Museum Concerts

People began to arrive in the late afternoon. Long before 8 p. m. they had packed the main hall of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art to overflowing, were huddling on stairs, pressing into small rooms and remote galleries. Thousands sat in the shadow of suits of mail, under priceless canvases, close to marble sculptures. Thousands could not see the musicians' stand, yet all 15,000, one of the biggest indoor concert audiences ever assembled, applauded deafeningly when a slim, silver-haired old man walked on to begin conducting his twentieth series of eight free Saturday performances by a 65-piece symphony orchestra.

David Mannes first came into the Metropolitan Museum to conduct promenade music for receptions. When, in 1918, Director Edward Robinson asked him to give a concert for soldiers & sailors, the Mannes Concerts began. Only 781 people went to hear him. He then got his musicians from the New York Symphony, now gets them from the Philharmonic and other orchestras, pays them regular union rates.

At one of the 1918 concerts John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his daughter Abby sat on camp chairs and listened. Afterwards Mr. Rockefeller offered to help pay the expenses, paid for two concerts in 1919, for the four January concerts every year since. Rich Manhattanites like Clarence Mackay, Mr. and Mrs. George Blumenthal, Frederic A. Juilliard, the late Charles W. Gould paid for four concerts every March.

The Mannes Concerts have become a New York institution, attracted as many as 17,000 people to a single performance. Conductor Mannes has never ceased to boast that he "landed in the most beautiful building in the world." The son of a Polish furniture dealer, he was born 70 years ago in New York City. He was too poor to go to school more than four years, or to afford regular music lessons. From 13 onward, he fiddled at parties, skating rinks, theatres, a waxworks museum, learned English when he played for nothing at the old Union Square Theatre. He was still a boy when he met Violinist John Douglas, the talented son of a Negro slave who had studied at the Paris Conservatory but could not get an orchestra position because of his race. Douglas was eking out a living with his guitar, gave young Mannes free violin lessons.

At 26, Mannes was playing a solo between the acts at the Herman's Theatre. Conductor Walter Damrosch called him to his box, signed him up as a first violin with the New York Symphony Orchestra. Damrosch's sister Clara was singing with the Oratorio Society when Mannes met her. In 1898 Mannes became concertmaster of the Symphony, married Clara Damrosch the same year.

In 1900 David Mannes became director of the New York Music School Settlement, oldest of its kind in the U. S. The school at first had only a half-dozen teachers, about 50 students. It now employs 90 teachers, has an enrollment of over 1,000. In 1912 Mannes founded a settlement in Harlem out of gratitude to Negro Teacher Douglas, often gave recitals for Negroes at Hampton Institute, still serves as a trustee for colored Fisk University in Tennessee.

The throngs that pressed into the Museum last week came not only to listen to music but to honor David Mannes. A citizens' committee headed by Mayor LaGuardia presented the old man with an elaborate scroll. On it Novelist John Erskine had written: In the twentieth year of your concerts

Dear David Mannes

We offer the thanks of music lovers

Your neighbors and friends

For the golden hours you and your men

provide. With understanding affection you have

served

Both the composers and your hearers. Yon pay us the tribute of assuming That we would listen only to what is

noble. We are grateful for the revelation of

your sell.

Now, for you, health and happiness! For you and us, more song!

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