.
I made this sacrifice with a heavy heart, but at that time it was the
only solution. An orchestra devoted only to concerts could not be
maintained without an endowment, and that I did not have at the time,
while the length of my Wagner opera season enabled me not only to give
my men a good engagement but to have the pick of the best musicians in
New York.
From then on until 1903 most of our playing of symphonic music was only
on our spring concert tours and at irregular intervals in New York.
In 1900 Maurice Grau asked me to conduct the Wagner operas at the
Metropolitan, and in the spring of 1902, at the close of my second
season with him, I received an invitation from the New York Philharmonic
Society to become its conductor. This invitation was a great surprise to
me, as the Philharmonic had been, ever since my father’s day, the rival
orchestra. In many ways it seemed a flattering proposition, as it was
the oldest organization of its kind in America and had had an honorable
history. Under the leadership of Theodore Thomas and later on of Anton
Seidl, the audiences had been large and its affairs had prospered. It
had always been a co-operative association, composed of the members of
the orchestra, who had complete control of its affairs, receiving no
salaries, but dividing the profits equally among themselves at the end
of each season. I accepted the conductorship, but found very soon that
my acceptance was a blunder. The society had come upon evil days, and
under its last conductor attendance had dwindled to less than one-half.
Of the membership of the orchestra only the skeleton remained, and I
found to my amazement that of the hundred players at the concerts, less
than fifty were actual members of the organization, the rest being
engaged from outside, and often changed from one concert to another.
Some of the members were old men who should no longer have played in the
orchestra at all; but they were devoted to the concerts of the society,
and as the orchestra was regulated by their votes, they naturally would
not vote themselves out of it. Many of them had been excellent musicians
and were personally upright men, but age, alas, is no respecter of
technic, and the fingers of the left hand and the muscles of the bow arm
gradually stiffen with advancing years. Most of the wind instruments
were outsiders and therefore could not be properly controlled regarding
their attendance at rehearsals and concerts, while, on the contrary,
nearly all of the first violins were old members, several of whom were
no longer fit to play first violin.
The fact was that Major Higginson, of Boston, with his permanent
orchestra composed of young men, many of them the best of their kind,
with their daily rehearsals and at least seventy-five symphony concerts
a season, had set a new standard of orchestral technic which the old
Philharmonic, under its archaic conditions, could not hope to equal.
The only solution seemed to me to lie in gathering together a fund large
enough to produce the same conditions and results as Higginson had
achieved in the Boston Orchestra, and, above all, to put the management
of the Philharmonic into the hands of a committee which should not be
composed of members of the orchestra, but of music lovers and guarantors
of the fund.
I discussed this idea with several of my friends and some old
subscribers and friends of the Philharmonic at a meeting held on January
5, 1903, and it was resolved to obtain a fund of fifty thousand dollars
a year for four years, to be administered for the benefit of the
Philharmonic Society as a permanent orchestra fund by a board of fifteen
or more trustees, but it was not to be subject to the control of the
Philharmonic Society. This fund was to be the beginning of an endowment
for a permanent orchestra, of which the Philharmonic Society was to be
the nucleus. The terms of the deed of trust under which the fund was to
be held were to be determined by a committee of three, consisting of Mr.
Samuel Untermyer, Mr. John Notman, and Mr. E. Francis Hyde.
The members of the Philharmonic Orchestra were not unfavorably disposed
toward our scheme. The idea of being guaranteed a yearly salary instead
of sharing problematic yearly profits, naturally appealed to them; but
when our committee explained to them that, under the terms of such an
endowment, several of the playing members would have to resign their
places because in the opinion of the committee they had passed the age
of usefulness, they rebelled. Nor did they feel inclined to give up the
absolute management of their concerts.
Among the most respected members of the Philharmonic Orchestra were two
old violinists. The one, Richard Arnold, vice-president of the society,
had been concert master under my father twenty-five years before and
still officiated in that position in the Philharmonic. The other, August
Roebbelin, who had played as first violinist in the orchestra for nearly
forty years, had also acted as manager of the society and unselfishly
given his best energies to its affairs. As a violinist, however, he had
passed his time of usefulness. Our committee, perhaps rather bluntly,
informed the Philharmonic committee that under the reorganization the
selection of the orchestra must be left in the hands of the conductor
and that Mr. Arnold would have to content himself with a second position
at the first stand, so that a younger artist could become concert
master, and that several of the first violinists, among them Mr.
