Leopold Stokowski

English classical conductor

• Born: April 18, 1882
• Birthplace: London, England
• Died: September 13, 1977
• Place of death: Nether Wallop, Hampshire, England

Stokowski made Bach’s organ works accessible to millions through his orchestral transcriptions, and he won both praise and criticism for the liberties he took with musical scores in an attempt to bring out the essence of the music.

The Life

Leopold Bolesławowicz Stanisław Antoni Stokowski (stoh-KAHF-skee) told fanciful stories about his origins, claiming at times that he was born in Poland, the descendant either of an aristocratic general who fought alongside Napoleon Bonaparte or of sturdy Polish peasants in the imaginary village of Stokki. At times he affected an Eastern European accent. In fact, he did have one Polish grandparent, also named Leopold Stokowski, who immigrated to England and married a Scotswoman. On his mother’s side, Stokowski was half Irish and half English, and he grew up in a lower-middle-class district in London. His mother wanted him to use the name Leo Stokes, but he did not want to Anglicize his name. Instead, Stokowski emphasized his Polish background, and he invented a more, not less, Polish-sounding name for himself—Leopold Bolesławowicz Stanisław Antoni Stokowski—according to one version.

Stokowski was a romantic who wanted to appear mysterious and exotic, and to play this role he felt it necessary to leave London, which he did in 1905 to take up a post as an organist and choirmaster for St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City. Before that, he held similar positions at St. Mary’s Church and St. James’s Church in London, and he acquired a degree in music from Oxford University after spending four years attending London’s Royal College of Music.

Stokowski’s main interest was in conducting. According to one of his stories, he was playing in a children’s orchestra at the age of twelve when the conductor fell ill, and Stokowski stepped up to take his place. From that time on, he said, he knew he wanted to conduct.

Although he had minimal conducting experience, Stokowski persuaded the board of directors of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra to hire him to lead their orchestra in 1909. Once in the post, he flourished, winning much admiration for his musical talent and for his dashing good looks and charm.

After Stokowski quarreled with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra board, in 1912 he moved on to become conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, where he stayed for a quarter of a century, transforming the Philadelphia musicians into what some called the finest orchestra ever, notable especially for its lush “Stokowski sound.” Stokowski quarreled with management in Philadelphia, too, this time over his desire to program more experimental, modern music than audiences seemed interested in hearing. Eventually, he left the position, though not before performing with the orchestra in the film The Big Broadcast of 1937 (1936). For a while Stokowski, who appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1930, contemplated a career in Hollywood. This did not materialize, though he appeared in the film One Hundred Men and a Girl (1938) with Deanna Durbin, and then he collaborated with Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse on the sound and light extravaganza Fantasia (1940); this led to another appearance on the cover of Time. Stokowski had a widely publicized romance with the film star Greta Garbo, and he was married for a time to the American heiress Gloria Vanderbilt.

After leaving Philadelphia, Stokowski worked with a number of orchestras, including some he started himself. He was constantly searching for better recording technology, having been one of the first to record orchestral music, as early as 1917. In 1972 Stokowski moved back to England, where he continued conducting and recording almost until the day he died at the age of ninety-five.

The Music

Stokowski was a controversial conductor whose emphasis on conveying the spirit of the music as opposed to following strictly the notes on the music score earned him admiration and derision. Traditionalists condemned him for varying tempi and for making other alterations to what composers had written. His response was that notes were mere specks on the page; what mattered was what the composer was trying to achieve. Stokowski was at his best with the Romantic and twentieth century repertoire, which suited his emphasis on feeling and spirit. He was noted for bringing a lush full sound from his orchestras and for being able to inspire musicians to new heights. He gave up using a baton to conduct, relying on his hands and eyes instead, and he experimented with different seating arrangements for orchestra members to create a better sound. His emphasis was always on the sound, and to this end he introduced free bowing, which freed his violinists from bowing up and down in step with each other. This avoided the pauses in sound created when all the violinists in a traditional orchestra simultaneously switched from up to down, and this also allowed each musician to bring his or her own inspiration to the performance.

Mahler’s Symphony No. 8. Stokowski initially won widespread popularity with his American premiere, on March 2, 1916, of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 (1911), also known as the Symphony of a Thousand. Long an admirer of the way Mahler could transform misery into joy in his music, and also interested in putting on a spectacle, Stokowski persuaded the Philadelphia Orchestra board to let him organize the more than one thousand performers (958 singers and 110 musicians) required for Symphony No. 8. The Philadelphia performances were such a success that he put on an additional performance at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House.

J. S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. Besides conducting in a controversial manner, Stokowski made controversial transcriptions for orchestra of nonorchestral works by a variety of composers, most notably by Bach. Some criticized him for making Bach sound Romantic instead of Baroque, while others supported his effort to bring out the Romantic and mystical essence in Bach’s works. Stokowski said that Bach wrote works for the organ that would have sounded better played by a modern orchestra. Since such an orchestra did not exist in Bach’s time, Stokowski was simply producing what Bach would have produced using modern resources.

The Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (1703-1707) became famous through Stokowski’s transcription, especially after he performed it in Fantasia. He first performed it in 1925, and he recorded it in 1927. One commentator said that as a result of the transcription, it had become the most famous organ work of all time.

