Music: Hoosier Athens’ Symphony

Proud of its title of the “Hoosier Athens” is Crawfordsville, Ind. (pop. 10,000), home of the late great Best-Seller General Lew Wallace (Ben Hur). Crawfords ville’s biggest office building—five stories—is owned by Ben Hur Life Association. The town’s prettiest buildings are on the campus of Wabash College. Two or three times a year, one of these buildings, a prim chapel seating 1,100 people, becomes Crawfordsville’s concert hall. There last fortnight, Crawfordsville culture glowed at its brightest. In the chapel 650 townsfolk heard the season’s second and final concert of the Crawfordsville Symphony Orchestra. Last week the orchestra’s managers checked over their books, discovered that Crawfordsville—which claims to be the smallest town in the U. S. to support a permanent symphony—had done itself prouder than ever this season. Receipts were 50% above last year, and sponsors easily wiped out its little deficit.

Leaders in founding the almost-amateur Crawfordsville Orchestra eight years ago were two violin-playing housewives (Mrs. James Brown, Mrs. Theodore G. Gronert), musical-minded Lawyer Lowell S. Love, who became the first conductor, and Professor Henry C. Montgomery, who (self-taught) played the French horn, became the orchestra’s librarian and guiding angel. With a full concert strength of 55 to 60 musicians, the orchestra now includes music teachers, Wabash students, musically knowledgeable farmers and townsfolk. Ages run from 15 to 61. Some instruments, like the English horn and bass clarinet, are missing. So for its concerts the Symphony augments its ranks by hiring from four to eight professionals from the Indianapolis Symphony.

The Crawfordsville Symphony played originally from borrowed scores, now has a library with a good standard repertory, proudly negotiates a complete symphony at every concert. Wabash College has a Capehart phonograph and a collection of records—gifts of the Carnegie Corporation—which enable the orchestra to hear how the world’s big orchestras perform the works in its library. At weekly rehearsals the Crawfordsville musicians often play out of tune, get lost, wheeze and whiffle, come in at the wrong places, and competing basketball games lure away many a player. But as concert nights approach, attendance and teamwork improve, and when the professionals appear the orchestra really goes to town.

Present conductor—28-year-old Gilbert (“Gib”) Kellberg, school music supervisor in New Ross, Ind.— is an earnest, moose-tall Swedish-American, with feet like fiddle cases. He earns $25 a concert. Graduate of a small Indiana conservatory, he plays the bassoon, once heard the New York Philharmonic-Symphony play in Chicago, listens on the radio to Toscanini for pointers. Total expenses of a concert run to about $50, most of which is recovered at the box office. Deficits are underwritten by boosting citizens (who subscribe about $1, get their names in the program).

Two seasons ago, Columbia Concerts Corp., which shares with NBC Artists Service a virtual monopoly on U. S. concert bookings, tried to sell the people of Crawfordsville a concert course from which their own orchestra was omitted. Crawfordsville would not hear of it. So, in order to sell the town such artists as Tenor Charles Hackett and Soprano Hilda Burke, Columbia Concerts Corp. became sponsor of the Symphony’s season.

That triumph went slightly to Crawfordsville’s head. Year ago, the Crawfordsville Symphony made what it likes to call its Eastern Tour. It consisted of a concert in the town of Noblesville, 45 miles to the east.