Roebbelin, would have to be retired altogether.
I had made it particularly clear that my selection as conductor for the
following year was not in any way a necessary part of the reorganization
scheme, as it seemed to me that the only way to achieve a real permanent
orchestra for New York was to unite the conflicting factions and to let
the choice of conductor be made after the organization had been properly
placed upon a sound and comprehensive basis.
After lengthy negotiations the Philharmonic, in a letter of February 28,
1903, definitely refused the offer of the reorganization committee
because, as their secretary expressed it, the amendments required by our
committee “would so change the nature of the society as to seriously
interfere with the control of its affairs by its members, which has
always been its vital principle, and that the future prosperity of the
society would thereby be impaired.”
As I had no desire to continue another year with the orchestra on the
basis of existing conditions, I wrote to Mr. Arnold and requested that
my name be not proposed as a candidate for the following year. I had
been in a very delicate position during all this time, as I had grown
quite fond personally of some of the very men whom, for artistic
reasons, it was necessary to retire. It was not in human nature that
they should have seen themselves as others saw them, or heard themselves
as others heard them, and at our rehearsals and concerts they all
certainly gave the best that was in them. The changes which I had
proposed were necessary, however, if the society expected to continue
its existence as an orchestral body.
For a few years they staved off the inevitable by engaging for each
season a number of European guest conductors. This served as a stop-gap,
as it diverted the attention of the audience from the deficiencies in
the orchestra to the different and interesting personalities and musical
specialties of the conductors. But then a reorganization plan, exactly
on the lines originally proposed by me, completely eliminating the power
of the orchestral players to manage the concerts or to select the
players in the orchestra, was accepted by them, and to-day the orchestra
of the Philharmonic Society is organized and successfully working on
exactly the same basis as the New York Symphony Society and the Boston
Orchestra.
For me the rejection of our reorganization plan was at the time
naturally a great disappointment, but not for long, as my efforts had
made new friends for me and in a new direction, which eventually proved
a turning-point in my life.
On March 19, 1903, I received a letter which read as follows:
I have been instructed by the members of the Permanent Orchestra
Fund Committee to express to you their appreciation of the
spirit of unselfishness and of loyalty to the highest artistic
interests which has characterized your attitude during the
negotiations which have been in progress between our Committee
and the Philharmonic Society. We regret that a consolidation of
our interests has proved impossible, but we relinquish the plan
we had in view with the greatest respect and admiration for your
broad attitude of mind in regard to the undertaking, for your
musicianship, and for your devotion to the cause of music in
which we are all working.
HARRY HARKNESS FLAGLER,
_Secretary Permanent Orchestra Fund_.
Years before I had met Mr. Flagler through his friend, Max Alvary, when
the latter was a member of the Damrosch Opera Company, but the meeting
was quite casual and I had not seen him again until the meetings of the
Philharmonic Orchestra Fund Committee, of which he had become a member.
I had been singularly attracted by him and his gentle and quiet, almost
diffident manner. He had been a great lover of music all his life and
had found in his wife Anne an enthusiastic companion in his love for the
art. As the reorganization scheme of the Philharmonic Orchestra
gradually unfolded itself, he became more and more interested in it as
the right solution of the problem of developing a symphony orchestra in
New York which should be the equal of the Boston Symphony or the Chicago
Orchestra, and he was ready to help such a scheme to the fulness of his
financial ability. Very quickly after the failure of this project, many
of the forces concerned recruited themselves anew, and a large
proportion of the would-be guarantors turned to me with the suggestion
to reorganize the New York Symphony Orchestra, and by subsidizing all
the first players and thereby binding them to the orchestra, make a new
beginning in the right direction. During the interregnum of three years
the orchestra had maintained itself fairly well through the earnings of
our long spring tours and summer engagements, but I joyfully hailed this
opportunity to renew the New York winter concerts. A reorganization of
the Symphony Society of New York was quickly effected by the re-election
of most of the old directors and of many new ones. My old and loyal
friend, Daniel Frohman, at whose theatre I had given many a Wagner
lecture in the years past, accepted the presidency pro tem and was of
great assistance in procuring outside work for the members of the
orchestra. He was succeeded by Mr. Samuel Sanford, a man of real musical
ability, who had founded the musical department at Yale University and
had contributed liberally to many musical enterprises. He immediately
became one of the largest guarantors of our orchestra fund.
