Frederick Jacobi and Herman Voaden: The Prodigal Son

Anton Wagner

 

“I figure that the new characters should be wandering musicians, the main one of whom should be an old, or oldish man, perhaps on a wooden leg and the other two young boys, who might be performed by girls. If it were not stretching the element of Time too far I should like them to look like that old picture The Picture of ‘Seventy-Five: the fife and drum boys playing Yankee Doodle. If it were not for the element of Time I should like to think of this old man as a veteran of the Revolution who goes around the country, with his young grandsons, making music, almost begging.”—Frederick Jacobi. Scenario for The Prodigal Son, 1942.

“Analyses are mental curiosae: they are voyages into the mode of thought of another human being.”—Frederick Jacobi, “Messiaen’s Language: Birds and Butterflies,” Modern Music, Vol. 23, No. 3, Summer 1946. 1

To link to Herman Voaden's The Prodigal Son libretto, click here.

 

Who was Frederick Jacobi (1891-1952) and why was his only opera never produced?

One day there will be a fully professional stage production of Frederick Jacobi’s and Herman Voaden’s opera The Prodigal Son. This text will serve as a guide to this production. Herman Voaden’s libretto, with the four 19 ^th century prints that inspired the opera, follows my introduction.

When the American composer Frederick Jacobi died of heart failure on October 24, 1952 at the age of sixty-one, Olin Downes, the dean of American music critics, wrote in a moving tribute in the New York Times, “it is tragic that he could not live to see his opera, ‘The Prodigal Son,’ performed.” 2 In March of 1949 the International Musician, the journal of the American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada , had referred to Jacobi’s The Prodigal Son as “the most ambitious of his works.” 3 David Ewen, in his 1949 American Composers Today, also called the opera “probably his magnum opus to date.” 4 For his son Fritz, (Frederick Arthur Jacobi), The Prodigal Son “was a watershed composition in which my father shifted from ‘modern’ to melodic and accessible music. The score is really quite lovely. Why it has never been staged in its entirety is an eternal puzzlement to me.” 5

Yet less than three decades after the death of the composer, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians referred to Jacobi’s opera as a mere “curiosity, being based on early 19 th-century American prints illustrating the biblical story.” 6 In his 1952 tribute to Jacobi, Olin Downes wrote regarding a stage production of The Prodigal Son, “there had been so many ‘almosts’ and in March of this coming year it is to be given in Texas, and he was looking forward to this event immensely.” But this Texas production also failed to materialize. Herman Voaden (1903-1991), the Canadian playwright, director and producer who had contributed the libretto for the opera, also actively pursued productions for The Prodigal Son in Toronto and with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for over a decade. Examining Frederick Jacobi’s collaboration with Herman Voaden in the creation of The Prodigal Son and their attempts to produce the work in the United States, Canada and England reveals a fascinating cultural, artistic and aesthetic dynamic in the creation of a mid-twentieth century North American opera.

The Collaborators

When Herman Voaden met Jacobi at Yale University in the summer of 1942, they seemed perfectly suited for the roles of librettist and opera composer. Already in 1930-31, Voaden had sought an American composer for his symbolic dance scenario Symphony: A Drama of Motion and Light For a New Theatre, 7 submitting the text to the stage designer Norman Bel Geddes and to Claire Reis, Chair of the League of Composers in New York . Canada’s leading experimental playwright and director, Voaden had obtained his BA and M.A. from Queen’s University in 1924 and 1926 and had begun doctoral studies, intending to write his Ph.D. thesis on Eugene O’Neill, at the University of Chicago in 1927. In 1930-31, he pursued graduate playwriting courses with George Pierce Baker at Yale and had his realistic play Wilderness: A Play of the North produced at the university in 1931. He also began his non-realist, symbolic playwriting at Yale, half-completing Earth Song: A Drama in Rhythmic Prose and Light, produced in Canada in 1932. Voaden’s decade-long experimentation with what he called “symphonic expressionism,” the blending of lyrical speech, music, sculptural “moments of illumination,” coloured lighting and formalized movement into a higher synthesis, had just concluded with the staging of his three-act drama Ascend As the Sun at Hart House Theatre, University of Toronto, in April of 1942. The production featured an original music score by the Canadian composer Godfrey Ridout (1918-1984) and extensive choreography by the dancers of the Volkoff Ballet.

Both collaborators on The Prodigal Son were teachers. Voaden used the stage facilities of the Central High School of Commerce in Toronto , where he was Head of English 1928-1964, to create Canada ’s leading experimental theatre laboratory of the 1930s. Jacobi began teaching harmony at the Master Institute of United Arts in New York in the mid-1920s and taught composition at the Juilliard Graduate School 1936-1950. He also began lecturing at the Julius Hartt Musical Foundation in 1941, lectured at the University of California at Berkeley during the summers of 1938, 1940 and 1949, as well as at Smith College (1943) and Mills College (1948). Like Voaden, he was a superbly trained artist who had already produced a substantial body of work.

On a personal level, Voaden and Jacobi were both politically progressive and spiritually mystics and romantics (Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss were early common influences). Both were third generation immigrants. The 1975 family history and genealogy, The Book of the Voadens, traces a complete family tree to the Voadens in Devonshire in the seventeen hundreds. Herman Voaden’s grandparents, James and Charlotte Voaden, emigrated from Devon , England , to Canada in 1857 and farmed in the backwoods of St. Thomas , Ontario . His father, Arthur Voaden, pioneered vocational teaching in Ontario and encouraged his son to pursue a teaching career. In his 1934 Hill-Land: A Play of the Canadian North For a New Theatre, Voaden dramatized his belief that, after the struggle for survival of the first two generations of immigrants in a new land, a flowering of artistic self-expression and creativity could occur in the third generation, as had occurred with him in his family.

This seems also to have been the case in Frederick Jacobi’s family, whose history is less well documented and is presented here for the first time:

His grandparents, Aaron and Francesca Jacobi, emigrated from Darmstadt , Germany , to New York in 1850 when Jacobi’s father (also named Frederick ) was four years old. Fritz Jacobi believes “my great-grandparents moved from Germany for economic, not political reasons.” The 1860 census shows the Jacobi’s living in Ward 11, District 4, in New York . Aaron Jacobi’s age is given as 61 and his place of birth, Darmstadt . Four sons are listed: Frederick, age 14, Michael (12), Leonard (Leonhard, 10) and Jacob (6). The place of birth for Frederick, Michael and Leonard is given as Darmstadt , while Jacob is listed as having been born in New York . Missing is their mother, Francesca Jacobi, who died shortly after Jacob was born in 1854. Also missing is the Jacobis’ only daughter, Regina , who left to live with cousins after the family home became chaotic following the death of her mother. Listed in the census is a thirty year-old female servant, also born in Darmstadt , who presumably looked after the children while their father was working.

The census lists Aaron Jacobi’s profession as grocer, with no real estate, and $1,000 as the value of his personal estate. According to Frances Dinkelspiel, a distant cousin who has studied the family’s history, after the death of Francesca “the family then lived in poverty. The father, Aaron, ran a little grocery store on the East Side . He returned to Germany where he died in Frankfurt in 1889. Frederick was naturalized as an American citizen in New York City in 1868.” 8

We probably first encounter Frederick Jacobi Sr. in the “City Intelligence” column of the July 18, 1859 New York Times. “The Sunday School connected with the congregation of Reformed Jews ‘Emanu-El,’ worshipping in the church in 12 ^th street, between the Third and Fourth avenues, was examined yesterday in the presence of Mr. Leventritt, Vice-President, and the School Committee,” the Times reported under the heading “Examination of a Jewish Sunday School.” “The synagogue was very well attended by adult members of both sexes, and the proceedings were of a most interesting character. The children, whose ages appeared to range from seven up to fourteen years, answered with commendable readiness a great variety of questions in Biblical History, and exhibited a high proficiency in the religious studies to which the school is dedicated. The Rev. Dr. Adler, pastor of the synagogue, made a feeling and eloquent address, and distributed prizes to the following children:” including a “Master Fredrick Jacobi.” 9

After his naturalization in 1868, Frederick Jacobi Sr. moved to California around 1870 where he married Flora Brandenstein in San Francisco in 1875. Her parents, Joseph Brandenstein and Jane Rosenbaum, were from a distinguished German-Jewish family. According to Frances Dinkelspiel he was in the wholesale wine business, establishing the company Lachman and Jacobi in 1876 and sending for his brother Jacob in New York to join him in the business. The 1880 Census for San Francisco shows Frederick Jacobi, “Liquor Merchant,” aged 35 (he gives his place of birth as New York ), living with his wife Flora, aged 23, occupation, “Keeping House.” They have two daughters at the time, Frances , 3, and Edith, age one. Living with them is Jacobi’s brother Jacob, 26, and two twenty -year old female servants, one German, one Chinese. 10 Another daughter, Rena, was born later in 1880. Frederick Jacobi Jr., the composer, was born in San Francisco May 4, 1891 .

Ernest Peninou and Sidney Greenleaf, in their history Winemaking in California, record the successes of Frederick Jacobi’s Sr.’s entrepreneurship. He joined Abraham Lachman in 1876 to found Lachman & Jacobi at the southeast corner of First and Market streets. Jacob Jacobi, who had previously worked in real estate, joined the firm as a bookkeeper in 1880. The same year Lachman & Jacobi organized the Fresno Vineyard Company with large land holdings near Fresno . Peninou and Greenleaf write, “the firm made remarkable progress during the 1880’s. They built in San Francisco at Second and Bryant streets a cellar with a capacity of two and a half million gallons and one of the best-equipped in the state.”

They made all their own cooperage, employing twenty-four coopers, who turned out some one hundred and seventy-five barrels a day. They were pioneers in sending their own salesmen into all parts of the country and in maintaining distributors in all the principal cities of the United States . In 1888 they bought an interest in the New York agency handling their wines, which took the name of Eddinger Brothers & Jacobi. By this date thirty per cent of all the wine shipped out of California was handled by Lachman & Jacobi. In 1891 the firm acquired full ownership of their New York agency. Frederick Jacobi became manager there. 11

Though in New York , the Jacobis maintained close business and family connection with San Francisco , particularly since Frederick ’s brother Jacob had married his wife’s sister, Edith Brandenstein. One of Jacob’s and Edith’s children, the writer and teacher Flora J. Arnstein, born in 1885, has left an oral history interview conducted when she was 100 years old that provides important information about Frederick Jacobi Jr.’s early life and his continued connection with California. 12

Flora Arnstein was named after the mother of Frederick Jacobi. Through information from her father and her own visits to Jacobi’s parents in New York, she relates that her grandfather (Aaron Jacobi) was impoverished but took his children to concerts, that her father Jacob was also musically gifted but did not have the opportunity to develop his talents, and that Jacobi’s grandmother was religious but that his grandfather only went to the temple on the high holidays. Perhaps as a result, Flora J. Arnstein’s parents were not affiliated with any temple or practicing Jews in San Francisco . The New York Jacobis travelled every summer to San Francisco and it is these annual train rides across the rugged landscape of the American West, as well as vacations in Santa Cruz, that may also have given rise to Jacobi’s nature-inspired compositions such as the 1917 A California Suite, the 1924 String Quartet Based on American Indian Themes, the 1925 Poet in the Desert, and the 1927-28 Indian Dances. 13

Flora J. Arnstein was very fond of her younger cousin, who was born rather sickly from jaundice. When she left school at the age of fourteen, Flora lived with the Jacobi’s in New York at the turn of the century in their home on 59 ^th street , right opposite the park. She remembers Jacobi as being very friendly and open about everything, that they went to concerts together, and that his parents encouraged his musical studies. Flora also had musical talent and played piano four hands with Jacobi. He encouraged her to enroll in classes with his own music teachers: piano studies with Paul Gallico and Rafael Joseffy and harmony and counter-point with Rubin Goldmark. In her unpublished novel No End to Morning, written circa 1934, Arnstein portrays Jacobi’s parents and the composer himself in the characters Uncle Ned, Aunt Flora and their son Tony. 14

The December 6, 1917 San Francisco Symphony Orchestra program notes for the premiere of Jacobi’s A California Suite, conducted by Alfred Hertz, greatly assist with the early chronology of his life. “Frederick Jacobi, a native of California , was born in San Francisco May 4, 1891 . At a very early age he displayed musical tendencies, and at the age of eight years his musical education was seriously commenced,” the program notes state. “He later studied in New York with Rubin Goldmark and Rafael Joseffy. In 1911 he went to Berlin and continued his studies at the Hochschule under Paul Juon for two years. On returning to this country, Mr. Jacobi became, in 1913, Assistant Conductor at the Metropolitan Opera House, under Mr. Alfred Hertz.”

The composer and conductor Lazare Saminsky (1882-1959), in an address on American composers given in Paris in 1922, provides still further biographical information on Jacobi’s early music studies. “He was for some time a student of the great master I. [Isidore] Philipp [the renowned piano teacher at the Paris Conservatoire], then had his theoretical training with Rubin Goldmark in New York and with Paul Juon in Berlin in 1910-12,” Saminsky reported. 15 A Romantic composer, the Russian-born Paul Juon (1872-1940) had the moniker “the Russian Brahms” and influenced Jacobi’s own composing aesthetic.

In a 1949 interview Jacobi himself recalled this period at the turn of the century. “I started writing little pieces for my family when I was quite young. I was taken to a musical comedy, and when I came home I picked out tunes on the piano and later criticized a grown-up friend of the family who came and played the tunes for us but in the wrong key. This incident and others determined my parents to start giving me piano lessons. Later, when I was being given lessons in both piano and composition, it seemed at first I liked both equally. But after I went to Berlin to study I found myself giving more and more time to composing and less and less time to playing. It gradually dawned on me that composing was to be my career.” 16

 

Jacobi’s early piano studies with Paolo Gallico and Rafael Joseffy, composition studies with Rubin Goldmark, and studies with Paul Juon at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik were all turning points in his development as a composer. Another American composer of Jacobi’s generation, Wallingford Riegger (1885-1961), also studied at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik where, according to Nicholas E. Tawa, he “learned the current musical styles of Central Europe .” 17

Born in New York , Rubin Goldmark (1872-1936) studied music at the Vienna Conservatory and later composition with Antonin Dvorak (October 1892-93) while attending the National Conservatory in New York 1891-93. He acted on Dvorak’s challenge to composers to use native materials in their compositions. His Hiawatha Overture was performed by the Boston Symphony in 1900 and he composed The Call of the Plains for violin and piano in 1915. The Philharmonic Society of New York performed his most famous work, the Requiem for orchestra, suggested by Lincoln ’s Gettysburg address, in 1919 and in 1923 he used African-American folk material in his Negro Rhapsody. John Tasker Howard writes in Our American Music, “Goldmark was one of the leading teachers in Manhattan , first privately, and then as head of the composition faculty of the Juilliard School of Music (1924-36)…his composition pupils included such widely divergent composers as Frederick Jacobi, Aaron Copland, Nicolai Berezowsky, Bernard Wagenaar, Vittorio Giannini, Paul Nordoff, and George Gershwin.” 18

Jacobi’s use of native materials and American locales in his 1917 A California Suite for orchestra, the 1924 String Quartet Based on Indian Themes and the 1927-28 suite for orchestra, Indian Dances, was undoubtedly influenced by Goldmark. In his 1936 Modern Music tribute to his former teacher Jacobi wrote, “his devotion to the classics was both touching and inspiring; touching because of its emotional and almost mystic love; inspiring because of its intellectual grasp, its unflagging joy in the concrete music as such…The tinsel and glitter of much of our contemporary music will inevitably fade and the dust which fills our eyes will eventually be laid: our children will smile at much that has won temporary acclaim. But in the works of Rubin Goldmark they will sense a man who had the courage to go his way, irrespective of momentary modes and moods.” 19

Jacobi’s initial lessons with Paolo Gallico, Rafael Joseffy and Rubin Goldmark in New York , followed by his subsequent studies at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik, enabled him to develop a professional career in music. On the basis of information provided by the composer, David Ewen writes in his 1934 Composers of Today, “upon his return to America , Jacobi was engaged as an assistant conductor to [Alfred] Hertz and [Artur] Bodanzky at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York .” 20

The German-born Hertz was the principal conductor of German opera at the Met from 1902 to 1915 when he became conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra until 1930. In San Francisco , Hertz premiered compositions by Jacobi in 1916 (The Pied Piper), 1917 (A California Suite), 1920-21 (The Eve of St. Agnes) and 1924 (Symphony No. 1), and conducted Indian Dances in the 1928-29 season. Artur Bodanzky, the Austrian-born pupil and former associate of Gustav Mahler and Hertz’s successor at the Metropolitan Opera, conducted Jacobi’s The Eve of St. Agnes with the New Symphony Orchestra in the 1920-21 season and The Poet in the Desert with the Society of the Friends of Music in New York in November of 1925.

Frederick Jacobi’s name appears (spelled “Jacoby”) immediately following Arturo Toscanini’s in the “Trial Balance of Artist’s Ledger Season 1913/14,” in the Metropolitan Opera Archives. The Ledger states his position as “Assistant Conductor” and indicates that he was paid $150 that season. On April 16, 1914 he received $100 for “Special remuneration for Season’s work” and on May 2, $50 for “Services Atlanta week ending May 2.” The Ledger also states that Jacobi “Sailed May 5 for [illegible initials] to Paris .” The Met season had ended April 26 and Toscanini, Caruso, Geraldine Farrar and a large part of the Met company travelled by two special trains to Atlanta for a week of performances. 21

The Metropolitan must have been satisfied with Jacobi’s services for the Archives has his contract, signed March 31,1914, contracting him “for the season of 1914/1915 for a minimum of twenty-three (23) weeks, beginning about the middle of November.” The contract stipulates a salary of $25 a week, “which sum shall be payable at the end of each week,” for “such professional services as Assistant-Conductor, Solo-Correpetitor, as well as Musical Stage assistant.” On April 2, 1915 , Giulio Gatti-Casazza, the Met’s General Manager, notified Jacobi that his contract was “hereby renewed for the season of 1915/16 upon the same terms and conditions as those prevailing for the season 1914/1915.” The New York Times mentions Jacobi’s appointment as assistant conductor, along that of Anton Hoff, Gennaro Papi, Francesco Romei, Hans Steiner and Willy Tyroler, on May 4, 1915 . 22 Jacobi signed his last Met contract, for the same professional services, with a raise to $30 per week, on May 1, 1916 . The 23-week term of the contract for the 1916/1917 season ran from November 6, 1916 to April 22, 1917 . 23

Jacobi did not actually conduct at the Met but, using his musical and language abilities in German and French, worked as a rehearsal conductor with singers and assisted the conductors. His piano playing must also have been excellent since a Met database shows him playing at Met Sunday night concerts. On November 29, 1914 he played the Triumphal Entry of the Bojars (Halvorsen); on December 6, 1914 Sylvia: Cortège de Bacchus (Delibes); and on February 14, 1915 the Hungarian Rhapsody No 2 (Liszt). On December 31, 1916 he accompanied Carl Schlegel in an aria from Tannhäuser (“O Du Mein holder Abendstern”) and three songs (“Kleines Bächlein,” “In a Temple Garden” and “Marching Song”) by Haile, Spross and Eisler. 24

Fritz Jacobi recalls, “I grew up in a household filed with music and, when my father completed a composition, he always performed it for us, although he generally didn’t tell anybody what he was working on until he had finished. I heard live performances of his chamber works, in many of which my mother [Irene Jacobi] participated as an ensemble pianist. I always liked his music, even when it was ‘modern’ in his early days as a composer.” 25

Irene Jacobi attended the New York Institute of Musical Art, which later became the Juilliard School , and married her husband May 29, 1917 . Jacobi had worked as a “repetiteur” or vocal coach during the Metropolitan Opera’s 1916-17 season. “I taught those idiots with silver tonsils their parts, “ he told Fritz Jacobi. “He played the celeste in the orchestra pit for ‘The Magic Flute’ and was once asked to serve as prompter. It so happened that the lady who ultimately became my mother, Irene Schwarcz, was sitting in a box near the stage. ‘Darling, you were wonderful,’ she told him after the performance. ‘I heard every word you said!’” 26

A concert pianist in her own right, Irene Jacobi performed her husband’s compositions with orchestras and string quartets in the United States and Europe and recorded on the RCA, SPA and CRI labels. Reviewing her performance of the 1938 Hagiographa in 1949, Alfred Frankenstein, music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, called her “an especially authoritative and brilliant performer of her husband’s music.” They would have three children, Maxine (1918-1923), Frederick Arthur (“Fritz,” b. 1921) and Dorothea Rebecca (1927-1969).

When the Swiss-born Ernest Bloch (1880-1959) moved to the United States in 1916, he became within a few years the best known and widest performed contemporary composer. John H. Mueller, analyzing the repertoire of the ten oldest major symphony orchestras for his 1951 study The American Symphony Orchestra, found that Bloch’s works consisted of over twenty percent of all American compositions performed during the period 1925 to 1930. 27

Jacobi studied composition privately with Ernest Bloch in 1919 in New York where Bloch was teaching at the David Mannes College of Music. Writing his mother April 28, 1919 Bloch mentions, “Mon élève et ami Jacobi vient de nous inviter à dîner avec lui” [“My pupil and friend Jacobi has just invited us to dine with him.”] When Jacobi settled his account with Bloch for his composition lessons before the summer break, Bloch wrote him June 22, 1919, “Merci pour votre chèque et le gentil mot qui l’accompagnait…Les sentiments que vous éprouvez pour moi sont tout à fait réciproques, mon cher Jacobi, et je suis hereux d’avoir rencontré une nature aussi artiste et amicale que la vôtre” [“Thank you for your cheque and the kind words that accompanied it…The sentiments that you feel for me are completely mutual, my dear Jacobi, and I am happy to have met a temperament as artistic and amicable as yours.”]

In 1919 Bloch won the $1,000 Coolidge Prize, established by the American philanthropist and music promoter Elisabeth Sprague Coolidge (1864-1953), for his Suite for Viola and Piano. Bloch wrote his mother September 25, 1919 from the Berkshire Festival in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where Coolidge had invited 500 guests for the premiere of his Suite, reporting, “Mon ami et élève Jacobi est aussi venu” [“My friend and pupil Jacobi came as well.”] By October 1919, Bloch had over twenty private students, including Jacobi and Roger Sessions. 28

Jacobi and Bloch developed a genuine friendship that transcended their pupil-teacher relationship. In 1921 Jacobi wrote Bloch about the birth of his son Fritz. Bloch replied in a moving communication September 27 that at the same time as Jacobi’s letter, he received a cable announcing the death of his mother on September 25. He mentions that Jacobi had seen his mother at the Berkshire Festival the previous year, his grief at not being able to close her eyes and kiss her for the last time, and that “nous ne sommes que poussière” [“we are only dust.”]

On March 22, 1922, Bloch refers to a letter from Jacobi about the successful performance of Bloch’s String Quartet No. 1 in New York, and on December 30, 1922 a visit with his “vrais amis,” his true friends, including Jacobi, in New York. On June 27, 1926 Bloch wrote Jacobi from San Francisco, where he was teaching at the Conservatory of Music, thanking him for his encouragement and for being one of only two Americans who had purchased the score of his Piano Quintet No. 1. When Bloch won the Carolyn Beebe Prize of the New York Chamber Music Society for his Four Episodes later that year, Jacobi was one of the jurors along with Albert Stoessel, Carl Engel, Howard Hanson and Emerson Whithorne.

Bloch wrote Jacobi on October 6, 1931 regarding the title and composition of his rhapsodic Sonata No. 2, the Poème mystique, composed and inspired, like Jacobi’s String Quartet Based on American Indian Themes, in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1924. His communication is between one respected professional composer to another. Irene Jacobi had performed Bloch’s Sonata No. 1 for violin and piano in Cleveland on March 25, 1929 . On November 9, 1932 , she performed his Quintet for Piano and Strings with the Ribaupierre Quartet in Lausanne while the Jacobis were living in Switzerland . 29

Jacobi reviewed the Columbia record release of Bloch’s Violin Concerto in Modern Music in 1940. He began by stating, “To those of us familiar with Bloch’s earlier music these moods and methods are old friends: the same opulent web of sound, the well-known fanfares of open and barbaric fifths followed by the familiar dramatic descent into the sombre and bitter depths...The methods of juxtaposing and combining fragments of themes; the alternation of mountain-peaks of exultation with valleys of despair; the systematically built-up climaxes—all these we know.” He concluded his review with “One feels again that Bloch is one of the few great composers of our time: a master fully mature and a figure unquestionably unique.” 30

 

In addition to Rubin Goldmark, Paul Juon and Ernest Bloch, Jacobi was also influenced by Igor Stravinsky, about whom he wrote more than on any other composer. In an article entitled “And After Stravinsky—?” published in the very first, February 1924 issue of Modern Music, Jacobi’s colleague, the composer Emerson Whithorne wrote, “we have only to inspect certain works of Malipiero and Casella in Italy, Poulenc and Milhaud in France, Goossens and Bliss in England, and Griffes and Jacobi in the United States to discover how potent is the hypnosis of this young Russian.” 31 Claire Reis writes in her 1955 autobiography Composers, Conductors and Critics that when she and the League produced the first stage presentation in America of Stravinsky’s Les Noces at the Metropolitan Opera on April 25, 1929, conducted by Leopold Stokowski, “Aaron Copland, Marc Blitzstein, Louis Gruenberg, and the late Frederick Jacobi were the four distinguished young composers” who played the four grand pianos called for by Stravinsky’s score. 32

Jacobi wrote about Stravinsky in Modern Music in May-June of 1928 (“The New Apollo”) and three times in 1935 (“Reflections on Ariadne and Mavra,” “On Hearing Stravinsky’s Perséphone,” and “Stravinsky Begins His Chronicles”). All four articles, revealing Jacobi’s great familiarity with and lucid insights into Stravinsky’s compositions and creative process, were republished in Carol J. Oja’s 1982 Stravinsky in Modern Music. (Oja’s collection from Modern Music also includes Frederick Jacobi Jr.’s amusing 1939 vignette “Harvard Soirée” about Stravinsky’s first concert at that university, written by Fritz Jacobi when he was a freshman and writing for the Harvard Advocate.) In “On Hearing Stravinsky’s Perséphone,” Jacobi called the composer “the most eminent master of music of our day.” Reviewing the first French edition of his Chroniques de ma Vie in “Stravinsky Begins His Chronicles,” he asks, “At what moment does the divine drop alight upon the head of the anointed one? This eternal mystery is baffling each time anew!”

In early 1934, Jacobi provided the following information regarding his musical preferences for David Ewen’s Composers of Today, published in December. These were “at the moment, Weber, Verdi and Mozart. The former two I consider far greater than I formerly did and than, I believe, is generally considered to be the case.”

This of course does not mean that I have any lack of love and adoration for Bach and Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, etc. I believe that the Wagner-Strauss school will not appear in history to be so important as it appeared to us to be in but recent years. Of the more recent composers Debussy seems to me by far the greatest. Of contemporaries I admire most Stravinsky and Ernest Bloch. Among my American contemporaries I admire most Louis Gruenberg, Aaron Copland and Roger Sessions, tho I have a great respect for some of our composers of the past (Rubin Goldmark for his technical mastery and Arthur Foote for his unusual purity of style). I am also a tremendous admirer of good jazz and of George Gershwin in particular. 33

The influence of all these composers shaped Frederick Jacobi’s musical aesthetic. Of equal importance, however, were his ethical and religious studies that shaped his philosophic outlook. At the same time as his early piano studies in New York , Jacobi attended the Ethical Culture School from 1901 to 1905, and again in 1906. 34 David Ewen, writes in his 1934 Composers of Today, “the major portion of his education was pursued in New York City where he attended the Ethical Culture School , of which he is today a patron.” 35

Established as the Workingman’s School in 1880 and renamed a decade later, the Ethical Culture School was created by the New York Society for Ethical Culture, founded by Felix Adler in 1876. The son of Rabbi Samuel Adler, head of the most influential Jewish Reform congregation in New York City , Temple Emmanu-El , Felix Adler believed that Judaism should be based on ethics and on eliciting the best in others and in oneself in an infinite spiritual universe. 36 According to Fritz Jacobi, “both my parents and my future parents-in-law were married by an important official of the movement.” Herman Voaden experienced a profound crisis of religious belief at the age of 14 in 1917 and similarly rejected traditional Christianity to develop, over the next decade, the concepts of his own “new religion.” In many of his plays of the 1930s, central characters seek self-perfection and the self-realization of those around them through artistic expression and union with nature. 37

Frederick Jacobi’s father died in San Francisco at the age of 65 on November 18, 1911 38 and his mother at the age of 59 in New York January 27, 1915 . 39 According to Fritz Jacobi, because his father’s three older sisters “were all married to well-to-do investment bankers and my father inherited virtually the entire estate, accumulated through wine and real-estate businesses…we always lived comfortably on his income from securities.” 40 This financial security allowed Jacobi to devote himself completely to his music. His first orchestral composition to be publicly performed was the symphonic poem The Pied Piper. Composed in 1915, the work was premiered by Alfred Hertz and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra March 24 and 26, 1916. On the concert program, it was played after Haydn’s Symphony in G Major and was followed by Franz Schubert’s Symphony in C Major.

When he first presented a ten-page typed scenario for The Prodigal Son to Herman Voaden at the beginning of their collaboration in the summer of 1942, Jacobi confessed at the end of his outline, “it is my first attempt at a stage conception. Although I have hoped for many years to write for the stage, which I love, I am entirely without experience.” Yet in The Pied Piper, he already told a dramatic story and musically created settings, conflict and characters in action. In his San Francisco Symphony program notes for the premiere, he indicated that he took as his source material the oldest mention in English of the Medieval German legend of the Piper of Hamlin, Richard Verstegan’s A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities of 1605. In the account by Verstegan (ca. 1550-1640), the legend is called “The Pide Piper” and Jacobi’s composition is spelled as such in the concert program. “I have tried in a general way to follow the story as related therein,” Jacobi wrote.

The slow introduction (moderato) presents the two principal themes. The first (Oboe solo) being the piper’s lay, his piping; and the second (‘Celli con sordini—later muted horns) representing the personality of the Piper, as I picture him: the solitary wanderer from the distant Unknown, drawing to him, as a magnet, both man and beast. The main movement starts with an episode representing the vermin-ridden town of Hamlin . The rats: Doppio Movemento, Allegro (Viola). A subsidiary theme: (Trumpets and clarinets) is the vain protest of the burghers against the plague which is over-running them. These two themes are worked together into a climax which ends in the sudden appearance of the Piper who, without much delay, leads the rats to their watery bier, in episode drawn mostly from theme one, the Piper’s lay.

The third episode is the wrangle between the Piper and the burghers over the promised recompense. A new theme: (Trumpets) is introduced. Then comes, of course, his appeal to the children—the children (Flute solo, celesta and harp) who follow the sound of the Pipe over the sun-lit hills to some happier land. There is a short epilogue similar in mood to the slow introduction. The whole piece is written freely in the form of the classic overture. 41

 

Jacobi left the Metropolitan Opera at the expiration of his contract on April 22, 1917 and, after marrying Irene Schwarcz May 29, 1917 , returned to San Francisco and enlisted in the Army. According to Fritz Jacobi, “he hoped to enlist in the Medical Corps so that he could be of service to his country without actually firing a gun. However, when the recruiting sergeant learned that he was a musician, he said, ‘That’s great! We need a saxophone player in the Army band on Alcatraz ’ (then a military base and not a prison). My father replied: ‘I play the piano. I don’t play the saxophone.’ ‘You’ll learn, buddy,’ the recruiting sergeant said, ‘you’ll learn!’” 42 Jacobi not only learned to play the saxophone while stationed on the Army base on Alcatraz Island but also found the time to complete the symphonic poem that would bring him national attention, A California Suite. His Psalmody, for solo voices, chorus and orchestra, is also inscribed “ Sept. 4, 1918 , Alcatraz .”

 

 

Expressing Nature

Jacobi and Voaden both incorporated native materials in their work. Voaden’s plays of the 1930s, influenced by the striking colourful non-realist landscapes of the Group of Seven painters, depicted the grandeur of Canadian nature and characters attempting to become one with its spirit. 43 Composed during the summers of 1916-17, Jacobi’s A California Suite was first performed by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra December 6 and 9, 1917. It was preceded by Cherubini’s Anacréon Overture and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Opus 21, and was followed by Berlioz’ Le Carnaval Romain Overture. The April 10, 1919 Musical Courier reported of a subsequent performance by the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, “the suite is not programmatic, but is rather a series of pictures suggested by the colorful life and romantic ‘air’ which is the boast of California.”

Of his ‘California Suite’ Mr. Jacobi says: ‘Carmelo, the first movement, tells of the tranquility of dawn in the peaceful Valley of Carmel , where I passed the summer. The second movement pictures a fiesta in Monterey , where every phase of such a festival is suggested. Into this movement comes the well recognized tango and other dances. The third brings the setting to San Francisco , where in the moonlight, brooding over the mission Dolores Cemetery , I found exquisite material for an elegy. Easter Sunday at Santa Barbara was my inspiration for the final movement. In this I had in mind the monks walking in the early dawn in ecclesiastical procession, approaching through an ever increasing sunlight the Santa Barbara Mission.’ 44

“In the early-morning atmosphere of the Far West one’s senses are reborn,” Jacobi wrote in 1925 in an account of the Inter-tribal Festival in New Mexico published in Modern Music. “One marvels anew at sunset and sunrise and at those two eternal phenomena—melody and rhythm. And one sees in the simple strength of Indian music, wild, yet ordered, a complete expression of the soul of a great race.” 45 Jacobi did not romanticize or sentimentalize this indigenous art form. In the same article he wrote, “Indian music is music of today. It is more of Stravinsky than of Brahms. It has a certain objectiveness. Not sentimental, not descriptive or anecdotal, it has clarity and strength of form. As in jazz, the rhythmic element predominates, but here the rhythm is a more integral part of the melody, of the phrase. There is also far more diversity of rhythm than in jazz.”

Fritz Jacobi recalls, “my father had always been fascinated by the American southwest and by Indian art.” Ernest Bloch was similarly struck by this natural environment and the art of American indigenous peoples. In a letter of November 14, 1924 written in Santa Fe , New Mexico , he reported a trip to the pueblo of Tesuque. “Extraordinaire!! Le pueblo, les Indiens, les gueules, la couleur, les costumes, inimaginables de beauté . Et les danses! Et cette musique! Ce style! Cette forme! Cela durait du matin au lever du soleil, jusqu’au soir!” [“Extraordinary!! The pueblo, the Indians, the faces, the colour, the costumes, unimaginable beauty. And the dances! And that music! That style! That form! It lasted from morning at sunrise until night!” He also mentions that “ Il paraît que Jacobi (!!!) comme tant d’autres, sans idées à eux, sont venus pour tâcher de capter leur musique!! Mais sans succès! J’ai été plus heureux, et bien que n’ayant pas pris de papier, j’ai pu noter quelques mélodies étonnantes” [It appears that Jacobi (!!!), like so many others without ideas of their own, came to try to capture their music!! But without success! I had more luck and even though I hadn’t taken paper was able to write down some remarkable melodies.”] 46

Bloch seems to have found it paradoxical that a Jewish composer would try to adapt music from American First Nations. (Two years later he himself would quote Amerindian melodies in the first movement of his America: An Epic Rhapsody, completed in San Francisco .) But several of Jacobi’s compositions of the 1920s were influenced and inspired by American Indian music and Pueblo , Navajo and Hopi paintings. His String Quartet Based on Indian Themes was written in Santa Barbara , California , during the summer of 1924 and premiered by the Chamber Music Society of San Francisco in October the same year. The New YorkTimes reported, “Frederick Jacobi’s ‘String Quartet’ was given its first public performance by the Chamber Music Society of San Francisco in October. The San Francisco Chronicle called it ‘One of the finest and most significant works in this form to come from an American composer. Aside from its excellencies in style, both in contrapuntal patterns and in the restrained modernity of harmony, it is music profoundly sincere.’ The themes are based on Amerind tunes found in the New Mexican pueblos of Laguna, Santa Clara and Tesuque.” 47

The String Quartet Based on Indian Themes was selected to represent American composers at the annual festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music and was performed at the Zürich Festival of the ISCM on June 19, 1926 . Reviewing the Zürich Festival in Modern Music, Aaron Copland referred to “Frederick Jacobi’s attractive string quartet which, in our opinion, is the best work we have yet heard by this composer.” 48 “The string quartet is in three movements—allegro furioso, lento, presto ritmico, and is based throughout on Red Indian themes,” Leigh Henry writes in Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music. “Of his use of these themes Jacobi says: ‘Though to our senses it may appear limited in its scope and lacking in emotional warmth, it has the supreme attribute of intense and thrilling vitality—a fundamental and barbaric energy.’” 49

Further information about the piece is provided in the program notes for the first New York performance of the Quartet at the November 19, 1926 League of Composers concert held at the Brooklyn Museum . “The second and last movements of this Quartet are based on Indian themes. Those of the second are taken from Natalie Curtis’ ‘The Indians’ Book.’ Concerning the song which the composer has used as the main theme of this movement, Miss Curtis gives the following brief summary:”

“Tuari (Young Eagle) is at work far from his native village. When asked for a song, he said: ‘I will sing you my own song that I sing to my wife.’ ‘But how can you sing to her when she is at home in Laguna and you are here?’ The Pueblo youth stared with astonishment at such a question, then answered quietly: ‘I sing to her though I am far away, and she, too, sings to me. The meaning of my song is this: I am here, working for you. Take care of yourself, and take care of the horses and the sheep and the fields.’”

The themes in the last movement were heard by the composer during a recent stay in New Mexico. They are part of the ritualistic dances of the Indian Pueblos of Santa Clara and Tesuque—Rain-Dances, Corn-Dances, and War Dances.

The principal theme is part of the Rain-Dance of the Pueblo of Santa Clara. The prayer for rain is, naturally enough, the most common and the most ardent prayer among the Indians of the arid Southwest. The second theme is taken from the Navajo Dance, a non-religious social dance of the Pueblo of Tesuque. It commemorates a legendary event in the history of the village. In days past, so the story goes, the village was saved from an onslaught of the Navajos by the cleverness and bravery of the women. Accordingly, the dance is given by the women, who disguised as Navajo warriors—even to moustaches and beards—dance and sing what to their recollection is a series of Navajo songs. They dance all day rhythmically and vigorously. The third theme is a War-Dance from the Pueblo of Santa Clara. Like most Indian war-dances, it is an extremely simple melody and very open and ‘major’ in character. 50

Jacobi spent the winter of 1927 in Taos , New Mexico , studying Indian music and culture. When asked in his 1949 interview what had attracted him to Indian music, he replied, “the irregularity of the phrase lengths, the sort of ordered asymmetry, rather than the symmetry we are so accustomed to. Its immense vitality. The time I spent collecting melodies with my wife among the Pueblos of New Mexico was a glimpsing of humanity across the chasm of thousands of years.” 51

Jacobi’s second major composition based on native American Indian music contained the sections “Buffalo Dance,” “Butterfly Dance,” “War Dance” and “Corn Dance.” The June 24, 1928 New York Times announced that the work, under the title “Jacobi’s ‘Indian’ Quartet,” would be premiered by the Chautauqua Chamber Music Society (the Mischakoff String Quartet) in Chautauqua during the summer of 1928. Serge Koussevitzky premiered the suite for orchestra, under the title Indian Dances, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra November 8, 1928 . The work was subsequently performed by the San Francisco Symphony, by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Symphony in Carnegie Hall in April of 1929, as well as in Warsaw and Copenhagen . In August 1929, Jacobi presented an address, “American Indian Music,” to musicians and music educators attending the Anglo-American Musicians’ Conference at Lausanne . 52

 

One of the Most Promising of the Young School of American Musicians

Jacobi composed over forty works between 1914 and 1942, many of them performed by major symphony orchestras across the U.S. and also in Europe . While Voaden worked to establish an indigenous theatre and drama in Canada, Jacobi laboured on behalf of contemporary composers and modern music in the U.S. “As early as 1919,” Carol J. Oja writes in Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s, “Jacobi was identified as ‘one of the most promising of the young school of American musicians.’” 53 The citation is from the Musical Courier, published in New York , in its April 10, 1919 article, “Jacobi’s ‘ California ’ Suite Well Liked.” The Courier cited reviews of his Suite, performed by the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Emil Oberhoffer, from the Minneapolis Tribune and the Minneapolis Journal. According to the Tribune, “the whole work shows real imaginative power and the orchestration throughout is extremely interesting.” For the Journal music critic, “the novelty was ‘A California Suite’ by Frederick Jacobi, a California composer. Its tonal poems, with echoes of California ’s Mexican past, as the impressionistic atmosphere given to the nature paintings, proved real music.”

Jacobi returned to New York following his discharge from the U.S. Army in March of 1919. In a letter from San Francisco of June 22, 1924 , Ernest Bloch wrote that his former pupil left San Francisco because he felt musically isolated. 54 In New York Jacobi could find the company of other young composers. His name appears among a group of musicians, conductors and composers issuing a public tribute following the sudden death, at the age of thirty-six, of Charles Tomlinson Griffes, one of America ’s first modern composers, on April 8, 1920 . 55 In its 1920-21 season, the New Symphony Orchestra in New York performed Jacobi’s symphonic tone poem, The Eve of St. Agnes.

In 1921 Jacobi was one of the charter members of the American Music Guild, founded in New York by a group of young American composers “to learn each other’s music and to present worthy works by other American composers to the New York public.” 56 In addition to Jacobi, the founding members included Marion Bauer, Emerson Whithorne, Louis Gruenberg, Sandor Harmati, Charles Haubiel, A. Walter Kramer, Harold Morris, Albert Stoessel and Deems Taylor. Carol J. Oja writes of the American Guild concerts, “most of these pieces had been recently composed and represented a transitional state between early-twentieth-century idioms—especially the lush textures and altered harmonies of French impressionism—and the varied approaches to dissonance that characterized modernism in the late 1920s.” 57

Jacobi was programmed in the Guild’s first 1922-23 season of three public concerts in the Town Hall and three private concerts at the New York Public Library. 58 Soprano Povla Frijsh sang his “Love and Death” and premiered his “Ballad,” accompanied by the composer on the piano, at the MacDowell Gallery, April 22, 1922 . 59 On November 8, 1922 Helen Teschner Tas, with Jacobi again on the piano, performed his Three Preludes for Violin and Piano at the 58 ^th Street Branch of the New York Public Library. The Guild presented his “Three Songs for Soprano” at the Town Hall February 6, 1924 , along with Edward MacDowell’s Sonata eroica, Albert Stoessel’s Five Pieces for Violin and Piano, and works by other composers. In October of 1922, Jacobi had unsuccessfully attempted to secure the support of the philanthropist Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge for the American Music Guild. 60 Without private patronage or public financial support, the Guild closed after its 1923-24 season.

Jacobi probably met Claire Reis, the future Chair of the League of Composers, through his wife Irene Schwarcz. She and Reis had been piano students with Bertha Fiering Tapper at the New York Institute of Musical Art. According to Oja, “Schwarcz’s name appears on recital programs with Reis as early as 1908…During the 1920s, Schwarcz became a frequent performer on modern-music concerts, and her husband joined with Reis in founding the League of Composers.” 61

Jacobi’s professional association with Reis began when she organized an all-American tenth anniversary concert of her People’s Music League, founded to provide free music to immigrant and low-income audiences, at the Cooper Union February 12, 1922 . He was one of the composers, along with Rebecca Clark, Louis Gruenberg, Walter Kramer, Lazare Saminsky and Deems Taylor, who performed one of his own works, the Three Preludes for Violin and Piano. According to Reis, “the audience received the program with enormous enthusiasm and the press recognized it as a real innovation. One critic wrote that he ‘doubted whether so promising an array of our present composers has ever before appeared together’.” 62 “The program served to answer with dignity the irreconcilable critics of native composition, and indicated also the devoted and serious aim which distinguishes the writing of these musicians,” the February 18, 1922 Musical America reported. “The program successfully accomplished its purpose in revealing the high standard of these native writings, and in demonstrating the erudition which accompanies the efforts of each of these still very young writers.” 63

Committed to bringing classical music to wider audiences, Frederick and Irene Jacobi served on the Music Committee of the People’s Music League. Elbridge Adams, a prominent attorney and the League’s Vice-President, commented on the small size and elite social composition of classical music audiences in New York in the January 1922 Musical America.

