MSM History

By John K. Blanchard (Class of 1989),
MSM Institutional Historian & Director of Archives

[Author’s Note: While based on documented facts, this essay does contain some conjecture on my part, something that I have avoided doing since taking on my current position nine years ago. I trust the difference between fact and opinion is apparent.]

IF ASKED, most of you would say Manhattan School of Music was established in 1918, right? “We celebrated the Centennial in 2018, so do the math.” “It’s right there on all those tee-shirts in the Campus Store.” “I heard someone say that.” As we say in the South, “I hear tell…”

An exact date of when something started is what we want to know. When were they born? When did the work premiere? When did its doors first open? We are a society of exactitude when it comes to starts.

So it is for institutions. If they last long enough, there will be anniversaries, with calendars to be produced. I remember early conversations in planning for MSM’s 100th that included an examination of past observances. A decade earlier, we had celebrated 90 years in 2007–08 (placing the founding in 1917–18); but events for the 75th took place in 1993–94 (making 1918–19 the first year). MSM’s Golden Anniversary season was celebrated in 1967–68 (when our Founder was still alive) with a major event in May at which Mayor John Lindsay presented our Founder with the Handel Medallion of the City of New York at a Lincoln Center reception; this would also put the founding at 1917–18. For our Centennial, we chose the 2018–19 season, which was in line with the 75th, as well as other indicators of a 2018 demarkation discussed in detail later.

For many years now, in spite of no hard and fast ribbon-cutting moment of launch-date certainty, MSM seems to have settled on the simplest solution, adopting the date of 1918 for our establishment year. This essay will examine the events before 1918 that led to the School’s founding, as well as the crucial years of its infancy, through 1921.

Had enough of dates? We haven’t even started…

Research and Sources

Most of the known details about the School’s establishing years (1913 through 1920), come directly from the source, Janet Williams Daniels Schenck (born November 22, 1883 – died October 12, 1976). Adventure in Music, her memoir, published in 1961, is excerpted in several instances in this essay. [The reader should assume, if a quote is not otherwise attributed, that it is from this source. Read a complete version of Dr. Schenck’s Adventure in Music here.]

To augment Schenck’s urtext of MSM’s history, I have been able to confirm and expound on some of her reminiscences with rare outside sources. In my research at Columbia University’s Rare Books & Manuscripts Collections, I discovered a pamphlet from 1915 published by the Union Settlement House (Schenck’s employer prior to 1918) and a second report by Union right after Schenck left them to forge her own way. Other hunts led to rabbit holes of archived issues of the Musical Courier and the New York Times, as well as other publications. Items from Schenck’s scrapbooks, annotated in her own handwriting and on typewritten labels, provide further documentation.

Keep in mind when reading further (and adding more confusion) that Manhattan School of Music was known as the Neighborhood Music School from 1920–1938, and the Union Settlement Music School before that. All are referred to as “the School” interchangeably, as was always the case in Schenck’s writing.

Founding Timeline, 1913–1920

A simplified course of seminal events will set the stage for further discussion. This begins in 1913 at the Union Settlement House on East 104th Street, where Janet Williams Daniels (she was not yet married to Martin Schenck) had been teaching music for three years and becoming more and more interested in the plight and needs of immigrants into that community.

Here are a handful of quotes from Dr. Schenck’s book related to the founding years, with a selection of ephemeral documents to back up salient points:

1913–1916: Janet Daniels is Director of the Union Settlement Music School in East Harlem

“I took my meals at the Settlement, but I lived with a friend in one of the old brownstone houses on East 105th Street… I asked those in charge at Union Settlement if I might be allowed to give some music lessons…”

1917: Union Settlement House withdraws funding for the Music School

“But the war had come and was absorbing the nation… Gradually my helpers on the Junior Auxiliary were drawn into war work. They presented me with one hundred dollars and exhorted me not to let the School die… And then came the decision on the part of the Settlement that it could no longer give me free rooms for the lessons…”

1917–18: The School becomes independent from Union Settlement.

“In 1917–18 the School was formed with the assistance of a self-perpetuating Board of Trustees and with myself appointed as Director.”  “In the early days of its organization in 1918, the School had occupied one of the houses owned by Union Settlement on East 104th Street, the use of which had been given us in return for a gift of $1,000 a year toward the work of the Settlement.”

1917 pamphlet from Schenck’s scrapbook

1920: Union Settlement Music School becomes the Neighborhood Music School.

“…the School was incorporated in 1920 as the Neighborhood Music School under the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York.”

1921: After renting a space from the Union Settlement, a building is purchased from the Jewish Guild for the Blind.

“…the School is moved to facilities at 238 East 105th Street.”

Brochure cover for the “new” Neighborhood Music School

Pick a Date, Any Date

Here’s a switch: For the first few years of the School’s existence, printed materials and reports to the Board actually gave “1913” as the School’s founding year! One reason could be that it gave gravitas to the fledgling organization: More years in existence = more experience = more dependability.

