Harp Column Blogs: Carl SwansonArchive

Mildred, being the intelligent and shrewd business woman that she was,  clearly understood her place on the concert circuit.  It was to entertain.  Her performances were as much shows  as concerts.  She traveled with many different harps on her tours, from tiny lap harps to perhaps an old single action wreck (that she attributed to Marie Antoinette!), to her gold Lyon  & Healy.  Her last driver told me that she once counted 26 harps on stage. They would be spread around  and she would talk to the audience about them, spinning fanciful tales, more fiction than fact, about the origin and history of each instrument.  She would also strum some little melody on each of the instruments.  It was the sum total of  the various elements; the exotic instruments, the entertaining  storytelling, the virtuoso playing, presented by a woman unlike anyone they had ever seen before, with patrician bearing, blond hair piled on her head and wearing an elaborate and elegant gown, that left her show, and her, imbedded in their memory. When I first started playing gigs many years ago, someone would invariably  come up to me and say "You know, when I was a child in Omaha, I remember going to this harp concert..."  It was always Mildred.  She played everywhere, and it was an experience that those who heard her remembered for the rest of their lives.

Underneath Mildred's astute business sense, her at times egregious obsession with money, her shrewd instincts for survival and self promotion, was a profound love of the harp.  I don't think she could really conceive of herself without the harp.  And when she was not using the harp to make money, she was a serious, dedicated, and very well trained harpist.

According to one source, it was Salzedo who encouraged the young Mildred to study with Renie(Mildred never studied with Salzedo). For years, most likely starting just after the end of World War I and continuing for the next 35 years, and broken only by the years during World War II, Mildred  went to France for about 3 or 4 months every summer to study with the woman many regard as the greatest harpist in the history of the instrument, Henriette Renie.  The reason, and the goal each summer, was to choose and learn music that would be used for the coming concert season.  I had long been under the (false) impression that Mildred's concerts were for the most part filled with music of a bygone era.  Cute salon pieces that have long since fallen out of favor.  I made a call to Mildred's former secretary( and a very good friend of mine) to check my facts, and was astonished to find out how wrong I was.  Mildred not only played serious repertoire, but she varied it considerably from season to season.  It would have been much easier to do what Zabaleta did,  and play the same program year in and year out.  But she didn't do that, and I can only guess that it was because she really wanted to keep herself interested in what she was doing.

She and Renie would choose pieces that offered a varied and interesting program, and then Mildred would work all summer, frequently having 2 or even 3 coaching sessions per week with Renie. Here are two of the programs Mildred played.  There were many others as well.  These are exact copies of the programs.

Part I

Pastorale Variations                                             Samuel-Rousseau
Bourree                                                    J.S. Bach
Chanson de Guillot Martin                                    Albert Perilhou

Part II

Short talk on the history of the harp illustrated on ancient instruments.

Part III

March of the Men of Harlech,                                arr. By John Thomas
an old Welsh Air
Les Follets                                                    Hasselmens
La  Source                                                    Zabel

INTERMISSION

Part IV

Four Dances composed for Mildred Dilling               David Watkins
Renaissance Dance
Bolero                                                  from Dance Suite, Aug. 1978
Hungarian Flute Dance
Fire Dance                                            Composed in 1961

Part V

Torre Bermeja                                            Isaac Albeniz(1860-1909)
Claire de Lune                                            Debussy
Legende                                                Henriette Renie(1875-1956)
After the poem 'Les Elfes' by Leconte de Lisle
************************************************
Another program:

Part I

Gavotte from the Violin Suite in E major                J.S. Bach
Siciliana XVI century                                      Respighi
Tic-toc-choc                                      Couperin
Capriccio                                              Scarlatti
Impromptu                                      Faure

Part II

La Jeune et la Veille                                Godefroid
Minute Waltz                                        Chopin
Etude in D flat(Un Sospiro)                    Liszt-Renie
The Fountain                                    Zabel

INTERMISSION

Part III

Torre Bermeja                                        Albeniz
Rain in the Garden(Jardin Mouille)                    De la Presle
Claire de Lune                                        Debussy
Prominade Matinale                                    Renie

Part IV

Gray Donkeys on the Road to El-Azib            Tournier
The Forest Pool( Vers la Source)                        Tournier
Legende                                            Renie

Miss Dilling uses a Lyon & Healy harp exclusively
Columbia Records            His Master's Voice(British)Records
Columbia Artists Inc.                Personal Direction:  Horace J. Parnelle
113 W. 57th St.
New York 19 NY

Some of the other repertoire that found its way onto her tour programs were the B flat Concerto of Handel, Etude de Concert of Tournier, Impromptu of Roussel, Liebestraum of Liszt/Renie, Colorado Trail of Grandjany, Granada of Albinez, Prelude in C of Prokofiev, the Hindemith Sonata, and there were others too.  The only Salzedo piece I can find on her programs is Song in the Night.  Her encores were usually  the Mazurka of Schuecker, and the Music Box of Poenitz.  The programming that she chose for these long and arduous tours stands as testament to her very considerable talent and training.

