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Of the three works on the program, Leonard Bernstein's "Piano Trio" was arguably the most fascinating, written when the composer was a nineteen-year-old student at Harvard. Quirky and a joy to listen to, it had Lenny's musical DNA all over it, foreshadowing works to come. The ensemble opened the program with Haydn's "Gypsy" Trio and closed with Dvorak's Trio No. 3 in F Minor. A standing ovation was rewarded with an encore of a movement from one of Beethoven's trios.]]>
Winter, with its cold weather, brings people indoors to socialize, and at Dumbarton Oaks the Blisses were no exception. Beatrix Farrand, the Blisses' landscape architect, noted this when, in late October 1936, she wrote her aunt, Edith Wharton: "Mildred has apparently already started on a winter campaign of entertaining, concerts, queens and, best of all, the Kenneth Clarks who are, I believe, for the moment at Dumbarton Oaks." In addition to entertaining Sir Kenneth Clark, who in 1933 had become director of the National Gallery in London, the Blisses that winter also entertained several musicians, who presumably performed in the Dumbarton Oaks Music Room. These included the American pianist Beveridge Webster, the Spanish soprano Lucrezia Bori, and the Polish-born, American bass Doda Conrad.
After the Blisses' 1940 gift of Dumbarton Oaks to Harvard University and the establishment of the research institute, Mildred Bliss returned to the idea of wintertime music. In 1941, the institute began planning to host "recitals" in the Music Room, an undertaking that would develop in 1946–47 into the Friends of Music concert series, which was to be based on the same-named series given at the Library of Congress in the Coolidge Auditorium. At the time, Mildred Bliss was particularly concerned that there was little programming of the classical song repertoire in Washington. She remembered her friend Doda Conrad and his famed interpretations of Franz Schubert's two great song cycles, the 1828 Winterreise (Winter's Journey) and the 1823 Die schöne Müllerin (The Lovely Mill Maiden). In September of 1941, she wrote Dumbarton Oaks' director, John Thacher:
There is one program which I particularly recommend to Dumbarton Oaks: two concerts by Conrad and [Mieczysław] Horszowski, one giving the Winterreise and the other the Schöne Müllerin. The ensemble of these two is of a very exceptional quality and I should like to have Washington become a center for lieder singing as it has already become for instrumental chamber music. If Dumbarton Oaks could have these two cycles it might lead to the Musical Division of the Library of Congress including lieder in their winter plans. It is one of the most beautiful forms and is eminently suited to a small hall, and the two artists would be far less expensive than a small orchestra and would complete the musical background Mrs. Coolidge and Mrs. Whittall and the Friends of Music are trying to give to the people of the D.C. [Dumbarton Oaks Archives, Administration files.]
Doda Conrad did perform Winterreise (with Erich Itor Kahn at the piano) in February 1948 for the Friends of Music of Dumbarton Oaks concert series. He would record the cycle with pianist Lili Kraus in 1950 (a copy of this recording is retained in the Dumbarton Oaks Archives). Mildred Bliss would also get her wish that lieder be performed fairly regularly at Dumbarton Oaks. Among those who sang German lieder in the first decades of the Friends of Music of Dumbarton Oaks are Peter Pears (1949), Doda Conrad (1948 and 1950), Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (1955), Gérard Souzay (1950, 1952, and 1956), Leontyne Price (1961), Maureen Forrester (1961), Ernst Haefliger (1965), and Montserrat Caballé (1966).
October 7 & 8: The Knights
November 3 & 4: Joel Fan, pianist
December 1 & 2: Piffaro, the Renaissance Band
January 12 & 13: Tempest Trio
February 9 & 10: Ashu, saxophone & piano
March 9 & 10: Bax & Chung Duo
April 6 & 7: Rebel
VS: It's my great pleasure.
JWC: So, when did you first start working for Dumbarton Oaks? We have in the record that you started in the '93-'94 year, but there's also correspondence to you as the Music Advisor in '89. Is that correct?
VS: Yes, I was actually engaged as the Music Advisor in October, officially – the letter came in October 1989. The season for '89-'90 was already in place. I believe Robert Thomson was responsible for that, but then I took over after that, '90-'91 and so on.
JWC: And when you first came here, what did you understand was the mission of the Friends of Music program in the past?
VS: Well, when I think about that, it's very interesting in the sense that I came to Washington as a radio producer. I worked at National Public Radio for a long time, but I came initially as a Fellow, courtesy of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. And because of that – many people, even here in Washington, don't know about Dumbarton Oaks. And because I had dropped in from Mars essentially, which is Berkeley, California, I didn't know that much about it. I'd heard of the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto by Stravinsky, and I didn't know that much about it. Consequently, the reason I even came to Dumbarton Oaks to interview for this position was that a message had been sent to NPR, National Public Radio, to find out if there was someone in their Performance Today classical music program department who would be interested or able to curate a concert series. And the person they approached had no idea how to do that and wasn't interested in doing that. But I had just arrived, and he knew that I had been doing something akin to that in Seattle where I had been living. So, he said, "Go over and talk to them." So, that's what I did, not really being sure what I was getting into. I had no idea of the – how venerable this place was at the time. All I knew was that there was a nice concert series that was offered, and could I do it? And I interviewed with Angeliki Laiou, and I assured her that I could produce a stunning series for her, not really knowing if I could or not at that point. But, because, you know, my whole career has been steeped, well, in many things, but one of them is classical music and music in general, world music, that sort of thing, so I thought I could do a pretty good job.
JWC: You mentioned that the previous year Thomson had lined up all of the performers. Was there a reason for that? Was there a break between individuals who were in charge of the Friends of Music and he was filling in a gap, or –?
VS: Yes, I believe that was – again, I wasn't terribly sure about any of this, but I've been learning the job for a very long time now, so I'm slowly, slowly – my appreciation for the whole place and everything, the wonderful history of it, has been growing steadily. I believe that Joan Southcote-Aston was the person who was in charge of the music before Mr. Thomson took over, but then she had an accident and was unable to continue in that position. And so I think he just filled in temporarily. That's my understanding of it. I never had the pleasure of meeting Joan Southcote-Aston, although I've heard so many stories about her, and I don't believe I've actually met Robert Thomson either. I may have just, you know, very briefly met him, but not ever in the context of talking about the music program. So, I've just been sort of taking it from scratch, essentially.
JWC: So, before you had come, there were a number of big-name performers who had come to the Music Room to give a performance. You had mentioned Leontyne Price, for example, before the recording started. What do you know about them through correspondence that you've been able to look over from the past, or what people have told you in conversation about those previous performers?
VS: Well, the most information I've received has come from a book that John Thacher put together – he wrote, he didn't put it together. He wrote the book about performers at Dumbarton Oaks. I happen to have it here too. It's kind of my Bible if I want to look into the history of Dumbarton Oaks music. What he says in the foreword to that book is that he had a friendship, or he ultimately developed a friendship, with Alexander "Sasha" Schneider and Ralph Kirkpatrick, who were notable musicians at the time. Schneider was a conductor and a violinist; Kirkpatrick, a harpsichordist. And he actually worked with them to develop the Friends of Music – I think I'm going in the wrong direction. What was your question exactly? Oh, the people who've performed here before, yes. And so, in his book, he does talk about just amazing performances by amazing musicians. It's sort of like a Who's Who of great performers of the first half of the twentieth century, Leontyne Price being one of them, and also Eileen Farrell, Jennie Tourel, Gérard Souzay – I don't know if he's as well known – Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau was one of them, Joan Sutherland. There are so many amazing singers, and then instrumentalists such as Rudolph Serkin and Leon Fleisher and Murray Perahia who are still, you know, very well known today; the harpsichordist Wanda Landowska, who's the pioneer in bringing back harpsichord performance in the world, actually; and Gustav Leonhardt, who is sort of the grandfather of the new early music movement, historically informed performances. He played here also, and who else? And of course Ralph Kirkpatrick himself did, but he was sort of part of the Landowska old school, I think. We also had Christopher Hogwood, who was another one of the early music keyboard performers there. Leonard Rose, a very beautiful well-known cellist at the time, who was a wonderful teacher. He taught Lynn Harrell, who actually came here to perform several times on my watch. So, yes, those were – Pinchas Zukerman was another violinist, Charles Wadsworth, who for years ran the Spoleto USA Festival and was a very well-known pianist. I could just go on and on, and I would refer anyone who's interested to this book. I don't know if it's generally available, but it certainly would be available to look at at Dumbarton Oaks.
JWC: Now, I may be mistaken, but my understanding is that a lot of those names that you mentioned, when they came to perform with Dumbarton Oaks, they weren't the world-class celebrities at the time. They had yet to be discovered. Now what do you think makes that the case? What attracted these up-and-comers to Dumbarton Oaks? Did Joan Southcote-Aston just have a talent for seeing things in people that others didn't at the time? or was there something about Dumbarton Oaks that attracted these types of people?
VS: Well, first of all, I don't – I believe it was not Joan Southcote-Aston who was primarily responsible for these initial contacts. She arrived in the fifties, and I think it was Mr. Thacher who really had the contacts, because he was friends with Kirkpatrick and Schneider, and they were the ones who – they would, you know, get into a huddle and say, "What should we do for the next season?" and they were very enthusiastic about it. And of course they had wonderful connections. They knew a lot of people and invited the musicians, and so I think that's how it got started, and it is true that so many of these people were well-known as excellent, excellent musicians but had not quite made their mark yet. They were rising musicians at the time.
JWC: And have you, I guess in your earlier years here – did you ever have a chance to meet any of these people? Did they ever come back?
VS: Well, the musicians themselves?
JWC: Any of these players in the early music phase.
VS: Well, I have not met any of the people associated with Dumbarton Oaks. I've heard Ralph Kirkpatrick play. I heard him in Paris actually. He was virtually blind at the time, he'd lost most of his eyesight actually, and I went back to speak to him afterwards, but at that point of course I had no idea that I was going to be at Dumbarton Oaks, ever. Many of the musicians I have encountered, but not always at Dumbarton Oaks, you know. I've invited Paula Robeson, who was one of the musicians who came, before she became Robeson – I forget what her maiden name was – and I've met a lot of the musicians in the other contexts, like when I worked for NPR, for Performance Today. Many of them would come and do performances in our studio. In fact, that's one of the reasons I feel like I know – I'm quite will informed about who's performing today and the quality of the performances and so on, because of that involvement. And that was my day job. I mean, this was just something extra, actually. So, I've met them but not necessarily here.
JWC: And one of the other major facets of the Dumbarton Oaks music program is its history of having pieces commissioned for Dumbarton Oaks. So, the first was Stravinsky, right?
VS: Yeah, the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto.
JWC: And then after that was Copland, and then Joan Tower, correct?
VS: Yes, Joan Tower, yeah.
JWC: Now, if I'm not mistaken, you played an important role in the most recent piece that was commissioned for Dumbarton Oaks, is that correct?
VS: Well, I wouldn't say it quite like that. I would say that, in terms of the commission, I really had nothing at all to do with the actual commission. That was Ned Keenan, and I believe James Carder did some research to identify someone to write the music, but I did help organize the concert. I put all the pieces – I found the performers, I worked on what program we should have, you know, the Copland and the Stravinsky, of course. I organized all of that.
JWC: Can you tell us a little bit more about that particular endeavor?
VS: Sure. Well, I found – one of my old friends is Christopher Kendall, who has an ensemble called the – it used to be called the 20th Century Consort, now it's the 21st Century Consort – but it's a small chamber orchestra, and I thought immediately of that group as a group that contains excellent musicians and who could, you know, do something on rather short notice. And also the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto is quite well known. So, I engaged that group. Unfortunately, Christopher was not available to conduct himself, so I asked Ken Slowik, from the Library of Congress? Gosh, wait. No, he is at the Smithsonian in the musical instruments collection. He's head of all the music at the Smithsonian essentially. He's also a performer, wonderful cellist, harpsichordist; does all sorts of different types of performances. And so he came over to conduct. The string players for the Nonet for Strings by Copland were – I think that came through the 21st Century Consort as well. And then Joan Tower – she had a string quartet in mind for this particular performance. It's called the Dumbarton Quintet. It's a string quartet and piano. She herself played the piano – she wanted to play the piano in this world-premier performance, and the string quartet – I think it was the Enso, but that's something I am going to have to look up
JWC: When Joan Tower was writing this piece, did you ever have contact with her?
VS: Oh yeah, oh yeah. I did. But she actually had written it quite a ways back and tweaked it a bit, and played it in sort of a different version before it was performed here. Enso, yeah. It's the Enso String Quartet. You know what that is right? Enso?
JWC: I'm not familiar, no.
VS: It's used a lot in Zen, because in calligraphy it's like an empty circle with the brush stroke: it's enso, for empty mind and so on, emptiness. Anyway, they performed it with her. I'm not sure if I answered your question sufficiently.
JWC: No, yeah. I'm actually kind of curious, though, about the process of commissioning a work, and you mentioned that James Carder –
VS: James Carder and Ned – I think James did, because I've spoken with James a little about it after the fact. He said that – he just got online. There are all kinds of things online that talk about commissioning works and so on. But I might add at this point that Jan and I are looking into commissioning a work – and I can't say more about it right now – from a young composer. Whether or not that will pan out, we don't know, but we're looking forward to 2015, 2016, which will be the years – 2015 is the year that the gift was made to Dumbarton Oaks – to Harvard, Dumbarton Oaks was conveyed to Harvard University – and then in the year 2016, if we miss the '15 target, that is the year that the Friends of Music will turn seventy. The anniversary of the commission would be the 75th – I mean of the gift – would be the 75th anniversary. So, we're looking to that year. I don't know what will come of it, but we're hoping that we might be able to do that.
JWC: And one of the other, I guess, credits to your name is that the series has been very well reviewed in the time that you've been here. You mentioned earlier a piece about your time at NPR and how that sort of exposed you to a lot of these current-day performers, but what else can you say about why people enjoy the Dumbarton Oaks music series so much, and why they keep coming back?
VS: Well, I really can't say why people enjoy it. All I can say is what my aspiration is when I put together a season. I actually have engaged several musicians throughout the years who have risen to prominence now, but who had not achieved that at the time, like Anonymous 4 is a very, you know, well-known group of four women who sing medieval music, and they came. There's quite a well-known violinist, Gil Shaham, now who performed with us before he even made his debut at Carnegie Hall. He told me that he was sort of using the concerts here at Dumbarton Oaks as rehearsal for his debut at Carnegie Hall. And there are quite a few others, I could go through my notes and take a look, but I don't remember off the top of my head. But, over the years, a thing that was so interesting to me was that, when I read Thacher's book, in the foreword to that book, there was sort of a mission statement in the sense that they wanted – because back in the days when Friends of Music was about to coalesce into something, there were very few chamber music series in Washington; in fact, very few classical music series in Washington. One of them was at the Library of Congress, one of them was at the Phillips, there's the National Symphony – am I forgetting something? Maybe at the National Gallery of Art as well, the NGA. So, they decided to look at what those groups were doing, or those organizations were doing, and try to do something a little bit different. So, at the beginning they said, "Well, we want to avoid all of the nineteenth-century music, you know, all of the Romantic music" – not avoid it entirely but play it down and spend more time in the eighteenth-century and the twentieth-century, and that of course would also involve some occasional commissions from young composers. So, over the years, of course, that changed quite a bit. Again, since I didn't know that when I first took over the series, I just was trying to create something that would be balanced and interesting and represent a lot of different eras and also go for the highest quality of performances I could find and so on. So, I didn't really stick to that, because I didn't even know about it, and now over the years I think audiences' tastes have evolved from what they were initially. My understanding of the Friends of Music is that, early on, it was a very sort of closed organization, and people were invited to join, and they actually joined, and it tended to be people mostly in the neighborhood and close friends of the Blisses. So – oh dear, I don't want to do that. So, now it's, you know, just generally open to anyone who knows about it. We don't ever advertise, and so it's just by word-of-mouth that people find out about the series, but they're very happy to come. Over the years, I think, since the audience is changing, their tastes are changing, what's going on in the world is changing, and also the way people listen to music and consume music is changing. And so I've taken some risks, I guess you could say, made some bold steps in terms of introducing groups that are a little more cutting-edge, perhaps, such as Brooklyn Rider, which is a string quartet that does very new and interesting work. They also perform with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Project. There's world music influence in what they do. Also, Time for Three, which is this wonderful young trio – not so young anymore – but they were young when they graduated from Curtis, just trained in classical music to an inch of their lives, yet in their downtime would go and play bluegrass and jazz, and they do wonderful little – they would tweak classical compositions and so on, and the audience loved it! I mean these are really musically conservative people, and they loved it, most of them did. There are probably a few grumpy people in the batch, but for the most part they liked it a lot, same with Brooklyn Rider. And then, I mentioned world music: one season not so long ago, a couple of seasons ago, I engaged – I lined up the season, and then I realized that the undercurrent of that particular season was world music, and what that was about. The reason I say that is because I engaged an early music group from Canada called Ensemble Caprice, and they had a program called "Vivaldi and the Gypsies," which is a politically incorrect term, but that's what they called it. It should have been Roma or Romani people, I suppose. But they had a Baroque manuscript with melodies from the Romani people – the Roma people – oh gosh, I don't know which it is. Which is it, do you know?
