About Connections: Love it or hate it, history is a map. Those who hate history think it irrelevant; many who love history think it escapism. In truth, history is the clearest road map to how we got here: America in the 21st century.
The Connections Hybrid: A periodic look at the Berkshire cottages and the connection between what they were and what they are now.
There have been many reuses of Berkshire cottages: inns and restaurants, house museums, schools, and condominiums. None, however, had more impact on the Berkshires than the transformation of the very private Tanglewood estate into the public grounds of the Tanglewood Music Festival. It happened this way.
The dreamer
In May 1934, Maestro Henry Hadley brought his dream of “music under the moon and stars” to heiress Gertrude Robinson Smith.
It was the height of the Depression. It seemed an odd time to create a new cultural venue, but not to Hadley. As a conductor, he knew better than most that musicians were employed seasonally. They were available and needed the money in summer.
With Hadley’s dream and Robinson Smith’s money, contacts, and undisputed executive ability, the first outdoor concert took place in incredibly short order. The Berkshire Symphonic Festival (BSF) was formed and produced its first concerts in August 1934, just three months after the two met.
The New York Philharmonic played and Hadley conducted. From the first, the concerts were performed on the grounds of a Berkshire cottage. The first was on the Dan Hanna estate (later the DeSisto School) on Route 183 in Stockbridge, just a stone’s throw from its future permanent home: Tanglewood.
For two years, 1934 and 1935, Hadley lived out his dream conducting concerts under a summer sky. In 1936, Robinson Smith and her BSF board members invited the Boston Symphony Orchestra to play at the BSF concerts. The New York Philharmonic and Hadley, the man with the vision, were out.
The executive
When Hadley approached her, Robinson Smith replied that, if her friends thought it a good idea, she would roll up her sleeves. Her friends were a formidable group: the Berkshire cottagers.
One among them, the Countess DeHeredia, had concerts on the grounds of Wheatleigh. She and the others enthusiastically supported the idea.
Robinson Smith was born in 1881, the daughter of a wealthy New York attorney and board member of Allied Chemical. She was a woman of girth, guts, and money. Her summer home in Stockbridge was called the Residence. She built it herself and lived in it with companion Miriam Oliver. The New York Times – searching for language to describe Robinson Smith’s feminism, sexuality, and lifestyle – called the Residence “a man-less Eden.”
Robinson Smith and her friends supplied the money to initiate the project and picked up the shortfall for the next few years. Mrs. Reginald Vanderbilt lent her grounds (Fox Hollow today) for the 1936 concert, but Robinson Smith was the executive, the moving force making dream reality.
The first BSO concert
August 1936: the night was starlit and quiet as the charismatic and world-renowned Serge Koussevitzky conducted one of the greatest orchestras in America. They performed Sibelius’ Second Symphony accompanied by the unnaturally loud chirping of a cricket. The Berkshire beastie was out of sight but situated so that its chirp was magically magnified. The local newspaper as well as New York, Boston, and two European papers critiqued both performances: Koussevitzky and the cricket.
The donors
The Tanglewood estate was built by Caroline Sturgis Tappan. By the 1930s her spinster daughter, Mary Aspinwall Tappan, and her niece, Rosamond (Mrs. Gorham) Brooks, wanted to sell the Berkshire cottage but there were no takers.
On March 25, 1937, Mary Tappan signed a document that stated in part: “Know all men by these present that I, Mary Aspinwall Tappan of Stockbridge in the County of Berkshire and Commonwealth of Massachusetts, a single woman, hereby grant onto the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Inc. …an undivided ½ interest in and to a parcel of land…shown on the map as Tanglewood Estate in Stockbridge.” On April 14, 1937, Rosamond S. (Mrs. Gorham) Brooks signed over the other half, and her husband ceded his rights of “homestead and curtsey.”
It was a reporter who told Robinson Smith to forget about the name Berkshire Symphonic Festival because, from that day, everyone would use the shorter name Tanglewood.
All the elements but one were in place and the BSO summer music festival at Tanglewood was born.
The Shed
August 12, 1937: as Koussevitzky conducted an all-Wagner concert, all hell broke loose. The storm was so loud that the concert was interrupted and finally inaudible as torrents of rain hit the tent and intermittent thunder roared.
At intermission Gertrude Robinson Smith rose up and addressed the crowd. This redoubtable woman demanded contributions to build a concert hall to stop the madness of a full orchestra performing in a tent.