Mildred encouraged many young Americans to study with Renie too, and many did. But typically, there was an ulterior motive.  When a family expressed an interest in sending their daughter(or son)to study with Renie, Mildred would approach the parents and offer to be the child's chaperone, for a fee of course.  This way she could at least defray the cost of the trip, if not make money on it.  One former student told me that she was 27 when she decided to go spend a summer in France with Renie.  When Mildred approached her parents with the chaperone idea, they just laughed and said that their daughter could take care of herself.

The same woman told me that almost every morning Mildred would come to her and ask  innocently "Marian, do you have any plans this afternoon?"  She quickly learned to have (real or fictional) plans at the ready.  Because if she said no, she wasn"t planning anything in particular, Mildred would have her changing strings, tuning harps, bringing mail to the post office, etc. "There was another student there who never seemed to figure that out," she told me, "and Mildred ran her ragged all summer."

Renie died in 1956, and that brought an end to the stays at the seaside resort town of Etretat on the Normandy coast, which is where Renie taught during the summer.

I regret that I never heard Mildred in her prime.  I'm not sure why she didn't record more than she did.  During her best years(the 1920's into the 1950's) recording techniques were not the best, particularly for harp.  That may be the reason that she didn't pursue it.  Or maybe there wasn't enough money in it for her.

I only heard Mildred in concert once, and it was at the very end of her life.  The harp was hideously out of tune. HIDEOUSLY!  Mildred played some very difficult pieces on that program, and she really shouldn't have been playing them anymore.  But what struck me was the obvious fact that, earlier in her career, she must have had a very formidable technique.  You could still see that.

What's interesting about Mildred is that she never tried to fit into the harp world.  She aimed her career at a general public who knew nothing about the harp.  Perhaps it was the lack of an 'official' orchestra or teaching position that frequently caused the harp world to not take her as seriously as I think it should have.  She was often seen by other harpists as being dowdy, or kitchy, and this is unfair and inaccurate in my opinion.  She had a concert career at least as active as the next major concert harpist who followed her, Zabaleta.  The main difference between the two was that Zabaleta became a major recording artist(with Deutsche Gramafone), recording an enormous amount of solo and concerto repertoire, and performing, in addition to a staggering number of solo recitals, many many concertos.  As far as I can tell, Mildred didn't record very much, and rarely performed concertos.

Next time:  The final curtain falls

Much of Mildred's fame came from her years of touring with Community Concerts and women's musical clubs.  Many harpists have since done the same thing, and found it to be a grueling grind.  A community concert tour involves 8 to 10 weeks or more of driving, usually 300 to 500 miles a day, giving a concert in the evening, and then driving to the next location the following day.  Sometimes there's a gap of several days when there are no concerts booked, and the touring artist has to just hang out somewhere for several days until the next engagement.  Travel costs are paid out of pocket by the artist, thereby reducing the fee.  The driving can be awful.  Blizzards, hurricanes, car trouble, all have to be dealt with AND one must arrive at the concert venue on time.  In addition, there are the required receptions after each concert, where one has to bolt a smile on ones face and make small talk, when all the artist wants to do is get some sleep.

Mildred loved it.  Part of the allure was of course the attention, the guaranteed audiences, the fawing public, and the fee.  But the larger part of a concert tour for her was business.  For Mildred, the concert was just a way of getting  into new territory, and was only one aspect of the business at hand.  At the obligatory reception following each concert, she would "work the crowd," making careful mental notes of who was important, who had money, and who owned a harp that they were not using.  If she found someone with an old harp, she would go to work and convince them to sell it to her, using some story about having a poor student in New York that couldn't afford an instrument. Mildred once told me, with an air of enormous pride, that she had never paid more than $150 for any harp  she owned!  That was a fiction, but I think it was an accurate figure for many of the old klunkers she bought on tour.