JW: I think Roma.
VS: Roma. And what's "Romani"? Is that an adjective perhaps? Anyway, it doesn't matter. So, from the Roma – and then they arranged the melodies, and then they arranged the harmonies and instruments – how they perform it. And what they did was that the played a Vivaldi concerto, and then they would play a Roma concerto, Romani concerto, "gypsy" concerto – not a concerto, just the gypsy piece, it wasn't a concerto. I'm really glad you don't have to edit this, because it would be a nightmare. Anyway, so we had world influence in that concert. We also had – I engaged a Mexican string quartet, the quartet of Latinoamericano, who came to play. The first half of the concert was all music from the New World, essentially, for string quartet, and then the second half they were joined by a player of the bandoneón, which is a tango instrument, and this is a person who played in Ástor Piazzolla's tango band in Argentina. His music is very popular now. It's very well known in classical concerts. I mean, he's just been embraced by the classical world as well as the world music community. So, we had that, and then the other sort of strange concert for that season was in December. It was called Music of Three Faiths, by the Boston Camerata. They were the performers. The Boston Camerata has performed many times at Dumbarton Oaks, and this time they performed – it was essentially medieval music from the Jewish tradition, the Christian tradition, and the Muslim tradition. And we had an Arabic ensemble. They called it the – I can't remember what it was called, but anyway, it was a trio of Arabic musicians from different Arabic-speaking countries actually. So, that was a little bit interesting too. We added a new dimension, I think, to our music series with that. And coming up this next season we're going to have a Persian santur.
JWC: Now, I was curious to know – you talked about the audience a lot – who is your audience nowadays? Do you have a lot of the same types of people who may have been involved in an earlier era of the music series, or do you have professionals, families? Who likes to come?
VS: We have a core audience that I think has been coming to these concerts – forever! A few seasons ago, maybe ten seasons ago, actually, I remember a man and his wife were telling me, as they were welcomed to the first concert of the season – he said, "I believe this is the fiftieth" – the fiftieth! – "year that we have been coming." I was really surprised to hear that, because that's a long time. But they looked like it was possible. So, what I'm saying is, I think there are quite a few people like that. We had – unfortunately, many of them have passed away – but early on, after I first arrived, I remember that J. Carter Brown, who was the Director of the National Gallery of Art, would come faithfully with his family, and he would tell me that he was – his aunt brought him to Dumbarton Oaks when he was a child, and that she would gesture to the stairway that comes down into the Music Room and say, "And then Mrs. Bliss would come down the stairway!" That was rather nice, to have that connection, that he was there and that he had heard about Mrs. Bliss. I don't know if he actually met her or not, but he would hear stories about her from his aunt. The widow of Abe Fortas, who was on the Supreme Court, used to attend faithfully. Her name was – oh gosh, Carolyn, I think? A-G-G-E-R was her last name, and she would come every season. She would subscribe every season to our concerts and was very happy to be there, I think. And actually I believe that that is the Fortas that has given the name to the Fortas Chamber Music Series at the Kennedy Center. So, we were very fortunate to have her as well. Again – I'm just trying to think of any other people who – actually, I think that's probably the only connection I had to the people who came who might have been connected to the Blisses in any way.
JWC: Do you find that the type of audience you have influences how you put together a season?
VS: Right, that was your question, wasn't it. I think, actually, that we do probably have an audience that is hanging on as long as they can to this particular concert series, because they're familiar with it and so on. The newer additions to the audience – well, I would say the youngest are probably in their mid-forties.
JWC: Oh, wow.
VS: I mean, there may be the occasional slightly younger person, a couple who comes, but I think it does tend to be an older audience. The youngest people in the audience, of course, are very often the Fellows who are here at Dumbarton Oaks, which is lovely. It's wonderful to see them. But, no, I actually have to say that I do believe that there are some younger people coming, and that's – maybe it's because we're doing some more interesting music. I mean, there are different audience categories, you know. There are people who are very enthusiastic; every time they leave a concert they say, "Oh that was wonderful, thank you so much, it was so interesting" – whatever, nice things. And then there are other people who I think might be a little grumpy about anything that's new and challenging to them. But they came back, so, you know, I think it's worth the risk.
JWC: And what for you makes an ideal concert? I know there's a lot of variety in the types of pieces that you're putting together and between seasons there are different themes, but is there some common thread that ties all the concerts together?
VS: Within a season? or just in general?
JWC: Well, both. Within a season, it seems to be more topical; there's a musical common thread, and I'm thinking overall is there, you know, a spark or something that you're looking for that, regardless of the genre or period that a piece is from or that a performer focuses on – that they all have in common?
VS: Well, I think – what I try to do or look to do, really – what it is I look for is excellence in performance – excellence, but not just musicians who have a lot of facility – not just musicians with chops, as we would say, but musicians who are deeply musical. I'd say that's really important. I mean, sometimes I'm luckier than other times, but I will not engage anyone whom I have not heard either in person or, nowadays, on YouTube. That way, I can see how they present themselves and I can actually hear them directly in performance to see that they can deliver the goods. That's probably not a very good way of putting it. But I want to just make sure they're the real deal – really have accomplished artists who come here. That's really the most important thing. The programming, of course, is the most fun in terms of when I've identified wonderful musicians. We can talk about what they want that might be a little different or more interesting, or whatever. I think its excellence – excellence of musicianship and performance.
JWC: When you're finding these performers, how do you first encounter most of them? Do they have agents that are reaching out to you, or are you seeing in the community and reaching out to them? Or a little bit of both?
VS: I'd say it's both. I've actually been in the business here, at Dumbarton Oaks, but before that many, many years. I know lots and lots of musicians and I know lots and lots of managers and agents, so we'll sort of have a nice collegial relationship. I might write to them and ask them if they have this or that and ask them what so-and-so is doing this year. Or they might approach me and say, "we have this really interesting group that's gotten together," "this is a particularly interesting program," and so on, and I consider it. So, it's very fluid in that way. I just feel very comfortable moving on my own or taking things that are offered by the managers. If I trust them. You have to trust them in taste and so on.
JWC: What's the number of performers you have in a series versus the number that you start to investigate at the beginning of the season? What's the ratio of people –
VS: I've never kept track of that. I don't know. I do – some seasons I have a very clear idea in my mind of what I want to do. Boom – just like that. Other seasons, I think, "Oh my gosh, it's another season. I have to line up fourteen concerts." And then I start thinking, I have to organize in my mind what I think might be a good season. And other times I'm so full of ideas and there are so many people I'd like to have come to Dumbarton Oaks that I can only have – there are only seven concerts, each one done twice. That's where I got the fourteen. So, I have to be selective. It's an odd process. I don't actually think about something like that, now that you ask. No statistics.
JWC: How far in advance do you generally plan out a concert series?
VS: A season? Well, right now I'm working on in the summer of 2013 – of course we have the 2013-14 concert series, but I'm working on 2014-15 right now, and I have quite a number of ideas. I haven't nailed down anything yet, but I'm sort of designing it now. I have these sort of maybe this or that, you know. It's in process right now.
JWC: When you're putting these things together, are you always trying to find something new and different, or are there always a few standbys that the audience really enjoys and makes reappearances through the years?
VS: Well, I look for what – I try to pay attention, first of all, to what's going on in the world of music. I do look for something that might be particularly interesting because it's different in its approach. I think it's really important to pay attention to that sort of thing. We've had a group here a few seasons back called "A Far Cry." It's just a chamber orchestra of young people who met at New England Conservatory. They were so amazing in their approach to the type of music they played and they listened to music and they listened to each other when they played and the variety they offered within one concert itself. To me, just something about them just struck me as being something very different and special, so I engaged them. And they were so fantastic, the night after the last concert, I went home and got their manager on the phone, who lives mercifully on the West Coast, so it wasn't so early and I said, "I want them next year again." So wonderful. That was the first time I did that. Normally I don't do that, even if we have wonderful concerts. But these people were so compelling and so musical – so deeply musical and dedicated, and so wonderful – that I had them come back. But to answer your question about whether I'm always looking for something different or new, I think more than that – I think I am looking for something new. I always like to have one, what I would call to myself, a weird concert that might shake everybody up. I don't always succeed in identifying a weird piece. Sometimes I have an entire season of rather tame concerts and then I'm disappointed in myself when it comes out to be a tame season. I try to balance. If I have the weird concert, I will try to have something that will wash gently over the ears of our audience, who might be more sensitive to that sort of thing and who might be reassured by that type of program. But, I do really think it's important to pay attention and offer more of the sort of new approach to how people are playing music. Classical music. They – the serious intellectuals – are talking about the future of classical music is in jeopardy. And it can be in jeopardy, but what I know is that we have so many young people; something about it sparks interest. Lots of musicians are graduating from conservatories and universities and whatever all the time – that can continue. We just need to identify what that is and find an audience for them. And so they have to be as out there as we do in terms of having to think about a different way to how they deliver the music to people who listen.
JWC: Do you ever find that other people in either the Washington community or father afield come to consult with you when they're trying to put together a concert series of their own?
VS: All the time. Yes, they do. I get phone calls from people who are about to start a series and they ask me basic nuts-and-bolts questions about it. It's not so much artistic stuff. It's more like – well, it sort of is, like, how do you go about lining people up, or how do you deal with getting people interested to come as an audience, or how do you do your contracts? – various things like that.
JWC: Is Dumbarton Oaks unique in the type of concert series it provides, or is it a somewhat common type of series when you look at other cities throughout the country?
VS: Well, I don't know that much about all that which is happening around the country, but I've had people comment that this is one of the last places they can come to just to subscribe to a season knowing that they'll get wonderful classical music. That said, I often try to give it a little classical music, but a little something else to broaden the horizons. We don't have a mandate to do crossover music or a dumbing down music. I'm not saying those two are the same. I don't try to provide concerts to the lowest common denominator. I try to provide concerts to intelligent – because out audience certainly is – and knowledgeable and musically literate. I have to say also that there is not a need to do that. I imagine that there are probably some presenters who have difficulty bringing audiences in, and they have to find things – play the Pachelbel Canon or have Vivaldi's Four Seasons again and again, because that's what people know and want to hear. There's nothing wrong with that music, just not exactly adventuresome either. It's a known quantity. We're very fortunate here to be able to function here without being able to market what we do. The subscribers hear about us – its word of mouth. We're virtually fully subscribed every season. We have to save a few seats for the people here at Dumbarton Oaks and comp tickets for the performers and so on, but for the most part we do have a pretty full audience and people keep coming back without having to attract them with – you know what I'm saying, I think.
JWC: What do performers tell you after they come here about the opportunity they have to perform the pieces that they like or the more adventurous pieces? What about the audience or things of that nature?
VS: Well, they invariably – I've never heard any of the musicians complain. They just love it here. They say, "Oh, this is the most beautiful place." The ones from overseas – from Europe – will say, "It's just like being in Europe." – the Music Room and so on. They actually sometimes – our audience can be somewhat understated. Sometimes they fall asleep and drop their programs on the floor. But our musicians love them. They say, "This is just lovely." And our audience gives them a warm welcome too, I think. They seem to like the audiences. Maybe it's because they don't actually have audiences like them often, and because they don't have to play in a school gymnasium or basketball court, or something. It's a real concert offering experience from their point of view, and a really positive one.
JWC: On the flip side, what does the audience say about the performers? I'm sure many of them have subscriptions to either the Kennedy Center or other performing arts venues –
VS: They do. They have that a lot too. What they do a lot – often they'll ask me, "Do you know the dates of your concerts next season yet, because I don't want to have a conflict between that and the Kennedy – chamber music concerts at the Kennedy Center," or something like that. We really are on their radar screen. We are important to them – important enough that they want to schedule around what our dates are with what's going on elsewhere. Does that answer your question?
JWC: Yeah. But what do they say about the performers themselves?
VS: Oh, the performers themselves. They love it.
JWC: How do they compare – going to the opera is much different than here, of course – but how would they compare the two –
VS: Compare the two?
JWC: Do they enjoy coming here more than they enjoy going to the Kennedy Center?
VS: You'd have to ask them. You would have to interview some of the audience members. Will you do that?
JWC: We might, if you have the names of some of the people who have been around for a very long time.
VS: Maybe we can find some of those.
JWC: Another thing which I was curious about that was mentioned is the Music Room itself, which is aesthetically wonderful. What about from an acoustic perspective or some of the other more technical aspects that you need to keep in mind when bringing these performance groups in?
VS: Well, I think the acoustics are decent acoustics. It's not a really live room, and sometimes when we have the type of music that responds better in a live environment, we will open the drapes over the windows and that gives us more hard surface. I think the tapestries soak up a lot of sound, and you don't want to be moving those around. The audience also will soak it up. The only time I notice it very much is when we do have groups such as Anonymous Four, the group I mentioned before, that's four women's voices singing medieval music. It's very stark and high and wonderful in a cathedral, for example. In the Music Room, it sounds okay. It's also – its dry. It's a drier environment. As you may or may not know, the drier the environment, the more present every little thing will be, like the source of the sound. I mean a violinist, for example – you will hear every little screak happening on the string or bow, and so on. I think musicians prefer to have a more live environment. That said, that's not that this is a dry Music Room. It's pretty good. It's pretty good, but it's not ideal for certain types of music. Now, I'm trying to actually steer clear of some of those cathedral-like ensembles. We had a wonderful December concert this last season with a group called Cantus. It was a capella – nine men singing a capella. Somehow, that was just great. We didn't need anything. And it was the nature of the music they sang as well. They weren't singing medieval music. Actually, they did sing one thing that was medieval. It was a totally mixed program. They sang one thing that was from Sweet Honey in the Rock, they sang music – folk music. They sang Native American hymns, and they sing, well sung I should say – Russian choral music – that sort of thing. Just a variety that you didn't need to have special acoustics. And it was good – so good. I listened over and over to the recording they did in the Music Room. It was so lovely. It took me weeks to stop listening to it. But that was just me. I don't know if anyone else felt the same.
JW: Do you have any recommendations as to how you could equip the Music Room such that it could be more acoustically conducive to medieval choir music, for example?
VS: That's a good question. Well, I'm not sure if just a shell would work. I'm not sure if that would do it, because my understanding of it is the entire surrounding surfaces should be the types of surfaces that create a more light environment and just a shell might help a little to project it out, but I don't know we would need it that often. Part of the beauty of having it in the Music Room is that it's the Music Room and it doesn't have a lot of things that get between the musicians and that. We now have a platform, which the audience was begging for for years and years saying, "We can't see the musicians," because when we position the musicians there are two possible – well there are many possible ways, but we either put them lengthwise and everyone sits so we look at them up against the tapestry at the end of the room, and the other way is a sort of semicircle around the fireplace. Everyone prefers the semicircle because it is more intimate, but when they are in the long configuration, if you come in late and you are sitting in the back – because there are no assigned seating here – it's really hard to see anything at all. I've sat in the back and it's really looking for the – you don't even know who's playing. It was great that we could have a platform. It only goes up about a foot, but it is just enough extra that people can see. But then it creates other problems because whenever we have musicians – ensembles that have pianos, we can't lift the piano.
JWC: You mentioned before a little about the Fellows. What type of addition do you think that they give to the music series? They aren't here for the music; that's a nice added perk of Dumbarton Oaks. What do they tell you about their thoughts on the music series? Do they say things similar to what the regular subscribers would?
VS: I don't think I can answer that. No. There are some that come regularly. Most don't come regularly, quite honestly. The ones that do come regularly clearly are music lovers and show up every time. But you'd have to talk to them about that too, I think.
JWC: I guess what I was trying to get from you – when you talk to audience members what types of conversations do you have with them? You're saying they don't tell you what they enjoyed?
VS: They?
JWC: When you talk to an audience member after a performance, what do they tell you?
