1

Thirteenth Chapter (Continued)

It ended by by boarding the night train from

Veracruz

and leaving Tony there to meet Ida's boat. I just couldn't stand another night in that vile town!

Adiós! adiós, Señora, Generál cried the obsequious porters as they saw me off. Every one called Tony Generál down there on account of his boots!

The train was to leave at seven o'clock and seemed all ready to start, but the porter came in and said: Well, we don't go until 11 or 12!

Why?

I exclaimed. Oh we've just heard of a passenger train that is bringing in some more people who want to go to Mexico City!

That's the kind of schedule they keep here! I dined, went to bed and to sleep before we left, but we didn't get in until one o'clock next day!

San Ángel Inn seemed a Paradise after my week of rain and discomfort. They told me that when the earthquake hit them, the great concrete fountain in the patio here swayed from sided to side splashing the water up in the air and threw all the gold fish out on the ground! But this old stone monastery is so solid it never cracked.

Sunday night, Frank, who had returned from Jalapa in the morning, and I went down to meet Tony and Ida. In the confusion of sorting out the valises at the train and trying to prevent the cargodores from running away with them, I saw a tall, fair

2

man standing at one side and tentatively bowing to me when he caught my eye. I recognized him from his photographs which had been in every newspaper here for weeks advertising his arrival. It was Stokowski, the great conductor of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra. So I went up to him and he told me he had never forgotten his visit to my place in Taos and had known me because I had joined Tony who was on the train with him. He was just up from Yucatán for a few weeks here and had a letter to me - had already made friends with Ida and Tony. Frank joined us saying he had a letter from John Davey telling him to look out for Stokowski and help him see things. He was very attractive and charming and I invited him to lunch the following Tuesday, and also Tannenbaum and we separated. He had a busy little American woman named Mrs. Payne acting as cicerone for him. I had read in both the American and Mexican papers that he was coming here to look for indian music and I had written

Frank Crowninshield

Frank Crownshield

who, it was reported, was coming also, that the only indian music around here was Tony's, so I understood his eagerness to be friends.

We had a lovely sunny party in the Patio on Tuesday and Frank brought Professor Moisés Sáenz along. This last was a splendid looking man, strong and dark and full of a kind of valor. He was minister of Education before, but is now at the head of Public Health and Charities.

We had some fine talk at lunch and the meal was exquisite. Madame Roux made her appearance at our table, full of compliments and flattery for Stokowski for she adores distinguished visitors and before lunch was over we saw a photographer sneak in with a camera and its tripod, and hide behind a vine hung pillar and she had undoubtedly had him telephoned for to get the group

3

to add to her really historical collection of diners that hangs around the patio. As Sáenz said, one can reconstruct the whole past from those photographs of hers! Before they left Frank mentioned that he was about to arrange a meeting between Tony and

Chávez

Chaves

, who is the Director of the Mexican Symphony Orchestra and a great modernist. I have forgotten to tell that Stokowski came here to direct

Chávez's

Chaves'

orchestra because he admires

Chávez's

Chaves'

compositions so much and in fact came to lunch directly from rehearsal. When Frank said that Stokowski said that Tony had promised on the train to sing for him too, we asked him to join us for that

Chávez

Chaves

evening. He said he was meeting

Chávez

Chaves

at six o'clock that same day, so Frank said we might as well try to get together that night and they could just bring

Chávez

Chaves

along here about eight o'clock. It was 2:30 then, so they said they couldn't face any more food that day after the marvelous meal we had just put away. In fact it was wonderful. We had for Hors d'oeuvres - salad of avocado and a pâté de FailFoie gras - cream of Spinach soup, white fish with Burgundy sauce, filet of beef with string beans, duckling cooked in orange juice with watercress salad and a miraculous strawberry tart, with Dubonnet for the aperitif, graves superior iced, through the meal and green chartreuse with the coffee. Naturally no one could think of an evening meal! I said, Oh, we can order some chocolate and sandwiches if we need them, and they departed, all promising to come back, bringing

Chávez

Chaves

, and Sáenz was to bring Mary, for after all the party for Tony and

Chávez

Chaves

had been originally planned to take place in her house and she'd hate to miss it.

I had been much interested in getting Tony to sing

4

for

Chávez

Chaves

to watch the lattter's reaction because he thinks these indians here have indian music and we know they haven't, and as he has based some of his most modern work on what he calls indian music, I wanted to see what he'd say when he really heard some!