As soon as she was alone after the reception, she would transfer the little slips of paper and calling cards she had collected into her address book, writing in the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the important people she had met.  She would also write down what some of the wealthier women were wearing.  If she was booked back in the same town a few years later, as often happened, she'd call one of these women, and the conversation would go something like this.  "Janet, this is Mildred Dilling,"she would start off, notes in hand.  " You know, I've never forgotten that lovely velvet dress with the little bows that you wore at my reception." The woman would be utterly charmed.  Mildred would then continue, "Now,  I'm going to be in Greensboro( or wherever) on February 15 and it would be lovely to see you again."  "Oh Miss Dilling," the lady would say, " my husband and I would be honored if you'd stay with us as our guest while you're here."  Having achieved the intended goal, Mildred would save on lodging and food at that stop.  It didn't always work, and there were plenty of times when she stayed in a motel, but it was always worth a shot.

If  there was a layover of several days, and Mildred knew that there were harpists in the area, she would call whoever was important in the harp world there and say," Now Lily, I'm going to be in Deluth for a few days, and I could give a masterclass while I'm there.  I charge $25 for participants and $15 for auditors."  The harpist, thrilled at being contacted by the great Mildred Dilling, would then make all of the arrangements, getting the local university or a church to donate the use of a small hall.  She would then do all of the leg work, contacting people, collecting the money, arranging a luncheon, etc.  Mildred would then swoop in, do a masterclass, collect $500 or more, and leave town, never offering the person who had organized the event any kind of compensation.  I once spoke to a woman (an amateur harpist who is now almost 100!) who had organized such an event for Mildred in St. Louis.  She and her lawyer husband, prominent members of St. Louis society, had housed Mildred for several days, wined, dined, and entertained her, and had organized and hosted a masterclass.  Before leaving, Mildred asked her if she would like a private lesson.  The woman smiled and said she'd be thrilled.  "Do you know that she charged me for that lesson?" the woman told me. "The bitch!"

Mildred never passed up an opportunity to make a buck.  Travel for a concert artist in the 1930's and '40's was by train, not car, and Mildred on at least one occasion  that I know of had the harp case removed from the baggage car during a layover so she could give some local harpist a lesson on the train platform, and collect another teaching fee.

Thus was Mildred's life on the road.  A million things going on, but always driven by the goal of making money.  The harps she bought on tour, if they were still playable, would often be rented out at another stop along the way.  The only harps she ever had repaired were ones that were completely unplayable, and therefore unable to earn her money.  When she died, she had 40 harps rented out all over the country, and many of the renters had had the instruments for 20 years or more.

Next time:  Mildred and Renie

Some of you have occasionally asked about Mildred Dilling, so I thought you might be interested in my experience with her.  This will not be a biography. There have been two articles on her in the American Harp Journal over the years.  The most recent was in the winter 2001 issue( vol. 18, no. 2). The other is in the winter 1981 issue( vol. 8, no. 2), which appeared less than a year before she died. I want to reminisce about her character(boy, was she a character!), what she was like to be around, and to tell some of the stories I heard from other people about her.

Whenever I've told people stories about her, the inevitable reaction is, "You have to write this down."  So here it is.  There is too much to put in one blog, so I'm going to spread it out over the next three or four blogs.  The following information comes partly from my own experiences with her, partly from what she herself told me, and partly from what others who knew her very well told me.

For starters, here's a little summation of her life to consider.  She lived in New York city and worked as a harpist at exactly the same time that two men(Salzedo and Grandjany) completely dominated the harp world in the United States. .  She was married only briefly, and so had to support herself her whole adult life. She never held an orchestra position nor a school teaching position of any kind  And yet she was much more famous than either Salzedo or Grandjany, and made a lot more money.  When she died in 1982,her stock portfolio alone was worth 2 million dollars!  She lived in a gargantuan apartment on East 51st St. (her apartment was in the same building as Shirley Mclaine's).  She owned some 50 harps, and had influenced generations of harpists.

I first met Miss Dilling (as everybody called her) in Paris once or twice while I was living there.  The only real vacation she ever took was an annual trip to Paris each fall where she would set herself up in a hotel on the rue de Rivoli across from the Louvre for a week or two and go out to see Marx Brother's movies every day at a revival cinema, then go to concerts in the evening.  I was introduced to her by a former student of hers who was also living in Paris and was a good friend of mine.  Mildred smiled politely when I was introduced to her and then immediately forget that I was even there.

Several years later, at the 1975 Conference in Minneapolis, I ran into her again and introduced myself, mentioning the name of the former student who had introduced us several years earlier.  She again put on her public greeting smile, and again immediately wiped my existence from her memory.