If one realizes that in this city of six millions only some 40,000 persons attend the opera and concerts where admission fees are charged, one can appreciate how few of those who need it are getting the actual benefits which music brings into the lives of the people. These 40,000 music patrons are mostly the well-to-do class and the poorer classes have to get along with the hurdy-gurdy and an occasional brass band. It is necessary, therefore, to bring the best sort of music to the great majority. 64

In addition to the American Music Guild and the People’s Music League, Jacobi was also associated with Edgar Varèse’s avant-garde International Composers’ Guild, founded in 1921. On April 23, 1922 , he premiered his “Circe” and “Medusa,” sung by Nina Koshetz with the composer at the piano, in the Guild’s third concert at the Greenwich Village Theatre. The two songs were programmed with works by Varèse, Carlos Salzedo, Francis Poulenc, Sergey Prokofiev, Erik Satie and others. 65

Varèse founded the Guild in 1921 “for the purpose of introducing to American audiences new music from all parts of the world.” 66 Claire Reis organized concerts for the International Composers Guild as its executive director in 1922. The biggest success of the Guild had been the February 4, 1923 sold-out American premiere of Arnold Schönberg’s celebrated Pierrot Lunaire at the Klaw Theater, conducted by Louis Gruenberg following twenty-two rehearsals in Reis’ home. Reis wanted a repeat performance of Pierrot Lunaire. But the autocratic Varèse, pointing to the Guild’s charter that provided for only programming premières, refused. His wife, Louise Varèse, later described the confrontation among the Guild members: “Mrs. Reis and Gruenberg, supported by Saminsky, Jacobi, and Whithorne, voted for a repetition of Schoenberg’s work. Their argument was eminently practical. The Guild needed money and the success of the first performance would, they argued, have aroused sufficient curiosity to ensure a second crowded house.” 67

Another source of dissension was the fact that the French-born and educated Varèse favoured European composers. According to David Metzer, “Frustrated by Varèse’s autocratic leadership, Reis and other members—Louis Gruenberg, [the patron] Alma Wertheim, Lazare Saminsky, Leo Ornstein, Emerson Whithorne, Frederick Jacobi, [the art dealer] Stephen Bourgeois, and [the publicist] Minna Lederman—seceded. In March 1923 they established the League of Composers.” 68 Reis again served as Chair of the executive committee and would hold that position for the next quarter century, when Aaron Copland became Chair of the League. 69

It is important to remember that Jacobi had already won a public profile as an established American composer before the League’s first public concert in November of 1923. The Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra performed his California Suite in April of 1922. In October 1922, Lazare Saminsky discussed Jacobi’s compositions, along with that of other American Music Guild composers, in his lecture “Les jeunes compositeurs américains”[“Young American Composers”], presented at l’Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris and published in the December 1922 Le Monde Musical.

Saminsky praised Jacobi’s 1920 symphonic prelude The Eve of Saint Agnes as a beautiful work, somewhat influenced by Debussy and Richard Strauss that, along with the A California Suite, had been performed with great success in New York, San Francisco and other American cities. He described the 1921 Three Preludes for Violin and Piano among Jacobi’s best scores and also spoke highly of his vocal and piano compositions. “Mr. Jacobi has an extremely musical nature,” Saminsky stated. “He is endowed with a very fine and noble taste and is master of modern techniques. Despite being a conscious and conscientious observer of everything musical in the world, he has known how to maintain his independence. A tender melancholy, humanity, and nobility characterize the majority of his works such as his Preludes for violin and his song without words, Circe.” 70

At the beginning of his address, Saminsky briefly referred to eighteen American composers including Jacobi’s early teachers, Paolo Gallico and Rubin Goldmark, as well as the better-known Martin Loeffler and Arthur Foote. But he stated he would speak in detail only about the most recent generation of American composers which, “removed from all foreign influences, is truly in the process of creating a national school“ [“dégagé de toutes influences est véritablement en train de créer une école nationale.”] “Until now one felt very clearly in the majority of compositions a sort of assimilation of all kinds of foreign elements, whether German, Italian, Slav or Oriental, in which the personality of the composer extricates itself with difficulty,” he asserted.

The young generation appears to want to free itself from all of that as well as of that movement towards nationalism taken by musicians such as Mac Dowel, Charles Cadman and John Powel that no longer borrows from abroad but from indigenous Blacks and Indians. These tendencies will from now on be replaced by those that consist of incarnating in new works the characteristics of the race, the nation and American history and industry.

I have observed and taken part in this intense American musical life for a long time. I believe that this new spirit of America that produced the poetry of Walt Whitman as well as Grand Central Station in New York with their grandeur and incomparable style, this gigantic spirit of enterprise, energy and vision will also engender a heroic epoch in musical composition. A great American musical talent will appear whose works will clearly emit all the characteristic of his race and who will create a national school. All schools have been founded in this way.

Saminsky concluding his address by assuring his audience, “a creative musical America exists that has a life of its own. It will soon bestow, be sure of that, some beautiful works which will be an emanation of its own genius and that will place it in a favorable position among nations able to enrich the musical culture of the world.” 71

In order to further acquaint Parisian critics and audiences with contemporary American music, Saminsky conducted two orchestral concerts with the Colonne Orchestra at the Salle Gaveau in Paris in June of 1923 at which a violin piece by Jacobi and his symphonic poem The Eve of St. Agnes were programmed. Reviewing the French critical reaction to these American compositions, the October 4, 1923 Musical Leader reported,

That America is about to produce a characteristic, distinctive and notable musical expression as evidenced in the work of the younger Americans is the unanimous decision of the French critics following the special concerts, devoted principally to Americans and to composers resident here, given by Lazare Saminsky…

L’Avenir gives the American music performances an important place in the concerts of the season and speaks of them as ‘a revelation to those of us who complacently think that America produces only music for jazz bands. Mr. Saminsky,’ the writer continues, ‘assisted by the Colonne Orchestra and excellent soloists, undertook the task of showing us to what extent this opinion is wrong. He presented to us works interesting indeed, among which we would note particularly the colorful symphonic poem, ‘The Eve of St. Agnes,’ by Frederick Jacobi.’ 72

On June 20, 1925 , Saminsky again programmed one of Jacobi’s songs, sung by the American soprano Eugenia Van de Veer with orchestral accompaniment, for a concert with the Colonne Orchestra. Irving Schwerké , writing on “Some American Composers” in the May 31, 1925 Paris edition of the Chicago Tribune, echoed Saminsky and the French critics’ reaction to American music in 1923. “It is safe to say that, until within very recent years, American music has never assumed the form or been unified and permeated by the thought and feeling that would justify its being called an art representative or symbolical of a great nation.”

Yet Schwerké believed that an American “school” of national music that was both personal in expression and at the same time genuinely American was coming into being and that Jacobi was an important member of this younger generation of composers. “A complete master of his art is Frederick Jacobi. He is a learned and penetrating composer,” Schwerké wrote. “His piano pieces, songs, pieces for violin, choruses, and symphonic works are known throughout the United States . They represent a musical baggage that is rich in imagination, emotional effulgence, vitality and charm. His California Suite is written with a remarkable freedom and artistic conscientiousness and nobility, while in smaller compositions he expresses infinite tenderness and sadness.” 73

Despite Lazare Saminsky’s high hopes, Jacobi throughout his life was never interested in founding or being part of a national school of music or of expressing anything but himself. Unlike the experimental American composers of the 1920s and 1930s, he did not feel himself called to create a distinct American musical language. As a New York Times reviewer stated of the 1939 New York premiere of his Concerto for Violin and Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, “Mr. Jacobi does not fall prey to the procedure of some composers who write for violin as if it were a bassoon or a trumpet, and for bassoon and trumpet as if they were violins.” 74 He was content to write beautiful music in established European forms that would please general, rather than elite, audiences. Lou Harrison wrote of the 1946 premiere of the Concertino for Piano and String Orchestra in the final issue of Modern Music, “This charming piece makes no pretence to anything but diversion. It is of the clearest and easiest sonority, filled with fine neo-romantic tunes, a model of civilized musical life within the bounds of reflective evocation. The finale, a charming tarantella in the nineteenth century manner, is built on one of those indefinably catchy and, at first hearing, familiar sounding melodies that everyone wishes he could write.” 75

In the early 1920s, Jacobi’s compositions won critical and public esteem in both Paris and New York . In March of 1923 the New York Times reported that at a concert by the City Symphony Orchestra in Town Hall, “a five-minute ovation followed the playing of Frederick Jacobi’s ‘The Eve of St. Agnes,’ in which the orchestra rose and demanded that the composer, who was in a lodge box, acknowledge the applause.” 76 The September 1923 Vanity Fair described him as “a lyrical voice in native music. His ‘Eve of St. Agnes’, a symphonic composition which has been performed by leading orchestras, is spontaneous in content and brilliant in technique.” 77

Jacobi was able to maintain an active career as a composer throughout the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s independent of League of Composers’ sponsorship. In May of 1925 the New York Times announced, “one of the important novelties which will be performed for the first time in New York next season by the Society of the Friends of Music is a work for chorus, orchestra and baritone soloist by Frederick Jacobi, the American composer. It is called ‘Poet in the Desert'…The soloist will be Lawrence Tibbett of the Metropolitan Opera Company. Mr. Jacobi is one of the best known of the younger American composers. Several of his compositions have been presented by the best symphony orchestras in New York and in other cities.” 78

In May of 1924, Jacobi had been awarded an honorable mention in the 1924 Berkshire Music Colony competition for the best chamber music work for his Two Assyrian Prayers. One hundred and six compositions had been submitted from twelve different countries. The jury for the competition, sponsored by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, consisted of composers Edward Burlingame Hill and Eric De Lamarter, the violinist and composer Albert Stoessel, Carl Engel, Chief of the Music Division of the Library of Congress, and Augustus S. Vogt, founder and conductor of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir (1894-1917) and Dean of the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto. 79

Coolidge inherited an estate of over four million dollars during World War I and donated $400,000 to the Library of Congress in 1925. The Dedication Concert of the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress October 28, 1925 , in addition to works by Bach, Handel and Beethoven, featured Jacobi’s Two Assyrian Prayers, Charles Martin Loeffler’s Canticle of the Sun, and the Rhapsodic Fantasy by Frederick Stock, the conductor of the Chicago Symphony. 80 As part of its coverage of the Dedication Concerts, the October 18, 1925 New York Times carried a large photo with the caption, “Frederick Jacobi, American composer for Washington Festival.”

In 1926, Jacobi served on the jury of the Coolidge-Frost Festival in the Ojai Valley, California. 81 Coolidge programmed Two Assyrian Prayers, along with Loeffler’s Canticle, for her invitation chamber music concerts in Rome , Prague and Vienna in September of 1927. 82 She also commissioned Jacobi’s Hagiographa: Three Biblical Narratives for String Quartet and Piano, first performed by the Kolish String Quartet at the Berkshire Chamber Music Festival on September 22, 1938 . Frederick Stock premiered his Concerto for Violin and Orchestra with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra March 14, 1939 . 83

In the 1938 score for his Scherzo for Wind Instruments, Carl Fischer, Jacobi’s publisher in New York , called him “one of our foremost American composers.” Abraham Veinus, in the 1941 RCA record notes for Hagiographa, wrote, “Frederick Jacobi is today one of the most distinguished figures in American music.”

That the basic worth of Jacobi’s music has been recognized by the most discriminating of contemporary musicians is attested to by the fact that his music has been performed by the leading American orchestras (Boston Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Rochester Symphony, Chicago Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, New York Philharmonic, etc.) under the directorship of the most distinguished conductors in America (Koussevitzky, Stokowski, Stock, Bodanzky, Hanson, etc.) Outside of the United States, Jacobi’s music has achieved recognition in such musical centers as Paris, Prague, Rome, Copenhagen, Vienna, Milan, Warsaw and Zurich...His chamber music has been performed by such internationally known organizations as the Flonzaley, Pro Arte, Kolisch, Coolidge and Budapest String Quartets.

Jacobi served on the executive board of the League of Composers (as well as on the editorial board of its quarterly publication Modern Music) 1925-1946. Carol J. Oja characterizes the quarterly as “the single most important forum for American modernist composers.” 84 He also served on the American board of the International Society for Contemporary Music, founded in 1922. (Jacobi called it “a society which commits suicide annually but which nevertheless survives.”) 85 Paul Stefan writes in the March-April 1932 Modern Music that in Vienna the Austrian section of the International Society “gave a special performance devoted to Frederick Jacobi, who was present and gained a great success” but doesn’t indicate which compositions were performed. 86 Jacobi became a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers in 1924 and served on the board of the National Association for American Composers and Conductors, founded in 1933. He joined the American Composer’s Alliance chaired by Aaron Copland, which collected music royalties, upon its founding in December of 1937.

Jacobi was appointed to teach composition at Juilliard following the death of Rubin Goldmark in June 1936 and later became head of the composition department. His many students included the Canadian composers Barbara Pentland (1936-38) and Robert Lenard Barclay (1944-47) and John Verrall, Julia Smith (1936-39), George Kleinsinger, William Keith Rogers, Alexei Haieff, Dai-Keong Lee, Mark Bucci, Leonard Ratner, Roger Nixon, Jack Beeson, Norman Dello Joio, Robert Starer and Robert Ward. Carol J. Oja has noted of these last four, “they are among the leading composers who have travelled the same tonal road as Jacobi, and they have consistently seemed unperturbed as a parade of modernist fashions has passed them by.” 87

 

Expressing Ethnicity

On January 10, 1930 Jacobi was one of four composers, along with Ernest Bloch, Lazare Saminsky and Joseph Achron, whose works were performed as part of the dedication of the new Temple Emanu-El in New York. A commission later in 1930 from Saminsky to write a Friday-evening service for Temple Emanu-El, prompted Jacobi to further explore his Jewish heritage with one of his best known works, the Sabbath Evening Service According to the Union Prayer Book. The work for baritone solo (cantor) and mixed chorus was first performed at Temple Emanu-El December 4, 1931, conducted by Saminsky. According to Fritz Jacobi, “while he had never been bar-mitzvah’d, like so many of his compatriots, this commission motivated him to study the Bible and the Hebrew primer, and he taught himself the rudiments of Hebrew. Henceforth all of his music, secular as well as sacred, would be inspired by the Bible and the Prayer Book.” 88

Extensive background information about this commission appeared in the American Hebrew a week before its premiere. “The Choir Committee of Congregation Emanu-El, New York , is about to witness the realization of a fond dream—to bring about the revival of Hebrew synagogual music in America ,” Lionel Hill reported. “This important undertaking, conceived about two years ago and pursued quietly but relentlessly, envisaged as one of the major points of the program, primarily the publication and initial performance of new choral Synagogue Services, by representative composers of the United States and then possibly, also by eminent Hebrew composers of the European continent.”

At the suggestion of the members of the Committee, Frederick Jacobi, distinguished American composer and one of the leaders of the younger group of American composers, has written a choral Sabbath Evening Service just published, under the auspices of the Choir Committee of Emanu-El, by the Bloch Publishing Co.…It is difficult to conceive of a better plan which would tend to interest the outstanding Jewish composer in composing for the Synagogue, and thus to become an active force in Jewish cultural life.

The Sabbath Evening Service by Mr. Jacobi has proved to be one of the finest works of this well-known American composer. He has tackled with zest the task to be the first representative of the younger progressive group to take up Hebrew synagogual composition. Not only has he studied carefully the traditional synagogual style, but has acquainted himself with the Hebrew language, with its rhythm and music. In his new Sabbath Evening Service, the cantor’s recitatives and the pathos of such choral parts as the W’shamru, the Adoration, the “Sh’ma Israel,” are of finely conceived and strongly felt Hebraic cast…

The Jacobi composition contains nine choral hymns, with cantor solos of Hebrew ritual character, used in both the Orthodox and the Reform Synagogue, and one hymn—‘May the Word of My Mouth’—which in spite of its scriptural text is sung, in its English version, only in the Reform Synagogue. The service opens with Psalm 92, Tov l’hodos Adonay (‘It is good to give thanks to the Lord’), which is of vigorous and festive, traditional character. Among other ritual sections of the service, Bor’cha, Sh’ma Israel and W’anachnu are constructed in the ancient Hebraic form of antiphonic dialogue of the cantor and choir. ‘Hear, o Israel ’ stands out by the vigour of its Hebrew pathos and appeal.

Among the rest of the hymns comprising the Jacobi service, the W’shamru is perhaps the finest in its general conception, sonority and in adherence to the old synagogual melodie line. The service closes with the Adon Olam, the traditional Hebrew hymn with the words of the great medieval Hebrew Spanish poet Yehuda Halevi. Mr. Jacobi’s tonal conception of the Adon Olam is far from the ordinary over-solemn and march-like hymnal style. It is infused with tenderness and humility, like a truly great poem. 89

John Tasker Howard, in his Our American Music and Our Contemporary Composers writes, “The Jewish Service (1930-31) established Jacobi as one of the important Hebrew composers of the country. With melodies patterned after ancient Hebrew hymns, if offers moments of irresistible poignancy, of a passion that never sacrifices dignity.” 90 Howard writes elsewhere, “Two of the most eminent composers of liturgical music have been Ernest Bloch and Frederick Jacobi.” 91 Albert Weisser, in The Modern Renaissanceof Jewish Music, similarly calls Jacobi “one of the finest and most gifted of all our native Hebrew Americans who attempted an enunciation of their Hebraic heritage” and the first Sabbath Evening Service one of the “proudest ornaments” of the Choir Committee of Temple Emanu-El. “Jacobi’s work is in direct contrast to Bloch’s. It has neither the overpowering drama of the latter’s service nor its sense of excitement. It attempts less breadth of utterance and is consequently more intimate and closer to human likeness.”

Jacobi’s choral texture, again in contrast to Bloch, is essentially chordal but it has an airiness and a leanness which is a pleasure to behold. Using cantillation melodicles principally for the Cantor’s recitatives, Jacobi has made skillful and imaginative use of the traditional modes in the working out of his more strongly accented choral sections… Neither is interested in musical archeology, for Jacobi in this Service, also used tradition as a starting point and not as an end in itself. In all, Jacobi's’ first Service by its tender poetry and its human poignance kindles a warm and rich nostalgia for those dimly lit, half-forgotten Sabbath Eves which ever haunt the memory. 92

The New YorkTimes noted in its review of the Sabbath Evening Service that in “composing his music, Mr. Jacobi has not been academic or slavishly imitative of old patterns…His aim has been a simple but profound and racial expression of feeling.” “In seeking this good he has upset some misleading fallacies. Thus the emotion of the opening number of the service, ‘Tov L’hodos,’ is joyous and vigorous in mood, and by no means in the melancholy and tragic vein popularly believed to be a distinguishing characteristic of Jewish music. In this music of Mr. Jacobi’s there is light and strength as well as feeling. The modal idioms are used freely and in a strikingly authentic manner. The florid passages of recitative are simple and eloquent.” 93 In Modern Music, David Diamond also praised the work. “The Sabbath Evening Service for cantor and a capella chorus has nobility and exultation, loftiness and warmth of melodic utterance. Here his music has magnificently realized an actual Hebraic quality, that of racial sorrow, an exalted tristesse at once personal and meditative, of a poignancy directly related to the very elegiac feeling of the music of the synagogue.” 94

No aspect of Jacobi’s compositions has generated more comment than the question to what degree his works have been shaped and inspired by the Bible and the Prayer Book and his Jewish background. Artur Holde writes in Jews in Music, “Jacobi affirms his Jewish faith in the ‘Sabbath Evening Service,’ in ‘Three Excerpts from the Prophet Nehemiah,’ and ‘Hagiographa.’” 95 According to David Ewen in his American Composers, “Beginning with the Sabbath Evening Service…Jacobi produced several notable racially oriented compositions which assimilated the intervalic and modal characteristics of Hebrew music.” 96

Jacobi’s biography in the May 23, 1952 program for the first performance of his Friday Evening Service No. 2 (Arvit L’Shabbat) at the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York states, however, that he “began to study Hebrew when he was about thirty years old,” i.e. circa 1921. The following year he composed his Symphony No. 1, giving it the subtitle Assyrian. Adolfo Salazar, in his Music in Our Time, comments on this much earlier Mid-Eastern influence on Jacobi. “He has felt aesthetic preferences of various kinds. Sometimes it is the synagogue which inspires him or the vague Assyria of old in whose vast deserts he hears an inspired voice (the Assyrian Prayers, 1923; the ‘Poet in the Desert,’ 1925; ‘Three Excerpts from the Prophet Nehemiah.’” 97

The continued appeal of this Mid-eastern influence is suggested by Jacobi’s Two Pieces for Flute and Orchestra: Night Piece and Dance, which he completed in 1951 in Switzerland a year before his death. As the record notes for the 1952 SPA 7 release indicate, “Night Piece was written many years ago as the second movement of a symphony otherwise discarded [the Symphony No. 1, the Assyrian]: a symphony oriental in flavor, inspired by the British Museum Assyrian bas-relief, The Lion Hunt. It might be called Nocturne in Niniveh, for it is a mood picture nostalgic and exotic. Dance was written many years later, in 1951, at the suggestion of the composer’s friends and colleagues, Louis Gruenberg and Jacques de Menasce.” Jacobi had first rewritten this second movement of the Symphony No. 1 as Nocturne for Flute and Small Orchestra, first performed by the Rochester Little Symphony December 30, 1926, conducted by Howard Hanson.

Lazare Saminsky had belonged to a group of students at the St. Petersburg Conservatory in Russia who founded the Society for Jewish Folk Music in 1908. After moving to New York in 1920, he was a well-known founding composer-conductor of the League of Composers in 1923. As music director of Temple Emanu-El since 1924 and founder of its annual Three Choirs Festival in 1926, he continued to encourage composers to explore and develop their Jewish identities and musical traditions. Although he called the first Sabbath Evening Service “one of Jacobi’s most inspired works,” he declared in his 1932 Music of Our Day: Essentials and Prophecies, “of all the representatives of the Hebrew-American group, Aaron Copland possesses the strongest Jewish traits, mental and creative, and Frederick Jacobi bears the least pronounced Hebrew profile, in spite of his devoted interest in Hebrew culture and fine contributions to Hebrew music. Jacobi has a warmer attachment to his race than the others; however, this does not yet intensify the racial color of his music to a marked degree.” 98

 

 Two years later, Saminsky suggested that in the Sabbath Evening Service Jacobi had transcended the confines of European neo-romantic musical forms to arrive at a stronger personal and individual musical expression. “There is something very definitely in common in these three composers: Frederick Jacobi, Bernard Rogers and Israel Citkowitz. They all belong to the Mendelssohnian type of Hebrew creative musicianship; they share in some measure in its worship of culture, in its earnest and gentle workmanship,” Saminsky wrote in Music of the Ghetto and the Bible. “With the Sabbath Evening Service, his most mature and his unmistakably personal work, Frederick Jacobi has undergone a striking change, both technical and creative. If the ‘Adoration,’ the Va’anachnu koreim, of this service is the loftiest bit of music ever written by Jacobi, his V’shomru b’ne Israel is the warmest; the most colorful and true, more so even than his attractive String Quartet built on Indian themes.” 99

By the end of the 1940s, Saminsky was convinced that Jacobi’s European late-nineteenth century neo-Romantic musical aesthetic was constraining him from fully expressing his Jewish identity. “With Isadore Freed and Frederick Jacobi we come back again to the Mendelssohnian Hebraic mentality turned out of its natural channel of creation by the cross-currents of today’s music,” he wrote in a chapter entitled “Men of Mixed Aesthetics” in his 1949 Living Music of the Americas. “These two composers are not of as stubborn and monolithic a mind as Ernest Bloch. They are easily unsaddled and thrust into sidelines. Their nature causes them to follow milder aesthetics, French impressionism, Stravinsky’s softer lines, even today’s variant of the still lingering Wagnerian canticle.”

Jacobi’s Hebraism is less stable and less fertile than Freed’s. This is why even in this part of Jacobi’s creative effort we meet with shocks. In his piece From the Prophet Nehemiah for voice and two pianos, music overstated, overheated and very Wagnerian, we find a Nehemiah loudly married to Brunnhilde. In intention, in spirit perhaps, this is one of Jacobi’s best works, but not in execution. I am not sure that this kind of heat, quasi Biblical and quasi prophetic, goes well with Jacobi’s Mendelssohnian vein. 100

In his Of Jewish Music: Ancient and Modern, Israel Rabinovitch agrees with Saminsky that while Jacobi’s 1931 Sabbath Evening Service was considered “one of the finest compositions of its kind…his compositions of Jewish character or content” are “not particularly of marked Jewish melos.” 101

When Jacobi was asked in his 1949 interview about Hebrew music he answered, “I feel that there is a music which mirrors the Jewish soul. In writing Hebrew litany I do not pattern after any Hebrew music of the past. But I try for the very essence of the Hebrew spirit.” 102 This spirit can also be felt in Jacobi’s secular compositions such as his 1941 Night Piece, with its mid-Eastern flavour, and his Symphony No. 2 in C, premiered by Pierre Monteux and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra on April 1, 1948. In the San Francisco News, M. Fisher wrote of the latter work, “It is attention-compelling, clear and concise and contains many of those basic virtues which transcend period and time. That parts of it bespeak oriental themes and many passages convey a sense of exotic beauty tend to enhance its charm.” 103

By expressing himself musically, Jacobi believed, he was expressing his emotions and beliefs about his country and religious faith. “Jacobi does not believe strongly in nationalism in music, particularly a nationalism which is consciously sought,” John Tasker Howard writes in Our Contemporary Composers and Our American Music. “The composer, he feels, is too busy trying to create an expressive line, a satisfactory whole, to occupy himself, while composing, with matters other than those which are purely musical. If he does his job carefully and well, and if he has talent, the question of expressing his race, his nationality, his time, and even his emotions, will take care of itself. For, Jacobi, remarks, these elements tap the subconscious and operate best when left to themselves.” 104

Jacobi comments on this conscious and almost subconscious expression of Jewish identity in his program notes for Ode, composed in 1941 and premiered by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Pierre Monteux, on February 12, 1943. The San Francisco music critic Alfred Frankenstein, in an article for Modern Music, referred to “a deeply emotional Ode by Frederick Jacobi, inspired by a passage in the Hebrew Sabbath Service.” 105 Published as Ode for Orchestra by G. Schirmer in New York , the work is actually an ode to God. The prayer begins with “O Lord, open thou my lips, and my mouth shall declare thy praise.” It closes with “Thou hast sanctified us by thy commandments and brought us near unto thy service, O our King, and called us by thy great and holy name.”

In commenting on the relationship between this text and his music, Mr. Jacobi remarks, ‘It has been a constant source of amazement to me how perpetually stirring these ancient words remain. But not only that: the sequence of thoughts, the following-up of mood to mood is such that, if one feels them and mirrors them, in the order in which they come, a musical piece seems actually to take place under their guidance, a musical form seems to be the inevitable result. Perhaps this is only imagination on my part, but I have found it on several occasions to be the case.’ 106

Such verbal and musical prayers can also be found in the 1952 Arvit L’Shabbat, the Friday Evening Service No 2: “May the Lord Bless thee and keep thee. May the Lord cause his light to shine upon thee and be gracious onto thee. May the Lord lift up His countenance upon thee and grant thee peace.” In July of 1952, three months before his death, Jacobi adapted one of the sections from the Arvit L’Shabbat, the OMay the Words, and dedicated it to Cantor Gershon Ephros for his Cantorial Anthology of Traditional and Modern Synagogue Music. A translation of the Hebrew prayer “Yihyu le-ratson,” the prayer is usually said or sung after the silent “Amidah,” the long silent prayer that is at the heart of the Jewish service: “O may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable unto Thee O my Rock and my Redeemer, O Lord my Rock and my Redeemer, and my Redeemer.” 107 In his Cantorial Anthology, Gershon Ephros noted, “according to the information kindly conveyed to the Editor by the widow of the composer, this ‘O May the Words’ turned out to be Frederick Jacobi’s last composition written by him shortly before his untimely death.” 108

Olin Downes, in his November 2, 1952 New York Times “American Composer” tribute wrote, Jacobi “had the supreme happiness of hearing his Second Synagogue Service superbly performed last May at the Park Avenue Synagogue, and he realized that he had been able to project what he felt in his heart and soul and his musical intellect, for the work was evidently deeply moving to almost everyone.” In its May 1952 review of the Arvit L’Shabbat, the New York Times reviewer had noted, “Mr. Jacobi’s new score was moving and effective in performance. He has created for the Sabbath Eve service a setting that has appropriate dignity and musical interest. With great skill the composer has utilized traditional thematic materials in a work that is contemporary in texture.” In contrast to the joyous expression of the 1931 Sabbath Evening Service, the Times reviewer stated of the Friday Evening Service No. 2, “throughout Mr. Jacobi’s score runs the strain of melancholy that is so marked a feature of Jewish music, appropriate to the age-old service in which is brought to mind the sorrows and the grandeur of an ancient people.” 109

 

A member of the Jewish Academy of Arts and Letters, Jacobi expressed his Jewishness not only through his compositions but also by being active in the Jewish community in New York . In 1931 Saminsky had been one of several musicians and scholars who founded the American Palestine Music Association, or Mailamm in Hebrew. Jacobi and other Jewish composers presented compositions at Mailamm meetings. His String Quartet No. 2 was performed at a concert of contemporary Jewish composers presented by Mailamm at Town Hall February 19, 1938 . He was also one of the speakers at the dedication of the Mailamm Library of Jewish Music in New York March 21, 1938 . The aim of Mailamm was to preserve and foster Jewish musical traditions and, with the rise of Nazism in Germany , to assist imperiled European musicians. The Austrian composer Paul Pisk (1893-1990), Secretary of Schönberg’s Society for Private Musical Performances in Vienna 1918-21 and one of the founders of the International Society for Contemporary Music in Salzburg in 1922, credits Jacobi for enabling him to move to the United States in 1936. “Through Jacobi, I was invited to come to New York and play Austrian music on CBS as well as in connexion with the League of Composers.” 110

Jacobi had met the Austrian composer Karl Weigl (1881-1949) in Vienna , probably also through the International Society for Contemporary Music. (Jacobi reviewed the Society’s June 1932 annual festival in Vienna for Modern Music.) 111 Weigl corresponded with him after Jacobi’s return to New York from Switzerland in 1934 regarding scores of his chamber music he had passed on to him for possible performances by the League of Composers and other groups. Weigl had also given him the score for his 1932 children’s operetta The Pied Piper (Der Rattenfänger von Hamelin ) for possible production at the school Jacobi’s little daughter Dorothea was attending. With the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in March of 1938, the performances of works by Jewish composers were forbidden and Weigl’s situation grew desperate. “Since our last letters things have entirely changed here as you know. We shall have to leave and look out for a new working sphere in the U.S.A. ,” Weigl wrote from Vienna April 9, 1938 . “I should not dare to trouble you with the matter if not A. Rodanzky, Dr. P. A. Pisk, Mrs. Younker etc. had told me of your great kindness and collegial benevolence and if the circumstances here were not so very difficult.” 112

Weigl not only had to find a position for himself but also for his wife, the musician Valerie Weigl (1889-1982), and to ensure the safety of their twelve-year old son Wolfgang. “If only we could find our living there for all 3 of us and be able to take the boy with us.” Jacobi responded April 21, 1938 . “We have been thinking a great deal about our Viennese friends and acquaintances recently so it was not altogether a surprise when I received your letter. I can well understand your desire to come to America now. Under the circumstances it is perhaps the wisest thing to do. But the situation here is really very, very difficult. We have many of our own excellent musicians unable to find employment and economic conditions here at the moment are not at all favorable...At the present time we have evolved no scheme for taking care of the newcomers; we have no organization for helping them to find positions.”

While offering his assistance Jacobi cautioned, “If you should decide to come to America you must be prepared for considerable difficulty and for a wait of perhaps a considerable lapse of time before you find anything…As you probably know, it was well over a year before Pisk found his position [at the University of Redlands] in California.” Weigl was able to leave Austria for the U.S. in 1938. As Jacobi had cautioned, he had considerable difficulty finding employment until he obtained a teaching position at the Julius Hartt School of Music in Hartford , Connecticut , in 1941, perhaps not by coincidence the same year Jacobi had also begun lecturing there.

In his 1952 tribute to Jacobi, Olin Downes noted, “the real change, the profound one which sets the Jacobi of the last ten years apart from his earlier self and his derivative developments, is an emotion which goes back to the earliest and profoundest depths of the racial consciousness: the religious music that he wrote in the years that followed the catastrophe of Hitler. This was when the iron entered his soul, and when the ploughshare of an incommensurable tragedy brought its soil to its highest fruition.” 113

The influence of Jacobi’s religious and ethnic background on his compositions becomes increasingly apparent in the 1930s and 1940s, though he always composed slightly more secular music. Following the 1931 Sabbath Evening Service, he subtitled his Concerto for Cello and Orchestra of 1932 Three Psalms for Cello and Orchestra in reference to the sacred songs of the Book of Psalms, one of the books of the Old Testament forming the hymn-book of the Jewish church. Each of its three movements is prefaced by a quote from Psalms 90, 91 and 92: “Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations;” “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty;” and “It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto Thy name, O most High.”

Herbert Elwell, in his program notes for the November 1935 Cleveland Orchestra performance, described its movements as presenting “three different aspects of the same religious mood: the tender, the buoyant, and the poignantly dramatic.” 114 Neil W. Levin, artistic director, Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, adds, “common to all three is an undeniable spirit of confidence, whether calm or jubilant—the confidence in God and His protection that is proclaimed in those Psalms.” 115 In a July 14, 1951 letter to David J. Putterman (1900-1979), Cantor of the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York , Jacobi referred to the Cello Concerto as “one of my most ‘Jewish,’ as well as one of my best, works it seems to me.” 116

In 1933 Jacobi composed Six Pieces for the Organ for Use in the Synagogue. The 1938 Hagiographa: Three Biblical Narratives for String Quartet and Piano again refers to the Book of Psalms. In his notes for the 1941 RCA Victor recording of Hagiographa (Holy Writings), Jacobi wrote that in the first movement, Job, “I endeavored to reproduce the dramatic intensity of the Book of Job: the sorrows piled high upon the head of the patient Job; his resignation to them; the advent of his friends; his stormy argument with God and the final reconciliation.” The second movement, Ruth, “is in a mood-picture, idyllic and pastoral…both the beginning and the end of this piece mirror the calm and the tenderness, with sacrifice requited and sorrow seen from afar.” The third movement, Joshua, “is the siege of Jericho : the battle, the trumpets; the city’s fall; the hymn of thanksgiving and the suggestion of a ritualistic dance.” 117

In 1938 the New York Times called Jacobi’s choral section “Adoration” from the 1931 Sabbath Evening Service, presented at Lazare Saminsky’s third Temple Emanu-El Choir Festival, “one of the most inspired of all his compositions.” 118 In the Concise Encyclopedia of Jewish Music, Macy Nulman notes that Jacobi “is also known for his arrangements of Palestinian folk songs.” 119 Masada , the Youth Zionist Organization of America, published his Palestinian folk song arrangement Dunam Po in 1939. He composed Shemesh, based on a Palestinian folk song, for cello and piano in 1940.

In 1942, just a few months before he began collaborating with Herman Voaden on The Prodigal Son, Jacobi composed Hymn for men’s chorus for the commemoration of the life and works of Rabbi Saadia Gaon (882-942), held at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York March 24. The text by Gaon he used for the composition expresses a theistic humanism that also reflects Jacobi’s own religious beliefs. The hymn to God, to be sung “not too slowly, but with deep concentration,” begins, “O turn and harken from the heavens, /To the cry of those Thou callest children: /Exalted One, where are Thy early mercies? /Renew them, ere Thy faithful disappear.” 120 Irene Heskes writes of the work, “it is an excerpt from the hymn Teyfen l’hakshiv (Turn to heed). The setting is modern and the strict prayer chant (nusakh) has been forsaken. Yet the work is entirely devotional in character, reaching a compelling musical climax and admirably fitting a liturgical text that is more than a thousand years old.” 121

Bloch Publishing issued Hymn in 1942 and Ahavas Olom, first performed at the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York with David J. Putterman, cantor, in 1945. In 1942, Jacobi also composed From the Prophet Nehemiah. Neil W. Levin has called his majestic Two Pieces in Sabbath Mood (1946) “a two-movement tone poem that depicts the spiritual parameters of the Sabbath in Jewish tradition and life.” 122 Jacobi composed Ode to Zion in1948 and arranged Mordecai Zaira’s Zionist song Ashrey Haish in 1949. He also arranged V. Shlionsky’s “We Are Like a Mighty Wall,” published in Harry Coopersmith’s The Songs We Sing—U’leshonenu Rinah by the United Synagogue of America in 1950. Jacobi called his Arvit L’Shabbat, the Friday Evening Service No. 2, first performed at the Park Avenue Synagogue in 1952, his “last will and testament.” 123 With its serene organ opening, melodic solo and choral singing, great solemnity, conviction and grandeur, the Service admirably reflects Jacobi’s religious faith at the end of his life.

In 1939 Mailamm, the American Palestine Music Association, was reconstituted as the Jewish Music Forum, the Society for the Advancement of Jewish Musical Culture. 124 Jacobi addressed the Jewish Music Forum in 1944, speaking on “Some Aspects of the Problem of Nationalism in Music.” Lazare Saminsky and Israel Rabinovitch are probably correct in stating that the average listener will not perceive a notable “Jewishness” in the majority of Jacobi’s compositions, even in a work such as the 1938 Hagiographa: Three Biblical Narratives. Jacobi’s address explains in part why. “True art must always be to a great degree spontaneous and natural” and should “transcend both time and space,” he told the Jewish Music Forum, meeting at the YMHA on December 18, 1944 . “Too much has been said about the immediate recognizability of the nationality of a work of art.”

The use of folk-material does not in itself constitute nationalistic art…There is the fact that that which seems, for example, typically Jewish to one person may not appear so to another. It is sheer arrogance for one to proclaim that one piece of music is ‘Jewish’ and another is not. Nationalism, like beauty, resides primarily in the eyes of the beholder. This does not mean, however, that there is no such thing as nationalism in music. We must, rather, be careful not to make a fetish of nationalism. When a composer is conscious of his national heritage, when he drinks deeply of its waters and responds to its influences, he will compose music which will be nationalistic to a certain extent. But this cannot be forced and created at will…

We should not forget that we are all heirs to a vast and wonderful universal culture and that, in addition, we are individuals differing slightly, perhaps, but importantly one from the other. I am strongly in favor of studying our Jewish musical heritage, but I see that there are dangers in the overstressing of the nationalistic aspects of our art. 125

 

The music Jacobi selected for performance after his December 18 talk was his 1941 Fantasy for Viola and Piano, played by Louise Rood and Irene Jacobi, and the 1942 Ballade for Violin and Piano, played by Fredell Lack and Irene Jacobi. On September 21, 1944 he had written Voaden, “Irene is well and we are both enjoying something of a Beethoven jag, in preparation for me for my YMHA lectures. I have never spoken on Beethoven before and have spent much of the summer with that gentleman. Irene and I have been playing the quartets, on the piano four hands, and we are thrilled.”

In 1945, Irene Heskes writes, “Bernard Carp, a communal social worker, enlisted the support of the Jewish Music Forum, in cooperation with the national association of Jewish Community Centres and the YM/YWHAs, for the formation of a National Jewish Music Council.” One of its responsibilities was to organize an annual Jewish Music Festival, begun in 1945 as Jewish Music Week. 126 In 1946 Jacobi, as Chairman of the Awards Committee of the Jewish Music Council, corresponded with Arnold Schönberg in Los Angeles , urging him to join Serge Koussevitzky, Darius Milhaud, Pierre Monteux, Gregor Piatigorsky, Jasha Heifetz and Ernest Bloch as an honorary sponsor of the Awards Committee. 127

In January of 1947, the Jewish Music Council established three prizes “to be awarded in an effort to encourage composers to write musical works that will reflect the spirit and tradition of the Jewish people.” 128 In the February 7 through March 6, 1947 Jewish Music Festival, two hundred communities nationwide participated in more than one thousand programs organized by the Jewish Music Council and sponsored by the National Jewish Welfare Board. Four major networks and many individual radio stations programmed compositions by Jewish composers. Jacobi spoke on “Jewish Music As I See It” at the Park Avenue Synagogue February 7. Avraham Soltes notes of these live concerts and radio broadcasts, lectures, exhibits, publications and pageants, “a thirsty community had discovered a fountain; a battered and fragmented Jewish people had found a core of identification.”

Look at the Board of Judges assembled by the Council in its nationwide competition for a Jewish musical composition: Frederick Jacobi, chairman; Leonard Bernstein, Marc Blitzstein, Bernard Herrman, Erich Leinsdorf, Curt Sachs, Randall Thompson and Joseph Yasser. The Honorary Sponsors of the Awards Committee included Ernest Bloch, Jascha Heifetz, Branislaw Huberman, Serge Koussvitsky, Darius Milhaud, Pierre Monteux, Gregor Piatagorsky, Artur Schnabel, Rudolf Serkin, and Bruno Walter—certainly, a more distinguished and stellar jury no other organization of the day might have gathered… drawn together by the traumatic experience of the Holocaust, they felt a need for positive Jewish identification. 129

In 1948 Jacobi was invited to address the first joint conference of the Department of Music of the United Synagogue of America and the Cantors Assembly of America. His address on nationalism and music essentially reiterated the points of his December 1944 address to the Jewish Music Forum.

On July 6, 1951, David J. Putterman wrote Jacobi in Gstaad, Switzerland, where he was starting to plan composing his Friday Evening Service No. 2, urging him to consider becoming Dean or chairman of the faculty of the new School for Cantors at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Jacobi replied on July 14, writing he felt highly honoured by the invitation but that “I don’t think I am qualified to accept the Deanship of an institute so specialized.” He would be happy to do some teaching of composition at the School and explained, “I don’t want to tie up with anything too big again: one of my reasons for leaving Juilliard was, indeed, so that I could be free to come and go as I want and to work for myself.”

Regarding the Service (Putterman wanted assurance that the work would be completed for the Tenth Annual Service by contemporary composers in 1952), Jacobi asked, “Would it be possible to have your secretary type the Scheme of the Service, as you have it in mind, and send it to me? The words of the prayers in English (perhaps listing the pages [in the prayer book] where I could find them in Hebrew); the places for the Organ Interludes: in other words, something which would look like an opera-libretto! I am eager to plan the work, not only that it suits you in individual moments, but so that it has unity and growth as a whole, like any real work of art and I should be happy to start revolving this in my mind: where the high moments should come etc. etc! If this could be sent me before we leave Europe [in October] it would be very helpful and I should appreciate it a lot!” 130

Frederick Jacobi was deeply involved in Jewish musical life, religion and culture in New York from the dedication of the new Temple Emanu-El on January 10, 1930 to his death in 1952. He embraced his faith and community and was embraced by them. Just two days after his death on October 24, the choirs of Temple Emanu-El and the First Presbyterian Church joined in singing one of his works in his honor at the Presbyterian Church on Fifth Avenue and Twelfth Street. 131

Jacobi was recognized as one of the foremost composers of religious and liturgical music in the United States . Why, then, was he not able to succeed with the Biblical subject matter of The Prodigal Son? In his 1949 Living Music of the Americas Lazare Saminsky commented, “his opera Prodigal Son so far known only through the orchestral suite played by the National Broadcasting Orchestra, is somewhat off the native Jacobi preserves.” Saminsky was convinced Jacobi had been led astray from his true musical nature “by the cross-currents of today’s music.” 132

Yet Jacobi was part of, and could not escape from, the development of modern American music and its attempts to win wider audiences with new works speaking to the America experience.

 

The Critical Climate

In the summers of 1939 and 1940, Jacobi had lectured at the University of California in Berkeley. In 1941, in addition to teaching composition at Juilliard, he also began lecturing at the Julius Hartt School of Music and was asked to write his first opera for the School. Its opera producer, Dr. Elemer Nagy, was also on the faculty of the Department of Drama at Yale where Allardyce Nicoll, the Department Chairman, recommended Herman Voaden as a librettist for Jacobi’s opera. Voaden had returned to Yale in the summer of 1942 to continue his graduate work in playwriting and play production. He also wanted to assess his symphonic expressionist aesthetic and theatre experimentation for Allardyce Nicoll with the intention of writing a book on symphonic theatre.

But while Voaden had received considerable critical interest and support in Toronto for his attempt to create a distinct “Canadian ‘art of the theatre’,” Jacobi in the 1920s and 1930s had faced a much more difficult reception for his musical compositions in the critical climate of New York . “Modern” composers, both European but particularly American, struggled for audience and critical support. In an article entitled “Question of New Music,” Richard Aldrich wrote in the New York Times April 8, 1923,

there has been a certain number of new compositions brought before the public, but how many have there been that made a serious impression of permanent value upon cultivated music lovers? Disinterested critics of New York from abroad say that New York is very conservative in musical matters and is not nearly hospitable enough to the newer manifestations in music, or at any rate that it gets an insufficient number before it to know really what is going on. The answer may be made that New York is reluctant to play and to listen to what seems to have little or no value.

In a May 4, 1924 Times column entitled “The Failure and the Promise of American Composers Today,” Olin Downes (1886-1955) similarly stated, “It is a curious phenomenon, one particularly unrepresentative of this country, that its young men should write music in any such numbers when apparently the majority of them have so little to say.”

The New York Times was aware that American composers had not yet taken their proper place in America ’s dynamic musical life. In a July 13, 1930 piece entitled “Rise of American Composers,” the paper noted in a veiled reference to Arturo Toscanini and the New York Philharmonic, “it is an arresting commentary upon the artistic consciousness of this country, as many observers here and abroad have had frequent occasion to note and to point out, that an orchestra recruited, trained and financed by American music lovers should make a triumphant tour of Europe under the baton of an Italian conductor, and complete this tour without playing a single composition by a native composer.”

