THE NEW YORK SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
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.
On our tours, Miss Steers usually attended to the local needs of the cities we visited—the music committees, the hall managers, and the newspapers—while Miss Coman travelled with us as general railroad manager, baggage despatcher, and “committee of one,” to smooth out all difficulties, adjust any disputes and, in general, to “oil the wheels.” As soon as we came into their territory everything moved like clockwork. I remember one agonizing day, however, when we had to make Salt Lake City from the West and terrible floods had disarranged all railroad schedules. The final jolt came when, at some station on the way, John Drew’s two cars containing his dramatic company and scenery were added to our already over-heavy train because the floods had compelled him also to change his route. All hope of reaching Salt Lake City in time for our concert seemed gone. Miss Coman hopped onto the engine and sat down next to the engineer and stoker. I did not know whether she used a woman’s wiles or brute force or a combination of both, but we arrived in Salt Lake City at nine P. M. on a lovely summer evening. An audience of two thousand had been notified that we would be late and were calmly promenading up and down in front of the theatre. Trucks were in waiting at the station to rush our baggage to the auditorium, our men had put on their evening dress in the baggage-car, and I began the opening overture with all the instruments properly tuned at ten minutes before ten. Symphony concerts were so few and far between in Salt Lake City that the audience did not mind this long wait one little bit.
Of course all these difficulties could not have been so happily solved had I not always had devoted and efficient heads of the different departments of our organization. George Engles is the most careful of business managers; Rissland, the orchestra manager, has always been tireless in his efforts to keep the men in good discipline and spirits and to look after their welfare; and Hans Goettich, who has been my baggage-master and librarian for over twenty-five years, is a perfect marvel. I remember seeing him flag an entire train because he had suddenly noticed that our baggage-car, containing all our music and musical instruments, had been hooked on to it by mistake. As this train was going to New Orleans, while we were headed for Chicago, we would have had to stop giving concerts for several days until that baggage-car had been traced and sent back to us! On Goettich devolves the entire responsibility for the library, which is packed in dozens of boxes and kept according to a system of his own. On these long tours our programmes are changed more or less every day, partly to avoid the monotony of repetition for us and partly because each community has its own needs according to its stage of musical development, which I try to gauge very thoroughly when making up my programmes. This means incessant work for the librarian and mistakes might easily occur, but during all these years I cannot recall a single concert when, through fault of Goettich’s, an orchestral part has been lost or misplaced. This is a remarkable record.
I remember giving a symphony concert in William J. Bryan’s town of Lincoln, Nebraska. I found a typical Middle Western community, living in nice houses with green lawns, with neatly bricked streets and concrete sidewalks, and roomy large-windowed schools. The theatre in which we played was thoroughly modern, clean, and well lighted, and the audience well dressed and appreciative. One of my double-bass players told me that he had played there thirty years before with Theodore Thomas. In those days Lincoln was but a frontier town and the theatre and the public who had come to hear the Thomas Orchestra were of a more or less primitive character. My double-bass player told me that with a colleague, whose head was devoid of hair, he had stood directly below a proscenium box in which a group of cowboys were seated. While the orchestra was playing Beethoven’s “Fifth Symphony,” one of these cowboys, who was chewing tobacco violently, amused himself by spitting frequently and always aiming for the bald head of the bass player, who had to keep one agitated eye on the conductor and the other on this horribly resourceful listener, in order to avoid his only too-well-directed shots.
Our orchestra always enjoyed the long spring tours, although now and then uncomfortable happenings would mar their pleasure. Nothing makes a musician so ill-natured as to be deprived of a good square meal, and sometimes our dining-car would not connect properly or we would be so delayed as to arrive in a town only just in time to rush to the theatre and give our concert. Then I would have to exert all my powers as an orator to induce them to go directly to the theatre instead of “loitering by the wayside,” and I would quickly order large quantities of ham and swiss-cheese sandwiches to be distributed behind the scenes just before the concert.
