 Hoolij Auditorium in the historic Jefferson building here at the Library of Congress. My name is Loris John Schissel and I'm a music specialist in the Music Division. Today I'm going to talk a little bit about Victor Herbert. This is in conjunction with an exhibit I worked on with Martha Hopkins from the Interpretive Programs Department and that's over in the foyer of the Music Division. So if you have a chance to get over there and actually see some of these treasures that we have in our Victor Herbert collection and in other collections within the Music Division that have a lot of Victor Herbert type materials or materials from his, from his epic. But I thought rather than, and this is going to be a very informal sort of chatty talk about a composer that I've known not personally but known through his music for about 20 or 25 years now and as I think as you listen to some of this music you're going to re-familiarize yourself with music that you've known for a long time particularly as we're getting ready to go into the Christmas season it just wouldn't be Christmas without March of the Toys or Toyland. So I thought I'd start it out right by playing some music and this is from a new CD set of Herbert's Irish Romantic Operetta they called Eileen the original title was Hearts of Aaron and this was probably the operetta that was closest to Herbert's heart being a patriotic Irish born composer and this recording isn't quite out yet it probably I think this week it's going to be released but all of the materials that were used in the reconstruction of this were found and used from our Victor Herbert collection over in the music division so I'm going to do two cuts of this and like all good things an overture is meant to give you a little taste of everything that's supposed to follow so we'll hear the overture to Eileen and then the second cut will be probably my second favorite Herbert song ever written and this is called Thine Alone so here are two cuts from the brand new Eileen my favorite song too but but uh and and a lot of these you'll find throughout a lot of the Herbert operettas Walt songs are always the sort of great tune that's waiting for that and and I think a lot of that comes and I'll talk about that when I talk about Hurley's Herbert's earlier career but he was first cellist in the Edward Strauss orchestra when he was a young man in Europe Edward being the third youngest son of the Johann Strauss family that way so he learned his waltzes from the master that way I thought I'd start with two two brief quotes that sort of are the things that I like to promote to people when I'm trying to convey an impression of what what it was like to know Victor Herbert and I think so much what I'm gonna kind of talk about today is is not so much Herbert's music because I think trying to describe music is trying to tell a person who's colorblind about the color blue but I think that you can you can get a sense of of Herbert as the person a sort of larger than life person who really made an impact on people across the board and if you go up to Central Park in the vast expanse of that area there's only one statue of a composer in all of Central Park and that's Victor Herbert and when that statue was unveiled um Mayor Jimmy Walker was the mayor at the time and he had a wonderful quote about Herbert he said Herbert would have been a great man even without his music and to that I always couple a different quote made much earlier in Pittsburgh when Herbert was the conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony when Andrew Carnegie was heard to extol my idea of heaven is to be able to sit and listen to all the music of Victor Herbert I want where upon Mr Herbert was heard to rejoin in the background Andrew Carnegie can go to hell and he really was this sort of larger than life Irishman he was born Victor August Herbert in 1859 in Dublin and his grandfather was Samuel Lover and for a lot of people if you're not Irish you probably don't know who's Samuel I see someone nodding their head back you know do you know who Samuel Lover is we do we he was a an author he wrote a very popular novel in the 19th century called handy Andy he wrote a lot of songs he was a painter and the Herbert household there were were young Victor grew up was sort of a hotbed of Irish artistic types that would come and go poets and painters and sculptors and composers and even into Herbert's later life he was still recording some of his grandfather's music as cello solos the low-backed car being being probably the most popular at the time but he he got his start early on his father died when he was fairly young and his mother remarried a German and moved to Germany and he was a physician and it was noted early on that Herbert had musical talent so he was sent to school where his first instrument was the piccolo which he was not particularly good at so they said well maybe you could try the cello and from there on the cello became Herbert's first sort of musical voice and it was sort of his entree into the musical world that way he studied with a well known cellist at the time Bernard Kosman and early on started getting a lot of engagements as a cello soloist he played in the in various orchestras he played for a Russian prince in his private household orchestras first cellist and as I said he became first cellist in the Edward Strauss orchestra and he was about this time that he began composing music for the cello and did so throughout his whole career you know the cello was always very much a part of Herbert even we have some recordings of him playing for the Victor phonograph recording later on where he wasn't quite as well-practiced if you listen to him on our on our national jukebox site but the cello always hung down at Lou Chow's down in New York and so when his buddy Fritz Chrysler and other string players would show up for a late night of heavy eating and heavy drinking the cello would come off the wall and then they play chamber music for the rest of the night and that cello now is at