Then, at a conference perhaps two years later, I was sitting in the audience one night next to an older man who I didn't know.  We talked a little before the concert started and he mentioned that he was a good friend of Mildred's.  I mentioned to him at some point that I repaired harps.  At intermission I had to go up on  stage because I was playing in the second half in some huge 20 harp ensemble piece.  As I waited for the second half to start I looked up to see that Mildred had taken the seat that I had just vacated and she and the man were talking.  Suddenly, he looked at me and gestured frantically to get my attention.  "She wants to talk to you," he mouthed.  The second the concert was over, she rushed over to me like a pit bull attacking a rabbit.  "What's your name," she  said in the tone of a drill sergeant. "Carl Swanson," I said.  "I understand you repair harps" she said. "I have a harp that needs a new soundboard.  How much do you charge for a new soundboard?"  That was the start of my relationship with Mildred, and in the years that I knew her, the most frequent phrase I would hear from her was "how much...?"

I repaired that harp for her and delivered it to her at her apartment when I was done.  She looked it over carefully, then picked up the phone and dialed a number.  "He just delivered the harp and it's beautiful," she said to whoever was on the other end.  "His finish work is like velvet."  When she got off the phone, she explained that she had a friend who needed some work too, and she was waiting to see how this one came out.  When I left Mildred's apartment, I went straight to Marian's apartment to pick up her harp.  Marian and I became very good friends and I repaired several instruments for her, all because of Mildred.

In those days(the late '70's) used harps were regularly advertised in the New York Times, and Mildred was always on the lookout for used harps.  She must have gotten out to the news stand at 5 o'clock every morning, because several times she called me around 7 A.M.  "I'm at a woman's house on Long Island," she would say,"and she has a style 14(or whatever) for sale.  How much would a new baseboard cost?" I would tell her, and then invariably hear "All that money for that little piece of wood?"  Every time I did a repair job for Mildred, it would start with endless complaining over the price.  Once we had settled on the cost(I never gave in to her verbal assaults) then it was a done deal and she paid what we had agreed on.  The next time she called  with another repair job, she'd start in all over again, and we'd have to go through the same rigmarole every single time.

In my dealings with Mildred, I quickly figured out that she never made any decision that did not involve making(or saving) money.  Money was the overriding force that drove her life.  As with other people I have known who are obsessed with money, it caused her at times to do things that were somewhat less than ethical, and to frequently step on other people's toes.

She was a shrewd businesswoman and it manifested itself in many ways.  The apartment that she had was in a building that had been built at the beginning of the depression.  Mildred initially rented a studio apartment in it.  As the depression wore on, rents on the larger apartments(vacant since the building had been completed) came tumbling down, and at some point Mildred figured out that she could rent one of the largest apartments in the building, rent out a couple of bedrooms to college girls, and live cheaper there than in her studio apartment.  The larger apartment, the one she lived in for the rest of her life, was on the 9th floor, had 4 bedrooms, a huge living room with a small stage at one end, and windows on all  sides.  You could look out those windows to the East River on one side, up 1st avenue from another, crosstown from another, and down first avenue on the south side.

But there was a problem initially.  One of the bedrooms was right over 1st Avenue, and, because of the canyon effect, was very noisy.  Girls would rent it and then move out after a few months because of the noise.  Mildred (always able to find a solution, particularly where money was involved) solved that problem by renting the room to a deaf girl! For the rest of her life, she always reserved that bedroom for girls with severe hearing loss.  Mildred told me once that there were times when she had all four bedrooms rented and she slept on a couch in the living room.  She was running a boarding house(at a profit) in one of the most elegant buildings in New York!

Next time:  Mildred on tour

I started this piece on a thread titled 'Important Repertoire" and then decided to put it here instead.  The question to be pondered is:  What constitutes 'important repertoire,' and what should we be playing. I would ask: How do we expand the audience for harp? And how do we expand the harp's repertoire?  The questions are interrelated.  I have been to too many harp recitals in recent years, often by very very good harpists, which all included the Dussek c minor sonata, the Hindemith Sonata, the Faure Impromptu, the Prokofief Prelude, etc.  Don't get me wrong.  These are great pieces.  But you can't play them all the time, on every single harp recital, and expect to be taken seriously.

Many of the composers listed in the thread are ones that I don't know and probably won't ever play.  But they all should be played by good players. And they should all be recorded too.  That is the only way we can expand the repertoire.  Time, and repeated performances will eventually decide which ones stay in the repertoire.