At present our players while on tour receive so much per day above their salaries for meals and beds, but in the early days I used to pay their hotel expenses, my manager engaging rooms and arranging the rates “on the American plan” before we arrived in the city in which we were to play. This system, however, never worked well because there was always intense jealousy among the musicians as to the quality or conveniences of their respective rooms; and if the first oboe found that his room did not front on as agreeable a locality as that of the first horn, he would perhaps sulk and consider that he had been unfairly treated. The newer arrangement proved much better, as it enabled some to save from the money allowed them and permitted others to “splurge” by spending more.
I remember that once in those early days we had to fill in a date in a small New York State town on our way to Canada. The principal hotel had room for only about twenty, and the other members of the orchestra were quartered in four other hotels. Naturally the unfortunate five who were put into the last of these had a terrible story to tell of their sufferings when we met the following morning at the station. To be sure, the manager of the hotel had charged only a dollar for each person, and this included his supper, bed, and breakfast, but their rooms had been dismal and the beds hard. The climax was reached in the morning, when, as a frowsy waitress began to serve them their breakfast in the fly-specked dining-room on a table covered with the inevitable dirty red and white checked cloth, the manager, putting his head in at the door, shouted: “Lizzie, no eggs for the band!” This phrase became a catchword in the orchestra, and whenever my manager or I refused anything to our men, the cry immediately resounded: “Of course, no eggs for the band!”
Orchestra players through experience become remarkably routined travellers. They know the good hotels and restaurants in every city of the Union, and during the long railroad jumps, especially west of the Mississippi, where distances between important cities become greater and greater, they know how to amuse themselves, each one according to his fashion. There are, of course, a few groups who play poker violently from morning till night. Others are equally constant to pinochle or bridge, while a few are perfect sharks at chess. The Frenchmen, as well as the Russian Jews, are great readers of serious literature, and books on history, philosophy, and music are in great demand among them. Whenever the train stops, even for a few minutes, a dozen jump off to play ball. As a rule, during the day we have two cars, one of which is given up to the smokers, where indeed the air becomes so thick that one could cut it with a knife. At night three or four sleepers are necessary to take care of us comfortably. The old days, when I travelled with fifty men, have gone long ago, and now we should not think of touring with an orchestra of less than eighty-five.
The time for spring tours seems to be passing, however, as the Western cities are beginning to minister to the needs of their respective communities with their own excellent orchestras.
For many years I accepted long summer engagements with two concerts every day, first at Willow Grove near Philadelphia, and then at Ravinia Park, on the North Shore near Chicago. The former became a great educational factor, as Philadelphia at that time had no orchestra of its own. Willow Grove Park is situated seventeen miles from that city and was built by the Rapid Transit Company in order to stimulate travel on their trolley lines. The first season, for which a military band had been engaged, had not proven a success, and I was invited the following year in the hope that a symphonic organization might do better. I began by giving them popular programmes of good music with a regular symphony night every Monday and a Wagner programme every Friday evening, with excellent results. Our audiences usually numbered from fifteen to twenty thousand. The Rapid Transit Company, realizing the importance of the concerts, promptly built a huge open-air auditorium after my own design, consisting of only a roof on pillars connecting with the shell in which the orchestra was placed. The acoustics proved exceedingly good and the out-of-doors atmosphere was preserved.
I continued these concerts for seven seasons, thereby developing an audience for symphonic music which eventually and inevitably demanded a resident orchestra of its own. To-day the Philadelphia orchestra, under the leadership of Leopold Stokowski, ranks as one of the foremost of our country. Its concerts are crowded to the doors and I like to think that our seven years of pioneer work in Willow Grove have helped to lay its foundations.
I also conducted a series of concerts at Ravinia Park, organized by the Chicago and Milwaukee Electric Railway to serve a similar commercial purpose. Chicago had, of course, enjoyed for years the splendid winter concerts of the Chicago Orchestra, first under Theodore Thomas and then under his successor, Frederick Stock, but this was the first time that symphonic concerts were given during the summer amid such charming surroundings on the borders of Lake Michigan. These concerts proved exceedingly popular, the audiences consisting not only of the North Shore residents but of thousands who came out from Chicago on trains and trolleys.
After several years of this work, however, the incessant daily concerts, coming after an arduous winter season, began to pall on my musical nerves. I ran a real danger, if I continued, of becoming nothing but a musical routinier, with an inevitable loss of the enthusiasm and freshness which is an absolute necessity for the interpreter. I therefore gave up all conducting during the summer months.
