From the Publisher

Composer, critic, author, and radio personality, (Joseph) Deems Taylor (1885-1966) was one of the most influential figures in American culture from the 1920s through the 1940s. A self-taught composer, the New York City native wrote such pieces as the orchestral suite Through the Looking Glass and the acclaimed operas The King's Henchman and Peter Ibbetson, the first commissions ever offered by the Metropolitan Opera. Taylor's operatic works were among the most popular and widely performed of his day, yet he achieved greatest fame and recognition as the golden-voiced intermission commentator for the New York Philharmonic radio broadcasts and as the on-screen host of Walt Disney's classic film Fantasia. With his witty, clever, charming, and informative but unpatronizing manner, he almost single-handedly introduced classical music to millions of Americans across the nation.

In this first biography of Taylor, James A. Pegolotti brings to life the remarkably multi-talented man within the context of his times. The captivating portrait recounts his formative years in the Bronx, his college years at New York University, where he composed four successive varsity musicals, his journalistic career first as a writer for the New York Tribune Sunday Magazine and then as the powerful music critic for the New York World, and his musical triumphs. Pegolotti also details Taylor's stints as editor of Musical America, president of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), best-selling author of Of Men and Music and other books, collaborator with Disney and Leopold Stokowski on Fantasia, and even judge for the Miss America pageant. He describes how Taylor used hiscritic's pulpit to champion American music, opera, and musicians, and also chronicles his colorful personal life, including his third marriage at age sixty to a twenty-year-old costume designer.

Enlivened with such figures as George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ayn Rand, and Taylor's fellow Algonquin Round Table tastemakers, this in-depth, well-balanced, and objective biography will stand as the definitive work on the great American composer-critic.

The New York Times

[Pegolotti's] contention that Taylor enjoyed success too early, and that his multiple talents undercut his focus on any one of them, and that he resisted financial risk, all ring true. — John Rockwell

Library Journal

Pegolotti (librarian emeritus, Western Connecticut State Univ.) rescues American composer, music critic, and radio commentator Deems Taylor (1885-1966) from obscurity through this well-researched, warts-and-all biography. Integrating the cultural, political, and technological developments of the time, he traces his subject's family background, years at New York University writing shows, three disappointing marriages and escapades with various women, relations with his ex-wives and only child, presidency of ASCAP in the 1940s, and maintenance of a multifaceted career. Taylor was once named in the same breath as Aaron Copeland and George Gershwin as the future of American music, and Pegolotti convincingly posits that he could have achieved their level of fame had he concentrated on one of his talents. Nowadays, Taylor is probably best remembered as the narrator of Fantasia and for his two Metropolitan Opera commissions (The King's Henchman and Peter Ibbetson). Basic music analysis and photographs complement the narrative. Recommended for all libraries collecting in American music or 20th-century cultural studies as the only complete biography. (Index not seen.)-Barry Zaslow, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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Table of Contents

Read a Sample Chapter

Deems Taylor: A Biography

Northeastern University Press

Chapter One

How Taylor Was Given the Name Deems

On December 22, 1885, the cries of a baby boy born that day filled the crowded flat at 152 West Seventeenth Street in Manhattan. For Katherine Johnson Taylor the birth had been a difficult ordeal because of the size of the infant, who weighed ten pounds and measured twenty-one inches. Fortunately, Joseph Schimmel Taylor, her highly organized husband, had anticipated possible difficulties and brought his mother, Mary, from Pennsylvania to be with them to help when their first child was born. Ten days later, Taylor wrote to his foster family to tell about his new son: "His name is Joseph Deems Taylor.... He has black hair, blue eyes, and is as fat as his Papa used to be. He is a very 'good' baby, and does nothing but eat and sleep.... Kathy is just ready to get out of bed. She had a pretty severe time, but came through it all very bravely."

There was also a certain bravery in the Taylors' providing their son with the middle name of Deems, for in doing so they abandoned a long-standing family tradition in which the mother's family name always became the child's middle name. Instead, Joseph senior wished to impart to his son the strength of a pastor he much admired, the Reverend Charles Force Deems. And he would very likely never have met the Reverend Deems if it hadn't been for his mother's family, the Schimmels, and their ventures with apple butter.

George Schimmel, the family's American patriarch, arrived in Philadelphia from Rotterdam, Holland, in 1753. He settled on a farm in Bucks County, eastern Pennsylvania, and married a Miss Eschbach. One son, Christian Schimmel, was the sole product of that union. When Christian grew up and married a Miss Yoder, they too had only one child, John Johann Schimmel. But John Johann married Hannah Oberholtzer in 1824, and the one-child tradition exploded with the production of nine Schimmels: seven brothers and two sisters.

All of the brothers worked on the family farm, but one of the youngest, Jose, saw other possibilities for his life and spent his spare time in the kitchen preparing fruit butters and other preserves. Since apple orchards dotted the area, he concentrated his efforts on producing an exceptional apple butter, an endeavor that eventually proved successful.

