During the winter of 1915 I received a letter from Margaret Anglin, our
distinguished American actress, asking me to compose the incidental
music for two Greek plays which she intended to produce the following
summer at the great open-air Greek Theatre in Berkeley, California. The
plays selected were the “Iphigenia in Aulis” of Euripides and “Medea” of
Sophocles. I was fascinated by the problem involved, as it necessitated
not only the composing of the music but the creation of a form in which
it was to be cast.
We know very little of the music of the ancient Greeks, and if we sought
to imitate that, it would sound so archaic and even unnatural to our
modern ears as to fail in properly supporting the emotions of the drama
for us. While the Greeks had developed the technic of the drama to a
remarkable extent, music as an art was at that time in its infancy,
although its importance was fully recognized by Plato and the great
dramatists.
The problem for me was to write music which should take full advantage
of the modern development of harmony and orchestration, and form an
emotional current on which the drama could float without being in any
way submerged. The treatment of the Greek chorus was another problem for
which I had no precedents. Mendelssohn had written incidental music to
“Antigone,” but this music does not represent Mendelssohn at his best,
as much of it is dry and academic in character.
The Greek choruses usually begin with a recital of some old story of
mythology, with which every Greek in the audience of that era had been
familiar since childhood. Gradually this story is brought into
connection with the situation on the stage and reaches its climax when
the chorus implores the actors to draw their lesson from it. These
choruses I treated in various ways, according to the needs of the
dramatic situation. Some were recited to a soft but expressive
undercurrent of music, others were sung, and still others were a
combination of both. I would have the story of the old Greek legend
recited by the first leader of the chorus. Then the second leader, as he
applied it to the dramatic situation, would burst into song, until, in
the third phase, the entire chorus would join in their impassioned
pleadings or warnings.
In the spring of 1915 I took a little cottage in Setauket, Long Island,
and there within six weeks wrote the entire music for the two plays, the
orchestra parts being copied sheet by sheet as my score was finished. In
June I packed them in my bag and travelled across the continent to meet
Margaret Anglin and take charge of the musical part of the production.
On arriving in San Francisco I found the great World’s Fair already in
full operation. Its Spanish architecture and the luxuriant verdure in
which it was enclosed made it a perfect dream of beauty, but I gave
myself little opportunity to enjoy it, as my real mission was across the
bay at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, where Margaret Anglin and a
company of players were already busily engaged from morning till evening
in rehearsing. They were anxiously awaiting my music in order to make it
fit in properly with the stage arrangements.
The Greek Theatre at the California University is one of the most
remarkable structures of its kind in the world. Built amphitheatrically
against the side of a hill and absolutely on the lines of the old Greek
theatres, its top is fringed by sombre eucalyptus-trees.
A few years before I had seen a performance of the “Bacchante” of
Euripides given by a company of Roman actors at an antique amphitheatre
on the side of a hill overlooking Florence. Much of this performance had
been impressive, but the music was tawdry, and as the play was given
according to old Greek custom in the late afternoon, the cruel sunlight
made the make-up of the actors and the garish colors of their costumes
doubly prosaic. The ancient Greeks had no artificial lighting and were
therefore compelled to give their performances in daylight, although
they sought to temper it so that night would fall at about the end of
the play. Margaret Anglin, with her characteristic genius, perceived
that a much greater glamour and stage illusion could be produced by
giving her performances at night, leaving the audience in darkness and
marking out the stage with great electric lights from above, which could
be heightened or lessened according to the actual needs of the drama.
If the drama in America had been treated as seriously by its cultured
citizens as music has been, Margaret Anglin would perhaps be to-day the
artistic head of an endowed theatre devoted to productions of
Shakespeare, Goethe, Molière, Calderon, Æschylus, Sophocles, and
Euripides. These great masters of the stage would form just as important
a part of her repertoire as the symphonies of Beethoven and Brahms make
up an important part of the programmes of the New York Symphony
Orchestra. Margaret Anglin is to-day the greatest tragedienne of the
American stage, and should be acting _Medea_ and _Lady Macbeth_. But
instead of that she has to tour the country, playing “Green Stockings”
and similar piffle, and only indulges her artistic ambitions and ideals
in occasional productions of Greek dramas at her own risk and very much
at her own expense.
