Difference between revisions of "Carpenter, John Alden (piano)"

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John Alden Carpenter (1876-1951) was one of four artists who recorded for the Chicago Gramophone Society, and one of two living composers whose music the Society issued on disc.

This page is part of the site Classical 'Society' Records by Nick Morgan.

It addresses solely Carpenter's relationship with the Society, and his private and commercial recordings; his life and career are well documented elsewhere.^[1]

For dates of creation and latest update, please see 'Page information' in left sidebar.

Chicago Gramophone Society

For all Carpenter's prominence and popularity, not least as a composer of songs, by his fiftieth birthday very little of his music had been issued on commercial records at home or abroad,^[2] and he himself had never performed on a published disc. So it is all the more remarkable that when he visited a Columbia studio in New York City on 5 December 1927 to make a record, it was not for Columbia but for a tiny group of Chicago music-lovers and gramophone enthusiasts, the Chicago Gramophone Society. On one of two discs making up its second issue, Carpenter is heard at the piano, alongside the mezzo-soprano Mina Hager, in his own Water-Colors, settings of ancient Chinese poems.^[3]

How did this come about? Standard works on the composer do not discuss the recording's genesis.^[4] The Society was short-lived and little reported: its activities are known mainly from notices in a Boston-based magazine, The Phonograph Monthly Review, which acted as its mouthpiece: in November 1927 it relayed a communication from the Society's President, explaining that the second issue had been delayed by 'an over-crowded schedule at the recording studios', but giving no hint as to its contents.^[5] The issue was officially announced in January 1928,^[6] distributed later that month or in early February, and reviewed in May.^[7] Perhaps surprisingly, none of these notices made anything of the Society's not insignificant achievement: this was only the fifth published record of any work by Carpenter, as well as his first (and only) published performance as a pianist, and it immortalized the partnership between the composer and one of his most devoted interpreters.

Mina Hager

Mina Hager's relationship with John Alden Carpenter began in an inauspicious year. In old age she recalled,

'I met and auditioned for Mr. Carpenter in a rather unorthodox way. There was a Chamber orchestra being formed in Chicago which, for prestige and encouragement, very much needed a new work by a "Name Composer" for the opening performance. Mr. Carpenter was the ideal choice. He accepted, perhaps because he had just finished orchestrating his Water Colors, a group of four Chinese tone poems [...] and was glad for this opportunity of having it heard. A friend knew that he, therefore, needed a singer so, without telling me, brought him up to The Great Lakes Training Base [sic] where I was singing. The songs I sang that night were hardly material for an orchestral appearance – I think one of them was Annie Laurie – but evidently they were right because he engaged me. I fell in love with Water Colors immediately, and that performance introduced me to the wealth of the wonderful collection of his songs, [...] and also to the man, Mr. Carpenter. Perhaps the first reason I love his songs is that they "do something to me." Also the learning of them and the singing of them did something for me, musically, artistically and professionally.'[8]

Hager's unwitting audition took place in late 1917, some months after the USA had entered the first World War. As early as May, Carpenter had approached John Philip Sousa about training bandsmen at the US Navy's Great Lakes Training Station in Chicago. As a result, Sousa enlisted and became bandmaster of the Station's band;^[9] and in September, Carpenter was appointed a member of the US National Committee on Army and Navy Camp Music.^[10] In this capacity, he more than once visited the Great Lakes Training Station,^[11] giving him ample opportunity to hear Hager. It is not known on what occasion(s) she sang at the Station; perhaps at one of the 'singing schools' organized there for the 'bluejackets' or 'jackies', at which old favourites like 'Annie Laurie' were sung,^[12] or at an entertainment such as the Thanksgiving Ball held there in November 1917.^[13]