We were exhausted after the lunch was over and Stokowski and little Mrs. Payne (very calculating and busy minded) had left for an important meeting in the city, and we just lay around all the afternoon. About five o'clock I sent for the maître d'hôtel and told him a few friends were coming for the evening and he must prepare a small table in the library and have about fifty very tiny sandwiches made of pâté de fois gras and caviare, and I gave him two bottles of Pommery (sec) to put on the ice. I said: Just put the plates and glasses and cups for coffee on the table, and serve us where we sit - no one will want much - make the table nice with flowers and put this in the centre, and I gave him my precious, unique, and only example of a mexican band in a band stand made in colored straws, with its tiny director standing in the centre! I never saw but that one and it was too amusing - and extremely suitable as a decoration!

We are so used to going to bed early evenings and reading that we all three felt lugubrious when we went downstairs at eight o'clock. There was the table all set for exactly ten people for a meal! One never gets what one orders here, but it looked terribly attractive with that bandstand raised up above a wreath of flowers. Two bottles of champagne stood discretely in buckets of ice on a side table and the fire was blazing.

Suppose nobody comes and here we sit, said Ida. They

5

may not find

Chávez

Chaves

is free for tonight.

I don't feel like giving my songs to them mexicans. said Tony. I guess I go down town. I guess you don't, I answered crisply. Let's warm up the drum. And I set it in front of the fire.

Madame Roux, enormous in an english tweed coat and skirt stuck her head in the door.

Does the table please you? she asked in French.

It's lovely. Do come in this evening. I added, and hear the music And monsieur too I said looking at the small shattered old man who is her beau and from whom Pancho Villa removed half a million head of cattle some years ago, up in Chinavah Chimalhuacán. I have never heard him - I long to hear that musique indienne - merci bien. . . She disappeared and we fell into silence. The maître d'hôtel dashed in and out with an anxious face, longing to bring in his little sandwiches and still nobody came. Oh dear! Think of 50 sandwiches we will have to eat up, I sighed! Una floated into the room in evening dress looking aloof. She had spend the last six weeks trying to meet

Chávez

Chaves

with all kinds of letters from Senator Cutting, etc. and he'd never answered her notes. She was feeling coldly towards him but still she couldn't decide not to come, and besides, she'd known Stokowski years ago. She joined our lovely little group around the fire and stared at the long empty room and so we just sat there awhile.

Then came a little tap at the door. The night watchman stuck his head in looking scared. Some people come, he said. I went to the door and outside in the Patio stood two strangers - two women, one in Chinese costume and the other in an old embroidered

6

muslin spanish dress. Behind them stood a crowd of mexicans in enormous straw hats, white cotton suits with sashes, and bare feet in huaraches. They all carried home made guitars, mandolins, fiddles and cellos. The two young women came right on in smiling and the men followed them. Maybe we're late one of the women said, It must be half past eight. I shook hands all around while my own group stared at us from the other end of the room. I determined not to be flustered and so I said gaily: Well who are you anyway?

Oh, I am Frances Toor and this is

Concha Michel

Maria Concha

. Elsie told me to look you up and I got your letter of introduction from

Paul Kellogg

Paul Kellog

, you know.

Oh yes, I said. The Mexicans stood around and she said, Shall we put some chairs down here for them? So we did. There were twelve of them, and they looked swell in a row at the end of the room which now did not look so empty. They looked exactly like the straw figures in my darling straw bandstand in the centre of the table.

I got everybody introduced and a tap came at the door. It was the maître d'hôtel looking as tho he would burst, carrying in a platter of tiny triangles of toast spread with things. He made as if to pass them to those Mexicans who were eyeing them hungrily. No. No. I whispered to him, wait - our friends have not come yet. I asked Frances Toor what the men would like and she said Cognac, so the waiter hurried out for it. Then the crowd surged in, Frank leading them. I hope you have something for us to eat he whispered - We've none of us had a bite since noon. A cold looking, dark, young man came in bowing, another followed, handsome, Mrs. Payne came next, pale and worn out with her

7

struggles, Stokowski smiling and fresh in a light gray suit, a jolly girl followed who clasped my arm: I am Mary she exclaimed. Sáenz strolled after her, large and courageous looking, and at the rear Madame Roux and Don Carlos, and Madame's neice, Madeline.