We accordingly resumed our New York concerts under the best possible
auspices with an enthusiastic directorate and a large subscription list.
I was, however, not satisfied with the wood-wind players at that time
available in New York. The Musical Union, which controlled all
orchestral players, had made the influx of good musicians from Europe
almost an impossibility by insisting that a player must have lived at
least six months in this country before he could join the union, and
that until he became a member no other member of the union would be
allowed to play with him. As all orchestral engagements in opera,
concert, or theatre were in the hands of union men, this meant that the
newcomer would have to starve for six months before he could begin to
earn a dollar toward his maintenance. This law was not enforced by the
union men for patriotic reasons, as most of them had been born in
Europe, but because they feared the possible competition for the
positions they monopolized. The best wood-wind players at that
time—and, generally speaking, this applies to-day—were French or
Belgian. The Conservatoire of Paris has for years produced very superior
artists on these instruments. The Boston Orchestra, which is non-union,
had several among its members, and their exquisite tone and beautiful
phrasing always particularly enraged me because, owing to the union
restrictions, I could not have players of equal merit.
I determined therefore to throw down the gantlet to the union by
deliberately going to France to engage the five best artists I could
find in flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and trumpet, demonstrate their
superior excellence to anything we could obtain in New York at that
time, and through the pressure of public opinion—and, above all, the
necessity of artistic competition with the Boston Symphony—force the
union to accept these men as members. When the Frenchmen arrived, the
rage among the members of the New York union knew no bounds. I had a
summer engagement for the orchestra on one of the roof gardens, but the
union refused to let them play with us except as “soloists,” and I
determined to take the matter higher up to the annual convention of the
National Federation of Musicians, which was held in Detroit in the
summer of 1905.
I found the national delegates much more amenable to reason than my New
York colleagues. There were more real Americans among them and many of
them listened to my pleadings with interest and sympathy. The president
of the federation, Joseph N. Weber, is a man of real intellectual
ability; and while he and I have had some violent quarrels and
disagreements during these many years, and while I have sometimes
denounced him to his face as a fanatic and he has given me tit for tat,
I must acknowledge that he not only has had the ability to build up a
remarkable organization of great power, but has often acted with great
fairness in disputes that have come up between the directors of the New
York Musical Union and myself.
The National Federation decided in my favor and gave me the permission
to incorporate these five Frenchmen in my orchestra and to enroll them
as members of the New York union, but as I had “sinned against the laws
of the federation in bringing them over from a foreign country,” I was
fined one thousand dollars. It was, however, intimated to me privately
that if I would return to the next convention of the federation, which
was to be held in Boston the following summer, I would in all
probability receive a remission of the greater part of this fine. It is
needless for me to say that I never saw any part of that one thousand
dollars again.
I returned to New York jubilant and my French players proved themselves
such superior artists that, together with our other excellent members,
many of whom had been with me for years, the orchestra quickly took rank
among the best in the country.
The leader of my first violins was Mr. David Mannes. I had discovered
him a few years before at one of the New York theatres, where he was a
member of the little orchestra and where I heard him play a solo
charmingly between the first and second acts. The beautiful quality of
his tone, and a fine sensitiveness to the melos of the work he was
playing, attracted me and I engaged him for the last stand of the first
violins. From there he was quickly promoted until he occupied the
position at the first stand of concert master. He married my sister
Clara, a pianist of fine accomplishment. Their sonata recitals have
become models of intimate unity in chamber-music playing, and several
years ago they founded the David Mannes Music School. This encroached so
much upon his time and energy as to compel him to resign his position in
the New York Symphony Orchestra, which he had held so honorably for many
years.
