In the early 1950s, at a luncheon meeting of the National Press Club, a slim, sandy-haired man by the name of Leroy Anderson took the stage. As he sat down at the piano, he modestly announced the songs that he had written and would be playing. Even though his name was largely unknown, his compositions were becoming quite popular and well known. After he finished, the audience of newsmen, members of congress, and other government dignitaries wildly applauded his performance. This young man from Boston was considered to be one of the most promising American composers of lighter works that had appeared in a long time (Gilbert 25).
Another musician that also had a part on that program, L. Wolfe Gilbert, was intrigued by Leroy Anderson's talent. He described Leroy Anderson as, "a modest, sincere artist, but one who did not take himself seriously. He exuded a quaint New England sense of humor and was not one of those who believed everything he read in his press notices" (25). After that first meeting, Mr. Gilbert became a fan of Leroy Anderson.
When Anderson made a trip to the West Coast to conduct at the Hollywood Bowl, Gilbert made sure he was in the audience. Even though this was Leroy Anderson's first appearance, the amphitheatre was filled to capacity. The first half of the concert contained selections from Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Strauss, and Sibelious. Gilbert says that, "he conducted with the assurance and obvious know-how of a seasoned, authoritative artist . . . When he finished conducting Finlandia by Sibelious, the applause was nothing short of an ovation. The musicians in the orchestra tapped their instruments in long approval" (25). The second half of the concert featured Leroy Anderson's own compositions; which, because of their frequent occurrence on television and radio the audience was familiar with them. In fact, the audience vocally requested Blue Tango, a composition that was the first instrumental to become No. 1 on the Hit Parade, selling more than a million copies.
After attending the Hollywood Bowl concert, Gilbert predicted that Leroy Anderson would carve a niche for himself in the world of music. That prediction came true; however, Leroy Anderson didn't receive the honors that many thought were due him until after he died. It wasn't until 1988 that he was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, eight years after his death by cancer on May 18, 1975. During his lifetime Leroy Anderson wrote forty compositions, and while he is remembered for his light classical popular pieces, he also wrote classical music such as Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in C Major. In 1947 the Boston Eire Society commissioned him to write the Irish Suite, which included Irish tunes, one of which is the Irish Washerwoman. He not only wrote his compositions for the large classical orchestras, but later arranged them for bands with the same care that he had arranged them for the orchestra, making sure that they were arranged for different instrument combinations so they would be available to beginning and intermediate groups including soloists.
Leroy Anderson was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on June 29, 1908. His mother was a church organist, and it was she who gave him his first music lessons which, of course, were on the organ. As he got older, he received piano lessons at the New England Conservatory of Music and studied double bass under the tutelage of Gaston Dufresne in Boston. By the time he was twelve he made his first effort at composing, a minuet for a string quartet.
When Leroy Anderson entered Harvard University in 1925 he was able to study under several of the Harvard masters. His teacher in music theory was Walter Raymond Spalding. Spalding was the head of the music division at Harvard and had studied under Guilmant, Widor, Thuille, and Rheinberger in Paris and Munich. Spalding had a strong interest in public school musical education and this influence is seen in the effort Leroy Anderson made arranging his works so that they would be accessible to public school level groups.
His teacher in counterpoint was Edward Ballantine who had been a student of Spalding and Converse. Ballantine had gone to Berlin to study under Schnabel, Ganz and Rüfer before returning to Harvard to serve on the faculty until his retirement. One of the characteristics of his music is that it often was humorous, and this same characteristic is found in Anderson's works.
One of Leroy Anderson's composition professors was George Enescu (outside of Romania he was also known as George Enesco), a Romanian composer and violinist, and at that time was considered Romania's greatest musician. Enescu is best known for his Romanian Rhapsodies and the Third Violin Sonata; however, one of his most important works, though less known, is the opera Oedipe, which Romanians consider to be his masterpiece. Enescu's appreciation of the opera was demonstrated when he conducted the performance of Lohengrin at the inauguration of the Romanian Opera House of Bucharest. Enescu was very active in music education, not only encouraging a school of music in his own country, but also teaching at several French and American Universities.
Probably the best known professor that Anderson studied composition under is Walter Piston. Walter Piston taught himself the violin and piano, starting about the age of eleven. He began as an artist and worked briefly as a draftsman, a skill which he used to illustrate the instruments in his text book Orchestration. He entered Harvard in 1920 and graduated summa cum laude the year before Anderson started his studies there. Piston did not approach music by teaching rules, instead, he helped the student to be able to recognize the basic principles. Piston, not only had Anderson as a pupil, but several other noted composers which included Leonard Bernstein who completed Jeremiah, his first symphony, in 1942.
