[Adapted from Dr Forman’s “Frank Forman, Cochlear Cyborg”, entry for 2007-09-15]
Well, what happened during Mencken Day in Baltimore? Sharon Hamilton gave a superb lecture on, “Mencken and Nathan’s Smart Set and the Making of Modern New York.” She showed Mr. Mencken’s mostly unrecognized role in turning literature from being dominated by moralizing Protestants and promoting those who wrote about life as it is. She gave me a copy of her paper and a disk of her slides, which I read later.
Then David Donovan, whom I did not know, gave a fine lecture, “H.L. Mencken: Musician and Music Critic.” Again, I heard very little, but he also gave me a copy of his talk. Of the greatest interest to me, which I have been trying to get for years, was a listing of the records Mr. Mencken’s publisher, Alfred Knopf, gave him, along with a splendid phonograph. The records went to Louis Cheslock, a long-time friend and participant in Mr. Mencken’s “Saturday Night Club,” consisting of professional and amateur musicians who would get together and joyously hammer out the classics from reduced part scores, modified to suit the instruments at hand. Once, they attempted the first eight of Beethoven’s symphonies thusly, but gave up in the wee hours of the morning. The records passed from Louis Cheslock (whose book H.L. Mencken on Music combines writings of the Sage with reflections on the Saturday Night Club) to his son Barry. Alas, the list is quite brief and consisted of only ten albums of 78s, all of them singles except the first symphony of Brahms, conducted by Leopold Stokowski on Victor and the Eroica of Beethoven on by Hans Pfitzner on Brunswick. These were both pre-1936 recordings, making me wonder whether Mr. Mencken had already owned these recordings. Of the Brahms, the only other early electrical recordings were conducted by Otto Klemperer, Felix Weingartner, and Hermann Abendroth. The Abendroth was not issued in the United States and the Klemperer, which was, was little known. Since Mr. Mencken knew Stokowski to some extent, this is a plausible choice. For the Eroica, Pfitzner’s recording is a surprising choice, not well-known then and processed, like the Klemperer Brahms, from the German Polydor label. It has been reissued on CD by Naxos and is interesting though, to my ears, rather stodgy. Mr. Mencken could have had American-recorded performances by Serge Kousevtizky and Willem Mengelberg, issues of recordings made in England by Sir Henry Wood and Albert Coates, but probably not one made in Germany but not issued here of Max von Schillings. I’d have chosen either the Mengelberg or the Coates myself. (I have all of these in some form or another.) My bet is that Mr. Mencken had a lot more 78s than were on the list. He once remarked that he would have rather been present at the first performance of the Brahms first than at the induction of General Pershing into the Elks and also that the gods will walk the concert halls again when another Brahms is born and not before. And he held the first movement of the Eroica in greater esteem than any other movement of any symphony, a judgment with which I heartily concur!
The biggest event was a 45-minute opera derived from a spoof by Mr. Mencken called “The Artist.” Written in 1912, it was a play in which a Great Pianist muttered silently to himself as he played a Beethoven sonata to an uncouth public and even more uncouth music critics jammered on during the performance. The play was staged as the first production of Baltimore’s Vagabond Theatre on 1916-11-02. Later, but we don’t know when, the aforesaid Louis Cheslock turned the play into an opera, with the participants singing the lines to music other than Beethoven’s. He also added a song at the end, patterned after Mr. Mencken’s famous desire for his gravestone, “If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner, and wind your eye at some homely girl.” (I am not sure what his gravestone actually said.) The performance of the opera itself played excerpts from three Beethoven sonatas, including no. 3, and a complete movement from another one. (From the text, it seems likely to me that it was the entire third sonata that was played in Mr. Mencken’s spoof, but I am not sure about this.) Though I couldn’t really hear anything, the production was absolutely hilarious!