the Manhattan School of Music and so the the scholarship cellist that comes in gets to play on the Herbert cello but I thought I'd give an example and this too comes off of one of these these new CDs of recordings of music out of our Victor Herbert collection that we're revisiting and coming out with I think at this point we have almost eight hours of Herbert music but this is a piece arranged by Herbert that he scored for piano and cello that he used a lot on his recitals and here again it's Herbert the great Irish patriot paying tribute to his homeland and it's a little Irish folk song called the riddle the little red lark so Herbert is is establishing himself as sort of the go-to guy as a as a premier cellist in Europe at the time and he starts connecting with a lot of people here's someone who's very gregarious and and very talented at the same time and he comes into contact with a lot of very famous musicians at this point his teacher introduces him to Brahms who asks that he be the principal cellist at a concert in celebration of Franz Liszt's 76th birthday party so he's doing doing things like that later on when he comes to America he and Max Bendix do the American premiere of the Brahms double concerto here in in the United States at that point so it's so we see Herbert sort of leaning towards the classical concert venue that way it's about this time as a young man in Stuttgart that he starts seeing a young woman who's a sort of the premier Wagner and soprano of the era and her name is Teresa Forrester and they fall in love and get married and as my colleague Ray White likes to say Herbert as she was engaged to become the the premier Wagnerian soprano with the Metropolitan Opera house here in New York under Walter Damrosch it was Herbert her husband who sort of came over here to the United States not so much on her coattails but maybe her petticoats that way but it worked out that that Teresa Forrester got the job as as the premier Wagner soprano at the Met and Herbert got the job as a principal cellist in the in the Met orchestra in the pit there and it was not without some embarrassment to Herbert that his wife was making an awful lot of money at the time and he was making 40 bucks a week as a pit orchestra musician at the time so he's over here in the United States his wife is having a successful career at the Metropolitan Opera and Herbert the ever gregarious is already starting to make contacts with different musicians and you have to realize that New York for a musician in the 1890s was a much different place than it was now we didn't really have what we would call a musician's union per se and a lot of the musical organizations were were organized by your ethnic background so you would have you know the the irish musicians would gather at a certain place and that's where you would go to if you wanted irish musicians well Herbert wasn't to be found amongst those players he was over with the german players and so when Anton Seidel and Theodore Thomas two very important american conductors at that time are looking for good cello players it's mr. Herbert who's at the front of the line shaking their hand and saying i'm your man hire me so he's he's already establishing himself within the first year of coming here to the united states as as again the principal guy to go to when you want a a virtuoso cello player he begins composing larger scale works he was doing work up in massachusetts at various festivals and one of his first works was a large cantata called the captive for full orchestra and large chorus and and soloist it's a terrible piece of music and uh but it was his start and and if anything uh he certainly got his name in the papers at the time particularly at these festivals that he was he was the the one that all the girls were hanging around with and everyone seemed to like to be in victor herbert's company as we go through we see as herbert increases you know his visibility and his accessibility and his money making his wife's career really diminishes at this point um i think probably because she wanted it that way uh certainly a different time in a different era but but she started singing less as time went on and she became very satisfied being mr. mrs victor herbert at that point and started having children two that lived uh alla Bartlett who will hear more about later and her son cliford who was sort of a ne'er-do-well and more about his ne'er-do-wellness later it's at this point probably in the 1890s that herbert has established himself in new york as a premier cellist he's beginning to do more conducting and his orchestral works are being performed by the theodore thomas orchestra and by the antonsidal orchestra which in a sense are sort of sort of early versions of the new york philharmonic at the time and since he's an exceptionally good conductor sidle and thomas have him conduct his own concert works on orchestral programs and this is also a period that that uh people don't quite think about when they think about this era when they think about live music in a sense is you you realize that this is a time before air conditioning and so people in the summer wanted to get the heck out of new york city where it was cool and so places like brighton beach and manhattan beach uh built were built large hotels out there that had full large scale orchestras that played throughout the whole summer bands played the susa band the gilmore band these various orchestras that was sort of the summer place to go so if you were well off enough financially you would move your family out to one of these hotels for the rest of the summer out at the beach and take the waters and listen to a lot of nice music that way and that's where herbert established himself more and more as a soloist as a composer and as a conductor and it was during that time in 1892 that as i mentioned patrick gilmore who this is pre john philips susa was really probably america's most well known and successful entertainer he did it with a concert band uh but patrick gilmore died in 1892 