Memories of a Musical Life Part 12

"YANKEE DOODLE" AND "OLD HUNDRED"

Copying the custom of Ferdinand Hiller, I used to close my concerts by an improvisation upon themes suggested by the audience. All sorts of themes were put into the hat--from Mozart, Beethoven, "Jordan is a hard road to travel," "We won't go home till morning," and many negro melodies. I had a faculty of developing a subject in such a way as to hold my audience.

One night somebody sent up the request that I should play simultaneously "Old Hundred" with one hand and "Yankee Doodle" with the other. This I did, merely to show that even two such dis-similar melodies could be played together in a musical way. There was a good deal of applause, but also considerable hissing from the religions element, so I made a speech explaining that I meant no disrespect to "Old Hundred" by placing it in such close connection with "Yankee Doodle," and that the melody which had to a certain extent been adopted as a national air was on that account worthy of being played with any hymn.

Fifteen years later, in 1870, George F. Root, who had a.s.sisted my father in his musical convention work in the East, but who had settled in Chicago and was doing the same kind of pioneer work in the West, was holding a summer musical convention in South Bend, Indiana. He wished to introduce piano as well as vocal teaching, and invited me to take charge of the piano cla.s.ses. It was a fearfully hot summer, and during the month I was in South Bend the temperature was continuously close to 100. Toward the close of the season concerts were given, and it was so hot that in lieu of a dress-coat I wore a linen duster, cut off at the waist.

At the last concert I received a request from two or three people to play "Yankee Doodle" with one hand and "Old Hundred" with the other.

Possibly they had heard me do so in 1855. Remembering my experience then, I made a few remarks, in which I told them that some little feeling had been created fifteen years before by my doing the same thing, but that--and here I got a little mixed--in playing "Yankee Doodle" with "Old Hundred" I did not intend any disrespect to "Yankee Doodle." At this the audience began to laugh. Schuyler Colfax, who was then Vice-President of the United States, was on the stage behind me, and I could hear him chuckling. I thought to myself, "Well, I have made some funny mistake, though I don't know what it is, so I won't go back and try to correct it."

Afterward Mr. Colfax, who was a noted speaker, told me that whenever he made a _lapsus linguae_, if it amused the audience he never attempted to correct it.

On my return from this concert tour to New York, I established the series of chamber-music concerts which, begun as an experiment, continued thirteen years. I also settled down as a teacher. While I had returned from Weimar with the full intention of continuing my career as a piano-virtuoso, and while my concert tour had been promising enough, I found that the public demanded a constant repet.i.tion of pieces to which it happened to take a liking, and I knew that I should soon weary of playing the same things over and over again. Moreover, I felt that from my father I had inherited a certain capacity for giving instruction, and that the chamber-music concerts and engagements with the Philharmonic and at other concerts in New York and elsewhere would serve to keep up my practice as a virtuoso.

SETTLING DOWN TO TEACH

In 1855 I accepted as pupils some four or five young ladies who were being educated at a fashionable boarding-school in New York. One of these girls was very bright and intelligent but without special musical talent. She was extremely averse to application in study, and the problem for me was to invent some way by which mental concentration could be compelled, for from the moment she sat down to the piano to practise she was constantly looking at the clock to see if her practice-hour was up. After a little study I found that in playing a scale up one octave and back, without intermission, in 9/8 time, there are necessarily nine repet.i.tions of the scale before the initial tone falls again on the first part of the measure. Thus,

[Ill.u.s.tration: musical notation]

and so on until another accent falls upon the initial C. Such an exercise is called a rhythmus, and the repet.i.tions compel mental concentration just as surely as the addition of a column of figures does. I found that if the compa.s.s was extended four octaves, thus, from

[Ill.u.s.tration: musical notation]

the nine repet.i.tions of the scale would require from three to four minutes if played at a moderate rate of speed. I saw at once that a state of mental concentration could not be avoided by the pupil, and that in this exercise lay a basic principle. I gave the exercise to my pupil. The result was that when the next lesson-hour came around and I asked her how she found the new exercise, she exclaimed: "How do I like it? Why, you have played a pretty trick on me! It took me nearly an hour to accomplish it; but I like it. Why did you not give it to me before!"

"Because," I said, "I invented it simply in order to compel your attention to your work." Following up the principle of grouping the tones, I applied the rhythmic process not only to all sorts of scale pa.s.sages, but included in the treatment arpeggios, broken chords, octaves, and in fact all pa.s.sages idiomatic of the pianoforte. The work of amplification was readily accomplished, and the result was a complete method in which for the first time, so far as I am aware, scientific rhythmic treatment was elaborated. This "Accentual Treatment of Exercises," as I called the system, was first published in the Mason & Hoadley Method, New York, 1867. The importance of accentual treatment is now recognized in every modern method.

The idea of starting a series of matinees of chamber-music occurred to me. I wished especially to introduce to the public the "Grand Trio in B Major, Op. 8," by Johannes Brahms, and to play other concerted works, both cla.s.sical and modern, for this kind of work interested me more than mere piano-playing. So I asked Carl Bergmann, who was the most noted orchestral conductor of those days, and thus well acquainted with musicians, to get together a good string quartet. This he accomplished in a day or two, and made me acquainted with Theodore Thomas, first violin; Joseph Mosenthal, second violin; and George Matzka, viola, Bergmann himself being the violoncellist. We very soon began rehearsing, and our first concert, or rather matinee, took place in Dodworth's Hall, opposite Eleventh street, and one door above Grace Church in Broadway.

