Orchestra & Toothbrush

When ten-year-olds have birthdays they must have parties. True to its years, then, was the Cleveland Orchestra when last week at home it celebrated the tenth year of its existence, the tenth also under Conductor Nikolai Sokoloff and Manager Adella Prentiss Hughes. There was a birthday concert at the Auditorium with the program which was given on Dec. n, 1918. There was a birthday dance for the musicians and their friends. There was a birthday luncheon for principals and patrons, with wrist watches and eulogies for Conductor Sokoloff and Manager Hughes, and a cake with ten candles. Patron John L. Severance cut the cake. Composer Deems Taylor of Manhattan, guest of honor, spoke crisp Taylorisms:

"There are now 49 orchestras in the United States able to play a classic symphony--through. . . .

"There still is a race which says: 'Of course, I'm a businessman and music means nothing to me.' But more people are beginning to realize that they might as well boast in this fashion: 'Part of my brain doesn't work, hence music means nothing to me.' It is ceasing to be such a very great mark of distinction to be a lowbrow. . . .

"I recall the stares a man once gave me when I wrote down my occupation as 'composer.' Might just as well have written down 'ballet dancer.' People had the idea that music was a woman's business, like, well, like knitting. A musician and a poet had a pretty hard row to hoe. . . ."

Of the Cleveland Orchestra: "It's not only healthy. It's a very good orchestra. There is not in Paris an orchestra worthy to be compared with it. There are nine orchestras in America which stand superior to the orchestras of any other country in the world--and the Cleveland Orchestra is included in that number. . . . And probably the principal reason it can stand up among the world's greatest is the fact that it has had one conductor for ten years. The idea that an orchestra must have a guest conductor every so often is like a series of companionate marriages. About as soon as the women begin to get used to one man, they have to start all over again and learn someone else's faults. . . . An orchestra ought to be as sacred as a toothbrush."