The success of Miss Anglin’s productions was truly remarkable. There were ten thousand people at each performance, and “Iphigenia in Aulis” had to be repeated twice. In this work the camp of Agamemnon and its atmosphere of war were graphically illustrated, and five hundred Berkeley students, picturesquely attired and well trained, gave a very vivid picture of the soldier’s camp, especially at the end of the play when the Oracle has announced that the wind has changed, and these hundreds of soldiers rushed across the stage in a tumult of joy to board their ships and sail for Troy.
The “Electra,” for which William Furst had written music for Miss Anglin years before, was also performed. Eventually I also composed music for this play, and all three of the dramas were performed in New York a few years later at the request of Mr. Flagler, on the stage of Carnegie Hall, which had been skilfully converted for the occasion into a Greek theatre.
We all marvelled how vividly modern these plays, written more than two thousand years ago, seemed as given under the artistic direction of Margaret Anglin. Electra, waiting outside the walls of the palace for the sound that shall announce to her the death of Ægisthus and Clytemnestra; Medea, having entered the palace to kill her own and Jason’s children in order to punish him for his marriage to the young Princess, while the chorus, shaking the iron grill of the doors, implore Medea not to slay her children; Iphigenia, youngest daughter of Agamemnon, descending alone the great flight of steps to suffer death in the sacred grove of the goddess Artemis, that her wrath may be appeased and favorable winds may send the armies of Agamemnon to Troy—all these are unforgettable scenes, and I was overjoyed to feel that the music which I had written was not inappropriate, but formed a good background for these crucial moments.
XX
DEAD COMPOSERS
I have a large library of musical works. It was begun by my father in 1857, and contains many scores of the composers of that period, sent to him for first performance in Germany. He added to it considerably during his thirteen years in America as founder and conductor of the Symphony and Oratorio Societies, and I have still further enlarged it since I became conductor of these two organizations. My library now virtually represents the entire symphonic development up to the present time, and as I look through my catalogue I am amazed at the number of dead composers which it contains. By this I do not mean those who have passed away, but those who were once celebrated, were hailed as great, but whose works are now forgotten and only repose undisturbed on dusty shelves like mine, for no efforts or housewife’s art will prevent dust from seeping into the shelves of a New York City library!
To mention a few of these “dead” composers alphabetically: Who now plays the overtures of Auber’s “La Muette de Portici” and “Fra Diavolo”? Yet they figured frequently in my popular programmes thirty years ago, and both operas deserve more than a passing recognition. The first was a stroke of genius in which the commonplace Auber rose to real heights. The heroine is a dumb girl, a prima donna without a voice, but very dramatically portrayed in the orchestra, and the atmosphere of a people fighting for freedom pervades the entire story. “Fra Diavolo” is a delightful comic opera. The only trouble is that the music is too good for the abjectly dull audiences that now frequent our theatres and want to see a “musical show.” Its plot is delightfully consistent, which is another reason for looking on it with disfavor to-day; but I have always regretted the Nemesis which overcomes Fra Diavolo in the last act. This delightful robber has by that time so endeared himself to us that he should be allowed at the end to escape, in order that the public may live in the hope of further pranks and misdeeds from him.
Thirty years ago I gave the first performance in America of a “Symphony in D Minor,” by Anton Bruckner. He was a man with the brains of a peasant but the soul of a real musician, and with a marvellous gift for improvisation, although he was, intellectually, incapable of developing and balancing his themes properly. A noisy party in Vienna wished, at the time, to acclaim this disciple of Wagner as a genius, to counteract the constantly growing admiration for Brahms, and more recently such eminent conductors as Mahler have tried to popularize Bruckner’s symphonies, but they have never gained a permanent hold on our public. Several years after my performance of his “Symphony in D,” I was in Berlin, and Siegfried Ochs, the conductor of the famous Philharmonic Choir, brought a little bald-headed man of over seventy years of age to my table at the Kaiserhof. On my being introduced to him, he suddenly grabbed my hand, and saying, “You are the Mr. Damrosch who has given my symphony in America!” he proceeded, to my great embarrassment, to cover my hand with kisses.
Vienna is full of stories of his childlike gentleness and modesty. Hans Richter once invited him to conduct one of his own symphonies with the famous orchestra of the Vienna Society of Friends of Music. At the rehearsal he stood on the conductor’s platform, stick in his hand, with a beatific smile on his face. The orchestra were all ready to begin, but he would not lift his stick to give the signal. Finally Rosé, the concert master, said to him: “We are quite ready. Begin, Herr Bruckner.” “Oh, no,” he answered. “After you, gentlemen!”
At that time he was also commanded to appear before the old Emperor Franz Joseph to receive a decoration. After he had been decorated, the Emperor turned to him and said very kindly: “Herr Bruckner, is there anything more I can do for you?” Bruckner answered in a trembling voice: “Won’t you please speak to Mr. Hanslick (the famous musical critic of Vienna) that he should not write such nasty criticisms about my symphonies?”