Carpenter, John Alden (piano)

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

This page addresses solely Carpenter's relationship with the Society, and his private and commercial recordings; his life and career are well documented elsewhere.

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

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

Chicago Gramophone Society

Remarkably, in December 1927 Carpenter made his only published recording as a pianist for the Chicago Gramophone Society. How did this come about? Two standard works on the composer do not discuss the recording's genesis. Nor was the Society's mouthpiece, The Phonograph Monthly Review, more forthcoming: in November 1927, it relayed a communication from the Society, stating that the production of its second issue had been delayed by 'an over-crowded schedule at the recording studios', and giving no hint as to its contents. The issue was officially announced in January 1928, distributed in February or thereabouts, and reviewed in May. It is perhaps surprising that none of these articles made anything of the fact that one of the two discs in this set was the product of a decade-long professional partnership between the composer and one of his most devoted interpreters, the mezzo-soprano Mina Hager.

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.'

The audition took place in late 1917, some months after the USA had entered the 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, with the result that Sousa enlisted and became the Station band's bandmaster; in September, Carpenter had been appointed a member of the US National Committee on Army and Navy Camp Music. In this capacity, he more than once visited the Great Lakes Training Station, 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 for the 'bluejackets', at which old favourites like 'Annie Laurie' were sung, or at an entertainment for the 'jackies' such as the Thanksgiving Ball held at the Station in November 1917.

Originally set for female voice and piano, the four Water-Colors had been premiered by the Scottish-born mezzo-soprano Christine Miller (1877-1956) and the composer on 4 October 1916 at the Ziegfeld Theater in Chicago. The premiere of Carpenter's new version for orchestra with piano was given by Mina Hager on 30 December 2017, 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. This was the beginning of a significant and enduring musical partnership, Hager becoming a life-long champion of Carpenter. It has been suggested that on 30 March 1918 they gave the first recital devoted entirely to his songs, but no source of the period confirming this has been located; it seems the recital in question took place exactly a year later, after a charity supper at Chicago's Arts Club, whose programme has not been ascertained. What is certain is that in May 1918, at a music teachers' convention in Bloomington, Illinois, Carpenter gave a talk on music and the war effort, after which Hager joined him in fourteen of his songs, including Water Colors, in her first known all-Carpenter recital. A critic noted that the singer, who had

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

The previous month, Carpenter had been given charge of the music for a gala celebration of the centennial of Illinois' statehood, mounted by the Chicago Historical Society at Orchestra Hall: as part of the festivities, Hager, wearing 'an old brocade gown' of the period from the Society's collection, sang '[a]ll of the songs that were favorites of the belles and beau [sic] of civil war days'. In June 1918, Carpenter again accompanied Hager in two groups of his songs, back at Chicago's Illinois Theater. Eighteen months later, they performed together at a meeting of the Englewood Woman's Club, 'a big compliment to the club.' Hager took the orchestral Water-Colors to Minneapolis in November 1920, and the following October she chose several of Carpenter's songs for her New York debut. Just days later, she sang a Carpenter group at the National American Music Festival in Buffalo, New York, and in December 1921 the composer once again joined her for a private recital of his songs at the home of a Chicago society hostess. Over the following years, they appeared together slightly less frequently, but Hager remained faithful, programming his songs regularly and taking them abroad, in 1924 to London, Berlin, and perhaps elsewhere in Europe; 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. 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.'

Yet, although Carpenter was perhaps Chicago's leading composer in the '20s, he was still barely represented on disc. If the Society was aiming to promote the city's music and artists, as suggested on the page devoted to it, his all but untapped oeuvre was an obvious choice. And it would not have been surprising if Carpenter, when approached by the Society, nominated Hager as performer, and proposed the original version of Water-Colors with piano (the orchestral version would have been too expensive to record), which fit neatly on a single 12-inch (30 cm) disc. The result was an important gramophone premiere, to be sure; still, it is tempting to wonder if the Society originally hoped to include another work and make up a two-disc issue devoted entirely to the composer. After all, by 1927 the Water-Colors were distinctly old-fashioned. The previous year, the world premiere of Carpenter's ballet Skyscrapers in New York had caused quite a stir, both for its jazz-influenced score and as 'the first attempt in a ballet of serious dimensions to bring into being a purely American choreography as an art form.' As it happened, Robert Pollak, music critic and joint underwriter of the Society's recordings, was not enamoured of Skyscrapers; reviewing the Chicago premiere, given on 5 November 1926 in a purely orchestral performance, without choreography, Pollak described the score as

'a moderately interesting study in jazz tune and rhythm giving a total effect not so interesting as either "Krazy Kat" or the "Perambulator" suite. Heretofore the humor of Carpenter has been a matter of light strokes and passing whimsies. "Skyscrapers" is so heavily scored that this effect is missing and the general impression is of something cumbersome and without contour. Then, too, the piece has that fault so characteristic of much modern music. What it considers rhythm is largely meter. There are only inconsiderate rhythmical patterns within the savage limitations of the jazz beat.'

One can imagine that Carpenter might have been put out by this unsympathetic response. Nevertheless, he did record Water-Colors for the Society, and two years later he would give Pollak a cordial interview for The Chicagoan, which employed Pollak as music critic. It seems likely Pollak dealt with Carpenter on the Society's behalf; did they discuss recording a piano work, played by the composer himself or by the talented Marion Roberts? (That was not to be: shortly after recording the Society's first issue, she was murdered by her fiancé.) This must remain speculation, unless Carpenter's papers are found to contain relevant documents, or discographical research determines whether any more of his music was recorded for the Society but not issued. This is highly unlikely, since the Society had no funds for such an exercise, unless funded by Carpenter himself. (A private recording made by Carpenter before the Society was founded, see below, cannot have formed part of this or any projected release by the Society.)

