Part 19

Lieutenant Weill and I first paid a _visite de cérémonie_ to the _Maire_ of Chaumont and explained to him our desire. The idea of what he called “_un petit conservatoire de musique pour les Américains_” in Chaumont appealed to his fancy immensely, and he immediately picked up his telephone and called up an old friend of his, a fellow citizen and mill owner. He explained to him the great honor that was about to befall their town if a proper building could be found, and exhorted him to show himself as a really patriotic citizen of France and friend of the Americans by giving the mill which he owned just outside the city and only a few minutes’ walk from our headquarters for this noble purpose. We motored to this building and met there an elderly, dignified, and courteous Frenchman who told us that anything he had was at the disposal of “les Américains.” We found a huge mill with walls two feet thick, the machinery in disuse, and with large empty spaces that our army engineers could easily turn into sleeping-quarters, practising-rooms, and other needs for a music-school. In one large wing we found a few women and many children playing about. I said: “Of course, we shall need this wing also.” “Then I regret,” answered the owner, “but this wing you cannot have, because I have given it to forty-eight refugees from Verdun with the promise that they shall occupy it until the end of the war.” Naturally Lieutenant Weill and I reconsidered, and concluded that a large tent could be put up in the meadow as an eating-place, and that we could get along without the extra wing. I then asked the owner what rental he would demand. “Oh,” he said, “anything that the American army wishes to pay.” But when Lieutenant Weill informed him that he should fix a fair price, he asked timidly: “Would the American army consider five hundred francs a month reasonable?” I tell this to offset the tales of those people who keep harping on the commercial greed of the French in anything that concerned the needs of the American soldier.

We returned to general headquarters jubilant, and, after a satisfactory interview with the officer in charge of building operations, it was decided to place the school in Chaumont, and I returned to Paris to complete my plans.

My brother Frank had recognized the lack of good schooling for our army bands and bandmasters many years before the war, and had very patriotically placed the entire machinery of his Institute of Musical Art at the disposal of the secretary of war. An arrangement had accordingly been made by which a bandmaster’s school at Governor’s Island, New York, was placed under my brother’s control, and for several years before the war a small number of bandmasters were graduated from it who ranked well on a par with those of other countries. But when we entered the war and our army was organized on a scale of millions these were but a drop in the bucket, and heroic measures were necessary to bring some semblance of order into this musical chaos of hundreds of uneducated bandmasters and thousands of still less educated bandsmen.

During these five weeks in Paris and Chaumont I worked very hard and, while my life has been crowded with affairs of all kinds relating to my profession, I cannot recall any time when the work was so constant day and night or when I was more jubilantly happy in the doing of it. During the forenoons Casadesus and I would examine the bandmasters, discover what they could and could not do, give them, so to speak, “first aid to the wounded” by pointing out their worst failings or their greatest weaknesses. In the afternoons Lieutenant Weill and I would run around to the various French government departments on the track of this or that musician whom we wished to corral as professor for our school. At night I would sit propped up in bed and work out the entire tuition plan of the school, down to the minutest details.

My general recommendations to general headquarters, all of which were subsequently carried out, included classes for the bandmasters’ instruction in the technic of conducting, in harmony, and in orchestration. These classes were put in charge of M. Francis Casadesus and M. André Caplet. The latter was later on succeeded by Lieutenant Albert Stoessel, a highly talented bandmaster in our army, who has returned to civilian life and has now become my successor as conductor of the New York Oratorio Society.

Captain Ellacott, of the A. E. F., became the military head of the school to which he gave most sympathetic assistance.

There were two professors each for oboe, bassoon, French horn, and flügelhorn, all of whom were graduates and first prizes of the famous Paris Conservatoire. I also recommended that the beautiful B-flat bugles of the French army be adopted by us and that a French drum-major, proficient on this instrument, be appointed as instructor to drill successive classes of fifty for one month each, the graduates to become first buglers of our regiments, in order that they might, in turn, instruct other buglers in their respective drum and bugle corps.

