one afternoon in april, theodore thomas, the conductor of the chicago symphony orchestra, had turned out his desk light and was about to leave his office in the auditorium building, when harsanyi appeared in the doorway. the conductor welcomed him with a hearty hand-grip and threw off the overcoat he had just put on. he pushed harsanyi into a chair and sat down at his burdened desk, pointing to the piles of papers and railway folders upon it.
“another tour, clear to the coast. this traveling is the part of my work that grinds me, andor. you know what it means: bad food, dirt, noise, exhaustion for the men and for me. i’m not so young as i once was. it’s time i quit the highway. this is the last tour, i swear!”
“then i’m sorry for the ‘highway.’ i remember when i first heard you in pittsburg, long ago. it was a life-line you threw me. it’s about one of the people along your highway that i’ve come to see you. whom do you consider the best teacher for voice in chicago?”
mr. thomas frowned and pulled his heavy mustache. “let me see; i suppose on the whole madison bowers is the best. he’s intelligent, and he had good training. i don’t like him.”
harsanyi nodded. “i thought there was no one else. i don’t like him, either, so i hesitated. but i suppose he must do, for the present.”
“have you found anything promising? one of your own students?”
“yes, sir. a young swedish girl from somewhere in colorado. she is very talented, and she seems to me to have a remarkable voice.”
“high voice?”
“i think it will be; though her low voice has a beautiful quality, very individual. she has had no instruction in voice at all, and i shrink from handing her over to anybody; her own instinct about it has been so good. it is one of those voices that manages itself easily, without thinning as it goes up; good breathing and perfect relaxation. but she must have a teacher, of course. there is a break in the middle voice, so that the voice does not all work together; an unevenness.”
thomas looked up. “so? curious; that cleft often happens with the swedes. some of their best singers have had it. it always reminds me of the space you so often see between their front teeth. is she strong physically?”
harsanyi’s eye flashed. he lifted his hand before him and clenched it. “like a horse, like a tree! every time i give her a lesson, i lose a pound. she goes after what she wants.”
“intelligent, you say? musically intelligent?”
“yes; but no cultivation whatever. she came to me like a fine young savage, a book with nothing written in it. that is why i feel the responsibility of directing her.” harsanyi paused and crushed his soft gray hat over his knee. “she would interest you, mr. thomas,” he added slowly. “she has a quality—very individual.”
“yes; the scandinavians are apt to have that, too. she can’t go to germany, i suppose?”
“not now, at any rate. she is poor.”
thomas frowned again “i don’t think bowers a really first-rate man. he’s too petty to be really first-rate; in his nature, i mean. but i dare say he’s the best you can do, if you can’t give her time enough yourself.”
harsanyi waved his hand. “oh, the time is nothing—she may have all she wants. but i cannot teach her to sing.”
“might not come amiss if you made a musician of her, however,” said mr. thomas dryly.
“i have done my best. but i can only play with a voice, and this is not a voice to be played with. i think she will be a musician, whatever happens. she is not quick, but she is solid, real; not like these others. my wife says that with that girl one swallow does not make a summer.”
mr. thomas laughed. “tell mrs. harsanyi that her remark conveys something to me. don’t let yourself get too much interested. voices are so often disappointing; especially women’s voices. so much chance about it, so many factors.”
“perhaps that is why they interest one. all the intelligence and talent in the world can’t make a singer. the voice is a wild thing. it can’t be bred in captivity. it is a sport, like the silver fox. it happens.”
mr. thomas smiled into harsanyi’s gleaming eye. “why haven’t you brought her to sing for me?”
“i’ve been tempted to, but i knew you were driven to death, with this tour confronting you.”
“oh, i can always find time to listen to a girl who has a voice, if she means business. i’m sorry i’m leaving so soon. i could advise you better if i had heard her. i can sometimes give a singer suggestions. i’ve worked so much with them.”
“you’re the only conductor i know who is not snobbish about singers.” harsanyi spoke warmly.
“dear me, why should i be? they’ve learned from me, and i’ve learned from them.” as they rose, thomas took the younger man affectionately by the arm. “tell me about that wife of yours. is she well, and as lovely as ever? and such fine children! come to see me oftener, when i get back. i miss it when you don’t.”
the two men left the auditorium building together. harsanyi walked home. even a short talk with thomas always stimulated him. as he walked he was recalling an evening they once spent together in cincinnati.
harsanyi was the soloist at one of thomas’s concerts there, and after the performance the conductor had taken him off to a rathskeller where there was excellent german cooking, and where the proprietor saw to it that thomas had the best wines procurable. thomas had been working with the great chorus of the festival association and was speaking of it with enthusiasm when harsanyi asked him how it was that he was able to feel such an interest in choral directing and in voices generally. thomas seldom spoke of his youth or his early struggles, but that night he turned back the pages and told harsanyi a long story.
he said he had spent the summer of his fifteenth year wandering about alone in the south, giving violin concerts in little towns. he traveled on horseback. when he came into a town, he went about all day tacking up posters announcing his concert in the evening. before the concert, he stood at the door taking in the admission money until his audience had arrived, and then he went on the platform and played. it was a lazy, hand-to-mouth existence, and thomas said he must have got to like that easy way of living and the relaxing southern atmosphere. at any rate, when he got back to new york in the fall, he was rather torpid; perhaps he had been growing too fast. from this adolescent drowsiness the lad was awakened by two voices, by two women who sang in new york in 1851,—jenny lind and henrietta sontag. they were the first great artists he had ever heard, and he never forgot his debt to them.
as he said, “it was not voice and execution alone. there was a greatness about them. they were great women, great artists. they opened a new world to me.” night after night he went to hear them, striving to reproduce the quality of their tone upon his violin. from that time his idea about strings was completely changed, and on his violin he tried always for the singing, vibrating tone, instead of the loud and somewhat harsh tone then prevalent among even the best german violinists. in later years he often advised violinists to study singing, and singers to study violin. he told harsanyi that he got his first conception of tone quality from jenny lind.
“but, of course,” he added, “the great thing i got from lind and sontag was the indefinite, not the definite, thing. for an impressionable boy, their inspiration was incalculable. they gave me my first feeling for the italian style—but i could never say how much they gave me. at that age, such influences are actually creative. i always think of my artistic consciousness as beginning then.”
all his life thomas did his best to repay what he felt he owed to the singer’s art. no man could get such singing from choruses, and no man worked harder to raise the standard of singing in schools and churches and choral societies.