I founded the Damrosch Opera Company in 1895, and the harassing question of how to maintain my orchestra seemed solved, for, during the first year, my opera season lasted thirteen weeks and during the following three years, from twenty to thirty weeks each. This not only enabled me to maintain a beautifully trained orchestra for the Wagner operas, but also gave to my symphony performances a greater finish. The orchestra was now under my exclusive control and could rehearse as often as the endowed orchestra of Major Higginson. But as it was the opera that enabled me to give my men such a long engagement, its needs had to control all other arrangements, and gradually the regular sequence of my winter concerts in New York began to suffer. I could not keep my opera company in New York except for a limited period each year, and therefore had to fill in much of my time in Philadelphia, Boston, and the larger cities of the South and Middle West. In 1899 I was therefore finally compelled to give up the regular subscription series of our New York concerts and the New York Symphony Orchestra became a part of my travelling operatic organization.
I made this sacrifice with a heavy heart, but at that time it was the only solution. An orchestra devoted only to concerts could not be maintained without an endowment, and that I did not have at the time, while the length of my Wagner opera season enabled me not only to give my men a good engagement but to have the pick of the best musicians in New York.
From then on until 1903 most of our playing of symphonic music was only on our spring concert tours and at irregular intervals in New York.
In 1900 Maurice Grau asked me to conduct the Wagner operas at the Metropolitan, and in the spring of 1902, at the close of my second season with him, I received an invitation from the New York Philharmonic Society to become its conductor. This invitation was a great surprise to me, as the Philharmonic had been, ever since my father’s day, the rival orchestra. In many ways it seemed a flattering proposition, as it was the oldest organization of its kind in America and had had an honorable history. Under the leadership of Theodore Thomas and later on of Anton Seidl, the audiences had been large and its affairs had prospered. It had always been a co-operative association, composed of the members of the orchestra, who had complete control of its affairs, receiving no salaries, but dividing the profits equally among themselves at the end of each season. I accepted the conductorship, but found very soon that my acceptance was a blunder. The society had come upon evil days, and under its last conductor attendance had dwindled to less than one-half. Of the membership of the orchestra only the skeleton remained, and I found to my amazement that of the hundred players at the concerts, less than fifty were actual members of the organization, the rest being engaged from outside, and often changed from one concert to another. Some of the members were old men who should no longer have played in the orchestra at all; but they were devoted to the concerts of the society, and as the orchestra was regulated by their votes, they naturally would not vote themselves out of it. Many of them had been excellent musicians and were personally upright men, but age, alas, is no respecter of technic, and the fingers of the left hand and the muscles of the bow arm gradually stiffen with advancing years. Most of the wind instruments were outsiders and therefore could not be properly controlled regarding their attendance at rehearsals and concerts, while, on the contrary, nearly all of the first violins were old members, several of whom were no longer fit to play first violin.
The fact was that Major Higginson, of Boston, with his permanent orchestra composed of young men, many of them the best of their kind, with their daily rehearsals and at least seventy-five symphony concerts a season, had set a new standard of orchestral technic which the old Philharmonic, under its archaic conditions, could not hope to equal.
The only solution seemed to me to lie in gathering together a fund large enough to produce the same conditions and results as Higginson had achieved in the Boston Orchestra, and, above all, to put the management of the Philharmonic into the hands of a committee which should not be composed of members of the orchestra, but of music lovers and guarantors of the fund.
I discussed this idea with several of my friends and some old subscribers and friends of the Philharmonic at a meeting held on January 5, 1903, and it was resolved to obtain a fund of fifty thousand dollars a year for four years, to be administered for the benefit of the Philharmonic Society as a permanent orchestra fund by a board of fifteen or more trustees, but it was not to be subject to the control of the Philharmonic Society. This fund was to be the beginning of an endowment for a permanent orchestra, of which the Philharmonic Society was to be the nucleus. The terms of the deed of trust under which the fund was to be held were to be determined by a committee of three, consisting of Mr. Samuel Untermyer, Mr. John Notman, and Mr. E. Francis Hyde.
