The Hallé and the First World War

Actes du colloque international « Les institutions musicales à Paris et à Manchester pendant la Première Guerre mondiale »

Before I talk specifically about the period of the First World War, I thought I should give you a brief summary of the Hallé Orchestra’s history prior to that date for context. I also wanted to say a little about the Hallé Archive and the sources that we have for this period in particular.

The Hallé Orchestra

The Orchestra was founded by Charles Hallé, who was German by birth. He added the accent to his name whilst studying in Paris to encourage a closer pronunciation of his surname! In 1848, following the revolution he arrived in London intending to make his career there. He found London rather full of emigrée musicians and opted instead for a life split between the capital and the provinces. He was invited to Manchester by one of that city’s cotton merchants, also a member of the German community. Initially Hallé worked with an existing musical society, the Gentlemen’s Concerts, and gave a number of recital series – he supplemented his income throughout with piano teaching. In 1857 he was contracted to provide the musical content for the Arts Treasures Exhibition held that summer in Manchester. He used this as an opportunity to try out an arguably ‘meatier’ musical diet on the public – with entire symphonies and concerti being offered. He also gathered a body of musicians from Manchester, London and the continent, who spent the weeks of the Exhibition rehearsing and playing together, engendering a higher standard of playing than the public was used to. After this success, Hallé himself admitted he was loathe to see these musicians depart for their homes and consulted with his friends as to whether he could make a ‘Grand Orchestral Concert Series’ a success financially. He took the plunge – contracting the players for the season rather than concert by concert. It was the first time something close to a permanently contracted orchestra had been set up in England. There were other differences, Hallé made sure that there were always seats available to non-subscribers. He imposed no restrictions on subscribers either. Hallé believed absolutely in the power of music to inspire, engage and thrill. He regarded it as part of his role to educate the public – introducing new and unfamiliar works often by starting with extracts before performing an entire work, and on occasion repeating a performance a week or so later.

By the time Hallé died, rather unexpectedly in 1895, his orchestra was regarded as one of the country’s finest (bear in mind that London had no permanent orchestras at the time). Manchester mourned, with his funeral procession bringing the city to a standstill. It was in large measure the German community who came to the rescue in 1895 to ensure that Hallé’s legacy lived on, and who appointed the Hungarian born Hans Richter as permanent Principal Conductor in 1899. Richter presided over a period of great strength for the Hallé – maintaining its reputation for excellence and developing a close bond with the British composer Edward Elgar and his music that lives on to this day. Following his retirement in 1911, Richter’s protégé Michael Balling was eventually appointed. 1913/14 season was only his second year in charge but he was already ‘making waves’. The financial set-up for the Hallé was based on a guarantor system – the Concerts Society was constituted from the first as a non-profit making body. The guarantors made themselves liable for payments in the case of debts or losses incurred up to a maximum of £100 each. We should remember that Charles Hallé had conducted, and often appeared as soloist, without taking the fees that the Society was now required to find – and in Richter, they had to find substantial fees! It is partly against this backdrop that what follows needs also to be set.

Our sources for the First World War era are concert programmes, including those kept by the orchestral librarian in a series of notebooks, which also cover concerts outside Manchester. In the Henry Watson Music Library, also in Manchester, are a series of notebooks kept by Gustav Behrens (friend of Hallé and architect of the Concerts Society), which include comprehensive press cuttings for the period – both concert reviews and other articles, as well as copies of some correspondence. On the whole what we have is the public record – there is very little that gives real insight into matters behind the scenes and the conclusions that we draw need to be tentative therefore. The men (and they were largely men at this time) who ran the Hallé, tended not to engage in public debate with the press on the whole – publicly ignoring adverse criticism – but we have no way of knowing what they thought in private.

World War One talk

As the 1913/14 season drew to a close there were grounds for optimism at the Hallé:

• In Michael Balling they had a relatively young & enthusiastic conductor, a pioneer in the mould of Sir Charles, who believed in making music accessible to all: “I cannot conceive that any lover of art could possibly object to paying a few extra pounds each year in order to keep going so fine and noble an institution as this Society […] it is not run for profit-making. It is run for the cause of music and for the sake of the refining and exalting influence it exerts upon Manchester citizens.” Discussions were taking place as to municipal subsidy.
• Nationally the Orchestra’s reputation was high with more out of town engagements, including concerts in Dundee and a week long appearance in February 1913 at the Edinburgh Beethoven Festival and 2 concerts in London in October 1913.
• New Chairman Gustav Behrens had been a key player in the formation of the Society, a friend of Hallé’s and instrumental in the appointment of Richter.
• There was a new Leader, Arthur Catterall, a local product of the RMCM who was to have a very distinguished career.

