Arts and Letters

Carl Ruggles died on October 24, 1971 in Bennington, Vermont. He was ninety-five years old. He was born in Marion, Massachusetts, near Cape Cod, on March 11, 1876. His ancestors immigrated to Boston from England in 1637. They included officers in the colonial wars (one a general), clergymen, managers, a steamboat captain on the Mississippi, and a singer. Ruggles often spoke of being descended from a long line of sea captains, possibly from his mother's side of the family.

His musical career began when he played on a home-made cigar box violin at the age of six. His mother liked to sing for him. Soon he was playing hornpipes and jigs by ear for the neighbors. A New Bedford bandmaster taught him violin and Carl played pieces like Variations by de Beriot on "The Last Rose of Summer." As a child prodigy he performed for President Grover Cleveland who was vacationing nearby. "In the Sweet Bye and Bye" played on the cornet was one of Carl's favorite tunes. When he was fifteen he heard Arthur Nikisch conduct the Boston Symphony Orchestra and accompany the singer Elena Gerhardt on the piano.

Later he played violin in theater orchestras and studied at the New England Conservatory, where he learned the standard violin studies. His teacher, Felix Winternitz, had him audition for Fritz Kreisler, who wanted him to go to Prague to study with Sevcik. The trip was arranged and William Beal agreed to finance it. Carl had letters of introduction to Dvorak. Mr. Beal died suddenly and Ruggles stayed in New England.

Carl studied with John Knowles Paine and Walter Spaulding at Harvard as a special student and privately with Joseph Klaus, who also coached George Chadwick and John Philip Sousa and who was greatly admired because of his keen ear. Klaus gave Ruggles thorough training in the Bach chorale style of writing and in orchestration. Carl wrote many songs in his youth. A baritone sang a group of them and the music critic, Philip Hale, wrote that they were "as dry as a covered bridge."

To earn a living Carl engraved music and title pages for a Boston publisher. He also studied marine architecture informally at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a year and a half and around the turn of the century he wrote reviews for a short-lived Cambridge paper. He covered the American premiere of Strauss's Ein Heldenleben. Among his earliest musical impressions were a performance of Cavalleria Rusticana, conducted by Mascagni, and the American premiere of the César Franck Quintet.

He played in Longy's amateur orchestra and he once told me that he had played viola in the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He was also a special student in an English course at Harvard. There he met men who were to become lifetime friends, among them Boardman Robinson, Will Irwin, and Gelett Burgess. He met the singer, Charlotte Harriet Snell, in 1906 and they were married two years later.

He lectured on modern music in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and some of his statements served as guidelines for the rest of his life. One was: "I hold that the highest art is of no school, no nationality; I believe it is universal." Another: "Modern music really began with Wagner." He had doubts about Tchaikovsky and Reger, but admired César Franck and Debussy.

In 1907 he moved to Winona, Minnesota, where he first taught music and gave violin recitals that were very well received. His Y.M.C.A. orchestra soon became the Winona Symphony. His programs included music by Gounod, Ethelbert Nevin, Bizet, Henry F. Gilbert, Mascagni, movements from classical symphonies, and concert performances of the operas Faust and Cavalleria Rusticana, as well as his own "Valse de Concert." He continued his violin studies with Concertmaster Timner of the St. Paul Symphony Orchestra. His wife, a contralto, sang locally and as soloist with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra.

In 1911 the Ruggleses made their only trip to Europe, visiting London, Paris, the Hague, and Hamburg, and Carl coached conducting with Dr. Ernest Kunwald in Holland. In 1912 he began working on an opera, "The Sunken Bell," with a libretto by Charles Henry Meltzer, based on Hauptmann's "Die Versunkene Glocke."

