Philip Hale's Boston Symphony Programme Notes

This book, assembling the musical writings of Philip Hale, draws principally upon the programme books for which he wrote descriptive notes for thirty-two years of concerts by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Since the notes were addressed to audiences approaching the music with, presumably, open minds, the writer judiciously withheld his individual opinion. This opinion he freely expressed in his newspaper reviews of the same concerts, extending over an even longer period, and it has seemed advisable, by combining the two, to bring together the critic and the historian. The editor has found, in the newspaper files, pertinent critical paragraphs which are here used to introduce the programme notes about each particular work. The transition from criticism to descriptive note is indicated by a typographical ornament.

In going through the scrapbooks in the Allen A. Brown Room of the Boston Public Library, wherein the newspaper criticisms of Philip Hale’s forty active years are carefully preserved, the editor came across this observation by him, in the Boston Herald of March 13, 1912: “In 1945 some student in the Brown Room of the Public Library will doubtless be amused by opinions expressed by us all, of works first heard in 1912. Some of us will not then be disturbed by his laughter or by quotations ornamented with exclamation marks of contempt or wonder.”

There is cause for wonder, to a student at a time ten years short of the year Mr. Hale mentioned; wonder, however, at his quick perception of essential values upon first hearing what time has since proved a masterpiece, or considerably less than a masterpiece, as the case may be. Few indeed are the professional judges of music who are not glad to leave undisturbed in the dust of the newspaper files some skeletons of their past—appalling errors of denunciation or proclamation. Again and again, when his fellow critics of another day wrote laughably of a then new tone poem of Richard Strauss or pastel of Claude Debussy, Philip Hale delivered a sane and still quotable judgment.

No attempt has been made to modify by omissions Mr. Hale’s frank expressions of personal preferences among the composers. This writer never spoke as a major prophet, but as one who might be discussing a favorite subject over a demi-tasse. Anyone is privileged to disagree, and those insisting upon their eternal verities are referred to any one of a hundred books where the musical monuments are enshrined in ringing platitudes of praise. When this critic wrote, with the very opposite of solemnity, about Bach, or Brahms, or Wagner, his ridicule was always directed against a certain snobbish element in his public—a genus which sat at the feet of these composers. “There is, it is true, a gospel of Johannes Brahms,” he wrote as long ago as 1896, “but Brahms, to use an old New England phrase, is often a painful preacher of the word.—Brahms is a safe play in Boston. Let me not be unthankful; let me be duly appreciative of my educational opportunities in this town.”

It is a joyful privilege to be the agent of bringing the treasure of Philip Hale’s musical knowledge and commentary within the permanence and general accessibility of two covers. It was at first hoped that the author could assist in the compilation, but, failing in health, he was unable to give more than his whole-hearted assent to the project. His death, November 30, 1934, came before the book was far under way.

The material drawn upon is of vast proportions. From the autumn of 1901 through the spring of 1933, Philip Hale contributed programme notes for everything played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in its regular concerts—upward of a thousand works. As music critic, Mr. Hale commented upon these and many more. He wrote for the Boston Home Journal from 1889 to 1891; the Boston Journal (like the other publication, long since extinct), from 1891 to 1903; and from then until his retirement in 1933 for the Boston Herald. There were also the editorials on various musical topics which he contributed anonymously to the New Music Review for many years. Acknowledgment is due for the quotations made from all of these publications; in particular the Boston Symphony Orchestra Concert Bulletins, which have provided the bulk of this book, and the Boston Herald, from which by far the larger number of critical paragraphs are drawn. To these should be added the innumerable writers to whom Mr. Hale himself has referred in the course of his programme notes. The helpful advice of Mrs. Philip Hale in the choice of the frontispiece is gratefully acknowledged.

The problem of selecting from the vast accumulation of Philip Hale’s writings became somewhat less formidable when a large number of works now forgotten, and others still current but of lesser importance, were eliminated. One hundred and twenty-five works have been chosen, with the aim of including those most often encountered upon symphony programmes. The works of recent composers were necessarily limited to those which had been played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and therefore described in its programmes, up to April, 1933. They are still further limited by the exigencies of space. The quoted reviews have been kept clear, for the sake of continuity, of dates and sources; documentation in the programme notes has been minimized. These notes are given in the form in which they most recently appeared. Their partial curtailment is justified by the readiness of their author to adjust them to the space of the programme in hand. To have used each note in its fullest form would have reduced the number of works which the book could contain. As regards the newspaper quotations, they are largely of recent years, and in any case represent the writer’s reconsidered opinion. A disproportion in the space given to a certain composer or certain work may be set down to the fact that in a few instances Mr. Hale did not happen at any time to write one of his inimitable essays in miniature which could be detached from the discussion of the occasion and the performance.