But what should this new American music be like? In his 1952 New York Times tribute of Jacobi, Olin Downes noted, “he wrote with fluency and technical dexterity, for he was thoroughly and admirably trained…as composer, practicing musician and writer about music, Fred Jacobi had fulfilled himself as an artist and fully formulated his creative response to his age.” Reviewing the composer’s works in the 1920s, however, Downes had been less appreciative. “Try as we will, we cannot feel frenzied enthusiasm for Mr. Jacobi’s compositions heard today,” Downes wrote of his Two Assyrian Prayers for solo voice and orchestra presented at the Worcester Music Festival in Massachusetts in 1925. Of Jacobi’s second prayer, “To Bel-Marduk,” Downes wrote, the “last verse—one of humbleness and supplication in the presence of the terrible god—was sung with particular tonal beauty and effect by Miss [ Florence ] Easton , who had a difficult, ungrateful task to perform.”

But how much value have these two pieces as actual music and as individual expression? There are harsh discords, outcry and rumpus of the orchestra. The sworn resolve to be primitive and barbaric forces these effects…His music is essentially not ultra-modern. It has a so-called ‘romantic’ rather than genuinely ‘modernistic’ nature: it is more remindful of the dramatic declamation and the stormy orchestra of Richard Wagner than of either a grim and prophetic past or any very exciting suggestions of a future. In a word, the writer did not find originality or any very convincing contemporaneousness in this ‘Prayers’ of Jacobi. 133

In 1929, Downes dismissed a concert of primarily American music by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in Carnegie Hall as “the poorest orchestral program by Mr. Stokowski that we remember.” Of Jacobi’s “Indian Dances he noted, “Mr. Jacobi has employed in the four dance movements heard last night melodies of the Pueblo and Navajo tribes of Arizona and New Mexico. But he has written better music. His treatment of the austere and finely profiled motives of the aboriginal seems not to add to but rather to deprive them of their original savor and power…in most cases Mr. Jacobi sentimentalizes the presentation of the Indian music, softening not only its contours but its tonal background…The audience sighed for better music, and understood why girls go to the movies. 134

This is not to suggest that the New York Times did not also give Jacobi positive reviews. In 1935 the Times stated of his String Quartet No. 2, “Mr. Jacobi’s quartet proved to be a substantial and well-sounding work, unashamedly melodious and euphonious. Its three movements conveyed something of mood and personal feeling. The andante elegiaco, intervening between two allegros, radiated a glow not common in the string writing of the day.” 135 Even Olin Downes, reviewing the Fourth Annual Choir Festival at Temple Emanu-El in 1939 was moved to write, “The ‘Adoration’ from Mr. Jacobi’s ‘[Sabbath] Evening Service’ must be ranked as one of his most inspired creations. Its quietly introspective measures at the start are led by subtle degrees toward a climax of almost fanatic intensity and power, undeniable in its effectiveness.” 136

There was a tremendous growth in American music in the 1930s, greatly augmented by musicians fleeing Nazism in Europe , in composition, live performances, radio broadcasts and recording. Reviewing recently issued records by American composers, including Jacobi’s Hagiographa: Three Biblical Narratives and Scherzo for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon and Horn, the Times in 1941 listed four main streams in American compositions. “First, there are those who are a little left of center in the nineteenth century romantic tradition (the ultra-conservatives are little heard from nowadays). Then there is the group associated with the League of Composers, who range from disciples of Schoenberg to those who foreswear European influences. The third group is made up of those who compose with ‘social significance’ and who have recently discovered American ballads. The fourth group consists of popular composers who have followed Gershwin in writing highbrow works in the jazz idiom.” 137

The Times categorized Jacobi as belonging to the second school associated with the League of Composers, although he perhaps should be more correctly placed in the first group. Jacobi’s association with the League is an interesting one. He is listed on its Advisory Board, and that of the League of Composers’ Review, in February of 1924, and then on its Executive Board, and that of the renamed Modern Music, from 1925 until the quarterly ceased publication the end of 1946. The League premiered his Two Assyrian Prayers, with Jacobi conducting and Irene Jacobi on the piano, along with works by Alexander Tcherepnin, Arthur Honegger, Igor Stravinsky and Fritz Klein, at the Klaw Theatre November 30, 1924 . The League also programmed his String Quartet Based on American Indian Themes at the Brooklyn Museum November 19, 1926 . In the May-June 1927 Modern Music, Jacobi was referred to in the list of contributors as “one of America ’s representative composers.” He represented the composer in a lecture at the MacDowell Club November 27, 1927 on the “cause of modern music from the point of view,” with Claire Reis representing the program maker, Minna Lederman of Modern Music, the editor, and Marion Bauer the critic. 138 In the May-June 1928 Modern Music, Jacobi is listed as “one of America ’s most representative composers.”

Claire Reis, in her 1955 Composers, Conductors and Critics writes, “as I looked over our files and scrapbooks, the name of the late Frederick Jacobi appeared, listed as a director as far back as 1924, our second season. His friendship had meant a great deal to me and to many others; even when his teaching schedule at the Juilliard School was heavy, he had remained a very active member, coaching, accompanying, judging scores.” In December of 1943, for the League’s twentieth anniversary, “the Town Hall Endowment Series offered an evening of world premières, written by Aaron Copland, Frederick Jacobi [his From the Prophet Nehemiah], Darius Milhaud, and Walter Piston.” 139

Besides public concerts, the League of Composers also actively promoted its members’ compositions via radio. When the League programmed the works of ten composers (including Jacobi) for CBS Radio in February and March 1938, Jacobi, Marion Bauer and Aaron Copland served as program commentators. In Modern Music, Goddard Lieberson wrote about the series, broadcast from 3:00 to 3:45 p.m., “It seems to me that these radio programs are the most important function of the League, as there is no other consistent presentation of contemporary American music on the air, and it is becoming increasingly important that American music reach large audiences.” 140

Jacobi played an important role in organizing these radio broadcasts. On May 28, 1939 , he was the commentator on WQXR, playing League of Composers recordings of Charles Martin Loeffler, Edgar Varèse and Quincy Porter. In January of 1940, he wrote Arnold Schönberg thanking him for suggesting new works to the League and for agreeing to have one of his compositions aired March 9 on a nation-wide CBS broadcast, with hook-ups in Europe and South America . Apparently in the absence of Claire Reis, he signed his letter as Acting Chairman of the League of Composers. 141

On February 15, 1945 the municipal radio station of New York City , WNYC, on its American Music Festival, presented a half hour of Jacobi’s compositions. To commemorate the 25 ^th anniversary of the League of Composers in 1947, WQXR programmed four Saturdays of League composers on its Music of Our Times. Jacobi introduced the music of William Schuman. He was co-chair of the League’s Radio Committee with Nicolai Berezowsky in 1947-48. 142 The Russian-born violinist and composer conducted and played for radio and was a member of the Coolidge String Quartet (1935-1940) that had recorded Jacobi’s Hagiographa for the 1941 RCA Victor release. In February of 1947 Berezowsky conducted the premiere of Jacobi’s Two Pieces in Sabbath Mood with the CBS Symphony Orchestra on the program Invitation to Music.

The nature of the collaboration between the two longtime friends, as well as Jacobi’s sensitivity towards his radio audience, is suggested by his correspondence with Berezowsky. “I do not know the [David] Diamond Trio about which you spoke but since you recommend it highly I presume it is good,” he wrote. “As for the Brunswick Quartet I don’t think that more than one of its movements should go on the air, for it is the kind of music highly inducive to many people, I am sure, to turn off their radios. (Nothing against the music as such). If the Diamond work is also too uncompromising in style it might be well to give one movement from some other work, perhaps one movement from one of the two Gruenberg sets. Perhaps one of the Bloch short pieces????????” 143

In May of 1947, Jacobi presented the young composer Frank Glazer on the WNYC series Meet the American Composer. 144 The dozen archival, non-commercial recordings of Jacobi’s compositions from 1935 to 1947 at the New York Public Library are either actual recordings of radio broadcasts or may have been intended for broadcast on the many radio programs Jacobi participated in as commentator. As Howard Taubman noted in a New York Times survey of commercially released recordings of contemporary American music in 1941, “Let us not delude ourselves. Making and selling records is a business in a competitive society, and unless the business shows a profit it will not long endure. Most contemporary works do not show a profit.” 145 Jacobi’s compositions were heard on radio until his death. Power Briggs, the noted organist, premiered one of his works on his popular CBS organ recital broadcasts and programmed another work on the CBS Contemporary Music Festival of the Air, April 27, 1952 .

Unlike Claire Reis, Minna Lederman, the dynamic editor of Modern Music, had a more adversarial relationship with Jacobi. In her The Life and Death of a Small Magazine (Modern Music, 1924-1946) she writes, “Frederick Jacobi, who in general approved the magazine’s policies and expressed his frequent admiration for the editor, carried on however an almost continuous bicker with her about its reportage and in particular about the New York review. He complained about the youth of the writers, their inexperience, and their apparent unwillingness to look at scores in advance of performances.” 146

Jacobi was particularly concerned about Elliott Carter, who covered concerts in New York and favored the more modern composers. Carter’s perception of Jacobi is suggested in the Winter 1946 issue of Modern Music, the same issue that reproduced the four 19 ^th century prints that had inspired Jacobi to compose The Prodigal Son. Reporting on the first annual festival of American music at Columbia University in the spring of 1945 he wrote, “saying what has often been said, only more skillfully, seems to be the goal of many members of the new generation. Frederick Jacobi’s familiar Second Quartet [1933] and Robert Russel Bennett’s cutely clever Water Music were performed.” 147

In The Life and Death of a Small Magazine, Lederman included excerpts from two articles Jacobi had written for Modern Music, “The Future of Gershwin,” from November-December 1937 and “Messiaen’s Language: Birds and Butterflies,” from the next-to-last Summer 1946 issue. Referring to the Gershwin piece in her introduction to the two articles Lederman writes, Jacobi “was an enthusiastic admirer with, as will be seen, many reservations that were also the inevitable expression of his own background and temperament.”

He belonged to a class now almost extinct, though there are a few notable survivors: the gentleman composer. I am using that term not in its denigrating implications but to define both Jacobi’s virtues and his limitations. Like Theodore Chanler he had all the advantages of a comfortable inheritance, was cultivated and much traveled, and he possessed a great sense of nobless oblige which led him to the championship of causes as well as the generous defense and promotion of his friends’ interests, especially of those less favored by fortune. He was a hard-working, well-trained musician, in early years a conductor and a teacher but first and last a composer, and a prolific one. With a firmly developed ego, he was ready to battle for himself as well as to prick the bubble of over-acclaim for the too quickly successful. Many of these traits appear in his approach to Gershwin. 148

When Modern Music was forced to cease publishing in January of 1947 for financial and organizational reasons, many critics and composers sent expressions of regret and appreciation to its editor. Lederman recalled, “another, most deeply affecting, was from my longtime friend and adversary, Frederick Jacobi. It contained a brief quotation from Goethe: ‘Auch das Schöne muss sterben.’ [‘The beautiful must die also.’]” 149

Olin Downes, in his obit of the publication, lauded its many achievements but also criticized some of its contributors—composers reviewing other composers’ works—for being partisan. “A defect of the virtues of Modern Music was is tendency to inbreeding and mutual admiration between individuals and cliques of composers represented in its pages. They were perhaps human…in excessively tooting their own horns, and in frequently bestowing upon obviously second class or footlessly experimental scores such praise as would have made an unsuspecting reader assume that at least several masterpieces had been born in the last few weeks.” 150

But Jacobi was both a “neo-classic” and a “neo-romantic” composer of an older generation aesthetically removed from the younger generation of avant-garde American composers who found voice in Modern Music. “My conscious aim has been to write music which is clear, definite and concise: I am an anti-obscurantist. I am a great believer in melody; a believer, too, that music should give pleasure and not try to solve philosophical problems,” Jacobi wrote of his own composing aesthetic. “I believe that art and craft have much in common and that art, to be valid, must be more than the manifestation of a passing mode: in short, that there are some eternal values which transcend period and time.” 151

Reviewing American composing from 1923 to 1933 in Modern Music, Aaron Copland wrote that “the past decade saw the older generation of ‘young’ composers come into their own; Bloch, Carpenter, Gruenberg, Ives, Jacobi, Morris, Ornstein, Ruggles, Salzedo, Saminsky, Varese, Whithorne. At the same time an entirely new generation of composers was fostered: Antheil, Blitzstein, Berezowsky, Chavez, Copland, Cowell, Hanson, Harris, McPhee, Rudhyar, Sessions, Sowerby, Still, Virgil Thomson, Randall Thompson, Wagenaar. These men form, for better or worse, the American school of composers of our own day.” 152

Jacobi’s European-influenced “neo-classicism” and “neo-romanticism” was a counter pole to the younger generation of composers who no longer exclusively looked abroad for their musical influences. “This is a plea for modernism by one who is at heart a conservative,” he began his May-June 1940 Modern Music article “In Defense of Modernism.” “A conservative because of a deep appreciation of the experiments of the past, of the long and arduous struggle which has slowly brought order out of chaos, or, to be more exact, a struggle through which mankind has learnt empirically to understand the musical elements in nature and to so combine them that with them might be constructed the great works of art which are our treasured heritage.” In the same article he critiqued Roger Sessions and a number of his contemporaries from the younger generation of American composers: “their music is too far removed from the natural sources of harmony, too far removed from the system of harmonic overtones.”

For the sake of what they consider harmonic or contrapuntal interest they have sacrificed the natural free play of sound: their music does not ring out; it is acoustically choked…a lack of moments of relief and of free breathing such as Mozart, consummate artist and unerring psychologist that he is, almost invariably gives us after episodes particularly fraught with harmonic or contrapuntal stress…It is as difficult for me to conceive of a large piece of musical architecture based on phrases which are unfinished and ill conceived as it is to imagine a great work of literature based on sentences which are incomplete.

Jacobi thought the most important element to develop in his composition students was their critical faculty. “A strong and ruthless faculty of self-criticism. This is what I seek to arouse in my students, for without it there is not a chance in the world of becoming a composer. The question of composing is a question of choosing at every step the right over the wrong, the better over the less good. This constant eliminative process is one of the principal acts of composing…The difficult part is discriminating between outstanding and mediocre ideas. Here’s where the critical faculty comes into play. What this faculty does? It tells you whether a sequence of notes is monotonous, whether the rhythm is weak, whether the harmony is inexpressive.” 153

Jacobi had his own ear and musical aesthetic of what formed beautiful music. On March 11, 1943 he wrote Voaden, “I am not, I must say, a great admirer of Shostakovitch, though he is certainly a tremendous talent; I think he is on the noisy, blatant side, not too much to my taste.”

The Canadian composer Barbara Pentland won a scholarship to Juilliard in 1936 and studied composition with Jacobi in 1937 and 1938. He introduced her to 16 ^th century counterpoint and Renaissance music, for which she was grateful, but felt confined by his insistence that she compose in traditional harmony and form. Because of her interest in non-conventional harmony, Jacobi recommended that Pentland study with Bernard Wagenaar, who used polytonality and atonality in his compositions, for her third year of studies. 154

Jacobi taught Julia Smith the same years at Juilliard as Barbara Pentland and also encouraged her to follow her own musical path. Writing Smith April 23, 1951 , he expressed his delight “to know that your opera performances have been so successful. You imply in this last note that I am responsible for your having chosen Copland as your ‘hero.’ Did I really do that? It seems to me the most I could have done was to acquiesce, perhaps enthusiastically, to your own suggestion.” 155 In the late 1940s, Jacobi encouraged another composition student, Stephen Citron, to pursue still another musical direction, steering him away from the classical tradition to become a composer of popular music. 156

Thanks to his inheritance from his father, Jacobi was able to live and compose in Europe from 1929 to the fall of 1934. Compositions from this period include the first Sabbath Evening Service, the Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (premiered by Diran Alexanian under the direction of Alfred Cortot at the Ecole Normale in Paris, May 30, 1933), the String Quartet No. 2, and Six Pieces for Organ for Use in the Synagogue. He remained on the executive of the League of Composers and, as the American delegate representing U.S. composers, reviewed the festivals of the International Society for Contemporary Music in Liege , Vienna , Amsterdam and Florence in 1930 and 1932-34 for Modern Music. Upon his return to the United States , his String Quartet No. 2 was premiered by the Pro-Arte Quartet at a League of Composers concert held at the French Institute in February of 1935 and also broadcast the same month by NBC in the first of a series of radio broadcasts arranged by the League of Composers.

In program notes for a December 9, 1936 performance of the String Quartet No. 2 by the San Francisco String Quartet, Jacobi described the significant change in his composing style that occurred during his five-year stay in Switzerland. Because of his 1924 String Quartet Based on American Indian Themes and the 1928 Indian Dances, he had acquired a popular reputation as a composer of native Indian music that was reiterated in the press and musical reference works until his death. In his 1936 program notes for the String Quartet No. 2, Jacobi emphasized, “A considerable difference in style will be noted between this work and its predecessor which was based on American Indian themes.”

The latter work appears much less ‘modern’—that is much less dissonant and less dependent on ‘color’ and external effect. This harmonic purification or regeneration came about in 1930 when in writing ‘Friday Evening Service for the Synagogue’ I found myself obliged by the exigencies of vocal writing to simplify my harmonic idiom. The Second String Quartet aims particularly at length and beauty of melodic line, at poise and architectural balance; that is, a return to a more-or-less classical ideal, suffused with warmth, tenderness, and intensity of personal expression. 157

Lehman Engel had also observed this change in Jacobi’s composing style while commenting in Modern Music on his works presented in the February 1936 New York Composer’s Forum Laboratory. “I have heard programs recently by Marion Bauer and Frederick Jacobi. Both exhibited works written over a comparatively extended period of time—a plan which gives one food for thought,” Engel wrote. The Jacobi compositions performed were the 1924 String Quartet Based on Indian Themes, the 1932 Concerto for Cello and Orchestra and the 1935 Concerto for Piano and Orchestra. “In Miss Bauer’s case, the development chronologically is in the direction of complexity,” Engel commented, “although in Mr. Jacobi’s the music of ten years ago is harmonically at least far more complex than that of the present day…of Mr. Jacobi’s program I enjoyed especially the Piano Concerto.” 158

Despite belonging to the “older” generation of American composers, Jacobi received largely positive reviews for his compositions in Modern Music from 1929 to 1946. Out of twenty assessments of his works, thirteen were positive, five mixed and two negative. Praising the lyrical feeling of Jacobi’s Cello Concerto in 1936, Arthur Locke wrote, “in this composition …there is a sense of genuine beauty that is conspicuously lacking in much music today that feeds solely on its own ultra-modernistic pretensions.” 159 A 1937 review praised his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra: “It impresses at first hearing with its directness and almost neo-classic harmonic unity.” 160

David Diamond’s detailed 1937 profile of Jacobi (the thirteenth out of twenty-six profiles of composers published during the run of Modern Music) lauded him for “his superb instinct for a melody of extended and well balanced musical ideas…In all of Jacobi’s work there exists an earnest endeavor to unite tendencies of the romantic and classic schools with present-day musical ideals…How encouraging then it is to find in Jacobi’s music an architectony that rests on universal and solid musical values, as opposed to a confused and undisciplined application of formulae.” 161 In 1939 Elliott Carter called his Concerto for Violin and Orchestra “one of Jacobi’s best works…light and tending toward neo-classic rhythmic and expressive structure. Here Jacobi appears to be hesitating between a whole-hearted return to classical models and a move toward a newer style…The delightful clarity of the whole and a tact in handling the combinations of violin and orchestra betoken great mastery.” 162

Jacobi’s personality and music aesthetic is clearly apparent from the twenty-one articles he wrote for Modern Music from 1925 to 1946. 163 Often he wrote with great humour, such as in his January-February 1941 article, “ America ’s Popular Music.” “Some of us thrill to Gershwin and to Beethoven; some of us just to Gershwin and some just to Beethoven. It is easier for me to understand those who thrill just to Gershwin than those who thrill just to Beethoven. And for those who thrill just to Bartok and Schönberg (without any preliminary training), I just do not understand them at all.”

But just as Jacobi began collaborating with Herman Voaden on The Prodigal Son, Olin Downes renewed his criticism of American composers. A week after Voaden’s Ascend As the Sun premiered in Toronto in April of 1942 to critical praise and Serge Koussevitzky performed Jacobi’s Ode with the Boston Symphony Orchestra April 22, the New York Music Critics Circle announced the five orchestral works (out of thirty-six nominated) and seven chamber music compositions (out of thirty-one nominated) from which it would select its award winner in each category as the best new American work of the season. The orchestral works were presented at a free concert a Carnegie Hall and the chamber music works, including Jacobi’s Ballade for Violin and Piano at a free concert at Town Hall. Irene Jacobi had premiered Ballade at the Town Hall earlier in April with the violinist Eudice Shapiro, head of the violin department of the Metropolitan Music School . The New York Times reported on that occasion, “Mr. Jacobi’s ‘Ballade,’ an impassioned, rhapsodic creation, admirably violinistic throughout and also well written for the accompanying instrument, was an interesting addition to the literature.” 164

Olin Downes was the incoming chairman of the New York Music Critics Circle. Yet after attending the two concerts of the twelve nominated new American orchestral and chamber works in May, he hastened to assure his New York Times readers that he “had nothing to do with the selection of a single piece heard on that program” and launched a frontal attack on American composers for what he suggested were “outworn methods and pathetic attempts to find refuge in the forms of a former age.” “What are we—we Americans—waiting for?” Downes asked. “Or are we, like the European artists, exhausted and afraid?” He gleefully reported that despite the free admission, the audience “expressed its opinion of the chamber music played on Tuesday afternoon by just getting up in increasing numbers and walking out…Nature took its course, and it was thumbs down for the afternoon’s music. Two-thirds of the audience had gone before it was over.”

And all honor to them, too. The afternoon was one of wretched music… In fact, most of the music was simply puerile and the rest of it was pale echo of the worst aspects of European chamber music—aspects that were stale to those of us who have attended any number of modern music festivals in Europe at Donaueschingen, Frankfort, Baden-Baden, to mention several which immediately come to mind in retrospection of fourteen to eighteen years ago. And here in New York, in 1942, one beheld young American composers wallowing in that trough of desuetude and post-war fatigue almost as proudly as the crowd they were imitating, and saying ‘What a good boy am I.’ It was rather pathetic. It was disheartening to perceive the musical scions of a nation supposed to be vigorous, hard-thinking and realistic, wasting time covering paper with such futile trackings. Fortunate, indeed, that it isn't that kind of thing we are doing at the front! If it were, Germany would knock us into a cocked hat at the first onslaught, as she did to defeatist France, which is mirrored so faithfully in recent defeatist French music. 165

Turning to the composing of American opera in a column a week later, Downes approvingly cited Herbert Graf’s “thoughtful and suggestive book,” The Opera and Its Future in America: “the present situation of grand opera here makes the time nearly ripe for the development of native American opera which, combining the technique of the European grand opera with a content and style truly expressive of the American people of the present day, will become a rich and complete art form [if it has] its roots in the hearts of its audience, and has crystallized their innermost, inarticulate feelings.” 166

 

The Opera Collaboration

This is the critical climate in which Frederick Jacobi and Herman Voaden began collaborating on The Prodigal Son in the summer of 1942. As Downes and Herbert Graf suggested, finding the most effective form and content of their opera would prove to be the two collaborators’ single greatest challenge. Above all, they lacked immediate contemporary musical and literary models they felt in sympathy with to either follow or depart from. Although he had not previously written for the stage, on a larger aesthetic level Jacobi did believe that he knew the fundamental laws “which are applicable in various ways to all styles of music.” As he stated in his 1949 interview, “the fundamentals are most of them quite simple. For instance, that every musical composition should be as clear, as concise and as definite as possible: that every musical composition should express human and individual emotions; that perfect form without emotion is dead; that emotion expressed without regard to clarity, definiteness and conciseness can be only chaotic.” 167

Jacobi did have extensive experience writing songs and works for solo voice, chorus and orchestra. The first time he is referred to in the New York Times is as an accompanist to mezzo-soprano Ruth Kingsbury at the Hotel Astor in 1913. 168 The Library of Congress Catalogue lists among his first scores vocal compositions from 1906 and circa 1912. Three Songs and Three Songs to Poems by Sarojini Naidu, were published in New York by G. Schirmer in 1915 and 1918. In 1920, Soprano Marguerite Ringo included his extended setting Love and Death in a recital at Aeolian Hall. 169 Alphonse Leduc in Paris published his Vocalises in 1921 and G. Schirmer two of the Three Songs to Poems by Chaucer in 1922. It is also worth remembering that Jacobi’s first works presented by the American Music Guild and the rival International Composers’ Guild and League of Composers were for voice: Love and Death and Ballade and Three Songs for Soprano by the American Music Guild, April 22, 1922 and February 6, 1924; Circe and Medusa by the International Composer’s Guild April 23, 1922; and Two Assyrian Prayers for Voice [soprano or tenor] and Orchestra by the League of Composers November 30, 1924. Jacobi composed The Poet in the Desert for orchestra, chorus and baritone solo in 1925.

Writing on America art songs in Musical Quarterly in 1925, William Treat Upton noted that “Frederick Jacobi has written few songs, but their quality is in an inverse ratio to their quantity.”

His two most recent songs to texts by Chaucer, ‘Rondel’ and ‘Ballade,’ are the work of a thorough-going musician, written in the quaint old-fashioned style absolutely appropriate to their text. The ‘Ballade’ is particularly vivacious and abounds in telling effects. Ever since it was issued in 1918, ‘The Faery Isle of Janjira’ (Sarojini Naidu) has been one of my most treasured songs—double or even triple stared a la Baedeker!—notable for the aristocratic elegance of its rhythms and deft melodic touches. ‘In the Night,’ from the same set of three songs to texts by the same author, is only second in interest and attractiveness, and the remaining ‘Love and Death’ is a dramatic song of great emotional power.” 170

Writing on American art songs again in Musical Quarterly in 1938 Upton noted, “we recognize at once the sterling musicianship of Jacobi…as expressed in the former’s songs without words, ‘Circe” and ‘Aria.” 171 For his article, Upton conducted a survey of representative American composers writing art songs in the mid-1930s and quoted three citations by Jacobi. “Frederick Jacobi puts the case well for the wordless song: ‘The idea of songs without words has interested me for a long while. I realize that in this way one greatly limits the singer’s means of expression, but to counteract this I believe there is the advantage to both composer and singer of being able to concentrate on something that is purely musical—not narrative or descriptive: the musical line.”

In his 1938 piece Upton wrote, “We agree with Frederick Jacobi: ‘It is impossible to tell in what form the songs of the future will be cast, but it seems certain that the influence of the great German tradition of song writing will not be lost.”

It seems to me that a human being, singing, will always exert a supreme fascination on other human beings. For that reason it is a fallacy to try to reduce the singer, when he is accompanied by a single instrument or by a group, to the level of the instrumentalists—to make him ‘one of an ensemble,’ as there has been a tendency to do of recent years. Similarly it seems to me wrong to write accompaniments that are over ornate, accompaniments that divide the attention of the listener rather than focus it. That which the singer sings, the melody, is bound of necessity to be the focal point of interest in a song.

Quoting Jacobi for the third time Upton noted, “the whole trend of modern music, in its essential objectivity, its tremendous technical demands, has been anything but favorable to a true song style. Thus, again, Frederick Jacobi:

It strikes me that there may be a temporary lull in the production of songs, owing to the fact that for the moment a more objective, a less personal, attitude towards art seems to be in vogue. The song, in the sense in which we understand it here, is the flower of the romantic age. And we are, temporarily, in the midst of a period which in its attitude towards art, has strong leanings toward the classic. But these things change rapidly. The romantic, the subjective, are eternal with man and so, I think, will be the song. 172

Jacobi wrote vocal music throughout his composing career, often setting poetry to piano accompaniment and adjusting his musical style to the time when the poetry was written. The Musical Courier noted that his 1946 Contemplation used “a lyric by William Blake beginning, ‘Who Is this that with unerring step dares tempt the wilds, where only Nature’s foot hath trod?’ It abounds with philosophy about the limited stature of Man when measured against Nature. The setting is a poetic one, with a whirring accompaniment, and possesses a fresh, pastoral quality.” 173 Of his 1948 Three Songs, the Musical Courier stated, “Jacobi sets three poems by Philip Freneau, the American poet of Revolutionary War days [1752-1832]. These are named On the Sleep of Plants, Elegy and Ode to Freedom. Using simple progressions and modulations with some Handelian flourishes in the Ode to Freedom, the composer has suggested an approximation of the period.” 174

Jacobi’s 1931 Sabbath Evening Service for mixed voices and baritone solo also has dramatic and theatrical elements. Just before he began collaborating with Voaden on The Prodigal Son in 1942, he completed From the Prophet Nehemiah: Three Excerpts for Voice and Two Pianos. The influence of all these compositions for voice on the scoring of The Prodigal Son has yet to be examined. When Irene Jacobi programmed the 20 ^th commemorative concert of her husband’s music in the Carnegie Recital Hall in 1972, she accompanied soprano Billie Lynn Daniels performing Penelope and Circe from the 1921 Vocalises, two dramatic, lyrical and mournful wordless songs that have a powerful operatic quality, and the romantic elegy, To a Wild Honeysuckle, to represent the composer’s many vocal compositions. 175

In his 1978 autobiographical chapter in Stage Voices: Twelve Canadian Playwrights Talk About Their Lives and Work, Herman Voaden briefly referred to his writing of the opera libretto. “I went back to the Yale Drama School in the summer of 1942. There I met the distinguished American composer, Frederick Jacobi, and began a close and happy collaboration, writing during the next three years the libretto for an opera, ‘The Prodigal Son.’ Here I had to write to order, objectively, with great economy. But I was still experimenting, searching—exploring the relations between the word, and music, and the theatre.” 176

Throughout Jacobi’s and Voaden’s collaboration on The Prodigal Son, their most frequent common references were to several classics of the opera repertoire.” I think much could be learnt from the libretti of Don Giovanni, Figaro and Magic Flute. Especially in regard to the relationship of dialogue to music and vice versa,” Jacobi wrote Voaden August 27, 1942 . In undated “Suggestion for Third Act,” where Johnny Appleseed enters just as the Prodigal contemplates suicide, Jacobi suggested to Voaden a “short recitative of moralization trying to prevent PS from doing this. (See wonderful recitative, with orchestral accompaniment, of the Sprecher [the Speaker] outside the Temple Gates in the Magic Flute.” Voaden wrote to his wife, Violet Kilpatrick, December 27, 1942 , “I worked steadily, finishing Act III and listening to ‘The Magic Flute.’” On June 20, 1943 he wrote Jacobi regarding the concluding action, dialogue and dancing of the last scene of the opera, “this is not the Mozartian scheme, exactly. But I should not have been honest with myself and my material had I forced it into the exact mold. There is something to be said, I suppose, for having models in mind but not being bound by them.” Jacobi replied July 11, 1943 , “of course you are right to consider the Zauberflöte-ending as a model to be regarded but not slavishly imitated.”

Jacobi had been inspired to compose The Prodigal Son by a series of four early 19 th-century American lithographs, published in New York by Kellogs & Thayer, illustrating the major episodes of the Biblical parable. He had admired these for many years in Wiggins’ Tavern in his hometown of Northampton , Massachusetts , where he lived off and on between 1924 and 1943. These prints in the Kellog series were published in New York circa 1840 and authentically portrayed colonial American characters in dress and backgrounds of their own period.

But what should the musical and dramatic form of this new opera be like and how would it compare to traditional European opera and American musical theatre? Jacobi wrote Voaden May 23, 1944 regarding further opera collaborations, “the ‘grand’ grand opera has its fascination too. One difficulty, however, is that I think an American subject would be advisable and that American subjects do not, it seems to me, lend themselves to this ‘relic of Europe and the past,’ as you aptly put it. It would require a new approach.”

Elemer Nagy seems to have favoured a more popular, lighter work for staging at the Julius Hartt School for Jacobi wrote Voaden October 11, 1942, “the technique which Nagy suggested was a bit faded, it seemed to me and reminiscent of the Student Prince and other operettas. I think we should have something new and fresh with the other procedure.” He repeated his idea of opening The Prodigal Son in pantomime and wrote, “I also like very much the idea of the second scene all a ballet…I am going to suggest the possibility of Agnes de Mille to help with the choreography of the second act; it would, it seems to me, be just up her alley and I think she could do something delightful even though the dancers were not the last word in professionalism.”

From the beginning of their collaboration in the summer of 1942, both Voaden and Jacobi had fairly developed, though not identical, concepts of the overall form of their opera. In August, Jacobi sent Voaden a ten-page typed scenario, “First Project for first scene of the Prodigal Son,” which provided an outline of the four scenes of the opera that is very close to the final version. It specifies the pantomime opening of the opera set on a Southern colonial mansion with an anticipated five-minute long Pastorale musical opening. “During this pastorale, pantomime showing activities on a prosperous farm of those days; perhaps a few negro slaves…the slaves should look pretty, almost a la Martinique…There would be some advantage in picturing this scene as taking place in the autumn; it would give a chance for showing the Fruits of the Land.” After the Pastorale,

the Father breaks the silence with a phrase something like: you see, my children, how good God has been to us. Is our debt to Him not great?…Dispute between the two brothers (did you speak about a duet from Macbeth???) to music which becomes more and more animated. (It should be a dialogue, not a set duet). The Prodigal Son is obviously exasperated by all the law and order of the Farm; he yearns for more excitement and lusts for that which The Great City has to offer. The father tries to quiet them but the dispute comes to a point where the two brothers are about to do violence to each other. The father separates them…No doubt all of this is pretty crude. But it gives the idea of some kind of a set-up for the scene; from it one can expand, I think and iron out.

Jacobi’s initial scenario also already conceived the second scene, “the whole of the Revelry with the Harlots in the form of a divertisement.” He had already featured the tango and other Spanish dance music in his A California Suite in 1917. For the second scene of The Prodigal Son, he suggested, “It would, I think, be delightful to have this scene nothing but a series of dances, most of them real old music, Waltz (which I hear, was coming in early in the century, polka and schottische: opening with a picture reminiscent of the Print and following, through a pas de deux, a solo dance by the evil one and a Danse Generale finishing with the Prodigal Son being kicked out through an opened door.” The scenario also conceived of the concluding fourth scene of the Prodigal’s return as a “Grand Pantomime.”

Jacobi and Voaden had the four Prodigal Son lithographs to suggest the overall dramatic structure of the opera. What the prints did not clearly provide was a plot mechanism and new characters in the third scene to bring about the return of the central character for the concluding reconciliation with his father at the end of the opera. Both librettist and composer examined Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens as a possible model. Jacobi felt the scenes before the cave outside Athens had certain similarities with the third scene of The Prodigal Son. In his ten-page scenario, he suggested that “Scene 3 could be modelled on things in Act 4 of Timon. There should be a few bars of introduction in the orchestra: very somber and despondent, as to the last act of Tristan.”

Shortly after the curtain goes up there should be a large solo on the part of the Prodigal Son. Whether this should start with a few words of Recitation or whether the main body of the poem and of the music should start at once we can decide. General idea: ‘how low have I fallen. I am reduced to tending Swine and the food which is thrown at me is scarce better than that which I give to my Swine…The monologue described above might well be modelled after the wonderful monologue at the beginning of Act 4 of Timon; the entrance of the new figures would, in any event, correspond to the entrance of Alcibiades in Scene three of Act Four of Timon.

Voaden had suggested Apemantus, the churlish philosopher in Timon of Athens, as a possible character type for The Prodigal Son, and he may indeed have provided the basis for The Cynic in the final libretto. Jacobi felt, however, that Apemantus was not the solution to the problem they were facing in the third scene. In his scenario he wrote, “strangely enough the very thing you wanted me to see in Timon, that is the character of Apemantus, seems to me a bit out of the picture.” Jacobi felt that clearly identifiable American characters were required who would resonate with American audiences. “I figure that the new characters should be wandering musicians, the main one of whom should be an old, or oldish man, perhaps on a wooden leg and the other two young boys, who might be performed by girls.”

If it were not stretching the element of Time too far I should like them to look like that old picture The Picture of ’Seventy-Five: the fife and drum boys playing Yankee Doodle. If it were not for the element of Time I should like to think of this old man as a veteran of the Revolution who goes around the country, with his young grandsons, making music, almost begging. The Time element is perhaps stretched too far though in this, do you think so? And if so could we perhaps think of something else of this kind to take the place of what I have suggested? Perhaps some research into old American customs would give us some ideas on this…The coming scene might be modelled on the scene between Timon and Alcibiades and Phrynia and Timandra.

It was Voaden who suggested incorporating Johnny Appleseed in the opera as the means to motivate Robert to return to his father. “I have gotten two small books on Johnny Appleseed,” Jacobi wrote Voaden October 11, 1942 . “It seems to me like a brilliant idea of yours but I must find out more about him to see just how he could be utilized.” The inclusion of this mystical American folk character, with his strong associations with the recurring cycles of nature, eventually pushed the libretto into a more poetic direction—rather than towards the more realistic, melodramatic and romantic genre of conventional popular opera. “Tomorrow I start work on Johnny and I am not sure just how to characterize him,” Jacobi wrote March 11, 1943 . “I think he must be fantastic, even a little cracked; what the old Jews called, I believe, a Luftmensch (a creature subsisting on air and in air) and nevertheless deeply rooted in the soil as a manifestation of God; a deeply religious man, of course. I hope this more or less coincides with your conception.”

In his scenario, Jacobi suggested to Voaden that parts of the libretto should be “built up in simple and biblical language, rather than in the colloquial language of the day,” referred to their collaboration as “a sort of ballet-opera,” and concluded his ten-page outline with the question, “Does all of this sound banal to you?”

Voaden’s own initial conception of the opera, outlined in an undated two-page typescript “The Prodigal Son,” was primarily a heroic archetypal one, completely non-Biblical, non-realist and ahistorical. It reveals his own conception of himself as a prodigal and reflects his previous symbolic dramatic writing: the failed quests of central characters in The White Kingdom (1928) and Symphony (1930) and the search for self-perfection by Adam in the highly abstract Earth Song (1932). In the opera libretto, he transformed the biblical source material into a quest drama in which Robert, the prodigal son, leaves his father for love, fame and to fulfill himself. According to Voaden’s initial conception,

This is the story of the young dreamers and rebels who go forth to create worlds of beauty or power. They go harshly from their beloved, their eyes cruelly set on the far hope. They live their dream, they fight their immemorial battles. They win skirmishes, but in the main, retreat—for the light fails them, or their swords are not sharp enough, or their hearts lack stoutness.

Then they say: There is a world where I belong—where my strength will avail—where I shall see clearly, and know what I must do. Humbly, then, they come home, with shame and bitterness in their hearts, remembering their fierce intolerant going from that place. The wise and the old, remembering their own youth and their dreams, go out to meet them with overflowing love. They call for rejoicing, for festival, because there is great gladness in their hearts.

But those who denied the dream when it called—who followed the stony path of duty—are angry. For a long time they will not be reconciled. At last they are content, discovering the wounds their brothers wear, like cross or star. And the prodigal sons find a kind of peace, there, among their own people. They marry, and beget children of clay and children of flame. Over all the land they spread the leaven of their humanity and wisdom and gentleness.

Who shall say they are less noble than the proud great ones of earth? They are quick to encourage the dream wherever it burgeons. Their roots grow deep, in their own place. They are wise, knowing intimately the four seasons, and their neighbours, and the small, true, enduring things. They watch from afar the great pageantry of the nations warring, hungering, searching for a better way. In their own place they too give themselves for the cause. It is because they vanquish the enemy in his separate strongholds everywhere that the nation marches on.

They grow old, ripening like the fruit of earth. Sometimes their eyes close and they tremble a little, remembering how they went forth to battle and were beaten back, and came home, and were met with love and joy. Theirs are the ways of kindliness and understanding, until they die.

Despite these underlying differences of their conceptions of the opera—Jacobi’s more realistic in a specific historic American setting, Voaden’s more archetypal and ahistorical—Voaden worked hard to provide realistic characterizations and motivations for the opera’s characters that would assist Jacobi in composing the music score. This is most apparent in a 15-page “marathon letter” begun January 9, 1944 and finished three weeks later while, as he wrote in his journal, he was “reworking Act IV for Fred.” His letter provides character descriptions and motivations for all the major roles of the opera. But it is his characterization of the Father that best reveals Voaden’s interpretation of the overall meaning of The Prodigal Son. “The father’s character line—or musical line—if you like, is the deepest and widest of the lot,” he wrote. “In his youth he was another Robert, and he knows the hungers, the dreams, the aspirations of the romantic. He has the luminous visions, spiritual quality, of Johnny Appleseed, but with greater authority and power. He is an earth man—like Wordsworth, Thoreau—a philosopher. And yet, like Milton , with soul like star, dwelling apart, he cheerfully subscribes to the humblest duties. He is kindly, gentle, a simple man, as the great are always simple. He is loved by family, revered by neighbours. He has been a capable and successful farmer.”

At the beginning of the last scene of the opera, the Prodigal’s brother, John, admonishes his father for mourning too much the loss of the Prodigal. In his January 1944 letter Voaden wrote, “The wind is out of his father’s sails when John has gone; the hope is out of his life. Everything seems lost. This is the nadir of hope; the darkest moment of the act—slow, meagre, weary, full of despair and doubt.” Jacobi wrote in the margin of Voaden’s letter, “Nun ist Mein ganzes leben dahin: Lohengrin. [Now my whole life is gone: Lohengrin].” Continuing his character and plot outline, Voaden wrote that Nancy and Ruth try to comfort their father. “He gathers his strength together, and begins to see more clearly. He comforts them, and speaks of the prodigal, of the secret of the romantic, and what they can do to help him be strong after his quest and fall. Then, out of his great longing, he speaks of his two sons, one flame and one earth, and prays for understanding between them.” Robert “has sought the external mystery. Now the inner adventure begins.” Re the concluding quintet of the opera Voaden wrote,

We are writing a finale which gathers up all the strands of idea, emotion, aspiration, character and incident into a big, significant, satisfying climax…My understanding was that when the quintet was over, and the reconciliation shown in mime, the father had the final word, as the supreme figure, the god-like character, of the piece. Two things he would say: that he rejoiced that Robert had plucked courage from misfortune and gained wisdom in sorrow and defeat, and secondly, looking toward the future, that Robert would find content in the enduring life of the earth. 177

 

Voaden and Jacobi found their work on The Prodigal Son artistically stimulating and genuinely collaborative. “In regard to the PS I am, when in good mood, often so struck by your words (as you know) that musical ideas jump in on me,” Jacobi wrote January 15, 1943 . Voaden responded in kind April 7, 1943 , “ours has been a close and single-spirited collaboration.” Eight months after he completed the score of the first version of the opera on July 18, 1943 , Jacobi wrote Voaden April 1, 1944 that despite their difficulty in finding a production company for the work, their collaboration “has been a great joy and …an amazingly successful one.”

When he was in London with Frederick and Irene Jacobi in 1951 for three workshop presentations of The Prodigal Son, Voaden recalled his collaboration in an April 16 “Meet the Commonwealth” radio interview: “We worked on the opera almost three years, I should say, steady consultation. I would go down to Northampton or he would come up to Toronto , when each of us had finished a spate of work, and at each stage in the building of the—of the house of the opera we worked together. We laid the stones together, so that we knew—he knew when he wrote—came to write the words, the music for the words—he knew the kind of words he would have, and the situation and the characters, and so on.”

It helped that Voaden did not object to Jacobi writing part of the text. “Fred wrote the words for small portions of the dialogue of the opera where the music came to him with great immediacy, and the words at the same time. He wrote the words also for both the neighbour sequences, the ‘cabin’ song, the traveller’s jingles, Hope Nightingale’s song.” 178 Voaden similarly proposed certain moods and musical developments for Jacobi’s music score. Describing the Prodigal’s return in the last scene of the opera in his January 9, 1944 letter he suggested, “when Robert is suddenly aware that John does not welcome him, the lull, the pleasant interlude is over, and the second half of the act begins in earnest.”

It is almost better that Robert should not return, than that he should return bringing disunity in the family. A profound uneasiness seizes the girls, and especially their father. It is a tension greater than the hunger for the prodigal’s return that opened the act. This is a threat to their happiness, to all that the family stands for.

I imagine some sort of harmonic maladjustment, or some poignant, unrealized, angry or bitter melodic line or phrase that dominates the music from now on, like a threat, like an invading army that has to be conquered. The nobler forces are steadily marshalled in greater force against it—the father’s love, patience, wisdom, faith; the tremulous hope of Nancy; Ruth’s quiet, intense longing; and Robert’s humility, rectitude, and belief—his reconciliation with life. The contest proceeds, like a great drama, until at last the dissonance, the embittered phrase, is transformed, illumined, lost in the triumph, the supreme climax. Then feasting and rejoicing close the drama.

He suggested that after the reconciliation between Robert and his family, “rounding off the scene, the father praises his son for his courage, and points to the life in the earth that is before him.” Jacobi wrote in the margin of Voaden’s letter, “paean in C Maj.”

