MEMORIES
OF A MUSICAL LIFE

The difference between Boston and New York as musical centers is largely due to my father. He made Boston a self-developing musical city. New York has received its musical culture from abroad.

THE success of my father's first venture led him to leave Savannah and settle in Boston. Then, as now, the Handel and Haydn Society was largely recruited from church choirs, but in those days its concerts were few, and these were almost entirely devoted to church music. Rarely was a "work" offered to the public. Outside the realm of church music, the society's repertory consisted of "The Messiah", "The Creation" (and more frequently fragments from these), the "Dettingen Te Deum" by Handel, and the "Intercession" by M. P. King, who has long since been forgotten. For five years my father was president of the society, and served as musical director, the special employment of a conductor not having been authorized until 1847.

I became useful to my father as an accompanist, and when he went to musical conventions he took me along with him, and I would play the piano accompaniments while he conducted.

RETURNING to Boston after a year, I was sent to Newport, Rhode Island, to study under the Rev. T. T. Thayer, who was a Congregational clergyman in that place. In a short time after my arrival I began playing the organ at the services in his church, and continued this with regularity until my return to Boston a few years later. At Boston I became the organist at the Congregational church in Winter street, at which my father was music-conductor.

Through the medium of this touch pianissimo effects are possible which no other mechanism can reach, for passages of the most extreme delicacy and softness still retain the quality of vitality and clearness of outline.

THE knowledge I gained from Mr. Schmidt was largely advanced and supplemented by what I learned a year or two later, in 1847-48, from the playing of the pianoforte virtuoso Leopold de Meyer, who came to the United States about that time.

I might easily have learned from any book of anatomy the names of the muscles which are here referred to, but for the practical instruction of pianoforte pupils this seemed to be of little consequence. However, there are three muscles of the upper arm which may here be named: the triceps, the brachialis anticus, and the biceps. Of these the first-named is of the most importance to the pianist.

IT is difficult to realize the crudity of musical taste in the early days. I remember that in 1840 my father conducted a convention in Vermont—I think in Woodstock. We went by rail as far as we could, and then traveled a number of hours by coach. We were received by the dignitaries of the town, and conducted to the house in which we were to stay. While we were shaking off the dust of travel, we heard the sounds of drum and fife. Looking out of the window, we found that these instruments headed a small procession which had come to escort us to the church. The drum and the fife were the instrumental outfit of the town; so, led by these, my father and I marched with the magnates of the place to the church. I still remember how foolish I felt.

I ARRIVED in Paris shortly after six o'clock in the morning, and went to the Hôtel de Paris, in the Rue de Richelieu. In those days, at that early hour, Paris was as quiet as an American town at midnight. There were three of us in the party. We secured two rooms, and my friends remained up-stairs, while I returned to the porter's lodge below to have my passport sent to the Bureau of Police to be viséd. The porter went out to attend to this, and I was left alone in the lodge.

"I have come over to study music."

"Ah, composition?"

"No; mainly piano, but also theory and composition."

"And where?"

"I expect to go to Leipsic to study with Moscheles, Hauptmann, and Richter. Eventually I hope to go to Liszt."

"Well, well, you've chosen good men. Moscheles knew Beethoven."

Then, with a few friendly words, he left the lodge and entered the hotel. Just as he was leaving the porter returned.

"Who is the gentleman?" I asked, pointing after the disappearing form.

The porter then took me into the courtyard and pointed out the room which Meyerbeer occupied, calling my attention to the fact that his window and mine almost faced each other.

"If you look out of your window about eleven o'clock," said the porter, "you will see Mme. Garcia and Roger, the tenor, coming here to rehearse their rôles in the new opera with the composer."

From Paris I returned to Schuberth's in Hamburg. He was an active, enterprising, pushing business man, with a large acquaintance in the musical world, and the knowledge of how to put it to the best use. I remained in Hamburg for some time. Boy-like, I had spent all my money in Paris, and was now obliged to wait for a remittance from home. In Hamburg I met Carl Mayer of Dresden, a fine pianist of the Hummel school, and Mortier de Fontaine, who was very well known in his day as a Beethoven-player—had, in fact, won considerable fame as the first pianist to perform Beethoven's "Sonata, Op. 106" in public. That was his label.