Arts and Letters

In the year 1903 a very young American violin student applied for permission to take the graduation examination at the famous conservatory in Bologna. To take the test, it was not necessary to be enrolled in the school. An outsider could compete for his diploma so long as he complied with the set of rules.

These rules were a bit frightening. The contestant must be prepared to play any one of thirty-six violin études by Fiorillo; any one of Rode's twenty-four caprices; a complete performance of one of the standard violin concertos; a classic sonata; an unaccompanied Bach sonata; and a sight reading from a manuscript composition—to say nothing of an examination in elementary piano playing, and exercises in theory, harmony, and counterpoint.

Our young American had a hard time getting to be allowed to compete. The judges were all against it. It was sheer foolishness, they argued, for so young a boy to think of taking the examination. Let him wait two or three years. His teacher insisted, pointing out that there was nothing in the regulations that stipulated any required age of a contestant. At last, reluctantly, they consented.

The examination took two hours, at the end of which, out of a possible fifty points, with thirty as passing, fourteen-year old Albert Spalding had won forty-eight. With a single exception, no other boy of his age had ever taken the examination, let alone passed it. The exception, 133 years before, had been a youngster from Salzburg named Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

As a result of the examination Albert Spalding became front page news, both in the United States and Europe. Concert managers came bearing gifts in the shape of proposed concert tours as a child prodigy. Fortunately, however, his family sensibly decided to send him to the Paris Conservatoire for two more years of study.

He made his concert debut there at the age of sixteen, with an orchestra conducted by his teacher, Lefort. The audience was enthusiastic. Spalding used to point out, modestly, that since most of the audience had free tickets, they had no choice but to be enthusiastic. But that wouldn't explain the enthusiasm of the critics, even though they did come in on free tickets. When the concert was over, Lefort said to him: "You were born to play in public. Also, what is rare, you have that in your presence which makes an audience want you to succeed. It is like a present from Heaven."

As a matter of fact, the firm foundation of his career was laid at a benefit concert for indigent actors. Every famous musician in Paris took part, including the fabulous Adelina Patti. The sixteen-year-old violinist was honored by an invitation to appear on the program, and received a genuine ovation. He was accepted. He was a pro.

Fame had arrived, but fortune was a bit laggard. On that score he received some good advice from his father. Spalding Senior was a famous man in his own right, being the "brother" portion of A. G. Spalding and Brother, known the world over for sporting goods and baseball annuals. His advice was short and smart: "Never mind playing the big towns at a loss. Play in the small ones and get paid."

Taking the advice, young Spalding embarked on a series of concerts in the smaller cities and provincial towns of France. The returns were not overwhelming, but they sufficed. One of the numbers on his debut program was the Saint-Saëns violin concerto in B minor. The great man heard favorable reports of his performance, invited him to come to see him, and took an immediate fancy to both the boy and his playing. The youngster of seventeen and the master of seventy-one gave a joint recital in Florence that was a triumph for all concerned.

Someone made a remark, now worn threadbare, to the effect that "happy is the country that has no history." In a sense, that applies somewhat to Albert Spalding's career. His fame grew, both in Europe and America; and it kept growing. Six months of his year he would play sixty or seventy concerts in this country. Then to Europe for an equal number. He toured England and every country on the Continent many, many times. He went on two long tours of Tsarist Russia; and that violin-loving country took him to its heart. He was as familiar a figure in Rome, Paris, or London as he was in New York, Chicago, or San Francisco.

When America entered World War I he promptly enlisted, with a view to becoming a liaison officer—a job for which he was particularly fitted, since he spoke fluent French and Italian, and adequate German. He went overseas as a private, and received his commission in Paris. His work was varied, and must have been interesting, since it included a cloak-and-dagger trip to Spain with his immediate superior, a Captain Fiorello La Guardia. That country had placed an embargo on exports, and the task of the two conspirators, dressed as civilians, was to purchase and smuggle over the border many raw materials that were badly needed by the Italian airplane factories. Which, in due course, they did.

Spalding's great interest, however, was aviation, and he was taking intensive training as an observer when the armistice arrived. He was demobilized in the summer of 1919 and returned to his interrupted career. In 1920, when Walter Damrosch took the New York Symphony Orchestra on an extended tour of Western Europe, Albert Spalding and John Powell were the soloists, chosen by Damrosch as two artists who could hold their own in any company.

As an interpreter Spalding was an absolute master. He was a man of tremendous quiet charm that was as potent in his professional as in his private life. Lefort was right. When he came out on the concert platform the audience did want him to succeed. His playing had a lovely, clear tone that never went in for the sentimentality, the "schmaltz," that occasionally betrayed some of his contemporaries. You might call it warm—but never hot.

About his own compositions he was modest to a fault. He wrote numerous smaller works for the violin, which his colleagues delighted to play. Yet I have never heard him refer to his own music. Besides being a public favorite, he could be called a violinist's violinist. He knew and admired all the great ones—Kreisler, Thibaud, Kochanski, Heifetz, Elman—and they in turn loved and admired him.

I may be wrong, but I have always felt that Albert Spalding received something less than his just due in his native country. It wasn't that he was not acclaimed everywhere, but some last measure of appreciation was being withheld. We hailed him as a superb artist. Europe hailed him as a great one. Something once said to him by a Russian musical enthusiast and patron may be the clue to the mystery. He said: "There is in your playing a distinctive quality that makes it quite different from any that I have previously enjoyed. I knew from your first phrase that I would want to visit the country peopled by your thoughts." And there, possibly, we have it. What he said, in his playing, was so utterly American in thought and feeling that we tended to take it for granted. He was a local boy who had made good. He was much more than that; and Europe realized it. Here was a new voice. His untimely death at the age of sixty-five robbed the world of a great artist and a great man.