You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘World War I’ tag.
Chicago’s Welcome to Our Heroes, Kaufmann & Fabry, U.S., 1919
Looking south from the Art Institute, a parade of American soldiers marches up Michigan Avenue in this image from the Pritzker Military Museum & Library collections. Orchestra Hall—complete with movie marquee—can be seen at the far right.
____________________________________________________
Chicago Tribune, August 25, 1920
The Nineteenth Amendment—giving women the right to vote—passes the House of Representatives on May 21 and the Senate on June 4, 1919, and is ratified on August 18, 1920. Chicago’s League of Women Voters soon parade through the city, encouraging women to register to vote in upcoming presidential election.
The influenza epidemic in Chicago first appeared at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station on September 8, 1918, and two weeks later, cases began appearing within the city. At the height of the epidemic in October, all of the city’s theaters—including Orchestra Hall—movie houses, and night schools were ordered closed, disrupting the CSO season for two weeks. By the epidemic’s end in November, over 50,000 cases of influenza and pneumonia had been reported. The article is here.
Prokofiev’s program biography, December 1918
During Sergei Prokofiev’s first visit to America, he appears with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on December 6 and 7, 1918, in two U.S. premieres: as soloist in his First Piano Concerto (under the baton of assistant conductor Eric DeLamarter) and conducting his Scythian Suite.
December 16 and 17, 1921
Prokofiev returns to Chicago and performs as soloist with the Orchestra on December 16 and 17, 1921, giving the world premiere of his Third Piano Concerto with Frederick Stock conducting. Two weeks later, he leads the Chicago Opera in the world premiere of his The Love for Three Oranges at the Auditorium Theatre on December 30.
On July 27, 1919, seventeen-year-old Eugene Williams, an African American, was swimming in Lake Michigan when he crossed the unofficial barrier at 29th Street between the city’s “black” and “white” beaches. A group of white men pelted stones at Williams and he soon drowned. Black eyewitnesses identified the aggressors when the police arrived, but they refused to arrest them. News of the event spread and violence soon erupted, primarily in the city’s South Side neighborhoods. Riots, shootings, and arson attacks continued through August 3, leaving nearly forty dead, over 500 injured, and more than 1,000 black families homeless. The article is here.
On October 9, 1919, the Cincinnati Reds clinch their first World Series victory, winning game eight against the Chicago White Sox, amid suspicions that the games had been fixed. A grand jury convenes in September 1920 and indicts eight White Sox players who, though acquitted in 1921, are permanently banned from the game. The article is here.
Chicago Tribune, January 15, 1920
The Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified on January 16, 1919 authorizing prohibition of the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol, beginning the following year. The amendment’s passing on December 17, 1917, was possible in part due to the wave of anti-German sentiment. Since many of the nation’s beer brewers were German, Prohibition became closely tied to American patriotism. The amendment is repealed on December 5, 1933, with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment.
First Children’s Concert program and Anita Malkin
On November 20, 1919, Frederick Stock leads the first of a regular series of Children’s Concerts specifically designed to introduce young Chicagoans to music. After hearing several auditions from promising young instrumentalists, Stock chooses eight-year-old Anita Malkin to become the first youth soloist on a Children’s Concert, and she performs the first movement of Rode’s Violin Concerto with the Orchestra on February 12, 1920.
Sergei Rachmaninov (Kubey-Rembrandt Studio, Library of Congress) and Orchestra Hall in the summer of 1920
January 23 and 24, 1920, Sergei Rachmaninov is soloist in his Third Piano Concerto. Frederick Stock conducts.
During the summer months, Orchestra Hall frequently was used as a movie house, and in 1920, Paramount Pictures’ Humoresque—a silent film based on Fannie Hurst’s short story—enjoyed a multi-week run.
On December 31, 1920, Frederick Stock leads the Orchestra in the U.S. premiere of Gustav Holst’s The Planets, less than two months after the world premiere in London. Stock also leads the Orchestra in the U.S. premiere of Gustav Mahler’s Seventh Symphony on April 15, 1921.
Chicago American, December 19, 1921
On December 18, 1921, Richard Strauss returns to Chicago to lead the Orchestra in a special concert at the Auditorium Theatre. The program includes his Also sprach Zarathustra, Death and Transfiguration, and the love scene from his opera Feuersnot, along with several songs—“Morgen!,” “Wiegenlied,” “Freundliche Vision,” and “Ständchen”—with soprano Claire Dux.