At the examinations I also asked the bandmasters certain questions regarding their position in their respective regiments, the attitude of their colonel toward music, their general treatment, and the hours allowed them for musical practice, and here I came on all kinds of conditions. Some of the commanding officers had no sympathy with music or with the bandsmen, and instead of making them practise their six hours a day, they were put to work as kitchen police and on other fatigue duties. I therefore urged that the commanding officers be impressed with the fact that the primary object of the band is not to fight, but to cheer the fighters, and the better their music, the greater its beneficial effects upon the spirit of the soldiers, and that therefore all bandsmen should be compelled to devote at least five or six hours every day to the practice of their instruments and to rehearsals, and that other duties should be made subsidiary to their musical work and should not be of a character to unfit them for a proper performance on their respective instruments.

I also discovered that there was a terrible wastage as regards musical instruments and that in several instances, preparatory to going into action, the instruments had been thrown away or simply left behind, nevermore to be recovered, and that therefore it might be wise to appoint a travelling inspector of musical instruments whose duties should be to attend to the speedy replacement of missing parts, the repairing of instruments, and the supplying of new music.

A really excellent headquarters band was formed at Chaumont, which became a source of much gratification to the commander-in-chief and his staff, accompanying him on many of his ceremonial visits and functions.

One of my most important recommendations for the school was that every week at least one concert should be given by the professors and such of the bandsmen as were really competent musicians. The programmes should be made up only of the great master composers, in order that the students—many of whom had come from isolated communities in our country and had had but little opportunity to hear good music—should become sensitive to the finer and more spiritual qualities of music as an art. This was carried out in most remarkable fashion during the entire existence of the school, and the programmes and their performance were worthy of a place in any highly cultivated musical community.

When I returned to Chaumont on a visit of inspection the following year, I heard one of these concerts, which included a quintet of Mozart for oboe and strings and a sonata for violin and piano by César Franck. I sat in delighted amazement as I saw the happy faces of over a hundred students in khaki who were listening to this divine music in rapt silence. What a pity that such a school cannot be founded in every State in America now that the war is over and our soldiers have returned home! This would speedily result in an excellent band for every town and lay a real foundation for the musical development of the people at large.

During these weeks in Paris I also saw a great deal of some of my French musician colleagues, all of whom had refused to leave Paris in spite of the Gothas and Berthas.

When I first called on Charles Marie Widor, the famous old organist of Saint Sulpice, I found him installed, by virtue of his office as _Secrétaire Perpétuel_ of the _Institut de France_, in a charming Louis XVI suite of rooms in that building. He showed me a hole in the window of his workroom and told me that a few days before he had just stooped down to pick up a musical score from the floor when a shell from the Big Bertha burst in front of his apartment and a piece of it hurtled through his window, missing him only because he was in a stooping position.

His Gallic wit and versatility make him a delightful companion, and I am grateful for the opportunity the war gave me for more intimate acquaintance and friendship with him. Indeed, this applies to all the friends made during that eventful summer. The war brought us more quickly and closely together than would have been possible otherwise, and as I was an American I reaped the full advantage of all the intense gratitude which the French felt for us, some of which was hardly deserved, as our government certainly had shilly-shallied and waited until it was almost too late before they threw our great weight of men and treasure into the balance.

I have already spoken of Mlle. Nadia Boulanger, who played the organ for me at the performance of Saint-Saëns’s “Third Symphony” on July 14. Among women I have never met her equal in musicianship, and indeed there are very few men who can compare with her. She is one of the finest organists of France, an excellent pianist, and the best reader of orchestral scores that I have ever known. Again and again I have seen her take up a manuscript orchestral score, sit down with it at the piano, and brilliantly read it at sight, transcribing it for the piano as she played along. When we first met, she and her dear mother were in the greatest grief. A younger sister, Lili, had died only a month before at twenty-four years of age. Beautiful, exquisite, and marvellously talented, she had won the much-coveted _Prix de Rome_ three years before—the first woman to have gained it. A mortal illness had slowly sapped her strength, and as she had been the idol of her mother and sister, her loss was to them a tragedy almost beyond endurance. Nadia, besides keeping up her professional duties—she was substitute organist at the Madeleine during the war—hurled herself into war work and more especially the care of the students of the Conservatoire who were at the front. She knew all their names and the numbers of their organizations and founded a kind of musical gazette, mimeographed copies of which were sent out every month to the students. All kinds of musical news and musical questions were published in it, so that these boys, in the midst of their military duties or while convalescing from their wounds in the hospitals, could have something to think about more immediately connected with their own profession. It is interesting to note that, in answer to the question, “Should German composers like Brahms and Wagner be played at our concerts during the war?” out of fifty-eight, forty-seven answered unequivocally “Yes” for Wagner and Brahms, three “Yes” for Beethoven and the classics, two were undecided, and six said “No.” These answers were accompanied in many cases by highly interesting essays on art and nationality of art, and, altogether, the judgments thus expressed reflected the high intellectual standard of these young French artists at the front.

