Happy birthday, Theodore Thomas!

Wishing a very happy birthday to our founder and first music director, Theodore Thomas, on the occasion of his 189th birthday!

“Theodore Thomas began his musical career as a violinist, and during the years of his boyhood and youth not only supported himself but helped support the family by playing anywhere and everywhere that he could find the opportunity. He has said himself that he has no remembrance of a time when he was not playing. The earliest recorded appearance on his programmes as a violinist is in 1852, he being at that time in his seventeenth year, but he had played in concerts before that, and was even then so well known that his services were in frequent demand in theatre and opera orchestras, as well as in concert-rooms. He had played before he was out of his teens in the accompaniments of nearly all the great singers of his time, some of the greatest singers of all times. His ability was so reliable, his musical endowment so unmistakable, and his qualities of leadership so convincing, that he was soon promoted from the ranks to the position of concertmeister, or ‘leader,’ as it was called at the time. More than once, in the absence of the conductor, he had to take his place, and at such time never failed to give signs of those extraordinary abilities which were destined to be manifested in after years, when the bow was finally exchanged for the baton. Doubtless had he continued playing the violin he would become a famous virtuoso, but ‘Frau Musica’ had other work and other triumphs for her favorite. His musical knowledge, his accurate musicianship, his perfect ear, and his ability in producing absolute purity of tone, as well as his great love for tone-color, fitted him to become a great violinist; but back of all these qualities and dominating them was the noble ambition to make people acquainted with the higher music, as well as that perfect mastery of self and sure knowledge of his own power which impelled him to become the leader of men, the interpreter of the great composers, a player upon the orchestral choirs rather than a player upon a single instrument. He had all the ability and all the knowledge to make himself one of the best of violinists, but his temperament urged him to become not a player but a leader of players—not a [Eugène] Ysaÿe or [August] Wilhelmj, but the master of the Ysaÿes and Wilhelmjs.”

—excerpt from Reminiscence and Appreciation by George P. Upton,
as published in Theodore Thomas: A Musical Autobiography
by Theodore Thomas, 1905

This article also appears here.