The Times Great Lives

Arturo Toscanini

A legendary musical figure

16 January 1957

Signor Arturo Toscanini, who died in New York yesterday at the age of 89, was the most renowned of living conductors, since his reputation was internationally supreme. His pre-eminence was recognized in Italy, where he was born, in America, where he worked for the greater part of his career, and in German countries, where between the wars he conducted at the Bayreuth and Salzburg Festivals.

His quality as an interpreter was mainly known in this country from gramophone records, but his visits to London in the 1930s and in 1952 confirmed and amplified the judgment that for clarity of presentation and fidelity to the composer he had no peer. His tastes were catholic but his interpretations were always those of an Italian. Yet Siegfried Wagner made him the mainstay of the Bayreuth Festival in 1930 and 1931, and the connection was broken only by Toscanini’s refusal to appear in Germany when Jewish musicians were maltreated by the Nazi Government. That he should thus be accepted by the leading institution which stands above all others for German music is certainly a remarkable testimony to the universality of his art. It was also a characteristic fulfilment of Toscanini’s career. For he had been the first to introduce Wagner’s Götterdämmerung to Italians; he had supervised the international repertory at the Metropolitan Opera in New York from 1898 to 1915; and it is on his performances of Beethoven’s symphonies that his popular fame is founded.

In this country our opportunities of hearing him in the flesh were limited to a short series of concerts in each of the years 1930, 1935, 1937–39, and a last visit in 1952, and, though we heard no opera under his direction, his performances of choral works, including Beethoven’s Mass in D and Choral Symphony, Brahms’s Requiem, and Verdi’s Requiem were memorable. It was widely claimed for him that his readings of these and other classics revealed them in their true character as their creators conceived them, if not for the first time, certainly in a definitive manner. The listener hearing some hitherto over-looked detail in a familiar symphony, noting some subtlety of tonal gradation or shaping of a phrase, was surprised to find that it was all marked in the score, which in point of fact the conductor never used either at rehearsal or at performances by virtue of his prodigious and, as it seems, photographic memory. Yet his interpretations were no more final than those of any other executant musician, and critics whose admiration was less idolatrous found the defects of his qualities in his reading of German music.

Beethoven’s Symphonies

The Latin mind, like the Mediterranean sunshine which conditions it, views things with hard edges, clear outlines, and thorough-going logic. Toscanini’s meticulous attention to detail in Beethoven’s symphonies made them classical and brilliant but ultimately a little inhuman. The opening chords of the Eroica sounded, at any rate with the virtuoso orchestras of America, more like pistol shots than an announcement of the key of E flat, and his bourgeois German Mastersingers became a procession of Florentine nobles. This is only to say that he was true to himself, and no conductor of more single-minded integrity ever lived. This sterling honesty brought him into conflict with the Fascist Government, whose song ‘Giovinezza’ he refused to play, as it also caused him later to break with Nazi-dominated Germany. To show with an unmistakable gesture what he thought of their intolerance he went to Palestine and conducted the newly formed Jewish orchestra in its national home.

Born at Parma on March 25, 1867, he began his musical studies at the local conservatoire, where his principal subject was the cello. Attention was first called to his exceptional abilities by his remarkable memory, which enabled him after a few rehearsals to play his part in the orchestra without opening the copy on his desk. His opportunity came when, at Rio de Janeiro in 1886, he was called by a sudden emergency to leave his place among the cellos and conduct Aida, which he did by heart. From that beginning he went on to the Metropolitan in New York, where he was chief conductor from 1898 to 1915. In 1922 he returned to La Scala at Milan, where he had previously worked between 1898 and 1908, and when the theatre was reopened after alterations in 1922 he was appointed director and ruled it like the autocrat he was.