One person present at the concert described the appeal this way: “She rose up, a big woman in a great big hat. She was a good speaker and so imposing I was impressed with her more than anything else that night including Koussevitzky.”
She raised $11,000. That is approximately $185,000 today. It was money raised during the Great Depression, raised in one night–actually, in one 15-minute intermission. The rain thunder and lightning were Robinson Smith’s co-solicitors. It was a hell of a storm.
She continued fundraising and the final figure was $77,181 (approximately $1,135,000.) As impressive as Robinson Smith’s effort was, the amount was not enough. The architect Koussevitzky selected, Eliel Saarenin, would not take the job for the money available.
Reputedly, he said, “For that amount of money you can only build a shed.”
So Stockbridge resident Joseph Franz built a shed with the funds and in the time available. It stands to this day.
From 1934 to 1937, Tanglewood concerts were always a mixture of urbanity and country charm and, in many ways, early concerts at Tanglewood were like those today: the crowd numbered about 14,000 – 15,000 people, picnics were encouraged and, from August 4, 1938, when the shed was dedicated, the season closed with Beethoven’s Ninth.
On the other hand, tickets ranged from $2 – $7.50 and proper dress was mandatory. If a woman arrived in shorts, a wrap-around skirt was provided at the gate and she was not allowed onto the grounds until she put it on.
The end of the Berkshire Symphonic Festival
It was 1941. George Edman, Berkshire Evening Eagle editor, explained to his fellow Berkshire Symphonic Festival board members: “If the BSO fails to live up to its part of the agreement (to present an agreed-upon number of concerts), all title to the property and the shed which we erected reverts to BSF. If we fail to live up to our part of the agreement (to manage and promote annual concerts in a suitable enclosure), the property, including the shed, reverts to the BSO.”
Seems clear but, unfortunately from the first year in which a profit was made (1936), BSF established a “promotional reserve.” When the contract between the BSO and the BSF was signed, it stated that net profits from concerts would be divided equally between the two organizations. BSF included in its expenses the contribution to the promotional reserve.
In January 1941 a letter from the BSO board stated its dissatisfaction: it wanted half the amount before the contribution to the fund. In fact, BSO demanded additional monies for the years 1936-40.
The attorney for BSF, Stuart Montgomery said, “I am surprised that any objection should be raised since it was never raised before.”
The answer may have been that 1941 was the year the contract between BSO and BSF was up for renewal.
Jerome D. Greene replaced Warren as president of the BSO board and wrote Edman, “The trustees of the Boston Symphony Orchestra are determined not to resume their former contractual relations with the Berkshire board.”
They were looking for an issue over which they could pick a fight. They had found one: the promotional fund.
Greene tried to move Edman to his point of view: “The acquisition of Tanglewood, the growing success of the Festival, and establishment of the Berkshire Music Center are a wonderful culmination of the hopes of [your board]. The culmination has in fact gone far beyond what was in people’s minds when the Festival was started. Far beyond anything the BSF would be in a position to effect. If this could only be recognized by your board so the transfer of control to the BSO could come about as a generous and wholehearted recognition of the position, it would be ideal.”
Not surprisingly, Robinson Smith did not see it that way. From the genesis of the Festivals, the “advancement and material gain to the Berkshires” was the first concern of BSF, with classical music a means rather than an end.
Robinson Smith wondered: would not the priorities be reversed if the BSO took over? Robinson Smith thought it would be the case and added, “God help the Berkshires if Boston takes over.”
The culture war went on through World War II. BSO refused to be “employed by a lesser organization.” It was over.
On October 5, 1945, Gertrude Robinson Smith stepped aside with the grace Greene had hoped for and called ideal. With typical Robinson Smith flair, she resigned in a 125-word telegram – 85 of the words follow:
“It gives me great pleasure to notify you that the Board of Trustees of the Berkshire Symphonic Festival at their annual meeting held today in Stockbridge, voted unanimously to make a gift of the music shed and its contents at Tanglewood to the Boston Symphony Orchestra thus giving them entire control and management of the future festivals at Tanglewood. Our best wishes to your trustees, your great conductor and your fine musicians for many years of happy and successful Festivals.”
Robinson Smith had ousted Hadley and the New York Philharmonic. Now the BSO ousted her. The two people who made it all possible were gone. Greene accepted Robinson Smith’s telegram with pleasure and alacrity. In a move meant to be gracious, not ironic, the BSO gave to Robinson Smith, the woman who gave the BSO 6,000 seats, one free seat in the shed for her lifetime.
