There were two professors each for oboe, bassoon, French horn, and flügelhorn, all of whom were graduates and first prizes of the famous Paris Conservatoire. I also recommended that the beautiful B-flat bugles of the French army be adopted by us and that a French drum-major, proficient on this instrument, be appointed as instructor to drill successive classes of fifty for one month each, the graduates to become first buglers of our regiments, in order that they might, in turn, instruct other buglers in their respective drum and bugle corps.
At the examinations I also asked the bandmasters certain questions regarding their position in their respective regiments, the attitude of their colonel toward music, their general treatment, and the hours allowed them for musical practice, and here I came on all kinds of conditions. Some of the commanding officers had no sympathy with music or with the bandsmen, and instead of making them practise their six hours a day, they were put to work as kitchen police and on other fatigue duties. I therefore urged that the commanding officers be impressed with the fact that the primary object of the band is not to fight, but to cheer the fighters, and the better their music, the greater its beneficial effects upon the spirit of the soldiers, and that therefore all bandsmen should be compelled to devote at least five or six hours every day to the practice of their instruments and to rehearsals, and that other duties should be made subsidiary to their musical work and should not be of a character to unfit them for a proper performance on their respective instruments.
I also discovered that there was a terrible wastage as regards musical instruments and that in several instances, preparatory to going into action, the instruments had been thrown away or simply left behind, nevermore to be recovered, and that therefore it might be wise to appoint a travelling inspector of musical instruments whose duties should be to attend to the speedy replacement of missing parts, the repairing of instruments, and the supplying of new music.
A really excellent headquarters band was formed at Chaumont, which became a source of much gratification to the commander-in-chief and his staff, accompanying him on many of his ceremonial visits and functions.
One of my most important recommendations for the school was that every week at least one concert should be given by the professors and such of the bandsmen as were really competent musicians. The programmes should be made up only of the great master composers, in order that the students—many of whom had come from isolated communities in our country and had had but little opportunity to hear good music—should become sensitive to the finer and more spiritual qualities of music as an art. This was carried out in most remarkable fashion during the entire existence of the school, and the programmes and their performance were worthy of a place in any highly cultivated musical community.
When I returned to Chaumont on a visit of inspection the following year, I heard one of these concerts, which included a quintet of Mozart for oboe and strings and a sonata for violin and piano by César Franck. I sat in delighted amazement as I saw the happy faces of over a hundred students in khaki who were listening to this divine music in rapt silence. What a pity that such a school cannot be founded in every State in America now that the war is over and our soldiers have returned home! This would speedily result in an excellent band for every town and lay a real foundation for the musical development of the people at large.
During these weeks in Paris I also saw a great deal of some of my French musician colleagues, all of whom had refused to leave Paris in spite of the Gothas and Berthas.
When I first called on Charles Marie Widor, the famous old organist of Saint Sulpice, I found him installed, by virtue of his office as Secrétaire Perpétuel of the Institut de France, in a charming Louis XVI suite of rooms in that building. He showed me a hole in the window of his workroom and told me that a few days before he had just stooped down to pick up a musical score from the floor when a shell from the Big Bertha burst in front of his apartment and a piece of it hurtled through his window, missing him only because he was in a stooping position.
His Gallic wit and versatility make him a delightful companion, and I am grateful for the opportunity the war gave me for more intimate acquaintance and friendship with him. Indeed, this applies to all the friends made during that eventful summer. The war brought us more quickly and closely together than would have been possible otherwise, and as I was an American I reaped the full advantage of all the intense gratitude which the French felt for us, some of which was hardly deserved, as our government certainly had shilly-shallied and waited until it was almost too late before they threw our great weight of men and treasure into the balance.
I have already spoken of Mlle. Nadia Boulanger, who played the organ for me at the performance of Saint-Saëns’s “Third Symphony” on July 14. Among women I have never met her equal in musicianship, and indeed there are very few men who can compare with her. She is one of the finest organists of France, an excellent pianist, and the best reader of orchestral scores that I have ever known. Again and again I have seen her take up a manuscript orchestral score, sit down with it at the piano, and brilliantly read it at sight, transcribing it for the piano as she played along. When we first met, she and her dear mother were in the greatest grief. A younger sister, Lili, had died only a month before at twenty-four years of age. Beautiful, exquisite, and marvellously talented, she had won the much-coveted Prix de Rome three years before—the first woman to have gained it. A mortal illness had slowly sapped her strength, and as she had been the idol of her mother and sister, her loss was to them a tragedy almost beyond endurance. Nadia, besides keeping up her professional duties—she was substitute organist at the Madeleine during the war—hurled herself into war work and more especially the care of the students of the Conservatoire who were at the front. She knew all their names and the numbers of their organizations and founded a kind of musical gazette, mimeographed copies of which were sent out every month to the students. All kinds of musical news and musical questions were published in it, so that these boys, in the midst of their military duties or while convalescing from their wounds in the hospitals, could have something to think about more immediately connected with their own profession. It is interesting to note that, in answer to the question, “Should German composers like Brahms and Wagner be played at our concerts during the war?” out of fifty-eight, forty-seven answered unequivocally “Yes” for Wagner and Brahms, three “Yes” for Beethoven and the classics, two were undecided, and six said “No.” These answers were accompanied in many cases by highly interesting essays on art and nationality of art, and, altogether, the judgments thus expressed reflected the high intellectual standard of these young French artists at the front.