The program was as follows:

Tuesday, November 27, 1855

1. Quartet in D Minor, Strings _Schubert_

2. Romance from Tannhauser, "Abendstern" _Wagner_

3. Pianoforte Solo, Fantasie Impromptu, Op. 66 (first time) _Chopin_ Deux Preludes, D flat and G, Op. 24 _h.e.l.ler_

4. Variations Concertante for Violoncello and Piano, Op. 17 _Mendelssohn_

5. "Feldwarts flog ein Voglein" _Nicolai_

6. Grand Trio in B Major, Op. 8, Piano, Violin, and Cello (first time) _Brahms_

It will be observed that we started out with a novelty, Brahms's Trio, which was played then for the first time in America. I repeated it in Boston a few weeks later with the a.s.sistance of some members of the Mendelssohn Quintet Club. It received appreciation on both occasions and was listened to attentively, but without enthusiasm. The newspapers spoke well of it in general, but there were some who regarded it as constrained and unnatural. The vocal pieces were inserted in deference to the prevailing idea of the period that no musical entertainment could be enjoyed by the public without some singing. We quickly got over that notion, and thenceforth, with rare exceptions, our programs were confined to instrumental music.

It was my purpose in organizing these concerts to make a point of producing chamber-work, which had never before been heard here, especially those of Schumann and other modern writers.

THEODORE THOMAS AT TWENTY

The organization as originally formed would probably have remained intact during all the years the concerts lasted had it not become apparent almost from the start that Theodore Thomas had in him the genius of conductorship. He possessed by nature a thoroughly musical organization and was a born conductor and leader.

Before we had been long together it became apparent that there was more or less friction between Thomas and Bergmann, who, being the conductor of the Germania and afterward of the Philharmonic orchestras, also a player of long experience and the organizer of the quartet, naturally a.s.sumed the leadership in the beginning. The result was that Bergmann withdrew after the first year, and Bergner, a fine violoncellist and active member of the Philharmonic Society, took his place. The organization was then called the Mason and Thomas Quartet, and so styled it won a wide reputation throughout the country. I should say in pa.s.sing that Bergmann was an excellent though not a great conductor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MASON-THOMAS QUARTET

MATZKA, MOZENTHAL, BERGNER, THOMAS, MASON]

From the time that Thomas took the leadership free and untrammeled, the quartet improved rapidly. His dominating influence was felt and acknowledged by us all. Moreover, he rapidly developed a talent for making programs by putting pieces into the right order of sequence, thus avoiding incongruities. He brought this art to perfection in the arrangement of his symphony concert programs.

Our viola, Matzka, was also an excellent musician, and for many years the first viola of the Philharmonic orchestra. Mosenthal, who played second violin, achieved a wide reputation as composer and conductor, in which latter capacity he did splendid work for the Mendelssohn Glee Club. He was also one of the best teachers of piano and violin in New York.

THOMAS AS CONDUCTOR

Thomas's fame as a conductor has entirely overshadowed his earlier reputation as a violinist. He had a large tone, the tone of a player of the highest rank. He lacked the perfect finish of a great violinist, but he played in a large, quiet, and reposeful manner. This seemed to pa.s.s from his violin-playing into his conducting, in which there is the same sense of largeness and dignity, coupled, however, with the artistic finish which he lacked as a violinist. He is a very great conductor, the greatest we have ever had here, not only in the Beethoven symphonies and other cla.s.sical music, but in Liszt, Wagner, and the extreme moderns.

Why should he not conduct Wagner as well as anybody else, or better?

Everything is large about Wagner, and everything is large about Thomas.

His rates of tempo are in accord with those of the most celebrated conductors whom I heard fifty years ago. In modern times the tendency has been toward an increased rate of speed, and this detracts in large measure from the impressiveness of the works, especially those of Mozart, Beethoven, Von Weber, and others.

That the skilful orchestral conductor does not rely solely upon the ear but sometimes receives a.s.sistance from the eye in his work is ill.u.s.trated by an experience of Theodore Thomas which he related while dining at my house some two years since. On one occasion, when a benefit concert was tendered to him, the orchestra was increased to jubilee dimensions, and I think there were sixteen violoncello-players, with other instruments in due proportion. During the final rehearsal Mr.

Thomas became aware of some imperfections, probably of phrasing, and traced the error to the violoncellists, but could not at first detect the individual whose fault it was. On closer scrutiny he observed that one of them was bowing in the wrong way, and thus obscuring the phrasing.

The newspapers, in reviewing the concert, mentioned this incident as ill.u.s.trating the wonderfully sensitive ear of the conductor, whereas on this occasion, at least, the eye was the detective agent.

It is possible, however, for a trained ear to detect errors in mere manipulation, and I am reminded by one of my former pupils that, having taken advantage, during one of his lessons, of my momentary absence in an adjoining room, to play a pa.s.sage according to his own ideas of proper technic, he was astonished to hear me call out to him that he had used the wrong finger in striking one of the keys.

That Thomas had entire confidence in himself was shown in the outset of his career. One evening, as he came home tired out from his work, and after dinner had settled himself in a comfortable place for a good rest, a message came to him from the Academy of Music, about two blocks away from his house in East Twelfth street. An opera season was in progress there. The orchestra was in its place, and the audience seated, when word was received that Anschutz, the conductor, was ill. The management had not provided against that contingency, and was in a position of much embarra.s.sment. Would Thomas come to the rescue? He had never conducted opera, and the work for the evening's performance was an opera with which he was unfamiliar. Here was a life's opportunity, and Thomas was equal to the occasion. He thought for a moment, then said, "I will."

He rose quickly, got himself into his dress-suit, hurried to the Academy of Music, and conducted the opera as if it were a common experience. He was not a man to say, "Give me time until next week." He was always ready for every opportunity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THEODORE THOMAS

ABOUT TWENTY-FOUR YEARS OLD]