Music: Jubilee

When a Londoner uses the word “Prom” he refers not to a college dance but to an extraordinarily popular series of concerts given every autumn at London’s ugly old Queen’s Hall. Unlike Covent Garden concerts, the Promenade series are not fashionable. Main reasons for the concerts’ popularity are their cheapness, varied programs, unconventional atmosphere, the personality of their conductor. Highest admission charge is about $1.75, cheapest 50¢. The 50¢-tickets admit bearers to a large space devoid of any seats. There, an odd assortment of Londoners amble around the floor, smoke, swap opinions and amateur musical criticism, behave in general more like swing fans at a jam jag than ordinary concertgoers. On some nights the floor is so packed, the air so heavy with smoke and heat that faintings and hurried exits are common. Since the series began in 1895, weed-whiskered old Sir Henry Joseph Wood has conducted every concert. When he and Concert Agent Robert Newman at first insisted on including new and unfamiliar compositions in their programs, critics praised them but insisted that that kind of thing would not go down with the untutored public. Wood ignored their advice, continued to give his audiences small doses of modern music, gradually increasing them with the years. That the works of Scriabin, Sibelius, Bela Bartók and such English composers as Vaughan Williams, Gustav Hoist, Arnold Bax and William Walton are now popular pieces in the repertory of all British symphonic orchestras is largely due to his efforts.

Brought up in a musical family (his mother was a piano teacher), Sir Henry started his career at the age of ten as deputy organist in a London church. Later he gave recitals up & down the country, conducted opera, spent a period as a singing teacher. In the 44 years since the Promenade Concerts began he has done more conducting than any living man and has probably trained more orchestral players. Out of season he finds time to do wood carvings and carpentry and produce professional-looking landscape paintings. When the concert season is on he becomes a passion of punctuality, spends hours over his scores, rehearses and performs with demon-like energy. Each morning he solemnly practices his baton before a mirror.

Last week, as the 44th season of the Promenade Concerts closed, musical Britain turned out in a body to do Sir Henry honor. The occasion: a Jubilee Concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall, celebrating Sir Henry’s 50th anniversary as a conductor. Special trains ran from all parts of England. From Cardiff, Wales, in the midst of England’s “distressed areas,” came 500 Promgoers. The musicians who played in the concert all gave their services free. They were: London’s four leading symphonic orchestras (BBC’s, the London Symphony, the London Philharmonic, the Queen’s Hall), London’s three crack choirs (BBC’s Choral Society, the Royal Choral Society, the Philharmonic Choir), 16 of England’s best concert and opera singers, Sir Henry’s great & good friend, Sergei Rachmaninoff. Ralph Vaughan Williams composed a special song for the occasion called Serenade to Music. Sixty-nine-year-old Sir Henry planned to turn over the proceeds from his anniversary party to an endowment of hospital beds for orchestral players.