The members of the Philharmonic Orchestra were not unfavorably disposed toward our scheme. The idea of being guaranteed a yearly salary instead of sharing problematic yearly profits, naturally appealed to them; but when our committee explained to them that, under the terms of such an endowment, several of the playing members would have to resign their places because in the opinion of the committee they had passed the age of usefulness, they rebelled. Nor did they feel inclined to give up the absolute management of their concerts.
Among the most respected members of the Philharmonic Orchestra were two old violinists. The one, Richard Arnold, vice-president of the society, had been concert master under my father twenty-five years before and still officiated in that position in the Philharmonic. The other, August Roebbelin, who had played as first violinist in the orchestra for nearly forty years, had also acted as manager of the society and unselfishly given his best energies to its affairs. As a violinist, however, he had passed his time of usefulness. Our committee, perhaps rather bluntly, informed the Philharmonic committee that under the reorganization the selection of the orchestra must be left in the hands of the conductor and that Mr. Arnold would have to content himself with a second position at the first stand, so that a younger artist could become concert master, and that several of the first violinists, among them Mr. Roebbelin, would have to be retired altogether.
I had made it particularly clear that my selection as conductor for the following year was not in any way a necessary part of the reorganization scheme, as it seemed to me that the only way to achieve a real permanent orchestra for New York was to unite the conflicting factions and to let the choice of conductor be made after the organization had been properly placed upon a sound and comprehensive basis.
After lengthy negotiations the Philharmonic, in a letter of February 28, 1903, definitely refused the offer of the reorganization committee because, as their secretary expressed it, the amendments required by our committee “would so change the nature of the society as to seriously interfere with the control of its affairs by its members, which has always been its vital principle, and that the future prosperity of the society would thereby be impaired.”
As I had no desire to continue another year with the orchestra on the basis of existing conditions, I wrote to Mr. Arnold and requested that my name be not proposed as a candidate for the following year. I had been in a very delicate position during all this time, as I had grown quite fond personally of some of the very men whom, for artistic reasons, it was necessary to retire. It was not in human nature that they should have seen themselves as others saw them, or heard themselves as others heard them, and at our rehearsals and concerts they all certainly gave the best that was in them. The changes which I had proposed were necessary, however, if the society expected to continue its existence as an orchestral body.
For a few years they staved off the inevitable by engaging for each season a number of European guest conductors. This served as a stop-gap, as it diverted the attention of the audience from the deficiencies in the orchestra to the different and interesting personalities and musical specialties of the conductors. But then a reorganization plan, exactly on the lines originally proposed by me, completely eliminating the power of the orchestral players to manage the concerts or to select the players in the orchestra, was accepted by them, and to-day the orchestra of the Philharmonic Society is organized and successfully working on exactly the same basis as the New York Symphony Society and the Boston Orchestra.
For me the rejection of our reorganization plan was at the time naturally a great disappointment, but not for long, as my efforts had made new friends for me and in a new direction, which eventually proved a turning-point in my life.
On March 19, 1903, I received a letter which read as follows:
I have been instructed by the members of the Permanent Orchestra Fund Committee to express to you their appreciation of the spirit of unselfishness and of loyalty to the highest artistic interests which has characterized your attitude during the negotiations which have been in progress between our Committee and the Philharmonic Society. We regret that a consolidation of our interests has proved impossible, but we relinquish the plan we had in view with the greatest respect and admiration for your broad attitude of mind in regard to the undertaking, for your musicianship, and for your devotion to the cause of music in which we are all working.
Harry Harkness Flagler,
Secretary Permanent Orchestra Fund.
