Music: Shotgun Symphony

As Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture boomed to its finish last week in St.Louis’ Convention Hall, an audience of 9,000 leaped to its feet and looked nervously for the nearest exit. Amid the pealing of Moscow’s bells and the surging of God Save the Czar, two shotguns had belched fire and smoke behind the scenes of the St. Louis Symphony. The shooting was merely part of an old Muscovite custom.

Ever since Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky included an obbligato for cannon in its tumultuous score, the 1812 Overture has been considered something to shoot about.

The late John Philip Sousa did it with bombs and giant firecrackers. His predecessor, redoubtable Bandmaster Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore, cracked plaster from the ceiling of many a U.S. auditorium with a battery of real cannon manned by a squad of U.S. artillerymen. In Madison Square Garden, six years ago, Conductor Erno Rapee added a squad of infantry and a ten-gauge cannon to his WPA orchestra of 210 men, made enough noise to rock midtown Manhattan.

All this roused the envy of St. Louis’ Conductor Vladimir Golschmahn. Promising in his program that he would perform the overture so stirringly that the audience would “literally be lifted from their seats,” Conductor Golschmann ransacked nearby army camps for artillery. He found plenty of cannon, but no blank shells. At last Conductor Golschmann settled for a couple of shotguns which he borrowed from the Schubert Theater’s property manager, Eugene Popp. They were “fired by stage mechanics into empty wooden tubs. St. Louis Symphony patrons agreed that the popping of Popp’s shotguns was noise enough.