However:

• Financial problems – there had been a deficit on the season of £1649 and subscribers had fallen.
• Balling’s new 6-month contract for players meant there was a higher wage bill.
• Balling had done much to reinvigorate the programming, but little English music was being performed (Richter’s final days had been marked by press controversy over his dependence on German music in his programmes).

1913/14 season included Rachmaninov’s Hallé debut on 29th January, and at the Pension Fund Concert Balling shared conducting honours with Elgar. Balling departed for his home in Bayreuth in April – with all set fair.
We don’t know what exactly took place within the Hallé Committee during August & September – the minutes do not survive and even Behrens’ notebooks do not shed very much light. Sir Thomas Beecham gives an account of how he became involved in his autobiography A Mingled Chime – which makes a good story but should be taken with a pinch of salt. The position with Beecham grew rather than being presented as the outcome of the single meeting he describes:

[I] went to see the manager of the Hallé Concerts Society in Manchester, which was without conductor or policy […] The committee […], to whom the future of their concerts appeared dark and dismal without the guiding hand of a true-blue Teuton, were in a pathetic state of helplessness and vacillation […]. I entered into a partnership with the Society under which I would work for it as an unsalaried musical director, conduct the concerts when on the spot and engage a fitting substitute when absent.

Gustav Behrens does not fit this description, and no-one expected the War to last for long – so arrangements were at least initially ad hoc. This is made very clear in Behrens’ speech to the guarantors at a special meeting on 15th September.
We do know:

• Behrens wrote to Balling on August 26th “We feel ourselves that the whole matter of your conducting the concerts during the continuance of the war is fraught with many difficulties” ending with “let us hope that […] in the season following this you will be able to resume your position”.
• The players were approached and agreed at once to accept half-pay for 20 weeks, with a promise that any profit on the season would be shared amongst them.
• Elgar offered to conduct the opening concert of the season for "whatever you can give me"; Bantock asked for expenses only and Beecham would take no fee. Chorus Master R H Wilson took no fees throughout.
• Collectively it seems to have emerged quite quickly that even with the challenges presented by the economy, blackout and transport difficulties, regional concerts would continue. Aside from the question of boosting the nation’s morale, it was pointed out by a number of leading conductors that suddenly making orchestral and theatre musicians redundant would cause a great deal of hardship.
• Of the 94 members of the Orchestra in 1914, 89 were in fact British born, the remainder naturalised British subjects – indeed Carl Fuchs, cellist was interned in Germany as a naturalised British subject through the war; Brodsky and his wife (Principal of RCM) were also interned but were released following successful appeals by influential Manchester friends.
• Most of the above was printed in the 1914-15 season prospectus. The prospectus as printed is the only plan for the season that we have, so how much was changed we will never know.

So what happened next?

In terms of programming it’s interesting that the anti-German sentiment displayed elsewhere did not make itself heard at the Hallé (or if it did, was overruled) – 1914/15 season closed with a Wagner evening – at the RPS there was no Wagner until 1916, no Beethoven until March 1918 and Brahms disappeared for the duration of the War. This attitude contrasted with other local concert series Brand Lane & the Harrison Series – both substantially revising plans and Brand Lane going so far as to explain why at the end of the season. Later in the War, even as news of the slaughter on the Somme reached home the Hallé opened 1916/17 season with another Wagner evening, and indeed closed it with a programme that included more Wagner alongside Elgar’s For the Fallen.