VS: Well, generally, they just say they really enjoy it. If they didn't enjoy it – well mostly people just come out and say, "That was wonderful." I remember sometimes, as I said, we have the occasional grumpy audience member. And it's really occasional. I remember one person – and there's one person who still faithfully comes to the concerts – but if there's anything that is a little challenging or a little unusual or dissonant, or even not one hundred percent classical, she – it's a woman – might storm out at the end and complain. My colleague Cindy Greene is the one who deals with the subscriptions and tickets now. And that's sort of a new thing. I used to do everything. I don't hear as much maybe as she hears about it, but mostly its very complimentary. And, oh!, the other thing that happens that's quite charming is that sometimes throughout the year I'll receive notes from audience members who will say, "I just heard this fabulous concert up in Maine," or Chicago or whatever, and they'll send me this program saying, "You might want to think about these wonderful musicians." They'll send me suggestions which I find quite charming. And I receive little thank you notes at the end of the season saying, "Thank you. I really appreciate what you're doing," which is so nice. Its one of the few benefits of doing this.
JWC: Are there any particularly salient memories that you have about your time here? – either stories about performers who have come through who have left an impression on you or anything in general that you will always remember about Dumbarton Oaks.
VS: I think the thing that I will always remember, actually, is a very personal thing and is something that just goes on inside of me, which is that when I first came here, as I intimated when we began speaking today, I didn't really understand all that much about Dumbarton Oaks. Slowly, slowly over the years – I've almost been here for a quarter of a century now, twenty-five years next year, I've more and more began to realize what a treasure Dumbarton Oaks is and what a privilege being able to promote these concerts. When I first took it on, I took it on because I love music, I'm a performer as well, as well as someone who is a radio producer in the cultural arts, and so on. Slowly, slowly I began to realize this is such a gift and what fills me – I'm filled with gratitude for having this opportunity to be here and to work with musicians to actually identify young rising musicians and give them an opportunity to play in this very distinguished venue. I've discovered that this is a very prestigious venue [laughs]. People go, "Oh! Dumbarton Oaks. We'd love to play there." So it's about being able to give young people an opportunity to do that. And for years there was a policy of no reviews, no recordings. It was supposed to be an intimate soirée – nothing should come between the people, the audience, and the music. Now Jan has so heartily embraced the initiatives and new ways of doing things. To have that dimension is just – I feel like we're continuing to grow and change in a good way. Gosh, I think one of my most favorite things was that Cantus, which I already mentioned. There was just something about the content – oh, I remember what it was. There was an encore that they sang that happened to be from the Methodist hymnbook. I know nothing about the Methodist hymnbook, but it was set to the tune of Sibelius's Finlandia. The thing that struck me – we've been having such a difficult time these last few years in the world, and the words are something to the effect that "This is my native land and I love it deeply and dearly and the skies are so blue and pine and clover grow here and everything. But in other places, the sky is just as blue and the clover and pine grow. People have aspirations and hopes just as mine and love their country too." And I was thinking, whoa, wouldn't that be a great national anthem? Because I mean, well it's not – I should be careful what I say – it's not just like waving the flag and bombs bursting in air and it's a prayer for peace, really, and understanding of all nations. That's what really caught me in the Cantus concert and I remember that. And I learned about that hymn. I had never heard it before, so that was very special. But that's not what you want to hear. You want to hear something "Dumbarton Oaksian" [laughs]. What can I say? Something I've always wanted to do – it's not a memory – but something I've always wanted to do is to have some sort of an outdoor concert someday in the beautiful outdoor garden. I'm still hoping we'll be able to figure out a time when its not a rainy season or too hot or too this or too that. It's just magnificent and the ability to do something like that would be just tremendous.
JWC: Wonderful. Is there anything that we've neglected to ask you that you feel is particularly important to talk about?
VS: Let me think. Dumbarton Oaks – Friends of Music – well, I guess not. I could talk more about particular amazing performances that we've talked about here, but that's researchable. One could look it up. "Look it up," as they say. I don't know. The thing about it is, as soon as we finish with this I'll probably have all sorts of thoughts I should have said, but at this point I think I'm okay.
JW: Well thank you so much for speaking with us today.
VS: You're quite welcome. It's been a pleasure.]]>
IU: You are welcome.
ABF: Can you tell us about how you and your husband, Paul Underwood, first came to Dumbarton Oaks and about your memories?
IU: My husband was teaching at Cornell, and I came down in advance to find an apartment here, when he was granted a fellowship as a Junior Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks. And he had written in advance to say I was coming to Washington. I had never been in the city before. It was 1943 – the war – and I found it rather overwhelming, but I went to Dumbarton Oaks and introduced myself, and John Thacher was very gracious. And his – maybe his secretary, I don't remember what position she held – turned out to be a classmate of mine in college. So, they were both very gracious, but they were not much help about apartment-hunting. But I finally found one in an apartment building and I went back to Ithaca, and my mother and husband and I came to Washington that fall, so it must have been September, probably, 1943. And my introduction to Mr. and Mrs. Bliss – by the way I had been rather impressed, even on my short interview with John Thacher, by the rather rarefied atmosphere at Dumbarton Oaks in those days. But when I came here my first introduction to the Blisses was a series of concerts that were held in the Music Room, and at that time open only to, of course, Mr. and Mrs. Bliss, and to the Fellows at Dumbarton Oaks and, of course, the Director of Studies also, and the head of the study of garden architecture and so on, and the Pre-Columbian, but no outside people. And they were wonderful concerts – really it was a great privilege to be there. I think probably Mrs. Bliss did most of the selection of the people who performed there. But I still remember my first meeting with her. Of course, we were advised that formal attire was rather expected. And we lived in Arlington and we had no car, so we had to travel by bus – we were rather poor too – we traveled by bus. You know, I had a long evening dress, and my husband was in formalwear. And we enjoyed the concert very much, and at the end Mr. and Mrs. Bliss were at the entrance to the Music Room, and we would make our way out and thank them for the concert. So, this was the first time we had met, and Mrs. Bliss looked at me and she said, "Oh, your dress is such a lovely color. I wonder if I might have it for cushions later." I looked at her; I thought, "How am I supposed to react to this?" you know? I thanked her very much. I don't know what I said – I really don't – but I was rather startled. So, that was not a very good beginning to our acquaintance. But she, you know, she thought she was – she didn't know how the other half lived. And she didn't quite know how to approach, so she wasn't very comfortable, I suppose. I assume. Anyway, that was my initial impression of her. And then after that I didn't have much contact with Dumbarton Oaks at first, because I was rather bored, and I wanted a job, so I applied to the Signal Corps and they were very interested at first because I had taken a course on crypto-analysis at Cornell that one of the professors was giving. It was just for his entertainment, really, but several of us took it – among the students too. And so when they heard that I had taken this course, my interviewer was very interested. Oh yes. But he asked me if I had any relatives abroad, and I said, "Yes, I'm French. I have relatives in France still." And he said, "Oh well then, I'm sorry. You're a security risk." And I said, "But they're on the right side!" He said, "No, I'm sorry, we can't consider you." And so I went home, and I was rather distressed, and in the same building was a young lady, a young woman – we had met at Cornell; she was in the Music Department – we were friendly with her there and we continued to be friendly here, and she said, "Well, try O.S.S.," and I said, "No, if the Signal Corps won't have me, O.S.S. isn't going to have me." O.S.S. – you're too young to know – is the predecessor to C.I.A. She said, "Try; I know they're looking for people." So I went to O.S.S., and they took me. So I had a job, and that was fine. And then the next thing you'll be interested in – well, my husband was happy at the change at Dumbarton Oaks, and the Director of Studies was Koehler at the time, Wilhelm Koehler; I think his first name was Wilhelm . I was rather sorry at that, because being French, I would have loved it if I had been there when Focillon was the Director of Studies, but he was gone, and it was a German instead. And I knew that Mrs. Bliss was very much of a Francophile. Anyway...what was I saying?
CW: You got a job at O.S.S.
IU: O.S.S., yeah. So, my husband was getting accustomed to Dumbarton Oaks, and he was quite happy. And he had studied publications of Koehler at Princeton, so he knew all about him, and so on, and it was very nice, very comfortable. And then, what happened next? Oh, there came the Conference –
CW: The Dumbarton Oaks Conference in '44.
IU: Yes, that was set up preliminary to the San Francisco.
CW: Right.
IU: And at that time we lived on the estate. We lived in the villa that had been originally the kennels for the dogs parading through the estate, when it was under the Blisses.
ABF: Was this by the garden? Were you right nearby the garden?
IU: It's in a hollow of the estate, and when it was turned over to Harvard, they changed it – no, before that, they changed it into a villa for Mrs. Clark, I think her name was, who was the curator, the librarian of Mrs. Bliss's rare books collection. And at that time, as I said, our apartment was in Arlington, and it was very hot. No air conditioning, of course, at that time. And I was working long hours too, at O.S.S. sometimes, when we had a report to get out. So, she said, "I'm going away for the summer for two months. Why don't you come and stay in the villa?" So we thought, "Well, fine." She had no kind of air conditioning, but it was in the hollow. In fact it was a little bit dank, but it was cool, it was cool, and there was room for my mother and Paul and me. And that's where we lived during the Conference. And it was an amusing time, because I can still remember our laundry man coming to the villa with our laundry, furious, angry. He said, "I'm an American citizen, and I have to come here under armed guard to deliver your laundry."
CW: Because the Conference was still going on.
IU: Oh yeah, oh yeah. And my husband said to me, "You know, Irène, I go up in the elevator, and there is the Secretary of State, and he greets me, and I know he thinks I'm one of his young men," you know. "Every morning, we go up and we greet each other." So, it was a really amusing time. I remember he called me once and he said, "I forgot to pick up our eggs;" – which were delivered at the front entrance – "do you mind picking them up when you come home?" So, I said, "Okay," so I rang the bell, and of course it was after working hours at Dumbarton Oaks, and I don't know who it was who answered, but it was one of the bright young men still there, and I said, "I'm sorry, but I'm Mrs. Underwood," and he said, "Oh yes, the Underwood eggs," and he got them for me.
ABF: Did you meet any big political personalities while you were there?
IU: Not political, but we met the President of Harvard, because he was part of the Conference, and he lived in one of the suites, I don't know whether it was the east end or the west end of the Fellows Building. Are you familiar with the Fellows Building?
CW: We live there, yes.
IU: Oh, you live there. I think it was probably the east little apartment there. And so we would spend evenings with him. It was very interesting. But other than that we didn't meet any of the others, no, no. But the scholars were still permitted to use their studies, which by the way were still under the roof where the domestics lived before it was given to Harvard. You know, I used to tease my husband and say he was in an ivory tower during the war, but he said, "No, you don't know what the offices, our studies, are like, under the roof, with no air conditioning."
CW: Right, it must have been hot.
IU: It was very hot. But that changed shortly thereafter, and then they were moved down, and they each had their little offices, and it was very nice. So, what else? Well, that was about it during the war, yeah. And then I left O.S.S., I went to the State Department briefly, when they were going to divide O.S.S. into the C.I.A. and part of it went to the State Department, and I was going to the State Department to hold the French desk until the rest of it came over there, and they wanted to be sure, because the man was leaving who was on the French desk at that time in biographical intelligence. So, I went there briefly, and I hated it. I really hated the State Department. It had a lot of red tape, which we never had in O.S.S., because they were mostly from the academic world, or refugees, and we were free spirits, but not in the State Department. So, I decided to leave. And anyway we wanted a child, and my doctor said, "You have to rest. You can't work these long hours." So, I had worked at the French Supply Mission, which was an easy, easy job, and then my daughter was born.
ABF: That was 1947?
IU: She was born, yeah. How did you know that?
ABF: We did our research.
IU: And I had a difficult time adjusting to being at home, so Dumbarton Oaks was very paternalistic in some ways, and I had a job, a temporary job, with the Byzantinische Zeitschrift. Do you know anything about that?
CW: No.
IU: No. Well, it was a research tool set up for scholars, and we were – well, I'll let someone over there describe it for you – but anyway, I worked on that for a time. And then Mrs. Bliss had a collection of the letters of Franz Liszt, and she wasn't satisfied with the translation that she had had made, so she asked Libby Bland – do you know about Libby Bland?
ABF: No, who is that?
IU: She was – at that time I wasn't sure whether she was really the curator of the Byzantine collection or whether there was somebody above her; I've forgotten – but later she became curator of the Byzantine collection of art. And Mrs. Bliss asked her if she would do a new translation, and Libby asked me if I would help. So, I said yes, I realized it was a pretty bad translation. I don't know who did it, if it was just a student or what. So, we both worked on that, and that was a temporary job. And then after that, sometime later, I was in charge of photography at Dumbarton Oaks – not the taking of photographs, no no, but the collection, organizing it and getting into the files and so on.
CW: Photographs of the collection or the gardens, or everything?
IU: Everything, pretty much – mostly of the artwork. No, actually, this was only of the artwork, the Byzantine Collection. But those were all temporary, part-time jobs, and then after that my husband went to Turkey for the first time I think in 1949, was it, or '50?
ABF: Well, in 1950, he took over Whittemore's position.
IU: Yeah, but before that he had gone. That was very amusing. Whittemore – you probably know about Thomas Whittemore – was getting on in age, and A.M. Friend, who was at the time Director of Studies at Dumbarton Oaks and who had been my husband's professor both as an undergraduate and as a graduate student, thought, "Well, somebody has to take over the Byzantine Institute; why doesn't Dumbarton Oaks do it? And why doesn't somebody learn about the work while Whittemore is still there?" So he sent my husband over as a sort of a – casing the joint, to see how things were going. Whittemore was a fantastic character. He was really something.
ABF: When did you meet him?
IU: I never met him, but I heard all these stories about him. So my husband gets to Istanbul and he knows there's an Englishman on the staff of the fieldwork under Whittemore, and so he makes contact with – oh dear, what is his name? I've forgotten.
ABF: It wasn't Ernest Hawkins?
IU: Yes, it was Ernest Hawkins. And Whittemore was very possessive of anything to do with the work, so he gave my husband a tourist's introduction to the work, you know, but not in the way they actually did the work, and all that, but he took him around to see it. But my husband and Ernest would meet in coffeehouses, and Ernest would tell him more about what was going on. So, my husband had a pretty good idea by the time he had finished his first trip to Istanbul, and then when Whittemore died – in the State Department, actually, he collapsed – Dumbarton Oaks took over the Byzantine Institute, and my husband was sent there as the director of the fieldwork, to take Whittemore's place and to take over. And I think he – well, I know he really enjoyed it, but it was a tricky position, because I don't know how – Whittemore was a very persuasive character, and how he managed to get Atatürk to agree to change these churches which had been turned – well they were either not used at all, and nothing was done about them, or Hagia Sofia, the greatest church in Istanbul and the one that the Greeks still revere, had been turned into a mosque, and somehow Whittemore persuaded Atatürk to turn all the Byzantine churches back into not churches, but museums. And so that's how the work started, trying to preserve the mosaics and the wall paintings.
CW: Right.
IU: Yeah, I don't know what got me on that, but anyway. What else can I say?
ABF: Was your husband excited about taking this job which would take him away from D.C. to Istanbul for such a long period of time?
IU: Well, originally he went from April to I don't know, I don't remember the dates, but November, maybe, or maybe a little earlier than that. The rest of the time – you couldn't do it in the wintertime; it was too cold – no, he was all right with that. I mean, he didn't like to travel, that's true. But he stayed put in Istanbul, except when he went to Cyprus. Of course they started doing fieldwork in Cyprus too. And he had a young Turk who was on the faculty of Robert College become more or less his mouthpiece between the Turks and taking care of official documents he had to give and so on, except once Ercüment forgot about taxes, and my husband had to appear in court, I think, and it was rather iffy, but – so, I don't know how long he did that before we joined him. I think our first trip there – you probably have this down pat, but I don't.
ABF: Was it 1952?
IU: '52, I think, yes.
ABF: Yeah.
IU: Was it '52 or was it...?
ABF: Your first winter – he writes about your first winter as being in 1953 and it was so cold that you had to put on all the clothes you brought with you.
IU: That was the second trip we took. We went earlier than '53.
ABF: Okay.
IU: Yeah. We went – I think –
ABF: – would that have been '51, maybe?
IU: '51, I think, yes, '51 we went.
CW: You, and Sarah went with you?
IU: Yeah, she went the first time, yeah. And then we came back. And then we went again in '53. We came back in '52. I don't know have the dates pat, but anyway, we were there from '53 to '55.
ABF: Okay.
IU: Yeah. And our first trip – well, my husband had gone in '50, '51, and '52 – no, when did I say? – when did we first go there?
ABF: '51, I think.
IU: '51, yeah. But he had gone there in '50.
ABF: Yeah.
IU: And prior to that he had been there once before.
ABF: Right – because there's correspondence from that time.