Originally set for female voice and piano, Carpenter's four Water-Colors had been premiered on 4 October 1916 by the Scottish-born mezzo-soprano Christine Miller (1877-1956) and the composer, at the Ziegfeld Theater in Chicago.^[14] Carpenter's new version for orchestra with piano was premiered by Mina Hager on 30 December 1917, at a benefit concert for the Navy Relief Society in Chicago's Illinois Theater, again with Carpenter himself at the keyboard, and Arthur Dunham (1875-1938) conducting his Philharmonic Orchestra.^[15] This was the beginning of a significant and enduring musical partnership, Hager becoming a life-long champion of Carpenter. It has been stated that on 30 March 1918 they gave a recital devoted entirely to his songs, 'described as 'very possibly the first of its kind';^[16] but no source of the period confirming either the event or the date has been located. Perhaps the recital in question was one given exactly a year later, after a charity supper at Chicago's Arts Club, whose programme has not been ascertained.^[17] In the meantime, in May 1918, at a music teachers' convention in Bloomington, Illinois, Carpenter had given a talk on music and the war effort, after which Hager joined him in fourteen of his songs, including Water-Colors; this is currently the earliest documented all-Carpenter recital. A critic noted that the singer, with her

'contralto voice of excellent quality and used with artistry, [...] proved an excellent interpreter. She shared with Composer Carpenter in the success of the songs.'[18]

The previous month, Carpenter had been put in charge of the music for a gala celebration of the centennial of Illinois' statehood at Orchestra Hall. During the festivities, Hager, dressed in 'an old brocade gown' of the period, sang 'songs that were favorites of the belles and beau [sic] of civil war days'.^[19] In June 1918, Carpenter accompanied Hager in two groups of his songs, once again at Chicago's Illinois Theater.^[20] Eighteen months later, they performed together at a meeting of the Englewood Woman's Club; this was received as 'a big compliment to the club.'^[21] Hager took the orchestrated Water-Colors to Minneapolis in November 1920,^[22] and the following October she chose several of Carpenter's songs for her New York debut.^[23] A few days later, she sang a Carpenter group at the National American Music Festival in Buffalo, New York,^[24] and in December 1921 the composer joined her for a private recital of his songs at the home of a Chicago society hostess.^[25] Over the following years, they appeared together less often, but Hager remained loyal to him, programming his songs regularly and taking them abroad - the first time, in 1924, to London, Berlin, and perhaps elsewhere in Europe.^[26] That same year, she apparently recorded one of Carpenter's best-known war songs, The Home Road, at the Victor studios in New York; designated a 'trial', this was not issued.^[27] By 1928, a newspaper could claim that

'Miss Hager is said to have sung, at one time or another, every song ever composed by John Alden Carpenter, modern composer.'[28]

Carpenter was a native of Chicago, and he and his wife were leading figures in the city's social and artistic elite. Born in South Dakota, Mina Hager had moved to Chicago to study singing, made her name there and stayed for over ten years before settling in New York City. On the face of it, composer and singer made an obvious pairing for the self-proclaimed connoisseurs of the Chicago Gramophone Society;^[29] but who was approached first? The Society had started life, probably in late 1925, as a private circle for aficionados of recorded music,^[30] one of several founded in North America around that time. In 1927 it took the unusual step of issuing records under its own imprint, invoking the example of Britain's National Gramophonic Society,^[31] which had been founded by a magazine publisher to provide subscribers with classical repertoire not yet available on commercial records. Chicago's Society was one of several inspired by the N.G.S.; its first issue, on two 12-inch (30 cm) discs, consisted of César Franck's Prelude, Chorale and Fugue for solo piano, just the kind of large-scale instrumental work such societies' members favoured. Its second issue again consisted of two discs, but rather than instrumental music, it contained seven songs, sung by Mina Hager: four by Carpenter on one disc, and two by Hugo Wolf and one by Richard Strauss on the other (with a different pianist, not credited on the labels). Strauss was a particular enthusiasm of the Society's President, Vories Fisher, who underwrote its issues along with a fellow-member, Robert Pollak, himself a great admirer of Wolf. It is easy to imagine that they wished to have more of these composers' songs on a disc which, after all, they were financing; but it is not currently possible to do more than guess at how or by whom these songs and those by Carpenter, or the singer and the pianists, were chosen. Apart from Columbia's matrix cards, no original documents or business archive appear to remain from the Society's brief existence, and neither Carpenter's nor Hager's papers are known to contain any relevant material.^[32] Pollak was both a trained musician and the music critic of a Chicago periodical, so perhaps the simplest hypothesis is that he used his expertise and contacts to recruit Hager for the Society's second issue; she was certainly known to Pollak, having made a considerable impression on him as the soloist in the Chicago premiere of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire Op.21. After accommodating Pollak's and Fisher's wishes, Hager would surely have been invited to put forward her own suggestion, and again one can well imagine that she chose Water-Colors (in the original setting with solo piano - the orchestral version would have been too expensive to record), which had been so pivotal in her career, and also that she undertook to ask Carpenter to record it with her. True, Pollak had been less impressed by the Chicago premiere of Carpenter's new ballet Skyscrapers, given on 5 November 1926 in a purely orchestral performance, without choreography,^[33] but there is no reason to suppose he would have objected to this tried and tested favourite. This hypothesis has the merit of explaining why the Society issued a work by Carpenter, when his name had until then not been mentioned in connection with it; other, less likely hypotheses are briefly examined on the page of this site devoted to the Society, as is the question of how the recording itself was produced.