Each year the guarantee fund for the maintenance of the orchestra was
increased by the supporters of the New York Symphony Society, and more
and more men were engaged on regular weekly salaries. At last my dream
was realized, and New York had an orchestra organized on the same lines
as the Boston and Chicago Orchestras, devoted exclusively to symphonic
music and assembling daily for rehearsal.
The fund at this time reached over fifty thousand dollars a year, mainly
subscribed by the directors of our organization. Several of these had
been supporters from my father’s time, among them Isaac N. Seligman,
who, with his family, had been interested in music in New York for many
years. Others had come into the organization when I became its conductor
and had remained loyal supporters and close friends from that time on.
Among them were: Richard Welling, a director since 1886, a well-known
lawyer and reformer in municipal politics, and who as a member of the
Naval Reserves promptly enlisted as an ensign when we entered the Great
War, although he was then well over fifty years of age; Miss Mary R.
Callender and Miss Caroline de Forest who had been directors since 1885.
Miss Callender further signalized her affection for the orchestra by
leaving fifty thousand dollars to the pension and sick fund after her
death in 1919. The complete list of the subscribers to the fund at the
time was as follows:
Mrs. H. A. Alexander Mme. Nordica
Mr. C. B. Alexander Mr. Stephen S. Palmer
Miss Kora F. Barnes Mrs. Trenor L. Park
Mrs. William H. Bliss Mr. Amos Pinchot
Miss Mary R. Callender Mrs. Joseph Pulitzer
Mr. Robert J. Collier Mr. Thomas F. Ryan
Mrs. Paul D. Cravath Mr. Charles E. Sampson
Mr. Paul D. Cravath Mr. Samuel S. Sanford
Miss Caroline de Forest Mr. R. E. Schirmer
Mr. Charles H. Ditson Mr. Henry Seligman
Mrs. S. Edgar Mrs. Henry Seligman
Miss A. C. Flagler Mr. Isaac N. Seligman
Mr. Harry Harkness Flagler Mr. Jefferson Seligman
Mr. Edward S. Flagler Mrs. Jesse Seligman
Mrs. Frances Hellman Mr. Frank H. Simmons
Mr. Otto H. Kahn Miss Clara B. Spence
Mr. A. W. Krech Mrs. F. T. Van Beuren
Mrs. Daniel Lamont Mr. Richard Welling
Mr. Albert Lewisohn Mrs. J. A. Zimmerman
Mr. Frank A. Munsey Mr. Paul Warburg
Mr. Emerson McMillin
The ideal conditions under which I now worked gave me the opportunity to
carry out several artistic plans which I had had for a long time. The
first of these was a Beethoven cycle, in which I gave not only all the
nine symphonies in chronological order, but other compositions of
Beethoven, some of which had not yet appeared on the concert programmes
of New York. Accordingly, in the winter of 1909, I prepared six
programmes composed of Beethoven’s works, and at the last concert gave a
double performance of his “Ninth Symphony.” This was a real _tour de
force_, but not original with me. During the summer of 1887, which I had
spent with von Bülow in study of the Beethoven symphonies, he had told
me of having given such a double performance in Berlin and that the
results had been very remarkable, inasmuch as at the second hearing, the
audience had been able the more perfectly to grasp many of the
intricacies of this “Hamlet” among symphonic dramas. Our double
performance caused a good deal of comment, most of which was very
favorable. Between the two performances the orchestra and chorus were
refreshed with hot coffee and sandwiches, and as the work takes about an
hour and ten minutes to perform, the repetition, together with a
half-hour of rest between, brought the final tumultuous outburst of the
choral “Ode to Joy” to eleven o’clock. Notwithstanding the lateness of
the hour, the audience began a great demonstration of approval,
applauding and shouting for many minutes; but while I and my performers
took some of this as ours by right, I have always felt that the audience
intended a good part of it as directed toward themselves for having so
nobly endured the great strain which I had put upon them.