and susa sort of fell into the reign of being the premier bandmaster at the time now the musicians of the gilmore band didn't want to see the whole thing go to pot so they kept the band organized they had an interim conductor who didn't work out well and someone got the idea of hiring victor herbert to be the bandmaster of the gilmore 22nd regiment new york national guard band and uh his friends warned him don't do this victor you're lowering yourself going out on the road with a concert band they said what on earth would possess you to become a bandmaster and very frankly he told him it's the money and uh he became very successful as a bandmaster and remained a bandmaster all the way through the 1890s almost into 1900 about at that point and i always think of this imaginary meeting of john philips susa and victor herbert susa the 1890s was was also not only america's most well known bandmaster and composer but he was also at that time probably our most popular theater composer and by 1897 susa had three operas running on broadway simultaneously the bride elect the charlatan and al capitan and herbert was already establishing himself as a composer of operettas and i always imagine this this late night meeting of herbert and susa over several drinks where they were herbert finally says you know susa why don't you let me take care of the operetta stuff and i'll give up the bandmaster stuff and you can take care of that and then i'll take care of my end but he he began in 1894 composing operetta's prince ananias being his first produced opera at that time and continued to write for the american musical stage right up to his death he was working on the ziegfeld follies of 1924 when he dropped dead of a heart attack in 1924 in in that time composed some of the most popular most beloved operas or light operas that we've ever known and here here's where i'll jump off a little bit because it's a question i always get from people they say what what's the difference what is an operetta why is that different than an opera what what is it about a show with music that that makes it an operetta and it can be a little different for each show that you look at and they certainly come up with all sorts of goofy names for it i lean they call it a romantic operetta uh some of them are called comic operas but but primarily an operetta which is sort of the precursor to what we call our america musical is is a play a light play generally an entertainment an entertainment uh that's written and to which you add songs through it and so there were certain uh authors of of light opera that that run through this whole period probably from about the 18 late 1880s up to about world war one and that's really where the operetta starts to die out but that's also where our young composers like Irving Berlin and George Gershwin and Sigmund Romberg and various composers like that start to take what Herbert and Sousa and these other fellows had sort of established and really gave it an an american feel and took it up a couple of notch matches both musically and story wise i mean the biggest criticism of of Herbert's and most operettas of that period are the books are pretty flimsy and that's not that's not to say that they don't work i think the one of the the the the big mistakes you can make when when looking at these shows is to say well the music is okay but this book stinks uh the music and the books tend to run simultaneously in the sense that uh that it's it's not meant for highbrow audiences this was this was stuff that you could take your family to this was this was entertainment and so composers like Herbert even with his his great classical background had this tremendous ability to write these tunes that were very memorable and i doubt that anyone here of a certain age didn't or doesn't have a grandmother or a great grandmother or something that didn't have lots of victor herbert's music in their piano bench uh this was music that was was very much a part of everyone's everyday life and it still is like i said at the introduction it can't be christmas without the march of the toys or or toiland or some of those iconic tunes um at this point you know talking about herbert the operetta composer and we've we've heard a little bit of that i wanted to play just a snippet of a piece of music that he wrote and it's like with so much of his music his his great skill was as an orchestrator uh but he wrote this fabulous music that's very much in the style of france list and richard strouse and that's really kind of his musical pedigree that way this is a piece it was probably published posthumously and it was it was originally written for full orchestra but this is a piano version of it and it's a tune called devotion and it kind of i think it gives you a sense of herbert's compositional skill outside of the theater that way so this is devotion flavor of a almost this kind of scott joplin type piece certainly a lot of his music and he wrote large-scale concert works probably his most well-known work today if you go to a concert hall is still his second piano or second cello concerto um which several cellists have championed throughout the years lin harrell being one and yo yo ma plays it an awful lot and it's it's really as far as his concert music is one of his real standard pieces that way um but he also wrote an irish rhapsody which when it was written at the time was one of his most popular concert works that way um and a large-scale suite called columbus sort of in celebration of america's somewhat tardy celebration of of uh christopher columbus discovering america although we celebrated in 1893 then in chicago at the great chicago world's fair um and these pieces sometimes get performed i think when you listen to a lot of his his more large-scale concert works you really do get the sense that herbert was probably more comfortable in smaller forms um whether that be sort of two steps waltz's songs um that way and that that's really where he excelled that way and so much of that music like that