However it came about, the Chicago Gramophone Society's recording of Water-Colors was an important gramophone premiere. Yet it attracted next to no comment, either at the time or since. Understandably, as a limited, non-commercial edition, it was reviewed only in the The Phonograph Monthly Review,^[34] not in other musical periodicals or in the general press (a preview in The Chicagoan was a sort of puff^[35]). More surprisingly, perhaps, neither Carpenter's nor Hager's recollections or opinions of it are known. Hager seems not to have retained a copy of the disc; it is not among those held alongside her papers at the Newberry Library in Chicago.^[36] Whether the composer owned one is likewise not known; in general, Carpenter's views on the gramophone appear not to have been canvassed. Perhaps he was not that interested in making recordings for public consumption: he appeared just once more on a commercial disc (see below), although he left one remarkable, not to say historic private, purely utilitarian recording. Or perhaps he was uncertain of the reception his piano-playing would receive from the gramophone audience, unseen and unknown. Such a fear was not unfounded. Today, a composer's recorded performance, or personal supervision of one, almost automatically accrues a special interest and authenticity. At the time, if the sole, anonymous review of the Society's second issue is anything to go by, the opposite was true:

'The composer's accompaniments are played with gusto and insight – a rare feat for a composer!'[37]

Nor does he seem to have made any comment on Hager's performance, despite his lasting admiration and support for her: in 1941, he wrote to the composer and critic Virgil Thomson, hoping to persuade him to review a forthcoming performance by the singer, now in the twilight of her concert career:

'It has long been my conviction that Miss Hager has very unusual gifts. [...] She has had some success in a limited way since she left Chicago and established herself in New York some years ago but nothing like the recognition to which, in my judgement, she is entitled.'[38]

Recordings

Private

System Western Electric, under licence to Columbia Phonograph Co., as denoted by the logo Ⓦ preceding matrix numbers.

Notes Made, presumably, in the studios of Columbia's 'Personal Record' Department in New York, the above recording is attributed in an unknown private source to the Chicago Gramophone Society.^[39] This is highly unlikely. The Society was not officially founded until just under a year later. Not only were there no subscribers yet to finance such a project, a set of nine sides (or ten, with a filler) would have been beyond the future Society's means, not to mention an impractical proposition to issue.^[40] Moreover, this recording was clearly meant not for public audition but as an aid to the ballet's first production at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where the world premiere was given two months later, on 19 February 1926.^[41] The ballet's genesis had already cost Carpenter considerable effort, as revealed in an interview between its designer, Robert Edmond Jones, and the founding editor of Modern Music, Minna Lederman:

'To discover what stimulus music rather than drama gives the painter, we casually asked [Mr. Jones] whether he worked from the score or the libretto. His unexpected replies led us to the story of the making of this ballet, the details of which are given here to record a pioneer effort from which an art-form emerged [...] Skyscrapers originally, it appears, had no libretto, no plot, no dance designs, not even a locale. In the beginning there was only the music and it is directly from this that the production has been built — built by the composer and the designer of scenes without the traditional choreographer. [...] A reversal of the usual routine, which is to start with the story, then proceed to the music and the stage picture, was therefore in order. Mr. Carpenter played the score repeatedly and from the music itself Mr. Jones evolved the scenes [...] Retreating to a farmhouse in Vermont they took the music and the scene designs and set to without story, plan or dancer. Their procedure is described by Mr. Jones: "Carpenter would play the music giving me an impression of the changing orchestration. He played each passage over and over again for hours. This would give me certain ideas of movement for which I drew tentative designs, to be discussed with him. Countless series of patterns were made during six months of gruelling, unremitting labor."'[42]