Initially the writing of the opera libretto and score proceeded relatively quickly. For the first version of the opera, Jacobi inscribed the end of Act I “ July 18, 1943 , Riverdale , N.Y. ,” Act II “ Nov. 17, 1943 ” and Act III “ Sept. 9, 1944 .” Yet the progress of the opera was far from so clear cut. Voaden had completed a radio adaptation of his 1936 stage play Murder Pattern: An Experiment Toward a Symphonic Theatre for his playwriting course at Yale University with Walter Pritchard Eaton the end of July 1942. On July 27 he wrote his wife, Violet Kilpatrick, “Eaton is fairly confirmed in his opposition to everything save the realistic theatre. [Allardyce] Nicoll is younger, and eager to escape from it.” He must have established contact with Jacobi in July, for on August 5 he wrote Violet that in his playwriting course, “they heard my opera synopses & we had an interesting argument about opera…Did some work on another ‘Prodigal Son’ scenario, then talked to Nagy at 7.” On August 28 he wrote in his journal, “I go to class. Eaton reads J’s synopsis and we have a fine free-for-all about motives and characterization and incident…And Eaton goes, and for an hour and a half we thrash out P.S. Nagy and I very excited, I filling the little black note-book. ‘EEF you ware onlee closehr,’ says Nagy, ‘we cood do mehnee theengs together.’” 179

On September 9 Jacobi wired Voaden at Yale that his U.S. visa had been extended. On September 16 Voaden wrote Violet Kilpatrick from Northampton reporting on another working session with Jacobi at his home on 90 Pomeroy Terrace. He described “a strenuous morning, changing + typing the last of Act I. In Fred’s study I read over the rest of Act I. He was very pleased with it! Then he played the music already written for Act I—30 minutes of it! He has used about half the soliloquy—has made a big thing of it…Then 2 hours work planning Act II in skeleton—very successful…both very pleased with our day—‘an auspicious start.’” The next day he again wrote Kilpatrick, “Another big day! Morning gathering & inventing material for Act II…Then supper, and an exciting, exhausting evening arguing over the points I had gathered—setting, mood, character & plot issues… tomorrow is a big day! We go to Hartford to see Paranov (Musical Director of the School) and Nagy! I must be fresh, so will now to bed.”

Both collaborators had high hopes for the future success of The Prodigal Son. On November 27, 1942 , Jacobi wrote Voaden regarding the second act, “your act has shaped up beautifully and I hope that I shall also be able to see it through to a successful conclusion. So I am very happy about it; it is very jolly and charming and much more like Offenbach than like Bach!” He also reported the reaction of his son Fritz who was home on leave from military service: “For Hope’s Song…the song is, after all in waltz time, and according to Fritz (who is on furlough) the hit of the opera. ‘We must not let it out before the first performance, for fear that all the organ grinders will be playing it before then,’ he says, according to the old Verdi tradition!”

Jacobi finished the second act on December 5 but was unable to meet again with Voaden over the holidays since he was ill with influenza. Voaden wrote Elemer Nagy January 10, 1943 about his trip to New York , clearly anticipating that The Prodigal Son would be staged at the Julius Hartt School of Music in Hartford . He reported that Jacobi “was still too sick to see me, but I saw a great many plays and some operas, and the trip was well worth while. I had lunch with Irene Jacobi, and read to her the last part of Act III. She seemed to like it. I am sending it on to you, so that you and Mr. Paranoff [the conductor Moshe Paranov, Director of the Julius Hartt Musical Foundation] will know what is coming—also a tentative outline of Act IV, as we mapped it out. Some of the suggestions about lighting and staging are my own. I have not yet submitted them to Fred.” On January 24 Voaden wrote his mother that Jacobi “is resting, now, and won’t start to work till early in Feb. So the opera is held up more than 6 weeks and they are working on it this spring and giving it early in the fall. Too bad, but it will be a better work when completed for the added time spent on it.”

Jacobi wrote Voaden March 11, 1943 that he was convalescing and had composed the first part of Act III, Scene 1 up to the appearance of Johnny Appleseed. “It has, I think, succeeded very well and Irene thinks it one of the best things in the opera and one of the best things I have written. I think I have caught the spirit of your fine words in spite of having eliminated a lot of your text (two or three complete pages, I think) to my regret…I know you don’t mind my making necessary eliminations but I think you should keep in mind that everything in music takes more than twice as long as it otherwise would.” Voaden finished his work on the libretto in June of 1943. On July 21, 1943 , Jacobi telegrammed Voaden, “opera completed. Eager to show it to you all,” although he would not finish the full orchestration until September 1944. Of the concluding quintet of the opera he wrote March 9, 1944 , “the quintet is, I believe, the most effective piece in the opera and a fitting crown for the whole work. Irene too is highly enthusiastic about it.”

Voaden, too, was very satisfied with his stimulating collaboration on The Prodigal Son. In his journal entry for “New Year, Jan.1 st, 1944,” he wrote, “It was a good year—1943. The opera finished (almost)” and recalled “two exhilarating trips to N.Y.” In his December 1943 journal he described one of these morning train trips from New York to Jacobi’s new home on 5000 Independence Avenue in Riverdale , New York . “Suddenly the east river widens—the palisades appear—here is the Hudson , serene, majestic! Mighty river! Fred again: we climb up, up, in the December sunlight, the wide, down-slanting lawns, the trees, the country peace—the silence, broken by the roar of the trains! Up & up. Here is Toscanini’s big home on the terrace above the river; further up, here is the Jacobi home. The wide hall, the long living room—the sun room, bright, looking toward the river! Upstairs—the four lovely rooms—then Fred’s studio—& Act IV & exciting talk…Good talk.”

 

 

Producing the Opera in the United States

Initial public reaction to the libretto and score of The Prodigal Son was encouraging. The Village Players, directed by Dora Mavor Moore, presented a rehearsed reading of the libretto at the Canadian Literature Club in Toronto on May 17, 1943 . Verna Bentley, the Club’s Secretary, wrote Voaden two days later to praise his writing. “The beauty and strength of the words themselves, the excellence of their presentation, and the emotional impact of the story, all combined to make it a memorable performance.” An unidentified newspaper article, “4 Paintings Inspired Prodigal Son Opera,” noted “this is the first case on record in Canada of an opera-text being read as a play.” In notes in his diary for the Village Players press release, Voaden wrote, “the first production will be given next fall at the Julius Hartt School of Music in Hartford , Connecticut , which commissioned the work.”

Even before he had fully completed composing the opera, Jacobi was playing the piano/vocal score to conductors who might be able to produce its premiere. One of these was the conductor and violinist Albert Stoessel who directed opera productions in the summer festival at Chautauqua , New York . Stoessel had conducted Jacobi’s Two Assyrian Prayers and Nocturne at the Worcester Music Festival in 1925 and 1927, his String Quartet Based on Indian Themes and the Concerto for Cello and Orchestra at Chautauqua in 1928 and 1935, his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra at Juilliard in 1937, and the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra with the New York Philharmonic in 1939. He had also conducted four American operas (Louis Gruenberg’s Jack and the Beanstalk, George Antheil’s Helen Retires, Robert Russell Bennett’s Maria Malibran and his own composition, Garrick,) at the Juilliard Graduate School before and just after Jacobi joined the faculty in 1936. 180

Just a month before Albert Stoessel’s death of a heart attack at the age of 48, Jacobi wrote Voaden April 16, 1943 , “I played the Prodigal for Stoessel a couple days ago and I think he likes it immensely. My impression is that he thinks I have hit the nail exactly on the head in Acts I and II but that he has some criticism of Act III: too serious or too much slow music or something of the sort…Stoessel was very enthusiastic about your text and seems to think the whole thing has excellent possibilities.”

During the last week of January 1944, Jacobi also played the complete score on the piano for George Szell, conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, whom he thought “their best at the moment.” As a result of Szell’s favourable impression of the work, Jacobi was asked by Edward Johnson, the Met’s General Manager, to gather a group of young singers from the Juilliard School for an audition of the opera on March 20, 1944 . Voaden received permission from the Toronto Board of Education to attend the presentation in New York . Even before his immersion in Wagner at Bayreuth in the summer of 1928, he had been deeply affected by weeks of live opera at the Ravinia Festival near Chicago in July and August 1927. He saw Andrea Chénier, Madama Butterfly, Lohengrin (starring Edward Johnson), Fra Diavolo, Thais, Manon Lescaut, Faust and The Tales of Hoffman and was deeply moved by the combination of emotional melodic music, high romance and the beauty of Ravinia’s natural outdoor stage setting. In March 19, 1944 notes he wrote, “the train draws me to New York , and Edward Johnson (remember Ravinia Park —1928—the night lawns—Meistersinger—Lohengrin) hears my words sung! Tomorrow at 2:30 in the Met itself. Steady on, my heart!”

For Voaden the Met audition of The Prodigal Son was a revelation for his experimentation to forge his multi-media symphonic expressionist stage language. “14 years I have sought to express my inner singing and vision by spoken words sounded with music and dance and light. Wrong tack! Sing the word, and you have your exultation and your drama.” He recorded the event in his journal, “ Monday, March 20 ’44 . Audition,” possibly (in view of the shaky handwriting) on his return train journey to Toronto .

The audition is over—I have heard my words sung—and so have Edward Johnson, Eric Clark, George Szell, Chris? La Foya, Percy Hutcheson, Douglas Moore,--Ehlas, and half a dozen others. Three young Juilliard Singers, and one from Broadway (Robert)—strong, talented singers—how the words sang & lived & were weighty! We gathered in the little ante-room, till the mighty arrived & swept us up to the big room—Fred & Irene at the grand piano—the 4 singers in a row facing us. I sat at a small table, making notes in my script. Ed. Johnson & Hutcheson at the next table, with script & score—then Szell & the other conductor, with orchestral scores for Act I & II—then the others at further tables.

Fred talked a little too much, perhaps, before each act, standing close to Johnson. What a moment when they began to sing! Clear, powerful voices. I held myself tightly, proudly, amazed! Robert’s soliloquy—a big thing!—then the lovely scene with the girls—the father’s sombre appeal—“go not, my son” which Johnson & Hutcheson commented on—the quarrel. It was unfortunate the father was not sung & the Cynic. But the first act was solid, big—with a long powerful build.

The second act was weakest—lacking a Cynic—& arias—& with no dancers. Hope & Belinda were well sung—not well acted. The third took hold again—I was worried by St. Leger & Szell talking—but Johnson followed closely—script & music. Everyone liked Johnny & I was very proud of his humour, of his poetry—his mysticism—his gallantry. The aria was pure & beautiful— and I had written the words!

The duet in the 4 ^th was delightful—Johnson humming with them—& the final quintet a glorious & stirring climax. Many moods—great variety—the people will like it—and the musicians. Simple, direct, warm words & music.

In his record of the audition, Voaden noted, “Fred exhausted—6 weeks dreaming & working to this day.” On April 1, Jacobi had to write his librettist, however, “although we gave them such a good presentation…the decision is No!” and that Szell “told me that they turned us down, definitely, on the basis that the work was too light for the house and the house too big for the work!” On May 23, he wrote again regarding the receipt of “a very nice [letter] from Edward Johnson. He said that the PS had been greatly admired for its many fine qualities but all of them felt that certain scenes were too intimate for the size of the auditorium and the size of the house.” While greatly disappointed by the Met’s decision Jacobi conceded in his April letter, “on the whole their decision is justified. As Irene [Jacobi] has said, Belinda would look small indeed under the huge Metropolitan proscenium arch and I hardly think that the charm and subtlety, as I feel it, of our second act, would have reached very clearly to the top of the highest balcony.”

But where else could the collaborators look for a producer for The Prodigal Son? In January of 1944, Jacobi played the piano score for Columbia College , which had expressed interest in possibly performing the work the following year. On May 23, 1944 , he wrote Voaden that he had played the opera for Walter Herbert, “a friend of mine, who was highly enthusiastic about the PS when I played it for him some months ago.” Opera companies, university departments and music conservatories were in disarray and strapped for funding during the Second World War, however. “Juilliard is eager to give the work at some time, but when? Men singers there are almost non-existant,” and “the difficulty of the orchestra still exists,” Jacobi wrote April 1, 1944 , adding, “I imagine Hartford is still worse pressed than the Juilliard.”

Voaden was already raising the subject of collaborating on other operas and was suggesting literary works that could be adapted for that purpose. (He and Jacobi briefly considered Thornton Wilder’s novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey for possible adaptation as an opera via “a three-sided collaboration.” But on April 1, 1944 Jacobi wrote him, “I have about decided that the Bridge of San Luis Rey is a poor subject.”) On July 13, 1944 he again wrote Voaden, “As for future operas, I still am keen to discuss ideas but feel it would be a great encouragement to have something happen to this one before embarking on what proves to be a huge job. You know it is just two years ago now that we met and started collaborating! And I am still at work!” Without an imminent stage production, the composer adapted a ten-minute piece, Dances from The Prodigal Son Arranged for Two Pianos, Four Hands, from the polka, polonaise, the waltz from Hope’s Song and the tarantella in Act II, in August of 1944. He and Irene Jacobi performed these “Four Dances for Two Pianos” at an all Jacobi concert celebrating the second anniversary of the Jewish Museum in New York on May 16, 1949.

The Prodigal Son was premiered as a concert performance by the American Opera Society at the Arts Club in Chicago May 18, 1945 . Joseph Anderson was the pianist and musical director. The tenor Maxwell Wilson sang Robert, the Prodigal Son. Soprano Linda Grob sang the parts for Robert’s sister Nancy, the “enchantress” Hope Nightingale, and Belinda, her maid. George Grammer Smith, baritone, sang Robert’s father, the Traveler and Johnny Appleseed. The program was as follows:

Act I

Autumn scene outside a prosperous Farm Home in the United States, early nineteenth century.

Piano: “Pastorale”
Trio: “We Wish You Happy Birthday”
Traveler: “Brushes, Fine New Brushes”
Robert: “Oh, To Be No More His Son”
Duet: “Go Not, My Son!”
Father: “To the Earth I Turn Again”

Act II

Dining Room in an elegant Pre-Victorian Hotel.

Piano: Polka
Hope Nightingale: “As I Was Driving on the Hill”
Belinda: “In My Arms I Held Her Tightly”
Trio: “I’ve Been Robbed, Cheated!”

 

Act III

Same scene as Act I, early Spring.

Robert: “Long Ago I Left the Home I Loved”
Johnny Appleseed: “There Is No Motion in the Air”
Trio: “I Know a Cabin”
Duet: “The Happy Spring Returns Again”
Piano: “Pastorale—The Return”
Robert: “I Have Come Home to Work in the Fields”
Father: “You Were Lost, But Are Found Again”
Trio: “I Know a Cabin, a Little Cabin”

 

On May 31, 1945 Esther Turkington, the President of the American Opera Society, wrote Jacobi, who had been unable to attend the performance, “it was a large and enthusiastic audience.” “The singers were splendid…Everywhere one heard expressions of delight and joy over the performance and the lovely music.” According to an unidentified clipping in the scrapbooks of the American Opera Society, the Society had presented the opera “with its sparkling music—its depths of pathos and humour—with great success, last spring, and its members unanimously voted that this gifted composer should have special recognition.” 181

On November 18, 1945 the New York Times announced, “The American Opera Society of Chicago will confer the David Bispham Memorial Medal on Frederick Jacobi, American composer, for his opera, ‘The Prodigal Son.’” The Society had established the Award for the best American opera produced each year following the death in 1921 of David Bispham, the leading American Wagnerian baritone at the Metropolitan Opera from 1896 to 1903. The Memorial Medal also commemorated his strong support of American operas. Modern Music printed photographs of all the four prints that had inspired the theme and locale of the opera in its Winter 1946 issue, along with an announcement “The Prodigal Son, America , 1800,” that the work had won the David Bispham prize.

In his letter of April 1, 1944 informing Voaden that the Metropolitan Opera had tuned down their opera, Jacobi mentioned that George Szell “calls the Prodigal Son a Singspiel, but I think it does not quite fit into that category…I think we have a real Opéra Comique: less tragic than Carmen, perhaps more like Mignon. Perhaps ‘mediated’ Carmen, to use what I think was your recent phrase.” Their failure to find a production for The Prodigal Son caused the two collaborators to have second thoughts about their score and libretto. “It seems to me that one thing mitigating against the PS has been the fact that none of our characters are strong enough as personalities,” Jacobi wrote May 23, 1944 . “I know we have the Pinkertons and the Radameses, even, who are less personal even than our Robert. On the other hand we have the Carmens, the Hans Sachses and the Feldmarschallins: people of stature, and these are perhaps necessary or advisable, in any event, for a grand opera.”

He disagreed with Voaden’s suggestion, however, to change the beginning of the opera. “I think the Pantomime sets just the mood I am after (Biblical, patriarchal, gentle and tender) and I think any other beginning would get us off on a wrong foot. I realize of course that the opera has varied types of music in it but I believe they will ‘gell’ in performance,” he wrote September 21, 1944 . “I believe the opera has two qualities which perhaps make it a little hard to take but I believe that it is just these qualities which give it its individuality: the combination of the light and the serious and the fact that the motivating force of the opera is father-and-son, rather than man-and-woman, --of the approved fashion-love. If I am wrong on these two points we shall flounder. Only the future will tell. But I have faith.”

Two years later, however, Jacobi began to question these very fundamental points after discussing the opera with the Russian-born American conductor Alexander Smallens. Smallens had been a member of the League of Composers executive board with Jacobi from 1927 to 1936 and had conducted his Concerto for Violin and Orchestra with the New York Philharmonic Symphony in 1939. In the fall of 1945, Jacobi expanded the ten-minute Dances From The Prodigal Son Arranged for Two Pianos, Four Hands into an eighteen-minute orchestral suite by including some of the Johnny Appleseed music in one of the interludes. Entitled Four Dances From The Prodigal Son, the suite was premiered by Smallens with the New York Philharmonic at the Lewisohn Stadium in front of an audience of six thousand on July 4, 1946 and was subsequently published by G. Schirmer. Lou Harrison wrote in Modern Music, “Frederick Jacobi’s Four Dances from ‘The Prodigal Son’ are pleasant and clear in instrumentation, and they dance well, though they seemed at this hearing to have no very special character.” 182 Lazare Saminsky would later write in his 1949 Living Music of the Americas, “The four dances from the opera are attractive, their orchestration neat and gay. Of them, Tarantella is the most enterprising and the liveliest.” 183

Yet Noel Straus’ July 5, 1946 review of the Four Dances in the New York Times echoed Lou Harrison’s impression that, separated from the stage action of The Prodigal Son, the dance music from the second act lacked context and character. “The four dances from Mr. Jacobi’s three-act opera, which was written in 1944 and has not yet reached the stage though put on in concert form in Chicago by the National Opera Society, consist of a polka, a polonaise, a waltz and a tarantella,” Straus wrote. “Since the opera tells the biblical tale as if it occurred in the early part of the last century, Mr. Jacobi has purposely imitated dance music of that period, with all of its naiveté, binding the pieces together with brief transitions. The unpretentious dances are amusingly conventional, but heard out of their context verged on the commonplace in their melodic and orchestral treatment, perhaps with intention.” 184

The great weight Jacobi attributed to Alexander Smallens’ criticism of their opera derived from his remarkable work as an opera conductor. He was assistant conductor at the Boston Opera 1911-1914, worked as conductor of Anna Pavlova’s touring company 1915-1916, conducted at the Chicago Opera 1919-1923 and was musical director of the Philadelphia Civic Opera 1924-1931. Smallens conducted the premieres of Reginald De Koven’s Rip van Winkle and Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges in Chicago in 1920 and 1921, conducted the U.S. premieres of Richard Strauss’s Feuersnot and Ariadne auf Naxos in Philadelphia in 1927 and 1928 and premiered Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess in Chicago in 1935.

Writing Voaden October 24, 1946 of his meeting that day with Smallens, Jacobi reported, “as for the Prodigal Son, Smallens seems to feel that as a regular opera it is almost impossible in its present state: not dramatic enough and lacking some elements which are necessary for the stage.”

The subject, as we know, is pastorale, as he says, of a ‘masque-like quality,’ better adapted for a cantata or a ballet. He went on to the effect that there was nothing we could do about the end: for it is prescribed to us by the very subject which everyone knows. The element of surprise is not to be brought in there.

He feels, however, that the whole situation would change if we had a different third scene. (I shall talk of the opera as being in four scenes as we originally said and forget about the word ‘act.’) He knows the second act and its atmosphere well from having conducted the Dances, as you know. He was extremely enthusiastic about the first act and I gather that he feels that I am a real opera composer which fact he had doubted since, he says, no one in America knows how to write an opera. (This does not mean that he does not admire your text too but I think he was amazed at the dramatic vitality which my music infused into your scene.)

So far so good. But now perhaps you will be shocked. He thinks the third scene, instead of being ‘goody’ and, as he seems to feel, ‘tame,’ should be sordid, dramatic and even bordering on the violent. There must be some sex interest here. He feels that with a violent, or somewhat violent, third scene, the pastoral character of the ending would not only be permissible (and inevitable) but also far more effective than it is now. I am not disinclined to agree with him. Will you think the thing over?…What I think we need is a scene which is intimate, miserable, sexy, violent and which opens the door for the denouement which we desire.

Voaden had been elected President of the Canadian Arts Council, an umbrella group of sixteen national organizations representing over five thousand artists, in December of 1945. In October of 1946 the Canadian government appointed him a member of the Canadian delegation to the inaugural month-long meeting of UNESCO in Paris in November and December. “Your letter was a bomb-shell!” he wrote Jacobi November 4, 1946 regarding Alexander Smallens’ suggestions. “I wish we could see a performance of the work—or even hear it sung through once more in an audition—before we change and rewrite Act III. I am inclined, with you, to feel that the change is a good one (at least for the first part of the scene) but I should like to feel surer than I am.”

Despite his additional responsibilities and ongoing teaching duties, Voaden was willing to find the time to revise the third scene of The Prodigal Son as Smallens had recommended and sent suggestions to Jacobi about possible changes for the scene November 5. Jacobi wrote him on November 9, 1946 noting, “I gather that you feel as I do: that you hate to scrap what we have, not because of laziness but because we think it has ‘quality;’ but that, on the other hand, the criticism seems justified and that our work in its present state does lack dramatic and operatic tension. I shall try to see Smallens again and perhaps some others before we make up our minds irrevocably to try the new path.”

The following day Voaden took the train to Halifax and sailed on the Aquitania to Paris November 11 for the UNESCO conference, working on revisions for Act III on his trans-Atlantic journey. In his November 5 letter, he had suggested adding an evil female character, Eva, to the third “The Prodigal Son in Misery” scene. “Robert and Eva…are reaching the end of their tether— hungry. The locket is worth a great deal. To get it, Eva warms to him, sexily; he sings (perhaps in an aria) his passion, hunger, for her. Andrea del Sartoish, perhaps, telling her of home, suggesting she go as his wife. He is caught in the net, like Don José .” In his November 9, 1946 letter Jacobi noted, “I think it would be difficult to combine Johnny Appleseed in one scene with our new bad girl (I have called her Anna—in honour of Anna Lucasta [the central character in Philip Yordan’s play] in my mind’s eye and rather prefer that to Eva, which reminds one, of course, of Mother Eve, the first woman.”

I had a violent ending of the scene in my mind rather than the mystic one we now have…In our present set-up we have built up Johnny’s character considerably; it would be hard to build him up properly and also to build up our new bad girl in one short act. It would, in any event, take the focus off of the girl and I think it is the lack of the element of evil, of bitterness, which gives our present work its perhaps slightly insipid character. It seems to me, after all, that it might be better to concentrate on the bad girl and use Johnny only incidentally as a foil. But it does seem a shame to sacrifice our well-rounded, comic and mystic Johnny! I am, as you see, quite confused. The Carmen atmosphere is, in any event, the correct one, according to my way of feeling too.

On January 11, 1947 Jacobi suggested a solution by adding a second scene with the new evil woman figure in Act II, “The Prodigal Son Wastes His Substance.” “I think it would be perfectly feasible to end the scene with Robert stabbed and lying across the threshold (or across the bed or across the table). The audience could easily imagine (between the acts) that Robert has gotten over his wound and that he has found his way to the Desolate Landscape which is the present Johnny Appleseed locale.” Combining this “momentary flight into the Realistic” with the existing Act II would add the dramatic conflict Smallens had found missing in the opera. This suggested solution would also enable keeping the existing Johnny Appleseed scene intact as the first scene of Act III.

In his January 11 letter, Jacobi informed Voaden, “You will be interested to know that I heard the dress rehearsal of Bernard Rogers’ (and Norman Corwin’s) The Warrior at the Metropolitan the other morning and that I found it excruciating. I am ashamed to say that I left before it was over and that I had to force myself to stay as long as I did.” The nineteenth American opera presented by the Metropolitan, The Warrior premiered, with a live radio broadcast, January 11, 1947 on a double bill with a new English translation of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel. A contemporary treatment of the Samson and Delilah story, the opera featured Mack Harrell and Regina Resnik in the principal roles. Jacobi wrote Voaden, “I understand that the critics are planning to be merciful but as for me, I thought it ‘catastrophic.’”

As you know, I think there are two essentials for opera: Lyricism and Drama and this work had neither. It was exasperating for me to see this large stage with nothing going on; to be aware of excellent singers standing there and having nothing to sing and a huge orchestra on the spot, emitting a few ejaculations from time to time, but nothing at all worthy of its possibilities. Perhaps I am prejudiced by our failure to make the grade but I do not think (having my ideas about opera) that I could have thought otherwise in any event! I found the words corny and pretentious. (How lucky one is to have a distinguished librettist!…like H.V.)

Far from merciful, Olin Downes completely agreed with Jacobi’s criticism of the musical score, orchestration, staging and libretto of Rogers’ and Corwin’s opera. In his devastating January 12, 1947 “‘Warrior’ Is Given at Metropolitan” New York Times review, Downes stated, “this is a singularly weak and ineffectual opera, so weak and ineffectual, so strikingly without inspiration or dramatic intensity, that one can only wonder why a jury of eminent authorities should have given it the Alice M. Ditson prize, and why, even on the basis of such endorsement, the Metropolitan should have produced it.” Of the opera’s musical score Downes commented, “Mr. Rogers has written a little music that we know in short instrumental forms, and this with sensitivity. His sincerity is not to be questioned, but as a musician for the theatre he has not dramatic technique and he does not summon the revealing musical phrase…this opera score has no convincing melodic idea of any kind…the orchestra largely squeals to express scorn or satire, and the drums are whacked, often and violently, for struggling or rage.” Of Corwin’s libretto for The Warrior Downes wrote, “He has some glowing lines, but his tabloid version of the tremendous story of Samson and Delilah, taken as a whole, creates no real characters, projects no genuinely powerful emotional moments—indeed hardly gives itself time to do so—and wavers in its style between the stilted and pretentious and the ‘modern’ and colloquial.”

In February of 1947 Jacobi left for San Francisco to attend rehearsals of his Concertino for Piano and String Orchestra by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Pierre Monteux. The February 15 youth concert featured Jacobi as commentator and Irene Jacobi as piano soloist. On the program, the Concertino was preceded by Mozart’s Don Juan Overture and was followed by Darius Milhaud’s Bal Martiniquais and Beethoven’s Symphony No 5 in C Minor, Opus 67. He was back in San Francisco the following year, writing the program notes for the premiere of his Symphony in C, completed in September of 1947, on April 1, 1948 . “This symphony, dedicated to Pierre Monteux and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, was directly inspired by the delightful performance of my Concertino for Piano and Strings, given in San Francisco last February. Its opening theme came to me on the train on my way back to New York.” 185

In May of 1948, Jacobi arranged the waltz and polka from the opera for piano, four hands, as Two Dances From The Prodigal Son. Either already in 1947 or in 1948, he submitted The Prodigal Son to Gaetano Merola (1881-1953) of the San Francisco Opera Company. Merola conducted the San Carlo Opera in San Francisco 1918-1922 and became the founding director of the San Francisco Opera in 1923, programming primarily the standard European repertoire. Merola believed there was no successful opera without a female lead. His major criticism of The Prodigal Son—the lack of a conventional male-female romantic interest—led Jacobi and Voaden to revise the opera.

Though greatly tempted by the possibility of a production in San Francisco, Jacobi wrote Voaden October 9, 1948, “I should hate to make any real changes in the music for it flows along so naturally now!…I think Act II and the first scene of the third act, (Appleseed) should be left as much as possible as they are!” He nevertheless suggested “to give Ruth more prominence” as a love interest for Robert in Act I and to heighten the staging of the dramatic and sexual conflict in Act II.

It seems to me that we should accentuate as much as possible the brutality of the clash between Robert and Hope at the end of the scene, re the Mother’s Picture; make it rather rough stuff. Also the ghoulishness of the final dance of that scene should be accentuated. I think Belinda (perhaps drunk, too, by this time) might be re-introduced (not saying anything but merely being part of the stage picture)…the dance should attain an almost bacchanalian whirl and Belinda, galumping after the dancers, would add something sinister to the picture…If we placed this scene in New Orleans we might consider it Mardi Gras time…to add to the general ghoulishness.

An undated typescript inserted in the revised score of the opera explained, “the second version of The Prodigal Son was made at the request of Mr. Gaetano Merola, head of the San Francisco Opera Company.”

It changes the character of Ruth into an adopted daughter of Mr. Randall, father of Robert, the Prodigal. Ruth is in love with Robert, though the latter, in the first act, has no more than a brotherly affection for her. During the course of his wanderings (Act II and the first scene of Act III) Robert becomes aware of the love he has left at home. When he returns he is dismayed that Ruth is being ardently wooed by his older brother John. A conflict between the brothers is inevitable and ends only when Ruth has opted for Robert, whom, she admits, she has loved from the beginning. The two central scenes of the opera (Robert away) remain practically untouched. The final scene only is very different.

In 1972 Voaden further specified the difference between the first and second version of the opera. “In essence, only two scenes have been added: an opening scene between John and Ruth before the Prodigal’s return, and the confrontation scene in which Ruth chooses Robert. These are in Act III, Sc. 2. The changes in the first two acts and in Act III, Sc. 1, were chiefly libretto changes.” 186

Voaden worked on implementing these changes in the first half of 1949. He also considered still further recommendations for revisions made to Jacobi by the German-American opera director Leopold Sachse, who had taught stage technique at the Juilliard Graduate School of Music in 1940-1941. Sachse had established a permanent opera company in pre-Hitler Germany in Münster, opened his own theatre, the Sachse Oper, in Berlin and later was general manager and director at the Hamburg State Opera House. Edward Johnson appointed him director of Wagnerian opera at the Metropolitan in December 1935, where he worked for seven years as stage director of primarily German operas. In 1945, Sachse was named stage director of the New York City Opera and in 1947 became president of the American Lyric Theatre, founded with other members of the New York City Opera to present operas in English. He continued working at the New York City Opera, sharing directing duties with Theodore Komisarjevsky and Gian-Carlo Menotti for the 1948-49 season.

Like Smallens and Merola, Sachse had also suggested introducing a romantic love relationship and greater dramatic conflict for The Prodigal Son. Voaden wrote Jacobi on July 15, 1949 , “while working over the script to make the changes I have considered Sachse’s suggestions. The problem is created by the fact that the opera has a certain line or centrality based on the four prints, the father-son axis. Any radical changes violate this axis. Only a complete rewriting of words and music will change it from an American re-telling of the biblical story to something else.”

In the two new scenes added to Act IV, I did my best to add the love interest and excitement without destroying this centrality. We are agreed that the changes we have made in Act I are not sufficient to give Ruth and her love for Robert prominence. But the scene between Ruth and Robert which we have to write will have to be very carefully done; if it is too slight it won’t establish sympathy for Ruth; if it is too heavy it will destroy the line of the rest of the act as written…

The second suggestion, that the Salesman and Cynic should be fused and built up into something diabolic, is an interesting one. But it would result in a different opera from the one we have written. The ‘line’ would be simpler; the play a conflict between good and evil. As always in symbolism, character and humorous values would be sacrificed, also credibility. I doubt the final result would have more audience interest—it would depend on how well it was done.

The salesman has a dirty, shabby, disreputable humour. He is your creation, and a very interesting and amusing one. The cynic was created to fit into our genteel, champagne-like second scene atmosphere. He is a philosopher, a wit, a gentleman. He belongs to the act, as the salesman belongs to the rural mood of the first scene.

The same actor might sing both roles, and Scene 3 might have an enlarged dream scene to open it, in which, in the shadowy dawn, both figures might appear, with snatches of their words and music, in a kind of mephistophelean duet, their appearances accented toward devildom, and Ruth’s image and words giving him peace and redemption at last. (It could be one figure, with two masks, one urbane, one gross). An alternative, or additional suggestion, is to have Robert faint when Johnny has almost persuaded him to go home. Then, in his stupor, this two-figured devil and Johnny could have contest for his soul. It might be a quintet or sextet, with Hope on the evil side, and Ruth, and perhaps his father, on the good…

I think we should try to have a performance of the last act as it is, before considering pushing it the final step towards melodrama by starting with the Ruth-John wedding. This change would be apt to destroy the father-son reunion axis almost entirely, throwing the romantic angle to the fore. As I said, we have tried to hold a nice balance between the two and to fuse them into one in the present revised version…

As to the final suggestion of more spoken dialogue, it does not appeal to me. It makes the opera more intimate, more like a play. Transitions from spoken to sung dialogue are always difficult. I feel that we have just enough spoken dialogue as it is. However, this is something about which we might feel more secure after a partial or complete performance.

Jacobi responded to Voaden from Berkley , California July 23, 1949 with the news that Stanford University would stage a full production of the Second Act of The Prodigal Son on August 19. He had been teaching during the summer session at the University of California , where a concert of his music was given at Wheeler Hall August 8, 1949 . Jacobi himself conducted his Concertino for Piano and String Orchestra. The program also included the slow movement from Hagiographa, the first and last of the 1921Three Preludes for Violin and Piano, three songs to words by Philip Freneau, and the Meditation for Trombone and Piano, written for and performed by Davis Shuman, Jacobi’s colleague at Juilliard.

Albert Frankenstein highly praised Jacobi’s music in the San Francisco Chronicle. “The program was devoted largely to chamber music, and it beautifully exemplified Jacobi’s gift of lyric melody. He knows how to create an exquisite and memorable theme, how to set it in exactly the right harmonic and instrumental framework, and how to develop its implications for brevity or length.” He called Hagiographa “a big, grandly sonorous work somewhat recalling the idiom of Ernest Bloch” and noted that the Concertino “is also a piece of considerable size. It has the curious and rather special virtue of seeming bigger that it actually is: its tuneful materials are so adroitly handled that it makes an impression of considerable weight and complexity although its timespan is exceptionally short.” Frankenstein concluded his review by mentioning, “Irene Jacobi is an especially authoritative and brilliant performer of her husband’s music and served throughout the evening as soloist, ensemble player and accompanist” and that “the second act of Jacobi’s opera, ‘The Prodigal Son,’ will be given at Stanford on the 19 ^th.” 187

Buoyed by this first staging of an act from their opera, Jacobi agreed with Voaden that the addition of a conventional romantic plot as advocated by Gaetano Merola and Leopold Sachse would transform the opera into something very different from what had first been conceived by the composer and librettist. “Strangely enough, I had been mulling about the whole affair and feeling, just as you do: all these suggestions may be good in one way but they are throwing our opera ‘out of kilt,’” he wrote in his letter of July 23.

The father-son axis, as you say, becomes confused; the Ruth-Robert affair, however, never becomes completely clear, structurally! My feeling is that, if we should get a complete performance of the work at a non-commercial theater (Stanford, Toronto, Hartford or something similar) I should like to see the whole work done as originally conceived and executed (details of the final scene perhaps to be mulled over). OK!: as they say: it would not be the usual ‘effective opera,’ it would have no chance with the big public! OK, I say again. It has its own character; let us see if it cannot ‘get over’ in its own way before trying to make out of it something more conforming to the usual romantic standards.

The Stanford University premiere of the second act was the first test of the opera as a dramatic work rather than merely as a music score. Announcing the first staging of any part of the opera in its August 14, 1949 Art and Music section, the San Francisco Chronicle reproduced the lithograph “The Prodigal Son Reveling With Harlots,” on which Act II was based. The Chronicle indicated “Mr. Jacobi’s opera, to a text written for him by the Canadian poet, Herman Voaden, is conceived in the same general spirit as the lithographs, and, naturally, the work is staged in a style taken directly from the pictures.”

The premiere of Act II was produced as the conclusion of a mixed program of fully staged scenes from operas (following scenes from Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte, Von Flotow’s Martha, Verdi’s Falstaff and Ernst Bacon’s American opera A Tree on the Plains) by the Stanford Opera Workshop of the Stanford University Department of Music. Jan Popper, the general director of the Stanford Opera Workshop, conducted the works with a 52-member student orchestra in the large Stanford Memorial Theater after a six-week summer session. Two days later the performance was repeated in an open-air stadium in the Berkley hills. Robert, the Prodigal, was sung by James Gordon, Hope Nightingale, “attractive ‘gold-digger,’” by Betty Benson, Belinda by Marian LosKamp, and The Cynic by Raymond Hammett. Patricia Smith was Sylvia Slender and La Mariquita and Vernon Westburg the dancers Gilda and Frederick. Robert’s fair-weather friends were Jean Allred, Betty Beecroft, Margretta Dollard, Harry Eagan, Charles Gans, Sylvia Gray, Marilyn Jane Green, Carolyn Johnson, Betsy Jones, Frances Lusk, Margaret Nalos, Daryl Reagan, Earl Rosenberg, Leslye Sebastian, Joseph Turner and Vernon Westburg.

The synopsis of the opera provided in the Stanford Opera Workshop program highlighted the transformation of the original source material from a Christian parable about sin, repentance and forgiveness to a more contemporary American realistic work. But the synopsis only partly revealed Herman Voaden’s romantic and idealistic themes, found in so many of his previous dramatic works, which he may not have expressed sufficiently clearly in his libretto. “In spite of its Biblical title, The Prodigal Son plays in America , for it is based on four early American prints which show the ancient story as though it had taken place in the United States in the early days of the nineteenth century,” the Stanford opera synopsis stated.

In the first act we see the Prodigal run away from his father’s patriarchal farm in Virginia to seek his fate in the large city: Charleston , New Orleans , or perhaps even old New York . He leaves his family disconsolate but he is set on leading a ‘larger life,’ among ‘poets, statesmen and philosophers’ and he also has an uncontrollable yearning for the feminine charms which only a larger community can convey.

But he falls into the hands of a gang of ‘charming thieves’ in an elegant ‘hot-spot’ of pre-Victorian America . His companions amuse themselves at his expense and exploit him to the full until, finding his money exhausted, they throw him out mercilessly into the street.

In the third act he wanders Westward to find work, but, finding none, is a prey to despair and is about to do away with himself when he is chanced upon by the legendary Johnny Appleseed, who, prophet of ‘regeneration’ and the constant rebirth in Nature, persuades Robert to return to his home and his father. This he does, to the joy of his family, in the fourth and final scene of this ‘lyric parable.’

Alfred Frankenstein, in his August 21, 1949 San FranciscoChronicle review “Home-Grown Opera: Stanford Workshop Presents Two Rich in American Folklore,” focused on the American folk material of The Prodigal Son. Entitling his paragraph “Realistic Opera,” the leading music critic in San Francisco wrote, “realistic opera is one of the world’s most difficult forms. Mr. Jacobi and his librettist, Herman Voaden, seem to have realized that opera is likely to be most successful when it is treated in highly stylized fashion, and they have stylized their ‘Prodigal Son’ in a most amusing and original way.”

They tell the Biblical tale in terms of early Nineteenth Century America, taking as their spring board a set of anonymous lithographs of the 1840’s in which the moral lesson of the parable is brought down to that date by means of characteristic costumes and architectural settings. The opera is in three acts, the second of which, showing how the Prodigal Son wasted his substance in riotous living was presented on Friday night.

This was full of set-pieces, too, but readily justifiable ones in view of the dramatic circumstances. The Prodigal Son was entertaining himself and his friends in a very high-toned dive; there were ballads like those of Henry Clay Work, trilling sentimental songs, and several dances. To my ear, the best part of the score was the dances. The effect of the whole was bland and sweet and altogether lacking in climax.

Virgil Thomson, the distinguished composer and music critic, also expressed doubts about the musical and dramatic viability of the opera. In his August 28, 1949 New YorkHerald Tribune “Music in Review” column Thomson wrote, “Jacobi’s ‘The Prodigal Son’ is a treatment of the Biblical subject through the eyes of Currier and Ives.”

The décor of Act II represents a mid-nineteenth-century American gambling house and bordello. Our hero is shown ‘wasting his substance in riotous living,’ that is, being flattered, cheated, robbed and finally thrown out. The music of all this is Victorian in style, too, some of it directly expressive, other passages requiring parody in the execution to give them dramatic point. Utterly delightful from any point of view is the polka that introduces and closes the scene. Pleasant enough but not dramatically helpful is an interpolated (and danced) tarantella. With stylish sets and costumes and a thoroughly stylized regulation of stage movements, the work might have charm. Without such aids, the music of it seemed a little weak to this listener. He feared, moreover, that played and sung against a strong visual presentation it might also seem weak. Weak or strong, however, Jacobi’s score of ‘The Prodigal Son’ is a professional one; and its second act is a sound, if slender, theater piece. 188

Writing Voaden August 21, Jacobi described the experience of the Stanford world premiere of the second act as “one of the most important of my life!” Despite the lukewarm critical reception, he referred to “what seemed like tumultuous success on the part of the huge and distinguished audience which packed the Stanford Memorial Theater.” He and Irene Jacobi had reservations about the student orchestra, the choreography, several performers and dancers, and the stage direction by Joel Carter. Though Betty Benson as Hope Nightingale “was enchanting” and “the stage set was lovely…the staging was far from our dream; the orchestra did very imperfect work and our Robert left very much to be desired!” Jacobi had already expressed concern about the choreography for the production in his July 23 letter. “The ‘Dancer,’ whom we met yesterday also, seems the wrong type to us: the Martha Graham-Social-Conscious-Serious type. Fortunately, she will not dance in it herself and perhaps she will have good choreographic ideas. I feel we MUST get the right person for this, as the whole act is a dance-act!” In his August 21 letter, he reported that “the stage management was confused” and that “the choreography was very poor and Sylvia Slender was terrible!” While he repeated “the applause was tumultuous and there is no doubt but that the public as a whole loved it!”, he correctly anticipated that Frankenstein’s San Francisco Chronicle review “will not, I fear, help us to future performances.”

For Jacobi the Stanford stage production did offer several useful lessons for the future, however. Seeing the second act on stage he wrote Voaden, “my only real doubt is whether Belinda’s song gets across as I thought it would: the audience seemed in doubt as to the irony of its spirit.” He concluded, “everything on the stage needs tremendous underlining (paint grease must be put on very thickly). This holds true to music as well as staging and I may reorchestrate some of it with this thought in mind.” He also came to believe “it is doubtful whether the presentation of one mere act is fair to the work…the work is elegant and sophisticated: mere amateur performances will never bring it out properly and I wonder whether we should go after them?”

On December 30, 1949 , Jacobi wrote Voaden that he would be leaving his position at Juilliard the end of January. In regard to The Prodigal Son and Voaden’s approaches to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation he advised, “I veer more and more to the ‘old version’: that is, leaving Ruth as sister. I think the conception is more direct in that way and leaves, as you say, the father-son-axis more straight-forward. The ‘new version,’ though, also has its good points and I am eager to play its music (last scene) for you. My feeling is that it would depend on where the production (not the CBC, but any production!) is to take place: if at a place approaching ‘Broadway’ (one of the regular opera companies) New Version might be best. If on the air, or at Julius Hartt, perhaps Old Version would be preferable.”

The two collaborators were also seeking possible stage productions in Toronto . Arnold Walter, Director of the Senior School at the Royal Conservatory of Music, wrote Voaden March 4, 1950 that he had “met Mr. Jacobi on Monday.” Another important contact was Nicholas Goldschmidt, a friend of the Voadens in Toronto . The Czech-born conductor had been director of opera at the San Francisco Conservatory and at Stanford University 1938-42, where he directed Douglas Moore’s The Headless Horseman as his first production. After he directed the West Coast premiere of Moore ’s folk opera The Devil and Daniel Webster in San Francisco in the spring of 1942, Moore offered Goldschmidt the position of director of the opera department at Columbia University . Moore was chair of the Music Department and wanted to make Columbia an important centre for opera. 189

Goldschmidt was at Columbia from 1942-44 and may have first become acquainted with The Prodigal Son when Jacobi played the piano score of the opera at Columbia College in January of 1944. In Toronto , Goldschmidt served as the first music director of the Royal Conservatory Opera School 1946-57 and was the first music director of the CBC Opera 1949-57. In 1950 he also became music director of the Opera Festival Association and music director of the University of British Columbia summer school. As artistic director of the Guelph Spring Festival in Ontario , he would go on to conduct the North American premiere of Benjamin Britten’s The Prodigal Son in 1969.