Encores Abolished

Of new works, such as the eagerly expected performance of Boito’s Nerone and the premiere of Puccini’s last opera, Turandot, he refused to announce even the dates until he was satisfied that the productions were ready, in complete disregard of the convenience of those who were prepared to come long distances to attend them. Nor would he compromise on matters of artistic detail, still less on principle. Thus he abolished encores at La Scala in the face of long-standing Italian practice, and he demanded obedience from the singers and players whom he directed. Yehudi Menuhin, the violinist, who worked in happy association with him at concerts in New York, bears astonished testimony to his impulsiveness and to the general acceptance by others that his will was law. To stop a telephone bell ringing during a private rehearsal with Menuhin Toscanini pulled the instrument from the wall, plaster and all, and returned without a word to the piano. No one expressed any surprise, though Menuhin confesses that he had never before seen such an uninhibited obedience to impulse. There were therefore some qualms at the bbc when that body invited him to come and direct its orchestra, but he won the players’ confidence, enthusiasm, and loyalty without any of the explosions with which he has been credited elsewhere. Indeed, Mr Bernard Shore, the violist who played under him, says in his book The Orchestra Speaks that playing under Toscanini becomes a different art. ‘He stimulates his men, refreshes their minds; and music that has become stale is revived in all its pristine beauty.’

But his autocracy at Milan was bound to bring friction with those whose artistic concentration was less than his own, and after having taken the Scala Company abroad to Germany and Vienna and given performances, more particularly of Verdi’s Falstaff, which entranced German-speaking audiences, he announced his intention of leaving Milan, and in the winter of 1929 accepted the post of conductor to the Philharmonic Society of New York. It was with the New York Orchestra that he first came to England and toured Europe. He remained with them until 1936.

Later Tours

He then formed his own orchestra, the National Broadcasting Company Orchestra, with which he gave concerts all through the Second World War, touring Latin America and making the gramophone records which preserve his interpretations for the rest of the world. In 1946 he returned for a while to Milan for a few months in order to contribute the proceeds of some concerts towards the rebuilding of La Scala in addition to a financial gift of a million lire. When the Festival Hall was being built in 1950 it was announced that he was willing to come to London and direct some of its inaugural concerts. This plan, however, had to be abandoned. Notwithstanding, he did conduct in the Festival Hall, when in September, 1952, he came to London to give two concerts devoted mainly to the four symphonies of Brahms. In this connection it is worthy of remark that though he denounced other musicians for tampering with scores, he did himself play some tricks with the timpani of Brahms’s C minor symphony.

This symphony also showed him sacrificing the brooding tragedy of the opening in favour of creating immediately a feeling of tremendous tension, a treatment which leaves him with a problem of what to do with the development section. In the milder Brahms of the St Anthony Variations and the D major symphony he showed a more ingratiating temper and in his interpretation of Debussy’s La Mer sensuous tonal shading was not neglected. But in general it was the intensity, the urgency, the magnification of the life of a score, upon which he seized, and it was this remarkable dynamic drive which he preserved into extreme old age.

His last concert was given at Carnegie Hall in New York no longer ago than in April 1954, when he bade farewell to his orchestra and his public in a Wagner programme, at the end of which he dropped his baton and went out, not to return to face the plaudits of his audience, a symbolic gesture of retirement after 68 years of active music-making.

Signor Toscanini’s wife predeceased him in 1951. There were a son and two daughters of the marriage, of whom one is married to Mr Vladimir Horowitz, the pianist.

Christian Dior

A master of couture design

24 October 1957

M. Christian Dior, the famous French couture designer, died suddenly yesterday at Montecatini, Italy, at the age of 52, as announced in our late editions. Never strong, Dior had been in ill-health for some time and his death, although so sudden, was not entirely unexpected.

A master of his craft, a rare genius, Dior’s name will stand high in the records of fine achievement in the field of couture design. Even more than this he will be honoured for the help that he, with the Marcel Boussac organisation, was able to give France just after the war when it was so greatly needed. Then, the great textile industry, the third most important in France, was nearly at a standstill, but following the tremendous success of his first collection in January, 1947, with its full-skirted styles each requiring many yards of fabric, orders began to flow into the French mills.