(The 'farmhouse in Vermont' was probably Carpenter's 'summer place' in Charlotte^[43]). Even then, Carpenter's work was not done, according to a review of the first night:

'The opera stage management and Mr. Carpenter himself had worked three weeks drilling the large company in the scenes of "Work, Play, and Work Again," which formed what plot the ballet offered.'[44]

This brief account leaves unclear exactly what happened behind the scenes at the Met. Presumably, repetiteurs were available, but perhaps the score, full of devices borrowed from the epoch-making ballets of Stravinsky and Prokofiev, was considered difficult enough for dancers that the composer's help was required. If so, Carpenter can hardly have been expected to put himself through three more weeks of arduous keyboard work, and his records would have been an excellent substitute; significantly, he played mainly the score's rhythmic skeleton, as one would for dancers, while singing and even whistling the salient melodic lines. Perhaps, too, the discs served as an interpretative guide to the conductor of the first run, Louis Hasselmans. It is not known how the sides were pressed, whether in 'automatic' couplings, to facilitate continuous playback on one machine, or in the conventional 'manual' sequence, or even 'single-faced'; in the latter cases, two machines would have been needed.

This recording is a remarkable document: it preserves not only some 27½ minutes of Carpenter's piano-playing, singing and whistling, but also a slightly different version of the score from that published by Schirmer in 1927. At the very start, an unidentified man instructs the listener to 'Adjust or tune your phonograph to this A'; someone, presumably Carpenter, sounds the A above middle C three times on the piano. The music starts almost immediately, unannounced, but then the person who gave the preliminary instruction calls out rehearsal cues, 'Number One', 'Number Two' etc. These usually correspond in placing to the figures (starting at 1) printed in the published score, but soon diverge in number: an interpolated 'Number 7a' ushers in a slightly different version of Scene III, so that when 'Number 8' is called it corresponds to published figure 9, and so on until another discrepant section after 'Number 43' / fig.44, which widens the gap yet further. The reduction which Carpenter recorded was presumably sight-read from his composing score, or a reworking of it which emerged after the weeks closeted with Jones in Vermont.^[45] Not the least remarkable aspect of the recording is the verve of Carpenter's performance, which conjures up an image of him hammering out the ballet's scenario with Jones at the farmhouse's piano. The fact that all sides are pressed from takes -1, and contain no fluffs or restarts, suggests the music was still very fresh in the composer's mind and under his fingers (although this may also have been an economy measure; to record 9 ten-inch sides and press three copies of each, Columbia charged something in the region of $450^[46]). Carpenter's infectious projection of the score's essence must have helped to motivate the dancers and players for the first run at the Met. Although an ostensibly 'functional' run-through, it is vivid and involving, and deserves to be more widely heard and investigated further.

Commercial

System Western Electric, under licence to Columbia Phonograph Co., as denoted by the logo Ⓦ preceding matrix numbers, and to Victor, as denoted by the letters VE in matrix prefixes.

Cuts Water-Colors: none.

Song of Faith: presumed none (auditioned without score).

Notes The single disc which Carpenter made for the Chicago Gramophone Society is his only known commercial recording as a pianist. No transfer to another medium is currently available. For more detailed information see relevant page.

The 'Parts' of Song of Faith listed above do not necessarily correspond to divisions in the score, but to sides of the records. Carpenter appears only in the last 'Part' of both the short- and long-play editions. The complete work takes up four short-play sides, issued on Victor 1559 and 1560, and two long-play sides, issued on Victor L-11608. Multiple transfers of the short-play edition are available for audition and download from archive.org (Parts 1 and 2; Parts 3 and 4).

Acknowledgements

I am extremely grateful to Don Tait of Chicago for his invaluable help in researching the content of this page.

References

Note The Phonograph Monthly Review underwent various name changes, detailed here, but on this page and elsewhere on this site, the magazine is referred to in the text and footnotes as The Phonograph Monthly Review or, where appropriate, the Review.