____________________________________________________
A Time for Reflection—A Message of Peace—a companion exhibit curated by the Rosenthal Archives of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in collaboration with the Pritzker Military Museum & Library—will be on display in Symphony Center’s first-floor rotunda from October 2 through November 18, and the content also will be presented on CSO Sounds & Stories and the From the Archives blog.
This article also appears here. For event listings, please visit cso.org/armistice.
This exhibit is presented with the generous support of COL (IL) Jennifer N. Pritzker, IL ARNG (Retired), Founder and Chair, Pritzker Military Museum & Library, through the Pritzker Military Foundation.
Additional thanks to Shawn Sheehy and Jenna Harmon, along with the Arts Club of Chicago, Newberry Library, Poetry Foundation, and Ravinia Festival Association.
Enlist: On Which Side of the Window are
You?, Laura Brey, U.S., 1917
The recruitment poster at right, from the Pritzker Military Museum & Library collections, shows a civilian man looking out a window as soldiers march to service.
____________________________________________________
Boston Globe, March 26, 1918
For a Boston Symphony Orchestra performance in Providence on October 30, 1917, several Rhode Island ladies’ clubs had contacted orchestra manager Charles Ellis, requesting the addition of The Star-Spangled Banner to the concert. After consulting with BSO founder Henry Higginson, Ellis decided not to change the program. Unaware of the request, music director Karl Muck—born in Germany but naturalized as a Swiss citizen—after the concert was accused in the press of working for the German cause and eventually arrested on March 25, 1918. He also was imprisoned at Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia until August 1919, when he and his wife were deported. The article is here.
Ernst and Lina Kunwald, December 8, 1917 (National Archives and Records Administration)
Music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra since 1912, Ernst Kunwald continued to express pride in his Austrian heritage during the war. He led The Star-Spangled Banner before one concert but only after expressing to the orchestra and the mostly German audience that his sympathies were with his homeland. Kunwald was arrested by the U.S. Marshals Service on December 8, 1917, and released the following day, whereupon he resigned his post as conductor. One month later, he was interned under the Alien Enemies Act at Fort Oglethorpe and was deported soon thereafter.
Theodore Thomas and Frederick Stock
At the invitation of founder and first music director Theodore Thomas, Frederick Stock came to the U.S. in 1895 to join the Orchestra as assistant principal viola. He applied for his first U.S. citizenship papers four days after his arrival, but inadvertently neglected to complete the process. He was promoted to assistant conductor in 1899, and shortly after Thomas’s unexpected death on January 4, 1905, the board of trustees soon elected Frederick Stock as the Orchestra’s second music director on April 11.
Columbia Graphophone Company 1917 recording
Stock’s arrangement of The Star-Spangled Banner
In 1916, on the eve of U.S. involvement in the war, President Woodrow Wilson ordered The Star-Spangled Banner to be played at military and other notable events. Stock made his own orchestration of the Banner along with America (My Country ’Tis of Thee) and recorded both with the Orchestra for the Columbia Graphophone Company on May 28, 1917.
Stock’s fingerprints (FBI Case Files, National Archives)
When the trustees encouraged Stock to finalize his citizenship—to deflect concerns over his German heritage—he discovered that his 1895 application was invalid and needed to start the process a second time. But first, Stock had to submit a Registration Affidavit of Alien Enemy, complete with fingerprints, on February 7, 1918.
With his citizenship status incomplete and the country at war, on August 17, 1918, Frederick Stock made the decision to resign, asserting his loyalty to the U.S. “I do not hesitate to classify myself as American, because all who know me are aware that at heart, in thought and in spirit, as well as in action and deed, I am American, just as willing as any patriot to give my last drop of blood and my last penny for the land of my adoption and of my affections.” Stock’s handwritten letter and a transcript are here.
The trustees of the Orchestral Association reluctantly accepted Stock’s resignation on October 1, 1918. Acknowledging that he had changed the language at rehearsals to English in 1914 and had programmed countless works by American composers, the board expressed its hope that the separation would be temporary, and it would soon be their “joy to welcome to our conductor’s stand Citizen Stock.” The transcript of the board meeting minutes is here.
Eric DeLamarter
Chicago composer Eric DeLamarter, was hired as assistant conductor and led the first concerts of the 1918-19 season. DeLamarter also served as organist at Fourth Presbyterian Church from 1914 and as the first conductor of the Grant Park Music Festival beginning in 1935.