IU: And then we decided we would go together, and we went for one season and came back to Dumbarton Oaks, and then we went in '53, again as a family, and stayed until we came back in '55, yeah. And from then on he commuted, without us. Sarah and I stayed here. But the first time we went, that was really quite exciting, because when we were on the plane, they told us that unfortunately they had to circle, because the landing gear was sort of iffy, and they didn't know. So, they had to lighten the load of the fuel, so they went round and round, and my daughter at the age of four had been very good, really, on the trip, but she got sick at that point from the circling, you know. And then they decided, well – this was in Ireland – we're going to land, we're going to dive, we're going to go up and dive, to see if that will loosen the landing gear, so they did that. It didn't work. So, they said, "Now we're going to land." And who was on the plane but Danny Kaye? And we thought, you know, while they were doing all this, we thought, "Well, he should come out and entertain us."
CW: To lighten the mood a little bit.
IU: He was in first class. But he didn't come out, and he had quite an entourage with him. But they went up and they dove, and the landing gear came out, but in landing they burnt one of the wheels, so they couldn't go on with that plane. I don't know. So we had to get off the plane, and they changed, but we went on finally. And when we got to London the next day, where we were changing planes, nothing was in the paper about the Underwoods being on the plane, but "Danny Kaye" – a banner headline – "In Near Crash." So that was my first experience in Turkey. And it was very pleasant, because we had rented a villa up the Bosporus, or Dumbarton Oaks had rented a villa up the Bosporus, in what had originally been, of course, a Greek village, and it was charming. And there were a Greek family who I think Alexander had worked for – Whittemore – anyway we became friendly with them, and it was very pleasant. And the head of Saucony-Vacuum, one of the big oil companies, for the whole of the Near East, had been a friend of Thomas Whittemore, and Whittemore had put him up whenever he came to Istanbul, and in fact when my husband came Whittemore put him up – I don't mean Whittemore, I mean what was his name, A.V. Walker. Walker was his name, the head of the oil company – and he was very – he liked us, and he liked Sarah too, my little girl. She was very good with him, and he was very good with her. Except he would invite us to lunch sometimes, and there would be the former Spanish ambassador, the former whatever, or the current somebody or other, you know, high up, and he would invite Sarah too, at the age of four, the first time we went there. And I would always wonder, "What are we going to go through this time?" I remember at one lunch, she was at his right hand, and she turned to him and said, "You put crumbs on my seat," and he laughed and he said, "Yes, I did." It was weird. And then the time he was at our house, and so was the head of Robert College, Dr. Black, and his wife, and there was Sarah – she always came, I mean – so in the middle of lunch she turned to A.V. Walker, she said to him, "Mr. Walker, you have a beautiful garden," and then somehow I could see her thinking, and she turned graciously to Dr. Black and Mrs. Black, and said, "Mrs. Black, you have a wonderful garden." So she handled that quite well. Actually, this was not her first trip. This was – no, it was her first trip, I think. Yeah.
ABF: If she was four, then it must have been the first trip, I think.
IU: It must have...well, I don't know, because when we went back I put her in a French school, Notre Dame de Sion, she hated that, although she knew a little French, because my mother and I spoke French, but I never attempted to speak French with Sarah, which was my mistake. I really should have. But my husband did not speak French; he understood it and he read it, but he didn't speak it. He had a few words, of course, but so – what did I start to say?
ABF: Your daughter, you put her in school.
IU: Oh yeah, I put her in that French school, and she hated it. And so I put her in the English High School for Girls. Each nationality that had trade relationships with Turkey – France, Italy, Germany, I don't know what else, but those were the big three – they each had their own schools. Of course, they had to teach Turkish, which my daughter flunked, and Turkish language and history, I think.
ABF: She was tiny, wasn't she?
IU: Yes. This was the second trip, not our final trip, when she was five, maybe. But she's small now, she still is. But I put her in the English High School. When we came back, Sirarpie der Nersessian was at Dumbarton Oaks. She had been my professor at Wellesley, and in fact I had done special honors with her at Wellesley, so when she greeted me in the library – I knew she was at Dumbarton Oaks, but the first time I saw her, I was in the Georgetown Library, and she came in with her sister, and you know, we embraced, we were friends. And her sister looked at her and she said, "Are you always this affectionate with your students?" "Oh," she said, "no, no, no, no, but this is special." So when we came back from Turkey I told Sirarpie that Sarah had been to her school, and Sarah was right there, and so Sirarpie turned to her and said, "You went to the English High School? That's where I went to school. Tell me, is the salon still to the right of the building? Do you have to curtsy before the mistress?" Sarah said, "Yes, yes." It's so funny, you know: my child and my professor going to the same school in Turkey. Well, Sirarpie, as you probably know, had to flee Turkey at the time of the massacre, and I remember when Jack Thacher asked her to attend a dinner he was giving for the Turkish ambassador, and Sirarpie was – really she didn't want to go. She thought, "I can't take this." She and her sister had both fled with nothing, nothing. And you know they had to work their way eventually to Paris, but first they had to work in Switzerland and so on, until they got to Paris, and they were finally able to establish themselves there. She went to the Sorbonne. But they had a brother who changed his name to a Turkish name, and for years they didn't speak, and we knew nothing about him, until finally – I think Sirarpie waited until the second time we went to Turkey to tell us that yes, she had a brother there; before that she had never mentioned him. So, it was very hard for her to attend this dinner with the Turkish ambassador, but she thought, "Well, I'm at Dumbarton Oaks. What else can I do?" So, that was that. What else can I tell you?
CW: So you lived in an apartment, or in a villa, that Dumbarton Oaks owned?
IU: Right.
CW: At first.
IU: They rented that the first time. But the second time we went my husband had rented a house – not a house, yes, a house – in the city itself, and it was an old Turkish house, and well, it was an unhappy time in our family, because I had a breakdown while he was away in Salonica, attending a conference, and it was a very bad time, but he came back and we eventually moved to an apartment building, which was better, because there was a French family there – in fact, there were two. One of them, he was the manager of the gasworks in Istanbul, and the other one was a man that my family – and oh, he was the one that Paul had come to know, because being manager of the gasworks for the city, he had to okay the pipe work and everything. When they laid new foundations for a new building or dug up an old building or whatever, he was involved. So, he had become interested in archaeology. And he became interested in the work of the Byzantine Institute, and so my husband and he were good friends, and so I already knew these people. I had met them before. And they were in the same building, and that made it much easier for me. And then I also did volunteer work at the Y, Y.W.C.A., teaching a very small group of young women English. And that was amusing. But I made the mistake of asking them, I said, "I love Turkish cooking. I want recipes." So, they gave me recipes, but unfortunately every time we had a meeting, they would say, "Did you try this? Did you try that?" And I never did, of course, because Turkish recipes, you have to prepare them in advance, everything is done in advance, so you're very relaxed at the time, but I wasn't going to do that when I had a maid; why should I? And they always wanted to talk about movies, and I didn't know about that. You know, movies weren't my great interest at the time. And when we had lived on the shore of the Bosporus before, in the villa, there was a very nice Turkish family next door with two grown daughters, and I think they were still going to Robert College at the time – yes they were – and they became very friendly with us, and they loved Sarah, and they were forever talking about movies and wanted to know all about the stars, and I couldn't help them very much, but – and I think we went once or twice to the movies together, but they were very nice. Unfortunately, when we came back I looked them up and the younger daughter had insisted on taking a job, and her parents would have nothing more to do with her. She would have stayed home, and they would have selected a husband for her, and it was very sad. And so my daughter went to this high school, and that was very pleasant. And then came the riots in fifty –
IU: I can't remember when they came.
CW: In September '55?
IU: Probably.
CW: Over Cyprus.
IU: Yes.
CW: Yes.
IU: And I remember I was visiting, spending the evening – I went from our apartment to another apartment building down the hill on the same street, where there was an English couple who had two sons, and the two sons went to the English High School for Girls, which was co-ed, never mind that the girls were still in the title, but – and our driver would take our three children, the two boys and Sarah, to school every day, and we became friends with this English – he was, I think, at the British Consulate. I don't remember what position he had there. So, I was spending the evening there, and we were having a very nice quiet time, and suddenly my husband came over, and I said, "What?" and he said, "You have to come home right away, right away." So, I said, "Okay. What's happened?" He said, "Well, there's rioting in the city, and you'd better come home," so we walked home – it was just down a few blocks – and as we walked home there was this group of men coming up from below with clubs, whatever they could grab, and they were coming up the hill looking very, very serious, and Paul said, "Hurry, hurry, we'll get home." So, we went home, our bell rang, and it was the janitor of our apartment building, looking very upset – he was Turkish. And he said, "Madame, do you have a Turkish flag?" And I said, "No, I don't have a Turkish flag." Well, the building was owned by Greeks, and he wanted to be sure that we had a sign that, you know, said, "We're okay; no, we're not Greek." But we didn't have it, so we said, "No, we can't help you. We'll just have to take our chances." Well, nothing happened, except down the street there was a little grocery shop, and they ruined that completely, and the main drag, all merchandise – the refrigerators, whatever – were in the streets. They totaled all the shops; the Greek and the Armenian and the Jewish shops were all totaled. And then we saw them the next day – but the next morning, my husband was worried, because on his staff he had both Turks and Greeks, and he thought, "I wonder how things are," and when his driver came in the morning, he said, "Alexander, you have to take me into the old city, because I don't know what's happening there." And so he agreed, and they drove into the Old City, and he found that the Turkish members of his staff had taken in the Greek members for the night, so they were safe. So that was good. But later in the day – oh, Sarah wasn't home: she had been spending the weekend at Robert College, because the president had a daughter, and they had just come – the Valentines became good friends with us – had just come that summer to take over the position of president of Robert College, and Sarah had been spending the weekend there with their daughter; she was a year or two older than Sarah. And I said to Paul, "I want to go up to Robert College and get Sarah. I want her to be home with us." And he said, "Yeah, I think you're right, maybe," and I said, "We'll take some bread with us," because we were sure that all the shops had been looted all the way up the Bosporus too. So we called, got hold of Alexander, and said, "You've got to take us up the Bosporus." And he said, "Oh, I really don't want to," because he was from Syria, I think, and he was a Christian, and of course nobody was supposed to know that, and he was afraid for his life, you know, if they discovered it. But he finally agreed to take us. And it was all right; we got there okay. Except for, when we got there we found that the Valentines had just received the day before their pictures and other things from the States, and they were busy hanging up pictures, very calmly. We entered their living room and said, "What are you doing? Do you know what's happening in town?" "No, no." They didn't know anything about it. And I said, "We've brought you some bread, because we were afraid you were running out of, you know, bread, anything." Oh, they were just amazed that anything had happened. So, we got Sarah; we got home okay. But a day or two later the World Bank was meeting in Istanbul at the time, and among the members of the Bank was Crainer T. Young, he was a friend of the Blisses, and they knew Jack Thacher, and they were interested in the art and so on. They were in Istanbul because of the meeting of the World Bank. Crainer was not familiar with the city so my husband asked me to accompany him to wherever he wished or I suggested he see. Unfortunately, I had not realized he was an avid photographer. He began to snap the all too evident signs of the recent rioting – merchandise strewn all over the main drag from all the Greek shops etc. I asked him to put away his camera, "In this tense atmosphere, we might be attacked." "You're right, he said." She wasn't with us; it was only Crainer. So, we got together, and he had his camera with him, and we went into the city, and the stupid man was taking pictures, and you know, the main street was filled with this merchandise; nothing had been cleaned up. And it was just horrible, and he was taking pictures. And I said, "Crainer, put away your camera; you know, they'll see you, and we'll be attacked if we continue." "Oh," he said, "you're right; you're right." So we got through all right, and it worked fine. In fact, as we were going home later that year, I mean going back to America, we met them in Naples and we had dinner together, and it was very pleasant. And Mrs. Young said to Sarah, "Would you like to see the kitchen?" She said, "Oh, yes!" So, they went off to the kitchen together, you see, which the Italians were always happy to have people do that in the hotels; you know, you could go and see whatever was being done. So, Sarah enjoyed that. But that meeting and the World Bank, and of course the Turks were ashamed to have the World Bank see all this destruction, but it was their doing. And then that fall – November, I think it was – we left – or maybe late October – we left for the States.
ABF: Did you see the Blisses in Istanbul?
IU: No, they didn't come out, but the – I never remember whether it's the Kress or the Kresge –
ABF: Yeah, the Kresses.
IU: Kress Foundation. They came out while we were there, and they were entertained.
ABF: It seems as if your husband was not only working on the restoration, but dealing with all these potential benefactors who were coming through, or handling all of the finances, and these letters make it seem like he –
IU: Well, I wasn't aware of all that he did. He didn't hide things from me, but I didn't think to ask very much. And unless I was personally involved – I didn't entertain the Kresses when they came, but I know there was a dinner for them at Robert College, and we were all together, and so I met them – but he probably saw many more people that he didn't tell me about, that I don't know, unless I was involved in some way.
ABF: It seems very remarkable, looking at his letters, all that he was managing to do while he was there.
IU: Yes. Well, as I say, he didn't tell me all that happened. He protected me, as it were, I think. But he enjoyed it, and we had this good friend who became his assistant, really, and he took care of the official part with the Turks – a very good friend – and he used to take us on sightseeing tours, and have us to his house, which was an old Turkish home with decorations of flowers, of course, because they could never have figurative decorations now. And it was really lovely; we enjoyed meeting, you know, the real Turks. And unfortunately, he's retired now from the faculty at Robert College, and he's not doing very well in old age, not accepting it very well, which is bad, and I haven't seen him. I saw him last – I don't remember when my last trip to Turkey was, in the '80s. I did see him then, but – we correspond at Christmas, but that's not great. So that's about it.
ABF: And do you remember seeing other Dumbarton Oaks scholars while you were there, like I know that Kitzinger came and stayed with you in October 1963?
IU: He did?
ABF: That's what the letter said.
IU: I'm going to see if I can see these letters, yeah.
ABF: They're there, at Dumbarton Oaks.
IU: I don't even know the name of the director. Joe, what's the name of the director?
ABF: Ziolkowski.
IU: Oh, yes, somebody told me that.
IU: Does he have a family?
ABF: Yes.
JM: He has a wife too; it's a very good addition to Dumbarton Oaks.
IU: Oh, good, I'm glad to hear that, because the one before that, I don't think – well no, well yeah, he's Director. But it's still Alice-Mary, right, who is Director of Byzantine Studies, but she's going to retire, isn't she?
ABF: Yeah, mhm.
JM: She's gonna stay one more year.
IU: One more year, yeah.
ABF: Yeah, Alice-Mary told us all about you.
IU: She did?
ABF: She did. She had very kind things to say.
IU: She did? I remember once Philip Grierson was giving a little cocktail party before dinner – and dinner too, I guess – outside, and I was early, and I didn't want to be early, so I was looking into this – there used to be a sort of an antique shop at the corner, I think – and I was looking in the window there, and so I was sauntering around, wasting time, and Alice-Mary came by, and she said, "What are you doing on a street corner, Mrs. Underwood?" So I said, "Well, I'm early, I'm early." Oh, dear.
ABF: I'm just wondering if we could go back for just a second to sort of the early days and if you could –
IU: Yes, you should have stopped me.
CW: No, no.
ABF: No, no, we wanted to hear it as you remember it before we asked questions. But do you remember going to teas with Mrs. Bliss or any of those other sort of rituals besides the music concerts?
IU: Oh, I meant to tell you about the teas. Yes, the teas were originally in the Music Room, which was not – they were too formal, really. It was cold, and I didn't enjoy that particularly. But then they moved to the Founders' Room – I hope it's still called that. It's on the right-hand side down the hall.
ABF: In the Main Building?
IU: Yes, yes. At the main entrance, the main entrance to the house, beyond that, when you still go down the hall, there's a relatively small room on the right, which has – I think it has bookcases; I've forgotten now – and it used to be called the Founders' Room, I think.
JM: I think it was called the Study, and the larger room was the Founders' Room.
IU: Oh, was it? The larger room, I know, is now called the Founders' Room, but I thought the other one was – well no, probably. I don't know, I don't know.
JM: I'm as confused as you are; I've only been here 33 years.
IU: No, but I've forgotten. My memory is not reliable. Anyway, you think it was called the Study. Well, that was a smaller room, and it was very nice, and Mrs. Bliss would occasionally appear, even though Harvard had had the gift for some time now, you know, of Dumbarton Oaks, and usually it was the scholars, and they didn't have to come – I don't think my husband ever came. I don't know whether he did or not. But the younger Fellows would certainly come, and Mrs. Bliss's maid, the maid who had been her personal maid – and I don't know whether she still had duties at their home in Georgetown – but she would be there at tea time, and she would make the most delicious butter sandwiches, just butter – they were so good – on very lovely bread. So, one day Sarah and I were walking in the gardens, and I had on a denim skirt, and she had on denim slacks, and she said, "Oh, let's go to tea." And I said, "Sarah, we can't go to tea. Look at us!" And she said, "Oh, come on, Mom. I know everybody there!" she said. So, I let myself be persuaded. And unfortunately it was one of the days when Mrs. Bliss had chosen to come. And we were sitting around having tea. And as I said, Mrs. Bliss, she always tried to be friendly, you know, but she didn't quite know, so she turned and she said, "And to whom does this belong?" pointing to Sarah. And I said, "She's mine, Mrs. Bliss! She's mine!" You know, our encounters were rather strange, Mrs. Bliss' and mine.