The room was full and that table couldn't hold the half of them. As for those fifty triangles! Well!

Have you met

Chávez

Chaves

? asked Frank, bringing up the cold dark young man who smiled coldly and shook hands. The mexicans who had had theirs, suddenly struck up a deafening tune that sounded like a barn dance. No one could make anyone hear a word, and I tried in vain to direct the waiter to give everybody a plate and then open up the wine, get some more plates and some more glasses - to pass the sandwiches - to get going in fact. He was overcome by his responsibility, and dashing out of the room he

staid

stayed

out. Everyone was looking absolutely starved and Mrs. Payne had partially collapsed from fatigue in a large chair. Frank, for heaven's sake open one of those bottles, will you, and pass the wine. I don't know how to open Champagne, said Frank cheerfully, Where's that waiter gone? He's gone that's all I know, I answered. I ran over to Madame! Madame - il nous faut encore des sandwiches, I hissed in her ear - all these people are hungry and look at those bits of food! Yes, yes, we'll order some at once. she bellowed above the music. where is that waiter? God knows, I groaned. I went over to Ida and sank into a chair beside her: I can't do a thing about this, I said in her ear, as the Mexicans thrummed and thrummed. Ida was weak from laughing. No, the party has run away from you. she cried . . like a tame horse that you've been driving all your life!

8

The waiter came back and opened a bottle but didn't know what to do next and I had to get the glasses all on a tray and tell him to fill them and pass them and I carried one at once to Mrs. Payne to resuscitate her, which it did. It wasn't long before everyone had a glass of wine but the two bottles were then empty and the sandwiches only went around once for everyone took at least two of the tiny things. Go and get some more sandwiches. Plenty of them, and two more bottles of wine, I ordered and kept ordering at intervals all through the evening. But sad to tell, all he could produce were

cheese

cheeze

sandwiches, and then the

cheese

cheeze

gave out and he came in with a huge platter of buttered toast! But as there was all the Champagne that anyone could drink, no one seemed to mind the peculiar dearth of food, after the first bitter (I suppose) realization.

But all this time that I had been trying to organize that end of it, the party had been going along of its own accord.

Concha Michel

Maria Concha

was singing Folk songs in a beautiful rich voice and then she picked up her muslin skirts and danced a Járabe with one of the men - a kind of spanish peasant dance. The music was loud but empty. It was nothing, really, but Spanish echoes. Everyone was talking and laughing and not listening. Madame Roux was pouring Champagne on Tony's head as he turned his back, to baptize him, she said. His eyes after a couple glasses of champagne were beginning to snap, and in the interval of Mexican music he snatched up his drum, made a low mocking bow to Stokowski, announced shortly: War Dance and started to sing, very loudly and better than I ever heard him. In an instant there was silence - Stokowski put his glass down on the piano,

Chávez

Chaves

turned around and stared, the Mexicans at the other end of the room leaned forward in their chairs, their mouths open with surprise.

9

Tony's song sounded strong, manly, passionate and powerful after the empty, effete, noisy string music. It brought another world into the room - something more alive and more vigorous, and at the same time more artful than what had been there. Stokowski had talked at noon about the crudity of our scale, the lack of subtlety and possibility in our notation and in our instruments. We can hear sixteenth and thirty-seconds he had said we do hear them in nature but not in our music. The day must come when we shall be able to record a finer music - with finer tones - and we must make instruments for it.

Tony was singing sixteenths and thirty-seconds! His vocal cords are accustomed to render tones and modulations that our voices cannot. The two directors focused on him with a peculiar intense concentration. He finished in fine form with the shrill cockrel crow that they use and with his drumstick suspended in the air, as he threw a funny look of bravado at Stokowski as much to say, If you really want to hear something, there's a song! Everyone in the room stamped and clapped with excitement, the Mexicans as well, and the two directors rushed up to Tony and grabbed him. But this is mag nif i centexclaimed Stokowski. I never knew there was anything like this. The two musicians put their heads together and began a technical frenzy of discussion. Madame's daughter rushed upstairs and dragged the two blameless daughters of the consul General out of bed and brought them downstairs so they should not miss such an evening. Tony sang a collection of songs from different tribes, and they never let him stop - but finally he came to an end and raising his drumstick to the Mexicans at the end of the room he called in Spanish:

10

Now you, boys and they flung themselves into a Spanish-indian fandango,

Concha Michel

Maria Concha

singing and dancing it. They had now all had their third round of cognac and they did their utmost to supercede the singing they had just heard. They rocked and stamped and gave occassional yells. They made noise. But it was empty. It lacked that strange religious fervor that true indian music has, and which embues it with fascination and glamour, and more than all, stimulates and excites and consoles those who listen to it, as though it would reassure and strengthen a failing humanity. The musicians in the room listened more or less politely to the Mexican band from Jalisco but they were not interested. Mrs. Payne murmured to me: I love it so - I hate to think it is passing away! Is it I asked incredulously. I could not see that it existed sufficiently. Frank came over to me beaming. Mabel - I've passed many strange evenings, but this is the strangest evening I have ever known. Later he came and said,

Chávez

Chaves

is so excited over Tony he wants to go with Tony and me when we go to visit the Neyarite indians to hear him sing to them and see if they can come out with any old real indian music.

At the end of the evening, when everyone was leaving, I caught up my bandstand and held it out to Stokowski, I'm going to give it to you to remember the evening by, I said. Can I have it? I love it, I'll always treasure it! he exclaimed. Well I just had to give it to him - it was so fitting an end to the party. What he wants more than anything else now is to come to Taos and have Tony get some boys and listen to their singing. Above all, to record it. It must be recorded he said. It must be saved somehow.

During the evening I had tried to get Una to sing because it would have been so amusing - we would then have heard the

11

three great periods of music - the archaic, the modified and the new modern form, but alas, there was no one to accompany her, for all the new music needs a skilled pianist.

The party filed out, everyone paying compliments to everyone else. Everyone was in a good humor but no one was drunk although there was quite a row of empty bottles along the table. There had been too much emotion and mental stimulant dominating the party, for wine to affect or overcome them. It had only sharpened the perceptions.

I guess indians got something people need, said Tony as he pulled off his boots!

12

Fourteenth Chapter

Getting tickets for the extraordinario symphony concert was difficult. All the town was plastered with huge posters saying merely Stokowski! On bill boards, booths, and even across church doors, but when we tried to buy tickets we couldn't find out where they were sold. Finally someone said they were on sale in a music store so we went and asked there on a Thursday. Although the concert was to take place on Saturday night, no tickets yet! The man said, Tickets very slow in Mexico! Maybe tomorrow! So after being out all day in the country, we motored to town about four o'clock and the shop had only just opened! Just the same, nearly all the tickets were gone already! In a small room at the back of the store I found several people, Mary Doherty, Sáenz's Secretary among them. Frank Tannenbaum had asked her to secure tickets for us when she got hers though I didn't know this.

On a chair, leaning against the back of it, was a diagram of the theatre. People had to get down on the floor and pick out the seats they wanted and stick pins in them. We got seats rather far back, unfortunately.

We had an engagement to tea with Frances Toor and drove over to her apartment house. On the fifth floor she had the equivalent of a pent house, with a parrot swinging at the front door. The building leaned over so much that the floor sloped rapidly to one side. She had some rooms with cream walls and all the doors and windows painted green, and there was a fine view over the city. She is a rather coarse featured Russian Jewess who says she was never happy

13

till she came to Mexico, where everyone is so kind and unselfconsciously smiling, and where one cannot be lonely. She has made a fine collection in the seven years she has been here of old indian and mexican chests, pottery, and textiles. She was rather mean about several people - for instance she said Emma hadn't the poetry or the knowledge to write the book she has gone home to write, and she said little Mrs. Payne has got hold of several rich women in America and is exploiting Mexico to them, selling things for $5.00 that cost her five cents, and selling the paintings of poor young Mexican artists to them and taking 1/3 in commissions.

Suddenly she got a phone message and came back and told us that Stokowski and Keppel (the head of the Carnegie Foundation) were about to be interviewed and Mrs. Payne wanted her to come over to the Hotel Geneve - and that she thought she'd better go! However, that her maid Leonora had prepared something for us and we must eat. We said we would, and not to bother about us - she ran off and Leonora brought in a red and white paper tablecloth and spread the table for a meal! We were aghast for we had had a hearty meal at two o'clock over in

Toluca.

Just the same, she served us with perfectly delicious enchiladas, puree of beans, large rolls and coffee, followed by a jelly of exotic fruit and sweet cakes! We just couldn't eat. It was only five o'clock. Ida put hers in a paper napkin and carried it away in her hand bag - so not to hurt any feelings. I toyed with mine - Tony did pretty well. When we were through we left - stuffed!

