An Autobiographical Sketch

I was born on July 1904 in Duluth, Minnesota, and have often wondered if the chill of my native climate generated my preference for the “coolth" of Classicism in the arts to the excessive warmth of Romanticism. During my freshman year in high school my family moved to Minneapolis where summer heat and humidity reinforced my dislike of climatic-musical “Fahrenheit.” But years later I learned to detest Midwestern winters as heartily as Czerny exercises, and not until I moved to California in 1939 did I achieve thermal composure and, with it, musical equanimity to the point where I am happy with both Mozart and Brahms.

My musical education was merely normal. Of the many pedagogues under whom I served time, only one has had any lasting influence on me - Donald Ferguson at the University of Minnesota. I remember him as a kind of middle-AmericanTovey.

I became a professional musician at the age of 17 or 18 when I began playing organ for silent movies. During the decade spent in that glamorous profession I earned a comfortable salary and developed considerable skill in sight-reading, transposing, and improvising; and I learned about New Orleans jazz from a pot-smoking drummer at one of the theatres where I worked. I also became acquainted with a vast repertoire ranging from movie music by Borch and Becce to movements from classical symphonies and chamber music which I rendered (probably in two senses) on a Mighty Wurlitzer. At the same time I continued my studies at the university, first as a pre-medical student and later as a candidate for a B.A. in English literature, which I never earned.

When talking-pictures made theatre organists superfluous, I floundered musically for several years in the mires of church and radio music and in teaching piano and organ to the untalented. In the early 1930's I happened upon two compositions that drastically changed my orientation. These were Copland's Piano Variations and Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms. I also began to read that much lamented quarterly journal, Modern Music, to which I was later to become a contributor.

When I came to California I buried my past, floundering again for a while, but this time with hopes that were not extinguished even by service in the Signal Corps during World War II and in defense work at Douglas Aircraft. Before this military episode I had already found my way to Evenings on the Roof and began writing reviews of these and other concerts for the Beverly Hills magazine, Script. I made friends with some of the musicians playing these concerts, particularly with Ingolf Dahl, who later became my most intimate musical friend for nearly 30 years until his untimely death in 1970. I was soon invited to become a member of the Roof group and my involvement increased to the point where I became coordinator during the last years of Peter Yates' regime, finally assuming the directorship when Peter retired at the end of the 1953-54 season, taking with him into retirement the title of Evenings on the Roof. Monday Evening Concerts are a direct and unbroken continuation of the Roof even though my own taste and judgement wrought many changes in the conduct of the concerts.

Thus it was only in my middle-to-late 40's that I began what I regard as the fruitful period of my musical life. My work with Monday Evenings led to my engagement as director of the Ojai Festivals (1954-59 and 1967-70) and as curator of music at the County Museum of Art (since 1965) where my principal responsibility is the conduct of Bing Concerts.

My professional history can be best told in a catalog of the music I have been privileged to present—music from Machaut to Stravinsky and Boulez. Equal in importance and closely related to this strictly musical part of my life have been a number of rewarding friendships. First of these was the long and happy relationship with Stravinsky. It began at a reception following the first performance of his arrangement of our national anthem, when I thanked him for the new bass line which so wonderfully invigorates an essentially banal tune, a remark that seemed to please him. That beginning blossomed later with the frequently attended Monday Evening and Bing Concerts and he conducted twice at Ojai during my stewardship there. His dedication to me of the Eight Instrument Miniatures is, so to speak, my passport to immortality. Aaron Copland and Boulez have been friends; Schoenberg I knew less well, though he was always cordial to me. Elliott Carter has been a supporter of Monday Evenings for many years (as was Ives in the early years of the Roof). My association with Ernst Krenek, though never intimate, has been warm and musically rewarding.

But it is not seemly to go on with this kind of name-dropping. Besides, my friends among American composers, especially those residing in Southern California, are far too numerous to name here; and I might inadvertently omit one or two, which would be inexcusable even for a septuagenary memory. Still more numerous are the performing musicians, vocal and instrumental, whose willingness to undertake difficult tasks has been both sacrificial and endearing. But I must allow myself a word about Michael Tilson Thomas. He remembers more accurately than I do his earliest participation in Monday Evening Concerts during his student days. His career has taken him far from Southern California, and he now returns to his home town from time to time as a guest. But he remains a particularly faithful friend and colleague.

Having spent these years in the company of good music and good friends, what else could I have needed for a good life? Only extra-musical support. And this I have had from the Los Angeles and Ojai communities in general, but most particularly from two extraordinary ladies - Mrs. Oscar Moss and Mrs. Anna Bing Arnold. Oscar Moss founded the Southern California Chamber Music Society in 1946 to guarantee the continuance of the Roof concerts. Mrs. Moss assumed her late husband's responsibilites and is still the cornerstone of the organization. Mrs. Arnold has sponsored Bing Concerts at the Museum from their beginning. They are only one of her generous gifts to the Museum.

It must be apparent from this biographical sketch that my role in the musical life of Los Angeles has been that of a catalyst, and nothing more than that. Concerts, after all, are not made by impresarios but by composers and performers under the auspices of money. I have been fortunate in being able to bring together those elements with enough effectiveness to cultivate a small but discerning audience. And even this was possible in part because Monday Evenings and Ojai Festivals were already successful ventures when I took over their direction. Bing Concerts have been an extension, on a very different level, of my previous work. But I do not mean to denigrate my work as a catalyst. Catalysis is not a mean achievement, for it does require some knowledge and imagination

Tempo: March 1988
Publication: New Series, No. 164 pp. 29-31
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Copyright © 1988, by the National Film Music Council. All rights reserved.