Chicago Daily News, February 20, 1919
At the trustees’ meeting on February 14, 1919, Orchestra manager Frederick Wessels reported that Stock “had complied with all the requirements of the law,” having filed the necessary papers on February 7; ninety days later, his citizenship would be complete. The executive committee met five days later and unanimously resolved that Stock should resume his music directorship the following week.
February 28, 1919
On February 28, 1919, “as Mr. Stock came through the door . . . cheers sounded in the upper tiers, and the audience rose to utter its gladness that he was back at the post.” That evening’s program began with The Star-Spangled Banner and concluded with the world premiere of Stock’s new March and Hymn to Democracy, “conceived,” according to the composer, “in the spirit of our day, a spirit, indeed, of world-wide turbulence and strife, but also a spirit imbued with unending hope and implicit faith in the ultimate regeneration of humanity.”
Linda Wolfe at the Frederick Stock School
Linda Wolfe, Stock’s great-granddaughter, added: “Most of Frederick Stock’s adult life had been with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra—ten years as a violist and thirteen as music director—when he was classified as an alien enemy. He was forced to temporarily step down from the podium, and I cannot imagine his anguish and heartache. However, Stock’s devotion to the ensemble and the city did not waver during this dark time, as he spent his exile developing plans for the Civic Orchestra, the series of children’s concerts, and the youth auditions, all endeavors that continue to thrive today.”
Wolfe is pictured here at the Frederick Stock School in Chicago’s Edison Park neighborhood. Opened in 1955, Stock School is a Chicago Public School early childhood center for students between the ages of three and five, providing a model program for children with and without disabilities.
____________________________________________________
A Time for Reflection—A Message of Peace—a companion exhibit curated by the Rosenthal Archives of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in collaboration with the Pritzker Military Museum & Library—will be on display in Symphony Center’s first-floor rotunda from October 2 through November 18, and the content also will be presented on CSO Sounds & Stories and the From the Archives blog.
This article also appears here. For event listings, please visit cso.org/armistice.
This exhibit is presented with the generous support of COL (IL) Jennifer N. Pritzker, IL ARNG (Retired), Founder and Chair, Pritzker Military Museum & Library, through the Pritzker Military Foundation.
Additional thanks to Shawn Sheehy and Jenna Harmon, along with the Arts Club of Chicago, Newberry Library, Poetry Foundation, and Ravinia Festival Association.
Teufel Hunden,
Charles Buckles Falls,
U.S., 1917
The recruitment poster at left, from the Pritzker Military Museum & Library collections, shows a “devil dog” bulldog wearing a U.S. Marine helmet chasing a dachshund wearing a German helmet.
____________________________________________________
1913-14 Chicago Symphony Orchestra roster
Up until the outbreak of World War I, the roster of Chicago Symphony Orchestra musicians had primarily been European since its founding in 1891. The ensemble’s first two music directors—Theodore Thomas and Frederick Stock—were German immigrants, and their native language was spoken in leading rehearsals.
According to a report in the Chicago Tribune, tensions were high as the Orchestra performed works with strong nationalistic themes at a Ravinia Park matinee on August 14, 1914. Russian musicians taunted a Frenchman after Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture; Belgian principal clarinet Joseph Schreurs, “gritted his teeth as the musicians next swept through Die Wacht am Rhein,” a German patriotic anthem; and “several Germans snapped the strings on their violins while playing La Marseillaise . . . Quarrels arose [and] internal strife, fanned by patriotic fervor, threatened to disrupt the organization.” The article is here.
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, October 25, 1917 (Kaufmann & Fabry photo)
At the annual meeting of the Orchestral Association in December 1917, board president Clyde M. Carr addressed rumors regarding Orchestra members’ patriotism, reporting, “out of approximately one hundred members, there are only two who have not taken out their final papers,” completing their American citizenship. “There is no orchestra in America more unimpeachable in its Americanism.”
Musicians’ resolution
On April 6, 1918, Orchestra musicians drafted a resolution affirming their loyalty to the U. S. Charles Hamill, first vice president of the board, read the resolutions to the audience at that evening’s concert, declaring the Orchestra faithful to America “from the conductor to the kettle drum.”
While at Ravinia Park on August 6, 1918, seven members of the Orchestra were served notices to report to assistant district attorney Francis Borelli the following day, to answer charges that they had expressed pro-German sentiments. Accusations had been submitted against orchestra manager and trumpet Albert Ulrich; principal timpani Joseph Zettelmann, who had expressed contempt for The Star-Spangled Banner; trumpet William Hebs, who refused to stand during the anthem; and bass trombone Richard Kuss, who reportedly said he would kill any son of his who learned English. The article is here.