Today thousands of workers throughout the world owe their living directly to his inspiration, not only as a result of his couture showings, but also through the success of the wholesale houses and accessory businesses built up under the umbrella of the central organization in Paris, with offices in London, New York, and Caracas.

Born on January 21, 1905, at Granville, in Normandy, he was the only son of Maurice Dior, a wealthy chemical manufacturer. As a youth he enjoyed designing clothes for his sisters, and a costume representing Neptune, which he designed and wore at a fancy dress ball, won him the first prize. The Diplomatic Corps, however, not dress designing, was originally planned as a career for the intelligent, rather delicate, youth. He studied political science at the Sorbonne, but the French financial crisis of 1930–31, which crippled the family business, enabled him to escape from the prospect of a career which had never greatly attracted him. Always interested in art, with the collaboration of friends, he set up a small salon in the Rue la Boétie, in the centre of Paris, and helped to launch Christian Bérard among other young painters. Later Bérard was always to be seen sitting on the floor of the large salon at the première of Dior’s collections, until the former’s death in 1949.

Forced to give up his art gallery for reasons of ill-health Dior was sent to the mountains to recover. Returning eventually he took up couture designing in earnest, first of all with Agnes, for whom he designed hats, and later with Robert Piguet.

Shortly after the outbreak of war Dior retired to the country where he remained for some time with a sister who had a market garden business. On his return to Paris he became one of Lelong’s designers, and remained with Lelong until the fortuitous meeting with a friend of his youth, Marcel Boussac. At this time Boussac was, in fact, looking for a designer in order to set up a couture house, and a partnership was arranged culminating in the widely publicized first collection in the spring of 1947.

Christian Dior’s very real affection for England and things English stemmed from his first visit at the age of 19 when, to assist his recovery from a serious illness, his father gave him a sum of money and suggested it should be spent exploring Britain. He had, indeed, many English friends and always made a practice of having at least one English mannequin in the house on the Avenue Montaigne. And he always gave sympathetic attention to the products of British fabric manufacturers.

His feeling for line was allied to a wonderful appreciation of colour and texture, and whatever the ‘line’ the result was always feminine clothes designed to flatter the wearer. His early death at this moment is not only a tragedy for the house of Dior, but could have serious consequences for the French industry as a whole, following as it does the death or retirement of a number of other important French designers in the past few years.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Christian apologist and novelist

17 December 1957

Miss Dorothy L. Sayers died at her home at Witham, Essex, on Tuesday night at the age of 64.

Sudden death would have had no terrors for her. She combined an adventurous curiosity about life with a religious faith based on natural piety, common sense, and hard reading. She made a name in several diverse fields of creative work. But the diversity of her success was founded on an inner unity of character. When she came down from Somerville with a First in Modern Languages she tried her hand at advertising. The directness and the grasp of facts that are needed by a copywriter stood her in good stead as a newcomer to the crowded ranks of authors of detective fiction. During the 1920s and 1930s, she established herself as one of the few who could give a new look to that hard-ridden kind of novel.

Her recipe was deftly to mix a plot that kept readers guessing with inside information, told without tears, about some fascinating subject – campanology, the backrooms of an advertising agency, life behind the discreet windows of a West End club. Lord Peter Wimsey came alive as a good companion to the few detectives into whom an engaging individuality has been breathed.

This was not done by chance; she had made a close, critical study of the craft. Lecturing, once, on Aristotle’s Poetics she remarked that he was obviously hankering after a good detective novel because he had laid it down that the writer’s business was to lead the reader up the garden, to make the murderer’s villainy implicit in his character from the start, and to remember that the dénouement is the most difficult part of the story.