ABF: Do you remember Mr. Bliss as well?
IU: No, no. He didn't show up very much. Well, I knew him, of course, and one of the things I remember, when he died, Mrs. Bliss, who I think had a rather soft spot for my husband, who was quite handsome – they met in the hall, and she said, "Oh, Underwood" – everybody was by their surname; she never – "I wonder, you know, Mr. Bliss, we found that he had many shirts that he didn't wear, and I was wondering if you would like them." He was just as thunderstruck as I had been in my encounters. I said, "How did you handle that?" That's one encounter he told me about. And he said, "Well, I didn't quite know, but I finally said, 'You know, Mrs. Bliss, Mr. Bliss was a much taller man than I, and I'm afraid perhaps they wouldn't fit me.'" What else could he say? I thought it was such a strange suggestion, you know. But I knew who he was, of course. We shook hands, and I went through receiving line after receiving line, and there he was, so of course I knew him. But I remember their golden anniversary, they had a reception, and there was a line to go to greet them. It went from R Street all the way to the front bit, to the main entrance of the house, you know; people waited to see them. And we were in line, we were near the R Street entrance, actually; suddenly, the word came down the line, "Mrs. Bliss would like to see Underwood; Mrs. Bliss would like to see Underwood." My husband was very reserved, and finally it reached us. And Paul was looking at us, and I said, "Well, Paul, she wants to see you; you'd better go." So poor Paul, he had to walk all the way up to the front of the line; I don't know why she wanted to see him at that point. I never did learn why she called him. He probably told me, but it didn't stick. That was so funny. Oh dear. But I really didn't know Mr. Bliss. He seemed very nice, you know. He didn't spend much time at Dumbarton Oaks. She, of course – her great interest was the garden, and she still planned, she and her landscape architect – Farr –
ABF: Beatrix Farrand.
IU: Yeah. – planned a water garden, and I mean it was pebbles imported from Scotland, and I don't know what's happened to that part of –
ABF: It's still there.
CW: By the pool, yeah.
IU: Is it still a water garden? I mean, is there water on it?
CW: It's just pebbles now; it doesn't have water.
JM: The design was flawed and wouldn't hold the water, and they redid it at the cost of many tens of thousands of dollars, and they did it wrong, and it didn't hold again.
IU: Now it holds? It never held? Before that it was a tennis court. And I remember during the war diplomats would come there and play, you know, and there were also victory gardens on the grounds that the staff had, little plots where you could grow vegetables. We never had one; we were not gardeners. So, it was a great experience, really.
ABF: Did it seem as if there was a very clearly defined social hierarchy among the scholars who were working there?
IU: No.
ABF: With regard to who was invited to lunch there?
IU: When ambassadors were invited to dine at the Fellows Building, I don't know who hosted the dinner – Mrs. Bliss or Jack Thacher. When the French ambassador came, the Underwoods were invited – I assume because of me. And when the Turkish ambassador was invited, Sirarpie Der Nersessian, an Armenian scholar, was invited – because she was born in Istanbul? I don't really know whom Mrs. Bliss invited to their home from Dumbarton Oaks. I remember there was Fanny Bonajuto, for example. Have you heard of her? She was assistant to Julia Warner, who was in charge of publications at one time, and Fanny came from a very good family in Italy, and she had married a Sicilian prince, and so she was a principessa – how do you pronounce it in Italian? Principessa or whatever.
CW: Principessa.
IU: – And she was invited to Mrs. Bliss's for lunch. Mrs. Bliss never invited me. Oh, I didn't tell you about the Christmas – I've got to – Well, the Christmas party, the Blisses.
JM: I'd like to just put another tape in before you do this. We'll run out of tape. Just pause for a minute, please.
IU: But don't waste your tape; it's just going to be one story.
JM: Well, I only have three minutes. So let me just pause.
IU: The Blisses used to give – I remember one, but I think it was more than one time – a Christmas party at their house. The members of Dumbarton Oaks received pointsettias at Christmas time and flowering plants at Easter; Mr. Kearney, head of the grounds, would deliver them, also presents from Mrs. Bliss. One year, I remember the card that came with it. I don't know whether it was always to the wives or whether I just misread the card that came with it and thought it was addressed to me. And I looked at it and I couldn't make out what it was; it was a little case – I don't even remember what it was made of. So, I wrote a thank-you note – I don't know how I phrased it, because I didn't know what the object was, but I phrased it somehow – thanking Mrs. Bliss. It was meant for my husband. And she was, she really – I heard – gave Kearney a hard time for delivering the wrong thing, delivering it supposedly to me when it should have been to my husband. I don't know what happened. I was so embarrassed to have this whole thing here. But the one I was going to tell you about, the Christmas party that I remember, was at their home in their rumpus room, where there was a Picasso on the wall, and you name it, you know, but it was what they termed the "rumpus room." And it was just for the Dumbarton Oaks Fellows and wives. And 1952 was the first year that my husband was to be accompanied by our daughter and me for his yearly sixth-month directing of the work in Istanbul, and Mrs. Bliss had presents for everybody there at the party. And mine was a very nice fitted toilet case. And I thought that was so nice, really so very, you know, gracious and very thoughtful. Usually it was her social secretary who selected them. I'm sure she gave her a list and said, "Get something," you know, so that was very nice. But like everything that Mrs. Bliss did, there was always something. Children were not invited to this party. Now that was okay with us, because my mother lived with us, and so I had a live-in babysitter, you know, Sarah's grandmother. But the Van Nices did not have a mother living with them, and they kept their children in the car, in the street, all during this party. Now, really, I would not have done that. I'm sorry. But I thought that was so bad. But you know, Mrs. Bliss didn't think of the problems that parents have sometimes. So, that was sad. That was all I was going to say.
ABF: Well, we don't want to keep you any longer, but we'd love to keep going.
IU: No really, I must go.
ABF: Well, thank you very, very much.]]>
KP: I met David Keogh, a dentist, who urged me to come to Dumbarton Oaks as a volunteer. I was interviewed by Chris Blazina and it was an awesome place. This was around, let me think, I would say it was around 2001. And I was there for quite a while, and I'm still there and I love the place. I remembered the feeling of awe. That experience was like a rapture walking into that Music Room. I mean there's so much history hitting you in the face, and I saw the virginal, and I saw the harpsichord, and I knew that Kirkpatrick had played there and Wanda Landowska, who was at that time world famous as a harpsichordist. I personally didn't care for her playing – emboldened to say because it was so brittle. But Kirkpatrick was fabulous and I went to several concerts there. For me, the most overwhelming experience musically was when this person came into the hall for rehearsal with us. I was in a little chamber orchestra. We were all members of the National Symphony and Paul Callaway of the Washington Cathedral was going to conduct us. If I recall correctly, this singer, a soprano, was going to sing excerpts from The Magic Flute of Mozart. Now who can dislike Mozart? Anyway, this woman came into the room and standing next to the conductor said, "I want to apologize right off the bat for my voice. I've just come from Australia and my throat is dry and I'm sure I'm not going to be able to sing very well, but I ask for your patience with me." And she started to sing, and it was breathtaking. I found tears coming down my face. It was just overwhelming. It was so beautiful. Mozart of course, for me, is exquisite and this voice building it was so marvelous. I had played the Magic Flute several times with the Washington Opera Company. And so I was so smitten with it all, and I had some wonderful things to play on the bassoon. And it was just a thrilling experience. Who else?
AS: Of course, that turned out to be Joan Sutherland.
KP: Yeah, I think that's her name. She was extraordinary.
AS: What year was that?
KP: I'm not good at that. But I would guess its – why do you not have those programs available?
AS: I think they're in the Archives, although I couldn't – I work for the archivist, but I'm not intimately familiar with the Archives myself. I think that what we're trying to go back and collect now are impressions and what it was like to be there that weren't necessarily recorded on the program.
KP: I see. Well, you know, people ask me over the years, as they have other musicians, "Why do you need a conductor? I see you just looking at the music." And I said, when you drive a car, do you not see what's on the side? On the right, on the left, what's going on in back and what's going on in front? You see it all. You can't be a musician without peripheral vision. And so they get an idea of what I'm talking about. Anyway, I would be turning and be seeing these treasures in the Music Room. I'd come home just thrilled, and my wife would say, "Gee, you look like you could light up a room you're so excited." I'd tell her about –
AS: Did you play concerts after you were a docent or these were earlier?
KP: This was before. I became a docent around, let's see, this is 2009 – maybe 2002 or 2003. And I'm talking now about the mid-1960s, I think.
AS: Was this still when Mrs. Bliss was alive? Do you ever remember interacting with her?
KP: I think she was still alive.
AS: Because I know she was a great patron of the concerts.
KP: Yes she was. She hired Nadia Boulanger, who was the foremost pedagogic person to conduct, and it was only because – let me start over. Mrs. Bliss asked Igor Stravinsky to write a work to celebrate their anniversary – their 50th. And he decided to do that, and when it was finished she asked him to come over and conduct it. He was ill, so Nadia Boulanger conducted it. It was a symphony in E♭. I love Stravinsky. He was – there was a lot of devil in him. And he wrote the kind of piece – just joyful and wonderful and disjointed, as music often is. He went through phases. He was like a tailor. He would go through different styles. I loved the woodwind quartet. I loved the L'Histoire du soldat, which is very worth hearing. So many good things. But anyway, Leontyne Price sang there with us. Jennie Tourel, who might be known to you. She was famous, in any case. Ralph Kirkpatrick, yes, he was just a wonderful harpsichordist. And Alexander Schneider, who played violin in the Budapest String Quartet.
AS: These were all around the mid-1960s?
KP: Yes. Howard Mitchell who started out as the solo cellist in the National Symphony when it was a very young orchestra, and then became finally its conductor – that was after Kindler – Hans Kindler. And Mitchell was not a great conductor, but almost adequate. I wouldn't talk like this, except he's gone.
AS: He conducted at Dumbarton Oaks?
KP: Mitchell? Yeah. He also – just a little bit–but he also played a Hindemith cello concerto, which is a very fine work. He really stumbled over that. Paul Callaway was the conductor. And Paul Callaway was the chief musician at the Washington Cathedral – the National Cathedral. What else can I tell you?
AS: I wonder if you, having attended these concerts in the mid-1960s – that was a very different era, I think, of Dumbarton Oaks, than I've seen now. From what I understand, there were very much society events.
KP: It was indeed. I had to listen to rehearsals, in those days – yeah, it was very hoity-toity. Hoity-toity.
AS: So, you would be playing for the who's who of Georgetown and of Washington, DC.
KP: I suspect. Exactly
AS: I don't know if there are any particular – if you had any interaction with them –
KP: Well, there are people on the National Symphony Board who were very well heeled or they wouldn't have been on that board who came to those concerts. I was a fairly prominent member of that orchestra and – I mean when you walk on stage with something as big as a bassoon, and there's one right behind you that I turned into a floor lamp.
AS: That's neat.
KP: Isn't it nice?
AS: It must make you stand out, I guess.
KP: Yeah. In any case, I got to know some of these people. We were friendly. We had kind of a relationship over the years. And among them, there were some people that became very good friends.
AS: And they were all patrons of the Dumbarton Oaks concerts?
KP: Not all, but some.
AS: Speaking of the National Symphony Orchestra, you are, I think, the perfect person to ask about the relationship between Dumbarton Oaks and the National Symphony. It sounds like you came to know of Dumbarton Oaks through the National Symphony. Is that fair?
KP: I think that's a reasonable assumption – playing those concerts. I spoke in hushed tones in that place and, yeah, I was amazed by it all.
AS: You said that the same people who were National Symphony musicians knew people at Dumbarton Oaks, or was there a formal relationship there?
KP: No. It was very casual and very singular.
AS: Did Dumbarton Oaks have a place in the Washington, D.C. music community that you know?
KP: No.
AS: It's an isolated place.
KP: Yeah. The attitude now has changed markedly. They want people to come in, which is a big change. My feeling when I came into the place to be a volunteer was, don't come and see us – we'll let a few people come through – let me see your nails and hair; you need a shave. I make fun, but it had that feeling.
AS: This was in the 1960s too?
KP: Yeah
AS: And do you remember a moment when that changed? A decade when that began to be different? Or was it not really until you came back to be a docent?
KP: I think it was more when I came back. The head of the docents had a lot to say about the attitude of the docents, how they felt about it. And Chris Blazina, who's been with the docent program with some time – very hard-working, dedicated person. And it's become very professional, even though it's voluntary. And she has a wonderful grasp of how to deal with kids and how to keep them interested and how to arouse their curiosity, and so on. And she's very good that way – and how to talk to adults about these things and ask them questions so that it heightens their curiosity about what they're looking at. And that's fun.
AS: Shall we talk a little bit about the docent program and your experiences of that? I wonder what you recall about the docent training process. You talked about your hiring a little bit, but the training experience?
KP: The training was very demanding. I think we met a couple times a week, maybe two or three times a week. And we had lectures with the heads of departments. They were learned in their field. The pre-Columbian people knew what they were talking about. They could discuss a piece and its history and its aesthetics and all that. It was very exciting. I was – in 1959 the National Symphony took a tour of all of Latin America starting in Mexico and going down the west coast into Panama, and then going through – let me think – what's next going south? Chile and we went to Peru and Argentina and we came out through Paraguay and Uruguay and then Brazil. It was fascinating and fabulous: three months – a tour of three months. I remember Fanny and I – my wife and I – discussing the ramifications of that three months away from my children and her. And I said, well Fanny, I'm going to buy us a house. We had a two-bedroom house and it was inadequate. And she bought us this house. And this is 1969.
AS: That was your first interaction with pre-Columbian –
KS: Yeah I went to fincas where I could dig and find pieces–I found a pipa–a little pipe. It was pre-Columbian. And other shards, pieces of pottery. And I went to all the museums. There was a gold museum – museo de oro – a gold museum and – there was a floor made of skulls, believe it or not. A lot of gold. It was exciting, to say the least. Anyway, I had that feeling of what a thrill of seeing the pieces for the first time. So when I came back, it wasn't long after that that those pieces at the National Gallery of Art arrived–In the basement, neglected. And that's what had Mr. Bliss order a museum wing just to take care of his collection.
AS: This is the exhibition at the National Gallery?
KP: No, it was at the National Gallery – a lot of wonderful pieces that Bliss owned but had no place to show. This was before the wing that now holds them.
AS: Right, the Johnson –
KP: Yeah, and that is so gorgeous – inside, outside, all that glass. Gorgeous. Anyway – what?
AS: Well, back to your experience as a docent. I get the feeling that there are a lot of interesting individuals and groups that come through Dumbarton Oaks. I wonder if there are any particularly memorable groups that you led on tours.
KP: Some of the groups were strictly garden people, and they wanted to know everything about the gardens and they were gardeners on a high level. And I didn't do any gardening work while I was playing Beethoven and Mozart, so I – and I felt at a loss, but I tried.
AS: There's a lot of garden clubs and things like that that come through.
KP: Oh yes. And people who love roses. I remember one group that I took through – and this is true what I tell you. It's true. I said, "Do you see this Ingrid Bergman rose?" That's what it's called. An Ingrid Bergman rose. And I said, "You know, when the National Symphony moved to its present site in the Kennedy Center – we were before that at Constitution Hall, which was a horrible place for music. It was just awful. And here we were in a new hall. And Antal Doráti was the conductor at the time had a press conference. And he spoke to a few members of the orchestra – I was pleased to be one of them – and to people from various cultural entities. And it was very gala and festive. And they had shrimp trays and lobster trays and any kind of drink you could think of. And I took advantage of all that largesse and I got a little tipsy. The room – the building, rather, was new to me at that time. My wife and I felt it was time to leave. We didn't want to overstay, and since the building was new to me, I wasn't sure where I could find an elevator to go to the parking garage. Finally, we found one. And the door opened on the elevator and I look at this woman–a beautiful woman, and I say to her, "Are you Ingrid Bergman?" And her head goes down and she says, "Yes." And I said, Ms. Bergman, may I kiss you? And she said, reluctantly, "Yes." And I kissed her on both cheeks and that was that."
AS: It was a lucky time to leave.
KP: So, that's my story of the Ingrid Bergman rose. But anyway, what can I say?
AS: So, you also did a lot of school groups coming through.