An August 16, 1918, letter to the Chicago Tribune editor expressed subscribers’ “faith in the loyalty of the majority of the members of the Orchestra.” The article is here.
Following the investigation, on October 10, 1918—the day before the first concert of the Orchestra’s twenty-eighth season—the Chicago Federation of Musicians announced that oboe Otto Hesselbach, bassoon William Krieglstein, bass trombone Richard Kuss, and principal cello Bruno Steindel were expelled from the union. All four had been tried on the same charge: “acting in a manner derogatory to the interests of the local and its members through unpatriotic actions and utterances.” The article is here.
Otto Hesselbach
In February 1919, the Chicago Federation of Musicians recommended conditional reinstatement of Hesselbach, Krieglstein, and Kuss, but not Steindel. Hesselbach and Krieglstein complied; Kuss did not. The article is here.
Otto Hesselbach (1862–?) was hired by Theodore Thomas in 1893 as oboe and principal english horn, and he also was occasionally listed as a member of the viola section. He was reinstated to the Orchestra in 1919 and served until 1928.
William Krieglstein and Richard Kuss
After emigrating from Austria in 1907, William Krieglstein (1884–1952) moved to Chicago and joined the Orchestra in 1912 as bassoon and principal contrabassoon, and beginning in 1915, he also was rostered as a bass. After his reengagement in 1919, Krieglstein was a member until 1929.
Richard Kuss (1883–1957) came to the U.S. from Germany in 1907 and served as bass trombone from 1912 until 1918. He was reinstated to the union in 1919 and remained in the city, primarily working for the Chicago Opera, but was not reengaged by the Orchestra.
Bruno Steindel
Former principal cello of the Berlin Philharmonic, Bruno Steindel (1866–1949) had played under Brahms, Dvořák, Grieg, Richard Strauss, and Tchaikovsky when he was chosen by Theodore Thomas as the Chicago Orchestra’s founding principal cello in 1891. Following the investigation, he tendered his resignation on October 1, 1918. Steindel continued to perform in Chicago, as principal cello of the Chicago Civic Opera and giving concerts for the benefit of German war orphans, despite protests by American Legion posts. The article is here.
Steindel Trio
Steindel’s wife Mathilde, a pianist who frequently performed with the Steindel Trio (along with CSO violin Fritz Itte), had become depressed over the countless accusations her husband had received in the press. On the evening of March 5, 1921, she committed suicide by drowning herself in Lake Michigan. The next morning at the foot of Farwell Avenue, the police found her automobile, its lights “still ablaze. Her expensive fur coat, which she had cast off before jumping into the lake, lay on the pier.” The article is here.
____________________________________________________
A Time for Reflection—A Message of Peace—a companion exhibit curated by the Rosenthal Archives of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in collaboration with the Pritzker Military Museum & Library—will be on display in Symphony Center’s first-floor rotunda from October 2 through November 18, and the content also will be presented on CSO Sounds & Stories and the From the Archives blog.
This article also appears here. For event listings, please visit cso.org/armistice.
This exhibit is presented with the generous support of COL (IL) Jennifer N. Pritzker, IL ARNG (Retired), Founder and Chair, Pritzker Military Museum & Library, through the Pritzker Military Foundation.
Additional thanks to Shawn Sheehy and Jenna Harmon, along with the Arts Club of Chicago, Newberry Library, Poetry Foundation, and Ravinia Festival Association.
Heroes of the Marne 117th Infantry Regiment, Georges Scott, France, 1915
The poster at left, from the Pritzker Military Museum & Library collections, shows French soldiers who fought in the First Battle of the Marne between September 6 and 12, 1914.
____________________________________________________
In the years leading up to the United States entering World War I, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra gave a number of premieres, featured prominent guest soloists, and made its first commercial recording. Additionally, Orchestra Hall hosted an extraordinary variety of events, several of which are illustrated below (all events in Orchestra Hall unless otherwise noted).
Albert Spalding (Moffett Chicago photo) and Arnold Schoenberg (Egon Schiele, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
On December 8, 1911, Albert Spalding is soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the U.S. premiere of Sir Edward Elgar’s Violin Concerto. Frederick Stock conducts.
Albert Capellani’s film Les misérables (parts 1 and 2)—starring Henry Krauss as Jean Valjean and billed as “the greatest motion picture ever made”—is screened from August 21 through October 10, 1913.