Perhaps, of course, Carpenter and the Society were simply content with the Water-Colors. With a different pianist, Hager recorded a companion disc, of lieder by Wolf and Strauss, repertoire which spoke directly to the enthusiasms of Pollak and his co-sponsor Vories Fisher, the Society's President, and which she may have selected in consultation with them. Perhaps Carpenter 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. His views on the matter appear not to have been canvassed, nor does he seem to have left any comment on his recording with Hager, 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.'

Perhaps, indeed, Carpenter was uncertain of the reception his piano-playing would receive from the gramophone audience, unseen and of unknown disposition. Such a fear was not unfounded. Today, a composer's recorded performance, or personal supervision of one, is almost automatically granted a special interest and authenticity. A modern reader is likely to be taken back at the anonymous review of the Society's second issue:

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

Recordings

Private

Selection	Artists	Format	Matrix	Stamper	Date	Location	Label cat. no.	Country
Spoken instruction to tune playback machine Carpenter Skyscrapers, unpublished piano reduction – start; Nos.1 to 6(?)	John Alden Carpenter (piano, voice), anon. (speaker)	10" / 25 cm lateral disc	Ⓦ81672-1	unknown	27 November 1925	Columbia studio, New York City(?)	private, unnumbered?	USA
(NB side-break unclear) Nos.7(?) to 11	John Alden Carpenter (piano, voice, whistling), anon. (speaker)	10" / 25 cm lateral disc	Ⓦ81673-1	unknown	27 November 1925	Columbia studio, New York City(?)	private, unnumbered?	USA
Nos.12 to 22	John Alden Carpenter (piano, voice), anon. (speaker)	10" / 25 cm lateral disc	Ⓦ81674-1	unknown	27 November 1925	Columbia studio, New York City(?)	private, unnumbered?	USA
Nos.23 to 32	John Alden Carpenter (piano, voice), anon. (speaker)	10" / 25 cm lateral disc	Ⓦ81675-1	unknown	27 November 1925	Columbia studio, New York City(?)	private, unnumbered?	USA
Nos.33 to 38	John Alden Carpenter (piano, voice), anon. (speaker)	10" / 25 cm lateral disc	Ⓦ81676-1	unknown	27 November 1925	Columbia studio, New York City(?)	private, unnumbered?	USA
Nos.39 to 42	John Alden Carpenter (piano, voice), anon. (speaker)	10" / 25 cm lateral disc	Ⓦ81677-1	unknown	27 November 1925	Columbia studio, New York City(?)	private, unnumbered?	USA
Nos.43 to 46	John Alden Carpenter (piano, voice), anon. (speaker)	10" / 25 cm lateral disc	Ⓦ81678-1	unknown	27 November 1925	Columbia studio, New York City(?)	private, unnumbered?	USA
Nos.47 to 50 (NB No.51 not called)	John Alden Carpenter (piano, voice), anon. (speaker)	10" / 25 cm lateral disc	Ⓦ81679-1	unknown	27 November 1925	Columbia studio, New York City(?)	private, unnumbered?	USA
Nos.52 to 57; end	John Alden Carpenter (piano, voice), anon. (speaker)	10" / 25 cm lateral disc	Ⓦ81680-1	unknown	27 November 1925	Columbia studio, New York City(?)	private, unnumbered?	USA

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. 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. 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. 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."'

(The 'farmhouse in Vermont' was probably Carpenter's 'summer place' in Charlotte). 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.'

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. Not the least remarkable aspect of the recording is the verve of Carpenter's performance, which summons a mental image of him and Jones hammering out the ballet's scenario together. 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). 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

Selection	Artists	Format	Matrix	Stamper	Date	Location	Label cat. no.	Country
Carpenter Water-Colors (i) On a Screen (ii) The Odalisque	Mina Hager (mezzo-soprano), John Alden Carpenter (piano)	12" / 30 cm lateral disc	Ⓦ91733-2	2-A-2	5 December 1927	Columbia studio, New York City(?)	Chicago Gramophone Society 50019-P	USA
(iii) Highwaymen (iv) To a Young Gentleman	Mina Hager (mezzo-soprano), John Alden Carpenter (piano)	12" / 30 cm lateral disc	Ⓦ91734-2	2-A-1	5 December 1927	Columbia studio, New York City(?)	Chicago Gramophone Society 50019-P	USA
Carpenter Song of Faith – Part 4 (of 4) (short-play edition)	John Alden Carpenter (narrator), Chicago a Cappella Choir, anonymous (organ), Philadelphia Orchestra, Noble Cain (conductor)	10" / 25 cm lateral disc	BVE-72050-2	unknown	10 April 1932	Studio 2, Church Building, Camden, New Jersey	Victor 1560-B	USA
Part 2 (of 2) (long-play edition)	John Alden Carpenter (narrator), Chicago a Cappella Choir, anonymous (organ), Philadelphia Orchestra, Noble Cain (conductor)	12" / 30 cm 33⅓ rpm lateral disc	LCVE-72051-1	unknown	10 April 1932	Studio 2, Church Building, Camden, New Jersey	Victor L-11608-B	USA

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 throughout this site, the magazine is always referred to in the text and footnotes as The Phonograph Monthly Review or, in some contexts, the Review