In 1914 concerts opened not just with the English National Anthem, but also with one of the allies’. In January 1917 start times moved to 7.00pm to try and get around transport and blackout issues. In February 1918 a concert included settings for three of Rupert Brooke’s 1914 Sonnets and Butterworth’s Shropshire Lad. The only wholesale change was to the programme for 14th November 1918, when the advertised programme was scrapped entirely and a largely patriotic one took its place. Interestingly, the altered programme was greeted with a marked lack of enthusiasm in the Manchester Guardian, critic Samuel Langford wrote “The attempt to make last night’s Hallé Concert a great commemorative occasion could hardly hope for complete musical success. The concert already planned would probably have attracted a larger and more representative audience and would have been musically worthier of a great moment […]. Whether we ever shall have music worthy to celebrate the present moment is doubtful, but at present we are certainly so far from it that all attempt at musical celebration seems vain. It is almost a capitulation to go to the German masters for it, but the close of Beethoven’s Choral Symphony would come nearest to doing justice to the time and we suspect that Handel’s Messiah at Christmas will be found much nearer the mark than last night’s concert. Mackenzie’s Britannia overture is worse than useless…”
Interestingly, the decision of the Hallé to mark Armistice Day in 1920 with a programme that was largely Wagner was greeted with criticism in some sections of the local press.

There were purely logistical problems caused by the war that had an impact, with communications and transport issues leading to changes in soloist and repertoire on more than one occasion.

Financial woes continued – subscriber levels were still falling although numbers of non-subscriber tickets were up – attendances were understandably hit by the curtailment of some railway services, the blackout and general hardship.

The pre-season Promenade concerts – introduced under Simon Speelman in 1905 – were re-branded and given a marketing "makeover", a deal was done with impresario Brand Lane so that he now used the Hallé for his orchestral concerts, the Hallé season was altered to 15 concerts as a result and they were not all on Thursdays. With the Promenade & Brand Lane the season thus extended to 32 weeks, so musicians were paid for longer. As the war wore on though the players were still on half pay and trouble here was brewing – it culminated in a dispute over pay shortly after Armistice that at one point reduced the contracted players to just 2.

27 players served in the armed forces, of whom 2 – G.A Bennett (horn) and Frank Tipping (violin) – were killed in action.

Women arrived in the ranks of the Orchestra (as opposed to playing second harp) for the first time in October 1916. Their inclusion in the player body went unremarked by the critics. Since our earliest surviving minute book only dates from 1922 we have no official record of the decision and no photographs of the orchestra from that time, so literally all we know is their names: Miss L Dunlop & Miss E Richmond were in the First Violins; Miss G Barker, Miss C Dunnington, Miss A Kirkman, Miss J Morris and Miss O Walker in the Second Violins whilst Miss M Dunnington played the ‘cello.  The following season Miss Morris’ name has gone, and a Miss Burrows appears, along with Mrs Rawdon Briggs in the violas. Rawdon Briggs had been Leader of the Hallé from 1905-1913 and was also a member of the Brodsky Quartet. His wife also played with the Quartet as a second viola on occasion. In October 1918 Miss O Walker moved to the First violins. The season following the end of the war saw six women remain in the string section but at the end of this season Hamilton Harty was confirmed as permanent Principal Conductor and he dismissed them. He did not claim a lack of ability in women players but argued that it was impossible to create a "complete unity of style" in a mixed orchestra; rather more prosaically he also pointed to the difficulties of making arrangements whilst the orchestra was on tour. His decision went neither unnoticed nor uncriticised; composer Ethel Smyth attacked it in the press as "unutterable rubbish" and a brief argument was waged between the two in The Guardian.
We know from the RNCM archives that Gertrude Barker was also a student and contemporary of Frank Tipping – and effectively took his place in the strings when he left. He had briefly been one of the youngest players to be employed in the Orchestra, being only in his teens when appointed and 21 when he died.

Lasting impacts? Financial model had to change, programming had become more creative – this was to remain under Harty; adapting to survive had been done and would be again. Women did not come back again until 1940. Balling of course did not return – ironically the anti-German sentiment was probably higher at the end of the war than it had been during.

Pour citer cet article

ROBERTS Eleanor, « The Hallé and the First World War », Actes du colloque Les institutions musicales à Paris et à Manchester pendant la Première Guerre mondiale (5-6 mars 2018), Conservatoire de Paris (CNSMDP), Opéra-Comique, Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM), Les Éditions du Conservatoire, 2021, https://www.conservatoiredeparis.fr/fr/halle-and-first-world-war.