The Ruggleses came East in 1917, and Carl wrote some music criticism for a New York Socialist paper. He also started an orchestra at the Rand School. He spent a great deal of his time composing—his song, "Toys," written at age forty-three, was the first of the short list of compositions that he acknowledged, and was followed by Men and Angels—while he and Charlotte lived in Grantwood, New Jersey. In 1922, they moved to New York. Around this time he prepared three lectures, "The Present Situation in American Music," "The Historical Background of Music," and "Technique and Fantasy in the Study of Composition" to introduce a class in composition that he was planning to give at the Whitney Studio Club. His likes and dislikes were, by then, firmly established, and in his lectures he did not hesitate to demolish, with a few well-chosen words, Edward MacDowell, Walter Damrosch, John Alden Carpenter, Charles Griffes, and Leo Ornstein. He liked Cowell, Wagner, Stravinsky, Ravel, and Ruggles. His song cycle, Vox Clamens in Deserto, for solo voice and chamber ensemble, was sung by Greta Torpadie for the first time in 1924.

Carl worked on "The Sunken Bell" for thirteen years. In the early twenties a Chicago organization with the somewhat fractured name of "Opera in Our Language Foundation," included "The Sunken Bell" in a list of American operas that it recommended for performance. When I asked him about his opera some fifteen years later, he said that Artur Bodanzky, conductor of the Metropolitan Opera, accepted the work and set a performance date. Carl wanted a large bell and knew just the man in Brooklyn who could cast one. Bodanzky thought this was impractical and suggested a papier-mâché bell with suitable sounds in the orchestra. According to Carl, he picked up his as-yet-unfinished score and walked out, saying, "No bell, go to hell." That ended his connection with the Metropolitan. Years later he discovered he could not write operas. I asked him what had happened to the score and he said that it was at the bottom of a trash heap in his shed in Vermont. Later it was apparently destroyed or lost.

Rockwell Kent, a close friend, introduced the Ruggleses to Vermont and they moved to Arlington, permanently, in 1923. On one of their visits with Kent, the two men got into an argument about the relative difficulties of composing and painting, and Kent suggested that Carl should paint a picture and he would compose a piece of music. A week later Carl produced a drawing of Mount Anthony, but Kent had no song. This started Carl on his second career, that of painter. He soon met many painters and became a lifelong friend of some, notably Henry Schnakenberg. Although he never studied painting he worked at it steadily from 1928 on. Critics and fellow artists said that his work was remarkably free of influences and consequently authoritative in its own statements.

In Arlington, the Ruggleses lived in a rebuilt schoolhouse. Carl stayed musically active and conducted the Arlington Choral Society in a performance of Harvey B. Gaul's "The Holy City" in 1923. In the twenties a number of his compositions were infrequently performed in Europe and in this country. The reception was at first mixed, but nothing could induce him to compromise. His musical friends in New York were Varese, Ives, Salzedo, and Cowell.

He had an exalted view of his art and was completely honest in his reactions. He also had a genius for making friends and enemies. The conductors he liked were Goossens, Slonimsky, San Juan, and Stokowski. He despised Toscanini. He liked to tell that when Toscanini heard a Ruggles work at the Venice Festival the Maestro said that the hall should be fumigated. Carl made no comment about Toscanini's remark, believing that the Maestro with his own words had branded himself a Pharisee and a Philistine.

The Ruggleses loved Vermont and the Vermonters loved them. The old schoolhouse where they lived seemed to absorb their personalities, and they, in turn, seemed to become a part of the brook, the trees, the flowers, the bushes, the rocks surrounding the house—and of the sky and hills. The large room with the old grand piano was filled with old furniture, flowers, colored glass, art objects, paintings, drawings, books, scores, and cigar smoke. The magic of the light coming through the window seemed to transform the room and the Ruggleses at one and the same time into a work of art and a part of nature. A visit with them was a full and deep experience. They gave of themselves completely and one felt that one had really become a part of their life during the visit. Carl worked in the morning, but in the afternoon he spent a great deal of time in the general store, swapping yarns with his cronies. His profanity was spectacular. His Rabelaisian stories and limericks were colossal and it was not wise to expose unprepared friends to his recitations.