While Jose experimented, in 1850 his sister Mary married Thomas B. Taylor, another farmer from Bucks County. Taylor died a decade later, leaving Mary to raise their three children. Relatives and friends helped her as best they could for the next two years. By this time the Civil War was raging. Mary wed a neighbor, John Ritter, who was a widower with six children of his own. But life took another terrible turn for her when Ritter died two years later. Now she was a widow with nine children.

Under the circumstances, Mary had no choice but to place all nine children into the care of nearby relatives. So it was that her son Joseph Schimmel Taylor, who would become the father of Deems Taylor, found his home with the Jacob Moyer family in Passer, Pennsylvania, only a half-mile from his mother's house. The Moyers welcomed eight-year-old Joseph and called him JoJo, a nickname that stayed with him throughout his life.

The hundred-acre Moyer farm was situated about a dozen miles southeast of Allentown. The mildly undulating terrain featured woods, meadowland, and acres of apple trees, all of which demanded a great deal of work and attention. For six years JoJo worked on the farm, gathering apples and making cider in season, feeding chickens, collecting eggs, and helping with the milking. Amusements were limited, but when JoJo wasn't shaping toys with the many tools available in the woodshed, Grandfather Moyer taught him to read German. Years later he recalled how happy those times were: The Moyer household was of the kind which constitutes the moral backbone of this country. They lived in the fear of God and made the Bible the rule of life. They were members of the New Mennonite church and belonged to the Springfield congregation [a few miles from the farm].... After the service hosts of friends and relatives were invited to go home with us ... and this Sunday dinner was an institution forever to be remembered. Meat, potatoes, preserves, three or four kinds of pie, and Oh, such conversation. Unfortunately when the company was large I had to wait for the second table.... Frequently the guests remained for supper; but at four o'clock I had to change my clothes and go for the cows.... That is the one objection I have to farming. It isn't nice to have to milk on a Sunday night. If you wish to appear in company in the evening you have to change a second time; for it would never do to come to the parlor with the odor of cows upon the person.

JoJo also exhibited an amazing memory that may well have been photographic. To impress visitors, he would announce that he could memorize advertisements and-for a penny-recite them in reverse. Though JoJo's mother and the Moyers recognized his unusual memory and intellect, they knew he needed to learn a trade to assure he would be able to earn a living. Thus in 1870, at fourteen years of age, he was apprenticed to tradesmen in the nearby towns of Milford Square and Hagersville to learn to be a carriage painter.

At this time young JoJo also decided to become a member of the Springfield Mennonite Church, so every Sunday he walked six miles for instructions in the faith, an interest that wasn't surprising, for Mennonite traditions ran strong in his family. Not only were the Moyers Mennonites, but JoJo's grandmother Hannah bore the family name Oberholtzer, a key German family in Mennonite history. This Swiss Anabaptist sect, named for its leader, Menno Simon, had come to Pennsylvania in the 1680s to escape religious persecution. Like the Quakers, they resisted warlike actions. The values of frugality, hard work, piety, and helpfulness permeated the Mennonite world and found a place in JoJo's heart. He was received into the congregation in 1872. Time would prove that nothing Deems Taylor received from his father had greater impact than the work ethic of the Mennonites.

After JoJo completed his apprenticeship, he spent several years painting carriages, but his active mind ultimately found this work unappealing. He determined instead to become a teacher and entered the Pennsylvania State Normal School in Millersville to complete the necessary program to gain a certificate. The Millersville school, the first of Pennsylvania's state sponsored colleges for training teachers, had only about a hundred students. The educational regimen was hard, but JoJo derived particular enjoyment from singing, either in the choir or in small groups. During choir practice he noticed the beautiful voice of Katherine Moore Johnson, a member of the class a year behind him. JoJo became entranced with Katherine. In 1878 he graduated at the head of his class of thirty-two neophyte teachers (eight women and twenty-four men). For his first teaching opportunity JoJo selected Mount Joy township, just ten miles north of Millersville, where Katherine remained to complete her final year.

JoJo's first year of teaching, he admitted years later, was "afflicted with the intellectual malady of nearly all fresh graduates, an overestimate of his own importance." Perhaps that attitude did not sit well with the Mount Joy school board, because after one year he left to teach at Ebervale, in the coal-mining region of northeastern Pennsylvania. The choice again may not have been accidental, since Katherine had begun her career only five miles away, in Hazleton. At the end of his second year of teaching, in 1880, JoJo proposed marriage to Katherine and she accepted. However, they hardly rushed to the altar: Katherine remained to teach in eastern Pennsylvania for another year, at Wilkes-Barre, while JoJo chose a one-year appointment in Huntington at the Brethren Normal School, now Juniata College. By the time JoJo had completed his third year of teaching, in 1881, he realized that he could never get married and start a family on his meager income. Fortunately, his uncles Jose and Owen Schimmel came to his rescue. Jose had by now developed a superior apple butter, and when he took jars of the preserve to Philadelphia, they sold so well that he established a canning factory there, J. O. Schimmel and Company. Continued success convinced Jose to open factories in Chicago and New York. He chose his brother Owen to take apple butter to New York City, then virgin territory for the sweet spread. By the late 1870s Owen had begun tempting New Yorkers with Schimmel apple butter, and by 1881 he needed a reliable assistant as a bookkeeper. Remembering that JoJo had an incredible memory and agility with numbers, Owen made him an offer to come to New York City. JoJo quickly accepted, leaving his rural roots to join in his uncles' business.