Years before I had met Mr. Flagler through his friend, Max Alvary, when the latter was a member of the Damrosch Opera Company, but the meeting was quite casual and I had not seen him again until the meetings of the Philharmonic Orchestra Fund Committee, of which he had become a member. I had been singularly attracted by him and his gentle and quiet, almost diffident manner. He had been a great lover of music all his life and had found in his wife Anne an enthusiastic companion in his love for the art. As the reorganization scheme of the Philharmonic Orchestra gradually unfolded itself, he became more and more interested in it as the right solution of the problem of developing a symphony orchestra in New York which should be the equal of the Boston Symphony or the Chicago Orchestra, and he was ready to help such a scheme to the fulness of his financial ability. Very quickly after the failure of this project, many of the forces concerned recruited themselves anew, and a large proportion of the would-be guarantors turned to me with the suggestion to reorganize the New York Symphony Orchestra, and by subsidizing all the first players and thereby binding them to the orchestra, make a new beginning in the right direction. During the interregnum of three years the orchestra had maintained itself fairly well through the earnings of our long spring tours and summer engagements, but I joyfully hailed this opportunity to renew the New York winter concerts. A reorganization of the Symphony Society of New York was quickly effected by the re-election of most of the old directors and of many new ones. My old and loyal friend, Daniel Frohman, at whose theatre I had given many a Wagner lecture in the years past, accepted the presidency pro tem and was of great assistance in procuring outside work for the members of the orchestra. He was succeeded by Mr. Samuel Sanford, a man of real musical ability, who had founded the musical department at Yale University and had contributed liberally to many musical enterprises. He immediately became one of the largest guarantors of our orchestra fund.
We accordingly resumed our New York concerts under the best possible auspices with an enthusiastic directorate and a large subscription list. I was, however, not satisfied with the wood-wind players at that time available in New York. The Musical Union, which controlled all orchestral players, had made the influx of good musicians from Europe almost an impossibility by insisting that a player must have lived at least six months in this country before he could join the union, and that until he became a member no other member of the union would be allowed to play with him. As all orchestral engagements in opera, concert, or theatre were in the hands of union men, this meant that the newcomer would have to starve for six months before he could begin to earn a dollar toward his maintenance. This law was not enforced by the union men for patriotic reasons, as most of them had been born in Europe, but because they feared the possible competition for the positions they monopolized. The best wood-wind players at that time—and, generally speaking, this applies to-day—were French or Belgian. The Conservatoire of Paris has for years produced very superior artists on these instruments. The Boston Orchestra, which is non-union, had several among its members, and their exquisite tone and beautiful phrasing always particularly enraged me because, owing to the union restrictions, I could not have players of equal merit.
I determined therefore to throw down the gantlet to the union by deliberately going to France to engage the five best artists I could find in flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and trumpet, demonstrate their superior excellence to anything we could obtain in New York at that time, and through the pressure of public opinion—and, above all, the necessity of artistic competition with the Boston Symphony—force the union to accept these men as members. When the Frenchmen arrived, the rage among the members of the New York union knew no bounds. I had a summer engagement for the orchestra on one of the roof gardens, but the union refused to let them play with us except as “soloists,” and I determined to take the matter higher up to the annual convention of the National Federation of Musicians, which was held in Detroit in the summer of 1905.
I found the national delegates much more amenable to reason than my New York colleagues. There were more real Americans among them and many of them listened to my pleadings with interest and sympathy. The president of the federation, Joseph N. Weber, is a man of real intellectual ability; and while he and I have had some violent quarrels and disagreements during these many years, and while I have sometimes denounced him to his face as a fanatic and he has given me tit for tat, I must acknowledge that he not only has had the ability to build up a remarkable organization of great power, but has often acted with great fairness in disputes that have come up between the directors of the New York Musical Union and myself.
The National Federation decided in my favor and gave me the permission to incorporate these five Frenchmen in my orchestra and to enroll them as members of the New York union, but as I had “sinned against the laws of the federation in bringing them over from a foreign country,” I was fined one thousand dollars. It was, however, intimated to me privately that if I would return to the next convention of the federation, which was to be held in Boston the following summer, I would in all probability receive a remission of the greater part of this fine. It is needless for me to say that I never saw any part of that one thousand dollars again.
I returned to New York jubilant and my French players proved themselves such superior artists that, together with our other excellent members, many of whom had been with me for years, the orchestra quickly took rank among the best in the country.