Carl's personality had as many facets as his art and the same integrity. Every action was charged with emotion. Henry Cowell described him as honest, slow-working, irascible, deeply emotional, self-assured, intelligent, original, and sturdy. Charlotte said of Carl that God made him and broke the mold. Cowell told about listening to Carl pound out the same chord, fortissimo, for forty-five minutes. He asked him what he had in mind. Ruggles said he wanted to repeat the chord and see if it still continued to sound magnificent. Cowell said that only time would tell; Ruggles replied, "The hell with that—I'm giving it the test of time right now."

When Carl Sandburg visited the Ruggleses he made some disparaging remarks about modern music. Charlotte went to the entrance and returned with Sandburg's hat, coat, and guitar: "Mr. Sandburg," she said, "people who make disparaging remarks about modern music are not welcome in this house. Here are your things and the door is right behind you."

Carl had only contempt for pretentious and pompous people who relied on their public relations and routines to uphold their reputations. He took great pleasure in classifying the great and near great in many fields, and demolishing unworthy celebrities with a few well-chosen words, his favorite being "putrid." On his scoreboard he rated painters, trombonists, poets, statesmen, pitchers, conductors, tennis players, composers, umpires, college presidents, and any other category that interested him.

One of his friends recalls spending several hours with Ruggles as he tried to decide whether Tchaikovsky was a thirteenth- or fourteenth-rate composer. In the field of American composition, he had no hesitation in putting himself at the top, with Charles Ives a close second, although he had some doubts about the latter. He told a story about a dinner at Ives's after which that composer showed him one of his symphonic works. Ives became irritated because he couldn't seem to arrange the pages and project his meaning, so he threw the score in the air, shouting, "It's no good!" and the pages fell all over the floor. Ruggles continued, "As I helped Charles and Harmony pick up the pages I took one and I said to him, 'Charlie, you're exaggerating. In this measure right here, I see something that gleams.'"

When Bennington College was founded Carl viewed the occurrence with suspicion. Academia in Vermont was bad enough, but although he was not, by any means, a male chauvinist, a women's college in Vermont was something new and he viewed it with alarm. In 1934 President Leigh invited him to spend a day on campus as visiting composer for a fee of $50 and meals. Carl was pleased with the generous stipend. He came to my freshman class, which was studying orchestral instruments, and was ominously well-behaved for the first fifteen minutes, but as I was explaining the use of mutes, he exploded: "Hell and damnation! Why don't you give them something to chew on… like Richard Strauss?" He then bellowed some of his favorite themes from Ein Heldenleben and Zarathustra, conducted some of Wagner's Ring with groans and stampings, and illustrated his ideas with a work of his own, pounding the piano mightily. Within forty minutes he had created a celestial orchestra which didn't exist just then, but which when it does come into being will make a beautiful and mighty sound! The students were at first dazed, then hypnotized. They finally trotted out, gazelle-like, to spread the news that at long last a real person had arrived on campus!

Carl then went to the Commons building and greeted faculty and students with all the dignity of a ship's captain. The small string orchestra was rehearsing a movement from a Lully suite which he wanted to hear. When we had finished he said, "Very nice, like fudge; but it needs some more stirring. Keep it up," and with a kindly smile he excused himself. At lunch with the faculty he started telling some racy stories, then modulated to his choicest limericks, all delivered in a stage whisper that echoed through the room. Service was badly disrupted as the student waitresses tried to get within earshot. The splendor of his profanity and the rich imagery of his limericks made a deep and lasting impression, and by the time he left campus he had won over everyone, including the kitchen and grounds staff.

Ruggles' friend Karl Lorenz organized a children's orchestra in Bennington County, aided and abetted by Carl. Lorenz treated the children, aged seven to fourteen, like members of the New York Philharmonic. To strengthen the group, Carl played viola in dress rehearsals and concerts. In 1940 the Children's Orchestra played a special arrangement of Ruggles' Angels for strings, with Carl in the viola section. Governor Aiken made a speech. There was a one-dollar admission charge and they toured the state, earning enough money to buy their own instruments.