This was the first Beethoven Festival ever given in New York, and a few
years later I organized a Brahms Festival on similar lines. I directed
his four symphonies, the ingratiating Zimbalist playing the “Violin
Concerto,” Wilhelm Backhaus the great “B-Flat Piano Concerto,” and my
brother with the chorus of the Oratorio Society conducting a very
beautiful performance of the “Requiem.”
Such festivals devoted exclusively to the work of one composer are a
great lesson to the serious music lover, and I think that as Beethoven
represents almost the alpha and certainly the omega of symphonic music,
there should be repetitions of Beethoven cycles every few years. I have
never been able to understand why it should not be similarly possible to
give Shakespearian cycles in spring, in which all of our best actors
could combine to make up ideal casts. We should certainly make American
children as familiar with Shakespeare’s great tragedies as, for
instance, the children of Germany, to whom Shakespeare is much more of a
household word than he is to those of this country or England. If music
can find Flaglers and Higginsons to endow it as an educational
necessity, why cannot similar men be found to do the same for the drama
and thus help to lift it as an educational factor from its painfully
weak position to which the necessities of making it a paying institution
have driven it.
During all these years my relations with Mr. and Mrs. Flagler became
more and more intimate. I had never met such people in my entire life.
Their devotion to and interest in the orchestra increased constantly,
and Mr. Flagler’s contributions to the fund became greater and greater
as the needs of the orchestra increased. But his help was offered with a
shyness, as if it had been the orchestra that conferred the benefit upon
him. He also took over a work which I had always detested more than
anything else, and that is the collection of funds. As the expenses of
the orchestra increased with the years, it became necessary to collect
money from outside sources beyond the large sums already contributed by
the directors of the society. With constant good humor, patience, and
infinite tact Mr. Flagler, whose own donations to the fund were greater
in proportion to his income than those of many others, would write
letters or call personally on well-to-do musical patrons to collect
perhaps a few hundred dollars toward the fund, and he would be
inordinately proud of his success as a financier and collector.
Finally even his infinite patience wore out under this yearly strain and
this manifested itself in a very remarkable way.
In the spring of 1914 he quietly informed me that he had decided to
assume the entire financial responsibility of the orchestra himself and
to contribute all necessary funds for its proper maintenance. This
amount was double what would have been considered necessary ten years
before, but salaries of orchestral players and other expenses in
connection with the giving of concerts had increased enormously and it
was Mr. Flagler’s desire that, while there should be no waste, the
affairs of the orchestra should be managed in such liberal fashion that
the artistic needs could first be considered in shaping its policy.
This magnificent and unique act naturally created a great excitement in
the musical circles of New York, and Mr. Flagler was universally
acclaimed as its foremost musical citizen.
I have a characteristic letter of his, dated August 31, 1914, in which
he says:
Indeed I am not overmodest about my gift to the Symphony
Society. It is not that, but what I am doing is so little in
comparison with what the _real_ makers of music, creators and
interpreters like yourself do for the betterment of the world
through their art, that it doesn’t deserve to be thought of. I
_am_ proud and happy in the thought that I may be the means of
helping you to put before the world your ideas in regard to the
interpretations of the masters and to bring the God-given art of
music to many who would not otherwise have its uplifting and
consoling power, and that is what we are doing together. You
shall be free as never before to work out your own ideas
unfettered by thoughts of the financial necessities. . . .
Since then the society has pursued the even tenor of its way and, freed
from all financial worries, has contributed much to the cause of music.
The orchestra plays over a hundred symphony concerts during the winter,
in New York and elsewhere. These include a series of Sunday-afternoon
concerts at Æolian Hall, Thursday-afternoon and Friday-evening concerts
at Carnegie Hall, and a series of young people’s concerts and another of
children’s concerts. There are also subscription concerts in Brooklyn,
Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and Rochester, and several tours
every winter to Canada and the Middle West. During the war Mr. Flagler
often gave the services of the orchestra for charities connected with
the war, and several times donated the gross receipts of our regular
concerts to such organizations as the American Friends of Musicians in
France, in which he and his wife became very much interested. But
perhaps the climax in the history of the orchestra was reached in its
great European tour in the spring of 1920. To this I shall devote a
separate chapter following one on my experiences in France during the
Great War.