I was immensely interested in the rehearsals on the stage of the Greek
Theatre. They began at nine-thirty in the morning and would often
last—with an intermission of an hour or two for lunch—until eight
o’clock at night, but as they were held outdoors in the glorious fresh
air of California there was but little fatigue, and all concerned gave
themselves up enthusiastically to Miss Anglin’s direction and
picturesque conception.
She had hired a bungalow near the theatre and a Japanese butler-cook.
This little Jap would always appear at one o’clock with a basket filled
with the most delicious luncheon dishes, artistically decorated in real
Japanese style by his own deft fingers. He seemed to have a great
penchant for the stage, asserted that he had acted _Hamlet_ in Japan,
and would sit for hours after luncheon watching the rehearsal, with his
little inscrutable eyes fixed on the stage. I have often wondered
whether on his return to Japan he gave performances of the Greek plays
to his own compatriots and whether any great changes or adaptations were
necessary to make them comprehensible to his audiences.
While the general plan of the action and grouping had been carefully
worked out by Miss Anglin, she had an open mind and eye, and would often
change the arrangement completely if an improvement could be effected
thereby. This meant incessant repetitions, during which her patience and
cheerful courtesy never failed her.
A grand piano had been rolled into a corner of the stage, and I was so
fascinated in watching the rehearsals and the gradual evolution of the
stage pictures under her skilful hands, that I insisted on always
playing the incidental music myself, even though some of the scenes were
repeated dozens of times.
Miss Anglin had enlisted the services of fourteen of California
University’s loveliest and most talented coeds to form her Greek chorus.
Beauty seems to flourish naturally on the Pacific coast, and some of
these young ladies were glorious specimens of a truly Greek and
statuesque charm. The recitation of one of the choruses, which was to be
spoken in a kind of elastic rhythm to the music of the orchestra, was
intrusted to one of these Dianas of Berkeley, and as she had no
conception of this, to her, novel combination, Miss Anglin asked me to
give her a separate rehearsal after lunch. I sat down at the piano and
recited the chorus to her while I played the accompanying music. She
stood by my side listening intently and looking like a statue of Diana
of Ephesus. Then, bending her head with stately dignity, she said: “I
get ya!” Alas! the illusion was gone, and her voice brought me back
suddenly from my dream of 400 B. C. to California of 1915. She had not
“got me,” however, and I was finally compelled to give this chorus to
another young lady, less statuesque in form but more clever in achieving
plastic unity between speech and music.
But my real troubles began when I tried to collect an orchestra of fifty
for the performances. At that time there were not many good players in
San Francisco, and even those few were permanently engaged in the big
World’s Fair orchestra. My first rehearsal was truly pathetic—I had
been so spoiled by the many years of association with my lovely New York
Symphony Orchestra. But where there is a will there is a way, and by
stealing a few men from the local theatres and borrowing a few more from
the exposition orchestras, we were enabled to get a fairly good body of
men assembled.
The success of Miss Anglin’s productions was truly remarkable. There
were ten thousand people at each performance, and “Iphigenia in Aulis”
had to be repeated twice. In this work the camp of _Agamemnon_ and its
atmosphere of war were graphically illustrated, and five hundred
Berkeley students, picturesquely attired and well trained, gave a very
vivid picture of the soldier’s camp, especially at the end of the play
when the Oracle has announced that the wind has changed, and these
hundreds of soldiers rushed across the stage in a tumult of joy to board
their ships and sail for Troy.
The “Electra,” for which William Furst had written music for Miss Anglin
years before, was also performed. Eventually I also composed music for
this play, and all three of the dramas were performed in New York a few
years later at the request of Mr. Flagler, on the stage of Carnegie
Hall, which had been skilfully converted for the occasion into a Greek
theatre.
We all marvelled how vividly modern these plays, written more than two
thousand years ago, seemed as given under the artistic direction of
Margaret Anglin. _Electra_, waiting outside the walls of the palace for
the sound that shall announce to her the death of _Ægisthus_ and
_Clytemnestra_; _Medea_, having entered the palace to kill her own and
_Jason’s_ children in order to punish him for his marriage to the young
Princess, while the chorus, shaking the iron grill of the doors, implore
_Medea_ not to slay her children; _Iphigenia_, youngest daughter of
_Agamemnon_, descending alone the great flight of steps to suffer death
in the sacred grove of the goddess Artemis, that her wrath may be
appeased and favorable winds may send the armies of _Agamemnon_ to
Troy—all these are unforgettable scenes, and I was overjoyed to feel
that the music which I had written was not inappropriate, but formed a
good background for these crucial moments.