I saw many instances of how keenly the French separate their artistic from their political convictions. One night my friends of the French Military Commission at Chaumont had come to Paris and one of them, Captain Guegnier, invited me to dinner at his apartment. His wife and the wife of one of his colleagues had come to Paris from the country especially for the occasion. We sat down, a very jolly party of six, to a most delicious dinner such as only the French can devise and properly execute. As all the party were musical we naturally had a good deal of music after dinner. The ladies sang charmingly and I had to play excerpts from their beloved Wagner—“Tristan,” “Meistersinger,” “Parsifal,” and the “Trilogy.” My hostess sang songs of Fauré, Chausson, and Debussy, and just then the sirens boomed out their disagreeable message that the Gothas were taking advantage of the moonlit night to make one of their raids over Paris. At the same moment the taxi-cab man, who had come to take me back to my hotel, announced that he had arrived. Would he like to come up-stairs? Oh, no, he would just sit inside the cab and wait till I got ready. “Then let us have some more music,” said my hostess, and simply drew the curtain over the windows. And, while the Gothas were scattering their shells over Paris, she turned to me and said: “Now let me sing for you this lovely song of Schubert.” There was my French hostess singing German songs, and it was not until about one o’clock in the morning that Lieutenant Weill and I turned homeward.

The vast difference in attitude between the French and certain of my compatriots regarding the proper stand to be taken in time of war toward the art of an enemy nation was very striking. I had myself decided that the New York Symphony Orchestra should not play the works of living German composers, and that the German language should not be sung at our concerts during the war. There seemed to me good and valid reasons for such a course. But Beethoven, Mozart, and Wagner I considered as classics, belonging to us just as much as to Germany, and their divine message had naught to do with the political and military leaders of Germany who had plunged the world into this horrible bath of blood. There was, however, in New York a small but noisy group led by a few women who sought to demonstrate their “patriotism” by hysterical outbursts and newspaper protests against the performance of all music composed by Germans, no matter how many years ago. Some of these women, through the curious psychosis of war, really thought that they were serving their country by their protests. In the winter of 1918 the orchestra of the Paris Conservatoire made a tour through America under their conductor, André Messager. When I called on him the day after his arrival he showed me a letter he had just received from one of these women protesting against his performing a Beethoven Symphony during his stay in America. He was white with anger, and when I asked him how he would answer it, he said: “I will answer it as a French artist should.” I said: “The best way to answer would be to put Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Symphony on your first programme.” “I will,” he said; and he did.

The opposition to Wagner was based on very amusing premises. Because some of his heroes were wont to appear on the stage in very blond wigs and beards, these lady sleuth-hounds seemed to perceive some evil and subtle connection between _Siegfried_ in the “Nibelungen Trilogy” and Nietzsche’s “blond beast,” which, according to his prophecy, was eventually to control the earth. Their studies of Wagner were too shallow to enable them to realize that the whole philosophy of life as expressed by Wagner in the “Nibelungen Trilogy” was in direct contrast to the desire of the modern militaristic German to rule and control the world by force. Wagner depicts a prehistoric world in which the gods of greed, lust, and power rule, carrying, however, the seed of their own destruction within them because of the materialistic quality of their desires. As their power wanes and the old gods perish, a new religion is born, the religion of self-sacrifice through love, as symbolized by _Brunhilde_ in her self-immolation on the funeral pyre of _Siegfried_.

But all this is already ancient history, and I for one confidently believe that the racial spirit which created the Germany of Bach, Beethoven, Goethe, Kant, and Wagner will soon return again to brighten and ennoble the world.