On August 25, 1950 , Goldschmidt wrote to Jacobi in Gstaad , Switzerland , where he had lived and composed in his previous stay in Europe 1929-34. Goldschmidt reported that his music festival in Vancouver , involving the University of British Columbia , the CBC and the Vancouver Symphony “was a huge success.” He informed Jacobi, “I am opening the CBC season with Turandot,” but that, due in part to budget cuts, the CBC had not committed to Jacobi’s opera. “Yes, the Prodigal Son has been ‘postponed’—but it is not shelved; Terrence [Gibbs, Music Producer, CBC Toronto] as well as I like it very much—and we will, I am sure, do it within the next 18 months.” Terrence Gibbs had similarly written Voaden on June 9, 1950 , “Thanks so much for your letter and also the one from Jacobi. We shall certainly make every effort to produce the ‘Prodigal Son.’ I am afraid that as yet no date has been fixed.”

 

Producing the Opera in England

In the spring of 1951, Jacobi and Voaden attempted to secure a production in England for The Prodigal Son. Jacobi had been successful with several other compositions in Europe within the past year. The American Embassy in Paris featured his works at its American Embassy Theater June 15, 1950 . The program included the String Quartet No. 3 and the Concertino for Piano and String Orchestra and featured Irene Jacobi, piano, Kenneth Gordon, violin, the composer conducting, and baritone William Gephart in several of Jacobi’s vocal compositions. The String Quartet No 3 was also performed on Italian Radio and at a concert in London . 190 The Belgian violinist André Gertler performed the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra with the Brussels Radio Orchestra under Franz André, broadcast January 17, 1951 . Broadcasts of Jacobi’s works were also scheduled in Israel January 6 to 10. He had been a member of the jury of the International Competition for Opera Singers in Lausanne . While residing in Gstaad, he had completed the Ballade Concertante for piano and orchestra in December 1950 for his friend Nikita Magaloff, who premiered the work on Swiss radio the following year. When Magaloff gave its first concert performance with the Little Orchestra Society in Town Hal, New York , January 5, 1953 , the Musical Courier wrote that the work “has a Lisztian sweep, is of a rhapsodic character, and succeeds best in its lyric passages.” 191

Jacobi had also assured Cantor David J. Putterman that he would compose a second Friday Evening Service for performance at the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York in May of 1951. But on September 30, 1950 he wrote Putterman, “ Korea kept us guessing, as you may imagine, for a long time” and that he had decided to stay in Switzerland for another year. “I have not been able to work on the Service you wished me to write, as I was doing other things, this summer. And now I feel that, if I am not putting your plans all awry, it might be better for me to wait until we return to America , so that I can do it under your supervision.” Putterman wanted congregation participation included in the Service and Jacobi felt, as he wrote October 19, that the Cantor’s help would be “almost indispensable.” 192 Olin Downes, in his November 2, 1952 New York Times “American Composer” tribute to Jacobi, would later write about the performance of the Service, “David Putterman, the cantor who sang so marvelously …had been such a wonderful friend and musical guide in helping him with the stressing of the Hebrew words and in telling him which portions of the service required special moods.”

Two weeks before the first studio performance of The Prodigal Son in London , Irene Jacobi and the American cellist Madeline Foley premiered Jacobi’s Sonata for Cello and Piano, completed in Gstaad February 2, 1951 , in a concert in Zurich , Switzerland , on March 27. They repeated the concert in Amsterdam on April 2 and in London on April 7. 193 Jacobi wrote Julia Smith from Switzerland on April 23, “Irene and Madeline Foley played recently in Zurich , Bern and Amsterdam and gave, among other things, the first performance of my new cello and piano sonata. Then we went to London and there was a ‘studio performance’ of my Prodigal Son. It aroused much interest and we gave it again two nights later; and we are returning to give a third performance, a week from tonight.” 194 At the request of the American Embassy, Jacobi accepted serving as a juror for the Concours International Musical Reine Elizabeth, formerly the Concours Ysaye, the prestigious violin competition in Brussels where a fellow juror would be the Russian violinist David Oistrakh.

Three studio performances of The Prodigal Son, with Frederick and Irene Jacobi at the piano, were produced by the English Singers in London on April 10, 12 and 30, the first two under the auspices of the London Contemporary Music Centre. Voaden was on sabbatical in Europe for the year and traveled to London to promote the performances. In an August 18, 1951 mimeographed newsletter of his summer activities circulated to his friends he reported, “Frederick Jacobi had returned from his duties at the Juilliard School of Music in New York , and was spending the year in Gstaad in Switzerland . Some of his friends in England had arranged for a studio performance of The Prodigal Son on April 10, under the auspices of the London Contemporary Music Centre. Fred wanted me to help with the performance, introducing the scenes, and sketching the action of the parts that were not sung. On April 5 I left by train, reaching London on the evening of April 6. The performance was so well received that a second was arranged for April 12, and then a third for April 30.”

Voaden’s letters to Violet Kilpatrick, ensconced at their beloved summer retreat at 62 Boulevard Garavan, Garavan-Menton , France , reveal the planning for and audience reaction to the three performances. On April 9 he wrote Kilpatrick, “I have been working very hard on the opera. Rehearsal at noon today—the five singers are excellent. We are arranging for an intimate repeat performance on Thursday at 5 for BBC etc. officials. It seems that I live in a telephone booth.” On Tuesday April 10 he wrote, “the audition was a great success.”

We did it in an hour & a half—an audience of some sixty in this music room of the public library close to Victoria station—singers excellent—a wrapt, friendly, very appreciative audience—everyone very enthusiastic about it—boding well for Thursday’s big performance for the big wigs. I have insisted on this Thursday audition almost single-handed and am enlisting support everywhere in getting important people there. It was a good thing I came! Only regret—you not there. You would have been thrilled tonight—things like Johnny Appleseed’s aria—the Cabin song & the final quintet were deeply moving.

On Saturday April 14, 1951 , Voaden reported hurriedly on the second studio performance of The Prodigal Son. At the library, “Thirty—forty there—Eric [White from the Arts Council] & Mrs. Blom—Edward Dent [the former President of the International Society for Contemporary Music]. Someone from Arts Council—[Henderson from the music publishers] Boosey & Hawkes—2 from B.B.C. (McNair & Harris)—Andrew Cowan. Very good reception.” Later in the same letter he added, “I talked to McNair of BBC, who had been thrilled at audition. Result: If possible—a third studio performance Thursday at the American Embassy or failing that—Canada House. To bring in Sadlers Wells, C.[ovent] Garden--& more top BBC people. Plus press & publishers.”

On Monday at 6 pm , Voaden reported “Developments! If Fred has completed arrangements this afternoon, the American Embassy will sponsor a third studio Performance of The P.S. on Monday, Apr. 30 at 5 pm. Fred will go back to Gstaad, returning 4 or 5 days before the performance. I’ll stay here & plug for publicity meanwhile starting with Television.” The next day he sent another letter, correcting his previous optimism. “A set back—small—yesterday afternoon. The top cultural attache at the American Embassy reversed the decision & promise of his two subordinates who had seen the opera auditions. Since they have no concert hall—he has refused to sponsor events in other halls. We talked it over last night & are going ahead without it.” He was able to report that he “had a pleasant &, I believe successful recording hour with Monica Mugon yesterday. Almost forgot I was in front of the microphone. Will be sent out to the Empire in two weeks time: Meet the Commonwealth. 8-10 minutes interview & an aria or so from the opera.”

On April 17, 1951 , C.B. McNair, Head of Overseas Music, BBC, wrote Voaden recommending that he send invitations to the London Opera Group, the English Opera Group, the Glynbourne Opera, Covent Garden and Sadlers Wells. The same day Voaden wrote Kilpatrick, “This morning Fred and I chose the hall—(St. Cecilia’s House) very lovely—seats 120.” Kilpatrick traveled to London from Menton for this third performance of The Prodigal Son. In an April 30 dispatch to the London Free Press in Canada, Dave Spurgeon wrote of the final performance at St. Cecilia’s House, “although this was a studio performance and not a staging of the complete opera, it is the first time a Canadian librettist has introduced into this country his own operatic work…With the composer at the piano and excerpts sung by ‘The English Singers,’ Mr. Voaden described the story and stage action...before an audience of some hundred persons, including officials and representatives of the BBC, Covent Garden, the British Council, the Arts Council of Great Britain, and musical and operatic organizations.”

In his dispatch Spurgeon reported, “spirited and gay, and, in turn, sombre and tragic, the opera’s studio performances here brought forth great enthusiasm from its audiences…‘several operatic organizations in America and Europe are interested at the moment,’ Mr. Voaden said, but he added, ‘an opera is the hardest thing in the world to get produced.’ All that prevented one prominent orchestra leader in Western Europe from producing ‘The Prodigal Son,’ Mr. Voaden found, was politics. The government insisted that this year he present the work of a national of the country.” The June 3, 1951 New York Times reported simply, “Frederick Jacobi has played the piano for the English Singers in three studio performances in London of his opera, ‘The Prodigal Son.’” 195

In a letter of June 19, 1951 reporting on his musical activities during the summer, Jacobi wrote David J. Putterman, “there were three extremely successful performances (studio performances) of my opera, The Prodigal Son, in London .” 196 Voaden summarized the three studio performances of The Prodigal Son in London in his August 18, 1951 newsletter: “In all, some two hundred persons, including representatives from the BBC, Covent Garden , The British Council, The Arts Council of Great Britain, and various musical and operatic organizations, heard this short concert version of the work. I had an interview with Monica Mugan for an overseas programme, Meet the Commonwealth, and a portion of the opera was included in the broadcast. My greatest pleasure came from attending rehearsals. The singers were sensitive, accomplished musicians. They were enthusiastic about the work, and it was exciting to hear one’s words taking wing with music. The performances also were exhilarating. The opera was generally liked, and won many friends. I hope we shall not have to wait much longer for a complete stage performance.”

In his newsletter, Voaden also reported that in mid-July 1951 he and Violet Kilpatrick met Frederick and Irene Jacobi in Montreux , Switzerland . “We drove to the Jacobi’s home, Chalet Charmeuse, in Gstaad, where they have lived for more than a year. We lost our hearts to Gstaad. A charming town, with lovely meadows and green and white mountains all about it, and sun all day long, for the valleys open out in every direction. Mountain paradise!”

The peace and beauty of Gstaad were a great stimulus to Jacobi’s musical creativity. In addition to the Ballade Concertante and the Sonata for Cello and Piano, he composed the Capriccio for Violin and Piano in May-June, 1951, completed the Violin Pieces July 5, and re-orchestrated Nocturne in Niniveh and completed Dance (the Two Pieces for Flute and Orchestra: Night Piece and Dance) September 16, 1951. By the time he left Juilliard in January of 1950 to live in Switzerland , Jacobi probably knew he was suffering from heart disease. His Violin Pieces contain not only the section “B ä rentanz” [“Dance of the Bears”] but also “Alpha” [“The Beginning”] and “Ad Astram” [“To the Stars”].

 

Producing The Prodigal Son in Canada

Unable to secure a production of the opera in the United States or England , Voaden redoubled his efforts in 1952 to get the work produced in Canada . In order to introduce the opera to possible producers and to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in particular, he organized a complete concert performance under Jacobi’s direction at the 200-seat Arts and Letters Club, a private club founded in Toronto in 1908 for prominent arts professionals from all disciplines. In a draft for a press release he stated, “It is hoped that Canada may have the honour of giving the first complete professional performance of the work. Leaders of musical and operatic organizations in Montreal and Toronto , as well as officials of the CBC, have been invited to attend this concert presentation.”

Violet Kilpatrick had sailed for Europe on March 7 to visit friends in Spain , so Voaden wrote her almost daily about his activities in Toronto . On April 17 he reported a rehearsal at the Arts and Letters Club, “What a thrilling 2 hours! Evelyn Gould is lovely as Nancy ; Glen Gardiner has a rich sympathetic quality as the father—a wonderful voice. Gordon Wry is excellent as Robert—and Trudy Carlyle as Ruth. While they rehearsed, Stan Cooper and I prepared the program. The mood is good; there is a lot to be done, but I think it will come off wonderfully. We are doing the entire opera.” Two days later he wrote about the cast after another rehearsal at the Toronto Conservatory of Music, “they are a wonderful lot—I think it will come off with a big punch—bigger than the London performances…Big days for me—I live on air—hearing my words sung!”

Promotional notices to Club members and their friends for the April 22, 1952 performance described the opera as “an American version of the biblical story” and gave the setting as “in the middle States, about 1830.” The Arts and Letters Club playbill for the concert performance stated “The four original Kellog prints, which Mr. Jacobi purchased, may be seen in the foyer of the Club and will, perhaps, suggest a visual background for the Opera.” Irene and Frederick Jacobi played the score on two pianos with the following cast:

 

Robert, the Prodigal Son ---  Gordon Wry

His Father ---  Glen Gardiner

John, his brother --- Arthur Gray

Nancy, his sister --- Evelyn Gould

Ruth, his sister --- Trudy Carlyle

The Traveller --- Bill Williams

Hope Nightingale --- Doreen Hulme

Belinda, her maid --- Jean-Marie Scott

Sylvia Slender

Gilda --- Dancing Characters (not cast in this concert performance)

Frederick

The Cynic --- Herman Voaden

Johnny Appleseed --- Don Brown

Tom Rice, a trapper --- Bill Thompson

His two nephews --- Don Saunders and Jan Conde 197

 

The day after the performance Voaden wrote Kilpatrick on April 23, “last night was a great success—everyone delighted and impressed.” Two days later he added, “I came home from the opera Tuesday night at 12:30 , exhilarated.” But because of musicians’ union restrictions, an audio recording of the performance of The Prodigal Son could only be made surreptitiously off stage. “After school today Roy Bulgin and I went over the tape recordings of the opera. The pitch wobbles occasionally—a fault in the school machine, which we are to have overhauled. Whether the wobblings are now on the tapes I don’t know; but I think I’ll keep them as an imperfect record—for you when you return.” In his April 25 letter Voaden added, “Fred & Irene deeply satisfied with the whole experience—Fred thanked me for giving new life to our hopes for the work.”

Jacobi in turn wrote to Violet Kilpatrick in Valencia , Spain , on May 30, 1952 that Voaden “was very happy about the Prodigal Son performance and only regretted that you were not with us.” He reported, “as Herman may have written you, the Prodigal Son had a really great success at its Toronto performance which was excellent. Public response was immediate and highly enthusiastic; so I was disappointed when Herman wrote me that CBC had reservations and had still not made up their minds. A success such as we had makes one a bit fatuous, I fear, and one forgets for the moment that tastes differ and that there are special problems and considerations in every projected performance!”

Voaden had written to Jacobi in Riverdale , New York , May 27, “I am sorry to be so late in answering your letter and in sending you news. The truth is, there is no news. Shortly after our show, the CBC announced their opera program for next year—five of the six, leaving one to be named. I am reminded of the long and difficult delay after our ‘Met’ audition. You hesitated to make a direct frontal attack and ask for a definite ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for fear this will force a ‘no.’ I gather that Geof. Waddington was not completely impressed, but that Terrence Gibbs likes it—with minor reservations. It was our great misfortune that Ira Dilworth was not there. He is their superior, and his vote would have been a decisive one. I talked to Nicki [Goldschmidt]. He said they had not consulted him this year at all about what should be done—had merely told him what he was to conduct.”

Voaden’s communication with the CBC on behalf of The Prodigal Son had been facilitated by the fact that he had written the libretto for Godfrey Ridout’s very successful dramatic symphony for orchestra, chorus and soloists, Esther. The brief libretto, half narration interspersed with dialogue, tells the biblical story of how Esther enchants King Ahasuerus and saves her people from destruction. Only three days after the studio performance of The Prodigal Son at the Arts and Letters Club, Voaden wrote Violet Kilpatrick on April 25, “to the Conservatory at 6 for my first Esther rehearsal. Thrilling! What youth, rhythm, color, dynamic! Big orchestra—choir of 120.” The following day he added, “this morning Esther rehearsal in Massey Hall. Wonderful stuff. Heard the whole thing for the first time.”

Because of a controversial planned reorganization of the Royal Conservatory of Music, the Suiss-born Ettore Mazzoleni (1905-1968) had threatened to resign his position as Principal. When he conducted the premiere of Esther with the Royal Conservatory Symphony Orchestra in Massey Hall on April 29, 1952 , Voaden wrote Violet Kilpatrick the following day, “A night to remember! Chorus and orchestra, feeling a terrific love for and loyalty to Mazz, were inspired. So was Mazz. The result was electric. The work won a tremendous ovation. Ernest Morgan and Chas Jennings were at the party afterwards, and definitely committed the CBC to a fall performance...I sat beside Godfrey & Freda [Ridout] in the first row, just right of centre. When Mazz called to him he took his applause, then turned to me and I stood briefly and [he] shook hands with me.”

Esther was repeated in Massey Hall June 11 for a live broadcast by CBC radio. The next day Voaden wrote Kilpatrick, “Last night was Esther! I heard the show in the hall—not the broadcast. In the hall it was thrilling—a better orchestra & choir than in the final performance.” On June 29 he reported that the CBC’s “[Ira] Dilworth wrote Godfrey: [that he] had listened to Esther ‘with deep emotion.’”

Because the Arts and Letters Club was a private club and there was only the April 22 performance of The Prodigal Son, there were no newspaper reviews. The September 1952 Arts and Letters Club Monthly Letter reported, “the story was impressive and beautifully told, the solos and ensemble well handled and the music gratefully melodious and original.” 198 The painter Yvonne McKague Housser wrote Voaden the day after the April 22 performance, “there was lots of variety in the music and some perfectly beautiful singing in many parts, especially the group work. It would be such a satisfaction to see it complete with sets, costume and dancers. I do hope that materializes for both your sakes.”

In a November 3, 1953 letter to Voaden, Irene Jacobi recalled that of the two versions of the opera, “when we did it in Toronto it is my very strong recollection that Fred returned in part to the first version, which did not have any love interest other than that of the father-son relationship, but that he interpolated the spoken story which the son tells of his wanderings over sort of a pedal point, and then introduced the lovely quintet.” As in the 1951 London performances, Voaden had described the dancing and stage action missing from the concert presentation. The Arts and Letters Club performance was not a complete success, with Voaden writing Frederick Jacobi July 19, “I may also have been at fault as narrator in trying to create emotion and mood, rather than let it emerge from music and singing. I have thought so, listening to the indifferent tape recordings.” 199

On October 24, 1952 , Fritz Jacobi telegrammed Voaden, “Terribly sorry to tell you my father passed away this morning.” The day before he went into hospital, Jacobi had spoken to his copyist, Gordon Mapes, and “asked him whether he would undertake the job of copying, both score and parts,” to finalize the orchestration of the opera. 200

What were Jacobi’s preoccupations the last six months of his life? On May 30, a week after the world premiere of his Friday Evening Service No. 2 at the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York , he sent reviews to Voaden “in the vague hope that they may give you some encouragement to press for the CBC performance” of The Prodigal Son. “Let me know if there is anything I can do to get an affirmative decision from CBC…My Synagogue Service was, it appears, an unalloyed success; people reacted to it immediately as they have not to any of my other works and since I too feel it to be my best I am really overjoyed, thinking back at the event.” In his May 30 letter to Kilpatrick, Jacobi called the premiere of his Friday Evening Service No 2 “one of the most gratifying musical experiences of my life for the performance was beautiful, the congregation appeared to be in relaxed, devout mood and really moved in just the way I had hoped they would be.”

In his letter to Kilpatrick he also reported, “We plan going to Keene Valley in the Adirondacks on June 9 ^th to be gone for about three months, having rented this house to the people who had it while we were in Europe . I have no desire to leave Riverdale at this moment and the moving (two pianos!) is always a chore. But I trust that we shall find it worth while: the place is lovely.” Far from abandoning The Prodigal Son, however, Jacobi was determined to review the opera with Voaden and to press on with their attempts for a full-scale professional production. In his May 30 letter to Kilpatrick he mentioned, “I played the work for the music director of a southern university lately, since I am back; he was moved both to laughter and tears and declared it was the best American opera to date! So I suppose if enough others are of this opinion Herman and I shall have the pleasure of seeing and hearing our opera on the boards before we decide to take off for another planet. I certainly hope so!”

Ross Parmenter, in his March 30, 1952 New York Times “The World of Music” column, had commented on the increasingly supportive role of American universities in composers’ careers. “The American college is proving the American composer’s best friend. A striking evidence of this is provided by the way more and more of the colleges are holding festival-symposiums of American works,” Parmenter observed. “The University of Texas held its first such symposium ten days ago…Next week the spotlight shifts back to Texas, for on April 7 and 8 the North Texas State College at Denton is sponsoring a festival in cooperation with the National Association for American Composers and Conductors.” 201

In his May 30, 1952 letter to Voaden, Jacobi elaborated on this Texas connection. “I played the work for Dr. Hodgson of Texas Womens College recently and Julia Smith [1905-1889], a former student of mine two of whose operas Hodgson has given in Denton , Texas . Both went full overboard for our work and declared it ‘the best American opera so far’ (perhaps that does not mean much but it certainly indicated their enthusiasm).”

Hodgson is going to try to arrange a performance of it though there are many obstacles in the way, such as inadequate facilities for stage direction. In any event, I think I have decided to spend my summer on the Prodigal Son: there are many spots in the orchestration which can be improved and the latest cuts and little changes must all be put into the orchestral score and parts. I don’t want to be caught with my pants down if a performance does develop any place and I want, should I decide to find refuge on another planet, to leave this work in the best possible shape for I am convinced that it is one of my truest expressions.

Voaden sent Jacobi three installments of another “marathon” letter, giving his analysis of the Arts and Letters Club performance and of the opera in general, July 9, July 19 and August 4. Jacobi had advised against playing the complete score of The Prodigal Son in Toronto . “I know now that you were right in suggesting that we should not do the entire work at the Club from the point of view of the audience (or of the musical high-brows in the audience),” Voaden wrote July 9. “But I am glad we did. I have now a rich sense of what the complete work is, and what it would be like in stage performance—which is our goal.”

He observed a repeated pattern in the contrasting reception of the opera on the part of general audiences and “highbrow musicians” in Stanford, London and Toronto . “From all the ‘average’ people in the audience there was nothing but enthusiasm, delight and praise,” he wrote of the Arts and Letters Club performance. Musicians, however, were responding differently to the piano score than to actual concert performances. “One fact is clear,” he wrote July 9.

Among musicians the work assumes its just proportions as a serious and noble work, with lighter interludes, when you play it for them on the piano; but concert performances such as we had here and in London, seem to dispose a certain class of highbrow musicians, who affect the modern idiom, against it as an essentially light and popular work. Perhaps the delight that audiences take in it prejudices them; they can’t believe it is significant music…I cannot understand how the subtlety and delicacy of the lighter passages elude them. You have written from the heart, simply and directly. Is this no longer the fashion in music?

He advised against further concert performances and recommended cutting down the full music score of the opera (listed as being 2½ hours in duration in Claire Reis’ 1947 Composers in America) to 90 minutes for any possible CBC radio broadcast.

I am not sure that we should invite or seek more concert performances. The great climax of the play, the reunion of father and son, is pantomime, and is with difficulty realized in its full impact. The net result is that the last act, in concert performance, lacks punch and cumulative power. The quintet is thrilling and magnificent, but relatively brief. Moreover the introductory pantomime is not completely realized, and it sets the whole mood and biblical nobility of the piece. Then the whole of Act II depends on visual presentation. When there are no dancers, and when one cannot watch the intrigue and ‘business’ leading to the finale of the act it must seem long, and perhaps not completely interesting. The country dances, too, suffer in such a presentation.

In his July 19 letter, Voaden remarked “one reason for thinking kindly of our second version is that the last act is stronger and more interesting” and questioned the use of spoken dialogue by the father at the opening in Act I, the Cynic in Act II, and particularly Robert speaking his story of his wanderings in Act III. “You have given me good musical reasons for his doing so. I felt a sense of let-down—of a discomfiting change of approach and timbre—just when the work should be climbing toward its final peaks.” He returned to this question of the use of spoken dialogue, and whether that dialogue should be set to music, in his letter of August 4.

Unless it is amplified, it is hard to hear spoken dialogue (long sequences) in a big opera house. I wonder if the existence of the spoken passages did not contribute to Edward Johnson’s opinion after our ‘Met’ audition, that the work was too ‘intimate’ for them to consider it—and for Wilson’s unwillingness to consider it for Covent Garden. In other words, is a work with little, if any, spoken dialogue not more likely to be ‘grand’—to be suited to a big audience—than a work like The Prodigal Son?

Jacobi responded to Voaden’s three letters August 15, mentioning that he had “fainted in the swimming pool some weeks ago and had to be dragged out as though drowning.” Three days in hospital and several radio-cardiograms led to the medical assessment that he had not suffered a heart attack. He agreed that the Arts and Letters Club performance “made a distinct hit with the public,” that they should not press for further concert performances, and that for their idea of closing Act II with “an exciting and highly stylized ballet…the dancers here at the end could come in in masks, perhaps bird-masks, to suggest something in the nature of a hallucination.” Regarding the spoken dialogue in the opera he wrote, “it is strange that our young opera singers have so much trouble going from song to speech and back again; our comic opera (musical shows) people do it all the time…I personally like the father’s speech at the beginning of the opera; it gives the ear a much need rest after the long Pastorale and has a quiet dignity BEFORE the convention of the sung word has been established. Similarly I would be very loath to change Robert’s narration in the last scene; the underlying background music is, I think, very effective and the rest to the ear here too is, to my mind, highly gratifying.”

He also reported, “North State College, Texas, has the work under consideration; they are doing parts of the first act at this moment with piano accompaniment; I think the director, Dr. Hodgson, is keenly enthusiastic about the work and that his decision will be based to a great extent on how feasible he considers it for their means: the role of Robert seems to be a stumbling stone. He seems not at all sure that they would have anyone who could adequately fill it.”

In his August 4 letter, Voaden had raised the question of whether his libretto might be at fault for their failure to find a production of The Prodigal Son. “Over-all there is the big question mark. Is it a good libretto? If the work catches on with difficulty, is it not my fault? You have been successful in all you have written musically. I have some confidence that it is constructed on sound dramatic lines. But is it right for music?” Jacobi replied August 15, “I really don’t think our lack of stage performance need be attributed to the work itself.”

There really are awfully few outlets in our respective countries for a work of this sort. I realize, however, that that there are apparent discrepancies in style in my part of the work which might legitimately seem bad to persons who might otherwise be interested in the work. But I feel that the work, in spite of these appearances, is very well integrated: that my ‘light moments’ are as much suffused with myself as my most serious ones. And I feel that the differences in style in the Prodigal Son are distinctly less than those in the Magic Flute. Time alone will tell whether I am right about this.”

Jacobi had been writing Serenade, a short work for piano and orchestra commissioned by Fabien Sevitzky, conductor of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, for a performance by Menahem Pressler during the Steinway Centennial in 1953. He completed an arrangement for two pianos August 2, 1952 and would finish the Serenade for Piano and Orchestra August 21. In his August 15 letter he wrote, “It has kept me busy and I have not looked at our Opus, though I planned doing so. But I think the new work has turned out very attractively: it is a bit on the light side and some of our highbrow friends might again turn up a few noses. Yes, it is distinctively not a la mode, to write pleasant music these days! So much great music has been found hard to take that the assumption seems, in some circles, to be that that which is hard to take must necessarily be great music! Conversely with equal fallacy, it seems to me!” He closed his letter to his collaborator for the past decade, “Fondest greetings in which Irene joins me and let’s not lose faith in the Prodigal Son! Affectionately yours, Fred.”

“I have a deep and abiding faith in the work, and am confident that once it is produced it will confound the critics and justify our most spacious hopes,” Voaden had written Jacobi July 9. “The thing is to continue to work, patiently, resourcefully, for a production, for many productions.” He proceeded to do just that in Toronto . He had founded a community arts council, the Concert Committee of the Forest Hill Community Centre, in Toronto in 1945. It brought singers and concert, dance and theatre groups to the community and commissioned Canadian composers to create new works. Voaden had invited members of the Concert Committee to the 1952 Arts and Letters Club concert performance of The Prodigal Son. In the spring of 1953, the Committee inquired if the Recreation Commission of the Village of Forest Hill could premiere the complete stage performance of the opera for their next season. The total production budget they had available was $500. Tickets would cost $1.50 for adults and $1 for students.

The Toronto stage premiere took place at the Forest Hill Collegiate Auditorium March 23 and 27, 1954. Gordon Wry (The Prodigal), Don Brown (Johnny Appleseed) and Jean-Marie Scott (Belinda) reprised their roles from the 1952 Arts and Letters Club concert performance. Irene Jacobi and George Brough, the musical director, were at the piano, Gweneth Lloyd, director of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, was the choreographer and Jack McAllister, Head of English at the Ryerson Institute of Technology, the director. Voaden had written Irene Jacobi July 1, 1953 that “the hall holds only about 500 people. It is not a large stage—but not small. The lighting equipment is fair. My hope is that if the performance is successful it may lead to others—perhaps also a CBC performance.”

The young Jack McAllister had given the Canadian premieres of Benjamin Britten’s Let’s Make an Opera and Vaughan Williams’ The Poisoned Kiss and had studied the past two summers with Britten and Basil Coleman. Inviting Geoffrey Waddington, Director of Music, CBC Toronto, to attend the premiere, Voaden wrote February 11, 1954 , “I am delighted with Jack McCallister’s direction and with the vitality and character that the work shows in the full-stage production. In the rehearsals I am seeing the work come to life for the first time, dramatically and musically. It has proved an exciting experience.”

As in Stanford, the playbill for the stage production in Toronto highlighted the original visual inspiration for the opera and provided the titles and Biblical references for the four lithographs:

“1. The Prodigal Son Receiving his Patrimony
----- ‘He gathered all together and took his journey into a far country.’

2. The Prodigal Son Revelling with Harlots
----- ‘He wasted his substance with riotous living.’

3. The Prodigal Son in Misery
----- ‘He would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat.’

4. The Prodigal Son Returned to his Father
----- ‘Father I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight and am no more worthy to be called thy son...’

There is a moment in each of the four scenes in which the action approximates that of the corresponding print. The four Kellog prints may be seen in the foyer.”

Unlike Stanford, reviews were more positive but also decidedly mixed. The most important critic, John Kraglund, entitled his March 24, 1954 Globe and Mail review, “Orchestra Lack Handicaps Staging of Opera.” He noted that “The Prodigal Son is a retelling of the Biblical story with an early American setting. In keeping with the setting there is a strong folk element, but it does not always blend well with grand operatic tendencies…One flaw in the libretto, a tendency to make its intentions too obvious, was seen in the very homespun philosophy of Johnny Appleseed.”

The most favourable assessment of the production was George Kidd’s March 24 Toronto  Telegram review, “Fresh, Vigorous Music Marks Opera Premiere.” Kidd found the score “filled with engaging melodic passages which occasionally bog down with considerable recitative sections. But the music, on the whole, is fresh and vigorous and when there are arias and choruses the work possesses a charming quality that should make it live.” Of Irene Jacobi’s and George Brough’s two piano accompaniment, Kidd added, “this was a happy blend of talent, and made the entire score vibrant with its melodies.”

Regarding the opera’s libretto Kidd wrote, “Mr. Voaden has done a commendable task in fitting the story to the music…The words have a lyrical quality to them, and several numbers, particularly the little folk-song, have a sincere poetic appeal to them.” A dissenting critic, in an unidentified review entitled “Forrest Hill Opera” observed, “some of the Jacobi score is fine, but it employs introductory chords for unaccompanied singing to a point of affectation, while Mr. Voaden’s libretto ranges occasionally near the absurd.”

Hugh Thomson’s March 24 Toronto Daily Star review, “2 New Stars Born In ‘Prodigal Son,’” praised tenor Donald Brown in the role of Johnny Appleseed and contralto Margaret Stilwell as Ruth. There was general consensus that Gordon Wry had been miscast in the title role. Kidd wrote in the Telegram that he “was never fully convincing. He has a pleasant voice, and used it to good advantage in his third act song. But he lacked the debonair quality that one might have hoped for, and the repentance which should have come later.”

Critics disagreed about the choreography by Gweneth Lloyd, one of Canada’s leading choreographers of the period, on the small stage of the Forest Hill Collegiate auditorium. The unidentified “Forrest Hill Opera” reviewer wrote, “Terry Johnson and Victor Duret were spirited dancers of the rather conventional Gweneth Lloyd choreography.” In his Globe and Mail review, John Kraglund noted, “Lloyd’s choreography was also designed to keep it within the limited space” but that “there was some delightful dancing to the polka of the second act.” George Kidd, in his Toronto Telegram review, found Lloyd’s choreography “excellent.” The production incurred a deficit of $577, after costumes had been sold for $184. Gweneth Lloyd invoiced $160 for her choreography and six dancers, writing Voaden April 8, “Sorry to hear you finished in the red; we find it just isn’t possible to [do] anything in the theatre nowadays without that happening.”

Voaden continued to pursue possible producers at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation following the Toronto stage premiere. Writing Ira Dilworth, Director of Program Planning and Production at CBC Toronto, April 14, 1954 urging a CBC production of the opera he stated, “you will see from the enclosed list of the composer’s music that the range of his compositions is a wide one.”

Much of what he wrote is in a ‘modern’ vein. At the Graduate School of Music in New York, he taught composition for fifteen years to many of America’s foremost young composers. I do not believe that judicious critics would challenge his taste as a composer. But in ‘The Prodigal Son’ he deliberately set out to create a work of wide popular appeal. It is the forthright melodic character of the work which raises the eyebrows of some musicians, but the same melodic character will, I firmly believe, endear the work to listeners and audiences, and make it live, if it is given a chance to survive.”

On June 8, 1955, he wrote Dilworth again adding, “in The Prodigal Son Mr. Jacobi set out to write a distinguished opera in the grand opera tradition, which would be at the same time a melodic work of wide popular appeal. Sung in English, and with its familiar story, I believe it would make an ideal presentation either for Television or Radio.” But such a CBC production never materialized. Irene Jacobi’s attempts to interest Julius Rudel and the New York City Opera in producing The Prodigal Son were also unsuccessful. 202

  

Voaden and Irene Jacobi never gave up hope, however, and maintained contact over the years. “It was lovely seeing you the other day, she wrote Voaden December 31, 1958, “even though our visit together was so short. But it is easy to pick up the threads when the friendship is real.” She had written Voaden already on April 15, 1954 about Robert Starer [1924-2001], Jacobi’s “favourite pupil,” who studied with him after the Second World War and was appointed to the Juilliard faculty in 1949. “I have spoken to Robert Starer to ask him whether he would be willing, from Fred’s indications and directions, to complete the changes in the other acts, and he said ‘Yes’, but that it could only be attempted in the summer when he is free from the duties of Juilliard and the Music School of the Henry Street Settlement, where he is teaching the scholarship pupil of the Frederick Jacobi Memorial Fund.” Starer did not work on the opera at that time, however. He did subsequently compose extensively for the stage, including ballets for Martha Graham, Samson Agonistes (1961), Phaedra (1962) and The Lady of the House of Sleep (1978), as well as the operas Pantagleize (1973), The Last Lover (1975) and Apollonia (1979).

In December of 1968 and January of 1969, Irene Jacobi donated approximately ninety scores of her husband’s compositions to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. 203 This attempt to preserve Frederick Jacobi’s musical legacy may have prompted her to again write Robert Starer January 6, 1969. She informed him that she had had two sessions with the conductor Emanuel Balaban (1895-1973), a faculty member at Juilliard, “about making certain cuts in Fred’s opera…which I think are good and should tighten up things. Besides this we have gone over the second version of the last scene, which poor old [Gaetano] Merola was so eager to have and we both think it is excellent. It embodies the love interest which Merola thought it needed and Fred has made one of the Prodigal’s sisters a foster sister, and in this way was able to create the love interest and which enabled him to write one of the best arias.”

Besides six short cuts in Act I, Balaban had queried whether the “Tenor’s Aria [was] perhaps too low in beginning. Suggests ending it on higher note.” In addition to proposing three cuts in Act II, Irene Jacobi asked Starer, “do you think ‘Hope’ should be a mezzo-soprano? E.B. thinks Fred should have written in a higher key? Perhaps a third higher, in G major.” She concluded her letter, “It would be wonderful if ‘The Prodigal Son’ finally got its deserved performance under your directorship.” 204

Voaden and Irene Jacobi met in New York February 1 and 2, 1969 with Emanuel Balaban to try to finalize this second “Merola” version of the opera. On February 4, he sent her four pages of changes in the libretto. 205 Irene Jacobi apparently had also considered contacting the composer Robert Ward, another of Jacobi’s former composition students, to finalize the score for in an accompanying note Voaden wrote: “If you are writing to Robert Ward, you might tell him that the changes were made 1. To transfer to the scores for the first three Acts the libretto changes necessary to ‘plant’ Ruth’s changed relationship in the family—her love for Robert, and his dawning realization of his love for her—all in a preparation for the final Act, as revised in the ‘Merola’ version. 2. To iron out certain awkwardnesses in the libretto.” 206

Born in 1917, Robert Ward began graduate composition studies with Jacobi at Juilliard in 1939 for two-and-a-half years until he joined the U.S. Army in February of 1942. He completed his graduate studies with Jacobi after his demobilization in 1946. In a telephone conversation January 9, 2005 , Ward recalled Jacobi as a splendid craftsman, a wonderful human being and the greatest composition teacher he ever had. Ward had studied for four years with Howard Hanson, Bernard Rogers and Edward Royce at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester . But Hanson’s classes were large and he had the habit of solving his students’ composition problems by improvising on the piano rather than having them discover their own solutions. At Juilliard, Ward wanted to study with Bernard Wagenaar, whose classes were more popular, but he was assigned to Jacobi’s composition courses.

After examining several of Ward’s scores Jacobi told him, “You write a great first phrase but what happens after that?” Jacobi had Ward study scores by composers such as Haydn, Schubert and Stravinsky to discover their compositional techniques. During World War II Jacobi maintained a correspondence with Ward, sending him music manuscript paper so he could continue composing while stationed with the 7 th Infantry in the Pacific. Ward taught at Juilliard 1946-1956 and, with his Juilliard colleague Bernard Stambler, wrote the operas Pantaloon, premiered at Juilliard in 1956, the Crucible, commissioned and premiered by the New York City Opera in 1961, and The Lady From Colorado, produced in 1964. Ward credits Jacobi as a major influence in his early career as a composer but did not recall being contacted by Irene Jacobi in 1969 or ever seeing the score of The Prodigal Son.

Voaden submitted the vocal score, including the two versions of Act III, Scene 2, to Ezra Schabas at the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto, May 10, 1972. He wrote Schabas that “Early in 1969 I met with Irene Jacobi and Emanuel Balaban, who was teaching at Juilliard, in New York, and we made the changes in the libretto (with the attendant minor changes in the score) in the early part of the opera to prepare for this ‘Merola’ version of Act III Sc. 2.” Urging Schabas that the Faculty of Music produce The Prodigal Son—“certainly there would be no royalties or anything of that sort”—he added that Irene Jacobi “is 82 now; still giving concerts, active on committees. It would be the dream of a life-time come true if she could hear the full work with orchestra before it is too late.”

Irene Jacobi organized and performed at a concert of her husband’s works in Carnegie Recital Hall in October of 1972. 207 She wrote Voaden October 22, “In two days Fred will have been dead twenty years and a week ago tonight I gave this concert as a tribute to him. We had a most wonderfully enthusiastic and responsive audience, fine musicians to play the various works, and I have been very happy that I went to all this trouble…The week before there had been a two hour broadcast [on WQXR, ‘The Listening Room’] about Fred, his life and his music. Robert Starer, his favorite pupil, and now a well-known composer spoke so beautifully and as the head of this program, Robert Sherman, said—Fred came alive.” She closed her letter with “I am still dreaming about a performance of the ‘P.S.’ and long for it to happen before I die.”

But when Irene Jacobi died in May 1984 at the age of 93—three decades after her husband’s death and the two-piano staging of The Prodigal Son in Toronto—that dream was still unfulfilled.

The Enigma of Frederick Jacobi

There are two enigmas in the case of Frederick Jacobi. The first is why he has been overlooked as a major U.S. composer so that today only eight of his one hundred and eight compositions are available on cd. The second is Fritz Jacobi’s “eternal puzzlement,” why The Prodigal Son has never had a full professional production.

For Henry Cowell, a member of the group of ultra modern American composers such as Charles Ives and Carl Ruggles “who have developed indigenous materials or are specially interested in expressing some phase of the American spirit in their works,” Jacobi belonged to the group of composers “who do not attempt to develop original ideas or materials but who take those which they already find in America and adapt them to a European style.” According to Cowell, writing in 1933, Jacobi “adapts American Indian themes to a semi-modern European orchestral idiom.” 208

For the critic Paul Rosenfeld, writing in his 1929 An Hour With American Music, Jacobi is also an example of an “eclectic” composer. Just as Louis Gruenberg was “the pupil of Busoni,” Jacobi, according to Rosenfeld, was “the pupil of Dukas,” referring to Paul Dukas (1865-1935), the French composer of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (1897) and the opera Ariane and Blue Beard (1907). By contrast, Rosenfeld found some of Virgil Thomson's compositions, such as his Symphony on a Hymn Tune, more truly indigenous. “The symphony attains the quaintness of a Currier and Ives print. The style is angular and archaic with a distinct quality, a mixture of the severe, homely and delicate. Indeed, the symphony is pervaded by a mysterious feel of the American soil and past; and …suggests that in Thomson, too, the eclectic may eventually make way for the earth-born.” 209

Besides criticizing composers, Rosenfeld, as Minna Lederman observed, “set himself the far more difficult chore of tearing into the apathy of the American upper class.” 210 Jacobi was a member of the New York musicians’ club, the Bohemians, and the MacDowell Club. 211 Reviewing the April 29, 1922 American Music Guild concert at the MacDowell Gallery, Rosenfeld wrote, “There were rich, lustrous Stellas, Hartleys, Rays, Kandinskys, Picabias, in dusky chain about the place; but all over the room there was giggling and horse-merriment. It was the habit to emit a smothered laugh as soon as you had given Fred Jacobi your ticket and entered the room, and to rush up to your friends and have a good laugh with them…It was all very provincial looking; one felt New York the small town, full of church singers and music- teachers who believed in being modern.”

Jacobi accompanied Deems Taylor’s Three Songs for Soprano but did not have one of his own compositions programmed. The other American Music Guild composers featured in the concert were Marion Bauer, Charles Haubiel and Walter Kramer. “Four-fifths of the concert itself made no break with the doleful tradition,” Rosenfeld wrote. “Theoretically, the harmonies sounded were of the impressionist period. Each of the four young composers who led the procession through the program had heard Debussy and Strauss and Bloch, and felt the new idiom.…But they are not, when they compose, moving with what is moving in life. They are fugitive from their own personalities. The world in which they breathe does not seep into their composition, and color it. Like the audience’s, their life remains somewhere within them, and never touches the earth.” 212

Aaron Copland similarly belittled the American Music Guild and its member composers in Modern Music in 1933. In his article “The Composer in America, 1923-1933” he wrote, “The generation that was twenty to thirty during the years 1912-1922—Marion Bauer, Frederick Jacobi, A. Walter Kramer, Harold Morris, Deems Taylor—made common cause. These composers were modest, and did not for the most part venture so far as public concerts. Their efforts undoubtedly had value for themselves, but lacked sufficient scope to have seriously influenced the general trend of music in America.” 213

Jacobi was under intense pressure in the 1920s and 1930s from critics and composers such as Lazare Saminsky, Paul Rosenfeld, Olin Downes and Aaron Copland to compose for an “American” national school of music. He persisted in expressing only himself, whether in secular or religious music. Writing in Modern Music in 1927, the conductor and composer Howard Hanson called on critics to understand the varying individuality of composers and appreciate their different forms of self-expression. “Our writers, for the most part…still refer to the American composer as though he were a special type of animal. There is no ‘The’ American composer,” he stated. “We need a few more men who can talk about American composers as individuals; who know the difference between the music of Sowerby, Copland and Bernard Rogers; who can explain the contrasting aims of Emerson Whithorne, Quincy Porter and Frederick Jacobi. The American composer indeed!” 214

Carol J. Oja began reevaluating the individuality and importance of these earlier composers in the late 1980s. In her article “Cos Cob Press and the American Composer” she noted, “Although Emerson Whithorne is little remembered today, he was among those transitional composers in the twenties who began moving beyond established institutions. To a great extent, he and others like him—Marion Bauer, Louis Gruenberg, Frederick Jacobi—opened doors for Copland’s generation.” 215

In her groundbreaking 2000 study, Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s, Oja devoted a chapter to “A Forgotten Vanguard: The Legacy of Marion Bauer, Frederick Jacobi, Emerson Whithorne, and Louis Gruenberg.”

During the early 1920s, they appeared as promising figures in contemporary American composition, being among the first Americans—beyond Ornstein and Varèse—to be labeled as ‘modernist.’ Yet their fate ended up being similar to that of Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, and other American writers born in the 1880s: having the vision to imagine a new life for America’s creative artists, setting precedents for realizing it, and ultimately being overshadowed by a dazzling crop of young people. Stylistically, they represented a solid conservative strain that held firm throughout the entire century. 216

Oja’s focus on New York in the 1920s unfortunately precluded her assessing Jacobi’s extensive compositions of the 1930s and 1940s. In view of his large body of works composed during four decades, it is remarkable that David Diamond’s article in the March-April 1937 Modern Music is the only detailed analysis of some of Jacobi’s compositions to date.