Carl's artistic credo was simple: he believed art to be universal. He said that every one of his own works represented a new beginning and that his approach to each work was a different one. He maintained that in all works there should be the quality he called mysticism. He was impelled to work by a vague and mysterious vision that transported him to a vibrational world of color or sound. From this world, with infinite pains and patience, he would consciously select just the right sounds, colors, and shapes to project his vision. This often took years to accomplish but he kept on working until the external score or painting was in complete equilibrium with his inner vision.

The titles of some of his works give a clue to his visions. He took Men and Mountains from Blake's aphoristic lines: "Great things are done when Men and Mountains meet; / This is not done by Jostling in the Street.'' Portals was from Walt Whitman's "Songs of Parting": "What are those of the known, but to ascend and enter the Unknown?"

To view Carl's paintings in the schoolhouse was a moving experience. There were many of flowers and these projected the feeling that the flowers had roots and were really alive, drew water from the soil, and breathed. His paintings and drawings of trees never included a branch or a leaf that didn't seem to feed from the root of the tree. His hills and mountains seemed to be a communication between the earth and the sky. There was something of Blake in his paintings. Carl said of his own works that his lines never met, and often he used thick impastos that gave a three-dimensional quality to his works. In 1935 he gave his first one-man show at Bennington College, and the next year a second show. He was later invited to show at the Arts Club of Chicago, several times at the Detroit lnstitute of Arts, and at the Southern Vermont Arts Center.

In Vermont Carl seemed to be discovering music all over again. He respected Varèse, but thought he was lacking in melodic invention. He thought Ives was often inspired, but uneven in his work. He admired Richard Strauss and liked some of Henry Cowell's works. From time to time he would hear compositions that he had undoubtedly once known, and rediscover them. One day he asked me if I knew the E-flat Major Nocturne of Chopin. He had heard it on the radio and considered it one of the greatest pieces ever written. Although practically everybody knew the piece, it didn't exist for him until he had rediscovered it.

About Mozart's Jupiter Symphony he said, "Have you ever heard of a Jupiter Symphony by Mozart? Why this is one of the goddamnedest best compositions that anybody ever made; the last movement is spilling over with counterpoint." He also discovered Berlioz and his allegiance to Wagner was steadfast.

Carl didn't like to confine his musical ideas to small black notes. He often wrote his scores with large notes, done with colored crayons on butcher's brown wrapping paper which he ruled himself. They seemed to us like a kind of modern illuminated manuscript. He sneered at all composing systems and said that the melodic rhythmic line was the life of any composition; of course, together with counterpoint, counter-rhythms, and a strong and rich orchestration, all stemming directly from the composer's imagination.

I visited him one afternoon when he was composing. He went to his old and noble grand piano and said, "Listen to this." He then banged out a triple forte chord: C, C-sharp, F, and F-sharp. "Have you ever heard anything so god-damned beautiful as this damn chord? Listen again," and he repeated it for ten minutes. Then he sat me down and in a voice ringing with cosmic overtones, said, "Composers should be like scientists—when they discover something new, they should share it with their fellow artists. Otto, I want you to know you can use that chord any time you need it."

It took him sixteen years to complete the four Evocations. In 1934, as he formulated each section, he asked Julian DeGray, a pianist from Bennington College, to try it out. Then Carl would perfect it. With the passing of years, other pianists, Gregory Tucker and Lionel Nowak, were involved in the growth of Evocations. As each one played sections or an entire Evocation, Ruggles would improve it and the pianists also improved. Finally DeGray played all four in 1952 at Bennington College. Hans Lange conducted Carl's Men and Mountains with the New York Philharmonic on March 19 and 20, 1936, using the published version. We had proofread the score and parts. The performances were received with respect, if not enthusiasm. A year later, I saw Carl working on the score of Men and Mountains. Somewhat taken aback, I asked him what he was doing. "After hearing the performance with the Philharmonic, I realized that the melodic lines were too god-damned cramped in a lot of places, so I'm making a new setting that's going to be right." No sooner were the revised Evocations published than Carl found the ideal solution to the climax of the first one and he wanted it re-engraved. But Charlotte stopped him, "Now, Carl, Ray Green has gone to all that trouble to make that edition exactly the way you wanted it. Now you just can't do that, at least not just now."