1. ↑ Pollack, Howard John Alden Carpenter: A Chicago Composer, Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001 (revised edition of Pollack, Howard Skyscraper Lullaby, Washington & London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995)
2. ↑ Only four compositions by Carpenter are currently known to have been issued on commercial records before 1926:
   • Eight Songs for a Medium Voice - (ii) Don't ceäre, Louise Homer (contralto), orchestra, Walter B. Rogers, matrix B 18035-1, rec. 29 June 1916, Camden, New Jersey, issued on Victor 87263 (10-inch / 25 cm)
   • Khaki Sammy, Henri Scott (bass), orchestra, conductor / director unknown, matrix unknown, rec. c. April 1918, New York, issued on Brunswick 15216 (10-inch / 25 cm)
   • Khaki Sammy, Mabel Garrison (soprano), orchestra, Josef Pasternack, matrix B-21920-5, rec. 16 May 1918, Camden, New Jersey, issued on Victor 64783 (10-inch / 25 cm)
   • The Home Road, Ernestine Schumann-Heink (contralto), orchestra, Josef Pasternack, matrix B-24499-5, rec. 28 September 1920, Camden, New Jersey, issued on Victor 87320 and 831 (10-inch / 25 cm)
   Two compositions are currently known to have been recorded but not issued:
   • Three Songs for a Medium Voice - (i) The Lawd is smilin’ through the do’, Sophie Braslau (contralto), Francis Lapitino (harp), orchestra, Josef Pasternack, Victor matrix B-25795 (10-inch / 25 cm), rec. 7 December 1921, Camden, New Jersey, unissued
   • The Home Road, Mina Hager (soprano) [sic], LeRoy Shield (piano), second(?) part of Victor unnumbered 'trial' (10-inch / 25 cm), rec. 26 May 1924, New York City, unissued; NB Carpenter is not credited but is almost certain to have been the composer
3. ↑ All details of Columbia recording sessions for the Chicago Gramophone Society were ascertained, from original Columbia matrix cards now held by Sony Music Entertainment in New York, by Michael H. Gray, whose kind help is gratefully acknowledged; personal communication, 30 September 2015
4. ↑ O'Connor, Joan John Alden Carpenter: A Bio-Bibliography, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994
   Pollack, Howard Skyscraper Lullaby: The Life and Music of John Alden Carpenter, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995, revised as John Alden Carpenter: A Chicago Composer, Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001
5. ↑ Johnson, Axel B. 'General Review', The Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol.2 No.2, November 1927, pp.[41]-45 (on p.44)
6. ↑ 'The Chicago Gramophone Society hereby announces (...)' (notice), in 'Phonograph Society Reports', The Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol.2 No.4, January 1928, pp.146-47 (on p.146); Pollak, Robert 'Current Records', The Chicagoan, Vol.4 No.8, 14 January 1928, p.26
7. ↑ 'Special', in 'Analytical Notes and Reviews', ibid., Vol.2 No.8, May 1928, pp.306-15 (on p.308)
8. ↑ Hager, Mina '"Speak for Yourself, John Alden Carpenter!"', Music Journal, Vol.28 No.3 (March 1970), pp.66-67
9. ↑ Buzzell, Francis The Great Lakes Naval Training Station. A History, Boston: Small, Maynard & Company, n.d. [c.1919], pp.147-48; Pollack, Howard John Alden Carpenter: A Chicago Composer, Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001, p.158
10. ↑ 'Inspiration of Song Is Stressed in Plans For Training Camps', Arkansas Democrat [Little Rock, Arkansas], 17 November 1917, p.4
11. ↑ e.g. 'Sousa Coming To Teach Music At Great Lakes', Chicago Daily Tribune, Wednesday 23 May 1917, p.[1]; 'Song Leaders To Visit The Camps', Decatur Herald [Decatur, Illinois], Sunday 9 December 1917, 'Christmas Edition' section, p.6
12. ↑ '’Tis Songs Of The Heart That Uncle Sam's Nephews Sing', The Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram [Richmond, Indiana], Saturday 4 August 1917, p.10, also published as 'Singing School Held to Train Rookies' Voices', The Statesman [Austin, Texas], Thursday 9 August 1917, p.2
13. ↑ 'Cordon Will Give an Old Fashioned Dance for Jackies', Chicago Daily Tribune, Tuesday 23 October 1917, p.19; 'Great Lakes Ball Adds $5,000 to the Navy Relief Fund', ibid., Thursday 29 November 1917, p.22
