Music: Patterns in Boston

Seventy years ago in Chicago the name Carpenter stood for everything which could be used aboard a ship from marline-spikes to anchors. Lake shippers used to congregate by the dozen in George Carpenter’s ship-chandlery, grown now to deal in mill and railroad supplies. But the Carpenter name has outgrown the business. People all over the U. S. are becoming acquainted with the music of John Alden Carpenter, the late Chandler George’s son.

In Boston last week Conductor Sergei Koussevitzky presented a new Carpenter work called Patterns, in which shy John Alden Carpenter made his first appearance as a piano soloist. Boston’s symphony subscribers went to the concert with high expectations. Composer Carpenter had delighted them before with Adventures in a Perambulator in which are described the reactions of an infant taking its daily excursion to the lake front; with Krazy Kat, sensitive, half-sad music for George Herriman’s comic-strip characters; with a finely made Concertino for Piano & Orchestra.

No one was prepared to hear Heaven-storming, epoch-making music last week. Carpenter kept his emotions well hidden even when describing the death of the poor, ugly dwarf in The Birthday of the Infanta. Reticence marked his Song of Faith, played widely last winter in celebration of the Washington Bi-Centennial. The ballet Skyscrapers, proved, too, that Carpenter’s expert craftsmanship serves him best in light, colorful music, unburdened by big ideas. But Patterns, with its sentimental waltz bit, its brief Spanish interlude, its sketchy piano embroidery, was almost anemic, its reception by critics and audience cool.

Chicago is likely to deal more kindly with Patterns when it is played there this week. John Alden Carpenter is its foremost composer. Patterns, Chicago knows, was written immediately after the death of Composer Carpenter’s wife Rue Winterbotham Carpenter, able interior decorator. His friends know, too, that hard times are making it necessary for Composer Carpenter to give more & more time to the business which his father left him to carry on down near the River.