devotion piece was something that your grandmother would play at home on her piano and that's where herbert became a millionaire was through the sale of piano sheet music of his songs that way and he lived in an era where he went from the 18 the 1890s where the only live the only music you had was the music that you made all the way up through post world war one time where you're getting into the phonograph recording at that point and almost we're we're getting into the point where we're going to have radio and different methods of transmitting music that way but herbert at least initially did it the old-fashioned way he did it in person and he did that not only as a cello soloist but but by the late 1890s he established his own orchestra which he called the victor herbert orchestra and that orchestra stayed in existence right up until the time of his death it was made up of a lot of musicians from the pittsburgh symphony because at the turn of the century herbert was selected to be the first music director of the brand new pittsburgh symphony orchestra which andrew carnagy had allowed to do with starting that orchestra and it was not a pleasant time for herbert because the folks up at pittsburgh had a very different idea about what sort of orchestra they wanted up there and herbert like all things herbert had his own ideas and didn't really give a damn what the people at the pittsburgh symphony wanted as far as their orchestra was concerned yeah but the musicians loved him mainly because he got them an awful lot of work being a popular composer at the time it was very easy for him to say hire the pittsburgh symphony under the name victor herbert orchestra and will come play for the rest of the summer at your resort or will do recordings for the victor recording company or that and here here's where you get the sense and ed waters our former chief here at the music division wrote sort of the definitive biography of herbert but interviewed several players who were in the pittsburgh symphony at the time and herbert in rehearsal could be just as explosive as he could when referring to mr carnagy going to hell but if the rehearsal was going terribly victor herbert could be just simply unbearable in rehearsal but if the concert went really well victor herbert would take the entire orchestra out for dinner and drinks and as as one of the herbert's arrangers said when he heard that quote he said that shows the generosity of victor herbert because musicians are a thirsty lot but he spent almost five years there at the pittsburgh symphony did a lot to establish the orchestra within the community and he really was one of those terrific irish glad handers that everyone in the city knew him and everyone came to hear the orchestra and there's a wonderful photograph within the victor her two photographs within the victor herbert collection over in our music division and one of the things that he did was he liked to bring in famous guest artist and since he had this sort of musical pedigree as a musical genius of the cellist from his european days when he asked richard strauss if he'd come over and guest conduct the pittsburgh symphony strauss i'm sure jumped on the idea mainly because he knew herbert would have a well prepared orchestra forum and knowing herbert from his european days all the way up through that time knew that he'd be fed well and given lots to drink at that point too and so there's a wonderful photograph of strauss as the guest conductor of the pittsburgh symphony and in the one photograph it's herbert at the front of the orchestra excuse me let me start the story differently they decided to have a photograph taken of richard strauss in front of the orchestra and just before the camera was snapped one of the musicians of the orchestra said wait we have to wait joe just stepped out to the bathroom well joe being one of the double bass players in the back row there and herbert said never mind so herbert went back and you see this wonderful picture of the pittsburgh symphony with richard strauss on the podium and victor herbert back holding a double bass in the bass section there well not to be outdone strauss said well let's switch places so we have another picture of herbert at the front of the the pittsburgh symphony and richard strauss the great german composer sitting in the back row there playing the double bass in the pittsburgh symphony throughout this time talking again from the 1890s up we're in the early part of the 20th century now herbert has established himself as the go-to guy for the musical if you want a successful musical you're a producer you go to herbert you find a book that herbert likes or an author that that works well with herbert and there's there's a wonderful photograph of him in the collection given his great capacity for work oftentimes he would work on three operas at the same time and so in his studio in new york there at his house he'd have a sofa over here that had his french themed operetta that he was working on and over here on a different chair would be another operetta maybe on an american theme that he would be working on and then his his operetta with a german theme on a sofa or chair over here and the way he worked it out was he had various liquors from from the countries that he was working on so he had his french wine for his french thing and and that's that's how he would run through that way and he could his musical assistants were amazed that he could work on one show for a while until he got sort of tired of it take a drink and go over and work on a completely different show different book at the same time we're running simultaneously that way um by the turn of the century he was to to begin work on probably his his most famous opera which is babes and toyland and most of us know it unfortunately probably by the laura and hardy version that you see uh lots of times at christmas and there's there's very little to do with with the original babes and toyland that they came up with with laura and hardy although a lot of the