In 1949 Stokowski conducted Organum twice in New York with the Philharmonic Symphony, and Carl had his first great popular success. The Ruggleses spent a number of years in Miami where Carl conducted a seminar in Composition at the University and from 1948 for nine years they spent their winters at the Hotel Chelsea in New York.

Charlotte died suddenly in Arlington on October 2, 1957. The next April Carl wrote a hymn without words for Charlotte. It was a G Major unison tune for congregation with a few chromatic notes in the organ, entitled "Exaltation." It was his last finished composition and although he left a great mass of fragments and sketches, there are no other later completed works. After Charlotte's death Carl moved to the old Arlington Inn and eventually, in 1966, to a nursing home in Bennington, where his friends the Nowaks, DeGrays, Brockways, and Finckels could visit him.

On February 9, 1954, he was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. A new generation discovered him in the sixties. The University of Vermont gave him an honorary Doctor of Music degree in June 1960. In 1961 the State of Vermont designated his eighty-fifth birthday as "Carl Ruggles Day." A year later Goddard College opened a show of his paintings with a recital by Lionel Nowak. In 1964, Brandeis University conferred on him a Creative Arts Award. In January 1966, Bowdoin College gave a festival of most of his music and showed forty of his paintings and drawings.

His music was being performed, and Sun Treader for orchestra and Evocations, played by John Kirkpatrick, the pianist, and also Ruggles' biographer, were on records. Theodore Strongin, The New York Times music critic, said of the works on the Bowdoin program: "concentrated, dissonant, asymmetrical, logical, but spontaneous-sounding. They are like eloquent, granitic prose."

On September 29, 1968, Bennington paid him a unique tribute. The Albany Symphony, Vermont Symphony, Berkshire Symphony, and Bennington Community Orchestras joined forces with soloists and gave a concert of all of his music in the beautiful auditorium of Bennington's Mount Anthony High School. A simultaneous exhibition of his paintings revealed his remarkable talent in this medium. He was presented with the Gold Medal of Honor from the Vermont State Council on the Arts in recognition of his achievements in both music and art. The event was televised by the National Educational Broadcasting System.

His hearing had been failing for many years and composing became difficult, but in spite of later failing eyesight, he continued doing occasional abstract paintings into his ninety-third year. When he got to be ninety-four, it was difficult for him to communicate with his friends because of his infirmities, but once he grasped his visitor's hand, the recognition was tactile, and he would tell about planned performances or of new admirers of his works.

He was fortunate in having strong patronage for more than half a century, but in the last years of his life some of his supporters died and he was in a precarious financial state. Some of his friends from Bennington and elsewhere met on October 24, 1971, to see if anything could be done for his comfort. It was difficult to visit him because he was often in a comatose state. The New York contingent drove back in the afternoon, feeling sad, and at six o'clock Lionel Nowak called up to say that Carl Ruggles had died.

On November 8, 1971, the young conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Michael Tilson Thomas, programmed Men and Mountains for a concert in New York. Alan Rich, the music critic of New York Magazine, had this to say: "Profoundly and excitingly original… knew tremendous amounts about emotional power and the excitement of pure instrumental color… the tremendous, clashing energies of the brief suite by the late Carl Ruggles, are, forty-seven years after their creation, more exhilarating than almost anything being thought of today."

Virgil Thomson summed it all up in his essay on Ruggles in American Music Since 1910. He ranked Ruggles' music higher in quality than that of Ives. "The music of Ruggles, far more recondite, is also more intensely conceived and more splendidly perfected… Ives falls short, I think, of Whitman's total commitment, as he does also of Emerson's high ethical integrity. Ruggles, judged by any of these criteria, comes out first-class. Europe, where he has been played more than here, has never caviled at such an estimate; nor has his music, under use or after analysis, revealed any major flaw. Standing up as it does to contemporary tests, including public indifference, how can one doubt that it will also stand the test of time?"