'Without describing the status of most of the music in the past, it may at least be said that the administrations supporting it let the work out to many independent band leaders, without requiring the upholding of musical standards, or having the means to uphold them, and without even suggesting such standards.
'The task of the new department heads, Charles B. Stover, Commissioner of the Department of Parks, and Calvin Tomkins, Commissioner of the Department of Docks and Ferries,[59] was therefore to place the work of providing municipal music upon a basis admitting of musical standards, and thus to make possible the systematic carrying out of new and progressive ideas.
'In the Park Department, Commissioner Stover's first act in extending the scope and influence of the municipal music was to increase the number of music centres. Most important of all, he increased the number of symphony orchestras to two, and opened a new music centre for orchestral music at McGowan's Pass in the upper end of the park, where there is a natural amphitheatre. The crowds from the upper East Side that frequent this portion of the park are made up of persons who for the most part have never heard a symphony orchestra. It is an interesting fact that at the first concert given them there was much curiosity, but little real response, up to the performance of a movement from a Beethoven symphony, which brought forth prolonged and enthusiastic applause until an encore number was played. The concerts at McGowan's Pass have grown steadily and rapidly in popularity, eager audiences of from four to six thousand, or more, assembling at every performance....
'One other feature of fundamental importance in any truly national development, a feature wholly new, has marked the season's concerts in Central Park. This is the establishment by Commissioner Stover of a rule that each of the two orchestras shall perform one new or little-heard composition by an American composer each week. This is a step of the utmost moment, not so much in the mere gaining of a hearing for the works now performed, as in the recognition of the composers of our own land as a factor in the creation of America's dawning musical democracy.
'On the recreation piers the band concerts provided by the Dock Department have been enjoyed by many thousands. An innovation there has been to classify the program, and give the concerts distinctive character on different evenings—an Italian Opera Night, American Night, Wagner Night, Folk Songs and Dances, German-Slavonic Night, etc....
'In these activities of only a single summer, it will be seen what a vista of possibilities has been revealed. If these developments have any meaning whatsoever, they have a meaning of the deepest sort for every American city and village. The magnitude of New York's operations is not the most important point. We are most deeply concerned with the spirit of these progressive activities, a spirit which may find its appropriate expression wherever there exists a community, large or small, which senses the upward trend of American humanity and democracy.'
M. M. M.
FOOTNOTES:
[56] It is reproduced in 'The Musician,' Vol. X, p. 484.
[57] This society must not be confounded with one of the same name founded in 1858 at St. Louis by Edward Sobolewsky, the opera composer, for the purpose of producing the best choruses.