music is the same in there but this this operetta operetta was composed at an interesting time and sort of fits in tandem with with other works that were being written at the time probably one that you're all familiar with in its later trappings called the wizard of os it actually was by frank bomb written at the turn of the century and was made into a musical and it took america by storm everyone went wizard of os crazy and so herbert thought let's let's do something with this idea the sort of fantastic world of of wizards and and tornadoes and such and they came he and glenn mcdonough came up with a with a libretto and story for this book and unfortunately most of us know it in its sort of watered down version but it's really a very scary opera it starts out with kids that are washed into this sort of scary fantasy land that has giant spiders that come after them and and all of that um but it's one we hope uh that will be part of the sort of renaissance of rerecording some of these musicals but it it really is a very much a grand opera in an operetta setting that way and most of us know the great tunes from that the march of the toys is from their toyland probably a generation ago people would know other songs from it like i can't do the sum and some of those songs that were very much a part of of christmas and very much a part of our american musical vernacular um and and throughout that time herbert is is working with different authors i think probably and herbert would probably agree that probably his most successful collaborations were the ones he did with harry or henry blossom was his name um this certainly they're the best books of all of them although some of his later shows were done oddly enough with a woman author and lyricist rita young was her name who unfortunately died young of cancer not long after herbert passed away but she may have been one of those those people that was was a real champion or a real instigator of the american musical had she lived probably post showboat or something um but uh but if you if you go through these shows you see what what ties them all together the the two really great gifts that herbert had was this amazing ability for memorable melody and also his amazing ability as an orchestrator i think we're always it's unfortunate that on recitals when you do actually get to hear a herbert song from an operetta it's often with piano accompaniment not that there's anything wrong with that but you really don't get the full treatment when you don't hear the orchestra and just like when you heard on the on the vine alone that we played he was a master orchestrator really of the richard strauss school the interesting thing about eileen is that he decided to dispense if you listen closely to the recording he decided to dispense with the bassoon completely in the pit orchestra which is unusual and it's going to be your bass instrument for your woodwind family there and substitute the bass clarinet um are you a bass clarinet player oh all right yeah well you hear it throughout there and it really changes it really warms up the warms up the sound that way in my i do a lot of orchestral concerts i conduct a lot of orchestral concerts and probably over the past 150 or 200 concerts i always sneak in a couple of herbert's works either as encores or something that sometimes they don't fit the program i just last year i did an all gershwin program with the cleveland orchestra and snuck in a herbert piece but just told the audience that it was okay because herbert and gershwin were good friends uh but the the the fun thing that the gratifying thing about being able to perform his music is that at intermission you have people come up and say i just love that victor herbert number you did pan americana or or some piece like that and at the same time after the first rehearsal or the intermission at the first rehearsal you have musicians of the cleveland orchestra coming up and saying oh what a joy it is to play that music of victor herbert because it's so skillfully arranged and particularly a cello player in an orchestra if you want to make friends with a cello section you just put a pass out one victor herbert piece and they just go like that so um see i've gotten us up through the the early parts of the of the 20th century with herbert as the operetta composer another hat that herbert had and it's sort of the three themes that i use in the exhibit over in in the music division is he sort of had many musical worlds and so you have herbert as the cellist you know the concert classical train musician as a cellist that way you have him as sort of the broadway the quintessential broadway composer of his time the other thing was that he was an activist certainly anyone who's born in dublin ireland and the grandson of samuel lover is going to be very passionate about all things irish so it's not surprising that he didn't have much to do with the english and that his operettas were not produced very much if at all in england at that time because he quite frankly didn't like the english um but he spent a good deal of his career promoting irish music and the loyal sons of hibernius chorus up in new york city was started by herbert and he was the first president of that group and arranged a lot of irish music for men's chorus up there he also arranged a lot of music to be played on his orchestral concerts that was ir of irish origin that way the um i played that the little red lark piece the cello solo that also has it's it's it's also orchestrated for string orchestra that way um so he was very much involved in that and certainly if you would ask him towards the end of his life what piece he was probably most proud of it would be eileen that was really the culmination of of all of his work um it it i can't talk about his music for theater without at least mentioning natoma which is his grand opera uh it was commissioned by the metropolitan opera and uh it's one of those unfortunate pieces it wasn't the first american opera performed at the met it was in