Music at Yaddo

A showplace of Saratoga Springs, N. Y. is Yaddo, 500-acre estate of the late Banker Spencer Trask and his poet wife, Katrina. For twelve years Yaddo's three-story stone, Victorian-Gothic mansion has been a free, luxurious refuge for writers, painters, musicians, critics, all carefully selected, and carefully mother-superiored by a high-minded, hieratic lady named, Elizabeth Ames. Yaddo has also been, on & off during the past eight years, a place where serious U. S. composers could gather to play, hear, discuss their own music. As such it is valuable, for many composers, especially young ones, get little chance to hear how their work sounds. Last week Yaddo held its sixth long-haired jam session, officially called a Music Period.

From 150 scores submitted, a committee headed by Composer Richard Donovan chose works by 36 composers for performance in the Yaddo music room. Best-known name on the programs was Oklahoma-born Roy Harris (TIME, April 8), who provided a fairly doughy set of preludes and fugues for string quartet. Quincy Porter's eight-minute quintet for flute and strings, based on A-Tisket, A-Tasket, was the brightest bit. Ross Lee Finney gave out Bletheris, a monody for voice and orchestra based upon a section of The Hamlet of A. MacLeish, which was spoiled because Mr. Finney sang the vocal himself. And so on. None of the music would have set Saratoga Springs on fire, but it probably would have pleased Katrina Trask, who used to say: "At Yaddo they will find the Sacred Fire, and light their torches at its flame."

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