Part 14
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.