Yet, the earliest records in the MSM Archives show financial entries that start with January 1918. Mysteriously, some earlier pages of that leather-bound ledger have been torn out. The first entry from the School’s treasurer, Margaret G. F. Mann, shows “Balance on hand — $219.86” from 1917 books. This precious document shows that month’s income and disbursements, as well one notable investment ($1.50 Dividend on Open Stair Tenement Co. Stock).

Schenck had written “In 1917–18 the School was formed,” and for decades official MSM text and anniversaries used these as the founding dates.

Of course, there’s the “newspaper of record” which seemed to think it was 1917.

“Janet Schenck Dies; Music Educator, 93” (detail, The New York Times, October 14, 1976)

Then there are all the various anniversary materials mentioned earlier. Like a century-long game of telephone, details conflict. Facts get muddled.

So was it 1913? Or was it 1917–18? 1918? Why not 1920, the year of our first incorporation? For that matter, why not 1938, the year the School’s name was changed to Manhattan School of Music?

Does it really matter? To some, perhaps. The bigger story is one of immense resilience in the face of often insurmountable forces. How a single individual harnessed groups of volunteers, donors, parents, teachers, and notable artists together — championing a small, fledgling enterprise to help the future of music in Harlem, in the City, and, eventually, in the world.

A Community Effort

Having graduated from the New York School of Social Work (now a graduate department of Columbia University), Schenk writes extensively of the changing demographics of the neighborhood in which she chose to immerse herself, as well as in large cities across the U.S.

The Editor’s Preface to her book on the community music school movement reads: “The significance of Mrs. Schenck’s contribution to the cause of music in working class communities is not alone in the subject matter of her book. The knowledge which she has gained in the course of gathering the facts is the foundation upon which some of the most important activities of the Music Division of the National Federation of Settlements have been built. Without her detailed and accurate knowledge of the field, her acquaintance with its leaders and their opinions, and her sympathetic interpretation of the aims of the music school settlements to musicians and to the public, the inspiring growth in numbers and improvement in the quality of teaching in a score or more of settlements during the past few years would have been impossible.”

Music, Youth & Opportunity: A Survey of Settlement and Community Music Schools, 1926

Schenk writes in Adventure in Music that early on she “had developed an enormous interest in communities, the lives they encompassed, in different racial groups, their problems and their adjustments to our country… I knew of no place where one could find in those days a mixed racial community with musical heritage except at a social settlement, so I went to Union Settlement on East 104th Street…”

It was not a dilettante’s existence, however. She walked the walk, literally. “I took my meals at the Settlement, but I lived with a friend in one of the old brownstone houses on East 105th Street,” she explained. “More than half [of the population in the area] were foreign born, and 94.1 percent were of foreign origin… in that dramatic and kaleidoscopic shifting of national groups….”

Still, she saw no place where “a musically gifted child, off-spring of those foreign races so deeply imbued with music, was able to secure really good instruction and, through music, realize a more complete development…” and this became her life’s calling.

District Music Service

It is important to note that in the midst of all the struggle to keep the School afloat in the first few years, Schenck was establishing what we would call today a community outreach or engagement service.

Music was beginning to be used at troop camps and in hospitals, not only for entertainment but for possible therapeutic value. “Our own District Music came into being in answer to the new demands… So started the effort made by our students and faculty to share, on a broad scale in the greater life of the community, what they themselves had received from the School… Concerts also were given in neighboring libraries, public schools, settlement houses, and wherever requested.”

Schenck wrote in her diary at the time: “I go every Thursday to the Grand Central Palace, which is now a debarkation hospital, and bring music… Ellis Island, again, was not as bad as I had feared. They had just discharged a lot of men, so the wards were not too crowded. Our students played first where the men were nervous cases. They seemed depressed and listless. Then we played in a tuberculosis ward where they were pretty sick — then in a psychopathic ward where they locked the door after us and all the windows were barred. The men were tragic. Beginning next week we are to have charge one day a week at the shell-shock hospital and also one day at the surgical hospital.”

Financial Needs

Schenck required money to pursue her vision and fulfill her goals, writing “I found myself with over one hundred eager waiting students, a small and devoted group of teachers who needed work — and no funds.” Therefore, friends and donors, or “subscribers” as they were called, were always in need of engagement. “It was a large order, but friends became interested — and it was at this moment that the future Manhattan School of Music was born… All were music lovers or musicians themselves and sympathetic to the desires of our young students… This account of the School should include pages of names of faculty and alumni who have contributed so much to its development.”

In addition to her supporters among the women of the Union Settlement’s Junior Auxiliary (a kind of fundraising group of volunteers), she sought advice and assistance from two prominent musicians whom she had met while studying in Paris: Pablo Casals and Harold Bauer. They became the first members of her Artist Auxiliary Board, and Bauer came through with “a check and our first Library acquisition — fourteen volumes of the Art of Music…” [Note: the Bauer gift is still in the MSM Library collection] and on December 31, 1918, “he also started our Endowment Fund by giving a concert at the then popular Aeolian Hall.”

