West Stockbridge — At the Old Town Hall on Sunday, May 7, Ronald Barron, retired Principal Trombonist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, will tell the story of how he came into possession of rare sheet music, purchased for 50 cents over half a century ago, bearing the signature of one of the most important French composers of the 19th century. The document’s chain of custody, spanning well over a century, links together a succession of custodians starting in 1915, its dedicatee having joined the Boston Symphony as trombonist in the orchestra’s first year of operation.
In a music-enhanced oral presentation titled “Saint-Saëns, Stewart and the BSO, A Personal Discovery,” Mr. Barron will talk about the years of research that followed his discovery. Admission is free.
I interviewed Mr. Barron last November before he gave the same talk at Simon’s Rock. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Ron, what sent you diving down this mysterious rabbit hole?
It all started when my friend Herb gave me an old score of a piece of music I was very familiar with called “Cavatine for trombone and piano” by Camile Saint-Saëns. It’s a little, five-minute piece. I had recorded it back in 1975. It’s very popular among trombonists (only because Saint-Saëns wrote it, really. It’s not a great piece). Herb had purchased it in 1952, but he really hadn’t used it much, and it had what he thought was Saint-Saëns’ signature at the end of it. It had both the trombone part and the piano part in the same binding, so he wasn’t really able to use it. But he had kept it all these years and wanted to give it to me for safe keeping.
The score was dedicated to George W. Stewart. Herb wasn’t sure who Stewart was, but I found out quickly that George Stewart was an original member of the Boston Symphony. So that connection was intriguing to me.
And the signature proved to be authentic, in actual fact. So then I just had to quickly figure out how Stewart and Saint-Saëns met each other, and why.
And I found out that George Stewart, among other things, being somewhat of a businessman and manager—what we might call an empresario—had left the Boston Symphony after 10 years and had been a very important musical employer. He was music director, not only in St. Louis in 1903 for the World’s Fair, but also in San Francisco in 1915.
And that is when he had invited Saint-Saëns to come to San Francisco and be a guest of honor and compose a piece for the fair and spend time there as the great composer he was recognized to be. And, as a thank-you note, Saint-Saëns wrote this little piece to Stewart. And he sent it back to Stewart when he returned to Paris in August of 1915.
And Herb had come into this score because he bought it at a cut-out bin, on the street, in Boston in 1952. He paid 50 cents or a dollar for it and then gave it to me. And the confluence of personnel—the little piece, first of all, that I had recorded—and the fact that Stewart and I had both been in the Boston Symphony—it just was all too intriguing for me. And that began my research, which has led to the presentation which I will give on November 11.
It intrigued me, and it ended up making connections in the music business from that period in history, which led directly to people that influenced me and I knew in my professional life. And that was, in the end, quite intriguing.
The presentation will make those connections.
And it trickles down to my trombone teacher in the 1960s, when I went to school in Cincinnati, and it goes through members of the Souza Band and the famous Boston cornettist Walter M. Smith and other people who were Boston Symphony colleagues of mine who knew Walter Smith in the 1930s. I had the occasion to meet Walter’s first-born son that he named after George Stewart: George Stewart Smith. Unfortunately, all the people I’ve been talking about have passed away since I began this project. They were previous generation.
I use musical examples in the presentation, which make it a little bit more interesting than just hearing me talk for an hour.
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Hear retired BSO Principal Trombonist Ronald Barron give his talk, “Saint-Saëns, Stewart and the BSO: A Personal Discovery,” at Old Town Hall on Friday, May 5 at 7 p.m. Admission is free, but if you plan to attend, please send an email with your name and the number in your party to: info@weststockbridgehistory.org.
