At a time when musical culture was rare
in this country, he looked forward with hope and expectation to the time
when America would become a patron of the best music. "When Americans,"
he said, "shall have learned the supreme value and glory of the orchestra,
. . . then I look to see America the home of the orchestra,
and to hear everywhere the profound messages of Beethoven and Bach to men."
And again: "All the signs of the times seem to point to this country as
the scene of the future development of music. . . . It only needs direction,
artistic atmosphere, and technique in order to fill the land
with such orchestras as the world has never heard. When our so-called
conservatories and music schools, instead of straining every nerve
to outdo each other in turning out hosts of bad piano-players,
shall address themselves earnestly to the education of performers
upon all the orchestral instruments; when our people
shall have become aware of the height and glory of the orchestra,
as the only instrument for the deepest adorations in man; . . .
when our young women shall ask themselves for any serious reason
why they should all, with one accord, devote themselves to the piano
instead of to the flute, the violin, the hautboy, the harp, the viola,
the violoncello, the horn instruments which pertain to women
fully as much as to men, and some of which actually belong by nature
to those supple, tactile, delicate, firm, passionate, and tender fingers
with which the woman is endowed; when our young men shall have discovered
that the orchestral player can so exercise his office
as to make it of far more dignity and worth than any political place
in the gift of the people, and that the business of making orchestral music
may one day become far higher in nobility than the ignoble
sentinelship over one's pocket to which most lawyers are reduced,
or the melancholy slaveries of the shop and the counting-room
and the like `business' which is now paramount in esteem;
when -- I will not say when we have a new music to perform,
but when we shall have played Beethoven's symphonies as they should be played,
and shall have revealed to us all the might, all the faith, all the religion,
the tenderness, the heavenly invitation, the subtle excursions
down into the heart of man, the brotherhood, the freedom, the exaltation,
the whisperings of sorrow unto sorrow, the messages of God
which these immortal and yet unmeasured compositions embody,"*
then will America give to music the place it deserves.
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