Some people involved in the discussion seem to assume that great music was written for piano, but not for the harp.  If you pick up a copy of Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, you quickly realize that there is a vast list of composers in all areas of music(solo instrumental of all kinds, opera, church, chamber music, etc.) who are completely forgotten and no longer played.  The 'short' version of Bakers, which is the one I have, is 1155 pages of fine print.  The composers whose names you would immediately recognize represent perhaps 1% of all of the composers in this book.  When I have discussed this issue with other musicians, we always come to the conclusion that not more than 1% of all of the 'serious music' written has made it into the standard repertoire.  And that is probably being generous. So the list of pieces that make up the standard repertoire for piano, as long as it is, represents 1% or less of all of the compositions written for the instrument.

Does that mean the forgotten music is bad?  Not at all.  I'm sure there are a lot of dogs in there.  But I'm equally sure that there are some forgotten treasures.  Remember, Schubert's music  would have been completely lost if not for his brother Ferdinand, who spent the remainder of his life publishing and promoting  Franz's music.  Mahler too would have been completely forgotten if not for 40 years of persistence on the part of his widow Alma, who fought tirelessly to get performances of his music.  J.S. Bach was completely forgotten, and almost completely unpublished, until Mendelssohn discovered his music, and performed the St. Matthew Passion in 1829.  I mention these examples to show that some of the really great composers would have been forgotten as well if not for the effort of others.

New compositions are one way to expand the repertoire.  Unfortunately, the 1% rule holds here as well.  Edna Phillips and her husband commissioned something like 25 pieces for harp.  Only one, the Ginastera Concerto, has made it into the standard repertoire.  I think that contemporary composers should be encouraged to write more for the harp, but I also think any composer considering, or commissioned to write for the harp, should take at least 6 months of harp lessons first.

Another way to expand the repertoire is to dig into libraries and archives and find forgotten pieces.  That's how the Dussek c minor entered the modern repertoire.  It was rediscovered by Zabeleta.  My own teacher Pierre Jamet found, quite accidentally, a charming theme and variations by Petrini that otherwise would have been lost.

The burdon of expanding the repertoire for harp is on the shoulders of performing harpists.  We need to play what we like, but also find unfamiliar pieces(either new or old) to put on our programs.  We then need to present these pieces to the public in a way that they can understand them, mainly by talking about each piece before performing it.  And we have to encourage more harpists to play these pieces, perhaps by including them on competition and college repeertoire lists.

There was a wonderful play on Broadway this past fall called Souvenir. It was about the most famous bad singer who ever lived, Florence Foster Jenkins. If you don't recongize the name(instantly) then Google her and read the history. She was famous because she was such an awful singer, and people flocked to her concerts. To this day no one can say for sure if she knew she was that bad, or if she was putting everybody on. The author of the play took the approach that she was oblivious, and the narrator of the play, her accompanist, states several times during the performance that what she heard in her head as she sang was completely different from what the audience heard. In the most touching moment of the play, just before the final curtain and after the death of Jenkins, the narrator states once again that, right to the end what she heard in her head was so very different from what came out of her mouth. And then he says,"and THIS is what she heard in her head." Judy Kaye, the broadway star who plays Jenkins in this play, then comes out on a dimly lit stage and,after almost two hours of the most horrible off key bellowing you can imagine, sings the Gounod Ave Marie as it should be sung, and leaves the audience silent and in tears.

It got me to thinking. All of us who make music, whatever our level of playing, hear in our head something quite different from what we actually play. Anyone who has ever listened to a playback of their own performance can attest to that. It leads me to believe that we should all record ourselves more often and listen objectively to what comes out. It might also be a good idea for teachers to occasionally record a student in a lesson, and then listen to the playback with the student. I would also recommend that the recording of the student not be of a finished piece(at least not all the time) but rather of a work in progress, so that the student can hear, probably for the first time, exactly what the teacher has been hearing.

Last August I was the designated guest artist at a mini-conference in Florida. I had to give a full evening recital, and then the next day teach a few workshops, including a masterclass. After the masterclass was over, a woman came up to me and mentioned a comment I had made to one of the students in the masterclass. Then she said," My teacher has been saying the same thing to me for months. But it wasn't until I saw you working with that student, and I saw what he was doing, that it made sense."

The author of Souvenir must be a musician himself, and certainly understood that there is a little(or a lot!) of the Florence Foster Jenkins syndrome in all of us.