At a time when it was difficult for American composers to have their works published, Jacobi had fifty-nine compositions issued by twenty-four publishers, with thirteen of his scores appearing with more than one publisher. This indicates that there was a strong public demand for his compositions. He was twice the recipient of the award of the Society for the Publication of American Music, which issued his 1924 String Quartet Based on Indian Themes and the 1933 String Quartet No. 2. 217 Both of these works are currently in the repertoire of the Amernet String Quartet.

Eight of his compositions are currently available on three cds. The 1995 CRI American Masters series cd 703, Frederick Jacobi, includes the 1932 Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, the 1938 Hagiographa, the 1942 Ballade for Violin and Piano (with Irene Jacobi), and the 1945 String Quartet No 3. His 1941 Fantasy for Viola and Piano was released in 2000 on American Viola Works by Cedille Records, cd 90000 053. Naxos American Classics released Frederick Jacobi, catalogue number 8.559434, in November of 2004. The cd contains the Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra, excerpts from the 1931 Sabbath Evening Service, Hagiographa, the 1945 Ahavat Olam (Ahavas Olom, first performed at the Park Avenue Synagogue), and the 1946 Two Pieces in Sabbath Mood, first broadcast over the CBS network on the radio program Invitation to Music.

When Composers Recordings Inc., founded in 1954, first released the Quartet No. 3, Ballade for Violin and Piano and the Fantasy for Viola and Piano on record CRI-146 in 1961, a reviewer in the January 1962 American Record Guide noted, “Jacobi was one of the group of serious American composers bent on solid workmanship, without thought of current trends, specialized idioms, or ‘school’. His name does honor to American musical history…The contemporary ear will not be shocked, but it should recognize a creative mind very much alive.” Three years later the same writer, reviewing the Composers Recording CRI-174 of the Concerto for Cello and Orchestra and Hagiographa, described the cello concerto as “an outpour of melody, quietly passionate, touched with melancholy, minus spiritual tumult…Jacobi’s Concerto is a huge cantilena, of gorgeous curve and quiet intensity, realized superbly by [Guido] Vecchi’s golden tone.” 218

Florestan Croche, reviewing the same record in the Baltimore Sun in 1964 wrote, “stylistically, Jacobi was a neo-classicist, but one whose expression was tinged with the elements of mysticism and exoticism. Like Bloch, his was an evocation reflecting inspiration from Hebraic melody and Jewish spiritual and cultural heritages.”

There is a wide lyricism in his melody, an amplitude of contour of seeping line, and an intensity of dramatic quality in his music. Yet Jacobi’s is a sense of the drama which is always aristocratic, introspective and personal, and never allowed to become theatrical. Harmonically, like Bloch, his is a language of extreme chromaticism, one, however, which always appears to be tonally oriented. 'Hagiographa' is a rhapsodic work based on the Holy Writings of Job, Ruth and Joshua. Each of its three movements is cast in a conventional mold, yet in each there are undeniable elements of subjectivity, lyricism and freshness. Thus, while there is undoubtedly a quality of eclecticism in his music, there is also a feeling of stylistic freedom and individuality, in which a great and sophisticated variety of procedures has been thoroughly integrated into a personal style.

Croche found the Cello Concerto “a unique musical endeavor: a religious evocation as well as a solo concerto. In combining the two elements Jacobi recalls Brahms in the quietness of the lyrical first movement, and Debussy in the second. The finale is a marvelous combination of inner animation and exoticism. Like his chamber work, this is a composition which preserves inclusion among the important works of its kind.” 219

Reviewing the combined 1995 CRI Frederick Jacobi cd 703, Martin Anderson wrote in the July/August 1996 Fanfare, “The Ballade for violin and piano and the Third String Quartet, composed in 1942 and 1945 respectively, show Jacobi having moved beyond the explicitly Jewish music of the two earlier pieces to enter a new, more universalist period. In days gone by, it would have been a veiled insult to write that ‘the idiom is untouched by contemporary developments’—nowadays nobody cares; it’s enough that Jacobi (or whoever else) writes solid, accomplished music. And he does: complete ease of melodic invention, rhythmic verve, craftsmanly scoring, confident handling of tonality—Jacobi may have been a minor master, but master he was. In spite of his involvement with modern music, he seems to have found his own conservative seam and mined it for the small gems to be found there.”

 

 

Music for the People

In the 1920s, American composers of modern music had their concerts patronized by small, elite middle- and upper-class audiences. Claire Reis, in her 1955 Composers, Conductors and Critics, recalled, “from the beginning the League’s concerts in New York were patronized by cosmopolitan audiences with a rather high leaven of the ‘musical intelligentsia.’” 220 The composer Elie Siegmeister (1909-1991), writing in 1979, claimed with considerable exaggeration, “modernism galvanized the young composers, but was royally rejected by major orchestras and the broad musical public, and survived in those tiny concerts attended by 100—always the same 100—people.” 221

Nicholas E. Tawa, in his study Serenading the Reluctant Eagle: American Musical Life, 1925-1945, nevertheless affirms that in the 1920s “though concerts of contemporary music grew in frequency, the public they attracted remained small and confined mostly to an intellectual group living in and around New York City. No sense of connection with the nationwide mass of concertgoers came about. Nor did such a connection seem possible, owing to the persistent divergence in attitudes about what constituted musical excellence and beauty, what culture was all about, and what valuation to give to the past. The ultra-modern composer’s unilateral standards, exclusive behavior, and summary rejection of musical roots destroyed communality and assured aloneness.” 222

The 1929 stock market crash and deep Depression of the 1930s forced composers to reach out to wider, more general, audiences. Millions of Americans struggled daily for food, shelter and economic and spiritual survival. As Tawa writes, “people wanted compositions to articulate what they yearned to express but could not. At the same time, they desired recreation, a cheering of their minds through attractive melody, rhythm, harmony, and poetic subject matter.” Of the avant-garde experimentation of the 1920s, “only a few diehards still openly favored it. Most composers had turned themselves into populists anxious to make contact with the rank and file.” 223

Government support of musicians helped to bring American composers before a wider public via free or nearly free concerts, many featuring contemporary American works, throughout the country. The Works Progress Administration’s Four Arts Project, established in 1935, channeled $27 million to art, theatre, writing and music projects to provide employment. Composer’s Forum Laboratories, established by the Federal Music Project in the fall of 1935, gave audiences attending concerts by WPA musicians the opportunity of discussing new compositions with their composers. The struggle for the very economic and political survival of the United States itself also motivated composers to speak to and inspire Americans with national subject matter. Roy Harris composed the American Overture and When Johnny Comes Marching Home in 1935, Randall Thompson The Peaceable Kingdom in 1936, Virgil Thomson The Plough that Broke the Plains in 1936 and The River in 1937, Aaron Copland the ballet Billy the Kid in 1938, Elie Siegmeister Song of Democracy in 1938, William Schuman the American Festival Overture in 1939, and Douglas Moore the folk opera The Devil and Daniel Webster, also in 1939.

Already in 1936 Lehman Engel commented in Modern Music, “it is obvious that there is a great deal less experimentation than in the past, than say, even five years ago.” 224 By 1940 Oscar Thompson, writing on “The Contemporary Musical Scene” for the 1941 edition of Who Is Who In Music proclaimed, “composition everywhere would appear to be seeking to return to the main highway, though it is still too early to say that the experimental and revolutionary trends of the last quarter of a century have, indeed, led the ultraists into a cul-de-sac. There has been much writing in a vacuum—composers for composers—with little contact, in many instances, with the larger musical public.” 225

The Prodigal Son , with its American setting and characters, can be seen as part of this overall movement by American composers to reach out to a wider, more general public.

Frederick Jacobi was not directly exposed to the tremendous economic and cultural changes resulting from the 1929 stock market crash and the first years of the Depression due to his inheritance from his father and five-year (1929-34) residence in Switzerland. Following his return to the United States in the fall of 1934, he quickly reentered the American musical scene with the premiere of his String Quartet No. 2 at a League of Composers concert and NBC radio broadcast in February of 1935. In September of 1935, he contributed two of his Piano Pieces for Children to the Carl Fischer educational series, Masters of Our Day. Edited by Lazare Saminsky and Isadore Freed, the series featured the works of fifteen American composers and aimed “to enlarge the musical horizon of the youth of our day, to enrich its knowledge and to attune its ear to the new musical life.” Lehman Engel wrote in Modern Music, “the entire series was performed recently before a capacity audience of adults, many of whom were well-known musicians and the results were astounding. The evening on the whole was one of surprise and sheer delight.” 226

Jacobi immersed himself in many WPA Federal Music Project activities in order to reach out to more general audiences. On February 5, 1936 , he was the twelfth of thirty-two composers featured in the first season of the New York Composer’s Forum Laboratory’s concerts at the Federal Music Building on 110 West Forty-eight Street . The eight-member committee selecting the composers for the weekly concerts, which began in October 1935, included Aaron Copland and Edgar Varèse. Jacobi’s works presented at the February 5 concert by the Modern Art Quartet, soprano Louise Taylor, and Frederick and Irene Jacobi on piano, included the String Quartet Based on Indian Themes, a group of songs, two movements from the Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, and the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra. 227

On February 26, Jacobi’s songs and the two movements from the Concerto for Cello and Orchestra were repeated at the second concert of compositions derived from the Composer’s Forum Laboratories, along with Henry Cowell’s Seven Associated Movements for Violin and Piano, Marion Bauer’s Four Songs for Soprano and String Quartet, and Harold Morris’ String Quartet. 228 The official premiere of the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, written for Irene Jacobi, was presented on May 7, 1936 at the Manhattan Theatre by the WPA Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Chalmers Clifton, with Irene Jacobi as soloist. The New York Times noted that “she was vigorously applauded.” The symphonic works by the other four contemporary composers were George W. Chadwick’s Melpomene, Edgar Stillman Kelley’s New England Symphony, Edward Burlingame Hill’s Lilacs, and Roger Session’s The Black Maskers. 229 In Our Contemporary Composers, John Tasker Howard writes that the Piano Concerto “shows its American character in ‘ Charleston ’ jazz effects, and in an Indian flavor which harks back to Jacobi’s earlier period.” 230

On July 28, 1937 , the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra was performed by the combined WPA orchestras of San Francisco and Oakland . Jacobi’s participation in Federal Music Project activities did not stop him from critically evaluating the scores of other contemporary composers created for WPA audiences. Writing on “WPA Shows With Music” in the November-December 1936 Modern Music, he criticized the music of Paul Bowles, orchestrated by Virgil Thomson, for Edwin Denby’s and Orson Welles’ Horse Eats Hat. “Unfortunately, it appears to be hastily made and, in spite of the large apparatus used, sounds more or less flimsy.” In the same article, he criticized Virgil Thomson’s music for the historical pageant on the labour movement in America , Injunction Granted, for being “monotonous and nerve-wracking.” “On the whole it cannot be said that this ‘score’ will add greatly to the reputation of the author of Four Saints. It lacks his light hand and his usual ingenuity. No doubt he will claim that it is just the right thing as a commentary on the Living Newspaper and perhaps this is so.” 231

In 1937, Jacobi’s Scherzo for Wind Instruments was performed and recorded at the Yaddo Festival of American Music in Saratoga Springs, New York. The Festival, founded by Aaron Copland in 1932 to increase performance opportunities for experimental modern composers was, by 1937, also trying to connect with a more general public through its programming and issuing of recordings. 232

Jacobi was aware of the two aspects of composing music for personal expression and finding a public for one’s compositions. In his April 1, 1944 letter to Herman Voaden describing his “sense of sadness and depression” after hearing that the Metropolitan Opera had turned down The Prodigal Son, he wrote, “I may do another quartet: pour my soul out into a pure and simple form of music.” Yet he also added, “But eventually, if I get a text and some encouragement, I should like to do another opera…something short, witty and entirely light.”

He was genuinely fond of American popular art music and already incorporated a phrase from Gershwin’s Swanee in his 1921 composition for two violins with string orchestra, Morning and Evening at Blue Hill. Fritz Jacobi (b. 1921) has written of his father, “he was enamored of the Broadway musical and from the time I was a teen-ager he never failed to take me to the latest Rodgers & Hart or Cole Porter production. But he never sought to emulate these composers.” 233

In his 1941 “ America’s Popular Music” article Jacobi notes that, along with other popular composers, “I have followed [Richard] Rodgers’ work for over twenty years” and concludes, “popular music has been our National Genius.” “We in the United States have found in our popular music a nationalism which is neither self-conscious nor over-blown: an expression of sentiment and vigor which has clothed itself in a form perfectly adapted to its needs. More one can scarcely ask even of great art. Let us hope that in the sterner days which are apparently before us we shall not forget our talent for dancing and singing and that we shall properly cherish what now appears to me to have been something of a Golden Age.” 234

Jacobi maintained this belief in popular music until the end of his life. He composed the orchestral overture Music Hall during the winter of 1948-49 and had the work premiered by the New York Philharmonic Symphony before an audience of eleven thousand people in Lewisohn Stadium July 2, 1949. In the preface to the Leeds Music edition of the score the publishers state, “the composer has tried to present a kaleidoscopic picture of the varied things one might see at an old-fashioned music hall: things garish and droll, gay and sentimental; Spanish dancers, waltzing dogs, bicycle acrobats and incredible jugglers. Here, brightly lit and rich in sound, is the evanescent tinsel world of vaudeville.” 235

 

A Post-Modern Production of The Prodigal Son

When he was composing The Prodigal Son, Jacobi had been convinced that the work was suitable for production by the Metropolitan Opera. He was surprised to hear from others that the opera might have a more limited appeal. “I have shown the work to many people lately and generally with great success,” he wrote Herman Voaden December 19, 1945. “Cheryll Crawford and Mrs. Alex Smallens came to me through mutual friends who had heard the PS and loved it. Cheryll seems to like it and said fine things about your text. She feels, however, that it is the sort of work for 4 performances a year rather than 8 a week and I doubt if we shall be the successors to One Touch of Venus, though that, obviously, is what she had hoped we might be.”

Marjorie Mackay-Shapiro, in her entry on Frederick Jacobi and The Prodigal Son in the 2001 edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians writes, “The opera was a vehicle for Jacobi and his librettist, the Canadian playwright Herman Voaden, to express their wartime idealism, revealed most sharply in the prodigal son’s final aria, ‘Now the darkness lifts from my eyes.” 236 This is an interesting interpretation that contains a suggestion for a contemporary staging of the opera but is not borne out by the correspondence among the collaborators. Such a political interpretation of the work was also not perceived by the New York Times, which briefly referred to the opera in March of 1947. “The number of American operas available for production is beginning to pile up,” the Times reported. “A recent addition is Frederick Jacobi’s ‘The Prodigal Son,’ which, based on four early American prints, tells the biblical story as though it had taken place in the United States in the early nineteenth century. The second act, where the son ‘wastes his substance,’ might be in New Orleans, Charleston or old New York.” 237

The Prodigal Son was written during the height of the Second World War. Jacobi’s son Fritz was based in England as an intelligence officer with the 8 ^th U.S. Army Air Force that attempted to eliminate Nazi war production through precision daytime bombing of German industry. Yet war is not referenced in the opera. In his journal on New Year’s 1943, Voaden asked himself after a train trip to New York to see Jacobi, “Should I to the wars myself? On the train, the young men wore their uniforms, the good men.” There are few references to World War II in the Jacobi-Voaden correspondence, besides news from Fritz. On March 9, 1944, Jacobi wrote that Fritz “gets very depressed, naturally enough, at the depletions in his men as these raids grow in intensity.” He was able to write Voaden September 21, 1944, “War news from Europe is of course incredibly thrilling. Eddie Greenbaum [the general and Jacobi’s brother-in-law] is thrilled with what he has seen both in England and in France. The Pacific seems to me still to be in a hard stage and the Japanese advances in China seem to offset our otherwise brilliant work in the Islands.” Turning to the U.S. elections he wrote, “as for our own politics, I am strong for Roosevelt and I have a strong feeling he will get in by a big majority…my philosophic contention is that there will be no vast change if Mr. Dewey surprisingly makes the grade: the same problems will have to be faced, whoever gets in, and our parties are not so far apart as one would imagine to hear them barking at each other.”

Although personally and musically conservative, Jacobi was politically progressive. In May of 1938 he was one of thirty musicians, composers and performers who signed a public declaration in support of the Spanish government and the Musicians’ Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy. General Franco’s insurrection, supported by Nazi Germany and Italy’s Mussolini, was winning the Civil War in Spain. According to the New York Times, “the statement describes the current struggle in Spain as ‘one of the decisive conflicts of world history, whose outcome will have a profound effect upon the fortunes of men and of history for generations to come.’” 238

On February 4, 1939, Irene Jacobi and the Coolidge String Quartet presented works by Jacobi, Hummel and Schubert at a concert at the YMHA, presented by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, “For the Benefit of Persecuted Minorities.” In December of 1940, Jacobi was one of “ten of the country’s leading music educators” who attacked the National Association of Broadcasters for refusing to renew a contract with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers for the payment of royalties for contemporary music broadcast on radio and projected in movie houses. They accused the National Association of Broadcasters of assuming that “the American public can be bullied into repudiating, as radio has repeatedly repudiated, the right of composers to a decent return for their gifts” and of assuming that “the public can be made to forget the responsibility of the radio as a cultural medium, as a powerful means of supplying or withholding that which constitutes the public’s best interest.” Listing 163 composers whose works would be barred by the NAB from broadcast after January 1, the educators, all members of ASCAP, called for the intervention of the Federal Communications Committee and warned, “the music of America and the music of the world is at stake at this crucial moment.” 239

A recital by Irene Jacobi and Eudice Shapiro at the Town Hall April 1, 1942, at which Jacobi’s Ballade for Violin and Piano was premiered, was a benefit performance for the American Theatre Wing War Services. Irene Jacobi and Louise Rood premiered Jacobi’s Penelope at “Victory Concerts” at the New York Public Library and at the Metropolitan Museum of Arts in August of 1943.

At the end of August 1944, Herman Voaden informed Jacobi that he had accepted the nomination to be a progressive candidate for the socialist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation party in Toronto. He was particularly interested in trying to win government support for Canadian artists, few of whom were able to make a living from their art. Jacobi responded in his September 21, letter, “the whole project for which you are fighting seems to me very worth while and it is wonderful to me to think of the fine role you are playing in the cultural development of your country. I am sure these efforts will bear seed, if not, necessarily, in just the anticipated way. Do keep me politically informed!”

 

Stretching the Element of Time

In his 1949 interview with Hope Stoddard for the International Musician, Jacobi described in detail his method of composing. The first decision was what key the composition would be in. For his 1946 Concertino for Piano and String Orchestra, commissioned by the Saratoga Springs Music Festival, for example, “I decided immediately, C major—something bright, gay, forthright and unproblematical. From this initial conception comes the theme itself.”

From this point on it is a question of finding a continuation of the initial idea with interesting and attractive digressions and contrasts, changes of mood, subdued or violent, but all of them adding up to an intensification and enrichment of the original conception. Sometimes an eight-measure phrase holds me for a whole week. I have a terrible struggle with it, thinking of it in one way, then in another, then in still another. Changing a note here, varying the rhythm, the harmony. I often do the phrase twenty-five different ways before getting the right one. Sometimes I awake in the morning and find it has worked itself out. And, strangely enough, it is the phrase you struggle over like this which in the end seems most spontaneous. While a phrase that hasn’t been so worked over is the one that appears lacking in spontaneity.

When I’ve got the first phrase written down, I go on logically, the same as in a sentence. I work at composing at my desk from nine to one o’clock every day. I don’t wait for inspiration or mood or inclination or anything. I ask myself, after writing down that first phrase, ‘Do I continue in the same vein or is this the moment to do something of a contrasted nature?’ When I’ve written down that phrase I decide about the next.

Jacobi continued explaining his method of composing to his interviewer, Hope Stoddard. “‘It’s like dress-making’—and here I had the notion Mr. Jacobi was generously shifting to feminine ground to bring the truth home to me—‘when you try the dress on you see that the skirt falls a little unevenly’—he illustrated here with his trouser-cuffs—‘that the neck-line isn’t right, that the belt is too loose. Any one of a hundred little things might be the matter with it. The same way in a composition.’” 240

Like a dress that does not fit, there clearly was something also “the matter” with The Prodigal Son. The opera had not succeeded, as Herbert Graf and Olin Downes had suggested a successful opera must, in establishing “its roots in the hearts of its audience, and crystallizing their innermost, inarticulate feelings.” Perhaps a misstep was already taken when the collaborators accepting the very visual concept of the four prints that had originally inspired the opera. Jacobi was recognized as one of America’s foremost composers of religious music. But by placing the Biblical story of the prodigal son in a realistic American setting in the early eighteen hundreds, the religious parable of God’s love for mankind became secularized. God was replaced by human characters (the Prodigal’s father, his sisters, Johnny Appleseed).

Jacobi seems to have believed that a realistic historical setting enabled an audience to come closer to the truth and essence of a dramatic story. In his letter to Voaden of May 23, 1944, he suggested that in any further opera collaboration, “instead of [the model of] the ‘grand’ opera we might look at something ‘veristic’ of the Cavalleria [Cavalleria Rusticana by Pietro Mascagni] type. Early California would lend itself well to such treatment.” Voaden’s symphonic expressionist playwriting and production style was completely non-realistic and attempted to move audiences emotionally on an archetypal and metaphysical plane. But both collaborators were led to abandon their attempt to connect with their audience on an archetypal level when they substituted the conventional romantic plot and conflict of their second “Merola” version of the opera. The date of the composition of The Prodigal Son, the height of the Second World War, also restricted the thematic possibilities of the work.

There is nevertheless a paradox in Voaden “writing to order” a realistic opera libretto. His experimental playwriting and directing in Toronto from 1930 to 1942 aimed precisely at searching beneath O’Neill’s “banality of surfaces” to uncover subconscious states of being and metaphysical and spiritual realities. Besides his own works, he had also used his multi-media symphonic expressionist production style to successfully stage Bertram Brooker’s symbolist and expressionist dramas Within and The Dragon in 1935 and 1936. 241

It is enticing that in the early conception of the opera in 1942 Jacobi considered another visual image in place of the realism of the early nineteenth century Prodigal Son prints:

I figure that the new characters should be wandering musicians, the main one of whom should be an old, or oldish man, perhaps on a wooden leg and the other two young boys, who might be performed by girls. If it were not stretching the element of Time too far I should like them to look like that old picture The Picture of ‘Seventy-Five: the fife and drum boys playing Yankee Doodle. If it were not for the element of Time I should like to think of this old man as a veteran of the Revolution who goes around the country, with his young grandsons, making music, almost begging.

These evocative images suggest a very different Prodigal Son in which America itself becomes the central protagonist. Seen from the perspective of six decades after the opera’s creation, a completely different parable emerges from what the conductor Alexander Smallens called the “masque-like quality” of the opera. From such a reading the Prodigal’s father becomes the Father of the Nation, born out of the American Revolution (“Seventy years ago I was born here”) and embodying both its libertarian values and the Puritan simplicity of early American agrarian life. In such a reading the Prodigal Son himself is transformed from a romantic archetype representing youthful questing for experience and self-knowledge into another emblematic figure: Young America entering the world stage in the late eighteen hundreds and in the twentieth century. He becomes the forlorn universal wandering soldier, “From distant lands come home at last,” wasting his substance and robbed in foreign ports of call while on furlough for rest and recreation. He would strangely evoke the central character of Jacobi’s 1915-16 symphonic poem, The Pied Piper, “the solitary wanderer from the distant Unknown, drawing to him, as a magnet, both man and beast.”

After extensive work revising their opera to introduce the conventional romantic plot between the Prodigal and Ruth to try to win greater audience appeal, the two collaborators nevertheless eventually felt that they preferred the original first version of The Prodigal Son. By deciding to maintain the central father-son axis of their work, Jacobi and Voaden were already breaking operatic conventions by refusing to conform to “the usual romantic standards.” The 1954 playbill for the Toronto stage premiere had pointed out to the audience, “there is a moment in each of the four scenes in which the action approximates that of the corresponding [Biblical] print.” Whether these moments of “religious recognition’—with perhaps the exception of the last father-son reconciliation—conveyed any moments of religious, archetypal or dramatic insight or power is questionable. The technique nevertheless curiously parallels the special moments of Voaden’s symphonic expressionism, “these moments of intuitive illumination” in which “perfection is glimpsed.” Voaden attempted to produce these moments of “flashing revelation” through “intense, slow and lovely picturization—by translating ordinary stage movements into those of ritual and rhythm, by introducing music, dance and choral comment to sustain and lift the moment to complete significance.” 242

A post-modern production of The Prodigal Son would go one step further by presenting imagery providing moments of political and historical—rather than spiritual—recognition for audiences. Jacobi and Voaden both agreed that different images, settings and characters could be introduced into “the stage picture” during dance scenes and musical interludes in order to make the opera more compelling for audiences. Jacobi proposed heightening the “ghoulishness of the final dance” in Act II: “I think Belinda (perhaps drunk, too, by this time) might be re-introduced (not saying anything but merely being part of the stage picture)…the dance should attain an almost bacchanalian whirl and Belinda, galumping after the dancers, would add something sinister to the picture. …If we placed this scene in New Orleans we might consider it Mardi Gras time…to add to the general ghoulishness.” He agreed with Alexander Smallens’ criticism of the opera that the work “should be sordid, dramatic and even bordering on the violent” and that “there must be some sex interest.” As he wrote Voaden November 9, 1946 , “It is the lack of the element of evil, of bitterness, which gives our present work its perhaps slightly insipid character.”

Perhaps recalling his 1942 autobiographical drama Ascend As the Sun, Voaden wondered whether the roles of the shabby salesman and the genteel Cynic of Act II could be doubled and other non-realistic and expressionistic devices used to suggest psychological and spiritual conflict. “ The same actor might sing both roles, and Scene 3 might have an enlarged dream scene to open it, in which, in the shadowy dawn, both figures might appear, with snatches of their words and music, in a kind of mephistophelean duet, their appearances accented toward devildom, and Ruth’s image and words giving him peace and redemption at last. (It could be one figure, with two masks, one urbane, one gross). An alternative, or additional suggestion, is to have Robert faint when Johnny has almost persuaded him to go home. Then, in his stupor, this two-figured devil and Johnny could have contest for his soul. It might be a quintet or sextet, with Hope on the evil side, and Ruth, and perhaps his father, on the good.”

Virgil Thomson had observed of the 1949 Stanford production of Act II of The Prodigal Son, “the music of all this is Victorian in style, too, some of it directly expressive, other passages requiring parody in the execution to give them dramatic point.” Jacobi similarly suggested at times using what sounds almost like a non-realistic Brechtian acting and story-telling style in which the audience’s identification with stage characters and action is interrupted and the fact that a parable is being presented is never lost sight of. “My only real doubt is whether Belinda’s song gets across as I thought it would: the audience seemed in doubt as to the irony of its spirit.” He concluded, “everything on the stage needs tremendous underlining (paint grease must be put on very thickly). This holds true to music as well as staging and I may reorchestrate some of it with this thought in mind.” The “almost impersonal” feigned acting of Belinda and the direct address of the audience by The Cynic in Act II, as well as the “ritualistic quality” of the reunion between the Prodigal and his father at the end of the opera, are already reminders to the audience that we are seeing actors and a parable on stage, not life itself.

Six decades after its creation, The Prodigal Son is a work crying out for interpretation. What could a director such as Robert Wilson, with his “theatre of images” and manipulation of time, discover in this work to connect with the American national psyche? What images would such an innovative director create to portray the institution of slavery, the vulgar materialism of the Peddler, and the glittering artificiality of the urban characters in the bordello scene? How would he or she balance these with the mystic figure of Johnny Appleseed, evocative of an Eastern philosopher preparing the way in the wilderness? How would she or he portray the trapper Tom Rice and his two nephews, played by girls, and the errant Prodigal who returns home to the values and love of his father and sisters?

Jacobi has commented on the “moments of relief and of free breathing [that] Mozart, consummate artist and unerring psychologist that he is, almost invariably gives us after episodes particularly fraught with harmonic or contrapuntal stress.” Like The Magic Flute that also inspired the opera, The Prodigal Son moves from rebellious arrogance to experience, suffering, and self-knowledge to a final joyful return to, and welcome by, the community at large. Its paradigm is not the City—but the humble little cabin—on the Hill. This is the “combination of the light and the serious” that Frederick Jacobi and Herman Voaden sought to achieve in their opera and that one day will be seen by audiences.

Robert’s great Act I aria “To Be No More His Son,” sung by tenor Michael Philip Davis, had its San Francisco premiere at the Regina Resnik Presents: The American Jewish Composers in Classical Song concert held at the Martin Meyer Sanctuary, Temple Emanu-El, December 13, 2004. The aria had its New York public premiere at the same concert held at the Elebash Recital Hall, CUNY Graduate Centre, New York, January 19, 2005. Both concerts were part of the 350^th anniversary celebrations of the arrival of the first Jews in the United States in 1654 and coincided with the Naxos International release of the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music cd, Frederick Jacobi. These are promising signs that Jacobi’s music, both secular and religious, is about to be rediscovered nationally and internationally.

The libretto of The Prodigal Son that follows the Frederick Jacobi Chronology of Compositions and Discography is based on Herman Voaden’s text and Frederick Jacobi’s two-piano score of the opera located in the Herman Voaden Papers, York University Archives. Jacobi’s music scores for The Prodigal Son are located in The Fleisher Collection at the Free Library of Philadelphia.

 

 

A Frederick Jacobi Chronology of Compositions and Discography

The chronology and discography which follow are based on, and have been checked against, the following sources: performance references and reviews in the New York Times and Modern Music; Frederick Jacobi personal correspondence; The National Union Catalog Pre-1956 Imprints (Vol. 275, 1973), which includes annotations for dates of compositions, as well as the Library of Congress Online Catalog which list over 100 scores; the Free Library of Philadelphia Public Catalogue and the Juilliard School Library On-line Catalogue; the holdings of the University of Toronto Music Library; the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary Online Catalog; and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Online Catalog. Also useful were “Works by Frederick Jacobi,” following David Diamond’s article, “American Composers, XIII: Frederick Jacobi,” Modern Music, Vol. 14, No. 3, March-April 1937; the 1944 and 1949 promotional pamphlets “Frederick Jacobi: Chronological List of Compositions—Partial List of Performances;” Claire R. Reis. Composers in America . New York : Macmillan, 1947. Reprinted, New York : Da Capo Press, 1977; The Music Index (1949-1955, 1970); and Carol J. Oja, ed. American Music Recordings: A Discography of 20 th-Century U.S. Composers . New York: Institute for Studies in American Music, Conservatory of Music, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, 1982.

Entries on Frederick Jacobi were also checked in The Year in American Music 1946-1947. Julius Bloom, ed. (1947); Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Fourth Edition, Supplementary Volume, 1948 and Fifth Edition, 1954); Nicolas Slonimsky. Music Since 1900. (Third Edition, 1949, Fourth Edition, 1966, and Fifth Edition, 1994); David Ewen. American Composers Today (1949); The ASCAP Biographical Dictionary of Composers, Authors and Publishers (Second Edition, 1952); especially Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (Fifth Edition, 1958, and Eighth Edition, 1992); Encyclopedia of Concert Music (1959); Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music (1963); John Vinton, ed. Dictionary of Contemporary Music (1974); Art-Song in the United States: An Annotated Bibliography (1976); Contemporary American Composers: A Biographical Dictionary (1976); The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980 and 2001 editions); David Ewen. American Composers: A Biographical Dictionary (1982); Neil Butterworth. A Dictionary of American Composers (1984); The International Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians (Eleventh Edition, 1985); Greene’s Biographical Encyclopedia of Composers (1985); Composers on Record (1985); Storm Bull. Index to Biographies of Contemporary Composers (1987); Charles J. Hall. A Chronicle of American Music 1700-1995 (1996); and Mary DuPree. Musical Americans: A Biographical Dictionary 1918-1926 (1997).

Date          Title                  Publisher

1906 Passepied (!) (song for high voice and piano)

1906 Untitled song beginning “Sleep, Eileen”

1911 Untitled composition for clarinet and piano [inscribed January 1911]

ca. 1912 Il était une bergère (vocal score with piano)

ca. 1912 Four Voice Vocal Fugue

ca. 1912 Untitled composition for piano [with tempo indication, Allegro con fuoco]

ca. 1912 Untitled set of 5 pieces for piano

ca. 1912 Rondo (for piano)

ca. 1912 Tempo di valse (for piano)

1914 Three Songs New York , G. Schirmer, 1915
(F. L. Koch, “The Look,” by Sara Teasdale, A. Brome; for soprano and piano)

1915 The Pied Piper, Symphonic Poem (symphonic legend for large orchestra)

 First Performance: San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Cort Theatre, March 24 and 26, 1916, Alfred Hertz, conductor.

1916 Three Songs to Poems by Sarojini Naidu (“The Faery Isle of Janjira,” “Love and Death,” “In  the Night,” for high voice and piano) New York , G. Schirmer, 1918

Performance of “Love and Death,” Aeolian Hall, New York, January 13, 1920, Soprano Marguerite Ringo, and American Music Guild, MacDowell Gallery, April 22, 1922, Soprano Povla Frijsh and Frederick Jacobi.

1917 A California Suite (for orchestra) [Library of Congress lists Bloch Publishing, 1931]

First Performance: San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Cort Theatre, December 6 and 9, 1917, Alfred Hertz, conductor; Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, March? 1919, Emil Oberhoffer, conductor; Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, April 1922.

1918 Nocturne, for string quartet

First Performance: San Francisco , January 7, 1919 .

1918 Psalmody (piano vocal score) [inscribed “ Sept. 4, 1918 , Alcatraz ”]

1920 Three Songs, for high voice with piano (words by Sarojini Naidu; “Palanquin-Bearers,” “In a Time of Flowers,” “From a Latticed Balcony”) [inscribed “ May 10, 1920 ”]

1920 The Eve of Saint Agnes (25 min. Symphonic prelude after the poem of John Keats) [inscribed “ October 15, 1920 N.Y.”]

First Performance: San Francisco Symphony, 1920-21 season, Alfred Hertz, conductor; New Symphony Orchestra, New York, 1920-21 season, Artur Bodanzky, conductor; Cooper Union, New York, February 12, 1922; City Symphony Orchestra, Town Hall, New York, March 6, 1923; Colonne Orchestra, Salle Gaveau, Paris, June 1923, Lazare Saminsky, conductor

1921 Three Preludes for Violin and Piano New York , Composer’s Music Corp., 1923 New York , Carl Fisher, 1926

First Performance: People’s Music League, Cooper Union, New York, February 12, 1922, Helen Teschner Tas and Frederick Jacobi; American Music Guild, New York Public Library, November 8, 1922, Helen Teschner Tas and Frederick Jacobi; Music in Contemporary Life, Musicians’ Congress, University of California at Los Angeles, September, 1944, Eudice Shapiro, violin; Eudice Shapiro recital, Town Hall, New York, April 9, 1947; Wheeler Hall, University of California, Berkeley, August 8, 1949, Irene Jacobi, piano; Carnegie Hall, November 13, 1949, Bela Urban and Virginia Urban.

1921 Vocalises (“Circe,” “Medusa,” “Penelope,” “Aria” for voice and piano; revised 1930) Vocalise- étude, Circé : pour voix élevé; Vocalise- étude, Aria : pour voix moyennes. Paris, Alphonse Leduc, 1932

Premiere Performance of “Circe” and “Medusa,” International Composers Guild, Greenwich Village Theatre, April 23, 1922, Soprano Nina Koshetz and Frederick Jacobi, piano; WQXR Radio, New York, February 24, 1938; Composers’ Forum Laboratory, Carnegie Chamber Music Hall, November 9, 1938, Soprano Helen Marshall, and Frederick Jacobi, piano; “Penelope” and “Circe,” 20 ^th anniversary concert, Carnegie Recital Hall, October 16, 1972, Soprano Lynn Daniels and Irene Jacobi, piano.

1921 Six Pieces for Piano

1921 Morning and Evening at Blue Hill (for two violins and string orchestra with piano) [inscribed “1921”]

1921 A Festival Prelude (for orchestra) [inscribed “ Dec. 8, 1921 ”]

1922 Symphony No. 1 (Subtitled Assyrian, 22 min.)

First Performance: San Francisco Symphony, November 14, 1924, and Berkeley, Alfred Hertz, conductor; Rochester Philhamornic, Albert Coates, conductor.

1922 Three Songs to Poems by Chaucer (for voice and piano) “Roundel” and “Ballade” published as Two Poems by Geoffrey Chaucer, New York , G. Schirmer, 1923.

First Performance of “Ballade,” American Music Guild, MacDowell Gallery, April 22, 1922, Soprano Povla Frijsh and Frederick Jacobi; American Music Guild, “Three Songs for Soprano,” Town Hall, New York, February 6, 1924; “Roundel,” Lazare Saminsky concert, Salle Gaveau, Paris, June 20, 1925, Soprano Eugenia Van de Veer.

1923 Two Assyrian Prayers (piano vocal score)

1923 Two Assyrian Prayers (Soprano or Tenor and chamber orchestra, 12 min. French text by Rebecca Godchaux. “To Ishtar” and “To Bel-Marduk”)

[inscribed “To Mrs. Frederick S. Coolidge in deepest appreciation. Frederick Jacobi, New York, Jan. 21, 1925”]

First Performance: League of Composers concert, Klaw Theatre, New York, November 30, 1924, Judson House, voice, Irene Jacobi, piano, chamber orchestra conducted by Frederick Jacobi; Worcester Music Festival, Massachusetts, October 8, 1925, Florence Easton and Albert Stoessel, conductor; Dedication Concert, Festival of Chamber Music, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Auditorium, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., October 28, 1925; Chicago Symphony, Frederick Stock, conductor; Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Chamber Music Concerts, Hans Kindler, conductor, in Rome, Prague and Vienna, September 1927.

1924 Three Preludes for Violin, with orchestral accompaniment [inscribed February 20, 1924]

1924 String Quartet (Based) on (American) Indian Themes (18 min.) Published for the Society for the Publication of American Music [7 ^th Season], Universal Edition, New York, G. Schirmer, 1926. “Dedicated in friendship and deepest esteem to The Chamber Music Society of San Francisco.”  New York, Carl Fischer, 1954. King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, Theodore Presser

First Performance: Chamber Music Society, San Francisco, October 1924; Fourth Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music, Zürich, June 19, 1926; Corporazione delle Nuove Musiche, Rome, Milan; Helen Teschner Tas Quartet, League of Composers concert, Brooklyn Museum, New York, November 19, 1926; Chautauqua, New York, summer 1928, Albert Stoessel, conductor; Philadelphia Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, New York, April 2, 1929, Leopold Stokowski, conductor; The Flonzaley and other Quartets in Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and other cities; Faculty of the Community Centre Conservatory of Music, WABC Radio, New York, March 22, 1932; Modern Art Quartet, WPA New York Composer’s Forum Laboratory, Federal Music Building, February 5, 1936; Third Movement, CBS Radio, Milestones in American Music, winter 1942.

1925  The Poet in the Desert (after the poem by C.E.S. Wood, for orchestra, chorus and baritone solo) [inscribed August 16, 1925, Mont Pelerin sur Vevey]

First Performance: Society of the Friends of Music, Town Hall, New York, November 20?, 1925, Lawrence Tibbet and Artur Bodanzky, conductor.

1926 Nocturne (for flute and small orchestra; 5 min.) Rewritten second movement of Symphony No. 1, 1922)

First Performance: Rochester Little Symphony, December 30, 1926, Howard Hanson, conductor; Worcester Music Festival, 1927, Albert Stoessel, conductor; Boston Symphony, Alfredo Casella, conductor.

1926 Marsyas (for violin and piano)

1927-28 Indian Dances/Danses Indiennes/Indianische Tänze (16 ½ min.) ( Buffalo Dance, Butterfly Dance, War Dance, Corn Dance; Suite for Orchestra) Vienna, Leipzig, Universal Edition, 1931; Boston, C.C. Birchard. Dedicated “To My Wife.”

First Performance: Boston Symphony, Cambridge, Massachusetts, November 8, 1928, Serge Koussevitzky, conductor; San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco and Berkeley, California, Alfred Hertz, conductor; Philadelphia Symphony, Philadelphia and Carnegie Hall, New York, April 2, 1929, Leopold Stokowski, conductor; Warsaw, Gregor Fitelberg, conductor; Copenhagen, Fritz Mahler, conductor; Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra Young People’s Concert, Carnegie Hall, February 20, 1937, Ernest Schelling, conductor; American Music for American Youth, New York City High School of Music and Art Orchestra, May 13, 1939, Alexander Richter, conductor.

1930-31 Sabbath Evening Service According to the Union Prayer Book (Friday Evening Service) New York, Bloch Publishing, 1931 (baritone solo/cantor, mixed chorus, a capella; 20 min.)

First Performance: Temple Emanu-El, New York, December 4, 1931, Cantor Moshe Rudinoff and the Temple Emanu-El Choir, Lazare Saminsky, conductor; subsequently performed in leading synagogues in San Francisco (Temple Emanu-El, Cantor Reuben Rinder), Philadelphia, Los Angeles and elsewhere. “Sacred Service,” Temple Emanu-El, May 17, 1935; “May the Words,” Festival of American Choral Music and Its Ancestry, Temple Emanu-El, March 27, 1936; The “Adoration” from the Service performed at the Third and Fourth Annual Choir Festival, Temple Emanu-el, New York, March 25, 1938 and March 31, 1939. “O May the Words” (“Yihyu le-ratson”) from the Service performed at the Park Avenue Synagogue, New York, March 19, 1943; “May the Words,” All American Conference on Hebrew Music, Assembly Hall, Temple Emanu-El, December 17, 1944; “Adoration,” 11 ^th Annual Three Choir Festival, Temple Emanu-El, March 29, 1947, Lazare Saminsky, conductor; excerpts, St. Paul’s Church, Knightsbridge, London, June 2001, Patrick Mason, baritone, and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chorus, Joseph Cullen, conductor.

1932   Concerto (Three Psalms) for Cello and Orchestra (16 min.)   Reduction for Piano and Cello, Vienna, Universal Edition, 1933 and (revised orchestration) 1951. Dedicated to Dirian Alexanian.  New York, Associated Music Publishers; Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, Theodore Presser; European American Music/Universal;

First Performance: Ecole Normale, Paris, May 30, 1933, Diran Alexanian, soloist, Alfred Cortot, conductor; Chautauqua, summer 1935, Harry Fuchs and Albert Stoessel, conductor; Juilliard School of Music, January 1936, Harry Fuchs and Albert Stoessel, conductor; WOR Orchestra, May 15, 1935, Harry Fuchs and Frederick Jacobi, conductor; Cleveland Orchestra, November 1935, Juilliard School of Music, January 16, 1936, Albert Stoessel, conductor; Victor de Gomez and Arthur Rodzinsky, conductor; WPA Composers Forum-Laboratory, Federal Music Building, New York, February 5 and 26, 1936, Eleanor Aller and Frederick Jacobi, conductor; Hartford Festival Orchestra, Hartford Festival, February 9, 1936, Eleanor Aller and Frederick Jacobi, conductor; Zurich Radio Orchestra, June 23, 1951,Walter Haefeli and Tom Scherman, conductor; Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, Guido Vecchi and William Strickland, conductor. Barcelona Symphony/National Orchestra of Catalonia, Centre Cultural de Sant Cugat, Barcelona, May 2000, Alban Gerhardt and Karl Anton Rickenbacher, conductor.

1933 String Quartet No. 2 (23 min.) Published for the Society for the Publication of American Music [SPAM 37, 16 ^th Season]; New York, J. Fischer, 1935. Dedicated to The Pro Arte Quartet. King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, Theodore Presser

First Performance: Pro Arte Quartet, Mills College, July 18, 1934; NBC Radio Guild Series, New York, February 1, 1935; Pro Arte Quartet, League of Composers concert, French Institute, February 18, 1935; San Francisco String Quartet, Veterans’ Auditorium, San Francisco, December 9, 1936; Mailamm concert, Town Hall, New York, February 19, 1938; Forum String Quartet, Composers’ Forum Laboratory, Carnegie Chamber Music Hall, November 9, 1938; the Gordon Quartet; the Budapest Quartet, etc. [performed during the Society for the Publication of American Music and the Juilliard School of Music, Festival of American Chamber Music, Museum of Modern Art, March 10, 12, 15, 17, 19, 1943?]; San Francisco String Quartet, Marines’ Memorial Theatre, March 12, 1952.

1933 Six Pieces for the Organ for Use in the Synagogue.  One piece published as Prelude. [Contemporary Organ Series, No. 6] New York , H.W. Gray, 1941

Performance: [Organ Prelude: Toccata, Three Choir Festival, Assembly Hall, Temple Emanu-El and WHN Radio, March 19, 1937; Prelude, 7 ^th Annual Three Choir Festival, Temple Emanu-El, March 27, 1942; “Three Preludes,” Maccabean Music Festiva, Assembly Hall, Temple Emanu-El, December 19, 1946; “Organ Prelude,” Vinaver Chorus, Friends of Choral Art, Times Hall, New York, February 2, 1948; Festival of Jewish Arts, Carnegie Hall, March 4, 1950; 14 ^th Annual Three Choir Festival, Assembly Hall, Temple Emanu-El, May 4, 1951, Robert Baker, organ]

1933 Three Preludes for Organ.

1934-35 Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (26 min.)