Frederick Stock leads the Orchestra in the U.S. premiere of Arnold Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra on October 31, 1913. (On February 8 and 9, 1934, the composer returns to Chicago to lead the work as guest conductor.)
Helen Keller (Library of Congress)
On February 5, 1914, the North End Woman’s Club presents Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller in a demonstration of the technique used by Sullivan to teach Keller—blind and deaf since she was nineteen months old—how to speak.
William Henry Hackney presents a Colored Composers’ Concert featuring music by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Harry Burleigh, J. Rosamond Johnson, Will Marion Cook, and R. Nathaniel Dett on June 3, 1914. The Chicago Defender article (from June 6, 1914) describing the concert is here.
The Orchestra gives the U.S. premiere of Gigues from Claude Debussy’s Images for Orchestra on November 13, 1914. Frederick Stock conducts.
Apollo Club’s Messiah and Edith Lees with Havelock Ellis (Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science)
The Apollo Club of Chicago presents its annual performances of Handel’s Messiah at the Auditorium Theatre on December 27 and 28, 1914. Harrison M. Wild leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Edith Lees, author and the openly lesbian wife of Havelock Ellis, gives a lecture on February 4, 1915, advocating for the general acceptance of “deviants” (i.e. homosexuals). Offering Oscar Wilde and Michelangelo as examples of what the “abnormal” could accomplish, this is one of the earliest public calls for the acceptance of gay people.
On March 5, 1915, Frederick Stock leads the Orchestra in the U.S. premiere of Alexander Scriabin’s Prometheus.
Stock’s Festival Prologue
Celebrating the opening of the Orchestra’s twenty-fifth season on October 15, 1915, Frederick Stock leads the world premiere of his Festival Prologue, which he had written while in California for the Panama–Pacific International Exposition. Stock considered the work “an expression of his esteem not only for that noble band of artists which for a quarter of a century has uplifted and upheld the musical culture of our city, but also for those who have permitted themselves to be thus uplifted and upheld—the music-loving people of Chicago.”
Amy Beach and Percy Grainger (Library of Congress)
On February 4 and 5, 1916, Amy Beach is soloist in her Piano Concerto in C-sharp minor. Frederick Stock conducts.
Percy Grainger is soloist in the world premiere of John Alden Carpenter’s Concertino for Piano and Orchestra on March 10, 1916. Frederick Stock conducts.
Otterström’s American Negro Suite
On December 15, 1916, Frederick Stock leads the Orchestra in the world premiere of Thorwald Otterström’s American Negro Suite, incorporating melodies from Slave Songs of the United States—the first and most influential collection of African American music and spirituals, published in 1867.
Bengali poet and the first non-European recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Sir Rabindranath Tagore reads from his own works on December 19, 1916.
On May 1, 1916, Frederick Stock and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra record for the first time (in an unidentified Chicago location): Mendelssohn’s Wedding March from A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Columbia Graphophone Company.
Violinist Maud Powell and pianist Arthur Loesser (half-brother of Broadway composer Frank Loesser) appear in recital on February 18, 1917.
On March 25, 1917, Walter Damrosch leads the New York Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with Efrem Zimbalist and Brünnhilde’s Immolation from Wagner’s Götterdämmerung with Julia Claussen.
____________________________________________________
A Time for Reflection—A Message of Peace—a companion exhibit curated by the Rosenthal Archives of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in collaboration with the Pritzker Military Museum & Library—will be on display in Symphony Center’s first-floor rotunda from October 2 through November 18, and the content also will be presented on CSO Sounds & Stories and the From the Archives blog.
This article also appears here. For event listings, please visit cso.org/armistice.
This exhibit is presented with the generous support of COL (IL) Jennifer N. Pritzker, IL ARNG (Retired), Founder and Chair, Pritzker Military Museum & Library, through the Pritzker Military Foundation.
Additional thanks to Shawn Sheehy and Jenna Harmon, along with the Arts Club of Chicago, Newberry Library, Poetry Foundation, and Ravinia Festival Association.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg (Library of Congress)
On June 28, 1914, heir-apparent to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, are assassinated in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb and south Slav nationalist.
Austria declares war on Serbia on July 28, 1914, launching a chain reaction. In a few short weeks, the world is at war, ultimately pitting the Triple Entente (France, Russia, and Britain) against the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary). In an effort to cut off French forces, Germany invades Luxembourg and Belgium in early August with the eventual goal of occupying Paris.