In five weeks all necessary arrangements for the school were completed and notices were sent by the General Staff to the bandmasters of the entire A. E. F. who had not come up to the necessary qualifications during the examination which I had given them, to report to the Chaumont School in batches of fifty every eight weeks, beginning on October 1, and to start their studies. Students for oboe, bassoon, French horn, and flügelhorn were also selected from the hundreds of applicants. At first we had great difficulty in finding the necessary instruments for them. France is famous for its wood-wind instruments, but the various factories had long since ceased operations, as all the workmen were in the army. The ever-ready and ingenious Lieutenant Weill, however, succeeded in scraping together enough oboes and bassoons to start the classes, and I cannot say enough for the willing assistance which was accorded me by every United States army officer with whom I came in contact. From the commander-in-chief down to Lieutenant Kelley, who sat in the anteroom of General Dawes’s office in the Champs-Élysées, and whose principal duty seemed to be to ward off disagreeable or tiresome callers who wished to rob General Dawes of his valuable time, all made me feel as if the improvement of the army bands was the one thing necessary to win the war. It was high time for me to leave France and “get back to earth,” as I no longer walked on anything but air and with my head projecting far above the clouds.

During my last visit to Chaumont I motored down to Domrémy, the birthplace of Jeanne d’Arc, and found the little village in just about the same state it must have been when she was born in the little house next to the church, both of which have been carefully preserved for the worshippers of to-day. The open space in front of her house, the trees surrounding it, and the monument in the centre seemed to me to form a natural stage on which a peace pageant could well be enacted, and as I sat there and the bell began to toll from the little church in which Jeanne had whispered her prayers, I began to dream of a possible peace celebration in which a company of American soldiers, a company of French soldiers, an American and a French military band, singers from the Opéra Comique, and a children’s chorus should take part; the climax to be the joyous meeting of the military forces around the monument and the awakening of Jeanne from her sleep of centuries, opening the door of her little house and standing there looking with astonishment at the unwonted sight of American soldiers in khaki as brothers of her beloved countrymen.

On my return to Chaumont I outlined this idea to several officers of the Staff and of the French Commission, who received it with enthusiasm and promised every assistance, but, alas, nothing ever came of it. When I returned to France the following spring the armistice had been arranged and the Versailles Conference was dragging its weary and dreary deliberations toward an unsatisfactory conclusion. There did not seem to be enough illusion or enthusiasm left to celebrate anything international connected with the war.

On my last visit to Chaumont I gave a little dinner to Colonel Collins, secretary of the Staff, whose constant interest had been invaluable and whose mind seemed to be capable at a moment’s notice of turning from the consideration of some intricate military problem to the great advantages to be derived from the introduction of the French B-flat bugle into our army. Over a very good magnum of champagne I rose and made him, Colonel Boyd, and Lieutenant Weill solemnly swear that for the rest of the war and as long thereafter as necessary the bandmaster’s school at Chaumont should be to them as the apple of their eye, and this oath they faithfully kept. The school flourished from October, 1918, until June, 1919, when it was discontinued owing to the return of our army to America. The relations between the French professors and our boys, all living together like a happy family, became so sympathetic and intimate that the results may truly be said to have been remarkable. The soldiers realized that they were receiving an education in music equal to that of the foremost schools of France or America, and the French professors entered into their duties with an enthusiasm which was touching. Casadesus told me that many of his pupils worked at their musical problems twelve hours a day and I urged him, in some way or other, to continue these pleasant and important international musical relations by founding a summer school somewhere in France, preferably near Paris, to which American men and women, already sufficiently advanced in their study of music, could repair for three months every summer in order to acquaint themselves with French art and French methods of teaching. Until the war began, hundreds of American students had gone to Germany every year, and it seemed a pity that, owing to the Frenchman’s lack of propaganda for what his country could offer to our students, some of this stream could not be diverted to France. Our talks eventually led to the founding of the _Conservatoire Américain_ at Fontainebleau, of which details are told in another chapter.

By the courtesy of General Pershing I received permission to leave for home on the army transport _America_. This ship sailed from Brest, and I was anxious to go there in order to see my daughter, Alice Pennington, once more. She and her friend, Miss Letty McKim, had been there for a year and had founded the naval Y. M. C. A., to the great satisfaction of Admiral Wilson and our navy stationed there. My daughter’s enthusiasm and vitality, together with that of her equally able friend, had created an atmosphere which our sailors greatly relished, and I was keen to see some of her work.