ROCHESTER 1936

ROCHESTER 1936-1937

On our arrival, one of our chief concerns was a place to live. The Eastman School office provided lists of available housing which helped us find a two room efficiency apartment on Alexander Street, about a good half mile from the school. Another of our concerns was to sell our car, the Plymouth, in order to help pay our expenses. The scholarship for Chris and the assistantship for me were fine, but we also had to generate living expenses. We did sell the car, received the money for it and promised delivery the next day. However, before that a mishap occurred. Somehow a short developed in a battery cable, producing all kinds of sparks and smoke. For a moment we thought the car was doomed. Fortunately there wasn't much charge in the battery which disarmed and tragic possibilities. A recharge of the battery was all that was needed and the coupe was delivered to the new owner without further problems. Now we could devote ourselves to the problems of getting acquainted with our new environment at Eastman. The school was developing quite a sizeable class of graduate students, especially at the masters level. For our scholarship and assistantship, we were required to play in the Eastman School Orchestra, directed by Paul White and occasionally by Dr. Hanson himself. How nostalgically do I remember those long Saturday afternoon rehearsals with Hanson conducting the Sibelius 5th Symphony. For the remainder of the assistantship I had to guide a number of first year theory students into mysteries of keyboard harmony. Getting used to Eastman was not easy. The marble halls were so cold and uninviting, bringing on a yearning for the warm, "gemutlich" atmosphere of the conservatory we had recently left in Cincinnati. To make matters worse, the composition majors did not teach the first few months. Bernard Roger's wife had just died in childbirth and he was not available for the better part of the first semester. Therefore, we composition majors were assigned a substitute, a Mr. Royce, whose claim to fame was that his father was an outstanding philosophy professor at Harvard University. Royce's philosophy was to compose as many "starts" as possible with the result that I found myself full of starts but with no meaningful development of a composition under my belt. I felt pretty low, realizing I had an April deadline to submit a thesis orchestral score. The nadir of my feelings came at the Christmas recess when we took the train to Toledo to Visit my parents. I just couldn't see a happy result for me. But, happy or not, I had to return to the "graduate grind" after January l, l937. Then matters began to pick up and I started developing a good "start" this time with Mr. Rogers who had returned to his teaching duties. We were real workaholics and would see each other at breakfast time, would go our separate ways during the day and would get together for dinner at a reasonable priced restaurant. There would be a goodly number of concerts to attend. In January, after one of such concerts, our friends, Bob and Vicki Bloom, suggested we all go out for some beer. Bob, a Curtis student when Chris was there, was now the oboe teacher at Eastman and the first oboist in the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. To their invitation we said "no," explaining that we had too much studying to do. Consequently we started for our apartment, first crossing the street on East Avenue. There was a gas station on the corner with a ramp at the curb which was slippery because of the cold and a recent snow. As we crossed the street and started up the ramp I suddenly slipped and quickly came down with all my weight on my right ankle and fell prone on the street, groaning with intense pain. Shades of the time when I was in the third grade and a horse and light wagon ran over me on another icy street. As luck would have it a car, populated by good Samaritans, stopped, picked me up and drive to the nearest hospital which was on Alexander Street, just a few blocks from our apartment. Here I would like to express a very belated thank you to those wonderful folks who rescued me from that inhospitable pavement. We didn't get their names because we were too engrossed in our immediate problem. My poor wife was beside herself in anxiety. Fortunately there was an orthopedic specialist on duty at the hospital and he, with an assistant, proceeded to assess the damage which turned out to be a Potts fracture of the ankle where the foot is at right angles to the leg, just the opposite of a sprain. The doctor looked at it and said to his colleague, "Isn't that a beauty?" To which I replied that I was not able to appreciate it or words to that effect. They administered an anesthetic and some time later I awoke in a ward filled with men patients, the atmosphere of which was so depressing I immediately thought of nothing but how to get out of there. I hardly slept a wink all night and the next day insisted on being discharged from the hospital and taken to our apartment. Had I realized how hard this was to be on my dear wife, I would have born the discomfort of the ward. But we did get permission to leave and, with a wheelchair loaned by the hospital, Chris wheeled me the few blocks to our apartment. Somehow we managed to weather the next few months. Needless to say, I became somewhat of a celebrity. At least people were aware of my plight. Bob Bloom said, "See if you had gone with us to have a beer, this accident would not have occurred," to which statement, there was no answer. I attended rehearsals and concerts on crutches and had to sit with my foot propped up. Early in the recovery, Chris had to wheel me the six blocks to school. Each Time we had to cross a street, the curbs posed a real problem, necessitating my dismounting from the chair and hobbling across the street. We could hardly believe the number of cross streets we encountered. I gradually eased into walking via crutches and became very adept at this kind of locomotion, thus relieving Chris of any further nursemaid duty. My studies continued apace. Both of us studied with Gustav Tinlot, a delightful Frenchman, well liked by his colleagues. With my composition emphasis I'm afraid I didn't do the in-depth work I should have. My thesis composition for orchestra,"Symphonic Prelude" was finished just in time to be played by the Rochester Civic orchestra with Howard Hanson conducting. It came off rather nicely and was chosen to be included on a national broadcast at the end of the composition symposium of all the pieces of the composition candidates. The Spring months also brought job opportunities to us masters candidates. Casey Lutton of the Lutton Placement agency of Chicago came to Eastman to acquaint us with the national job picture. I signed up with him and awaited the results. Within a few weeks I was apprised of several openings, one at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa and the other at Florida State College for Women at Tallahassee, Florida. In the meantime I became a candidate for another position in spite of myself. One of our friends confided in us that she was going to interview for a position at a Junior Women's College in Illinois and we all wished her well. A short time later, the President of that college was in town interviewing various candidates. After he had finished hearing those interested in the position, he asked the Eastman placement office to see more at which point my name was suggested and henceforth I was summoned to the office to meet this hard-to-please person. They found me in a practice room, crutches and all. I hobbled to the office and had a few words with said president. Now he wanted to meet my wife who was also found in a practice room and brought to the office. She had on a turtleneck sweater and presented a most casual appearance. The meeting was most casual also and we parted, thinking little of the possibilities. A number of weeks later we received a letter from the president, offering me the violin teaching position at $1,800 a year, believe it or not. Obviously we could not accept for a number of reasons, the most important being the low salary and then too, it was too early in this game of job hunting. We preferred to wait and see how Des Moines and Tallahassee turned out. Both places were interested in me and the Tallahassee school actually offered me the position sight unseen, An Associated Professorship at $2,400 per year. This shows how low salaries were in those days in higher education. We hemmed and hawed for awhile and finally decided on Florida. "After all" said our friend, Bob Bloom, "All those Florida bathing beauties would be pretty hard to resist." Letter on Ella Oppermna, Dean of the School of Music, confided in me that the deciding factor in hiring me was that my undergraduate degree was from the Cincinnati Conservatory, her alma mater, and not my masters degree from the Eastman School. In June the Master's degree was made official at the commencement ceremony. A number of our Eastman friends also earned degrees, Victor Allesandro who later made a name for himself as conductor of the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra, Frederick Fennell who became Mr. Wind Ensemble nationally, Ulysses Kay, a brilliant black composer who became recognized as one of this country's fine composers and last, one of our best friends, Gardner Read, composer par excellence who for many ears was Professor of Composition at Boston University.