While at Harvard, Leroy Anderson was very active in school activities. In the band he played the trombone, the double bass in the orchestra, and singing in the famous Harvard Glee Club. During his senior year he took over the conductor's job of the Harvard Band as its drum major, including the goal post toss over. During that year he arranged some traditional Harvard songs and other Ivy League tunes for the band which caused people to notice the quality and personality of his talent. After he graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1929 he continued on with that job as he entered graduate school, graduating with his M.A. in 1930. Frederick Fennell, principal conductor of the Tokyo Kosei Windorchestra in Japan and a longtime admirer of Anderson's music, observed, "It is not all that difficult to imagine what the Harvard music faculty must have thought of their magna cum laude graduate associating himself with the nonsensical trivia of a marching band at a football game, even though it was at Harvard" (26). At that time no one knew how important that activity would become in launching Anderson's career with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
As Leroy Anderson was graduating from college, the great depression was just beginning. Edward Jablonski points out, that "despite the depression and its pinch, there was a flowing of the American symphony, a flurry of opera, and the birth of the ballet" (318). During this time Leonard Bernstein was working on his first symphony, George Gershwin presented Porgy and Bess (considered one of the most impressive American operas) in a Broadway theatre, and composers like Schuman, Creston, Copland, Roger Sessions, Peter Mennin, and others were very active in producing American symphonies. Jazz was evolving into swing, which required larger bands, giving birth to the commercial jazzy swing bands that today is called the Big Bands. Country music came into its own during this time. With the help of radio, the "citification of what had been rural music" gave birth to country artists such as Earnest Tubb, Roy Acuff, Carter Family, and Jimmie Rodgers (Jablonski 317-23).
During the depression, when so many were out of work, Leroy Anderson found more than enough to do. Besides music, he had a love for words so he studied German and the Scandinavian languages, becoming fluent in eleven different languages, a skill that later would serve his country well. He was the church organist and choir director for a Congregational church in Milton, Massachusetts. He tutored at Radcliffe College and became a member of the faculty in 1932. At the same time he was working as an instrumentalist and conductor for Boston hotels, radio, and summer resorts. His activities as an instrumentalist gave him the opportunity to be part of a band playing for the entertainment of passengers on a cruise to Scandinavia. By 1935 Leroy Anderson decided to devote his time exclusively to music, starting out as a freelance arranger, composer, and conductor.
During this same period of time it was a tradition to have what was known as Harvard Night at the Boston Pops. Harvard Night actually ran for seven nights during May and June and was one of the highlights of the Pops season. In 1935 the manager of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, George E. Judd, was a member of the Harvard class that would be celebrating their 25th reunion that year, and he wanted an arrangement of the Harvard songs that he had been hearing played by the Harvard Band at the football games. As a result, Anderson was asked to conduct the Boston Pops playing his arrangements. The nights that Anderson conducted the orchestra, Arthur Fiedler, the Boston Symphony's popular maestro whose conducting guaranteed a sold-out Symphony Hall, was in the audience. Arthur Fiedler liked what he heard and asked Anderson to write a piece that would feature the strings of the Pops orchestra. It wasn't long before Jazz Pizzicato, an immediate hit, was placed on Fiedler's desk. Arthur Fiedler liked it so well that he requested a companion piece to it, which was to be Jazz Legato. This was the start of a relationship with the Boston Pops and Arthur Fiedler that was to last for the rest of Leroy Anderson's life. It wasn't long before Fiedler engaged Anderson to be the arranger and permanent orchestrator for the Boston Pops Orchestra (Fennell 26-27).
With the advent of World War II, Anderson was called to serve by the U.S. Military in military intelligence. Because of his Swedish ancestry and fluency in Scandinavian languages, he was stationed in Iceland. By the time the War ended, Anderson had become the Chief of the Scandinavian Desk of the Military Intelligence Service and had been transfered to Washington. He was offered a very attractive career in the Intelligence Service, which he declined in order to return the music he loved. He was discharged as a Captain, but later was called back in service for a short time during the Korean War.