First Battle of the Marne (Pritzker Military Museum & Library)
During the First Battle of the Marne, from September 6 through 12, 1914, the French army and British Expeditionary Force successfully thwart German progress just east of Paris. A major turning point early in the war, by August 1914, the entire Allied army on the Western Front is forced into a general retreat back towards Paris as the German armies continue through France.
RMS Lusitania (Bain Collection, Library of Congress) and an English recruiting poster (Sir Bernard Partridge)
To weaken the British war effort, Germany seeks to cut off U.S. aid to Britain through naval warfare, at its height when the passenger liner RMS Lusitania sets sail from New York for Liverpool. German submarines torpedo and sink the ship on May 7, 1915, killing 1,198 people, including 128 Americans. Germany limits submarine warfare due to U.S. outrage over the incident. Seen at right, a Parliamentary Recruiting Committee poster portrays Justice emerging from the sea, as the Lusitania sinks in the background.
Verdun, France and Battle of the Somme (Pritzker Military Museum & Library)
A German offensive on the French town of Verdun from February 21 through December 18, 1916—the largest and longest battle on the Western Front between the German and French armies—results in nearly one million casualties. The Battle of the Somme—fought by the armies of the British Empire and France against the Germans—begins on July 1, 1916, with the launch of an Allied offensive, initiating the largest battle of the war on the Western Front.
Chicago Tribune, April 3, 1917; Chicago Daily News, 1918
In January 1917, a telegram from German foreign secretary Arthur Zimmermann to U.S. German ambassador Count Johann von Bernstorff—offering financial aid to Mexico if it agrees to partner with Germany on the U.S. entering the war—is intercepted by British intelligence and forwarded to President Woodrow Wilson. The story reaches the public on March 1, as Germany reinstitutes unrestricted submarine warfare. On April 6, 1917, the U.S. declares war on Germany.
American forces land in France on June 25, 1917, and African American troops are the first to arrive, including the 370th Infantry Regiment from Illinois (many from Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood).
Second Battle of the Marne (Pritzker Military Museum & Library)
Led by Bolshevik Party leader Vladimir Lenin, leftist revolutionaries launch a takeover of the provisional government on November 6 and 7, 1917, marking the end of the Romanov dynasty and centuries of Russian Imperial rule.
The Second Battle of the Marne is fought on June 2, 1918, with American forces preventing Germans from crossing the Marne River at Château-Thierry.
Meuse-Argonne Offensive (Pritzker Military Museum & Library)
On September 26, 1918, Allied forces launch the Meuse-Argonne Offensive—part of the Hundred Days Offensive, the final series of Allied attacks—covering the entire Western Front between France, Belgium, and Germany. It is the largest and bloodiest attack of the war for the American Expeditionary Forces, involving over one million U.S. soldiers. The French map at the left illustrates the offensive and shows American daily lines of advance, divisions in lines, French colonial troops, enemy defenses, and railroads.
On November 11, 1918, Germany signs the Armistice of Compiègne. In accordance with the agreement, fighting ends at 11:00 a.m., Paris time, ending the war on the Western Front.
Ignace Paderewski and his wife Helena (Library of Congress)
Representatives from the Allied nations—including pianist Ignace Paderewski, newly appointed as prime minister of Poland—along with German authorities sign the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919, signifying the end of the war.
____________________________________________________
Death in Venice and The War That Will End War
Thomas Mann’s novella Death in Venice (Der Tod in Venedig) is published in Germany in 1912.
George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion is first performed at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna on October 16, 1913.
In August 1914, H.G. Wells begins publishing a series of articles in London newspapers, later published in the book The War That Will End War.
The New York Times, June 7, 1913, and The Saturday Evening Post (Norman Rockwell)
Pierre Monteux conducts the premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring with Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris on May 29, 1913. In Le Figaro, Henri Quittard calls the work, a “laborious and puerile barbarity.”
A painting by Norman Rockwell—Mother’s Day Off—first appears on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on May 20, 1916.
A family arrives in Chicago (University of Washington)
By 1916, the first wave of the Great Migration is fully underway, with nearly 1.5 million African Americans moving from the southern United States into the northern states, many settling in major cities, including New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Saint Louis, and Detroit.
Stock and the Orchestra onstage at the Auditorium Theatre, April 24, 1917
Less than three weeks after the U.S. enters the war, second music director Frederick Stock leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s first performances of Gustav Mahler’s Eighth Symphony on April 24, 26, and 28, 1917, at the Auditorium Theatre as part of the Chicago Music Festival. The Orchestra is expanded to 150 players vocalists included six local choruses, two hundred boys from Oak Park and River Forest, and eight soloists. The Chicago Tribune called it “the most important event of its kind the West has ever known.”
