Enthusiastic Amateur

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One of the finest orchestral conductors alive, a sovereign interpreter of music old & new, is no solemn priest of tone but the ebullient son of Britain's most celebrated laxative manufacturer. Goateed, 63-year-old Sir Thomas Beecham is also an enthusiastic newlywed, a considerable amateur of the Elizabethan drama (especially Beaumont & Fletcher), an adamant and voluble Tory (though in this role he is really more of a Character than a Colonel Blimp), and a transparent apostle of the

THE GREAT MEDICINE Precocious advertising helped . . . good time. But all these facets of the Beecham personality combined, distracting though they are, cannot hide the fact that in their midst stands a musical artist of the first water.

Last week Sir Thomas was helping Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera make a smashing success in Chicago. Said the Chicago Tribune's discriminating Claudia Cassidy of Sir Thomas' Faust: "Its most persuasive points were Beecham's energetic pursuit of the beauty and brimstone of Gounod's imperishable score. . . . Sometimes the result was so delightful you wished the stars would stop singing." Throughout the winter Sir Thomas has been one of the chief ornaments of the Met's conductorially brilliant season on its home grounds. Between times he has galvanized the young, awkward Brooklyn Symphony into an ensemble which shamed the venerable New York Philharmonic-Symphony across the river. Sir Thomas is too independent, both financially and personally, to bother with the politics that are usually required to get and keep the outstanding symphony conductorships.

Besides, he prefers the lesser orchestras for their eager responsiveness. During the past season he has also directed the symphony orchestras of Seattle, Salt. Lake City, New Orleans and Montreal. A large section of the U.S. concertgoing public has heard Sir Thomas prove beyond question that the first requisite of a fine symphonic performance is not a great orchestra but a conductor of Sir Thomas' own shining ability.

His audiences have seen him jump about the podium like a college cheerleader, stand on one foot, kick up his heels, shake his fists, lunge with his arms, yell at the brass, lose his baton, nearly lose his balance. They have watched this catalogue of gestures bring from the orchestra a beautifully controlled flow of pliant, clearly articulated symphonic sound. No conductor has a more eloquent sign language for encouraging, warning, cajoling or just plain frightening orchestra musicians into giving him what he wants. Sir Thomas, unlike most maestros, seldom bothers to beat time--he seems able to infect musicians with the desired momentum. But always he is about the subtle business of communicating to the orchestra, by the contortions of his face and form, his own profound knowledge of the score, his emotional temperature, from the tender to the explosive, and his exquisite musical taste. Beecham is widely regarded among musicians as an unparalleled interpreter of Mozart and Haydn in particular, and as a conductor, in general, of the order of Toscanini and Koussevitzky.

Just the Thing. The wealthiest man who ever twitched a professional baton, Sir Thomas has lost more money conducting orchestras than any ten of his contemporaries have made. The money (a fortune estimated at $140,000,000) was amassed by the amateur Lancashire horse doctor, Joseph Beecham, who invented Beecham's Pills. Joseph Beecham was one of the first British businessmen to grasp the power of modern advertising. He even circulated a hymn book edited with an eye to furthering his product. Most famous edited hymn:

Hark! the herald angels sing,

Beecham's Pills are just the thing.

Peace on earth and mercy mild,

Two for man and one for child.

When Tommy Beecham was born, in 1879, the elaborate Beecham home, in St. Helens near Liverpool, already contained an assortment of pianos and pipe organs. Beecham pere soon added the latest gadget in mechanical music, a reed orchestrion, which made Wagner sound like a merry-go-round. Tommy listened to it by the hour, vowed he would devote his life to music. Beecham's Pills made possible a musical education at home and abroad. Tommy learned much as accompanist to the late great French baritone Victor Maurel. But the pills were not always an unmixed blessing. When, after an inconclusive term studying law at Oxford, Tommy Beecham cut loose and bought himself his first symphony orchestra, he called it the Beecham Philharmonic. British wags dubbed it the "Pillharmonic" and laughed him off the podium.

The law had been Joseph Beecham's idea, but he was finally converted to his son's music, began to back him. In 1914 Joseph Beecham's long passion for theatrical properties reached a climax when (in a syndicate) he bought no less an item than London's Covent Garden Opera House, complete with the vast Covent Garden vegetable market that adjoins it. When World War I broke, Beecham pere's colleagues backed out, left him holding the bag. In the bag was nominal ownership of the Opera House, the adjoining market, nine other theaters, and an unpaid bill for $15,000,000. Having achieved this stroke of financial wizardry, Joseph Beecham died and left the magic to Tommy. The bequest kept Thomas Beecham in & out of English bankruptcy courts for nearly 20 years. But he kept producing opera in Covent Garden, managing the vegetable market on the side. His near bankruptcies in real estate deterred his musical expenditures not a whit. He soon lost a good $5,000,000 producing opera.

Economic Dither. He got something for his losses. Sir Thomas is often referred to as the greatest amateur in musical history. He is probably the only figure in that history who has been angel, impresario and artist all at the same time. He hired the finest operatic artists he could find, supervised their operas, conducted in the pit--and ended by reinvigorating the whole art of opera in England. On the side, he conducted symphony concerts in Queen's and Royal Albert Halls, introduced England to compositions by Sibelius, Strauss, Stravinsky, Delius and many other contemporaries.

