Arturo Toscanini

Today it is impossible to say that anyone is really the quintessential orchestral conductor, and there is no single Mr. Big of the Baton. This diluting of fame has occured for virtually every field, but up through the mid-twentieth century every profession had one giant that stood above all others. We had Babe Ruth, Joe Louis, and even the King (although some people may prefer this King). And up to the mid-1950's, the conductor was Arturo Toscanini.

Arturo had one of the longest careers for any musician - or anyone else for that matter. He started out a professional cellist in 1885 only four years after Wyatt Earp's famous fracas at the OK Corral. His final performance was in 1954 - the year Hank Aaron hit his first major league home run.

Unlike today, being a performing musician was a good way to earn a living since in the pre-electronic era if you wanted music it was live music or no music at all. Arturo entered the Parma conservatory at age nine and after graduating got a job as cellist in one of the many Italian opera companies. He also doubled as assistant choirmaster and in 1886 his company went on tour to South America. There in Rio de Janiero he made his debut on the podium when he was pressed into service when a hostile audience booed the regular conductor off stage. Although after the performance - where the fledgling conductor received rave reviews - Arturo returned to his cellist's desk, word got out about the young (19 years old) conducting marvel and he soon found himself waving the baton more often than stroking the strings.

Before Arturo, fame of conductors and - musicians as well - was quite fleeting. Try to name a famous conductor or musician of the 19th century who wasn't also a famous composer. We remember Gustav Mahler as the composer of his 5th Symphony, but not that he was the conductor of both the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic. Even Niccolò Paganini and Fritz Kreisler - whom we remember as violinists - wrote compositions that are still performed today. But how many people (aside from true violin affciandos) know of Pablo de Sarasate, Maud Powell, or Eugène Ysaÿe?

It was actually two technologies that made it possible for the fame of non-composing musicians - whether performer or conductor - to survive more than a generation or so. One was the advent of electronic recordings that finally produced a step up from the old acoustic recordings and at least began approaching a facsimile to a live performance. The second was the recording tape that 1) allowed multiple takes to be spliced into a "perfect" performance, 2) left us with additional footage to let us into the laboratory so to speak and hear how the final performance was crafted, and 3) made mass distribution far more facile than with direct recording.

There are recordings of Arturo rehearsing. Sometimes he hummed and even sang, which as anyone who has sat in an orchestra or choir can attest, is not too uncommon for a maestro. You will even see films of Leonard Bernstein singing along. Often the conductor isn't aware of what they are doing and one time a judge of a choir competition suggested that the choirmaster quit singing since he was louder than the choir. Arturo was once singing along during a rehearsal and suddenly stopped the orchestra and shouted, "Who is singing?" Or so the story goes.

Toscanini's temper was legendary. He was known to snap the batons in two at a missed cue, and if the batons didn't snap, he would pick up the score and hurl it at the orchestra. Some of the scores were expensive and rare, and the librarian supposedly began giving Arturo flimsy and easily broken batons. As was the case with many people with short fuses like Captain William Bligh of Mutiny on the Bounty fame, once the maestro blew off his steam, he would calm down and continue.

But in venting his frustration Arturo often went beyond the boundaries of good taste. One time in Italy he began berating a violinist for "scraping" and not using enough bow. The violinist did not take the rebuke kindly and responded with his own invective. A face to face shouting match ended up with Arturo lashing out with his baton which struck the violinist's bow which rebounded and hit the man in the face. The blow inflicted a slight - but as is the case with any facial wound - potentially serious cut.

The violinist filed charges. In his defense, Toscanini brought in a psychologist who in a marvelous piece of early psychobabble said that after making a pathological study of Arturo, he found that the conductor was often in an artistic "sublime frenzy" where his ordinary personality forsook him and so the maestro could not be held responsible for his actions. Today though such an act would have cost Arturo his job, a fine, and (possibly) some time in the slammer.

One of Arturo's friends was George Marek, an executive at RCA. George said the worst case he ever saw of the Toscanini Temper was during a rehearsal where the cellos "smeared" a passage. Arturo hit the roof, screamed, yelled, ripped his shirt, and clawed at his chest, actually cutting himself. Aruturo had to leave the podium, and the orchestra was informed the rest of the rehearsal was canceled.

What did the musicians think of playing under the maestro's baton? It depended on the musicians. Some remembered the maestro could get more out of his orchestra than any other conductor, and when Arturo was mild, not wild, they were disappointed. After two rehearsals with the Palestine Symphony in 1936, Arturo had nothing but praise for their playing. Then during the third rehearsal a musical miscue brought on a return of the Toscanini Explosion, and the orchestra members were happy he was treating them like everyone else.

But the top flight professionals, though, weren't always so forgiving. One writer and friend of Arturo later interviewed a number of the members of the NBC Symphony, the last orchestra Arturo conducted. As the recordings attest, the NBC Symphony was staffed with the best musicians available, and the writer wanted to know what it meant to serve under the baton of the century's most renown conductor. To his surprise it didn't mean that much. They were decidedly unimpressed with Arturo's temper tantrums and didn't see how it helped them play better.