KP: Oh yes. With the children, some are very interested and some are not. It's so important not to be a naysayer, but to encourage curiosity. "What do you think this is?" "What do you do with that?" "What would you do if you had it?" It was a lot of fun.
AS: These are local area schools?
KP: Yes. Some from out of town. Hagerstown, Benson, Baltimore.
AS: I wonder – oh yes. You were involved with the docent program for about five years?
KP: About five or six years.
AS: In that time did you notice, were there any major initiatives or changes to the program?
KP: There have been changes in emphasis, I would say, and changes for the better. I tend to speak colloquially. I don't want to worry about trying to sound erudite and I want people to remember something. So, I made it a point not to overload visitors, but to pick out a few pieces and really let them become familiar with them. And always to say please come back. I think I was a decent person at communicating in a friendly way.
AS: By changes in emphasis, you mean changes in the style of –
KP: Yeah, it was much more formal. Now, with so much information on the wall for these pieces, we're more reduced to saying, "If you have any questions, I would be happy to try to answer them." Before, you could tell them the whole thing – the story about the piece. So, that's a big change – a big change. In the Byzantine wing, it's more possible to tell people things. It's a wonderful collection of Byzantine artifacts. Yeah, that's what I remember. I can't get specific about how things – you know, how things change sometimes; it's very gradual. I don't say, oh listen to this; we're going into another phase.
AS: Well, I think one thing that tends to change over the years is how – and you already touched on this – is how Dumbarton Oaks interacts and reaches out to the public – or not.
KP: Okay, I'm a volunteer, as is my wife, at the Phillips Art Gallery. We were there only a couple of times a month, and they would hand information about the other museums and art galleries in town. And if people asked where is the this or the that, we could give them a sheet of paper with that information. There was nothing about Dumbarton Oaks. And I asked Chris Blazina, "Why don't we tell people about Dumbarton Oaks? It's so unique." And she said, "Well, we're working on it." And I think they were talking about it.
AS: And I think it's – just now we're getting a brochure made up – changing as we speak.
KP: Right. Exactly. But now it's not surprising on a Sunday afternoon in nice weather to have hordes of people to come into the garden – and how deserted the galleries are.
AS: Beautiful. Did you ever attend any of the concerts in the gardens?
KP: No.
AS: Because I understand that they took place.
KP: Well, it's obscure. And that's why it's so important to look in the Archives to see if there's any information. It seated fifty people, is my understanding. And they could somehow cover the pool – either drain it or cover it – and I got the idea that they did string quartets there and they did theater. But I'm not sure. And I've heard different opinions.
AS: I wonder, while we're talking about concert locations, if you might talk about the acoustics in the Music Room, because that's an unusual setting, is it not?
KP: Yes, it is. They are not ideal. They are not terrible, C+. It's because the surfaces are so hard and it's not built for, really, for playing. I mean a string quartet wouldn't be that bad, but it's louder than it would be in a different kind of setting where there is absorbable material that can soften things. On the other hand, it's so exotic and wonderful. I should think a string quartet would be just thrilled to play.
AS: It's a beautiful and historical place to play – that's certainly for sure. I meant to ask you earlier if you – you've had a chance to watch the concerts in that room from the sixties to really recent years.
KP: I watched and played in the sixties and seventies.
AS: Yes. And, given that span of time, have you seen a change in the type of performer and program that Dumbarton Oaks puts on?
KP: Well a lot of it is chamber music, string quartets. There's one group, I think they are from France, and they played Baroque instruments and a copy of an early bassoon. I got tickled hearing, because it's a good thing that it became obsolete. And I could understand it. Those instruments were built to be performed at in a small room. In the 1600s, 1700s, audiences were all invited, and they were very few. They might have fifty people at most – would be an audience. So the instruments didn't have to be efficient in projecting sound. And so the violins played very quietly and the bassoons sounded like the tea was ready. But they played an instrument, it was a conically bored horn – I think it was an animal horn. It was called a cornetto. And it had a tiny little mouthpiece, I mean tiny. And I couldn't - with all my experience blowing into instruments - I couldn't understand how this man was producing all this wonderful playing. It was like a soprano trumpet. And you really had to be a knowledgeable musician to get what you wanted out of that. It was quite wonderful. The concerts, I think, all through these years have been varied in a nice way. Singers, less singers now, we haven't had a vocal kind of concert for a long time. And we did have some famous people as I have mentioned. But now it's mostly instrumental.
AS: Is there a tradition of these kinds of educational instrumentals? With a lot of historical instruments that you are talking about, that are rare instruments, is there a component to that?
KP: I'm not sure I understand what your question is.
AS: I guess you were talking about some rare or historical instruments –
KP: Oh you mean like the cornetto? I gave a paper to my colleagues there about those early instruments and explained the size of the concert hall and the makeup of the audience was such that instruments didn't have to do extraordinary things to be heard. And it was when Beethoven started becoming famous and when the public was welcome because it was now a means of making wealth. They were charged for entering the concert hall, so the more the merrier. And Beethoven wanted to be, you know, recognized. In Mozart's time, it was still small audiences. So, when Beethoven became popular, they had to change the harpsichord into a piano. The early pianoforte was kind of half way between piano and a harpsichord. And then it became a piano that had this projection that was quite magical and that was appropriate for a big a hall. I did play for over two thousand people.
AS: By comparison, Dumbarton Oaks would be a small venue.
KP: That's why they could play those ancient instruments.
AS: I think – make sure I haven't – I did mean to ask you – well no I think we –
KP: Let me go back to something. Strings on violins and cellos were gut strings, made of cat gut. When they had to have more volume out of them in these bigger halls, they switched to metallic, long strings and it made all the difference in the world. And that's what they had to do. The bassoon, the oboe, the flute – they all changed. Early flutes, fancy flutes, where made of, oh my goodness, there were gold flutes and so on. The materials had to keep up with the times.
AS: Do you see a fluctuation in concerts with historical instruments? You talked about the varied nature of the concerts, singers versus historical instruments, very different things. Were they changing who attended these things? Were they members of the musical community or the public?
KP: I, you know, I have to imagine. I don't have any first hand information, hard information, but it seems to me, when my wife and I go to a concert there, these people are well educated in general and somewhat sophisticated, concert-goers. Beyond that I can't say. I go if it's something that I really want to hear and not tired of having heard it over the years. And people like the concerts. They really like them.
AS: Have any of the concerts – or as a volunteer, did you interact with any of the Dumbarton Oaks Directors? Were any of them hands-on enough that –
KP: No, only the person in charge of the concerts.
AS: So, that would have been? Let's see –
KP: Valerie.
AS: Yeah.
KP: Very nice person. I don't know if she's still in that position.
AS: Still involved, I know.
KP: I think she did the contact work and maybe even selected the groups, proposed them. I don't know.
AS: Well, you've answered – you've anticipated some of my questions and answered them very completely. And, unless you have other things to add, I wonder if I may ask a sort of summary question of you. Is there anything I missed?
KP: I don't know how to summarize what I said.
AS: Oh no, I wouldn't have you do that. I wonder – In some ways you've had a unique position because the parts of Dumbarton Oaks in which you've been involved are unique really. I mean the Friends of Music Program and the docent program are some of the only things that Dumbarton Oaks does to really engage with the Washington community and community outside the scholarly one which resides here and is really the center of Dumbarton Oaks. Because you come to the institution from that perspective, I wonder if you have any idea how these programs have maybe changed Dumbarton Oaks or impacted the research centers there or how they could in the future?
KP: How they've impacted?
AS: Yes. I mean is there a communication between these types of events and the scholarly centers?
KP: I think the museum director is a very nice guy. I'd better not say any more. He's a very nice guy and it's a very refreshing change. I am not crazy about this introduction of putting pieces, historically different, in the mist of a collection. For instance now you can walk into the gardens and you seem something stuck in there, nothing to do with the garden at all. It's a piece of sculpture of some sort.
AS: You are talking about the modern art installation?
KP: Yes. I don't care for it.
AS: It's caused quite an uproar I understand among the visitors.
KP: Yeah. I don't understand it, and I'm not crazy about it. Beyond that, I just think the pieces there are what make it, and they are plenty good and they don't have to be enhanced by some kind of foreign intrusion, aesthetic intrusion that doesn't make sense. That's my view.
AS: And others share it, that's what we've heard. Well thank you for meeting with me today, I really appreciate it.
KP: Oh, it's a pleasure. I wish I could have been more loquacious.
AS: No, no, no, you were fine.]]>
WHA: Thank you very much.
INT: July 17th.
INT: Oh, I'm sorry, yes, today's July 17th, 2009.
WHA: Everybody's in [laughter]. Did you get TJ in over there? [laughter]
INT: Oh yes, and Thomas Jefferson is presiding [laughter]. Which is very appropriate.
WHA: Where's his computer relay?, hanging on his – I assume my computer works wireless. When they were hooking it up, they said, where we gonna put it, and I said, just hang it around his neck, he'll love it.
INT: That's great. We'll start off with: you were never a junior fellow at Dumbarton Oaks?
WHA: No, no.
INT: So how did you first come to be involved?
WHA: Well, I was trying to remember all of that, how I – my first introduction to the whole Dumbarton Oaks scene was through Walter Muir Whitehill, who was a great friend of the Blisses, and who wrote what was considered the official sponsored history of Dumbarton Oaks. Do you know it?
INT: No, to our knowledge, we've been told that there's never been an official –
WHA: Not true. Walter Muir Whitehill, who was - well, I knew him through Boston connections, and he was a great friend of some of the Adams connections, obviously up there, and he was the head of the Boston Athenaeum, and very much involved, he was on the board of the art museum in Boston and the Massachusetts historical society, he was involved in everything, and at a very early stage in my life somehow I became a part of – I would see the Whitehills in Boston, and so I knew about the Blisses really second-hand but fairly intimately in terms of what they were doing. But his book is a very key document.
INT: I would imagine so. I'm not even sure there's a –
WHA: And Walter died in the late seventies, I think, so this book would have been done, well obviously before Mildred Bliss died in sixty-nine, but anyway he was very much an intimate. Then when I came to the National Gallery, I'd been living in Princeton and I was working for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund briefly before I came to the National Gallery, and it may have been through some Princeton connection that we then – Mrs. Bliss, though she had just died, was very much a social and cultural presence in Georgetown, which meant basically Washington. And Tom Bayard – does his name ring a bell? You've come on to him. He taught at Trinity I think, after he left Dumbarton Oaks, and he was a kind of protégé of Mrs. Bliss, and after she'd moved out of the house, down on Q – we were on P just around the corner – and Tom was a friend of friends of ours in Princeton so there were all these, I suppose not professional, but just sort of these connections, and we became good friends of Tom's, so I suppose that was really the first behind-the-scenes introduction, because the staff was very, very small.
INT: What year was this?
WHA: Seventy. Mrs. Bliss had just died. We're told in Washington that they were referred to as the "Three Bs" – Mrs. Bliss, Mrs. Bacon – Virginia Bacon, Mrs. Robert Lowe Bacon – and Mrs. Beale, who lived in Decatur House, opposite the White House – still living privately in that house. Mrs. Bacon was living in I think what had been John Marshall's house on F Street, pretty extraordinary, they were all contemporary buildings with the White House, and then Mrs. Bliss was out in the country. But those were really the powerhouse figures, and this is social history that has nothing to do with Dumbarton Oaks, but it's part of the texture. But we're into the transitional period of Dumbarton Oaks throughout the '70s. I think through Walter Muir Whitehill I became well acquainted with the Tylers, and it was Bill Tyler who asked me to be a senior fellow. And you know the Tyler connections to the Blisses.
INT: He was the godson, I believe.
WHA: Yes, and he was also the godson of Edith Wharton. And Edith Wharton was a great friend of Mrs. Bliss, and also Beatrix Farrand, and that's how Beatrix Farrand comes into the story, and I think that it was Royall Tyler, his father, that introduced the Blisses, I mean Mr. Bliss's mother, to Bliss's father.
INT: That was Royall Tyler?
WHA: She then became Mrs. Royall Tyler. [NB: It is unclear to whom he is referring.] So Bill – I always loved the fact that he was Edith Wharton's godson [laughter].
INT: And I think he was heir to all her papers and things.
WHA: He did, which he then negotiated – I think Yale has them now. I think that's right. I don't know, the Bliss papers, I suppose they're at Harvard?
INT: They were moved to Harvard. They originally were at Dumbarton Oaks, but Dumbarton Oaks didn't really seem to have the space or the resources.
WHA: And that's not – that kind of archival manuscript maintenance, it's just like at Monticello; we don't have any – other than a working library – we don't keep any manuscript material there. It all goes to the University of Virginia. Anything that has to be taken care of.
INT: We do have the material related to the building of Dumbarton Oaks and the gift –
WHA: You have all of that? But her plans, all of that is out in California.
INT: Oh, I didn't know that.
WHA: Well, she lived in California near the end of her life. So I know that a lot of the original garden plans, which have – all that's been documented, published, that's well-known. Well, anyway, that's the best of my recollection.
INT: Did you know Mrs. Paul Mellon as well?
WHA: Well, I did know her, and in fact when I was on the board there was discussion even then about the possibility of her giving her collection to Dumbarton Oaks, but it was clear that this was not going to happen in the 1970s, because her interests were clearly very special, and she did not want to have it being institutionalized under either Dumbarton Oaks or Harvard, and we still don't know where her collection is going to go – and maybe you do – or have not heard.
INT: I know that she's built a library.
WHA: She has, there, that's been a number of years ago. But it's not – it's fine for that but I can't imagine that being maintained in perpetuity. I suspect – I've heard rumors that there is another institution where maybe it would go, but I don't know any more than that. But she was never – was she actually ever on the board? I can't remember.
INT: I believe she was.
WHA: Her name was on it, but she – I think that she was never really active. It was with the idea I think that this would happen, but it was quite clear that this was not – that she was going in her own direction and so on.
INT: Yeah, we tried to speak with her –
WHA: No, I don't think it would make any sense now. She's 98. Her stepson is a good friend of mine – pardon me, her son by an earlier marriage – lives in Washington and is a good friend of mine, and I don't – people around Upperville never see her much. That would be not a productive avenue.
INT: Was Jack Thatcher still around the Washington scene in these years?
WHA: Oh, Jack was around, and he had just retired, I can't remember when.
INT: Sixty-nine.
WHA: He was very much a gentleman about town and knew everybody.
INT: It seems like there was a great deal of integration between the Dumbarton Oaks collection at that time, or at least the administration, and the Washington social scene.
WHA: Dumbarton Oaks was very much a Georgetown social scene. There were very few people who had any real intellectual interest in what Dumbarton Oaks was doing. It was something of a mystery. I mean, first of all, garden history – people didn't know what – that was such a new discipline or sub-discipline. Byzantine studies, that was totally off the books, and the pre-Columbian was also, really. That beautiful collection, that jewel collection – too bad you didn't get to speak to the architect.
INT: Philip Johnson. He passed away, I think.
WHA: Oh, yes.
INT: Did you know him?
WHA: I did, just briefly, when we lived in New York, but through other connections that had nothing to do with Dumbarton Oaks.
INT: He did leave memoirs or something like that.
WHA: About Dumbarton Oaks? Oh, well then that's good.
INT: It's helpful.
WHA: And someone else that I knew who is still I think living is Louis Auchincloss, who's a novelist and lawyer who lives in New York, who's in his early 90s now.
INT: What was his connection to Dumbarton Oaks?
WHA: Well, he was a good friend of them. He would have been a much younger friend, but he would have known the Harvard-Dumbarton Oaks scene, and I remember him talking to me about how Harvard had somehow – whether his law firm or somebody that he was involved with – when the Blisses were persuaded to give Dumbarton Oaks to Harvard, and he was rather critical of that. And he felt that Harvard had pushed them into it and used the threat of the war, the possible "invasion" like the war of 1812 – they ought to have – that somehow Cambridge Massachusetts was going to be safer, to own the property would add more stability. This is what I recollect Louis telling me, whether there's any truth to it I have no idea. But that was inside gossip.
INT: Very helpful to have.
WHA: Mr. Kreeger was also on the board when I was on the board. Another name that you – he's long since gone, the businessman in Washington. Does his name –?
INT: I don't think we've heard anyone bring him up before.
WHA: Well, he was – they were great art collectors, and he was on the board of the corp., and he was involved in all kinds of positions around culturally, and I guess I knew him through being at the National Gallery and because of his collection. But Bill Tyler got him on the board because he was a Harvard graduate and could stand up to the pressure from Harvard, which – there was a sense of pressure, at least in that period; the rumor was that Harvard would be happy to close the whole thing down and take the all proceeds back to Cambridge.
