1880s – American Adventures begin

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Early in 1880, Annabelle had been approached by the conductor Julius Benedict after one of his concerts at the Crystal Palace, and asked if she might be interested in going to America to teach violin in New York.  The famous entrepreneur Theodore Thomas was looking for someone to teach young people (mainly young women) who could be called upon to play in his different musical groups in the metropolis.  Theodore Thomas was something of a pioneer, keen to introduce music to the general American public which was not wholly dependent upon the standard European tradition.

Annabelle leaped at this opportunity!  She knew Julius Benedict from her days at Leipzig Conservatoire, but as for me, there was just the little matter of obtaining August Manns’s agreement for me to be taken ‘across the pond’.

The journey from Liverpool to New York was quite an event!  It took 11 days, but the time flew by, mainly because there was such a lot of music-making, and Annabelle was frequently encouraged to join in the fun!  When we arrived in America, Annabelle quickly settled into her new teaching role, with a string of pupils, all females, attending for lessons in her apartment in Harlem, New York, provided by Mr Theodore Thomas.

For the many years which followed, I didn’t once play in an orchestra, as the thought of a female orchestral player never entered the heads of the musical elite of New York. (A prejudice shared by the Church, especially within the ordained clergy).  However, Annabelle was determined to work for the equality of the sexes. But more significantly, she was enthralled by the unique sounds she heard from down-town Harlem, especially the singing in the black community.  She was appalled to discover that the music of the African-American population was ignored by the musical establishment, who seemed to be far more interested in the European ‘tradition’ of Beethoven, Wagner and Brahms.  It sounded to me as though America was happy to welcome ‘warring’ musical factions from a foreign land with one ear, while preferring to block the other ear to the rich heart-felt harmonies and rhythms of their own people, albeit descendants of pernicious slavery.  Highly gifted musicians such as Scott Joplin, Maurice Arnold Strothotte and Will Marion Cook were all destined to suffer from ignorant rejection by the music-loving public.

(Maurice Arnold Strothotte – composer later admired by Dvorak)

(Will Marion Cook – violinist)

During these American years, I was able absorb some of these sounds into my very being, into my bodily form, and I must say I had never heard anything like it anywhere else.  They have become ingrained into my musical fabric to this very day.  I can only describe these searing chords and musical vibrations as highly charged emotion, with both ‘gefuhl’ and Welsh ‘hwyl’ thrown in.  The most notable thing about these outpourings of musical tones was an unmistakable air of melancholy, and Annabelle was powerfully drawn to them.

I am remembering these special feelings from the winter of 1885/6, only 5 years after our arrival in New York, when Annabelle was on a teaching tour 470 miles away in Danville, Virginia.  She met there a fellow violin teacher from Bradford, England, 23-year-old Fritz Delius, who was extremely interested in African-American music, although he was planning soon to go to the Leipzig Conservatorium of Music.  For Delius, an experience of hearing this ‘special’ American sound while managing an orange plantation in Florida had convinced him that his future lay in composing music, and he was longing to capture the unique inflections and cadences which inspired him.

(‘Two Brown Eyes’ – Delius composition in Danville1885)

Contrasts and Diversities – again!

At the Danville Music Festival, Fritz Delius had managed to invite a few black singers to come along and perform a concert for us.  It was that occasion which made an indelible mark on me, bringing another new, exciting and melancholy tone into my sound world which is always there, for any sensitive player of mine to engage with. I am convinced to this day that these tones, these beautiful, rich forms of sound, are sounding in a musical world vastly different from the conventional Germanic symphonic style, so easily assumed. 

The timbre of Scott Joplin’s ‘RagTime’, the impressionisms of Debussy, the unexpected moodiness of Sibelius, the flavours of folk-songs and the strange and haunting sounds of Delius’s melancholic singers in Florida, are all a  long way away from the dominant voice of much of the European repertoire which assumed a kind of symphonic pre-eminence.  I still find I can hold these two worlds together – and this tension and disunity can be so enriching, indeed wonderful!   During the early part of the 20th century (yet to be recounted), many composers struggled to hold this balance of two ‘opposing’ styles, and, as we shall hear, it led to huge problems throughout the world – not least in America. Consider the rage caused by Arnold Schoenberg’s claim to have secured the future of ‘German music’!  Other composers found considerable freedom in the (re)discovery of folk and ‘nationalistic’ music with its far looser structures, forms and logic.  This mixture of musical worlds was to resound in me, from this time on – depending on the mood and attitude of the person playing me. In the Churches, were there ‘stirrings’ of Liberation Theology in the air, even now?

Annabelle struck up a strong friendship with her fellow-fiddling Fritz, and from 1886 she followed his progress at Leipzig with frequent letters, telling him about some of the people she had known there, including Julius Benedict and Arthur Sullivan.  Fritz made many new friends of his own at the Conservatorium, including Christian Sinding, Edvard Grieg, and a young violinist, Halfdan Jebe – all from Norway.  Jebe was later to play a highly significant part in my life.

(Halfdan Jebe)

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