fact the second um and herbert probably wasn't smart in his selection of a book for that opera and uh he selected joseph redding the the story is about an indian young indian girl and conquistadors and california you know sort of smacking of the girl of the golden west by mr mr puccini um but the book wasn't particularly strong and uh and you get get the sense in herbert's writings and his discussions with other musicians that he was really really deeply hurt by the poor reception of this show uh probably as much so that that he didn't go back and look at the piece again to see if it couldn't be fixed because the real problem which they saw right away at the first performance was in the in the between the second and third act that the the story really fell apart at that point and the music didn't support a bad story at that point and it's unfortunate because just weeks before he died in 1924 he finally was over the pain of of the poor success of this show that he said you know as i look at that second and third act it does sort of stink i'm going to go back and work on that uh but he didn't live unfortunately to do that and maybe with some fixing and with some tweaking it may have become a better piece that way he also composed a a shorter opera called madeline um which was not received well at the time but i think it's a piece that deserves a second look and here you have herbert as the great tune writer you know you can leave a herbert opera at a whistling songs that you remember right away after first hearing and he really set about when he wrote madeline to write a show that wasn't particularly tuneful he was really writing music that supported the the action and it's almost an impressionistic type opera in that sense very much out of the kind of debussy school that way and it's one that dr billington when he was when i was showing him the the exhibit we have over in the foyer there um him him being a a devotee and enthusiast for all things opera said well i should go to the met on one of these things should i should i talk to them about natoma and i said no under no circumstances should you talk to the met about natoma but if you want to show them an opera show the madeline which actually i hope will be part of this whole sort of resurgence of re re looking at herbert's music that way um but we have we have now herbert with the unbelievable success of babes in toyland but we also start to see by the end of the 1912 13 sort of period there american musical tastes are starting to shift and we have things like jazz coming in and we can't use our modern idea of jazz as a sort of improvisational type thing where you have a big band or something jazz at that time for a lot of players was to take a classical piece and syncopated or they'd say jazz and a lot of composers herbert being one of them was not real hip on the idea of jazz but as american tastes sort of change you have young composers like drome kern coming in and Irving berlin that are really putting an american accent on their music and it's at this point we start to see herbert herbert's popularity and need to be on the on the american musical stage they're sort of starting to wane um but herbert always willing to sort of reinvent himself starts co-composing a lot of shows with these composers he wrote shows with irving berlin worked with gerome kern on these shows and by the end of the the 19 teens after the first world war he's almost writing exclusively for the zigfal follies and his his work on those shows oftentimes were the dance sequences and so so here's where herbert is allowed to continue being the sort of classically trained composer but writing uh writing dance numbers for these for the zigfal follies one of them my favorite and i'd love to hear it but the music apparently is lost for it but if this was the big era of the the ballet roost and uh diagaloff and all that so as a spoof in one of the zigfal follies he wrote a ballet loose and uh and oddly enough on his desk after he died he was working on the zigfal follies of 1924 and he was writing a number for the tiller girls the tiller girls were british dancers that came over in the early 1920s and they had sort of instigated or were promoting a new sort of dance routine that they had invented and that was to take america by storm they were line dancer that did high kicks so we owe the rockettes to the tiller sisters but he was working on a number for the tiller sisters when he died um speaking about herbert as the activists have talked about his irish passions the other thing that herbert is probably most known for by a lot of people uh is he was a founder of askap the american society of composers authors and publishers and last this past year when we had the gershwin prize here uh one of my duties was to sort of take care of dion warwick and her and i are both smokers so we would and you can't tell the police this but we would spend time out here in the courtyard smoking between rehearsals and chatting and she said well what are you working on at this point i said well i'm doing a little exhibit of victor herbert over in our music division foyer over there and she said oh victor herbert you know he invented askap and i thought all is not lost if dion warwick knows who who victor herbert is um but but the whole askap concept came out of out of herbert's great passion for taking care of other people and they were at a restaurant called stanley's and you have to understand you know in the 1900s restaurants had their own live orchestras that's that was a chief form of entertainment you had in a restaurant and they were playing music the one piece that they were playing was a march by john philips who's a called from main to oregon and herbert was there with some of his colleagues and they're listening and and talking and and eating and it really dawned on herbert at that point you know here is this restaurant and they're playing my friend mr susan's music and they draw people into this restaurant to eat their food by playing our music and yet we