INT: What was the gossip related to that? Because it seems so explicit in the Bliss will that that is not what they wanted.
WHA: They were very explicit about it, and Louis Auchincloss discussed that with me about that issue, but nevertheless –
INT: Harvard will be Harvard.
WHA: Everyone read Harvard's ambitions.
INT: Yes, I think they took material from the collection up to – was it the Fogg during this time?
WHA: Yes.
INT: And that was a very big thing.
WHA: Was that during the war, when they took it?
INT: They might have taken it during the war, and then I think again maybe in the early seventies?
WHA: They could have, I don't remember. And that was not a good idea, it made everyone very nervous. And then also the friction was over the way the money was redistributed. Harvard had its formula dealing with the Bliss bequest, the proceeds didn't come back to Dumbarton Oaks, they got a fixed percentage.
INT: Really? Where was the other money –?
WHA: It was overhead for Cambridge, as we understood it.
INT: Were these for the Dumbarton Oaks professorships?
WHA: Well, all the operating funds, Dumbarton's endowment went to Harvard, you see, they would distribute it, they earned 8% and Dumbarton Oaks got maybe 4% – I don't know that, I'm just saying, that was at least – and Kreeger, who was very much of a finance man on the board, was quite outspoken and critical if ever anyone from Harvard ever came down.
INT: Were there visits from Harvard?
WHA: Well, not very often. The dean of arts and science – he was a very powerful dean, I can't think of his name.
INT: Bok?
WHA: No, that's the president. Bok came I think once during my time, and when you think how many institutions Harvard has, the very idea that he might have even come once – but the dean who was very powerful, and I think he was dean of arts and sciences but I can't remember the names. But the problem at Dumbarton Oaks – Byzantines studies at Harvard, you obviously have a connection at Harvard, but the other two areas did not and do not, and that was always felt to be a weakness in the way the thing's structured, and that gave the Byzantinists – they were, you know, not equal among equals. But that's again part of the politics of the thing. But everyone understood all this.
INT: If we could go back for a second to your relationship to Mr. Whitehall.
WHA: Whitehill.
INT: Whitehill, excuse me. You mentioned he had talked to you a little bit about the Blisses, did he have any particular stories that you recall? We're very interested in –
WHA: Not that I can recall now. I might be able to if I reread his book, but I'm sure anything he told me in the kind of after-dinner, over-scotch conversation would have been in his book and so on. He loved the style of the Blisses in terms of the way they went about supporting music and the whole civilized, really European atmosphere that really prevailed, certainly in the seventies. There was nothing else in Washington that came near that, because of the scale of it, small, intimate. And the Sunday night concerts – you had to be invited, as if Mrs. Bliss was still presiding. So it was very much a – the rituals were all figured out, and certainly carried on, with Jack Thatcher in the wings criticizing if they weren't.
INT: He was also a godson, I think, of the Blisses. Or at the very least a friend.
WHA: Yeah, he probably was. I don't remember that. But there was very much this curatorial reverence and caretaking of the image of the Blisses and Dumbarton Oaks as the Blisses related to it. So you had ten years – Giles Constable, maybe his father, who taught at Harvard, in art history I believe, probably knew the Blisses, and there may have been something, a little nepotism there, I don't know. He surely must have talked about that.
INT: Yes. We didn't actually get to –
WHA: Do that one.
INT: Well, I wonder if you might talk a little bit more about the European feel. Was it – I assume you must have gotten to know some of the scholars there at the time.
WHA: Oh yes, I did. And there were always European scholars, and we did see them, made a point that they would meet at the National Gallery and there was an atmosphere. Whether that goes on now or not, I don't know.
INT: We haven't gotten the sense that there's as much interaction as you're talking about.
WHA: Interaction, no. At that period there was, on a very informal level.
INT: Who were the major players there as far as academics, as you recall
WHA: Oh, I can't remember now the names again. Betty MacDougal, of course, she was somewhat controversial as a director. She was not an easy person to get along with, and people had the impression that she really didn't want anybody coming in doing research other than the fellows. And that's fair enough to understand, that it was a limited facility and so on. There was a feeling she was not particularly friendly to scholars who were not – who had a legitimate reason – who were not [fellows]. That's just a rumor and an impression I had. I think Betty suffered from the fact that while she was an art history major, garden history itself was parvenu, and didn't have full credentials at Harvard, or certainly at the Fogg. You can understand that.
INT: Well, at that time Dumbarton Oaks was really the only center –
WHA: It was really the only center. There was – the scholarship going on – there was a good deal going on in England in garden history; it has its genesis I think really after the war. And lots of the fellows and people who came up and were influential read at some of the symposia at Dumbarton Oaks. They were all international figures but I think the English garden history crowd – they quite often were members of the symposia; you can read the lists and so on. The Byzantinists, not so much. Not in terms of such a specialized field of study, as you know. With garden history, people – even though they didn't understand what the discipline was about and how it worked in terms of the collection at Dumbarton Oaks – nevertheless people said, well, you know, I have a garden.
INT: Did you have much interaction with the collection at Dumbarton Oaks?
WHA: Well, I've used it, yes. The study that I did on the French garden, I used [it] quite extensively, of course. At that point I had curated an exhibition on Jefferson at the National Gallery called "The Eye of Thomas Jefferson;" my catalog you may know.
INT: Seventy-six.
WHA: In working on Jefferson I did become very much involved in eighteenth-century garden history, because of his travels and interests, when he was in France. And it was actually through that rather narrow avenue that – and I realized at that point that there wasn't a useful small volume – not a picture book, but a serious book on the history of the French garden. Which has now been translated into French and two or three other – which is interesting, you know. The French consider that an area that they – would not recognize an American scholar. Actually the French edition of that, they did really quite a beautiful job of it.
INT: Do you remember, during that time when you were interacting with it, what the state of the collection was? As you probably know, there still is no museum space for the garden collection.
WHA: No. And there wasn't any – the museum part of the garden, it was a literary collection. It was works on paper. We never ever thought of it as objects or related to anything other than just seeing it all make perfect sense. Which is the way the Blisses began the collection – what they bought and so on.
INT: So at this point it was mainly the library. Because I know at least over the years they've managed to collect some of the prints and paintings that the Blisses originally had, of gardens.
WHA: Of gardens?
INT: Of botanical gardens.
WHA: Is that in the garden studies section?
INT: That's my understanding. But it sounds like this was not at the time.
WHA: Well, there were things around in the hallways, hanging on the walls, but not in any sense as a part of the study collection.
INT: And in the early sixties things were in the garden library?
WHA: Yes. I didn't know it until sixty-nine, seventy. I'd been there but I never used the collection at that time. I guess Betty MacDougal was there at that time. There was also Alan Fern's wife, do you know her? Alan Fern was head of the prints and photographs at the Library of Congress, and then he became director of not the Portrait Gallery, but what we now call the National Collection, the American Collection. His wife was Betty MacDougal's assistant; she's in Washington. She's somebody. She was very much in the working – I knew her very well, but I can't think of her first name now. Mrs. Alan Fern. I suppose he's living in Washington; I haven't seen him in years. But it was very, very intimate and small; there would never be another person or scholar or anybody. The fellows would be in their little cubicles and I got to know some of them.
INT: Who was there, do you recall?
WHA: I'm hard pressed for names. They'd always be in, working on very interesting subjects, I remember.
INT: In your conversations with one another, did they tend to be about garden history, or the literary aspects, or theoretical? What was the tone at that time in the seventies in terms of the field itself, as you recall?
WHA: Mostly they came out of literature as well as art history, or they came out of history; it is a subdivision of history. And garden history wasn't taught anyplace – what was his name, the head of the garden there; he's English?
INT: John Dixon Hunt.
WHA: John Dixon Hunt. He's very prolific in writing; have you talked to him?
INT: Spoke with him on Monday.
WHA: I remember him very well when he was there; I think later he catalogued Mrs. Mellon's collection, or did two volumes on that collection, which is available to you. But I think that was after he was at – he's at Pennsylvania I think now. He was a very conspicuous art historian, but he came out of literature. Interesting sort of background. My background is law.
INT: How did you get –?
WHA: Well, I don't know.
INT: We talked a little earlier about your time at the National Gallery. I wonder if you remember from that experience what the relationship was like between the National Gallery, specifically, and Dumbarton Oaks; you talked a little bit generally about the close interactions between the institutions.
WHA: Well, of course, John Walker – I was there briefly when he was just retiring. I came in with the idea that Carter would become the director and I was to pick up what Carter was doing, which I did, but that overlaps a bit. But certainly the Walkers were the connection with the Blisses, an intimate part of that circle. Those were the two major international cultural institutions in Washington – I mean in the humanities, or art, not the sciences, but I can't think of any – they were preeminent. No university had international stature in Washington during those years, true? And being both non-political institutions. Those were the two places European visitors would gravitate to, one or both, whatever. And certainly the Blisses were looked upon as major figures and made famous by the Dumbarton Oaks conference, the commissioning of Stravinsky. That was a big time. And far more sophisticated than Washingtonians on a day-to-day basis ever thought of themselves being. Washington then is no different than Washington now, I'm sure, just more people.
INT: It seems like there was a very practical relationship between the two institutions as well, because even when you did the Jefferson exhibit, Dumbarton Oaks I think lent books for that.
WHA: Yes, they loaned things. We had a close working – anything either would need, we were equals.
INT: So you got the sense that during that period Dumbarton Oaks was very generous in lending out the collection.
WHA: Oh, yes, absolutely.
INT: Because we've heard different things over different periods.
WHA: Well, it depends on what department they were. There was a special – we used to speak of our special relationship with Great Britain. There was a special relationship with Dumbarton Oaks. Both institutions were sort of latecomers; the National Gallery didn't open until 1940. The same time as the Blisses, isn't that true?
INT: Yes, the gift was in forty.
WHA: Were they living in Washington? He'd been in diplomatic service.
INT: They were living at Dumbarton Oaks briefly, but it was for really only about five years, I think, before the gift, and I think the museum and collection and center didn't really open until forty-six.
WHA: Forty-six? Well, they were putting up all those Renaissance ceilings. Is the ceiling still there?
INT: And it's been beautifully recently cleaned and renovated and reopened.
WHA: I've often wondered how much of that ceiling is original. I never saw a Renaissance ceiling in Italy that big. It's huge.
INT: But it is lovely.
WHA: It is lovely.
INT: One thing we've also touched on, but I think haven't talked about directly, is of course you got to know Giles Constable very well. He's known now I think as a bit of a controversial director.
WHA: Is he? I don't know what the controversy would be or what it was.
INT: There wasn't a sense of that immediately when you were there?
WHA: Well, Giles – I didn't know him that well. I don't think Giles was an easy person to know as a personality. He's a scholar. I think the Institute was a perfect place for him. I don't know that he was particularly comfortable with administration. That was an area I don't know anything about. That's just my outside/inside reading.
INT: He must have seemed a very different director than Bill Tyler.
WHA: Oh, yes, Bill was a preeminently new administration, the skills of diplomacy. Everything was protocolé, as Mrs. Tyler used to say. And again the foreign service was involved in all the diplomatic – and that played into the diplomatic scene, which should be mentioned, certainly in the seventies, when the diplomatic corps in Washington I think was much more conspicuous and ambassadors played much bigger roles than they do now, with electronics and all the things that have changed their lives and everybody else's. But then the diplomatic corps was very protocolé as who was senior, and they didn't change a lot, and the British ambassador was always – even though he wasn't number one in the pecking order – he was always very much number one on the social scene, and he was usually somebody new, because Washington was always a prime plum slot. But to give you the sense of that, the diplomatic corps really gave the scene around Washington an international feeling. Certainly we were aware of this at the National Gallery because the embassies – we were always being asked for this or that, not loans and so on but just to play some sort of a political role in who was coming to visit, heads of state or the Queen of England or whatever and so on. We had a very close regular relationship with the diplomatic corps. But just take, for instance, the senior diplomat, when we lived in Washington, was the Italian ambassador, and his name was Ambassador Ortona, and he'd been there longer than any other, he'd been through the war; his memory of Washington in terms of diplomacy was extraordinary. But those figures very much were part of the Dumbarton Oaks scene and they were people who knew what Dumbarton Oaks was and what its function was and so on. And that was very important. You usually found the European diplomatic corps in Washington was always of a very high caliber, so you can see how they fitted into the Blisses' idea of this European salon, which is really what it was. And the salon was Mrs. Bliss and Mrs. Bacon and Mrs. Beale, and they did run them; those houses were big enough, and certainly Mrs. Bacon was the only one still operating when we – and somehow we made her list so went there quite often so we got some sense of what must have been the same thing at the Blisses' – when they were actually living in the house – in terms of the way the dinner parties were given and the circle that brought them together. None of that exists anymore in Washington – nothing like that, as far as I know.
INT: We've read how one of the things that Mr. Bliss had promised Mrs. Bliss if she would come to Washington was that he would create this sense of a country estate in the city, and of course then the gardens are a tremendous part of that. And I wondered, as a specialist, just for our records, how do you see the gardens themselves at Dumbarton Oaks as they sit in terms of their importance as an American garden or the uniqueness or not and just to touch upon that.
WHA: They are very important, and Beatrix Farrand was very, very important in that whole period, one of the real stars, and the close relationship she had with her patron Mildred Bliss was very important. And she was encouraged to do things that were really extraordinary in terms of the way the whole layout was done and how they worked it out. It was a country estate and in fact the house obviously was a country estate when Georgetown was first founded. I don't know how large it was in the early – again Walter Muir Whitehill I think gives a good history. I was ex-official trustee of the National Trust when I was at the National Gallery, but then I was also on the board of Monticello, of which Walter had been on for long before I went on, and was very much involved in. He was one of the founders of the National Trust, so historic preservation was a part of this whole cultivated cultural scene that was led by people like that, and they all knew each other there, or seemed to. Does this give you any sense of the texture? And I really want to emphasize that the '70s were a transition in Washington culturally, politically, and certainly from Dumbarton Oaks' standpoint.
INT: So people were leaving Washington, or it was just a different generation?
WHA: Just a different [generation]. The atmosphere changes, the power center seemed to shift. Washington always changes. That's another whole big subject, we won't go there.
INT: Oh, well, I wonder – probably should have gotten to this a little bit earlier: just for our institutional history, you were a member I think both of the senior fellows committee for garden studies and for the advisory board, and I wonder if you might talk a little about the differences and maybe even the relationship between the two.
WHA: In my earlier comments I overlapped, I really wasn't making much of a chain. The garden program really was not too active as I remember. It was pretty much Betty's. She was running it that way; the conferences were her contribution. Speaking of the conferences, I mentioned – she was a very important senior fellow, a scholar – the archaeology/classicist Wilhelmina Jashemski, and she was the leading scholar on the gardens at Pompeii, of all things. She certainly is an international figure, recognized in her field. In fact Mary Beard, who's at Cambridge – who has a blog by the way.
INT: Yes, she does. I haven't met her, but she's come to our Cambridge a couple times.
WHA: Well, I've been in touch with her because I'm working on a book, which I managed to get a couple suggestions on, some ideas. She's been very generous and very funny. Her blog is called "A Don's Life;" she's a don, and she's a brilliant classicist and just gave the lectures at California – what are they called, the famous lectures, out there at Berkeley?
INT: Sather?
WHA: And those lectures are now online. You can hear her; it's really quite wonderful, there are three of them, they're marvelous, you can put them on your iPod. But Mary Beard, within the last few – I glance at her blog, and a lot of the time it's things I have no interest in, and she writes on a lot of things, not about the classics or anything else, but another thing. She'll really turn up some very interesting – in fact, I cite her in a footnote from her blog, which I thought she will enjoy. Her motto is "bloggo ergo sum". Anyway –
INT: She was never at –?
WHA: Oh no, but she did mention – I think Wilhelmina died or something came up – and she mentioned something in her blog because she knew everyone – and I was so delighted she did. I sent her an email, we've just been in touch basically by email.
INT: So she really was a figure from an international –
WHA: You mean Wilhemina? Yes, in fact, I helped her get this published; she had real trouble getting it published, you can imagine, and I'm sure it's wildly expensive now. But she had a technique; she was particularly interested in biological archaeology, and there was somebody at the Smithsonian that worked with her in terms of identifying plant material, spores, and seeds and all that, and this was really a pioneer work that goes beyond – not a part of Dumbarton Oaks, but nevertheless to me her connection with Dumbarton Oaks was extremely important.
INT: What was your fondest memory or the most exciting project that you were a part of in terms of your time?
WHA: Oh, I don't know about that. I think the music programs were great, which had nothing to do with anything else other than just the pleasure of it. The quality of the music program was so high.
INT: Was this the Friends of Music program?
WHA: It wasn't called Friends of Music then, it was Mrs. Bliss's musicale.