The concert was set for 9 o'clock but did not start until nearly 10. It was in a large theatre and was very informal. There isn't a yard of red tape in this whole country. The four sopranos and contraltos came in to join the orchestra and took ages

14

to get themselves fixed just right - their chairs, their skirts and all. Chávez came in, bowed coldly to the audience and faced his orchestra. He had a marvelous dress suit that moulded his beautiful figure and from the back, baton raised, he looked like a Toreador. He gave the Daphnis and Chloe of Ravel and in a flash one sensed how musical his orchestra is, how much more musical than ours. We did not seem to be hearing trained musicians playing on fine instruments. It was a direct flow of pure sound, exquisitely alive - with a vibration one does not get in America. It came into being like light, like sunshine; it was elemental like fire or air - immediate and transforming to the listener who perceived it directly like warmth and not through the brain as opinion or appreciation.

Chávez directing was one with the music. We had called him inexpressive and cold! On his job he was not personal. It was not Chávez interpreting a musical score. He became the thing - his body took the lines of the lyrical melody - he flowed into it and it flowed through him. He was like the composition - infinitely graceful and poetic. He swayed and his physique was capable of endless plastic subtleties. He poised himself like a butterfly - his baton and his long fingers were like delicate antennae. The orchestra passed itself out in shimmering waves. This was another dimension in symphonic orchestration. We get nothing like it at home.

Chávez followed this with a composition of his called "Indian Ballet" in four parts, showing air, water, fire, and earth. In an interval before he started the composition he stood before the orchestra - baton raised. His lines had altered, grown severe- angular and archaic. His proud head sprang from his high broad shoulders - sharp in outline and fierce like a piece of black volcanic

15

glass. His figure was archaic - with its narrow hips and long straight legs. Ida whispered to me that he looked like a piece of Etruscan bronze but I saw the Aztec calligraphy, the sharp, virile, dangerous Aztec speech, with its x's, tc's and yl's! He started the men and instantly we were transported to another earlier world than this - of other purer elements, and incomprehensible motivations; a world where other powers than ours ruled over the earth, where all the shapes were different. I feel certain that no European can ever direct this music of Chávez. It takes one with his blood. He has somehow gone back and touched the Aztec spring. The music had the configuration of the Codices and their bright colors. It was fierce, delicate, ruthless and completely different from anything I have ever heard or imagined. That it contained motives that suggested a harmonious acceptance of blood sacrifice does not describe it. It was simply of another life. As he directed it his back was all we have seen in antique and archaic sculptures here. He made one know the Aztec era, and surely reading the colored picture writing of the Codices after hearing and seeing that Indian Ballet one could come nearer its reality. This experience was a rare one for me. To think of Chávez and

Rivera

coming out of Mexico - easily the two greatest living artists!

There came an entracte. Tony went out and returned having met the Mexican who was on the train from El Paso when we came. He told Tony he was minister of education and to come soon to see him in his office. I asked Frank who was there, who the minister is now. He said "Puig." My heavens! The man poor Una has been trying to reach with letters from Cutting and from Governor Gomez! And he had been on that train and we never realized his importance for her! Well, this is Mexico. Una was leaving the next morning for New York, having given up all hope of making any connections to help her get

16

concerts here!

After ten minutes the audience reassembled and Stokowski appeared, tall, elegant, charming, with his auriole of blond hair so nearly white. He bowed and then turned swiftly about and summoned the orchestra to their feet in a loud triumphant blazing of the Mexican National Anthem! In a flash, with one impulsive movement the audience was on its feet cheering and they stood throughout the piece - Mexicans and Americans mingled, smiling. It was a most charming and endearing gesture from Stokowski. He certainly makes a good ambassador from the United States!

But Oh dear! Wagner, after

Chávez's

music seemed utterly passe and dead. In vain he threw himself about stretching himself to his longest long lengths - he could get no life from either the composition or the orchestra! They did not play like the same men at all. It was really boring, and there was too much contrast between his puppet like appearance, and

Chávez's

radiumistic, highly charged expressiveness.

Stokowski is the greatest of his kind that we have in America. In Mexico he seemed to lack oil, and the fire of human blood. He had intellect, yes, and great elegance. But he did not surpise one with the mystery of man's power.

There is great wonder here in this country.