MUNICIPAL MUSIC IN NEW YORK
S. H. J. SIMPSON
When the sailing list of each trans-Atlantic liner reads like the program of an all-star gala performance, and conductors, managers and husbands also sail, the small number of the cultured rich who maintain music in New York go likewise; but the city is not left empty. Then the Metropolitan assumes a perpetually “morning after” appearance; so, too, Carnegie Hall; and the new piano emporium will serve as a sounding board for band concerts across the way. It is to these band concerts—not only in Bryant Park but in almost every park and pier in the city—that the reader’s attention is called.
The vastness of New York is one of the greatest problems confronting any public spirited enterprise which aims to reach that vague, elusive faction—the people. The problem has been met and fairly solved musically by the three men who are responsible for the invasion by band and orchestra of the city’s parks and piers during the past three years. It is refreshing to meet with a movement which aims toward no tangible education, moral rescue or poor relief, and to find a department of city government frankly idealistic enough to organize a force whose only aim is the presentation of pure beauty. And it is curiously paradoxical that this movement should have found its opportunity in New York. It is, nevertheless, true that New York supports more entirely free summer concerts than any city in the world.
At the beginning of the current municipal administration the park and pier music in its present form had its birth in the constitution of a committee consisting of the commissioner of docks and ferries, the commissioner of parks and a new official designated as the supervisor of municipal concerts in parks and recreation piers. To the latter is due the lion’s share of credit for the ideals, the organization and the practical working of the system. To the commissioners New York owes a debt for their hearty co-operation, and in some cases, acute personal interest in the problems of the undertaking.
Not only has the size of the music loving population been considered in the multiplication of concerts, but the varieties of appreciation and the national tastes of different neighborhoods have been sympathetically studied by Arthur Farwell, the supervisor. The $100,000 annual municipal appropriation is divided between the piers and parks, and provides for a force of about seventy bands and conductors. Extraordinarily interesting is the study of neighborhoods in connection with the make-up of programs. This is especially so among the docks. The long pier at 129th Street, with an orchestra attracts what the directors are pleased to designate as the “high-brow” crowd. The call there is for the best in operatic and symphonic music—two and three movements of symphonies are often given. Selections from Italian opera flourish at East 112th Street, and at East 3d Street, all sorts of Jewish religious music is featured. The only crowd which has given any trouble assembles at West 50th Street, and the largest of the pier audiences is found at East 34th Street. Probably the most generally representative gathering is in the Mall in Central Park, where seven concerts a week are given in summer.
In thus cursorily reviewing the facts of the condition of municipal music in New York, only the smaller part of the situation is discussed. The movement, under its present impetus, is new, and to a large number of people, unknown. Although it is beyond the scope of the present article to consider, in any detail, the ethical aspect of the situation, it is, nevertheless, appropriate, in view of the comparative untriedness of the idea, to answer a few questions which are constantly brought up by those who are interested in the conditions. Even so, it seems that the time has come when the movement may fairly be said to have passed the experimental stage, if success may be measured by popular approval.
It merely remains to count the numbers in attendance. And here we find the answer to the most frequent query as to whether there is sufficient popular demand to warrant all this effort. The question has been submitted to a practical referendum. Do the people want it? Although no formal count of the audiences has been made it has been estimated that they ranged during the summer of 1912 from 5,000 to 15,000, in the various localities. In Central Park, every seat in the Mall and on the terrace was filled by eight o’clock, and stragglers wandered about the outskirts or stood packed between the benches all the evening. Every spot within hearing was filled, and it was with some difficulty that aisles and passages were kept clear. Nor is this audience a casual one. Any number of habitues are noticeable, night after night, in the same seats—jealous of their places—and night after night, the same tired mothers are there, with the same baby carriages. And way off, along the driveways, or here and there in a street near the docks, a policeman, a laborer, a little street urchin, may sometimes be seen to stop, and, “lifting his head in the stillness,” listen—and pass on.
This attention is, with few exceptions, so marked, that it, of itself, answers another question: Isn’t all this stuff way above the heads of the people? Again, the size of the audiences furnishes the most convincing answer. Theoretically, of course, the best, being the most human, is above no one’s head. But even practically, no genuine heterogeneous crowd of “street-bred people” trails from the dark places on a hot night—carrying or wheeling babies, with small children tugging at the skirts or clamoring to be carried—to hear such things as are above its head.
The aim of the movement is distinctly not educational in the instructive sense, nevertheless, the popular interest in the programs has been taken into consideration by Mr. Farwell in his brief and readable program notes. These give simple, important facts relating to composers and compositions, and do not attempt any detailed analyzation such as is familiar to the average concert goer. That these find a place, would seem to be proved by the knots of people who gather, program in hand, under the lights.
Underlying the entire discussion of this, or any purely artistic movement in this country, there is often the question: What’s the use? Be the reason what it may—personal gratification, civic pride, or any other cause—it is almost safe to say that no citizen grudges New York its parks, its buildings, or its Metropolitan Museum of Art. Why, then, its public music, which gives innocent pleasure, rest, perhaps inspiration to thousands? I do not think that this is grudged to the people. Its neglect is simply a matter of ignorance, rather than indifference, on the part of many men who regularly pay their opera and symphony subscriptions, and who have watched with interest the efforts of several organizations to bring the price of concert tickets down to a low figure. But this philanthropic effort does not strike at the root of the matter. Ideally, music should not have to be offered to the people as a commodity, nor as a charity, nor, primarily, as an education. It should stand, rather, as a temple, to which they may come gladly and freely, and from which they may go full hearted, carrying its best with them.
And this has been accomplished in the piers and parks in the last three years. But the winter contrast is striking. Fed up all summer, it seems hardly fair that men should be starved all winter. The daily papers printed, during September, 1912, a number of letters, asking why these concerts could not be continued through the winter months. There is but one solution of the problem—the municipal orchestra—and in this connection I cannot do better than quote a letter, written by Mr. Farwell to the New York Times, in response to the various suggestions and inquiries:
“The Central Park concerts have shown once for all that the greatest in music appeals directly and powerfully to the people when it is given to them under the right conditions. This is one of the mysteries of music—its power to short circuit an intellectual by a spiritual process. To wait until some hypothetical time in the future for the high gift of music to be given to the people is to be both dilatory and blind. The time for national initiative is at hand. What the people of New York really need is a permanent municipal symphony orchestra.”
Popular response to good music is no longer an open question. The people have answered it conclusively, and popular demand has become a live issue.