When JoJo arrived in New York he found no Mennonite churches, so he joined Uncle Owen in worshiping at the Church of the Strangers, where he met and became friends with the pastor, Reverend Charles Force Deems. The minister had come to New York from North Carolina, where he was well known as a preacher, writer, and educator with the Southern Methodist Episcopal Church. Deplorable conditions in North Carolina after the Civil War, as well as debts to some Northern creditors, spurred his move northward. With a wife and four children, Reverend Deems settled in New York City and initiated the Watchman, a weekly newspaper that urged national reconciliation and a forgive-and-forget philosophy regarding the Civil War. The newspaper survived only a year, after which he returned to his ministerial vocation.

What Reverend Deems heard from preachers in New York's pulpits were denunciations of "rebels" and the "rebellion." Such attitudes convinced him that his true mission was to provide a church of worship and comfort for Southerners who had found their way to New York. To accomplish this, he founded the Church of the Strangers, initially using the chapel of New York University at Washington Square for services. During his quest for a permanent home for the church, Reverend Deems fortuitously met Frankie Crawford Vanderbilt, the second wife of the shipping and railroad magnate Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. She became a member of his church, and a friendship between Deems and the Commodore resulted. Though the richest man in the country had never been one to give to charity, the charms of his Southern wife and the enthusiasm of Reverend Deems persuaded him in 1870 to provide the necessary fifty thousand dollars to establish a home for the Church of the Strangers on Mercer Street.

By the time JoJo arrived in New York, his uncle Owen had become an important member of the church's advisory council. JoJo also plunged into the life of the religious group, soon becoming one of its officers. He dedicated himself to helping Reverend Deems, even to writing the Church of the Strangers' official history, A Romance of Providence. Occasionally JoJo managed to get to Pennsylvania to visit Katherine, who had contracted a throat infection that ended her teaching career. She knew that her fiancé needed to build his savings before they could marry, so she waited patiently and passed the time doing needlework at the family home in Oxford, some forty miles west of Philadelphia. Three years later, in 1884, the couple married and moved into a lower Manhattan flat, a term that at the time suggested stark rooms with few amenities. JoJo worked for his uncle until he discovered that teachers' salaries in New York were double those of Pennsylvania. He promptly lost his taste for the apple butter business and took a position at a starting salary of $1,080, augmented with evening instruction and work with private pupils, and a promise of pay as high as $3,000 per year.

All this was explained in the previously mentioned letter of December 31, 1885, which JoJo wrote to his foster parents. But the main purpose of the letter was to relay the good news of his first child, Joseph Deems Taylor.

In what became a lifetime role as a traditional supportive wife, Katherine agreed with her husband's wishes to name the child not only for his father, but also for the forceful Reverend Deems. It was not until graduation from college that Joseph Deems Taylor simplified his name and became Deems Taylor.

Childhood Recollections

If environment predisposes a child's future direction, then young Taylor was certain to find a love for music. Katherine and JoJo, who had gained some formal training in the Millersville college choir, undoubtedly sang "Rock-a-bye Baby," "Oh Promise Me," and other popular tunes of the day, as well as hymns such as "I Will Sing the Wond'rous Story." But it was Taylor's parents' interpretations of the latest Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, particularly H.M.S. Pinafore and The Mikado, that found prominence in the home. Years later Taylor remembered that when he was six years old, his parents' warblings were distinctly Savoyard: [W]e were not wealthy. The piano, for instance, the traditional result and symbol of affluence, was missing. We did, however, possess a parlor organ: a Mason & Hamlin, and a good one; and what time he was not teaching day or night school, my father used to play and sing a good deal ... about some kind of little bird that died, and whose name was Tit Willow.... Also every once in a while, to some statement of my mother's my father would retort, "What, never?" Without even waiting for her to speak he would instantly answer himself, "Well hardly ever!" and burst into laughter. My mother would laugh, too. It seemed to me almost unbearably silly for two such aged people to go on like that over a simple question and its perfectly satisfactory answer.

Apparently young Taylor was not aware of the repeated question of H.M.S. Pinafore's sailors to their braggart captain, but he was intrigued by the black dots on the printed sheets of music that provided the impetus for his parents' vocalizings. Fascinated, he began his life as a composer, drawing his own musical staves that varied from four to six lines, "all generously filled in with large fat notes placed at random." In this manner, he composed a seven-movement work in youthful Sturm und Drang mode: Love, Hatred, Sorroe, Gladness, Anger, Joy and Fetig. The artistic embellishments on the staves provided early evidence of a budding talent for drawing.

Along with music, books and writing held an honored place in the Taylor family. JoJo read prolifically and chronicled family events in annual journals. He was a proud man, especially of his own self-discipline. His description of a trip in July 1890 to an educational meeting in St.

Continues...

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Excerpted from Deems Taylor: A Biography by James A. Pegolotti Copyright © 2003 by James A. Pegolotti. Excerpted by permission.
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