The leader of my first violins was Mr. David Mannes. I had discovered him a few years before at one of the New York theatres, where he was a member of the little orchestra and where I heard him play a solo charmingly between the first and second acts. The beautiful quality of his tone, and a fine sensitiveness to the melos of the work he was playing, attracted me and I engaged him for the last stand of the first violins. From there he was quickly promoted until he occupied the position at the first stand of concert master. He married my sister Clara, a pianist of fine accomplishment. Their sonata recitals have become models of intimate unity in chamber-music playing, and several years ago they founded the David Mannes Music School. This encroached so much upon his time and energy as to compel him to resign his position in the New York Symphony Orchestra, which he had held so honorably for many years.
Each year the guarantee fund for the maintenance of the orchestra was increased by the supporters of the New York Symphony Society, and more and more men were engaged on regular weekly salaries. At last my dream was realized, and New York had an orchestra organized on the same lines as the Boston and Chicago Orchestras, devoted exclusively to symphonic music and assembling daily for rehearsal.
The fund at this time reached over fifty thousand dollars a year, mainly subscribed by the directors of our organization. Several of these had been supporters from my father’s time, among them Isaac N. Seligman, who, with his family, had been interested in music in New York for many years. Others had come into the organization when I became its conductor and had remained loyal supporters and close friends from that time on. Among them were: Richard Welling, a director since 1886, a well-known lawyer and reformer in municipal politics, and who as a member of the Naval Reserves promptly enlisted as an ensign when we entered the Great War, although he was then well over fifty years of age; Miss Mary R. Callender and Miss Caroline de Forest who had been directors since 1885. Miss Callender further signalized her affection for the orchestra by leaving fifty thousand dollars to the pension and sick fund after her death in 1919. The complete list of the subscribers to the fund at the time was as follows:
| Mrs. H. A. Alexander | Mme. Nordica |
| Mr. C. B. Alexander | Mr. Stephen S. Palmer |
| Miss Kora F. Barnes | Mrs. Trenor L. Park |
| Mrs. William H. Bliss | Mr. Amos Pinchot |
| Miss Mary R. Callender | Mrs. Joseph Pulitzer |
| Mr. Robert J. Collier | Mr. Thomas F. Ryan |
| Mrs. Paul D. Cravath | Mr. Charles E. Sampson |
| Mr. Paul D. Cravath | Mr. Samuel S. Sanford |
| Miss Caroline de Forest | Mr. R. E. Schirmer |
| Mr. Charles H. Ditson | Mr. Henry Seligman |
| Mrs. S. Edgar | Mrs. Henry Seligman |
| Miss A. C. Flagler | Mr. Isaac N. Seligman |
| Mr. Harry Harkness Flagler | Mr. Jefferson Seligman |
| Mr. Edward S. Flagler | Mrs. Jesse Seligman |
| Mrs. Frances Hellman | Mr. Frank H. Simmons |
| Mr. Otto H. Kahn | Miss Clara B. Spence |
| Mr. A. W. Krech | Mrs. F. T. Van Beuren |
| Mrs. Daniel Lamont | Mr. Richard Welling |
| Mr. Albert Lewisohn | Mrs. J. A. Zimmerman |
| Mr. Frank A. Munsey | Mr. Paul Warburg |
| Mr. Emerson McMillin |
The ideal conditions under which I now worked gave me the opportunity to carry out several artistic plans which I had had for a long time. The first of these was a Beethoven cycle, in which I gave not only all the nine symphonies in chronological order, but other compositions of Beethoven, some of which had not yet appeared on the concert programmes of New York. Accordingly, in the winter of 1909, I prepared six programmes composed of Beethoven’s works, and at the last concert gave a double performance of his “Ninth Symphony.” This was a real tour de force, but not original with me. During the summer of 1887, which I had spent with von Bülow in study of the Beethoven symphonies, he had told me of having given such a double performance in Berlin and that the results had been very remarkable, inasmuch as at the second hearing, the audience had been able the more perfectly to grasp many of the intricacies of this “Hamlet” among symphonic dramas. Our double performance caused a good deal of comment, most of which was very favorable. Between the two performances the orchestra and chorus were refreshed with hot coffee and sandwiches, and as the work takes about an hour and ten minutes to perform, the repetition, together with a half-hour of rest between, brought the final tumultuous outburst of the choral “Ode to Joy” to eleven o’clock. Notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, the audience began a great demonstration of approval, applauding and shouting for many minutes; but while I and my performers took some of this as ours by right, I have always felt that the audience intended a good part of it as directed toward themselves for having so nobly endured the great strain which I had put upon them.