During the summer of 1917, International Harvester president Cyrus McCormick, Jr., travels as a government emissary and meets twenty-six-year-old Moscow Conservatory student Sergei Prokofiev at the Winter Palace in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg).
CSO program book, November 23, 1917
Sixteen-year-old Jascha Heifetz debuts with the Orchestra on November 23, 1917, as soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. Frederick Stock conducts.
On March 19, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson signs the Standard Time Act into law, implementing daylight saving time and authorizing the Interstate Commerce Commission to define time zones.
____________________________________________________
A Time for Reflection—A Message of Peace—a companion exhibit curated by the Rosenthal Archives of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in collaboration with the Pritzker Military Museum & Library—will be on display in Symphony Center’s first-floor rotunda from October 2 through November 18, and the content also will be presented on CSO Sounds & Stories and the From the Archives blog.
This article also appears here. For event listings, please visit cso.org/armistice.
This exhibit is presented with the generous support of COL (IL) Jennifer N. Pritzker, IL ARNG (Retired), Founder and Chair, Pritzker Military Museum & Library, through the Pritzker Military Foundation.
Additional thanks to Shawn Sheehy and Jenna Harmon, along with the Arts Club of Chicago, Newberry Library, Poetry Foundation, and Ravinia Festival Association.
Soldiers Celebrate Armistice. After the last shots of World War I on November 11, 1918, at 11:00 a.m., men from Battery D, 105th Field Artillery, celebrate by hoisting the U.S. flag. (Hillie John Franz, 1918, courtesy of Pritzker Military Museum & Library)
World War I was fought on a global scale, the likes of which had never before been seen. More than thirty nations declared war between 1914 and 1918, with fighting throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa. Far away from the battlegrounds, the effects of the war also were felt in Chicago—a city comprised largely of immigrants—as communities were divided and loyalties questioned. The war brought about extraordinary advances in weaponry and military technology, along with innovations in communications, medicine, and manufacturing. It also was one of the deadliest conflicts in human history, with millions of lives lost—both military and civilian—and countless more wounded on both sides.
One hundred years later, we reflect on the Great War’s tremendous impact as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra commemorates the Armistice of November 11, 1918—on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month—that ended this “war to end all wars.”
Over the course of the next several weeks, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association will present programs and special events at Symphony Center and across Chicago that explore themes of peace and reflection. A Time for Reflection—A Message of Peace—a companion exhibit curated by the Rosenthal Archives of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in collaboration with the Pritzker Military Museum & Library—will be on display in Symphony Center’s first-floor rotunda from October 2 through November 18, and the content also will be presented on CSO Sounds & Stories and the From the Archives blog.
This article also appears here. For event listings, please visit cso.org/armistice.
This exhibit is presented with the generous support of COL (IL) Jennifer N. Pritzker, IL ARNG (Retired), Founder and Chair, Pritzker Military Museum & Library, through the Pritzker Military Foundation.
Additional thanks to Shawn Sheehy and Jenna Harmon, along with the Arts Club of Chicago, Newberry Library, Poetry Foundation, and Ravinia Festival Association.
The title page of Frederick Stock’s post-1917 arrangement of The Star-Spangled Banner, the version currently used by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
On September 14, 2014, we celebrate the bicentennial of The Star-Spangled Banner, the national anthem of the United States of America. For many of us, most of the story is familiar, but did you know that the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, like many American orchestras, played a role in promoting the song’s popularity?
The first flute part of Stock’s arrangement—slightly different from the score pictured above—indicates a minor rhythmic modification
In the midst of the War of 1812, thirty-five-year-old lawyer and amateur poet Francis Scott Key witnessed the brutal twenty-five-hour attack on Fort McHenry in Chesapeake Bay by the British Navy that continued through the night of September 13, 1814. Early the next morning, Key’s sight of the U.S. flag—then fifteen stars and fifteen stripes—still flying over the fort inspired him to write the four-verse lyric Defence of Fort McHenry.
During the U.S. involvement in World War II (1941–1945), the forty-eight-star flag was a permanent fixture on the Orchestra Hall stage.
Contrary to many accounts, Key certainly had The Anacreontic Song (the song of a popular gentleman’s club in London), composed by John Stafford Smith, in mind when he wrote his lyric. After he completed it on September 16, it was printed as a broadside and initially distributed to the soldiers who had defended Fort McHenry. The first documented performance was a month later at the Baltimore Theatre.
