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Mrs. Vincent Astor organized a Women's
Committee, opened her exclusive home for business meetings, goes each
day to check on returns at campaign headquarters. Radio appeals have
been made by New York's Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, a longtime
Philharmonic subscriber, by Mr. Flagler, Mrs. Astor, Mrs. Christian R.
Holmes, Geraldine Farrar, Deems Taylor, Norman H. Davis. Mrs. Franklin
D. Roosevelt, speaking from the White House five Sundays ago, said:
"In helping to preserve the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra you
will help preserve a sense of values, a spiritual outlook, a feeling
for the good and the beautiful which in turn will help to preserve
those other things in our country which we believe should be
perpetuated.'' The Philharmonic's history has been a strong point of
appeal. It is the oldest U. S. orchestra, second oldest in the world.*
It has not missed a season since 1842 when it started as a cooperative
organization giving concerts in the Apollo Rooms on Lower Broadway.
The musicians stood up to play then. Several chosen for their
"appearance and address" acted as ushers, wore white gloves
until the Society discovered it could save $4.75 if they went
barehanded. Never has a Philharmonic concert been canceled. Only two
have been postponed, one when Conductor Anton Seidl died suddenly,
the other when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Radio has made the
Philharmonic the world's most widely heard orchestra. Columbia
Broadcasting System figured that 9,000,000 listened to Toscanini's
birthday concert, the 2,981st concert that the Philharmonic has given.
For its artistic prestige, never higher than during the last decade,
the little 67-year-old Italian is responsible. New Yorkers knew him
before as an opera conductor but in 1915 he tiffed with Giulio
Gatti-Casazza, raged out of the Metropolitan and returned to Milan to
give all his time to the Scala. No one thought he would accept when
Clarence Mackay asked him to conduct the Philharmonic in 1926. And when
he cabled that he would come, great was the trepidation among the
musicians. He was a musical god, they had heard, a despot, a devil. He
used no score even at rehearsal but he could detect the tiniest
flaws. Once in Milan he had smashed an offending violin and a splinter
flew up, hit the player in one eye. Toscanini's fabulous memory gave
him his first chance to conduct. He had studied to be a 'cellist at the
Parma Conservatory. As a 'cellist he was playing in Rio de Janeiro when
one night the regular conductor was unable to appear. In desperation
the players remembered that Toscanini, then 19, seemed to know
everything by heart. He had no dress coat. But the players hustled him
into one, thrust a baton into his hand and boosted him on the
conductor's stand. Without glancing at the score he gave such a
flawless At da that he stayed on as conductor for the rest of the
season. The players said then that he had memorized the scores
because he was so nearsighted. It never occurred to them that a man
might see with his ears and hear with his soul. His way was to absorb
music. Back in Italy he went on proving his powers. At 27 he
conducted Tristan und Isolde in Turin. His heart thumped for three
months afterwards and he slept much less than his four hours a night.
In 1898 he and Gatti were asked to reorganize the Scala. They did
such a good job that the Metropolitan wanted them for New
