Growth of an Orchestra The Kingston Symphony Orchestra
[Original headnote:] George Whalley, who wrote this report on music in Kingston, has had a long association with that city. He was born there, an after a varied and distinguished career as a scholar in the field of English literature (he is an authority on Coleridge) at London University, and Oxford, returned to Kingston to take part in its university and musical life, as Professor of English at Queen's, as amateur pianist, church organist, and "frustrated tympanist." It is as President of the Board of Directors of the Kingston Symphony that he appears below.
In the spring of 1954 the present Kingston Symphony Orchestra first appeared in public, accompanying the Kingston Choral Society in Haydn's Creation with James Milligan as principal soloist. There was an audience of 1200 people. It was eleven years before the orchestra would play to so large an audience again. In the spring of 1961 operations were nearly suspended for lack of funds. Yet for the season 1965-66 Alexander Brott was appointed as conductor and a budget of $24,500 was struck. This is the fourth year of Alexander Brott's conductorship; the current budget is $49,000, and the Vaghy String Quartet has come into residence through the co-operation of Queen's University, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Kingston Symphony Association.
The Association includes not only the Kingston Choral Society but also a Women's Committee that quickly discovered ways of collecting money. Without their support the orchestra could not have survived. In addition, the Ontario Arts Council, which is impressed only by musical achievement, sound organization, and solid community support, made a first grant of $1,100 for 1964-5. For the current year their grant is $8,200, with an additional $12,000 for the string quartet project.
Central Consideration
Funds are an essential lubricant; the central consideration is the orchestra itself – the quality and availability of players, training, rehearsal, teaching, conducting. The Kingston Symphony is – and always has been – made up of three components: a core of devoted amateur players, some of them well-trained and very talented; and group of local "professionals" – part-time musicians who belong to the Union; and military bandsmen. The heart of the orchestra – the string players – is the most vulnerable section of all, for most of them are amateurs, and many are members of the university or local industry, or are students at university or school. Losses occur without much warning and are sometimes heavy and unkindly distributed. Last year, for example, three cellists and the leading violist left Kingston. And yet, one of the best cellists we have ever had was a member of the U.S. State Department who for a year was on course at the National Defence College. But there has always been a shortage of string teachers, and until lately most of our string players have been trained elsewhere.
A string training program in the schools and university is the only reliable solution, but it takes time to mature. The School Board has made an important contribution – tentatively at first, and from 1960 with increasing force and scope – by establishing a program in strings and woodwinds, and by appointing able teachers who can devote their whole time to teaching music. But school instrumentalists, usually taught in groups and often unable to find or afford good private lessons, may stop playing when they leave school. In Kingston the gap between the school program and the Symphony has been bridged in the past weeks with the formation of a Youth Orchestra. A well-distributed group of over 80 has been chosen, and of these 15 or 20 may be ready to play in the Kingston Symphony within a year.
Turning Point
The turning point for the orchestra came in 1960. For a short time the Board secured the services of Frederic Pohl – a mature professional conductor who is also a violin virtuoso and a string teacher of outstanding experience and imagination. The Association did not have the funds to retain his services, but in the few months that he gave individual and group lessons, and prepared two concerts and conducted one of them, it was clear that the orchestra had much greater musical potential than even the players themselves had recognized. At the same time, Edouard Bartlett was appointed to Kingston by the School Board in co-operation with Queen's University. He too was a violinist, and with an outstanding record as a music instructor in Ontario schools. Under his direction, and confident that the potential of the orchestra could be realized, the players worked steadily – and for a time for no fee – and made steady improvement.
In 1964-5, the tenth anniversary, the first decisive step towards professional standards was taken. An ambitious program of five concerts was chosen and the budget more than doubled to $8,300. The community responded enthusiastically. By the end of the season Alexander Brott had agreed to become principal conductor, the players had agreed to accept the burdens and risks of a greatly expanded program of rehearsal and performance, and a campaign was organized to meet a budget of $24,000.
Alexander Brott's effect on the orchestra, the audience, and the whole musical community was immediate and explosive: audiences were about three times as big as the previous year. Music was chosen to establish a firm grounding for the orchestra in the standard repertoire, and the audiences liked it. In the first season each concert was devoted to a single composer: Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Sibelius; Rampal and Perlemuter were among the soloists. The next season was all Beethoven: seven of the symphonies including the 9th, and a good deal else, with Zvi Zeitlin, Lili Kraus, and Lois Marshall among the soloists. Then a season of Brahms and Canadian music, and now baroque music, Brahms and a few modern works. The spectacular progress of the orchestra under Alexander Brott has this year been reinforced and extended by the presence of the Vaghy String Quartet as section leaders and teachers.
The cost of this progress has not been negligible. The total budget has advanced from $8,300 in 1964-5 to $24,250, $38,100, $43,500, and for the current year $49,000. (The String Quartet is separately funded.) Grants from the Ontario Arts Council have been very generous and reflect the scale of community support. Individual and corporate subscriptions, apart from ticket sales, have advanced from $6,000 in 1965-6 to $11,600 in the present season.
Imported Players
As long as high standards of performance are required at every concert, and until an orchestra is self-contained and fully established, imported players have to be used. In the past three years the local orchestra of about 50 players has been reinforced by the addition of 25 to 30 per cent imports, most of them conservatory students. Because of the distance from Montreal, however, the cost of imports is disproportionate to the fees paid to local players and, when the budget is limited, local players can be adversely affected. The local players are the core of the orchestra and the reason for its existence; their morale can survive this situation only if it is clear that the use of imports is temporary.
The need for imports has now started to diminish, and within a couple of years the orchestra may be able to provide all its own players. In this matter the regular players have shown restraint and patience, recognizing that the present situation is still complex and vulnerable, and that full professional status can be reached only by concentrating on the total aim.
The growth of the Kingston Symphony in the last five years is remarkable for a city as small as Kingston, far removed from a metropolitan centre, and dependent on a constantly changing population of musicians. The growth has come from a steady community effort, from co-operation and good will among several interested groups, and from the devotion of all the musicians.
A few individuals have made an outstanding contribution. Frederic Pohl showed that the potential was here: Edouard Bartlett brought the orchestra to a level that would interest a professional conductor, and formed the Youth Orchestra; Alexander Brott has shown great energy and skill in drawing music from the players and giving them confidence that they can do what he demands of them; and the Vaghy String Quartet has brought to the community – the orchestra, the schools, the University – the sound and image of the most subtle and exacting kind of music. All these have shown in their various ways that good music is not only desirable but possible.