Sir Georg Solti’s 1986 account of the National Anthem featuring the Chicago Symphony Chorus
Frederick Stock recorded his 1917 version with the CSO for the Columbia Graphophone Company
During the nineteenth century, the song’s popularity grew and it was widely performed at public celebrations and as accompaniment to the raising of the flag. On the eve of U.S. involvement in World War I, President Woodrow Wilson in 1916 ordered the song to be played at military and other notable events. Wilson also directed the U.S. Bureau of Education to compile an official version; the bureau tasked five musicians—Walter Damrosch, Will Earhart, Arnold J. Gantvoort, Oscar Sonneck, and John Philip Sousa—to develop and agree upon a standardized edition. (An appraisal of one of the standardization manuscripts, featured on an episode of Antiques Roadshow, can be seen here.) Damrosch conducted the premiere of that version with the Oratorio Society of New York at Carnegie Hall on December 5, 1917.
Frederick Stock—the CSO’s second music director from 1905 until 1942—on the podium in Orchestra Hall in the 1930s
Almost simultaneously, Frederick Stock—the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s second music director from 1905 until 1942—made his own orchestration of the Banner along with America (My Country ’Tis of Thee) and recorded both of them with the Orchestra for the Columbia Graphophone Company on May 28, 1917. And keeping with the emerging popular custom (as evidenced in newspaper accounts and end-of-season indexes), the Orchestra performed the song at the beginning of all concerts during U.S. involvement in World War I, even though the song was rarely listed on program pages—a practice that continues today.
Although the tradition had become firmly established, President Herbert Hoover made it official on March 3, 1931, and signed into law that The Star-Spangled Banner was to be the national anthem of the United States of America. And during the U.S. involvement in the Second World War, Stock and later his successor Désiré Defauw continued the practice of performing The Star-Spangled Banner at the beginning of every concert.
Program page from the first concert of the fifty-fifth season on October 4 and 5, 1945—the first downtown CSO concerts following the end of World War II—at which music director Désiré Defauw conducted the national anthems of the Allied nations: China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Currently, The Star-Spangled Banner generally is performed at the beginning of the first concert of both the Orchestra Hall and Ravinia Festival seasons in addition to Symphony Ball and Ravinia’s annual gala. One notable exception: Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra were in Lucerne, Switzerland, on September 11, 2001, scheduled to perform Mahler’s Seventh Symphony that evening, only a few brief hours after the terrorist attacks in the U.S. At the beginning of the concert, Barenboim addressed the audience and announced that the Orchestra would begin the concert with the American National Anthem, “for tonight we are all of us Americans.”
Following the recording in 1917, Stock modified his orchestration, perhaps to conform to the standardized version. Stock’s version, with minor modifications, was later recorded by Fritz Reiner (the Orchestra’s sixth music director from 1953 until 1962) in 1957 by RCA; it was recently reissued as part of a comprehensive 63-CD set. The Banner was recorded a third time in 1986 for London Records, with Sir Georg Solti (our music director from 1969 until 1991) leading the Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Chorus, prepared by Margaret Hillis. (that same release included Bear Down, Chicago Bears and Sousa’s The Stars and Stripes Forever). Stock’s orchestration—the one preferred by music director Riccardo Muti—is the version still used today.
__________
In the community, members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra also have performed The Star-Spangled Banner for Chicago sports teams. The brass section, led by associate conductor Kenneth Jean, helped open the Chicago Bears’s sixty-eighth season on September 14, 1987, performing the National Anthem at Soldier Field. And CSO violas—performing Max Raimi’s arrangement of The Star-Spangled Banner—opened a Chicago White Sox game on August 25, 1998, at (new) Comiskey Park. On both occasions, the Chicago teams went on to victory: the Bears beat the New York Giants 34–19, and the Sox defeated the Baltimore Orioles, 6–4.
Kenneth Jean and members of the CSO brass at Soldier Field on September 14, 1987
CSO violas at Comiskey Park on August 25, 1998
__________
A slightly abbreviated version of this article appears in the September/October CSO program book.
Thanks to Mark Clague, Ph.D.—associate professor at the University of Michigan (and a former member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago)—for his guidance, and a tremendous amount of information can be found online at the Star Spangled Music Foundation’s website. Also thanks to CSO librarians Peter Conover, Carole Keller, and Mark Swanson, and Rosenthal Archives intern William Berthouex.
from the archives 