Leopold Stokowski

Leopold Stokowski

Leopold Stokowski (April 18, 1882 - September 13, 1977) (born Antoni Stanisław Bolesławowicz) was the conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the NBC Symphony Orchestra and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. He was the founder of the New York City Symphony Orchestra. He arranged the music for and appeared in Disney’s Fantasia.

Early Life

The son of Polish cabinetmaker Kopernik Józef Bolesław Stokowski and his Irish wife Annie Marion Moore, Stokowski was born in London, England, in 1882. There is a certain amount of mystery surrounding his early life. For example, no one could ever determine where his slightly Eastern European, foreign-sounding accent came from as he was a born and raised in London (it is surmised that this was a affectation on his part to add mystery and interest) and he also, on occasion, quoted his birth year as 1887 instead of 1882.

Stokowski trained at the Royal College of Music (which he entered in 1896, at the age of thirteen, one of the college's youngest students ever). He sang in the choir of St. Marylebone Church and later became Assistant Organist to Sir Henry Walford Davies at The Temple Church. At the age of 16, he was elected to membership in the Royal College of Organists. In 1900 he formed the choir of St. Mary's Church, Charing Cross Road. There he trained the choirboys and played the organ and in 1902 was appointed organist and choir director of St. James's Church, Piccadilly. He also attended Queen's College, Oxford where he earned a Bachelor of Music degree in 1903.

Professional Career

In 1905 Stokowski began work in New York City as the organist and choir director of St. Bartholomew's Church. He became very popular amongst the parishoners (who included JP Morgan and members of the Vanderbilt family) but eventually quit the position to pursue a post as an orchestra conductor. He moved to Paris for additional study before hearing that the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra would be needing a new conductor when it returned from a hiatus. So, in 1908, he began his campaign to obtain the position, writing multiple letters to the orchestra's president, Mrs. C. R. Holmes, and traveling to Cincinnati for a personal interview. Eventually he was granted the post and officially took up his duties in the fall of 1909.

Stokowski was a great success in Cincinnati, introducing the idea of "pop concerts" and conducting the United States premieres of new works by composers such as Edward Elgar. However, in early 1912 he became sufficiently frustrated with the politics of the orchestra's board that he tendered his resignation. There was a dispute over the resignation, but on April 12 it was finally accepted.

Two months later, Stokowski was appointed director of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Stokowski made his Philadelphia debut on October 11, 1912. This position would bring him some of his greatest accomplishments and recognition.

Stokowski rapidly garnered a reputation as a showman. His flair for the theatrical included grand gestures such as throwing the sheet music on the floor to show he did not need to conduct from a score. He also experimented with lighting techniques in the concert hall, at one point conducting in a dark hall with only his head and hands lighted, at other times arranging the lights so they would cast theatrical shadows of his head and hands. Late in the 1929-30 season, he started conducting without a baton; his free-hand manner of conducting became one of his trademarks.

On the musical side, Stokowski nurtured the orchestra and shaped the "Stokowski" sound. He encouraged "free bowing" from the string section, "free breathing" from the brass section, and continually played with the seating arrangements of the sections as well as the acoustics of the hall in order to create better sound.

Stokowski's repertoire was broad and included contemporary works. In 1916, he conducted the United States premiere of Mahler's 8th Symphony. He added works by Rachmaninoff, Sibelius and Igor Stravinsky. In 1933, he started "Youth Concerts" for younger audiences which are still a Philadelphia tradition and fostered youth music programs.

After disputes with the board, Stokowski began to withdraw from involvement in the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1935 onwards, allowing then co-conductor Eugene Ormandy to gradually take over.

In 1940, Stokowski formed the All-American Youth Orchestra which took multiple tours overseas and was met with rave reviews. During this time he also become co-conductor of the NBC Symphony Orchestra with Arturo Toscanini.

Also in 1940, Stokowski collaborated with Walt Disney to create the movie for which he is best known - Fantasia. He conducted the segments for the "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" and "Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria" and even got to talk to Mickey Mouse while onscreen.

In 1944, on the recommendation of Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, Stokowski helped form the New York City Symphony Orchestra, aimed at middle-class workers. Ticket prices were set low and the times of concerts made it convenient to attend after work. Many early concerts were standing room only; however, a year later in 1945, Stokowski was at odds with the board (who wanted to trim expenses even further) and he resigned.

In 1945, Stokowski founded the Hollywood Bowl Symphony. The orchestra lasted for two years before it was disbanded. It was later restarted in 1991.