This was the first Beethoven Festival ever given in New York, and a few years later I organized a Brahms Festival on similar lines. I directed his four symphonies, the ingratiating Zimbalist playing the “Violin Concerto,” Wilhelm Backhaus the great “B-Flat Piano Concerto,” and my brother with the chorus of the Oratorio Society conducting a very beautiful performance of the “Requiem.”
Such festivals devoted exclusively to the work of one composer are a great lesson to the serious music lover, and I think that as Beethoven represents almost the alpha and certainly the omega of symphonic music, there should be repetitions of Beethoven cycles every few years. I have never been able to understand why it should not be similarly possible to give Shakespearian cycles in spring, in which all of our best actors could combine to make up ideal casts. We should certainly make American children as familiar with Shakespeare’s great tragedies as, for instance, the children of Germany, to whom Shakespeare is much more of a household word than he is to those of this country or England. If music can find Flaglers and Higginsons to endow it as an educational necessity, why cannot similar men be found to do the same for the drama and thus help to lift it as an educational factor from its painfully weak position to which the necessities of making it a paying institution have driven it.
During all these years my relations with Mr. and Mrs. Flagler became more and more intimate. I had never met such people in my entire life. Their devotion to and interest in the orchestra increased constantly, and Mr. Flagler’s contributions to the fund became greater and greater as the needs of the orchestra increased. But his help was offered with a shyness, as if it had been the orchestra that conferred the benefit upon him. He also took over a work which I had always detested more than anything else, and that is the collection of funds. As the expenses of the orchestra increased with the years, it became necessary to collect money from outside sources beyond the large sums already contributed by the directors of the society. With constant good humor, patience, and infinite tact Mr. Flagler, whose own donations to the fund were greater in proportion to his income than those of many others, would write letters or call personally on well-to-do musical patrons to collect perhaps a few hundred dollars toward the fund, and he would be inordinately proud of his success as a financier and collector.
Finally even his infinite patience wore out under this yearly strain and this manifested itself in a very remarkable way.
In the spring of 1914 he quietly informed me that he had decided to assume the entire financial responsibility of the orchestra himself and to contribute all necessary funds for its proper maintenance. This amount was double what would have been considered necessary ten years before, but salaries of orchestral players and other expenses in connection with the giving of concerts had increased enormously and it was Mr. Flagler’s desire that, while there should be no waste, the affairs of the orchestra should be managed in such liberal fashion that the artistic needs could first be considered in shaping its policy.
This magnificent and unique act naturally created a great excitement in the musical circles of New York, and Mr. Flagler was universally acclaimed as its foremost musical citizen.
I have a characteristic letter of his, dated August 31, 1914, in which he says:
Indeed I am not overmodest about my gift to the Symphony Society. It is not that, but what I am doing is so little in comparison with what the real makers of music, creators and interpreters like yourself do for the betterment of the world through their art, that it doesn’t deserve to be thought of. I am proud and happy in the thought that I may be the means of helping you to put before the world your ideas in regard to the interpretations of the masters and to bring the God-given art of music to many who would not otherwise have its uplifting and consoling power, and that is what we are doing together. You shall be free as never before to work out your own ideas unfettered by thoughts of the financial necessities. . . .
Since then the society has pursued the even tenor of its way and, freed from all financial worries, has contributed much to the cause of music. The orchestra plays over a hundred symphony concerts during the winter, in New York and elsewhere. These include a series of Sunday-afternoon concerts at Æolian Hall, Thursday-afternoon and Friday-evening concerts at Carnegie Hall, and a series of young people’s concerts and another of children’s concerts. There are also subscription concerts in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and Rochester, and several tours every winter to Canada and the Middle West. During the war Mr. Flagler often gave the services of the orchestra for charities connected with the war, and several times donated the gross receipts of our regular concerts to such organizations as the American Friends of Musicians in France, in which he and his wife became very much interested. But perhaps the climax in the history of the orchestra was reached in its great European tour in the spring of 1920. To this I shall devote a separate chapter following one on my experiences in France during the Great War.