    NB This hypothesis, and Hager's recollection, appear to be contradicted by a contemporary report stating that only men were allowed to take part in entertainments held in training camps, see 'Dr. Grace Whitford Tells Of War Work By Chicago Women', The Tampa Daily Times [Tampa, Florida], Saturday 8 September 1917, p.5; in researching this page, no attempt was made to locate or consult records of the Great Lakes Training Station, but it is hoped that they survive and may throw light on this matter
14. ↑ 'Matters of Music', Chicago Sunday Tribune, 1 October 1916, Part 8, p.2, and Pollack, Howard John Alden Carpenter: A Chicago Composer, Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001, p.148
15. ↑ Donaghey, Frederick 'Saturday To Monday In Music', and 'Cinderella' 'Counting the Stars on the 100 Per Cent Flags Inspiring', Chicago Daily Tribune, Monday 31 December 1917, p.9
16. ↑ Pollack, Howard Skyscraper Lullaby, Washington & London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995, p.148
17. ↑ 'Hager-Carpenter Musicale at the Arts Club Sunday', Chicago Daily Tribune, Thursday 27 March 1919, p.15; 'Offices of "Children of the Frontier" Now in Powers Building', ibid., Saturday 29 March 1919, p.15
18. ↑ Cox, Jeannette (of the Musical Courier, New York) 'Second Day with State Music Teachers' Meeting', The Pantagraph [Bloomington, Illinois], Thursday 9 May 1918, p.3
19. ↑ 'Mme. X.' 'Great Loan Drive Takes First Place in All Activities', Chicago Sunday Tribune, 14 April 1918, Section 7, pp.4-5, 9 (on p.5)
20. ↑ 'Civic Music Forces Join for Concert', Chicago Daily Tribune, Monday 3 June 1918, p.15
21. ↑ 'Englewood Happenings', The Englewood Times [Chicago, Illinois], Friday 2 January 1920, pp.1, 8 (on p.8); 'Englewood Woman's Club', ibid., Friday 9 January 1920, Section Two, p.10
22. ↑ 'Two Popular Airs Are Included in Symphony Program Tomorrow', Minneapolis Morning Tribune [Minneapolis, Minnesota], Saturday 20 November 1920, p.31; 'Mina Hager, Chicago Singer, to Be Soloist With Symphony at Popular Concert Today', Minneapolis Sunday Tribune [Minneapolis, Minnesota], 21 November 1920, p.8
23. ↑ 'Miss Hager Heard in Pleasing Song Recital Program', New York Tribune, Tuesday 11 October 1921, p.7
24. ↑ McHenry, Izetta May 'American Concert Field', The Billboard, Vol.33 No.42, 15 October 1921, p.28
25. ↑ 'Brief Local Mention', Queen City Mail [Spearfish, South Dakota], Wednesday 28 December 1921, p.4
26. ↑ 'Music This Week', The Times, Monday 9 June 1924, p.16; Westermeyer, Karl 'Minna [sic] Hager', in 'Aus Berlin', Signale für die musikalische Welt, No.28, 9 July 1924, pp.1109-11 (on p.1109)
27. ↑ The Home Road Mina Hager (mezzo-soprano), LeRoy Shield (piano), unnumbered trial, recorded 26 May 1924, Victor studios, New York; for more information about this tentatively identified selection, see here
28. ↑ 'Bowl Soloist Has European Reputation', Los Angeles Times, Sunday 20 May 1928, Part III, p.13
29. ↑ Announcing its first issue, the Chicago Gramophone Society stated, 'This is, as far as we know, the first attempt to issue privately in this country any records that are made for the express purpose of suiting the taste of the record collector and connoisseur': 'Special', The Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol.1 No.5, February 1927, p.224
30. ↑ Fisher, Vories 'Chicago Phonograph Society', in 'Phonograph Society Reports', The Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol.1 No.1, October 1926, pp.32-34 (on p.32)
31. ↑ [Fisher,] Vories 'Recorded Remnants', The Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol.1 No.6, March 1927, p.274
32. ↑ It has not been possible to consult the John Alden Carpenter Papers held by the Newberry Library in Chicago (an application for a Short-Term Fellowship at the Newberry, submitted in December 2017, was rejected in April 2018), or the John Alden Carpenter Collection held at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.
    These libraries' online inventories, while detailed, are not exhaustive: the Newberry's online inventory of the Carpenter Papers lists no known Chicago Gramophone Society officers or members as named correspondents, while four letters from Mina Hager date from two decades after their involvement with the Society