Stokowski said he found cosmic attributes in the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, and he compared its sound to thunderclouds in the Himalayas.

Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Although one of Stokowski’s aims was to introduce millions to the standard orchestral repertoire, at the same time he sought to introduce regular concertgoers to the latest experiments in orchestral music. To this end, he programmed many American premieres, including one of Igor Stravinsky’s 1913 ballet in 1930. Over the objections of management at the Philadelphia Orchestra, he made the harsh, dissonant music of Stravinsky part of a double bill with an even more experimental work, Arnold Schoenberg’s 1924 opera, Die Glückliche Hand (The Hand of Fate). Despite the fears of management, the sound and light spectacle of the performance, featuring Martha Graham as the lead dancer in Stravinsky’s ballet, was a popular success.

Fantasia. One of Stokowski’s best-known performances is in this Walt Disney motion picture, in which he not only provides the musical background but also appears in person as the mysterious maestro who shakes hands with Mickey Mouse. Besides the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by Bach, Stokowski performed a number of other classic works, including a menacing performance of Modest Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain (1867); a stormy but sweet version of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 (1808), also known as the Pastoral Symphony; and a performance of The Sorcercer’s Apprentice (1897) by Paul Dukas. Besides these easily accessible pieces, he also played the difficult The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky.

Scheherazade. Stokowski recorded Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1888 work three times, the first time in 1951. It is the sort of lush romantic work he was drawn to, and it brought out his creative tendencies, producing a performance that some praised as sensual and voluptuous and others condemned as exaggerated and grotesque.

Ives’s Symphony No. 4. Stokowski was drawn to the music of Charles Ives, both of them being innovators and interested in transcending everyday reality. Glenn Gould, the noted Canadian pianist, commented that Stokowski was made for such music as the Ives Symphony No. 4. Stokowski pointed to the revolutionary approach to tonality and counterpoint contained in the symphony. It is a complicated work that had remained unperformed for nearly fifty years when Stokowski put on its world premiere at New York’s Carnegie Hall on April 26, 1965. He used two associate conductors to help with the complexities of the work.

Musical Legacy

“Tradition is laziness,” Stokowski once said. “If something is not right, we must change it.” He proceeded to change things, introducing free bowing, rearranging the seating of the musicians, discarding the baton, investigating the latest technology for recording and broadcasting, performing in motion pictures, and introducing the latest experimental music to often-resistant audiences. He also felt free to be almost a cocreator with composers, altering tempi, dynamics, and even notes. He was interested primarily in the spirit of a musical piece, in the emotions it could conjure.

In this approach he was often contrasted with his contemporary, Arturo Toscanini, who was known for his traditionalism and purism as a conductor. Some derided Stokowski for tampering with scores and especially for his transcriptions of the organ works of J. S. Bach. In those transcriptions he was closest to being a cocreator, but he believed he was bringing out what he saw as the essence of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor and other works.

Part of Stokowski’s legacy is a direct result of his Bach transcriptions. Bach’s organ works are much better known as a result, even if only in orchestral form. He also helped revive interest in composers such as Ives. Although his introduction of free bowing, his unusual seating rearrangements, and his discarding of the conductor’s baton were not widely followed, his general emphasis on bringing out the inner feeling of a musical piece, as opposed to confining himself to tradition and the notes on the page, continues to find adherents.

Principal Recordings

albums (as conductor): Sibelius: Symphony No. 4, 1932; Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante, 1940; Schubert: Unfinished Symphony, 1941; Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, 1943; Beethoven: Pastoral Symphony, 1944; Richard Strauss: Death and Transfiguration, 1944; Tchaikovsky: Pathétique Symphony, 1945; Debussy: Children’s Corner Suite, 1949; Haydn: Symphony No. 53, Imperial, 1949; Schumann: Symphony No. 2, 1949; Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 6 in E Minor, 1949; J. Strauss II: Blue Danube Waltz, 1950; Sibelius: Symphony No. 1 in E Minor, 1950; Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade, 1951; Bizet: Symphony in C, L’Arlesienne Suites 1 and 2, 1952; Sibelius: Symphony No. 2 in D Major, 1954; Brahms: Symphony No. 2, 1977; Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 4, Italian, 1977.

Bibliography

Chasins, Abram. Leopold Stokowski: A Profile. New York: Hawthorn, 1979. A brief but comprehensive account of Stokowski’s life, focusing on his personality. Includes illustrations, bibliography, and discography.

Daniel, Oliver. Stokowski: A Counterpoint of View. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1982. A massively detailed account of Stokowski’s life focusing on the development of his career and on his personal relationships. Includes illustrations, bibliography, and discography.

Robinson, Paul. Stokowski. Toronto, Ont.: Lester & Orpen, 1977. Short study of Stokowski’s musical approach, criticizing him for deviating from tradition.

Smith, Rollin. Stokowski and the Organ. Hillsdale N.Y.: Pendragon, 2004. A study of Stokowski’s career as an organist, with a detailed chapter on his orchestral transcriptions of Bach’s organ works. Includes illustrations and bibliography.

Smith, William Ander. The Mystery of Leopold Stokowski. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1990. An analytical study of Stokowski’s personality and artistry, assigning him almost magical powers. Includes a detailed, annotated discography.