Evening star., 1940-11-03
By Miriam Gutenberg.

By Miriam Gutenberg.
With materials as intangible as a
dream, five men went to work in the
spring of 1881 to build Washington
institution.
Their materials we're civic pride,
the wish of parents that their chill
dren might have all that music could
give them, and the sheer, simple love
of music that begets sharing. They
built the National Symphony Or
chestra.
Those five men, with DR.. Hans
Kinder as the eX-officio moving
spirit, formed the organizing COM
-nittee. 1t has taken thousands Of
men and women to provide the
financial bricks and mortar to make
an edifice of the institution.
You will not find the names of
all those men and women in the
Social Register. It's not that kind
of institution. There was the very
old lady who lives on farm outside
Washington. She has never seen the
orchestra, just heard it over the
radio from the Water Gate, but once
she sent in a dollar from her egg
money to help tide it over a crisis.
And there have been little boys who
have gone regularly to the orches-
tra's student concerts. Their
pennies. put together, have made
dollars to help keep the orchestra
alive.
Because of the old ladies and the
little boys and all the people in be-
tween, the National Symphony Or
chestra will open its tenth season at
Constitution Hall Wednesday night
with Rachmaninoff as guest soloist.
AS childs first decade is
harassed by measles, mumps and
whooping cough, so the orchestra
has had it's childhood illnesses
labor troubles, limited repertoire, in
sufficient muSicians-always a pre-
carious financial existence.
Even as recently as last April IA,
the program for the final concert of
the 1939-1940 season bore this an
nouncement:
The Board of Directors of the
National Symphony Orchestra As
sociation regrets that it is unable to
announce an orchestra season for
1940-1"
Agreement Reached.
Like all the other crises that have
dogged the orchestra, this, too,
passed. After five months of debate
between the orchestra association
and the Musicians Union, DR.. John
r. Steelman, director of the Labor
Departments Cancellation Service,
who had been attempting for weeks
to settle the dispute, called in Sam
uel R. Rosenbaum, vice president of
the Philadelphia Orchestra Associa-
ton, as mediator and the two fac
tionS reached an agreement.
Then began the campaign, three
months late, to raise the sustaining
fund for the season which opens
Wednesday. In the face of the
crisis, The Star and the National
Broadcasting Co. organized The
Dollar Club" From store at Four
teenth street and New York avenue
NV, programs were broadcast sew
eral times daily, urging Washing
tonians to join the drive to save the
symphony. In front of the store was
a topless kettle drum into which
motorists and passersby could drop
their dimes and dollars.
Youngsters in the school glee
clubs, Boy Scout drum and bugle
corps, musicians from the National
Symphony, representatives from the
city's music clubs came to add their
voices and their music to the appeal
for funds from The Dollar Club"
Meanwhile, volunteer workers
pressed the campaign, and in less
than three weeks SLOT 900 was con-
tributed by 1854 people who
couldn't let the orchestra die.
Ten years ago no one, not even
the most enthusiastic proponent of
an orchestra for Washington, would
have believed that the city held
1854 people willing to give that
music might be shared.
Ten years ago there had been
seven attempts to organize a SYM
phony orchestra in Washington-all
failures. Reginald de Koven, the
late great composer, dreamed of a
Washington symphony orchestra as
far back as 1902. Heinrich Hammer
and Kurt Hetzel both made futile
efforts to organize one Washing
ton musicians themselves banded
together in the spring of 1880 and
played three concerts on a co-opera-
tive basis. Called the National SYM
phony, this group invited Rudolph
Schueller to conduct the first con-
cert, DR.. Kinder to direct the last
two concerts.
But in 1881 Washington was still
the only great capital in the world
without its own symphony orchestra
1t was supplied by the orchestras
that came occasionally to the city
on tour. Most of the time there was
no music at all.