    The Mina Hager Papers, also held by the Newberry, likewise preserve no correspondence with the Chicago Gramophone Society, or other pertinent material; they do include correspondence with Carpenter, but it has no bearing on their joint recording
    I am extremely grateful to Bill Anderson of Chicago for kindly visiting the Newberry Library and consulting the Mina Hager Papers on my behalf, personal e-mail, 11 August 2018
33. ↑ Moore, Edward 'Stock Gives Carpenter's "Skyscrapers"', Chicago Daily Tribune, Saturday 6 November 1926, p.17; Pollak, Robert 'Musical Notes', The Chicagoan, Vol.2 No.5, 15 November 1926, pp.16-17 (on p.17)
34. ↑ 'Special', in 'Analytical Notes and Reviews', ibid., Vol.2 No.8, May 1928, pp.306-15 (on p.308)
35. ↑ Pollak, Robert 'Current Records', The Chicagoan, Vol.4 No.8, 14 January 1928, p.26
36. ↑ Once again, my thanks to Bill Anderson for confirming in person what is implied by the inventory of Mina Hager's sound recordings held at the Newberry Library
37. ↑ 'Special', in 'Analytical Notes and Reviews', ibid., Vol.2 No.8, May 1928, pp.306-15 (on p.308); like much of the magazine's content, this unsigned review was probably written by Robert D. Darrell (1903-88), see Darrell, R.D. 'O Pioneer (A Half Century Later)', ARSC Journal, Vol.19 No.1, 1987, pp.4-10 (on p.5)
38. ↑ Carpenter, John Alden Letter to Virgil Thomson, 2 May 1941, Thomson Collection, Yale University, quoted in Pollack, Howard Skyscraper Lullaby, Washington & London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995, p.149
39. ↑ The recording has been auditioned from a digital copy of a good transfer, in which all sides have been edited together, once or twice obscuring the exact locations of side-breaks; other than the matrix and take numbers and recording date, no further details, or images of the original disc labels, were available
40. ↑ The first issued commercial recording of Skyscrapers, made by Victor on 1 May 1932 and conducted by Nathaniel Shilkret, was laid out, in line with contemporary commercial practice for such works, on six 12-inch (30 cm) 78 rpm sides (in Victor Album M-130, 'manual'-coupled discs 11250>52, Album AM-130, 'automatic'-coupled discs 11253>55, and Album DM-130, 'drop automatic'-coupled discs 13227>29), as well as on three 12-inch 33⅓ rpm long-playing sides (on Victor long-playing 'manual'-coupled discs L-11618>19 and 'automatic'-coupled discs L-11691>92)
41. ↑ 'The Musical Go-Getter', The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Saturday 20 February 1926, p.6; Cushing, Edward 'Music of the Day', ibid.
42. ↑ M[inna].L[ederman]. 'Skyscrapers, an Experiment in Design: An Interview with Robert Edmond Jones', Modern Music, Vol.3 No.2, January-February 1926, pp.21-26
43. ↑ Among many press references to the Carpenters' 'summer place', see e.g. R.—, Nancy 'John Alden Carpenter House in Rush Street Is Taken by Paepckes', Chicago Daily Tribune, Tuesday 17 August 1926, p.29; 'Miss Carpenter to Be Married In Charlotte', Burlington Free Press and Times [Burlington, Vermont], Tuesday 29 May 1928, p.7
44. ↑ 'Carpenter Jazz Ballet Gives New York Kick', Chicago Daily Tribune, Saturday 20 February 1926, p.15
45. ↑ No piano reduction of Skyscrapers appears to have been published. One or more manuscript piano scores were given to Serge Diaghilev, who commissioned the work for his Ballets russes but did not mount it; see Watts, Carolyn America in the Transatlantic Imagination: The Ballets Russes and John Alden Carpenter's Skyscrapers (MA thesis), School of Music, University of Ottawa, 2015, pp.55, 58-59; the fate of these MSS has not been ascertained
46. ↑ Thanks to research carried out by Tim Brooks, Columbia's 'Personal Record' rates for 1917-18 are documented, and are summarized in Brooks, Tim Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890-1919 (first paperback edition), University of Illinois Press, 2005, pp.442-43; it is not known if, or how much, the rates had changed by 1927