As Sir Thomas' reputation with the baton increased, his finances became more confused than ever. In the early 'aos, in a complete economic dither, he gave up music altogether, concentrated for four years on balancing his books. By 1927 he had decided to take a fling at the U.S. He left London in one of his monumental (and dramatically effective) huffs. Said he: "England is finished, not only musically, but every other way. The only thing for anybody to do is to give up and go to America. After a few months' experience as a guest, I will stay permanently, and I advise as many English musicians as possible to leave this country. . . ."

Sir Thomas conducted the New York Philharmonic with such lively enthusiasm that at one concert he broke his braces and had to walk off the stage holding his trousers up with his hands. Within the year he was back in London. With the help of his close friend, U.S.-born Lady Cunard, he founded England's greatest contemporary orchestra, the London Philharmonic, whose principal backer he remains today.

Hitler and the Widow. During the '30s Sir Thomas became worldwide. He guest-conducted Toscanini's New York Philharmonic, appeared at the Salzburg Festival, the Vienna Opera. At the invitation of Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop, he took his London Philharmonic to Germany, also conducted the Berlin Opera. Feted by leading Nazis, he met Adolf Hitler, who assured him that his favorite opera was not Die Meistersinger (as always reported by Nazi propagandists) but Franz Lehar's luscious, low-brow Merry Widow. Sir Thomas invited Hitler to visit him in England. "He said," remarked Sir Thomas later, ''that he was afraid it might put too much strain on our police force. . . . Naturally, I made no comment on that."

Sir Thomas got his knighthood following his services to the Empire when, as an unofficial good-will ambassador to Italy during World War I, he helped keep wavering Italian politicians firmly on the side of the Allies. He still likes to call himself one of Britain's leading promoters of international friendship. But dull-witted people are forever taking umbrage at his peculiar expressions of amity. He told the Philharmonic Orchestra Association of Southern California that America's primary cultural asset was the English language--which was gradually being destroyed through misuse. Said an Association member next day: "The insults to our nation publicly made [by Beecham] . . . were un-British, unAmerican, uncalled for and should bar him from our auditoriums."

In Australia, on another good-will tour, Sir Thomas kept the Prime Minister waiting for an appointment and referred to the acoustical improvements in Brisbane's finest concert hall as a "rabbit hutch." The ensuing fan mail, he admitted, "was so various in invective that it might have been written by Elizabethan poets. . . . I am a peaceful and harmless man. . . . I simply can't understand why people are always going for me. It's positively a pathological attitude. People see Beecham and at once their backs go up."

Agreeable Creatures. Sir Thomas lives in a baronial Manhattan duplex with Tudor interiors, leaves it occasionally for walks in nearby Central Park. On warm days he sometimes has a taxi follow him with his overcoat. He smokes continuously, preferring light Havana cigars. He refers to tea as "poison" and says of his preference: "I have to drink a certain amount of Scotch, very much against my will." When his chronic gout once got the better of him in Philadelphia, he had him self pushed on the stage in a wheelchair and conducted the performance while sitting. At one New York Philharmonic rehearsal he became so elated that he fell off the podium into the second violins. "Podiums," he remarked, on recovering himself, "are expressly designed as a conspiracy to get rid of conductors." Like every other conductor worthy of his salt, Sir Thomas has told noisy audiences to keep quiet--his phrase for it in Covent Garden was: "Shut up, you!"

This year, after a 20-year separation, Sir Thomas divorced his first wife, the former Utica Welles (New York-born descendant of Connecticut's fourth Governor Thomas Welles). They have two sons, Adrian, 38, and Thomas, 33, both at present with the British Armed Forces. Sir Thomas has five elderly sisters, whom he describes as "very agreeable creatures," all living in England and married to "husbands who all do exactly what they want them to do--I don't know whether it's a family attribute, or just luck."

The present Lady Beecham, whom Sir Thomas married after his Idaho divorce, is a blue-eyed, 34-year-old British pianist named Betty Humby who has often appeared on her husband's programs. Current apple of Sir Thomas' eye is her eleven-year-old son by a previous marriage. He plays the clarinet in the Deerfield (Mass.) Academy band.

A Mingled Chime.* "The English," remarks Sir Thomas, "are the laziest nation in the world. Since the radio we have become practically comatose. I foresee a generation which will never get out of bed." Sir Thomas' own lack of laziness is underlined by the fact that he has added writing to his other activities: he has a work in progress on Beaumont & Fletcher, and a forthcoming autobiography called A Mingled Chime.

Sir Thomas' remarks about music have a lofty, Tory tone. He takes a poor view of the musical tastes of the masses, declares that great music can exist only when furthered by men of wealth and discrimination. Remembering his own lavish, costly activities as a patron, Sir Thomas is irritated by people who declare that fine music should be put on a paying basis. "Music," says he, "is a parasitical luxury, supported by the few. It is something that must be inflicted on the public."

Meanwhile, through low-priced concert tickets and his splendid phonograph recordings, Sir Thomas' infliction is something that the U.S. public is suffering very happily. He has become a treasured and crusty feature on the musical landscape of democratic America.

* To be published by G. P. Putnam's Sons.

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