don't get anything from this this is the same period where the phonograph companies are fighting the composers saying well we're not going to pay you anything to record your music we're doing you a great service we're promoting your music you should be thankful that we do do this for you well as as uh mr herbert said kind words but are no parsnips and so he he at that point with with some of his colleagues there particularly irving berlin and john philips who's a decide they're gonna they're gonna sue stanley's restaurant and so they do and the court case ends up all all the way up to the supreme court here in washington and it was decided that yes composers should be paid for the use of their music in establishments like restaurants and in theaters and nickle and slot places and phonograph company recordings of their music and it was oliver wendell holmes who who wrote the judgment on this and it's one of the more unusual judgments at holmes ever wrote but he said we certainly have to agree that composers should be paid for their music in restaurants if we didn't have music in restaurants what would we do when we're with boring company so with that said you know they won the case but sort of the fruits of victory were ashes in their mouth what are you how are you going to go about collecting money and giving it to composers whose music is performed in restaurants or you know used in that way and so herbert and his friends decided to organize asscap which was a way for restaurants for recording companies and such to license music by their composers so you as a restaurant would license through ascap saying we're going to use ascap composers music in our restaurant and the restaurant would pay a little fee maybe $50 a month or something like that that would go to ascap ascap would keep track of their composers what pieces were played at these restaurants and at the end of the month or at the end of six months you get a little check in the mail from ascap for its use each time that the situation changed since there was no precedent for these things a the photo phonograph company um player piano roles all those each of those cases had to be basically ascap would have to sue to get a ruling on these things so so Irving Berlin and john flip susa and victor herbert spent a lot of time here in washington talking to congress about revising the copyright laws so the protect composers would be protected but each time a lawsuit would be have to be filed and then that would go to the supreme court and each time they they've cited on the side of the composers the creative artists that way and that's an organization now that it's its members rank into the literally hundreds of thousands of composers but also the people who write lyrics for songs um and publishers of songs and it's something uh we're excited about because the ascap archive is here in the library of congress and ascap celebrates his 100th birthday in 2014 14 will be the 100th anniversary so so stay tuned for a lot of exhibits and a lot of concerts and such celebrating that way um herbert one of his last things that he was involved with before his death in 1924 was a very important concert by the paul whiteman orchestra at a olean hall in new york and uh it was where mr whiteman was going to present music jazz music for the for the uh classical music loving elite of new york and on that program were various pieces of a new piece by a relatively unknown composer a rhapsody in fact for piano and for orchestra a rhapsody in blue composed by george gershwin but the papers were all extolling that this concert was was going to be a big deal because victor herbert himself had written a piece a suite of serenades for this concert and uh we don't quite know the whole background on it or at least uh how this came about but even george's brother ira gershwin said that in the rehearsals of the rhapsody in blue victor herbert had several suggestions to george on how he might tighten this up or that might add a few bars here to to make the piece a little better that way and uh when that concert took place there in a olean hall in 1924 i always like to say that american music was never the same after that and it was the rhapsody in blue that literally changed the way we think about american music and this is right at the zenith right at the twilight of herbert's career and given his huge generosity and uh help that he gave so many young composers i think that having the papers so enthusiastic for for this young gershwin's rhapsody in blue probably the most happy person in the world about that concert was probably victor herbert because here here was the next generation of composer coming up and nothing probably made him happier knowing that uh this was a young friend of his a young composer um by 1924 he's working on his egg fell follies he goes to the lambs club of which he was a an active member lambs club being not unlike the sort of friars club or a theatrical club there in new york has a nice lunch doesn't feel real well and decides i better go see the doctor because he was going to go over and meet with mr zegfeld about about the follies which were in rehearsal at the time and uh he went to his doctor took a cab over there went in talked to the nurse and she said she said the doctor will be with you in a couple minutes why didn't you go outside and get some fresh air or something and so as herbert stepped out on the landing of the doctor's office there and literally dropped dead of a heart attack in his early sixties and uh the reason why i say there's not a macabre fascination with herbert's death but it was reported in the papers there throughout new york and and as all the papers in the united states talked about the great victor herbert passing away all of the papers said that victor herbert was coming into the doctor's office when he had his heart attack and it was ed waters our former chief here at the music division who talked to the secretary who had talked to herbert that day and the doctor when when they came out and