In 1945, while serving at the Pentagon, Leroy Anderson was thinking about the two pieces he had written for Fiedler and started to think of composing a new number when the title The Syncopated Clock came to his mind. It occurred to him that many composers had written about clocks, but they were ordinary clocks that beat in regular rhythm and his clock was going to be a clock that had its own irregular rhythm. Later he would use this experience in describing the creative process and what it takes to write a popular number. He remembered back to the night he performed for the National Press Club and how Hoagy Carmichael, one of the performers, introduced himself, "'You know,' he said in his quiet Hoosier drawl, 'many years ago I got up out of bed one morning and I said to myself: I think I'll sit down and write a piece called Star Dust so I won't have to work again for the rest of my life.' (The Syncopated Clock Still Ticks 31)" People would laugh when he told that story, but it made them stop and think of what goes into the creative process and what it takes to make a song popular. Even though The Syncopated Clock was popular and was being played, from the published score, around the country by professional and amateur orchestras, the record companies remained indifferent to it. Finally, in 1950, Anderson was asked to make an LP of his music and he included The Syncopated Clock on it. When the record was released, CBS was planning a program to show old movies in the evening called The Late Show. While the CBS producer was searching through recent music releases for a theme, he came across Anderson's record and liked The Syncopated Clock and used it. After five years of trying to get his song published, through a set of circumstances he had no control over, both Leroy Anderson and CBS found themselves with a hit on their hands. He concludes, "Incidentally, if anyone knows how to write music that is certain to be very popular, I should like to learn the secret. I'm sure Hoagy Carmichael would too. (The Syncopated Clock 31)"
After leaving the military, Leroy Anderson settled down in Woodbury, Connecticut with his wife Eleanor and his family, devoting his time to music. Starting with his first big hit, Fiddle Faddle, he started to turn out his style of music. The 1948 composition, Sleigh Ride, is probably the most recognized today. It is a standard on many Christmas collections. Looking at my personal collection, the song is included on more than a third of the Christmas CDs. It was a favorite of Gene Autry, Karen Carpenter graced it with her light style, and The Ventures produced their rock version of it in 1968. The most successful of Anderson's songs was Blue Tango, which was a "charming combination of South American rhythms and Negro spirituals, the mixture of blues and jazz (that) is still today received as an unusual and colorful and very vital sound. (Usaczyk)" Many of his songs, Sleigh Ride, Fiddle Faddle, Serenata, Belle of the Ball, and Blue Tango, were provided lyrics by Mitchell Parish, who also wrote the lyrics for Hoagy Carmichael's instrumental, Star Dust.
In 1958 Anderson got the opportunity to write the music for a Broadway Opera named Goldilocks that was choreographed by Agnes de Mille and stared Don Ameche and Elaine Stritch. The playwright, Walter Kerr, worried if Anderson would be able to be flexible and fast enough to make the overnight changes that are a part of producing a musical. Kerr said, "Well, I needn't have worried. He was the fastest of the lot. New songs were needed, and he'd have them the next morning. Furthermore, they were good . . . and absolutely perfect for the spot it was meant to fill. (Briggs 31)" While the play wasn't exactly a smashing success, it did run for 161 performances. Brooks Atkinson, a New York Times drama critic, thought the acting was very good, that the story line of a group producing a silent movie was without focus and overproduced, but found Anderson's music to be charming (The Theatre: "Goldilocks" 1:33).
Fennell sums up the reasons for Anderson's success, "The composer had a classical education in all the facets of music at the hands of distinguished and demanding teachers. His was an unusual talent, fed by curiosity and marked by an unmistakable instinct to do what was uniquely his. Missing no opportunity, he always seemed to possess the ability not just to learn but also to remember and to apply. After all this he remained a shy individual, . . . (27)"
To me, the best summary of the person Leroy Anderson is found in the "Idea Exchange" section of the September 1970 issue of The Instrumentalist. A high school viola player, named Linda, wrote to Anderson complaining about the parts that were assigned to the viola section. Her high school orchestra was performing three of his pieces, Fiddle Faddle, Sleigh Ride, and The Syncopated Clock. She found the viola parts to be "absolutely insulting" to her musicianship. She asked him, "you must know how frustrating it is to sit through an entire piece . . . while the other sections saw out beautiful melodies. Your parts treat us like a bunch of low-grade, moronic idiots! My five-year-old sister could play our part with ease! I really don't understand why you bothered writing us a part anyway. It's as if you had finished the score and someone came up and said, 'Hey, there's another instrument you forgot.' You shouldn't have troubled yourself because the part isn't worth the paper you printed it on! Please, please, please, give us a break. I'd admire you if I was out in the audience because all your pieces are fun to listen to. But, being a violist I can't help but hate you for the way you treat us." She closed and signed it with "I hope this letter is not insulting in any way . . . (Low Grade Moronic Idiots? 21)"
Leroy Anderson's character comes shining through in his reply to Linda, "I was very much interested to receive your letter because I know exactly how you feel. You see, I used to play the double bass, and if you think those viola parts are dull, you should see the parts we bass players have to put up with. Mostly we just go 'zoom, zoom, zoom' all the way through the piece." Then he explained the process he went through to put a piece of music fixed in his mind to orchestration. How the part a particular instrument is assigned -- melody, accompaniment, countermelody, etc. -- depends on the music. He enclosed three pieces of his music which he said, "I can assure you that I try to make all the orchestra parts as interesting as possible, including the viola part. If you look at the enclosed viola parts . . . you will see that the violas have a lot of interesting melodic passages. And far from treating you like 'low-grade, moronic idiots,' . . . I have given the violas some pretty difficult passages to play. I hope you will have a chance to play these numbers someday. In the meantime, when you are playing the accompaniment, remember that this is just as important to the music as the melody. At least we bass players and viola players are better off than the poor triangle player who had to count 104 measures rest and then go 'ping!' Thank you for writing and best regards. Sincerely, Leroy Anderson. P.S. The triangle player missed it. (Low Grade Moronic Idiots? 21-22)"
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