In the late 1940s, Stokowski became chief Guest Conductor of the New York Philharmonic. From 1955 to 1961, Stokowski was the Music Director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra.

In 1962, at the age of 80, Stokowski founded the American Symphony Orchestra. He served as music director for the orchestra, which continues to play, until May 1972 when, at the age of 90, he returned to England.

In 1976, he signed a recording contract that would have kept him active until he was 100 years old. However, he died of a heart attack the following year at the age of 95.

Personal Life

Stokowski married three times. His first wife was Lucie Hickenlooper (a.k.a. Olga Samaroff, former wife of Boris Loutzky), a Texas-born concert pianist and musicologist, to whom he was married from 1911 until 1923 (one daughter: Sonia Stokowski, an actress). His second wife was Johnson & Johnson heiress Evangeline Love Brewster Johnson, an artist and aviator, to whom he was married from 1926 until 1937 (two children: Gloria Luba Stokowski and Andrea Sadja Stokowski). His third wife, from 1945 until 1955, was railroad heiress Gloria Vanderbilt (born 1924), an artist and fashion designer (two sons, Leopold Stanislaus Stokowski b. 1950 and Christopher Stokowski b. 1955). He also had a much-publicized affair with Greta Garbo in 1937-8.

Leopold Stokowski returned to England in 1972 and died there in 1977 in Nether Wallop, Hampshire at the age of 95.

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Leopold Stokowski

The celebrated and magically communicative English-born American conductor (and arranger), Leopold (Anthony) Stokowski, was born into a Polish and Irish mother, but was raised as an Englishman. His famous, vaguely foreign, accent somehow appeared later in his life. (It is widely believed this was an affectation, as was his name, adopted in favor of the less exotic-sounding "Leo Stokes.") The young Stokowski was a precocious musician, and as a child learned to play the violin, piano, and organ with apparently little effort. At the age of thirteen, he became the youngest person to have been admitted to the Royal College of Music.

By eighteen, Leopold Stokowski had been appointed organist and choirmaster at St. James', Piccadilly. He attended Queen's College, Oxford, receiving a Bachelor of Music degree in 1903. He moved to the USA in 1905, but returned to Europe each summer for further musical studies in Berlin, Munich, and Paris. When a conductor fell ill in Paris in 1908, he made his debut as an emergency substitute. The impression he made led to a position with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in which he quickly achieved notable success. However, a more tempting prospect faced him when he was asked to take over the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1912. It was during his long and fruitful association with this ensemble that Stokowski established himself as one of the leading musicians of his day.

Leopold Stokowski Leopold Stokowski Leopold Stokowski gave the orchestra an entirely new sound, popularly known as the "Philadelphia sound" or the "Stokowski Sound." Its foundation was a luxuriant, sonorous tone and an exacting attention to color. He pioneered the use of "free" bowing, which produced a rich, homogenized string tone. A relentless innovator, Stokowski experimented with orchestral seating, famously lining up the string basses across the rear of the stage and, in an early instance, massing all the violins on the left side of the orchestra and the cellos on the right. He also had spotlights directed on his hands and his impressively prominent hair to enhance his dramatic, theatrical aura. One of the first modern conductors to give up the use of the baton, Stokowski employed graceful, almost hypnotic, hand gestures to work his magic.

Indeed, Leopold Stokowski was the first conductor to become a true superstar. He was regarded as something of a matinee idol, an image aided by his appearances in such films as the Deanna Durbin spectacle One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937) and, most famously, as the flesh-and-blood leader of the Philadelphia Orchestra in Walt Disney's animated classic Fantasia (1940). In one memorable instance, he appears to be talking to the cartoon figure of Mickey Mouse, the "star" of a sequence featuring Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice. In a clever parody, when the slumbering apprentice dreams of himself directing the forces of Nature with the masterful sweep of his hands, Disney artists copied Stokowski's own conducting gestures.

Following his tenure in Philadelphia, Leopold Stokowski directed several other ensembles, including the All-American Youth Orchestra (which he founded), the NBC Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic (both as co-conductor), the Houston Symphony Orchestra (1955-1960), and the American Symphony Orchestra, which he organized in 1962. He continued to make concert appearances and studio recordings of both standard works and unusual repertoire (including the first performance and recording of Charles Ives' decades-old Symphony No. 4) well into his nineties. He made his last public appearance as conductor in Venice in 1975, remaining active in the recording studio through 1977.