Harold Bauer benefit announcement in the Musical Courier (December 12, 1918): “…To give, and while giving to receive, is in itself a process not entirely devoid of pleasure. That is why it is an exceptional opportunity for New Yorkers to hear Harold Bauer in recital and at the same time contribute to the endowment fund of the Union Settlement Music School.”

Even students, whose tuition already helped finance faculty salaries, pitched in to fix up the first property purchase at 238 East 105th Street, mortgaged by the Board in 1921: “…it was in a bad state of repair but seemed the only place available. The students, however, were delighted with their new home and proud when they had raised two hundred and fifty dollars to help decorate the rooms. Trustees, students and staff painted chairs and hung curtains.”

Schenck writes in the closing pages of Adventure in Music: “No one knows better than I do that our School, or any school, is more than the efforts of any one person — it grows from the devotion and vision and hard work of a group of dedicated people — some contributing much and some little…”

A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall

To put the course of events in a larger perspective you must acknowledge the enormity of the social, economic, and personal obstacles Schenck found at every turn during this period.

Women’s Rights

The 1915 New York State ballot to allow women to vote was defeated by male voters, and Schenk had to wait until 1919 to vote nationally. “Was woman suffrage the important point?” Schenck questioned. “I certainly tired myself out marching in the parades.” Almost no females were in positions of power, few were earning money respectably, and all were expected to be married and look after their children and home (and husbands).

War

The U.S. entry into WWI in 1917 ate up funding for unnecessary activities. Congress voted to declare war on Germany in April 1917, followed by major combat operations on the Western Front under General Pershing in the summer of 1918. “…the war had come and was absorbing the nation.”

Finances

Schenck did not come from great wealth and, unlike some long-standing institutions, the School was not founded from the resources of one tycoon’s largess. (As MSM President James Gandre points out in his PhD dissertation on the surviving American music conservatories, And Then There Were Seven, “Two were founded with extremely large endowments; five were founded with no endowment and struggled mightily through many of their beginning years and beyond.” [Page 245])

Demographics and Poverty

East Harlem was in flux, with large populations of immigrants eager to assimilate and live that American dream, but in need of assistance. “…on East 104th Street it was the ten cent lesson to which the families seemed to cling, and the Community Sings, sometimes of a thousand people, on the streets in the evening. And behind all this, as the hard times increased, the long line of three or four hundred applicants waiting for distribution of sacks of coal at the Settlement.”

A Pandemic

The Spanish Flu infected one third of the planet’s population from 1918–1920, killing millions (and we’ve all experienced how a world-wide health crisis can wreak havoc on New York City)…

Personal Loss

Adding to all the above mentioned is the reality of Schenck’s own personal tragedy: at the same time that her plans for a music school were most at risk and in need of her attention, both of her parents — Mary Delia Williams and Henry Everett Case Daniels — died of typhoid fever in August of 1917, within 19 days of each other.

In spite of all these forces in play and strikes against her, she found a way to progress.

She wrote: “… because of all the difficulties with which we were faced, the unifying and enriching effects of the music seemed increasingly apparent… I became ever more convinced that there must be in the cities of modern America, schools of music for students of all financial backgrounds, where people of all ages could come together with their burdens and desires, and gain, through their contact with music, a reappraisal of values in living.”

Persisting Through a Marathon

MSM alumni, long-time faculty, and seasoned administrators can recall times during their own tenures that the School faced institution-changing hurdles. In January 1969, in the midst of the relocation from the east to the west side of the island, then-President John Brownlee died suddenly. The Trustees of MSM and Mannes planned a merger in the late 70s. Between 1986 and 1989 MSM had three different presidents. Several times, plans for a dormitory were put on hold. More than once, internal power struggles slowed progress. In these and other instances, the School seemed to falter, only to rebound stronger than before, finding new and organic ways forward.

Is it too romantic to think we were guided by an unseen lodestar?

(As Tennessee Williams writes in his 1947 short story The Yellow Bird: “Now from this point on the story takes a strange turn that may be highly disagreeable to some readers, if any still hoped it was going to avoid the fantastic.”)

Is it possible that this can-do attitude in the face of daunting challenges — the will to make things happen with the smallest of monetary means, a communal fight in the name of music — is so fundamentally ingrained at Manhattan School of Music that it is somehow forged into its very nature? Does it continue to this very day, after over a century? Can a school have a soul?

I posit that a pattern emerged in the quite fluid founding years of our institution that has repeated itself in past 106 years (give or take!). A theme. Like a cell by Beethoven being developed over and over. Like a motif by Mahler, triumphantly breaking forth only to dissolve in the next moment. Like a chord group by Ulehla, hovering around a tonal center. Like a song by Ellington, stretched by a pianist’s imagination, seemingly unrecognizable. New, yet familiar. Comforting.

Perhaps the true day that our School began was the day a young woman dreamed of a new music school. [Cue the off-stage chorus!] That is why it is appropriate and important that the date for the School’s annual Founder’s Day celebration is November 22, the birthday of Janet Williams Daniels Schenck.