But it is some 20 years since Miss Sayers wrote a detective story, and, shortly before her death, she said: ‘There will be no more Peter Wimseys.’ The detective writer had been ousted by the Christian apologist. Miss Sayers approached her task of making religion real for the widest public with a zeal that sometimes shocked the conventionally orthodox (with whose protests she was well able to deal) and always held the ears of listeners and the eyes of the reading public. ‘The Man Born to be King’ became a bbc bestseller, attracting large audiences Christmas after Christmas.

Dante Translations

She carried what she regarded as the central purpose of her life on to the stage and into books. Dogma had no terrors for her. She did not believe in putting water into the pure spirit of her Church. Dante, with his colloquial idiom and unselfconscious piety, naturally attracted her. The translations she published of his Inferno and Purgatorio caught the directness of the original but failed, as Binyon did not, to catch the poetry. But her prose comments have done more than those of any other recent English author to quicken interest in Dante.

Dorothy Leigh Sayers was born in 1893, the daughter of the Rev. Henry Sayers and Helen Mary Leigh. She was in print before she was 21 with Op I, a book of verse, and followed it in 1919 by another, Catholic Tales. It was a medium in which she could be skilful, flexible, and effective, and readers of The Times Literary Supplement will, no doubt, remember her strong poem, ‘The English War’, which appeared in its issue of September 7, 1940. Lord Peter made his first appearance in 1923 in Whose Body? There followed Clouds of Witness (1926), Unnatural Death (1927), The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1928) and The Documents in the Case (1930).

In 1930 Miss Sayers in addition to producing her Strong Poison, yet another detective book, made an interesting departure. Out of the fragments of its Anglo-Norman version she had constructed her Tristan in Brittany, in the form of a modern English story and produced it, partly in verse and partly in prose.

Have His Carcase (1932) introduced a companion for Lord Peter in the shape of Harriet Vane, a writer of detective stories. In Hangman’s Holiday (1933), a book of short stories, she created another amateur detective, Mr Montague Egg, who was a simpler reasoner than Lord Peter, but almost as acute. In The Nine Tailors, though of the same genre, her theme was built round a noble church in Fenland, and possessed a majesty which disclosed powers the authoress had scarcely exerted until then. Gaudy Night (1935) took Lord Peter and Harriet Vane into the serene and serious life of a women’s college at Oxford, and psychological problems deeper than those which belong to the detective convention arose.

Lord Peter on Stage

In 1936 her Busman’s Holiday, a play which presented Lord Peter married – Miss Sayers called it ‘a love story with detective interruptions’ – was staged at the Comedy Theatre. She had a collaborator in M. St Clair Byrne, and between them they provided Lord Peter’s public with an excellent entertainment. The Zeal of Thy House (1937), which was written for the Canterbury Festival and played there and in London, was set in the twelfth century and was a sincere and illuminating study of the purification of an artist, a kind of architectural Gerontius purged by heavenly fire of his last earthly infirmity. The Devil to Pay (1939) was also written for the Canterbury Festival. It set the legend of Dr Faustus, one of the great stories of the world, at the kind of angle most likely to commend it to the modern stage. Later it was played at His Majesty’s Theatre. By sheer alertness of invention and the power to fit her ideas into a dramatic narrative she accomplished an extremely difficult task with credit. Love All (1940) was an agreeable and amusing comedy.

In 1940 Miss Sayers published a calmly philosophic essay on the war, which she named ‘Begin Here’. Then, in 1941, she followed it with her ‘The Mind of the Maker’, in which she analysed the metaphor of God as Creator and tested it in the light of creative activity as she knew it. Unpopular Opinions, a miscellaneous collection of essays, came out in 1946, Creed or Chaos, another series of essays, pungent and well reasoned, in 1947, and The Lost Tools of Learning in the following year. She began her translations of Dante for the Penguin Series with the Inferno which came out in November, 1949; Purgatorio followed in May, 1955. She found the third volume Paradiso the hardest and in August, 1956, her translation had reached Canto VII. Her commentary was one of the most valuable parts of her books. After she had finished her second volume, she slipped in, as a kind of relaxation, a translation of Chanson de Roland, published this year.

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