Victor Herbert: A Theatrical Life

Chapter 4. Pittsburgh — Heaven and Hell

CHAPTER 4 pittsburgh—heaven and hell (1898–1904) My idea of heaven is to be able to sit and listen to all the music of Victor Herbert I want. —Andrew Carnegie Andrew Carnegie can go to hell! —Victor Herbert When the wind rose through Pittsburgh in mid-December of 1897, it picked up the chill of the ice-bound rivers that, then as now, cut a channel between the bottom land on which the city rests and the Allegheny Mountains, and swept six men through the dark, icy streets. It was with no little relief that they entered the Farmer’s Bank boardroom to begin a process leading to six years that Victor Herbert would recall as the most musically satisfying, and personally frustrating, of his life. The meeting of the Orchestra Committee of the Art Society of Pittsburgh was chaired by a new man, William Nimick Frew, a wealthy attorney and associate of Andrew Carnegie, shortly to become Chairman of the Board of the Carnegie Institute and trustee of the Carnegie Corporation . To his right sat Henry Clay Frick, the giant whose domination of the fields in which coke was mined—in coordination with Carnegie’s Iron Works—had made possible the establishment of Carnegie Steel, the foundation of Pittsburgh’s prosperity and prominence. The others present were men of like stature who, having brought Pittsburgh to a level of industrial prominence hardly equaled elsewhere in the United States, were now determined to bring to their city a cultural eminence to rival that of Boston and New York. The Art Society had been founded in 1873, the same year Frew had entered Yale. Andrew Carnegie had, in the early 1890s, presented to his city a unique institute: an art museum, library, music hall and center of natural history—a complex of buildings that brought together, in one physical location, a depository and laboratory of the arts and sciences. Here in 1895, after many hours of devoted work, the Orchestra Committee founded an orchestra and placed it under the direction of Frederick Archer, English organist and conductor. Archer had been imported 84 to give Pittsburgh an ensemble that, if not ranked with those of Thomas, Seidl, and Damrosch, at least would be looked upon by all classes of citizens with pride and affection. The committee supported Archer for three years, and had enlisted a group of guarantors to underwrite the financial deficits that all recognized would be inevitable—certainly in the fledgling years of an organization that, in Pittsburgh, had no predecessor. But for all his gentlemanly graces, Archer had proven musically deficient, and now, amid the paneling and plush, the committee had come to discuss the successor candidates. The only man present who was not a member of the committee was George H. Wilson, manager of the orchestra. Mr. Wilson had distinguished himself as a man completely devoted to the goal of his employers: the promotion of the good reputation of the Pittsburgh Orchestra. His attitude is open to conflicting evaluation. To his detractors he was like a dog, faithful to its master; to his supporters he was merely a dedicated employee. Wilson never thought of himself as an artist; he was a thoroughly typical middle-class professional with a wife and two daughters , both of whom were musically gifted instrumentalists. If Wilson was somewhat awed by the company that fate had brought him to serve, he might well have been. Not Wilson alone, but a whole generation of Americans born after the Civil War, had grown up in a time when the great heroes of the age were the captains of industry. Chance had given Wilson the opportunity to work in concert with such men; this was an opportunity not to be belittled. Wilson loved his job, and dedicated his life to the interests of the Pittsburgh Orchestra. He delighted in the company of Frew, Frick and Carnegie, and to promote their agenda was a satisfying goal for a man who considered himself fortunate beyond measure to have the opportunity to do so. Wilson has been described as ‘‘finicky,’’ and commentators have drawn the contrast between Wilson’s and Herbert’s personalities as the source of a conflict that eventually led to Herbert leaving the orchestra. Wilson was always correct, always gentlemanly, as might be expected of any ordinary man working in such a rarified atmosphere. Whatever con- flicts arose—and there were several after the initial years of Herbert’s service—Wilson...