First Performance: WPA New York Composer’s Forum Laboratory, Federal Music Building, February 5, 1936, Irene and Frederick Jacobi, piano; WPA Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra, Manhattan Theatre, May 7, 1936, Irene Jacobi and Chalmers Clifton, conductor; WPA Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra, Brooklyn Academy of Music, May 13, 1936, Irene Jacobi, piano; Radio Luxembourg, Irene Jacobi and Henri Pensis, conductor; American Composers’ Concerts, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Eastman Theatre, December 10, 1936, Irene Jacobi and Howard Hanson, conductor; Juilliard School of Music, New York, 1937, Jacques Abram and Albert Stoessel, conductor; Bay Region Symphony, combined WPA orchestras of San Francisco and Oakland, Veterans Auditorium, San Francisco, July 28, 1937, Irene Jacobi and Alois Reiser, conductor.

1934    Piano Pieces for Children (includes A Lovely Little Movie Actress, Once Upon a Time, A Charming Prince, There Was a Wicked Fairy and Six Caprices) A Lovely Little Movie Actress and Once Upon a Time published separately. [Masters of Our Day Educational Series] New York , Carl Fischer, 1936

Performance: A Lovely Little Movie Actress and Once Upon a Time performed at a Masters of Our Day concert, spring 1936.

1936 Scherzo for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon and Horn (5 min.) (Scherzo for Wind Instruments) New York , Carl Fischer, 1938. Dedicated to Marcel Tabuteau.

First Performance: Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia; Yaddo Woodwind Quintet, Yaddo Festival of American Music, Saratoga Springs, New York, 1937, Juilliard Wind Ensemble, 1941.

1936-37 Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (16 min.)  Reduction for violin and piano by the composer. New York , Leeds Music, 1954

First Performance: Chicago Symphony, March 14, 1939, Albert Spalding and Frederick Stock, conductor; American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers American Music Festival, New York Philharmonic Symphony, Carnegie Hall, October 5, 1939, Albert Spalding and Alexander Smallens, conductor; Little Orchestra Society, New York, January 30, 1950, Philip Frank and Thomas Scherman, conductor; Orchestra Symphonique of the Institut Nationale Belge de Radiodiffusion, Brussels, Janury 17, 1951, André Gertler and Franz André, conductor.

1937   Cadenza to Mozart’s Rondo for Piano and Orchestra (Kochel No. 386)

1937   Swing Boy (violin and piano)

1938 Hagiographa: Three Biblical Narratives for String Quartet and Piano (26 min.) New York, Arrow Music Press, 1942; New York, American Music Edition; King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, Theodore Presser; “For Mrs. Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge in friendship and deepest esteem.” [inscribed “ July 13, 1938”]

First Performance: Berkshire Festival, Pittsfield, Mass., September 22, 1938, Irene Jacobi with the Kolisch Quartet; New York Public Library, November 1, 1938, Irene Jacobi with the Kolisch Quartet and subsequently with the Coolidge, Budapest, Gordon and other Quartets; Jewish Museum, New York, May 16, 1949, Irene Jacobi with Zvi Zeitlin and Chaim Taub, violins, Sol Greitzer, viola and George Koutzen, cello; Claremont String Quartet; 20 ^th anniversary concert, Carnegie Recital Hall, October 16, 1972, Juilliard string group, Irene Jacobi, piano; Kilbourn Hall, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, March 2000.

1938 Preludes on Traditional Melodies  

Performance: New York Public Library; February 22, 1939, Jeanne Behrend, piano; Barbizon Plaza, New York, March 20, 1939, Jeanne Behrend, piano.

1939 Ave Rota: (Hail to the Wheel [of Fortune]) Three Pieces in Multiple Style for Small Orchestra and Piano (“The Swing” [“La Balançoire”], “The Merman” and “May-Dance;” written for the Juilliard Alumni). (14 min. The same for large orchestra and piano)

First Performance: Juilliard Chamber Orchestra, Town Hall and WNYC Radio, New York, March 26, 1939, Adele Marcus, pianist, Charles Lichter, conductor; Tenth Annual Festival of American Music, Eastman Little School Symphony of Phi Mu Alpha, Rochester, April 23, 1940, Irene Jacobi and Frederick Fennell, conductor; NYA Symphony Orchestra, WNYC Radio, January 5, 1941, Fritz Mahler, conductor; CBS Orchestra, Irene Jacobi and Howard Barlow, conductor.

1939 Dunam Po (“A Dunam Here”) Palestinian folk song arrangement published in Hans Nathan, ed. Folk Songs of the New Palestine. Harry H. Fein, trans. New York, Hechalutz and Masada, Youth Zionist Organization of America, 1938-1939.

194? Variations on a Theme by Moussorgsky (for cello and piano)

Dedicated to Raya Garbousova

194? Sonata á 3 (revision of Ricercare) (for violin, viola and piano)

1940 Shemesh (based on a Palestinian Folk Song) Cello and Piano

First Performance: Raya Garbonsova cello recital, Town Hall, New York, January 22, 1940.

1940 Rhapsody for Harp and String Orchestra (8 min.) Philadelphia, Elkan-Vogel

First Performance: Mills College Orchestra, January 1942, Marcel Grandjany and Antonia Brico, conductor; Juilliard School of Music, spring 1942.

1941 Fantasy for Viola and Piano (9 min.) New York, Carl Fischer, 1943

First Performance: Middlebury College, Bristol, Vermont, summer 1941, Louise Rood and Irene Jacobi; WNYC Radio American Music Festival, spring 1943; Jewish Music Forum, Y.M.H.A., New York, December 18, 1944, Louise Rood and Irene Jacobi; Carnegie Recital Hall, April 9, 1957, Louise Rood and Irene Jacobi; Carnegie Recital Hall, April 12, 1960, Louise Rood and Irene Jacobi.

1941 Ode for Orchestra (12 min.) New York, G. Schirmer

First Performance: [As Ode] San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, February 12 and 13, 1943, Pierre Monteux, conductor; Boston Symphony Orchestra, April 22, 1943, Serge Koussevitzky, conductor; Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, Symposium of American Orchestral Music, October 25-28, 1943, Howard Hanson, conductor.

1941 Cadenza for Mozart’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in C Minor (Kochel No. 491)

1941 Night Piece for Flute and Small Orchestra (5 min.) (Rewritten Nocturne in Niniveh, 1926) New York, Boosey and Hawkes, 1941

First Performed: San Diego Symphony Orchestra, July 22, 1941, Alene Benner and Nicolai Sokoloff, conductor; American Symphony Orchestra, Concert Theatre, New York, March 30, 1942; Juilliard Graduate School Orchestra, summer 1945, Richard Bales, conductor.

1941 Night Piece and Dance, for flute and piano. New York, Boosey & Hawkes, 1941 and 1953

1942 Ballade for Violin and Piano (11 min.) New York, Carl Fischer, 1943

First Performance: Town Hall, New York, April 2, 1942, Eudice Shapiro and Irene Jacobi; New York Music Critics Circle concert, Town Hall, May 1942; Jewish Music Forum, Y.M.H.A., New York, December 18, 1944, Fredell Lack and Irene Jacobi; Carnegie Chamber Music Hall, Madeleine Carabo and Vivien Harvey, June 1 and October 12, 1946.

1942 Hymn for Men’s Chorus (text by Saadia Gaon; 5 min.) New York, Bloch Publishing, 1942 and in Louis Finkelstein, ed. Rab Saadia Gaon: Studies in His Honor. New York, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1944 and New York, Arno Press, 1980. The same arranged for Mixed Chorus by Chemjo Vinaver, New York, Bloch Publishing, 1942 and in Chemjo Vinaver, ed. Anthology of Jewish Music: Sacred Chant and Religious Folksong of the East European Jews. New York: Edward B. Marks Music, 1955.

First Performance: Rabbi Saadia Gaon Commemoration, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, New York, March 24, 1942, Chemjo Vinaver, conductor.

1942 From the Prophet Nehemiah: Three Excerpts for Voice and Two Pianos (5, 4 and 6 minutes respectively)

First Performance: League of Composers Twentieth Anniversary Concert, Town Hall, New York, December 9, 1942, Marjorie Lawrence, soprano, Celius Dougherty and Vincenz Ruzicka, pianists; Fourth concert, Twentieth Century Music Group, Philadelphia, spring 1944; National Association of American Composers and Conductors and National Music League concert, Museum of Modern Art, New York, February 23, 1945, Sally Pestcoe, soprano, Frederick and Irene Jacobi, pianists; Jewish Museum, New York, May 16, 1949, Sally Pestcoe, soprano, Frederick and Irene Jacobi, pianists.

1942-44 The Prodigal Son: Opera in Three Acts based on Four Early American Prints. Text by Herman Voaden. (Full orchestra, 2 ½ hours).  [Act I of first version inscribed “ July 18, 1943, Riverdale, N.Y.”; Act II “ Nov. 17, 1943” and Act III “ Sept. 9, 1944”]

First Performance: American Opera Society, Arts Club, Chicago, May 18, 1945 (one piano concert performance, Joseph Anderson, pianist and musical director); Act II, Stanford Opera Workshop, Memorial Hall Auditorium, Stanford University, August 19, 1949 (staged with full orchestra, Jan Popper, conductor); English Singers, Central Library, Buckingham Palace Road, London, April 10, 12 and (at St. Cecilia’s House) April 30, 1951 (studio concert performance, two-piano version with Frederick and Irene Jacobi); Arts and Letters Club, Toronto, April 22, 1952 (concert performance, two-piano version with Frederick and Irene Jacobi); Recreation Commission of the Village of Forrest Hill, Forrest Hill Collegiate Auditorium, Toronto, March 23 and 27, 1954 (staged production, two-piano version, Irene Jacobi and George Brough).

1943 Penelope (arrangement for viola and piano from the 1921 Vocalises.) “Reproduced and bound by Independent Music Publishers, New York City.”  [score in Juilliard School Library]

First Performance: Victory Concert, New York Public Library, August 5, 1943, Louise Rood and Irene Jacobi and at the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, August 13, 1943, Louise Rood and Irene Jacobi.

1944 Dances From The Prodigal Son Arranged for Two Pianos, Four Hands (10 min.) [polka, polonaise, waltz, tarantella; inscribed “ Aug. 20, 1944”]

Performance: “Four Dances for two pianos,” Jewish Museum, May 16, 1949, Frederick and Irene Jacobi.

1944 Night Piece for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, String Quintet and Piano

1944 Music for Monticello (Trio for Flute, Cello and Piano, 20 min.)  [inscribed December 1944]

First Performance: American Music Festival, WNYC Radio, New York, February 12, 1947.

1945 String Quartet No. 3 (26 min.) New York, Arrow Music Press, 1948.  Miniature score, Arrow Music Press, 1949; American Music Edition; King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, Theodore Presser. Dedicated to the Budapest Quartet

First Performance: Walden String Quartet, First Annual Festival of Contemporary American Music, McMillin Academic Theatre, Columbia University, May 13, 1945; Budapest Quartet, San Francisco, summer 1946, and subsequently the Kroll, Paganini and Lyric Art Quartets; American Music Festival, WNYC Radio, February 22, 1950; Quattrocchi Quartet, American Embassy Theater, Paris, June 15, 1950; London, 1950; Italian Radio, 1950; 20 ^th anniversary concert, Carnegie Recital Hall, October 16, 1972.

1945 Ahavas Olom (Ahavat Olam; 3 min.)  (For tenor solo/cantor mixed voices and organ) New York, Bloch Publishing, 1946

Also published in David Putterman, ed. Synagogue Music by Contemporary Composers: an anthology of 38 compositions for the Sabbath Eve Service, almost all of which were composed for the Park Avenue Synagogue, New York City at the invitation of Cantor David J. Putterman. New York, G. Schirmer, 1951. pp. 180-189; New York, Transcontinental Music.

Dedicated to Cantor David J. Putterman and the Choir of the Park Avenue Synagogue.

First Performance: Park Avenue Synagogue, New York, Cantor David J. Putterman, May 11, 1945; Festival of Contemporary American Music, St. Paul’s Chapel, Columbia University, May 12, 1949, Cantor David J. Putterman and the Park Avenue Synagogue Choir, Max Helfman, conductor; Twenty-fifth Annual Service of New Liturgical Music by Contemporary Composers, Park Avenue Synagogue, May 2, 1969, Cantor David J. Putterman, Neil Robinson, organ; Riverside Church, New York, May 1998, Cantor Robert Bloch and the New York Cantorial Choir.

1945 Kaddish (for organ)

1945 Toccata (for organ)

1945  Toccata for piano solo. From Prelude and Toccata. Providence, R. I., Axelrod, 1946. [inscribed “ August 26, 1945”]

1945 Prelude in E Minor, for piano From Prelude and Toccata. Providence, R. I., Axelrod, 1946.

1945 Impressions from the Odyssey (three pieces for violin and piano; “Ulysses,” “Penelope,” “The Return”) South Hadley, Mass. Valley Music Press, 1953

First Performance: “Penelope,” Victory Concert, New York Public Library, August 5, 1943, Louise Rood and Irene Jacobi and Metropolitan Museum of Arts, August 13, 1943, Louise Rood and Irene Jacobi. Impressions, Town Hall, New York, January 11, 1947, Fredell Lack, soloist.

1945 Fantasy Sonata for Piano (9 min.)

1945 Four Dances From The Prodigal Son (orchestra, 18 min.) New York, G. Schirmer. [polka, polonaise, waltz, tarantella]

First Performance: New York Philharmonic, Lewisohn Stadium, New York, July 4, 1946, Alexander Smallens, conductor; NBC Symphony Orchestra, August 4, 1946, Alexander Smallens, conductor

1946 Concertino for Piano and String Orchestra (17 min.) Philadelphia, Elkan-Vogel, 1947

(Arranged for two pianos by the composer) Philadelphia, Elkan-Vogel, 1947

Dedicated to Irene Jacobi. King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, Theodore Presser. [inscribed “ June 25, 1946 ”]

First Performance: Spa Theater, Saratoga Springs Music Festival, Saratoga Springs, N. Y., [orchestra of 24 members of the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra], September 3, 1946, Irene Jacobi and F. Charles Adler, conductor; New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Irene Jacobi and F. Charles Adler, conductor; San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, War Memorial Opera House, February 15, 1947, Pierre Monteux, conductor; New York Philharmonic, Lewisohn Stadium, New York, July 8, 1947, Irene Jacobi and Alexander Smallens, conductor; Washington, Richard Bales, conductor; New York, Thomas Sherman, conductor; Mozart Orchestra of the Music School of Henry Street Settlement, Times Hall, New York, February 8, 1948, Irene Jacobi and Robert Scholz, conductor; Wheeler Hall, University of California, Berkeley, August 8, 1949, Irene Jacobi and Frederick Jacobi, conductor; string orchestra from the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, American Embassy Theater, Paris, June 15, 1950, Irene Jacobi and Frederick Jacobi, conductor; Orchestra of the Institut Nationale Belge de Radiodiffusion, Brussels, 1951 season, Irene Jacobi and Franz André, conductor; 20 ^th anniversary concert, Carnegie Recital Hall, October 16, 1972, Juilliard string group, Jack Chaikin, piano, James Conlon, conductor.

1946 Kaddish (for cantor, chorus and organ) [inscribed “ Dec. 29, 1946”]

[First Performance: 5 ^th Annual Sabbath Evening Service of Liturgical Music by Contemporary Composers, Park Avenue Synagogue, May 2, 1947?]

1946 Two Pieces in Sabbath Mood (Kaddish and Oneg Shabbat) (for orchestra, 2 min. and 9 min. Originally composed as two separate works for organ solo: Kaddish and Toccata; transcribed for small orchestra, 1946)

First Performance: CBS Symphony Orchestra, New York, radio program Invitation to Music, February 5, 1947, Nicholas Berezowsky, conductor. Version for larger orchestra first performed by Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Fabien Sevitzky, conductor, February 13 and 14, 1948; Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, Slovak Radio Hall, Bratislava, June 1998.

1946 Moods (for piano) Delkas Music Publishing and in U.S.A. Vol. 1; Compositions for piano by contemporary American composers. New York, Leeds Music, 1946.

1946 Introduction and Toccata, for piano solo Providence, R. I., Axelrod, 1947 Dedicated to Leo Smit

1946 Prelude in E Minor for piano solo Shawnee Press, copyright Templeton Publishing, 1956. Dedicated to Victor Wittgenstein

1946 Contemplation (to a poem by William Blake, for mixed voices with piano accompaniment; 5:30 min.) New York, Edwin B. Marks Music, 1952.  [inscribed “ Sept. 20, 1946”]

First Performed: Vinaver Chorus, Town Hall, New York, November 28, 1946, Frederick and Irene Jacobi, pianos, Chemjo Vinaver, conductor.

1946 Toccata (for organ)  [inscribed “ Dec. 7, 1946”]

1947 Symphony in C (Symphony No. 2, 21 min.)

Dedicated to Pierre Monteux and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra

[inscribed “ June 7, 1947”]

First Performance: San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, War Memorial Opera House, April 1-3, 1948, Pierre Monteux, conductor.

1947 Meditation for Trombone and Piano New York, Southern Music, 1953

First Performance: Town Hall, New York, April 13, 1947, Davis Shuman, soloist; Wheeler Hall, University of California, Berkeley, August 8, 1949, Davis Shuman, soloist; West Texas A & M University, October 28, 1997, Joe Cox and Karla Qualls.

1947 Suite Fantasque (for piano)

1948  Three Songs to Words by Philip Freneau (for medium voice and piano). (“On the Sleep of Plants” [1790], “Elegy” [1786], “Ode to Freedom” [1795]) New York, Boosey and Hawkes, 1949.  South Hadley, Mass., Valley Music Press, 1955

Performance: Jewish Museum, New York, May 16, 1949, Dorothy Stahl and Irene Jacobi; Wheeler Hall, University of California, Berkeley, August 8, 1949, Nancy Churchill and Irene Jacobi; American Music Festival, WNYC Radio, February 22, 1950, Dorothy Stahl and Irene Jacobi.

1948 Ode to Zion (text by Jehuda Halevi) for mixed voices and two harps

First Performance: Commencement Exercises, Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, June 6, 1948, Frederick Jacobi, conductor.

1948 Two Dances From the Prodigal Son (arranged for piano, four hands by the composer) [waltz, polka; inscribed “May 1948”]

1948 Music Hall: Overture for Orchestra (6 min.) New York, Leeds Music, 1949

Dedicated “For my friend Alexander Smallens.” [inscribed “Dec. 1948”]

First Performance: New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Lewisohn Stadium, New York, July 2, 1949, Alexander Smallens, conductor; Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, 1953, F. Charles Adler, conductor.

1949 Yeibichai (Yébiché): Variations for Orchestra on an American Indian Theme (9 min.) New York, Leeds Music

First Performance: Erie Philharmonic, 1949-1950 season; Orchestra of America, Carnegie Hall, January 13, 1960, Richard Korn, conductor.

1949? Tuari: Nocturne for String Orchestra (“From the [Lento movement of] the String Quartet on Indian Themes”)   [unpublished score U-4110 in Fleisher Collection, Free Library of Philadelphia]

1949 Music Hall Suite

First Performance: Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, 1949-1950 season.

1949 Fanfare, in Memory of James Whitcomb Riley: Born 1849 (wind instruments and percussion)

“Written in 1949 for Sevitzky & Indianapolis” [unpublished score U-4102 in Fleisher Collection, Free Library of Philadelphia]

[Performance: United States Army Band, Carnegie Hall and WNYC Radio, February 20, 1953, Major Hugh Curry, conductor?]

1949 Ashrey Haish (arrangement for mixed voices and string orchestra of a Zionist song by Mordecai Zaira)

1950 Three Quiet Preludes (for organ) New York, H.W. Gray, 1950

1950 Ballade Concertante for two pianos  [inscribed “ Oct. 16, 1950, Gstaad”]

1950 Ballade Concertante (Symphonie Concertante) for piano and orchestra [inscribed “Gstaad, December 20, 1950”]

First Performance: Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Switzerland radio, Geneva, summer 1951, Nikita Magaloff, and Edmond Appia, conductor; Little Orchestra Society, Town Hall, New York, January 5, 1953, Nikita Magaloff and Thomas Scherman, conductor.

1950-51 Sonata for Cello and Piano  [inscribed “ Feb. 2, 1951, Gstaad”]

First Performance: Zurich, March 27, 1951; Bern; Amsterdam, April 2, 1951; London, April 7, 1951; Madeline Foley and Irene Jacobi; League of Composers concert, Museum of Modern Art, November 30, 1952, Lillian R. Goodman, cello; Musicians Guild, Town Hall, March 15, 1954, Leonard Rose and Irene Jacobi.

1951 Two Pieces for Flute and Orchestra: Night Piece and Dance (Nocturne in Nineveh and Dance [inscribed “Gstaad, Sept. 16, 1951”])

Performance: Orchestra of the Institut Nationale Belge de Radiodiffiusion, Brussels, 1951 season, Francis Stoefs and Franz André, conductor. [According to Sid Grolnic, the Fleisher Collection at the Free Library in Philadelphia has the following scores with variations in titles and instrumentation: U-4104 title “Nocturne in Niniveh” crossed out in red pencil and “Night Piece” written above it; U-4106, same score as U-4104, titled “Nocturne in Niniveh,” bound with “Dance for Flute & Orchestra;” U-4105, same score as U-4106 except titled “Night Piece.”]

1951 Capriccio for Violin and Piano  [inscribed “Gstaad, May-June 1951”]

1951 Violin Pieces (with piano; “Alpha,” “Ad Astram,” “Bärentanz”)  [inscribed “ July 5, 1951, Gstaad”]

1951 Night Piece and Dancefor Flute and Piano (Nocturne in Niniveh, for flute and piano) New York, Boosey and Hawkes, 1953

1951-52 Arvit L’Shabbat (Friday Evening Service No. 2) for organ, baritone solo/cantor, mixed voices New York, Transcontinental Music, 1952

Dedicated to David J. Putterman and the Park Avenue Synagogue.

First Performance: Tenth Annual Service of New Liturgical Music by Contemporary Composers, Park Avenue Synagogue, New York, May 23, 1952, Cantor David J. Putterman and the synagogue choir, Max Helfman, conductor; Cantor David J. Putterman and the Park Avenue Synagogue choir, June 24, 1956. WNYC Radio, National Jewish Council Music Festival.

1952 O May the Words for organ and mixed voices [inscribed “ Keene Valley, July, 1952”]

Published in Gershon Ephros. Antologiyah Hazanit:Cantorial Anthology of Traditional and Modern Synagogue Music. Vol. 4. New York, Bloch, 1953. pp. 152-154 and as May the Words. New York, Transcontinental Music, 1955. Dedicated to Cantor Gershon Ephros. “According to the information kindly conveyed to the Editor [Gershon Ephros] by the widow of the composer, this ‘O May the Words’ turned out to be Frederick Jacobi’s last composition written by him shortly before his untimely death.”

1952 Serenade (Revised Ballade/Symphonie Concertante; arrangement for two pianos by the composer) [inscribed “ August 2, 1952”]

1952 Serenade for Piano and Orchestra (Revised Ballade/Symphonie Concertante) [inscribed “ August 21, 1952, Keene Valley”]

First Performance: Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, November 8, 1952, Fabien Sevitzky, conductor; National Association for American Composers and Conductors concert, Little Orchestra Society, Town Hall, New York, April 9, 1953, Menahem Pressler and Thomas Scherman, conductor; [Little Orchestra Society, eight-week tour of the Far East sponsored by the President’s Special International Program for Cultural Presentations: India (February 25), Ceylon, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Japan (April 14-17), Eileen Flissler and Thomas Scherman, conductor?]

19-- Overture to The Taming of the Shrew

19-- Three Songs for medium voice and piano. (John Keats; “Orison,” “Daisy Song,” “Sonnet (To Sleep”)

Dedicated “To Madame [Frances] Alda, in sincerest respect and admiration.” [score at Juilliard School Library]

19-- Two Pieces for Women’s Chorus (with piano)

19-- In the Sunlight (high voice and piano)

19-- Variations on El hibne hagalile (piano, four hands)

19-- Fuga (piano)

19-- Two Preludes Based on Traditional Melodies (for piano)

19-- Fox-trot (violin and piano)

19-- Jig (violin and piano)

19-- Violin Sonata (violin and piano)

19-- A Wedding Song (for organ)

 

 

Discography:

1935 Frederick Jacobi Collection of Noncommercial Recordings, New York Public Library: Concerto for Cello and Orchestra. (Allegro cantabile; May 15, 1935 archival recording; 78 rpm 12-inch); Harry Fuchs and the WOR Orchestra, Frederick Jacobi, conductor.

1935? Frederick Jacobi Collection of Noncommercial Recordings, New York Public Library: String Quartet No. 2. (archival recording; 78 rpm 12-inch); Pro Arte Quartet [NBC Radio Guild Series, New York, February 1, 1935?]

1936 Frederick Jacobi Collection of Noncommercial Recordings, New York Public Library:
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra. (December 10, 1936 archival recording; 78 rpm 12-inch); Irene Jacobi and the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Howard Hanson, conductor

1937 Yaddo Records: Winds Quintet (Scherzo for Wind Instruments, 1936)
(Yaddo 13A; 78 rpm 10-inch record) Yaddo Woodwind Quintet

1939 Frederick Jacobi Collection of Noncommercial Recordings, New York Public Library:
Preludes on Traditional Melodies. ( February 22, 1939 archival recording; 78 rpm 12-Inch); Jeanne Behrend, piano

1939 Frederick Jacobi Collection of Noncommercial Recordings, New York Public Library:
Ave Rota. (Selections; March 26, 1939 archival recording; 78 rpm 12-inch); Adele Marens and the Juilliard Chamber Orchestra. Charles Lichter, conductor

1940 Frederick Jacobi Collection of Noncommercial Recordings, New York Public Library:
Ave Rota. (April 23, 1940 archival recording; 78 rpm 12-inch); Irene Jacobi and the Eastman Little School Symphony of Phi Mu Alpha, Frederick Fennell, conductor

1941 Frederick Jacobi Collection of Noncommercial Recordings, New York Public Library:
Ave Rota. (Selections; January 5, 1941 archival recording; 78 rpm 12-inch); NYA Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Mahler, conductor

1941 New Music Quarterly Recordings:
Scherzo for Wind Quintet (Scherzo for Wind Instruments, 1936) (#1611; 78 rpm 12-inch record) Juilliard School of Music Wind Ensemble

1941 RCA Victor: Frederick Jacobi.Hagiographa: Three Biblical Narratives (1938);
(78 rpm 12-inch mono record Red Seal 17999-18001S in set M-782; 3 discs) Irene Jacobi, piano, and the Coolidge String Quartet

1943 Frederick Jacobi Collection of Noncommercial Recordings, New York Public Library:
Selections. (February 15, 1943 archival recording; 78 rpm 12-inch); WNYC American Music Festival, [ February 15, 1943 WNYC broadcast of Pre-War songs?]; Sally Pestcoe, soprano, Frederick and Irene Jacobi, pianists

1946 Frederick Jacobi Collection of Noncommercial Recordings, New York Public Library:
Dances From the Prodigal Son. (August 4, 1946 archival recording; 78 rpm 12-inch); NBC Symphony Orchestra, Alexander Smallens, conductor

1947 Frederick Jacobi Collection of Noncommercial Recordings, New York Public Library:
Pieces in the Sabbath Mood. (February 5, 1947 archival recording; 78 rpm 12-inch); CBS Symphony Orchestra, New York, radio broadcast on Invitation to Music, Nicholas Berezowsky, conductor

1947 Frederick Jacobi Collection of Noncommercial Recordings, New York Public Library:
From the Prophet Nehemiah. (June 1947 archival recording; 78 rpm 12-inch); Sally Pestcoe, soprano, Frederick and Irene Jacobi, pianists

1947 Frederick Jacobi Collection of Noncommercial Recordings, New York Public Library:
Concertino for Piano and String Orchestra. (Orchestral part arranged for second piano by Frederick Jacobi. (archival recording; 78 rpm 12-inch); Frederick and Irene Jacobi

1952 Society of Participating Artists: Frederick Jacobi (SPA-7; 33 rpm mono record; deleted 1970)
Contains: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (1936-37); André Gertler and the Orchestra Symphonique, Institut Nationale Belge de Radiodiffusion, Franz André, conductor.
Concertino for Piano and String Orchestra (1946); Irene Jacobi, the Orchestra
Symphonique, Institut Nationale Belge de Radiodiffusion, Franz André, conductor.
Two Pieces for Flute and Orchestra: Night Piece and Dance (1926 and 1951;
33 rpm record label says Nocturne in Nineveh and Dance); Francis Stoefs & the Orchestra
Symphonique, Institut Nationale Belge de Radiodiffusion, Franz André, conductor.

1953 Society of Participating Artists: Music Hall (1948) (SPA-47; 33 rpm mono record; deleted 1970)

1956 Radio-Recording Division, National Broadcasting Co.: Arvit L’Shabbat (Friday Evening Service No. 2, 1951-52); (archival disc, 33 rpm mono record); Cantor David J. Putterman and the Park Avenue Synagogue Choir, with organ.

1961 CRI SD 146: Frederick Jacobi (33 mono record; stereo released 1970)
Contains: String Quartet No. 3 (1945); Lyric Art Quartet
Ballade for Violin and Piano (1942); Fredell Lack, violin, Irene Jacobi, piano
Fantasy for Viola and Piano (1941); Louise Rood, viola, Irene Jacobi, piano

1963 CRI SD 174: Frederick Jacobi (33 mono and stereo record)
Contains: Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (1932); Guido Vecchi and members of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, William Strickland, conductor
Hagiographa: Three Biblical Narratives (1938); Irene Jacobi, piano, and the Claremont String Quartet

1969 Twenty-fifth Annual Service [of] New Liturgical Music by Contemporary Composers. (archival tape of Park Avenue Synagogue, Friday Evening Services, May 2, 1969; 2 sound tape reels: analog, 7 ½ ips, mono.; 7 in., ¼ in. tape at the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary)
Contains: Shema Yisroel (“O hear, Israel” from the Arvit L’Shabbat—Friday Evening Service No. 2); Cantor David J. Putterman, and the Park Avenue Synagogue Choir

1995 CRI American Masters CD 703: Frederick Jacobi (compact disc)
Contains: Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (1932); Guido Vecchi and members of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, William Strickland, conductor
Hagiographa: Three Biblical Narratives (1938); Irene Jacobi, piano, and the Claremont String Quartet
Ballade for Violin and Piano (1942); Fredell Lack, violin, Irene Jacobi, piano
String Quartet No. 3 (1945); Lyric Art Quartet

2000 Cedille, p2000: American Viola Works (compact disc, CDR 90000 053 Cedille)
Contains: Fantasy for Viola and Piano (1941); Cathy Basrak and William Koehler

2004 The Milken Archive of American Jewish Music Naxos American Classics: Frederick Jacobi(compact disc, Naxos American Classics 8.559434)
Contains: Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra (1932); Alban Gerhardt and the Barcelona Symphony/National Orchestra of Catalonia, Karl Anton Rickenbacher, conductor
Sabbath Evening Service (1930-31); excerpts; Patrick Mason, baritone, and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chorus, Joseph Cullen, conductor
Hagiographa: Three Biblical Narratives (1938); Brian Krinke, violin, Perrin Yang, violin, George Taylor, viola, Stefan Reuss, cello, Joseph Werner, piano
Ahavat Olam (Ahavas Olom, 1945); Cantor Robert Bloch and the New York Cantorial Choir, Aaron Miller, organ, Samuel Adler, conductor
Two Pieces in Sabbath Mood (1946); The Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, Samuel Adler, conductor

 

Footnotes:

1

This journey of exploration into the creative process of Frederick Jacobi’s and Herman Voaden’s collaboration on their opera The Prodigal Son was initiated by the over one hundred letters between the collaborators from 1942 to 1952, and between Voaden and Irene Jacobi from 1953 to 1972. This correspondence and other archival materials relating to The Prodigal Son are located in the Herman Voaden Papers, York University Archives, boxes 1982-019/034 and 1991-020/013. I am grateful to Suzanne Dubeau, Assistant Head, Archives and Special Collections, and to Sean Smith, Archivist’s Assistant, for their great help with the Herman Voaden Papers during my research. This research could not have been completed without the holdings of the Scott Library, York University , and the Music Library, University of Toronto . I am also grateful to the Resource Sharing Department at the Scott Library and to the many libraries in Canada and the United States that provided copies of crucial secondary source material on interlibrary loan.

 

2

Olin Downes, “American Composer: Contributions of F. Jacobi To His Time and Art,” New York Times, Nov. 2, 1952 . p. X7. My New York Times citations are derived from the ProQuest Historical Newspapers database. Other obituaries include “Frederick Jacobi, Composer, Was 61,” New York Times, October 25, 1952 . p. 17; “Frederick Jacobi, American Composer, Passes,” Musical Courier, Vol. 16, November 15, 1952 . p. 19; “Frederick Jacobi,” Pan Pipes, Vol. 45, January 1953. pp. 56-57; and “Frederick Jacobi ha muerto,” Revista musical Chilena, Vol. 8, No. 43, September [sic]1952. p. 96. There were also brief notices in the International Musician, Vol. 51, December 1952. p. 34; Musical America , Vol. 72, November 15, 1952 . p. 24; Variety, October 29, 1952 . p. 71; and Billboard, Vol. 64, November 1, 1952 . p. 49.

 

3

Hope Stoddard, “Frederick Jacobi on the Composer’s Craft,” International Musician, Vol. 47, No. 9, March 1949. p. 20.

 

4

David Ewen. American Composers Today: A Biographical and Critical Guide. New York : H. W. Wilson, 1949. p. 132.

 

5

Fritz Jacobi to Anton Wagner, July 27, 2004 . I am grateful to Mr. Jacobi for biographical information about his father and for sending me photographs and audio tapes of his father’s compositions. I am also grateful to the Frederick Jacobi Memorial Fund for assistance with research expenses.

 

6

Gustave Reese, “Jacobi, Frederick ” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Stanley Sadie, ed. Vol. 9. London : Macmillan, 1980. pp. 444-445. Reese writes that Jacobi’s 1924 String Quartet Based on Indian Themes and 1928 Indian Dances “are attractive works, but it is in his Cello Concerto [1932], Sabbath Evening Service [1931] and second string quartet [1933] that he progressed more substantially down the main path of his own development, in which there is a partial synthesis of Classical, Romantic and modern tendencies, and it is for these, as well as for a number of later works, such as the Concertino for piano and strings [1946], that he is noteworthy.”

 

7

All the plays and theatre essays by Herman Voaden referred to in this text, as well as secondary articles on Voaden, can be found in the “Published Plays,” “Unpublished Plays,” “Published Articles” and “Scholarly Assessments” sections of this The Worlds of Herman Voaden website.

 

8

I am grateful to Frances Dinkelspiel for providing a copy of this 1860 census and for factual information on the Jacobi family, based on archival materials from Henry Glazier in the Western Jewish History Center, Judah L. Magnes Museum, Berkeley .

 

9

“Examination of a Jewish Sunday School,” New York Times, July 18, 1859 . p. 5.) Temple Emanu-El had been founded largely by families of German Jewish immigrants in 1845. Frances Dinkelspiel surmises that “perhaps he had his bar mitzvah there and thus became a member.”

 

10

FHL Film 1254079, National Archives Film T9-0079, page 230D. I am grateful to Sandra Harris for locating this census data.

 

11

Ernest Peninou and Sidney Greenleaf. Winemaking in California . San Francisco : Peregrine Press, 1954. pp. 25-26. I am grateful to Frances Dinkelspiel for providing me with access to this history.

 

12

Flora J. Arnstein, “Ongoing: Poetry, Teaching, Family in San Francisco, 1885-1985,” an oral history conducted 1984-1985 by Suzanne B. Riess, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, 1985. pp. 1-40. I am grateful to Aaron Kornblum, Archivist, Western Jewish History Center, Judah L. Magnes Museum, Berkeley, for providing me with access to this interview.

 

13

The sound of the trains themselves may also have been a stimulus to Jacobi’s compositions. In his April 1, 1948 San Francisco Symphony Orchestra program notes for the premiere of his Symphony in C he wrote, “Its opening theme came to me on the train on my way back to New York” following a performance of his Concertino for Piano and Strings by the Orchestra February 15, 1947. Asked by Hope Stoddard in his 1949 interview, “what is the initial impulse for composing any particular work?” he elaborated: “Sounds from the outside world—a brook running, a tree rustling—induce the right receptiveness. A theme from my Symphony in C came to me while I was listening to the sound of a train rolling over railroad ties. Not that the theme is suggested by these things. Just that this undercurrent of sound seems to provide a sort of seed-bed from which it springs.”

 

14

I am grateful to Aaron Kornblum for drawing No End to Morning to my attention.

 

15

Lazare Saminsky, “Les Jeunes Compositeurs Américains: Conférence de M. Lazare Saminsky à L’Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris, le 7 octobre 1922,” Le Monde Musical, Vol. 33, Nos. 23-24, December 1922. p. 429. “Il fut pendant quelque temps élève du grand maître I. Philipp, puis fit son éducation théorique chez Rubin Goldmark à New York et chez Paul Juon à Berlin en 1910-12.”

 

16

Hope Stoddard, “Frederick Jacobi on the Composer’s Craft,” p. 20. Jacobi’s 1906 song with piano accompaniment, Passepied (!) and “Sleep, Eileen,” scores at the Library of Congress, are from his pre-Berlin New York studies.

 

17

Nicholas E. Tawa. Serenading the Reluctant Eagle: American Musical Life, 1925-1945. New York : Schirmer Books, 1984. p. 3. Jacobi’s 1911-1912 scores at the Library of Congress reflect these Berlin studies.

 

18

John Tasker Howard. Our American Music: Three Hundred Years of It. Third Edition, 1954 pp. 224, 379.

 

19

Frederick Jacobi, “Rubin Goldmark: A Tribute,” Modern Music, Vol. 13, No. 3, March-April, 1936. pp. 49-50, 49.

 

20

David Ewen. Composers of Today: A Comprehensive Biographical and Critical Guide to Modern Composers of All Nations. New York: H. W. Wilson, 1934. p. 130. When Malvina Hoffman’s bronze bust of Bodanzky was unveiled and dedicated at the Metropolitan Opera February 5, 1942 , Edward Johnson read telegrams from Arturo Toscanini and Jacobi for the memorial ceremony.

 

21

See “Farewell Night at Opera,” New York Times , April 26, 1914 . p. C7.

 

22

“Opera Retains Its First Rank Singers,” New York Times, May 4, 1915 . p. 15.

 

23

I am grateful to John Pennino, Assistant Archivist, Metropolitan Opera Archives, New York , for providing me with copies of these Met archival documents. The 1916 contract lists Jacobi’s address as 16 East 60 ^th Street . He dedicated Three Songs, [John Keats’ “Orison,” “Daisy Song,” and “Sonnet (To Sleep)],” to “Madame [Frances] Alda, in sincerest respect and admiration.” The New Zealand born soprano made her Metropolitan debut, opposite Caruso, in December of 1908 and sang there until December 1929. She married Giulio Gatti-Casazza in 1910 and divorced him in 1928. I have not been able to discover the date of composition of these Three Songs.

 

24

I am grateful to John Pennino for this information from a Met Concert/Gala database.

 

25

Fritz Jacobi to Anton Wagner, July 27, 2004 .

 

26

Fritz Jacobi to Anton Wagner, August 16, 2004 .

 

27

John H. Mueller. The American Symphony Orchestra: A Social History of Musical Taste. Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1951. Reprinted, Westport , Connecticut : Greenwood Press, 1976. p. 277. In the same “Popularity Pyramid” for the 1925-1930 period, Jacobi’s works, along with those of Aaron Copland and fourteen other composers, are listed as forming less than one percent of the repertoire. See also Benjamin Grosbayne, “Rise of American Composers,” New York Times, July 13, 1930 . p. 101.

 

28

All my citations of Bloch correspondence are taken from Joseph Lewinski and Emmanuelle Dijon. Ernest Bloch (1880-1959): Sa vie et sa pensée . Tome II. La Consécration américaine (1916-1930). Geneva : Éditions Slatkine, 2001. pp. 192, 203, 217, 177, 333, 364, 402, 681, 712, 548-549, 821.

 

29

Ernest Bloch and Romain Rolland. Lettres (1911-1933). Lausanne : Éditions Payot Lausanne, 1984. p. 208.

 

30

Frederick Jacobi, “Bloch’s Violin Concerto,” Modern Music, Vol. 17, No. 2, January-February 1940. pp. 81, 82. Frederick and Irene Jacobi’s performance on the piano of Bloch’s Schelomo, probably recorded between 1937-1940, can be found in the Frederick Jacobi Collection of Noncommercial Recordings at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

 

31

Emerson Whithorne, “And After Stravinsky—?” Modern Music, Vol. 1, No. 1, February 1924. p. 24. Reprinted in Stravinsky in Modern Music 1924-1946. Carol J. Oja, ed. New York : Da Capo Press, 1982. p. 3.

 

32

Claire R. Reis. Composers, Conductors and Critics. New York : Oxford University Press, 1955. p. 88.

 

33

David Ewen. Composers of Today. p. 131.

 

34

I am grateful to Fritz Jacobi for this biographical information on his family.

 

35

David Ewen. Composers of Today. p. 130.

 

36

See the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, www.bsec.org

 

37

See Anton Wagner, “Herman Voaden’s ‘New Religion,’” Theatre History in Canada, Vol. 6, No. 2, Fall 1985.

 

38

San Francisco Examiner , November 19, 1911 . p. 71.

 

39

New York Times , January 28, 1919 . p. 9.

 

40

Fritz Jacobi to Anton Wagner, August 16, 2004 . The provisions of the 1939 will of Jacobi’s brother-in-law, Henry S. Glazier, which among several major bequests left him $10,000, are announced in the October 18, 1939 New York Times, p. 31.

 

41

I am grateful to Kenneth O’Conner, Collections Assistant, San Francisco Performing Arts Library, for making a copy of this San Francisco Symphony Orchestra program available to me.

 

42

Fritz Jacobi to Gina Genova, Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, April 29, 2004 .

 

43

See Anton Wagner, “Herman Voaden and the Group of Seven: Creating a Canadian Imaginative Background in Theatre,” International Journal of Canadian Studies, No. 4, Fall 1991.

 

44

“Jacobi’s ‘California Suite’ Well Liked,” Musical Courier, Vol. 78, No. 15, April 10, 1919 . p. 51. In his program notes published in the December 6, 1917 San Francisco Symphony Orchestra program, Jacobi emphasized California’s Spanish past rather than its natural beauty. He described the Suite as “a series of pictures suggested by the colorful and romantic early California past—Spanish California ; days so attractive to all Californians and so much more picturesque than the corresponding periods elsewhere in the Western world.” He also referred to “Senoritas and Cavalieros in spirited dance” and to the mission of Santa Barbara as “the crowning glory of those bygone days—of Spain in California .” I am grateful to Kenneth O’Conner, Collections Assistant, San Francisco Performing Arts Library, for making a copy of this program available to me.

 

45

Frederick Jacobi, “Modern Music in Gallup , New Mexico ,” Modern Music, Vol. 2, No. 2, April 1925, p. 31.

 

46

Joseph Lewinski and Emmanuelle Dijon. Ernest Bloch (1880-1959): Sa vie et sa pensée . p. 545.

 

47

“Music Notes Afield,” New York Times, November 23, 1924 . p. X7. The score published by G. Schirmer in New York in 1926 and reprinted in 1954 is “Dedicated in friendship and deepest esteem to The Chamber Music Society of San Francisco.” Unidentified printed program notes for the “First New York Performance,” of the work, presumably by the Helen Teschner Tas Quartet, League of Composers concert, Brooklyn Museum , November 19, 1926 , states that the work “was dedicated to the San Francisco String Quartet and played by this organization in October, 1925.”

 

48

Aaron Copland, “Playing Safe at Zurich ,” Modern Music, Vol. 4, No. 1, November-December 1926. pp. 30-31.

 

49

Leigh Henry, “Jacobi, Frederick ,” in Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music. Walter Willson Cobbett, ed. Second Edition, Volume 2. London : Oxford University Press, 1963. p. 26.

 

50

“Program Notes: First New York Performance.” Unidentified playbill, probably by the Helen Teschner Tas Quartet at the November 19, 1926 League of Composers concert held at the Brooklyn Museum in conjunction with an exhibition by the Société Anonyme. I am grateful to Aaron Kornblum, Archivist, Western Jewish History Center, Judah L. Magnes Museum, Berkeley , for providing a copy of these program notes. The first third of the citation is reprinted, with variations, in Frederick Jacobi. String Quartet on Indian Themes. Second Printing. Published for the Society for the Publication of American Music. Universal Edition, G. Schirmer, 1954.

 

51

Hope Stoddard, “Frederick Jacobi on the Composer’s Craft,” p. 21.

 

52

Edwin Evans, “The Anglo-American Musicians’ Conference at Lausanne ,” The Musical Times, Vol. 70, No. 1039, September 1, 1929 . p. 828.

