WORKING OUT HIS IDEA
“Did you have an idea of a permanent building for your orchestra?”
“Yes. I wanted something more than an ordinary concert-room. The idea needed it. It was to be a place suitable for use at all seasons of the year. There was to be communication in summer with an open garden, and in winter it was to be a perfect auditorium.”
Mr. Thomas’s idea went even further. It must be bright, comfortable, roomy, well ventilated—for a close and drowsy atmosphere is fatal to symphonic music,—it must offer to the multitude every attraction not inconsistent with musical enjoyment. The stage must be adapted for a variety of performances, for popular summer entertainment as well as the most serious of classical concerts. There, with an uninterrupted course of entertainments, night after night, the whole year round, the noblest work of all the great masters might be worthily presented.
The scheme was never wholly worked out in New York, great as Mr. Thomas’s fame became, but it was partially realized in the old Exposition building in Chicago, where he afterwards gave his summer concerts, and it is still nearer reality in the present permanent Chicago orchestra, which has the great Auditorium for its home and a $50,000 annual guarantee.
“What were your first steps in this direction?” I asked.
“I began with a series of al fresco entertainments in the old Terrace Garden, in June, 1866. They were well patronized; and repeated in 1867. Then, in 1868, we removed to better quarters in Central Park Garden, and things prospered, so that, in 1869, I began those annual tours, which are now so common.”
The first itinerary of this kind was not very profitable, but the young conductor fought through it. Each new season improved somewhat, but there were troubles and losses. More than once, the travelers trod close upon the heels of calamity. The cost of moving from place to place was so great that the most careful management was necessary to cover expenses. They could not afford to be idle, even for a night, and the towns capable of furnishing good audiences generally wanted fun. Hence they must travel all day, and Thomas took care that the road should be smoothed with all obtainable comforts. Special cars on the railways, special attendants to look after the luggage, and lodgings at the best hotels contributed to make the tour tolerably pleasant and easy, so that the men came to their evening work fresh and smiling. They were tied up by freshets and delayed by wrecks; but their fame grew, and the audiences became greater. Thomas’s fame as a conductor who could guarantee constant employment permitted him to take his choice of the best players in the country, and he brought over a number of European celebrities as the public taste improved.
Theodore Thomas did another wise thing. He treated New York like a provincial city, giving it a week of music once in a while as he passed through it on his travels. This excited the popular interest, and when he came to stay, the next season, a brilliantly successful series of concerts was the result. At the close, a number of his admirers united in presenting him a rich silver casket, holding a purse of thirty-five hundred dollars, as a testimonial of gratitude for his services. The Brooklyn Philharmonic Society placed itself under his direction. Chicago gave him a fine invitation to attend benefit entertainments to himself; and, when he came, decked the hall with abundant natural flowers, as if for the reception of a hero. He was successful financially and every other way, and from that time on he merely added to his laurels.