saw a very dead mr herbert out in front of the doctor's office there swore his secretary to secrecy saying it'll ruin my career if it hits the papers that victor herbert died leaving my office so they changed the story that way um but uh but at that point you know all of new york was taken by shock that this great great man and a great many new yorkers knew victor herbert as he walked everywhere and people knew him and knew his music and liked him and and anyone who was with victor herbert for any amount of time out out of doors would realize that before he got from point a to point b any number of actors would come up to him and talk to him and say well i'm a little down on my luck and herbert would be the first one to put a twenty dollar bill in their hand um and take care of him that way and i'm always reminded um he had written some years earlier a piece for the new york police band i wrote a march for them called the finest and it was the new york police band that that played at the head of the cortege for herbert's funeral and ed waters interviewed the bandmaster at the time and he said he said i came this close to playing the march of the toys as we went down fifth avenue he said but i knew if i did that i would have broken every heart in new york and to close i'd like to just read this is you may want to get the if you're really interested in herbert just in the past year we've had all this wonderful herbert so and we like all things in the music and we're always happy when when our stuff is used and when people are enthusiastic about it so we have what eight or nine hours of victor herbert's music now recorded brand new recordings of that this is a brand new biography of victor herbert by neil gould and it's terrific you can still find ed waters biography of herbert on ebay and amazon and some of those places um and for all for ed waters book which is probably the most complete biography ever written about a composer um it it can be a little on the dry side but it's the place to go to where you need the facts on herbert and the thing i like about neil gould's biography is well i'll read it it was part of my original text for my exhibit over in the in the music division as neil gould puts forth in the preface of his recently published biography herbert was more than a great stage composer he was an ideal subject for a biographer by turns litigious bellicose short-tempered loving faithful collegial patriotic indulgent generous frustrated in short rick de herbert was a great character and uh and you know i mentioned that quote that mayor walker had said about herbert at the unveiling of his statue i'm just going to read this little paragraph the end of neil's biography which which really sums up my sentiments about this great man and then mayor walker surpassed himself and paid herbert the greatest tribute of all quote herbert would have been a great man even without his music unquote true enough in every aspect of his life his work his generosity his caring for the welfare and enhancement of others his patriotism his concerns for his family he was great as only great souls can be the music was a bonus through which he lives on rich very soulful sweet funny and dare we say in an age when scatter scatology is accepted and this next is reviled sentimental in 1927 ellipel the core the shroud fell and herbert's bronzed face looked upon these transient scenes for the first time and he's talking about the rededication of the monument in 2003 the few gathered in 2003 slowly dispersed and then through the hanging mist we heard a melody a street musician a black man whose solo saxophone playing has become an icon of the world of central park began to play herbert's indian summer and we turned back amazed caught by the haunting phrases and we looked up at herbert's idealized face through the mists of that day and of time he was smiling that smile that melody our endearing gifts to all of us born of his rare artistry and even rare humanity thank you very much and i should be mindful that if you want to hear more of this fantastic music we're going to celebrate the music of victor herbert right there in our historic coolage auditorium on december third 2012 at eight o'clock um the cellist you heard on the recording jerry grossman is going to be performing uh and we have an array i'm not allowed am i allowed to say that uh rebecca lucar is coming oh good i can legally say that rebecca lucar and of in a whole to beddy tell them the names of the singers i'm bad with singers oh i'm sorry choralist yooker uh wonderful young metso at the met who also happens to be married to jerry grossman who will be the cellist uh and who is cellist in the med orchestra um will be their um ron reigns uh who has done a lot of american musical theater and um operetta and who's best known to everybody probably except me as having been the bad guy on days of our lives yeah i don't know how many decades um uh bill hicks um who's the pianist or was he the the devotion pianist okay um is um going to be at the piano and it's bill and these singers and who did the complete songs of victor herbert on the new world recording set of cds and bill and jerry grossman um did a new world recording just before that of victor herbert cello concerto and they hope to continue doing both orchestral and piano cello pieces for a new world so get your tickets for that i think those are going to go fast when everyone hears who's going to be performing there so if you have any questions too i'm more than glad to answer oh that's herbert right there and that's a that's a great picture oh yeah yeah it was sort of his last big hit was eileen that was the one we we played a little little clip yeah yeah and musical tastes were changing at the time i mean irving berlin was writing you know so and if there's no other questions i'll send you out with my my other favorite song from eileen which is the big finale for the chorus and i love the title only victor herbert could come up with this it's a great day for the irish tonight