 

53

Carol J. Oja. Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s . New York : Oxford University Press, 2000. pp. 159-60.

 

54

Joseph Lewinski and Emmanuelle Dijon. Ernest Bloch (1880-1959): Sa vie et sa pensée . p. 545. By the end of the decade Bloch had come to share Jacobi’s opinion. “I love the people of California . But there is no one here I can talk to, or with whom I can exchange ideas. I am starved for companionship and do not know whether to stay on in California or go abroad.” Cited in Leonora Wood Armsby. Musicians Talk. New York : Dial Press, 1935. p. 132.

 

55

See Marion Bauer, “Charles T. Griffes as I Remember Him,” Musical Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 3, July 1943. pp. 360-361. Jacobi’s assessment of Griffes appears in “In Retrospect,” Modern Music, Vol. 4, No. 2, January-February 1927. pp. 32-33.

 

56

David Ewen. Composers Since 1900. New York : Wilson , 1969. pp. 42-43.

 

57

Oja. p. 156.

 

58

“Music Notes Afield,” New York Times, May 6, 1923 . p. X3.

 

59

Oja. p. 384.

 

60

Ibid. p. 430. Fn. 6.

 

61

Ibid. p. 216.

 

62

Reis. 1955. p. 29.

 

63

Frances R. Grant, “Native Writers Give Own Works,” Musical America , Vol. 35, February 18, 1922. p. 13.

 

64

Cited in Frances R. Grant, “Symposium of Composers to Open People’s Music League Season,” Musical America, Vol. 35, January 28, 1922 . p. 56.

 

65

R. Allen Lott, “‘New Music for New Ears’: The International Composer’s Guild,” Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 36, No. 2, Summer 1983. pp. 271, 283.

 

66

Carlos Salzedo, “Pioneer Period,” New York Times, December 6, 1942 . p. X7.

 

67

Louise Varèse. Varèse: A Looking-Glass Diary. Volume I: 1883-1928. New York : W.W. Norton, 1972. p. 189.

 

68

David Metzer, “The League of Composers: The Initial Years,” American Music, Vol. 15, No. 1, Spring 1997. p. 46. See also Oja. p. 186.

 

69

“The League of Composers,” New York Times, April 8, 1923 . p. X5 and Olin Downes, “Changes in Composers League: Claire Reis’ Resignation as Chairman of Board Comes at End of Twenty-five Years of Achievement in Modern Music,” New York Times, May 16, 1948 . p. X7.

 

70

Lazare Saminsky, “Les Jeunes Compositeurs Américains.” p. 429. “C’est une nature extrêmement musicale que celle de M. Jacobi. Il est doué d’un goût très noble et très fin et se sert des procédés modernes, en maître. Bien qu’observateur conscient et consciencieux de tout ce qui se passe dans le domaine de la musique du monde entier, il a su conserver son indépendance. Une tendre mélancolie, de l’humanité, de la noblesse caractérisent la plupart de ses compositions tels ses Préludes pour violon ou son chant sans paroles intitulé Circé.”

 

71

Ibid. pp. 428, 431. “Jusqu’ici dans la plupart des œuvres, on sentait très nettement une sorte d’assimilation de toutes espèces d’éléments étrangers, soit allemands, italiens, slaves, orientaux, desquels la personnalité du compositeur se dégageait avec peine; la jeune génération semble vouloir se libérer de tout cela, ainsi que de cette sorte d’étape vers le nationalisme qui consistait de la part de musiciens tels que Mac Dowel, Ch. Cadman, John Powel en emprunts non plus à l’étranger mais aux indigènes nègres ou indiens. Ces tendances seront désormais remplacées par celle qui consistera à incarner dans les œuvres nouvelles les caractéristiques de la race, du pays, de l’histoire et de l’industrie américaine. Moi qui ai longuement observé et pris part à cette vie musicale américaine si intense, je pense que cet esprit de l’Amérique nouvelle qui a créé la poésie de Walt Whitman et aussi la gare centrale de New -York d’une grandeur et d’un style incomparables, cet esprit gigantesque d’entreprise, d’énergie et de clairvoyance créera aussi une époque héroïque dans la composition musicale.

Un grand génie musical américain apparaîtra, dans l’œuvre duquel se dégageront nettement toutes les caractéristiques de sa race, et qui fera école. C’est du reste ainsi que toutes les Ecoles se fondent…L’Amérique musicale créatrice existe et a une vie qui lui est propre. Elle donnera, bientôt, soyez en sûrs, de belles œuvres qui seront une émanation de son propre génie et la classeront en bonne place parmi les nations qui sont susceptibles d’enrichir la culture musicale mondiale.”

 

72

“French Critics Review American Music,” The Musical Leader, Vol. 46, October 4, 1923. p. 322.

 

73

Irving Schwerké, “Some American Composers,” Chicago Tribune ( Paris edition), May 31, 1925 . Reprinted in his Kings Jazz and David. Paris : Les Presses Modernes, 1927. pp. 227, 229-230. The other composers Schwerké refers to are Carl Engel, Deems Taylor, Emerson Whithorne, Walter Kramer, Marion Bauer and Louis Gruenberg.

 

74

H.T., “Spalding Soloist at Music Festival,” New York Times, October 6, 1939 . p. 35.

 

75

Lou Harrison, “Reflections at Spa,” Modern Music, Vol. 23, No. 4, Fall 1946. p. 298.

 

76

“Ovation for Composer,” New York Times, March 7, 1923 , p. 16.

 

77

“A Group of the Younger American Composers: Creators of Music Who, Though of Various Schools, Can All Be Classified as Modernists,” Vanity Fair, September 1923. Reproduced in Oja. p. 161. The other composers in the group are Leo Sowerby, Leo Ornstein, Emerson Whithorne, Deems Taylor, Louis Gruenberg, Edward Royce, and A. Walter Kramer.

 

78

“Music Notes Afield,” New York Times, May 17, 1925 . p. X6.

 

79

“Summer’s Music Now at Hand With Promise of Varied Programs,” New York Times, May 25, 1924 . p. X5.

 

80

Cyrilla Barr, “The ‘Faerie Queene’ and the ‘ Archangel ’: The Correspondence of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge and Carl Engel,” American Music, Vol. 15, No. 2, Summer 1997. pp. 160, 168, 178.

 

81

David Ewen. Composers of Today. p. 130.

 

82

Edwin Evans, “The Coolidge Chamber Music Concerts,” The Musical Times, Vol. 68, No. 1017, November 1, 1927 . p. 998.

 

83

Dena J. Epstein, “Frederick Stock and American Music,” American Music, Vol. 10, No. 1, Spring 1992. p. 41.

 

84

Oja. p. 4.

 

85

Frederick Jacobi, “The I.S.C.M. at Florence ,” Modern Music, Vol. 11, No. 4, May-June 1934. p. 209. In 1924 the members of the American committee of the ISCM were Jacobi, John Alden Carpenter, Howard Hanson, E. Robert Schmitz, Carlos Salzedo, Lazare Saminsky, and Emerson Whithorne. Cited in Ronald Victor Wiecki. A Chronicle of Pro Musica in the United States (1920-1944) . Diss. University of Wisconsin . 1992. p. 61.

 

86

Paul Stefan, “ Vienna Resists the Depression,” Modern Music, Vol. 9, No. 3, March-April 1932. p. 130.

 

87

Oja. p. 167.

 

88

Fritz Jacobi to Anton Wagner, July 27, 2004.

 

89

Lionel Hill, “A Significant Revival of Synagogue Music: Congregation Emanu-El of New York , Sponsor of Movement, Will Arrange Initial Performance and Publication Early Next Month,” American Hebrew [ New York ], November 27, 1931 . p. 53.

 

90

John Tasker Howard. Our Contemporary Composers: American Music in the Twentieth Century. New York : Crowell, 1941. Reprinted, New York : Thomas Y. Crowell, 1975. p. 169 and Our American Music: Three Hundred Years of It. Third Edition, 1954. p. 474.

 

91

John Tasker Howard and George Kent Bellows. A Short History of Music in America . New York : Thomas Y. Crowell, 1967. p. 370.

 

92

Albert Weisser. The Modern Renaissance of Jewish Music. New York : Bloch Publishing, 1954. pp. 152, 153.

 

93

“Jacobi Setting Heard at Temple Emanu-el ,” New York Times, December 5, 1931 . p. 21.

 

94

David Diamond, “American Composers, XIII: Frederic Jacobi,” Modern Music, Vol. 14, No. 3, March-April 1937. p. 127.

 

95

Artur Holde. Jews in Music: From the Age of Enlightenment to the Mid-Twentieth Century. New York: Bloch Publishing, 1974. p. 132.

 

96

David Ewen. American Composers: A Biographical Dictionary. New York: Putnam, 1982. p. 355.

 

97

Adolfo Salazar. Music in Our Time: Trends in Music Since the Romantic Era. Translated from the Spanish by Isabel Pope. New York: W.W. Norton, 1946. p. 315.

 

98

Lazare Saminsky. Music of Our Day: Essentials and Prophecies. New York: T.Y. Crowell, 1932. Revised and enlarged edition, 1939. Reprinted, Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1970. pp. 152-153.

 

99

Lazare Saminsky. Music of the Ghetto and the Bible. New York: Bloch Publishing, 1934. pp. 125-126.

 

100

Lazare Saminsky. Living Music of the Americas. New York: Howell, Soskin and Crown, 1949. pp. 131, 132, 133.

 

101

Israel Rabinovitch. Of Jewish Music: Ancient and Modern. Translated from the Yiddish [Muzik bei Yidden, 1940] by A.M. Klein. Montreal: Book Center, 1951. pp. 299, 300.

 

102

Hope Stoddard, Frederick Jacobi on the Composer’s Craft,” p. 21.

 

103

Cited in David Ewen. American Composers Today. p. 132.

 

104

John Tasker Howard. Our Contemporary Composers: American Music in the Twentieth Century. p. 168 and Our American Music: Three Hundred Years of It. p. 473.

 

105

Alfred Frankenstein, “For San Francisco , Orchestral Moderns,” Modern Music, Vol. 20, No. 3, March-April 1943. p. 194.

 

106

February 12, 1943 program notes for Ode, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, p. 195. I am grateful to Aaron Kornblum, Archivist, Western Jewish History Center, Judah L. Magnes Museum, Berkeley , for providing a copy of these program notes.

 

107

I am grateful to Dr. Eliott Kahn, Music Archivist, Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, for this information and for making copies of Jacobi’s three versions of the prayer available to me.

 

108

Gershon Ephros. Antologiyah Hazanit:Cantorial Anthology of Traditional and Modern Synagogue Music. Vol. 4. New York , Bloch, 1953. p. 152. The end of the score is annotated “ Keene Valley , July 1952,” the summer retreat in Essex County , New York , where Frederick and Irene Jacobi stayed from June 10 on for the summer.

 

109

J.B., “New Jacobi Work Performed Here,” New York Times, May 24, 1952 , p. 15.

 

110

See Elliott Antokoletz, “A Survivor of the Vienna Schoenberg Circle : An Interview With Paul A. Pisk,” Tempo, New Series, No. 154, September 1985. pp. 20-21.

 

111

Frederick Jacobi, “Reflections on the Vienna Festival,” Modern Music, Vol. 11, November-December 1932.

 

112

I am grateful to the Irving S. Gilmore Library, Yale University, for providing me with copies of the following correspondence from the Karl Weigl Papers, MSS 73, Series II, Correspondence, Folder 23/662: Karl Weigl to Frederick Jacobi, October 6, 1936, January 24, 1938, and April 9, 1938; Frederick Jacobi to Karl Weigl, February 11, 1938 and April 21, 1938. I am also grateful to the Karl Weigl Foundation for permission to quote from this correspondence.

 

113

Olin Downes, “American Composer: Contributions of F. Jacobi To His Time and Art.”

 

114

Cited in record notes for Frederick Jacobi. Concerto for Cello and Orchestra and Hagiographa. CRI-174. New York : Composer’s Recordings, 1963.

 

115

Neil W. Levin, “Program Notes,” Frederick Jacobi. Naxos American Classics cd 8.559434, 2004. p. 8.

 

116

From the David J. Putterman/Park Avenue Synagogue Collection, Box 7, Folder 6, courtesy of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary. I am grateful to the Special Collections staff of the Library for making copies of this correspondence available to me.

 

117

Record notes for Hagiographa. RCA Victor Red Seal, M 782, I-5, 1941. Cited in Frederick Jacobi. Concerto for Cello and Orchestra and Hagiographa. CRI-174. New York : Composer’s Recordings, 1963 and in Frederick Jacobi. New York : CRI American Masters, CD 703, 1995.

 

118

N. S., “Temple Emanu-El Opens Choir Fete,” New York Times, March 26, 1938 . p. 13.

 

119

Macy Nulman. Concise Encyclopedia of Jewish Music. New York : McGraw-Hill, 1975. p. 123.

 

120

Frederick Jacobi, “Hymn” in Rab Saadia Gaon: Studies in His Honor. Louis Finkelstein, ed. New York , Arno Press, 1980.

 

121

Irene Heskes. Passport to Jewish Music: Its History, Traditions, and Culture. Westport , Connecticut : Greenwood Press, 1994. p. 123.

 

122

Neil. W. Levin, “Program Notes,” Frederick Jacobi. Naxos American Classics cd 8.559434, 2004. p. 14.

 

123

Olin Downes , New York Times , Nov. 2, 1952 . p. X7.

 

124

Irene Heskes, in her “Shapers of American Jewish Music: Mailamm and the Jewish Music Forum, 1931-62,” American Music, Vol. 15, No. 3, Autumn 1997. p. 311, reprints page 9 of the Jewish Music Forum Bulletin, Vol. 3, No. 1, December 1942, outlining program of activities for the 1942-43 season. Heskes’ reprint announces “excerpts from Frederick Jacobi’s opera ‘Esther’” to be performed at the Y.M.H.A. April 12, 1943 . The same page from the Jewish Music Forum Bulletin provided by Dr. Elliott Kahn, Music Archivist, Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, reads “excerpts from Frederick Bloch’s opera ‘Esther.” I am grateful to Dr. Kahn for clearing up this error. No such title appears in Jacobi’s list of compositions or in his correspondence with Herman Voaden.

 

125

Frederick Jacobi, “Some Aspects of the Problem of Nationalism in Music,” Jewish Music Forum Bulletin, Vol. 6, No. 1, December 1945. p. 4. I am grateful to Dr. Eliott Kahn, Music Archivist, Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York , for making copies of the Jewish Music Forum Bulletin available to me.

 

126

Heskes. 1997. p. 315.

 

127

Frederick Jacobi, October 16 and November 22, 1946 telegrams to Arnold Schönberg. I am grateful to the Arnold Schönberg Center, Vienna, for making copies of this correspondence available to me.

 

128

“Jewish Music Group Offering 3 Awards,” New York Times, January 4, 1947. p. 11.

 

129

Avraham Soltes. Off the Willows: The Rebirth of Modern Jewish Music. New York : Bloch Publishing, 1970. pp. 52-53. See also The Year in American Music 1946-1947. Julius Bloom, ed. New York : Allen, Towne & Heath, 1947. pp. 184-185.

 

130

From the David J. Putterman/Park Avenue Synagogue Collection, Box 7, Folder 6, courtesy of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary. I am grateful to the Special Collections staff of the Library for making copies of this correspondence available to me.

 

131

“2 Choirs to Sing Jacobi Work,” New York Times, October 26, 1952 . p. 55. The Frederick Jacobi Chronology of Compositions that follows at the end of this introduction is far from complete. There are numerous references in the New York Times to performances of his works where no titles of his compositions or exact dates are given. The following chronological references indicate the depth of Jacobi’s involvement with the Jewish community in New York and why his works and memory were so strongly kept alive by his community:

 

Unnamed composition performed at the dedication of the new Temple Emanu-El January 10, 1930; first performance, Friday Evening Service, Temple Emanu-El, December 4, 1931; unnamed composition, Temple Emanu-El, December 16 and 17, 1932; “Sacred Service,” Temple Emanu-El, May 17, 1935; “May the Words,” Festival of American Choral Music and Its Ancestry, Temple Emanu-El, March 27, 1936; first performance, organ Toccata, Three Choir Festival, Temple Emanu-El and WHN Radio, March 19, 1937; String Quartet No. 2, Mailamm concert, Town Hall, February 19, 1938; speaker, dedication of the Mailamm Library of Jewish Music, March 21, 1938; the “Adoration” from the Service performed at the Third and Fourth Annual Choir Festival, Temple Emanu-El, March 25, 1938 and March 31, 1939.

 

Unnamed composition, “Music by Americans of the Past and Present,” 6 ^th Annual Three Choir Festival, Temple Emanu-El, March 28, 1941; first performance of Hymn, Rabbi Saadia Gaon commemoration, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, March 24, 1942; organ Prelude, 7 ^th Annual Three Choir Festival, Temple Emanu-El, March 27, 1942; “O May the Words” from the Service performed at the Park Avenue Synagogue, New York, March 19, 1943; lecture series at YMHA beginning with Mozart, November 2, 1944; “May the Words,” All American Conference on Hebrew Music, Assembly Hall, Temple Emanu-El, December 17, 1944; lecture recital, “Some Aspects of the Problem of Nationalism in Music,” Jewish Music Forum, YMHA, December 18, 1944; first performance, Ahavas Olom, Park Avenue Synagogue, May 11, 1945; performance of Three Preludes, Maccabean Music Festival, Temple Emanu-El, December 19, 1946; appointed head of the group of judges for the national Jewish Music Council competition for the best composition by a Jewish composer, January 23, 1947; lecture and performance with Irene Jacobi and Fredell Lack, YWHA February 1, 1947; lecture on “Jewish Music As See It,” Park Avenue Synagogue, February 7, 1947; lecture recital YWHA, March 3, 1947; “Adoration,” 11 ^th Annual Three Choir Festival, Temple Emanu-El, March 29, 1947; lecture on Offenbach and Johann Strauss, YWHA, April 14, 1947; world premiere by Jacobi [Kaddish?], 5 ^th Annual Sabbath Evening Service of Liturgical Music by Contemporary Composers, Park Avenue Synagogue, May 2, 1947; eight monthly lectures on the development of the piano concerto and opera, YM and YWHA, beginning October 8, 1947; lecture, Congregation B’Nai Jeshurun, November 24, 1947; introduction, all-Palestinian program by cellist-composer Joachim Stutchevsky, Carnegie Recital Hall, February 24, 1948; address on nationalism and music, first joint conference of the Department of Music of the United Synagogue of America and the Cantors Assembly of America, 1948; lecture recital on Schumann, YMHA, March 11, 1948; first performance, Ode to Zion, Commencement Exercises, Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, June 6, 1948; performance, Ahavas Olom, Festival of Contemporary American Music, St. Paul’s Chapel, Columbia University, Park Avenue Synagogue Choir, May 12, 1949; From the Prophet Nehemiah, Hagiographa, Three Songs and Four Dances From the Prodigal Son, Jewish Museum, May 16, 1949.

 

Organ Prelude, Festival of Jewish Arts, Carnegie Hall, March 4, 1950 sponsored by the American Jewish Congress; organ Prelude, 14 ^th Annual Three Choir Festival, Temple Emanu-El, May 4, 1951; first performance, Friday Evening Service No. 2, Tenth Annual Service of New Liturgical Music by Contemporary Composers, Park Avenue Synagogue, May 23, 1952; unnamed composition, Presbyterian Church, October 26, 1952; unnamed composition, celebration of 300 ^th anniversary of Jewish settlement in America, 110 anniversary of the founding of Congregation Emanu-El and 25 ^th anniversary of the dedication of Temple Emanu-El, December 5, 1954; performance, Friday Evening Service No. 2, Park Avenue Synagogue , June 24, 1956; unnamed composition, 10 ^th anniversary celebration of the Cantors Assembly of America, Town Hall, May 8, 1957; unnamed composition, 75 ^th anniversary and 13 ^th Annual Service of New Liturgical Music by Contemporary Composers, Park Avenue Synagogue, May 24, 1957; performance, Ahavas Olom, Twenty-fifth Annual Service of New Liturgical Music by Contemporary Composers, Park Avenue Synagogue, May 2, 1969.

 

132

Lazare Saminsky. 1949. p. 133. Saminsky adds, “The four dances from the opera are attractive, their orchestration neat and gay. Of them, Tarantella is the most enterprising and the liveliest.”

 

133

Olin Downes, “Stoessel Breaks Record in Festival,” New York Times, October 9, 1925 . p. 27.

 

134

Olin Downes, “Music,” New York Times, April 3, 1929 . p. 35.

 

135

O.T., “American Novelties at League Concert,” New York Times, February 19, 1935 . p. 27.

 

136

Olin Downes, “Temple Emanu-El Opens Choir Fete,” New York Times, April 1, 1939 . p. 16.

 

137

Ross Parmenter, “Records: Americans—Composers of Many Schools Represented,” New York Times, June 8, 1941 . p. X6.

 

138

David Metzer, “The League of Composers: The Initial Years,” American Music, Vol. 15, No. 1, Spring 1997. p. 63.

 

139

Reis, pp. 209, 208.

 

140

Goddard Lieberson, “Over the Air,” Modern Music, Vol. 15, No. 3, March-April 1938. p. 191.

 

141

Frederick Jacobi to Arnold Schönberg, January 23, 1940. I am grateful to the Arnold Schönberg Center, Vienna, for making a copy of this letter available to me. The League of Composers stationary lists the League’s Executive Board as Mrs. Arthur M. [Claire] Reis as Chairman, Dr. Thaddeus Hoyt Ames, Treasurer, and executive board members Marion Bauer, Nicolai T. Berezowsky, Aaron Copland, Frederick Jacobi, Minna Lederman, Douglas S. Moore, Lazare Saminsky, William H. Schuman, Roger Sessions and Randall Thompson. The League’s membership was further listed as George Antheil, Marc Blitzstein, Ernest Bloch, Paul Bowles, Mark Brunswick, John Alden Carpenter, Elliott Carter, Chalmers Clifton, Henry Cowell, David Diamond, Lehman Engel, Herbert Elwell, Isadore Freed, Eugene Goossens, Louis Gruenberg, Richard Hammond, Howard Hanson, Roy Harris, Edward B. Hill, Charles E. Ives, Werner Josten, A.Walter Kramer, Ernst Krenek, Otto Luening, Robert McBride, Colin McPhee, Harold Morris, Nicolas Nabokoff, Paul Nordoff, Leo Ornstein, Paul Pisk, Walter Piston, Quincy Porter, Karol Rathaus, Wallingford Riegger, Bernard Rogers, Arnold Schönberg, Arthur Shepherd, Leo Sowerby, William Grant Still, Ernst Toch, Edgar Varèse, Bernard Wagenaar, and Kurt Weill.

 

142

Marion Bauer and Claire R. Reis, “Twenty-Five Years With the League of Composers,” Musical Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 1, January 1948. pp. 13.

 

143

Frederick Jacobi to Nicolai Berezowsky, March 3, [pre 1946]. I am grateful to the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, for making Jacobi correspondence available to me from its Nicolai Berezowsky Papers.

 

144

Julius Bloom, ed. The Year in American Music 1946-1947. p. 257.

 

145

Howard Taubman, “Records: Our Own Time,” New York Times, January 4, 1942 . p. X6.

 

146

Minna Lederman. The Life and Death of a Small Magazine (Modern Music, 1924-1946). New York : Institute for Studies in American Music, Conservatory of Music, Brooklyn College , 1983. p. 126.

 

147

Elliott Carter, “Scores for Graham; Festival at Columbia ,” Modern Music, Vol. 23, No. 1, Winter 1946. p. 55.

 

148

Lederman. pp. 30-31. Though the extant Jacobi correspondence is scattered in various archives, there are many accounts of his generosity towards other composers. Aaron Copland wrote Nadia Boulanger June 1, 1928 , “Your letter induced Frederick Jacobi to help again with financial aid so that Israel [Citkowitz (1909-1974)] has enough money until the end of October.” (See Carol J. Oja, “Cos Cob Press and the American Composer,” Notes, 2 nd Series, Vol. 45, No. 2, December 1988. pp. 240.) Jacobi introduced David Diamond (b. 1915) to the violinist Joseph Szigeti in the mid-1930s. As a result, Diamond composed his First Violin Concerto for Szigeti in 1936. According to the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music website, “Jacobi quietly organized some private financial assistance for Diamond to help him continue his studies and pursue his artistic goals.” In the early 1940s, Alma Wertheim wrote Copland “Fred Jacoby [sic] & I want to help Marion Bauer to get her oboe quintet published…. Fred and I will contribute towards the amount ($200 according to Mr. Kerr).” (See Oja, 1988. p. 247.) On April 23, 1951 , Jacobi sent a cheque to the composer Julia Smith, a former composition student who was involved in organizing a concert of Bauer’s music at Town Hall, May 8, 1951 . (See Olin Downes, “Miss Bauer’s Work Makes Up Concert,” New York Times, May 9, 1951. p. 41.) Bauer had retired as assistant professor at New York University after 25 years of service, without an adequate pension. Jacobi wrote Julia Smith June 19, 1951, “Of course our educational ‘pension’ system is cruel; I am no believer in the Welfare State, still I think it all wrong that fine people should be kicked out, after years of excellent service, without allowing them adequate means of support.” I am grateful to the University of North Texas Music Library for making copies of this correspondence from its Julia Smith Collection available to me. According to listings in the New York Times, the Jacobis donated $250 to the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies in 1931 and $650, in two appeals, in 1932.

 

149

Lederman. p. 199.

 

150

Olin Downes, “Magazine Folding: ‘Modern Music, Voice of Composers, to Quit,” New York Times, January 12, 1947 . p. X7.

 

151

Frederick Jacobi, April 1, 1948 program notes for the premiere of his Symphony No. 2 in C, San Francisco Symphony, Pierre Monteux, conductor. Cited in Frederick Jacobi. String Quartet No. 3. New York , Composers Recording CRI 146, 1961 and in David Ewen. American Composers: A Biographical Dictionary. New York : G. P. Putnam, 1982. p. 356 and in Frederick Jacobi. New York : CRI American Masters, CD 703, 1995.

 

152

Aaron Copland, “The Composer in America , 1923-1933,” Modern Music, Vol. 10, No. 2, January-February 1933. p. 90.

 

153

Hope Stoddard, “Frederick Jacobi on the Composer’s Craft,” p. 21.

 

154

Sheila Eastman, Timothy J. McGee. Barbara Pentland. Toronto : University of Toronto Press, 1983. pp. 25-26.

 

 

155

I am grateful to the University of North Texas Music Library for making copies of this correspondence from its Julia Smith Collection available to me.

 

156

I am grateful to Fritz Jacobi for this information.

 

157

I am grateful to Kenneth O’Conner, Collections Assistant, San Francisco Performing Arts Library, for making a copy of this program available to me.

 

158

Lehman Engel, “New Laboratories and Gebrauchsmusik,” Modern Music, Vol. 13, No. 3, March-April 1936. p. 52.

 

159

Arthur W. Locke, “Festival at Hartford ,” Modern Music, Vol. 13, No. 3, March-April 1936. p. 56. Reviews of Jacobi’s compositions in Modern Music can be accessed through Wayne D. Shirley’s Modern Music, Published by the League of Composers 1924-1946: an Analytic Index. William & Carolyn Lichtenwanger, eds. New York : AMS Press, 1976. p. 109.

 

160

Richard Sabin, “Works by Jacobi, Diamond, McBride,” Modern Music, Vol. 14, No. 2, January-February 1937. p. 95.

 

161

David Diamond, “American Composers, XIII: Frederick Jacobi,” Modern Music, Vol. 14, No. 3, March-April 1937. pp. 126, 129, 124.

 

162

Elliott Carter, “The New York Season Opens,” Modern Music, Vol. 17, No. 1, October-November 1939. p. 37.

 

163

 

“Modern Music in Gallup , New Mexico ,” II, 2, April 1925. pp. 28-31.

 

“In Retrospect,” [Griffes] IV, 2, January-February 1927. pp. 32-33.

 

“Music and Words,” IV, 4, May-June 1927. pp. 3-7.

 

“The New Apollo,” V, 4, May-June 1928. pp. 11-15. Reprinted in Stravinsky in Modern Music 1924-1946. Carol J. Oja, ed. New York : Da Capo Press, 1982. pp. 139-144.

 

“ Liege , 1930,” VIII, 1, November-December 1930. pp. 10-20.

 

“Reflections on the Vienna Festival,” X, 1, November-December 1932. pp. 34-39.

 

“Festival Impressions— Amsterdam , 1933,” XI, 1, November-December 1933. pp. 30-33.

 

“The I.S.C.M. at Florence ,” XI, 4, May-June 1934. pp. 209-213.

 

“Nabokoff’s Oratorio, Job,” XII, 1, November-December 1934. pp. 43-44.

 

“Reflections on Ariadne and Mavra,” XII, 2, January-February 1935. pp. 73-78. Reprinted in Stravinsky in Modern Music 1924-1946. Carol J. Oja, ed. New York : Da Capo Press, 1982. pp. 39-46.

 

“On Hearing Stravinsky’s Perséphone,” XII, 3, March-April 1935. pp. 112-115. Reprinted in Stravinsky in Modern Music 1924-1946. Carol J. Oja, ed. New York : Da Capo Press, 1982. pp. 47-50.

 

“Stravinsky Begins His Chronicles,” XIII, 1, November-December 1935. pp. 51-53. Reprinted in Stravinsky in Modern Music 1924-1946. Carol J. Oja, ed. New York : Da Capo Press, 1982. pp. 51-54.

 

“Rubin Goldmark: A Tribute,” XIII, 3, March-April 1936. pp. 49-50.

 

“WPA Shows With Music,” XIV, 1, November-December 1936. pp. 42-44.

 

“Homage to Arthur Foote,” XIV, 4, May-June 1937. pp. 198-199. Reprinted in Arthur Foote, 1853-1937: An autobiography. Norwood , Mass. : Privately printed at the Plimpton Press, 1946. pp. 133-135.

 

“The Future of Gershwin,” XV, 1, November-December 1937. pp. 3-7. Reprinted, New York : Columbia Bookstore, 1941?

 

“Bloch’s Violin Concert,” XVII, 2, January-February 1940. pp. 81-83.

 

“In Defense of Modernism,” XVII, 4, May-June 1940. pp. 221-225.

 

“ America ’s Popular Music,” XVIII, 2, January-February 1941. pp. 76-80.

 

“An Approach to ‘Greatness,’” [Albert Einstein. Greatness in Music] XIX, 2, January-February 1942. pp. 140-142.

 

“Messiaen’s Language: Birds and Butterflies,” XXIII, 3, Summer 1946. pp. 231-232.

 

164

N.S., “Shapiro and Jacobi in a Joint Recital,” New York Times, April 2, 1942 . p. 27.

 

165

Olin Downes, “Critics’ Concerts: Impressions of Two Programs of Music by American Composers,” New York Times, May 17, 1942 . p. X7. See also “The Composers Object: A Response From Eleven Who Were Represented at Critics’ Concerts,” New York Times, May 24, 1942 . p. X6.

 

166

Olin Downes, “The Future of Opera in America ,” New York Times, May 24, 1942 . p. X7.

 

167

Hope Stoddard, “Frederick Jacobi on the Composer’s Craft,” p. 20.

 

168

“Ruth E. Kingsbury Gives Recital,” New York Times, December 14, 1913 . p. 15.

 

169

“Marguerite Ringo, Soprano, Heard,” New York Times, January 14, 1920 . p. 24.

 

170

William Treat Upton, “Some Recent Representative American Song-Composers,” Musical Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 3, July 1925. p. 410 and in his Art-Song in America : A Study in the Development of American Music . Boston : Oliver Ditson, 1930. p. 145.

 

171

William Treat Upton , “Aspects of the Modern Art-Song,” Musical Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 1, January 1938. p. 29.

 

172

Upton . 1938. pp. 25, 12-13, 25.

 

173

“Mixed Voices,” Musical Courier, Vol. 146, November 1, 1952 . p. 29.

 

174

“‘Three Songs’ by Frederick Jacobi,” Musical Courier, Vol. 141, March 15, 1950 . p. 30.

 

175

I am grateful to Rob van der Bliek, Music Librarian, York University Libraries, for providing access to an audio tape of this 1972 commemorative concert in the Herman Voaden Papers.

 

176

Herman Voaden in Geraldine Anthony, ed. Stage Voices: Twelve Canadian Playwrights Talk About Their Lives and Work. Toronto : Doubleday, 1978. p. 47.

 

177

Herman Voaden to Frederick Jacobi, January 9, 1944. Letter in the Fleisher Collection, Free Library of Philadelphia. I am grateful to the Free Library for making a copy of this important letter available to me.

 

178

Voaden to Ezra Schabas, Faculty of Music, University of Toronto , May 10, 1972 .

 

179

Herman Voaden. “Romance at 39.” Typescript, p. 8.

 

180

See Marion Bauer, “Native Opera—Metropolitan and Juilliard,” Modern Music, Vol. 12, No. 4, May-June 1935 and Virgil Thomson, “In the Theatre,” Modern Music, Vol. 14, No. 3, March-April 1937.

 

181

Unidentified clipping, Scrapbooks of the American Opera Society of Chicago, Volume 4. I am grateful to the Special Collections section of the Newberry Library, Chicago, for this citation reference.

 

182

Lou Harrison, “Park and Stadium, Summer Season,” Modern Music, Vol. 23, No. 4, Fall 1946. p. 295.

 

183

Saminsky. 1949. p. 133.

 

184

Noel Straus, “Present-Day Music Heard at Stadium,” New York Times, July 5, 1946 . p. 23.

 

185

In the 1948 San Francisco Symphony Orchestra concert, the Symphony in C was preceded by Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Joseph Haydn and Beethoven’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra and was followed by Elgar’s Enigma Variations. I am grateful to Kenneth O’Conner, Collections Assistant, San Francisco Performing Arts Library, for making copies of these two programs available to me.

 

186

Voaden to Ezra Schabas, May 10, 1972.

 

187

Alfred Frankenstein, “Frederick Jacobi Works Are Performed at U.C.,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 9, 1949 . p. 12.

 

188

Virgil Thomson, “Music Teachers’ National Association Hears New Works in San Francisco ,” New York Herald Tribune , August 28, 1949 . Section 5, p. 6. During the five-day convention, both Thomson and Alfred Frankenstein presented talks on music criticism. Henry Cowell led a forum on Latin American music. Jacobi, Frankenstein and Ellis Kohs, Edward Lawton and Halsey Stevens took part in a round table on American music. New works presented included a world premiere of Darius Milhaud’s Friday Evening Service, a Pacific Coast premiere of George Antheil’s Fifth Symphony, as well as a performance of Walter Piston’s 1940 Sonata. Maxim Schapiro presented a recital of contemporary piano music by Piston, Stravinsky, Bartok, Bernstein, Villa-Lobos, Milhaud and Virgil Thomson. See R. H. Hagan, “Music Teachers Gather to Listen,” San Francisco Chronicle , August 14, 1949 . p. 4.

 

189

Gwenlyn Setterfield. Niki Goldschmidt: A Life in Canadian Music. Toronto : University of Toronto Press, 2003. pp. 39, 49.

 

190

“Jacobi Works Heard in Europe ,” Musical Courier, Vol. 143, February 1, 1951 . p. 24.

 

191

H.W.L., “Little Orchestra Society,” Musical Courier, Vol. 147, January 15, 1953 . p. 23. This concert occurred ten weeks after Jacobi’s death. In his memory, the conductor Thomas Scherman played Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music. See Howard Taubman, “Scherman Directs Tribute to Jacobi,” New York Times , January 6, 1953 , p. 23.

 

192

From the David J. Putterman/Park Avenue Synagogue Collection, Box 7, Folder 6, courtesy of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

 

193

“Jacobi Premiere in Zurich ,” Musical Courier, Vol. 143, April 1, 1951 . p. 10.

 

194

Frederick Jacobi to Julia Smith, Gstaad, April 23, 1951 . From the Julia Smith Collection at the University of North Texas Music Library.

 

195

Ross Parmenter, “The World of Music: Summer Opera,” New York Times, June 3, 1951. p. 101.

 

196

From the David J. Putterman/Park Avenue Synagogue Collection, Box 7, Folder 6, courtesy of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

 

197

Annotated April 22, 1952 Arts and Letters Club The Prodigal Son playbill, with two cast changes indicated from the printed program, in the Arts and Letters Club Scrapbook, Vol. 3, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto.

 

198

I am grateful to Scott James, Archivist of the Arts and Letters Club, for making a copy of this Monthly Letter available to me.

 

199

I have not been able to locate the audio tapes of this recording.

 

200

Irene Jacobi to Voaden, April 15, 1954 .

 

201

Ross Parmenter, “The World of Music: Contemporaries—Colleges Present Festivals and Symposiums Concentrating on American Composers,” New York Times, March 30, 1952 , p. X7.

 

202

Fritz Jacobi to Anton Wagner, August 16, 2004.

 

203

After Irene Jacobi’s death in 1984, Fritz Jacobi donated his father’s Juilliard lecture notes, correspondence, speeches and scrapbooks to the Library of Congress. I am grateful to Susan Clermont, Senior Music Specialist, Music Division, Library of Congress, for this information.

 

204

Irene Jacobi to “Dear Bob,” January 6, 1969. Letter in The Fleisher Collection, Free Library of Philadelphia. For a survey of Starer’s works, see Anthony Tommasini, “Robert Starer, 77, Composer of Ballets and Operas,” New York Times, April 24, 2001. p. B10. In his autobiography, Continuo: A Life in Music, the Austrian-born Starer states that when he came to the United States in 1947, “While there were several young composition teachers at Juilliard, I chose to work with an older man, Frederick Jacobi, a teacher of taste and knowledge who realized that I was quite formed in many ways, but needed advice and help in refining and sharpening certain aspects of my craft.” See Robert Starer. Continuo: A Life in Music. New York: Random House, 1978, pp. 73-74.

 

205

“Changes Agreed on at meeting Feb. 1 and 2, ’69 (Irene Jacobi, Emanuel Balaban, Herman Voaden)” in the Herman Voaden Papers, York University Archives. Box 1982-019/034, File (03).

 

206

Letter in The Fleisher Collection, Free Library of Philadelphia.

 

207

See Donal Henahan, “Jacobi Works Given in a Tribute to Him,” New York Times, October 17, 1972. p. 34.

 

208

Henry Cowell, ed. American Composers on American Music: A Symposium. Pao Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1933. Reprinted, New York: Frederick Ungar, 1962. p. 8. Despite their strong differences in their musical aesthetic for composing, Jacobi was a subscriber to Cowell’s quarterly magazine New Music, first issued in October 1927, “the only magazine in the world devoted to the publication of modern music.” See Rita Mead. Henry Cowell’s New Music 1925-1936: The Society, the Music Editions, and the Recordings. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981. pp. 62, 66.

 

209

Paul Rosenfeld, An Hour With American Music. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1929. Reprinted, Westport, Connecticut: Hyperion Press, 1979. p. 99.

 

210

Lederman. p. 176.

 

211

Mary DuPree. Musical Americans: A Biographical Dictionary 1918-1926. Berkeley: Fallen Leaf Press, 1997. p. 91.

 

212

Paul Rosenfeld, “Musical Chronicle,” The Dial, June 1922. p. 656. Reprinted as “All-American Night” in his Musical Chronicle (1917-1923). New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1923. Reprinted, New York: Benjamin Blom, 1972. pp. 258, 259, 260.

 

213

Copland. 1933. p. 89. Reprinted in his The New Music 1900-1960. New York: W.W. Norton, 1968. p. 104.

 

214

Howard Hanson, “Of Critics, Publishers and Patrons,” Modern Music, Vol. 4, No. 2, January-February 1927. p. 29.

 

215

Oja. 1988. p. 233.

 

216

Oja. 2000. p. 156.

 

217

See “Two Composers Contest Winners: American Music Society Picks Works of Shepherd and Jacobi for Publication,” New York Times, June 28, 1935. p. 24.

 

218

A.C., The American Record Guide, Vol. 31, No. 5, January 1965.

 

219

Florestan Croche, “Jacobi’s Tinge of Mysticism,” Baltimore Sun, May 3, 1964. p. D23.

 

220

Reis. 1955. pp. 50-51.

 

221

Elie Siegmeister, “Three Points of View,” Musical Quarterly 65 (1979). p. 282. Cited in Tawa. 1984.

 

222

Tawa. 1984. p. 9.

 

223

Ibid. pp. 38, 39.

 

224

Lehman Engel. 1936. p. 51.

 

225

Oscar Thompson, “The Contemporary Musical Scene” in Who Is Who In Music: A Complete Presentation of the Musical Scene. 1941 Edition. Chicago: Lee Stern Press, 1940. p. 24.

 

226

Lehman Engel. 1936. p. 53. See also “‘Masters of Our Day,’ New York Times, September 29, 1935 . p. X8.

227

“Jacobi Recital Given: Composers’ Forum-Laboratory Presents His Music,” New York Times, February 6, 1936 . p. 22. See also “Composers’ Forum,” and “Composers’ Forum Record,” New York Times, February 23, 1936 . p. X8 and June 28, 1936 . p. X6.

 

228

“American Music Heard,” New York Times, February 27, 1936 . p. 22.

 

229

“New Jacobi Concerto Feature of Festival: Symphonic Works of 5 Composers Also on Program of the Federal Project,” New York Times, May 8, 1936 . p. 20. See also “Season’s Concerts of WPA Total 1,839: Orchestral and Band Units of Federal Music Project Play to 1,094,642 Persons,” New York Times, June 19, 1936 . p. 17.

 

230

John Tasker Howard. Our Contemporary Composers. Third Edition. 1954. p. 169.

 

231

Frederick Jacobi, “WPA Shows With Music,” Modern Music, Vol. 14, No. 1, November-December 1936. pp. 43, 44. Barbara L. Tischler, in her An American Music: The Search for an American Musical Identity. New York : Oxford University Press, 1986. p. 143 writes, “Thomson’s score for Androcles and the Lion was a Federal Theatre commission, as were stage compositions by Herbert Haufrecht, Frederick Jacobi, and Earl Robinson.” I have not been able to determine what Jacobi’s stage composition may have been. The Jacobi Chronology of Compositions lists the Overture to The Taming of the Shrew, 19--.

 

232

Rudy Shackelford, “The Yaddo Festivals of American Music, 1932-1952,” Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 17, No. 1, Autumn-Winter 1978. pp. 106, 125.

 

233

Fritz Jacobi to Anton Wagner, September 21, 2004.

 

234

Frederick Jacobi, “ America’s Popular Music,” Modern Music, Vol. 18, No. 2, January-February 1941. pp. 78, 80.

 

235

Frederick Jacobi. Music Hall: Overture for Orchestra. New York: Leeds Music, 1949. p. 2.

 

236

Marjorie Mackay-Shapiro, “Jacobi, Frederick,” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians ed. S. Sadie and J. Tyrell. London: Macmillan, 2001. She adds that “this drama and Jacobi’s other works, both instrumental and vocal, reveal a modernism informed by intense American, Judaic and Romantic traditions.”

 

237

“A New Opera,” New York Times, March 23, 1947. p. X9.

 

238

“Musicians Support Loyalists in Spain,” New York Times, May 13, 1938. p. 28. Other signatories were the critic Olin Downes and composers Marion Bauer, Marc Blitzstein, Aaron Copland, Morton Gould, Wallingford Riegger and Bernard Wagenaar.

 

239

“Music Educators Fight for A.S.C.A.P: See ‘Incalculable Blow’ to Our Development if Radio Ban Becomes Effective Jan.1,” New York Times, December 16, 1940, p. 25. In addition to Jacobi, the other educators were Howard Hanson, Randall Thompson, Philip James, Douglas Moore, Albert Stoessel, Daniel Gregory Mason, Deems Taylor, Abram Chasins, and A. Walter Kramer. In the 1940s, Jacobi lectured widely besides his teaching at the Juilliard School of Music, the Julius Hartt Musical Foundation, the University of California at Berkeley, Smith College and Mills College. In addition to his presentations at the YWHA-YMHA (see footnote 131), he presented five public lecture recitals (one on Schumann) at the Juilliard Graduate School in February and March of 1943; had a composition presented at Mount Holyoke College in August 1943; gave five weekly public lecture recitals on the songs of Schubert, Bloch, Milhaud and Gershwin at Juilliard in November and December 1943; and presented five more public lectures at Juilliard beginning in January 1945.

 

240

Hope Stoddard, “Frederick Jacobi on the Composer’s Craft,” p. 21.

 

241

A personal friend of the Voadens, Bertram Brooker (1888-1955) was a writer, cultural nationalist, and one of Canada’s early modernist painters. See Anton Wagner, “‘God Crucified Upside Down’: The Search for Dramatic Form and Meaning” in Bertram Brooker and Emergent Modernism. Jennifer Oille Sinclair, ed. Provincial Essays, Vol. 7, 1989. pp. 38-51.

 

242

Herman Voaden, “The Symphonic Theatre.” Program note for Hill-Land. Reprinted as “Toward a New Theatre,” Toronto Globe, December 8, 1934 . p. 19.

 

NB: To link to Herman Voaden's The Prodigal Son libretto, click here.

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