Music: Festive Week

May is the month for festivals and last week several important U. S. musical festivals took place.

¶ Most elaborate was the 14th National Music Week (May 2-9). Endorsed by all 48 governors, the Week was observed locally by 2,000 towns and cities, nationally by National Broadcasting Company and Columbia Broadcasting System. Schools, churches and clubs helped carry out this year’s slogan: ”Foster Local Music Talent.” Radio broadcasts included concerts by the New England Conservatory and the Boston Symphony, the entire Smetana Opera The Bartered Bride sung by the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan, concerts by the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, the Musical Arts Chorus of Easton, Pa., the Lincoln Cathedral Choir of Lincoln, Neb., the Roth Quartet playing in Princeton, the University of Michigan Band. Pennsylvania alone arranged 50 special programs. Pittsburgh played orchestral works written by Pittsburghers. Los Angeles put on Charles Wakefield Cadman’s Indian opera Shanewis. New Orleans had choruses sing in schools and playgrounds. In Indianapolis, over an NBC hookup, 275 pianists sat down at 150 pianos and played them all at once.

National Music Week is the idea of Charles Milton Tremaine, a little old man who makes no music but has been associated with it all his life. Mr. Tremaine got his start promoting pianolas for the Aeolian Co., later tried to make his own pianos, failed. In 1916, deciding he was a better promoter than manufacturer, Tremaine formed his still existing National Bureau for the Advancement of Music. Four years later he put on a celebration which he called New York Music Week. Other cities copied this week, and in 1924 they united for the first National Music Week. Each community celebration is fairly autonomous, appeals to the national committee only for advice, slogans, pamphlets. Otto Kahn gave $1,000 and became first chairman of the committee. When he died. David Sarnoff, president of RCA, succeeded him. As permanent secretary, Mr. Tremaine is able to do most of the business, boasts that he never asks favors.

¶ Cincinnati turns out for its biennial May Festival with all the social pomp that Manhattan reserves for the opera. The Festival is one of the oldest (64 years) and best rehearsed in the U. S. It is a colossal affair involving huge choruses as well as the Cincinnati Symphony and imported soloists. At the 32nd Festival last week there were 228 men & women to do the choruses in Elgar’s The Apostles. They included salesmen, schoolteachers, mechanics, housewives, lawyers, a barber and Cincinnati’s portly, 60-year-old Mayor Russell Wilson who has led Cincinnati’s reform ticket since 1929. calls himself “the Old Grey Mayor.” contributes a hearty bass. Six hundred children sang in d’Indy’s St. Mary Magdalene. Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis was presented there for the seventh time, with four Metropolitan soloists-Soprano Kirsten Flagstad, Contralto Kathryn Meisle, Tenor Frederick Jagel, Basso Ezio Pinza. One hero of the five-day celebration was Conductor Eugene Goossens, who has directed it since 1931. This year he reaped additional honors with his one-act opera Judith. Novelty and biggest hit of the Festival was Negro Composer Nathaniel Dett’s The Ordering Of Moses, a massive work based on Exodus and involving wild rhythms and orchestral developments of Go Down Moses. Soloist Agatha Lewis made a poor start in The Apostles, but walked away with the hard soprano part in Bruckner’s Te Deum. Nobody earned rounder applause than old, left-handed Alfred Hartzel who had drilled the choruses for 18 months, as he has drilled other festival choruses since 1908.

¶ In Princeton, N. J., the Westminster Choir School spent three days commemorating U. S. music, presented such compositions as Mortimer Browning’s Trio, Gardner Read’s Passacaglia and Fugue, Virgil Thomson’s Stabat Mater, Charles Loeffler’s For One Who Fell in Battle, Normand Lockwood’s setting for Sweet and Low, a Navajo war dance by Arthur Farwell. The School’s big splurge came later in the week with its annual two-day Talbott Festival. Under Dr. John Finley Williamson, founder of the choir, 130 choristers sang Bach’s entire B Minor Mass. Forty-six school and church choirs contributed 2,000 voices to a vespers program. Prize cups were awarded to choirs from Syracuse, Philadelphia, Norristown, Pa.

Talbott Festivals are named for the late Mrs. Harry Elstner Talbott, the pious, wealthy, well-loved matriarch of Dayton. Ohio. Mrs. Talbott gave liberally to the Westminster Choir, which consisted of a group of factory workers who sang Sundays in a Dayton church. From these humble beginnings Dr. Williamson built the Westminster Choir School, moved it to Princeton, made its courses in harmony, theory, conducting, hymnology and Bible stiff and exhaustive. Mrs. Talbott financed its visits to over 200 U. S. cities, in 1929 took it to Europe. Thanks to her and Dr. Williamson, the school ranks among the best U. S. choral organizations, has branches in Japan and India, has attracted students from Korea, Brazil, the South African bush. In 1934 the choir won high praise in Soviet Russia.