INT: We were told that there was a dress code for these, that if a fellow were to come underdressed –
WHA: Oh yes, absolutely. Oh, there's no dress code now. But there surely must be at the concert? No. Well, it was on my invitation in those days and everybody knew everybody else, and Virginia Bacon would be sitting on the front row and she would be asleep in the first five minutes after whatever they were playing, snoring.
INT: That still happens!
INT: But a lot of the Blisses' personal staff stayed on.
WHA: Were still around. I don't know that the butler was, but he might have been. Wait a minute: somebody used to bring us sherry at the end of board meetings.
INT: We spoke with Tony and Silvia.
WHA: And the gardener, the head gardener was there.
INT: Don Smith.
WHA: Is he still extant?
INT: Yes.
WHA: So you've talked to him.
INT: Well, he's up in Maine, and they're going to go up and speak with him.
WHA: I think that's extremely important. I would put him high, put him above Giles – no, not for the record!
INT: We spoke with his son, who of course grew up on the grounds in the gardener's cottage, and that was very helpful.
WHA: Yes, and that would be another point of view, another level, of course.
INT: And he was interviewed, I think in ninety-three, it must have been, about the time he retired, just because of course he was such a figure that someone wanted to get his thoughts together, but we would like to talk to him. We haven't heard though that he was Bliss staff.
WHA: Who, Don? He was not? I thought he was on the staff, but I don't know that. You know, again, could be just loosely referred to.
INT: We've heard of an Antonio who was there, who was I guess Mr. Thacher's butler. I don't know that he ever worked for the Blisses, though.
WHA: No. And I think that's probably the one I would have seen.
INT: Alfredo.
INT: Oh, yes, I'm sorry, Alfredo. And Mrs. Aston, who was there in the library. She was rumored to be Bliss staff originally.
WHA: No. She was only very unhappy. But unhappiness was not unusual at Dumbarton Oaks.
INT: We've heard she was a very stiff British enforcer of the dress code.
WHA: Oh yes, she was. But she would somehow unburden herself to me, for reasons I had no idea. Yes, of course. But I knew her; she was probably a neighbor, and I don't really know – she was in a funny way sort of misplaced there; she wasn't a scholar, and I wasn't sure what her role really was.
INT: Our understanding is that she was in charge of the Princeton Index in the library.
WHA: The Index? Yes, it was something like that probably. And there was always particularly friction –
INT: In the library?
WHA: In the library.
INT: We've heard it was sort of a tumultuous time there, and that the staff dwindled down in the library to the point that –
WHA: Oh yes, there was just maybe one person, and there was curatorial work to be done in the rare book collection and prints.
INT: There was a rare book collection at that time? Because we've heard conflicting things really about the formality of that.
WHA: Well, is it not there, the rare book room?
INT: Oh yes, now of course, but we've heard in those days – we talked to Henry and Eunice Maguire, Byzantine fellows at the time, and they would talk about pulling – this was a little bit later, when Irene Vaslef came to the library, when she was head librarian – but they talked a lot about the course of the library with the main house; they've talked about pulling these seventeenth- and eighteenth-century books off the shelf and taking them I think either to Irene or to Seka Allen, who was also in the library, and that was the beginning of the rare books collection as we understood it, at least for Byzantine.
WHA: Oh, that's in the Byzantine.
INT: It must have been different for garden.
WHA: Oh yes, totally different. We never went there.
INT: How was the interaction between the programs?
WHA: Oh, absolutely none. Absolutely none. We never even knew where they were. You were talking about the sculpture being put in the garden or something – the thing that really stirred Georgetown up when I was involved there was the plan to build library facilities under the lawn, did you know about this?
INT: No.
WHA: Well this was a whole big –
INT: The North Vista? Yes.
WHA: Yes, and it was going to go – it meant removing one of the trees that had been there even going back before the Blisses, and it was going to be buried under that – what direction are we? North?
INT: Mm-hmm.
WHA: North. The North Vista. And people began to realize how much havoc was going to be wrought, digging this all up and supposedly putting it back. Hugh Jacobson, an architect and an old friend of mine in Princeton, was the architect for it. And I'm sure his plans – you want to talk to Hugh, because he ran into a real buzz saw over this, and he was a good friend of mine but I had grave reservations about the whole thing myself. I didn't feel it was going to go anywhere, so I wasn't carrying posters and picketing the place, but the feeling ran very, very high and it really had to do with the integrity of the grounds, just as simple as that. There would have been some irreparable changes if it had gone through.
INT: Were there any other major – you must have heard about the major projects going on at Dumbarton Oaks on the advisory board. Do you recall any other major projects or controversies or just discussions?
WHA: Oh, I can't think of anything. That one, of course, the extension, it had moved beyond the rumor stage, and the rumors were already pretty horrific around Georgetown, gossip and so on, as to what they were going to do. There were no published plans at the early stage, and I don't know if there ever were. And I think Giles – I think this comes under his – and it had to do with building facilities really for the Byzantinists, because the garden library wasn't growing all that fast. I don't even know now what the size of it is.
INT: I don't know now. I know that – we looked a little bit into the library in the early '70s in our research and it was something like two thousand volumes added in a year for the Byzantine collection and maybe three hundred for the garden.
WHA: Three hundred, yeah. Well, it also has to do with the level of scholarship and so on.
INT: As long as we're talking about the neighborhood, just very briefly, it's interesting because we've talked about, of course, the great ties between Washington social scene and Dumbarton Oaks at the time. But also the controversy really, and hopefully you can speak to this since you were living on P Street, between the immediate neighborhood and Dumbarton Oaks. We've heard things before, particularly about Elizabeth Taylor when she was living in the house on S street.
WHA: On S street?
INT: Senator Warner's house.
WHA: Oh, John Warner's house. But that didn't last very long, though. What was more dramatic was when Johnson appointed the neighbor to the Supreme Court – who am I talking about?, the lawyer in Washington. They lived right on R, just on the next block across the street from Dumbarton Oaks. Oh, famous lawyer, and he had to resign from the Supreme Court but there was some –
INT: Oh, he resigned – this isn't Bork, is it?
WHA: Oh no no, who never made it to the court. No, this is a famous lawyer. And the press was all up there because – and I remember going up to Dumbarton Oaks for something and the press was all around his house and a streaker came down our street because the press was all there. This was the 1970s.
INT: Oh yes, we've heard very many –
WHA: And Elizabeth Taylor, they were really basically I think out in Middleburg.
INT: Oh, really. I know she didn't like Dumbarton Oaks, you know, the gardeners being about and noisy in the morning.
WHA: Oh, that part I know nothing about; never heard anything about it. I can imagine.
INT: But were the neighbors sort of cantankerous with the center being so close?
WHA: I've never really heard anything. You know, being in Georgetown you usually heard those things. No, I think – Dumbarton Oaks kept up – obviously, because of the background of the place, they were very sensitive to its good neighbors' relationships. Giles can speak to that much better because he would get the letters and the telephone calls or whatever. It's too bad you didn't get to speak to Tom Bayard. He was very young, younger than I, and he was very, very like Bill Tyler; he was very, very protective of the Dumbarton Oaks mystique, or the Bliss mystique if you want to call it that, and I remember the first time I was up to see him, because we had mutual friends at Princeton, he said, do you want to see my office. I said, yes, where is it? He said, it's in Mildred Bliss's bedroom. Is that still used as an office?
INT: It is. It's no longer – I'm not entirely sure if Financial is up there –
WHA: Is Financial in the office now? In the bedroom? They haven't changed anything. This was very much looking like her bedroom.
INT: Really? Did you get the sense that it really was a house?
WHA: Oh yes, that part was. I was very interested in that part of it and how the Blisses expanded it, and all that's well-known, but I remember Tom taking me around, showing me all the expansion, the drawing room; they really did the whole – talk about a makeover. Big-time. When you see the original pictures of Dumbarton Oaks, that whole facade I think is new, on the south. I'm sure that's true. You can, if you know the original plans, figure out what they did, but all the grandeur really was brought in by the Bliss hallway and the staircase and all that.
INT: It's still very lovely.
WHA: It's beautiful, isn't it. What do those rooms get used for, the drawing room, anything much?
INT: There's the director of studies' office.
WHA: But the director's office is in that section, but I always thought that was a former utility room or something.
INT: I'm honestly not certain what some of those places used to do. I know when they renovated and they redid the museum and everything some of that must have changed. Because of course the building of the whole library changed everything.
WHA: It's amazing how dark it is. We're going to have to light a candle. Do you need a light?
INT: Oh, we're fine. I just want to make sure I haven't left anything out. You've done quite a good job of answering our questions without our asking them. I wonder if – we've asked a little about the beginning of garden studies, but has Dumbarton Oaks played an important role in the development and progression of it?
WHA: I think that's a very important question. Through its international program, through its fellows it certainly played a – in terms of giving scholars – a base. I never thought the collection was adequate as a real scholarly – when people would say to me, somebody would say, I'm going to apply to Dumbarton Oaks for a junior fellowship, I would say, have you looked at the collection first? Do you know whether it serves your purpose, or what other collections there are in greater Washington, if you look at the larger scene? But in terms of garden history, there was not a lot of energy behind building a larger collection. Excuse me just a moment. It's such an important question. I never thought that they pushed to really establish a base at Harvard. Betty went up there and taught and she was very unhappy, and I think she left after a year, was that right?
INT: I'm not really sure of the exact timing, but I've heard that.
WHA: After she had retired, or left Dumbarton Oaks. It should have been something they were taking a major leadership role, either at Harvard or someplace else, and as far as I know they played no role in the development, say, that John Dixon Hunt has done at the University of Pennsylvania. That's just larger because of his energy, but he's singular in the sense that there's not any others I can think of. Unlike the scene in England, where garden history has a much larger network and resources. Also garden history is built into the whole culture of Great Britain; it's part of their personality, and they see that. Gardening not only at every level, even at the academic; when you think of the great physical artifacts of gardens, the great Royal Gardens are in England, some of them, and it goes back three hundred years. So you can understand why – and we don't have anything like that, and there really isn't, in my opinion, an indigenous American garden style. Not that this had anything to do with Dumbarton Oaks but I'm just saying that we're no different from Byzantine studies. True?
INT: Absolutely.
WHA: But I never felt that Dumbarton Oaks took the leadership that it might have, professional leadership in terms of helping to build up any comparable academic programs. That may not be a factor.
INT: Do they exist now, or is this still a field that's developing?
WHA: I don't know; I'm out of touch with a lot of what's going on now. But just in looking over journals and things – I've given my own garden history library away, I don't have it here now; it was in another building here. It was a working library solely. I gave it to the Nelson Gallery in Kansas City, because my family comes from there. I felt again there were no real resources for anyone interested in the subject in that part of the world. And there aren't. But I'm just saying Dumbarton Oaks never really saw its role, and there may be a lot of reasons, a lot of political reasons, academic reasons in terms of Harvard. But it seems to me they could have done more. The garden conferences, are they still going on?
INT: Yes.
WHA: I used to get the programs regularly, but I didn't attend them. I thought the subject matter had gotten somewhat off the track; just looking at it over-all, there wasn't enough interest for me, but that's just a personal point of view. The real quality of it, I don't know.
INT: Well, I think you've answered most of our questions. I wonder, unless there's anything that we've left out that you can think of –
WHA: No, I think your last question is one I haven't said enough, but I've just put in my two cents.
INT: I wonder if in closing if you might talk a little bit about what you see, especially from your position as a person in Georgetown in the earlier days of Dumbarton Oaks, what the Bliss and the Farrand legacies are for Dumbarton Oaks.
WHA: Well, the institution itself is obviously their great legacy and I don't know what one could say beyond that. I didn't know either the Blisses or Beatrix Farrand – at least her work is a physical document that is studied periodically, and worried over in terms of its conservation and so on, and that's alive in that sense, and there's a great deal of academic interest and so on quite apart from the public interest. I don't know if the Blisses are fading. I doubt if anybody other than – I think it's so important institutionally to do what you're doing, for a lot of reasons, though I don't know who or how it will be made available.
INT: It will be placed in the Archives.
WHA: In the Archives? But I've been on a number of boards and I've always felt that when board-members come on, they usually have so little historical perception of an institution, just because of the nature – by the time they go off the board it's too late, and with rotating boards and so on. So I think that having this institutional history is very important; how it's disseminated or how it can be boiled down and useful, I have no idea. It seems to me there ought to be something that could go into a kind of handbook for directors and staff and any board functionaries – seems to me that would be important. Doesn't have to be published but it certainly would be something that would be – because otherwise the Blisses are fading. I doubt the staff has any idea now. Is that true?
INT: For the most part. Dumbarton Oaks did found an Archives I guess in the eighties or around that time. So there has been some formal attempt to collect what they call "Blissiana."
WHA: Blissiana?
INT: Yes. I've just noticed, and we work a lot with the Archives, that directors of study will come down for each of the programs quite a bit and take folders. The most major players, I think. There's an attempt to look back, but whether everyone else at Dumbarton Oaks does, I don't know.
WHA: No, of course not. Beatrix Farrand is a major figure unto herself, obviously, and her collection should have been there. But nothing can be done about that. Maybe copies of all of her papers should be part of – it seems to me that would be just the normal, natural thing.
INT: Thank you so much, you've been very helpful.]]>
Among the most esteemed wind players in the United States, the ten members of the Wind Soloists of New York perform masterworks by Rossini, Salieri, Mozart, Gounod, and Beethoven, for flute, French horn, clarinet, oboe, and bassoon.
Pianist Alessio Bax has won audiences around the globe with his lyrical playing, dazzling facility, and deep musicality. First prizewinner at both the Leeds and Hamamatsu (Japan) International Piano Competitions, he was also awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant, one of the most prestigious prizes in classical music. His program includes works by Brahms and Rachmaninov.
Recognized by Fanfare as the "premier men's vocal ensemble in the United States," Cantus offers an evening of high energy and beautifully blended sonorities. The nine singers perform music spanning many centuries and styles, from chant to contemporary works, to art song, world music, and, of course, seasonal favorites.
In its Washington, D.C. début, the period-instrument ensemble Quicksilver—two violins, cello, bassoon, theorbo, and harpsichord—has been praised by the Boston Globe for "fresh, technically assured, and rewarding performances." The ensemble, led by violinists Robert Mealy and Julie Andrijeski, explores the extravagant and virtuosic chamber music of the German seventeenth century, by composers such as Johann Kaspar Kerll, Matthias Weckmann, David Pohle, and Antonio Bertali.
The distinguished Brazilian-born guitarists and brothers, Sergio and Odair Assad, return to the Music Room with works by French and South American composers, including Debussy, Ravel, Gismonti, Jobim, and S. Assad. The Assads' exceptional artistry and uncanny ensemble playing promise to delight.
Among the finest of Czech string quartets performing today, the Škampa Quartet has represented its country in major concert halls and music festivals around the world for twenty years. Mentored by the legendary Smetana Quartet, this award-winning ensemble will perform music by Martinů, Beethoven, and Smetana.
A protégé of maestro Christoph Eschenbach and winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition (2009) and the Yehudi Menuhin Competition (2008), Ray Chen is among the most compelling young violinists today. Invited to perform at the 2012 Nobel Prize Concert in Stockholm, he is known for his beautiful tone, vitality and lightness. Chen closes the season playing works by Mozart, Brahms, Ysaÿe, and Saint-Saëns.
Programs are subject to change. For subscription information, please contact the Friends of Music.
For information about performing at Dumbarton Oaks, please contact Valerie Stains, Artistic Director and Music Advisor.]]>
On April 22nd and 23rd, the Boston-based chamber orchestra A Far Cry performed the final concerts of the 2011–2012 Friends of Music season. The self-conducted group of young musicians (the Criers, as they call themselves) made its Washington, D.C. debut last year right here at Dumbarton Oaks. We were so impressed by their musicianship, energy, and freshness, that we immediately invited them to play for us again this season, and they did not disappoint. Their impressive performances of music by Heinrich Biber (Battalia), Ludwig van Beethoven (the "Serioso" String Quartet, arranged for string orchestra by A Far Cry), Osvaldo Golijov (Tenebrae), and Benjamin Britten (Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge) were warmly received by Friends of Music audiences. The Washington Post's Stephen Brookes attended and reviewed the concert.
According to the New York Times, A Far Cry "brims with personality or, better, personalities, many and varied." The orchestra was founded in 2007 by a tightly-knit collective of seventeen young professional musicians and since the beginning has fostered those personalities, developing an innovative structure of rotating leadership both on stage and behind the scenes. The Criers maintain strong roots in Boston, rehearsing at their storefront music center in Jamaica Plain and fulfilling the role of Chamber Orchestra in Residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.]]>