Part of the problem, one musician pointed, out was a language barrier. Although technically Arturo spoke fluent English, he never lost his thick Italian accent and by mixing in Italian expostulations together with a rapid fire delivery, he produced a unique dialect where it was often hard to grasp exactly what he was saying. There was also the problem that, as with many authoritarians, Arturo sometimes could not understand the fact that you have to explain what you mean and that sheer mental projection won't get the message across.

During one rehearsal Arturo abruptly stopped the playing. "Again!" he shouted. They repeated the passage and once more Arturo stopped them. "Again!" he called and had them play the passage over. He kept this up over and over until finally he stopped them once more. Fixing them with his steely eye he asked, "Is there not an accent?" Why not just say he wanted more of an accent at the first, one musician wondered. Why waste everyone's time?

One thing that Arturo had that can not be denied was an incredible personal courage of a type virtually everyone thinks they have but very few people really possess. In the early day of the rise of Mussolini Arturo held hope - as did most Italians - that the new regime would be good for Italy but when he realized what Il Duce was all about he became an instant and rabid opponent of Fascism in general and Benito in particular. Although being anti-Fascist today is de rigeur even for those who spout its many contemporary equivalents (its amazing how many dictatorships call themselves democracies or republics), in Arturo's time you could open almost any American magazine and read letters to the editor saying Americans should follow Italy's example and put in a strong leader like Benito. But Arturo wasn't fooled for a minute. He flatly refused to play Giovinezza, the Fascist anthem at concerts, making a direct political statement that was literally taking his life into his hands. Once before a concert a group of Black Shirts stopped him at the theater door and asked if he was playing the song. When Arturo defiantly said he was not, one of the thugs lashed out and the group beat Arturo so badly he had to be taken back to his hotel. It was only Arturo's world wide fame that kept him alive, and when he left Italy in 1930 to take lead the New York Philharmonic, Benito breathed a sigh of relief.

But it was the NBC Symphony that solidifed Arturo into the American collective conscience. Under fire from politicians and other Arbiters of All that is Right and Good, David Sarnoff figured if they put on a high class act of classical music, then that would show everyone that television and radio was not turning Americans into a bunch of fat couch potatoes. So he struck a deal with the elderly but still vigorous maestro which gave him the podium, a top notch orchestra, and $50,000 a year or close to half a million in today's currency. Oh, yes. NBC paid the income tax.

What immediately strikes the listeners - or rather the readers of the personnel list or viewers of the tapes of the concerts - is the orchestra is all guys. That's kind of hard to explain since even back in the olden days of 1937, there were lots of top notch women musicians. There are many speculations put forward - for instance, an all male orchestra would eliminate any off stage hanky-panky (well, it would, wouldn't it?) - but no one really knows why.

Arturo's longevity - natural and professional - made him a bridge between the last of the classic titans and the modern era. He personally knew Verdi and played cello in the world premiere of Otello. Arturo was also acquainted with Puccini and debuted La bohème - now in the standard repertoire - and La fanciulla del West aka The Girl of the Golden West - one of the most unintentionally funny operas ever penned (picture Enrico Caruso singing an aria while he's about to be lynched by a bunch of 49'ers). At the time, though, Fanciulla was considered the best thing Puccini ever wrote.

George Orwell once pointed out that much artistic criticism is nothing more than a mishmash or words that have no real meaning ("The maestro's usual living quality was replaced in this performance by a particular deadness"). But for Arturo one specific (and recurring) complaint was that he conducting his songs too fast. One story is that Maurice Ravel refused to applaud after Toscanini conducted Bolero because the tempo was faster than the stipulated moderato (a story, by the way, that Maurice denied). For what it's worth and after reviewing a number of the maestro's performances, an official CooperToons opinion is that 1) the tempos seem fine and 2) the music sounds pretty good.

References

Toscanini, Harvey Sachs, Harper Collins (1996). Probably the best and most objective biography.

Toscanini: A Biography, George Marek, Atheneum (1975). George knew and admired Arturo personally and so this book is written quite favorably. Also although the book has many first-hand accounts, the editing could have been much better and there is literally page after page of digressions. George, by the way, wrote a biography of Beethoven, Beethoven: Biography of a Genius that in an official CooperToons opinion is one of the best.

Arturo Toscanini: Contemporary Recollections of the Maestro, B. H. Haggin, Da Capo (1989). Interviews with a number of people who knew Arturo.

Toscanini: An Intimate Protrait, Samuel Chotzinoff, Knopf (1956). A well known book in its day, written while Arturo was still alive but no longer active. Unfortunately, this is not the definitive book about the maestro who is painted as an obnoxious ego maniac who would berate women at dinner parties. The problem, though, is that not all incidents are told factually, such as the time when Arturo was conducting and evidently began to feel faint. What really happened is that when Arturo faltered, the concert master stepped in and kept the orchestra playing until Arturo recovered. However, the account told here is that the orchestra came to a stop and Arturo stood there surrounded by silence.

The Maestro Myth: Great Conductors in Pursuit of Power, Norman Lebrecht, Carol Publishing Corporation (1992). Not a sympathetic picture of the maestro and a lot of personal opinion and interpretration. Yes, Arturo was a harsh taskmaster but was he really the ogre pictured here? Mebbe.

Return to Arturo Toscanini Caricature

Return to CooperToons Caricatures

Return to CooperToons Homepage