Arts and Letters

The last half century has seen a change in the musical life of this country for which it would be hard to find a parallel. What is not hard is to name the musician who, most of all, is responsible for this change, and to whom our deep gratitude is due. Therefore, when one thinks or speaks of Dr. Walter Damrosch it is not so much a tribute to memory as it is a recognition of living presence. In every town of this wide land, in every home where good music is now as familiar as it was once strange, the spirit of that presence is as alive today as it was yesterday.

Walter Damrosch was nine years old when he first came to the United States. This was in 1871. His father, Dr. Leopold Damrosch, responding to a summons from the new world, transplanted the entire family from a rich musical life abroad to what must have seemed like a wilderness here. It was, indeed, a change from a university to a kindergarten. But Leopold Damrosch was a true pioneer. His musical distinction, his integrity, and his courage in the face of discouragements, of partisan rivalry, of temporary setbacks, blazed trails that endured, and which, in time, were to be broadened into highways by his son.

With this fortunate background the natural gifts of young Walter ripened and developed at a prodigious rate. In his teens he was given tasks which others older than himself were unable to do. Was there a new orchestral score to be reduced for piano reading? This was a job for Walter. His father could count on its being well done! When Wilhelm, the famous violinist, needed an accompanist for his tour, there was none so ready or so competent as this lad of sixteen. For a gigantic production of Berlioz' Requiem with a chorus of twelve hundred and four orchestras, assistant conductors were needed. His father felt sure Walter could successfully wield a baton before his face needed a razor.

Therefore if the death of Dr. Leopold was untimely, it was both timely and significant that Walter in his early twenties was equipped and ready to take his place, and carry to complete fruition the work so nobly begun. He was a champion and a crusader for Wagner in the days when operatic managers avoided this master like a plague. Undaunted by rebuffs and ominous precedents Walter Damrosch gave of his talent, his tireless energy, and his hard-earned savings until the Damrosch Opera Company had made the gods of Valhalla familiar throughout the land. Ten years earlier it was thought rash to produce even one of these music dramas in New York City.

But Walter Damrosch's exertions did not confine themselves alone to Wagner. It was usual in those days for a Wagnerite to be anti-Brahms and for a disciple of Brahms to abhor Wagner. This was not so with Damrosch. He had a broadness of vision and a depth of understanding that recognized greatness where and when he saw it; and he saw no reason to deprive himself, or others, of delight in one composer because of blind loyalty to another. We are apt to forget the long parade of works now favorites in the repertoire of every symphony orchestra which were first introduced to our public by Walter Damrosch. But if our memories are short the record remains to remind us; and a group of musical giants of the past and present bow their acknowledgments to the fellow musician who made their works as well known in the new world as they were in the old.

Walter Damrosch was a creative artist; creative not only as a composer, but also when he was recreating the works of others. His knowledge and experience as a composer and his generous approach to colleagues made him doubly valuable as an interpreter for new and unfamiliar works. A detailed record of his achievements would require many hours and still be left incomplete. Each and every one of his varied activities was a full-time job for one man, but here was a case of inexhaustible capacity. The Damrosch Opera Company, the Symphony Society, the Oratorio Society, the organization and performance of coast-to-coast tours, the children's concerts, the young people's concerts—and, in odd moments, the composition of some small work, like an opera! His was, indeed, a program of heroic dimensions. But Walter Damrosch took it all in his stride.

Of his opera Cyrano de Bergerac, produced at the Metropolitan some forty years ago, I like to recall the tribute paid him by one of our foremost composers. He wrote: "The whole work is to me a delight on account of its real musicianship—a work evolved from a highly sensitive, very intelligent brain, that has absorbed and assimilated much, without imitating anybody or anything." These words were sincerely felt. They were eloquently said. And the authority behind was no less a man than the late Charles Martin Loeffler.

I first met Walter Damrosch in the summer of 1908. He, with his family, had a cottage in York Harbor, Maine. My American debut was to take place the following November with the New York Symphony Society, and in view of this I was kindly asked to spend a few days with them. Shortly after my arrival Dr. Damrosch asked me to play. It was one of those peculiarly damp Maine mornings, disastrous to fiddle strings, but I, with the rash glibness of my nineteen years, chose a piece bristling with difficulties. The result was lamentable. No one in his right mind could think this playing eligible for a solo appearance with the symphony. But I had reckoned without my host. Here was a sympathy and an understanding that could penetrate a Maine fog. The sunshine of his smile and the warmth of his enthusiasm melted the film of croakiness and squeakiness of a rebellious fiddle. He discerned what there was of good underneath an unpromising crust, and urged me to go on. Spurred by this wise and generous reception who would not respond and play better than his best?

Later on I was to be witness of the overall knowledge of this complete musician. A stack of orchestral manuscripts had recently arrived from Europe. Undoing a package and reading at first sight from a new score, complicated in rhythm and intricate in design, Damrosch rattled off a performance on the piano that was breath-taking; he had apparently several pairs of eyes in his head, several pairs of hands, and a master mind to co-ordinate their findings. This is a feat I have rarely seen duplicated, a capacity that many of our streamlined favorites of the podium might well envy and try in vain to emulate.

When, in the late 1920s, after more than forty years of rich achievement another man—shall we say a lesser man—would have considered resting on his well-earned laurels, the challenge offered by the new field of radio awakened a sturdy response in Walter Damrosch. His ever renewable youth counted years as steps toward maturity without a trace of decline; so he dedicated his commanding knowledge to an audience of millions where hitherto it had been thousands. The clear, resonant, slightly metallic voice we all know so well endeared itself, and endeared music, in countless homes from coast to coast; and today, in those same homes, if the libraries of high-class records are present in such numbers, it would be hard to overstate the importance of Damrosch's influence in bringing this about.

This, then, is the man whose presence we feel here today, and shall continue to feel tomorrow, and tomorrow. His loss is, indeed, a deep sorrow to all of us, especially to us of the Academy and the Institute whose President he was. But it is also a triumphant sorrow; for the heritage which was his, and which he shared with us, is a permanent one—one over which death can claim no victory.