Looking Back: A Reflection on Our Origins

Looking Back: A Reflection on Our Origins

As Arizona Friends of Chamber Music continues to present world-class performances more than 75 years after its founding, it’s valuable to pause and reflect on the early years of this organization. The following document, written in 1958 by founding board member Sybil Juliani Ellinwood, offers a personal snapshot of the determination, creativity, and grassroots passion that shaped AFCM in its earliest days.

While many of the challenges described here — financial uncertainty, volunteer-driven operations, and creative resourcefulness — are now part of our history, the spirit of dedication and love for chamber music remains at the core of our mission today. This historical account reminds us of the remarkable journey from those modest beginnings to the vibrant, professionally-managed organization we are today. It also offers an early glimpse at the spirit of community support and fundraising that continues to sustain AFCM’s work.

We share this document as both a historical artifact and a tribute to the individuals who laid the foundation for chamber music in Tucson.

Arizona Friends of Chamber Music History
Written by Sybil Juliani Ellinwood in 1958

Money in the bank, the use of a fine chamber music hall, and a season featuring such internationally known musicians as the Paganini Quartet, the Alma Trio, the Hungarian Quartet, and the Koeckert Quartet – a rosy picture for Arizona Friends of Music to contemplate.

But the picture was not always so neatly and benignly in focus.

A tiny newspaper notice in the hot summer of 1948 brought together a small group of persons interested in forming a sponsoring society to present a series of chamber music concerts in Tucson at nominal prices – something not attempted before in this small city with the ravenous musical appetite.

Chairmen of this meeting, in whose fertile brains the idea of a “Tucson Chamber Society” was formed, were Harry Rickel, widely admired pianist and teacher; Arthur Blair, owner of an intellectually stimulating off-campus bookstore; and Alex Mann, manager of a well-patronized record department in a downtown store.

Meetings were held in each other’s homes to thrash through the unfamiliar snares of finance, hall-hiring, ticket-selling, and most important of all, gaining enough public support. The name was changed to “Arizona Friends of Music” to include a similar group started in Tempe by Harry Rickel when he joined the Arizona State College music faculty (the Tempe group, aided by the college from the first, is entering its ninth successful season – still under Rickel’s leadership). Arthur Blair took over the Tucson reins the second year.

Members of the board were Miss Anna Mae Sharp, Dr. David Patrick, Dr. Desmond Powell, Dr. Robert Bretall, and Professor Samuel Fain (all of the University of Arizona faculty). Others included Irving Coretz, pianist and teacher; George Rosenberg and Sybil Ellinwood, both newspaper people, and Stewart Udall, an attorney who is now one of Arizona’s representatives in Congress. Alex Mann and Arthur Blair both devoted most of their extra-curricular hours to Friends of Music activities until they moved away from Tucson.

The executive board has expanded over the years to include Mrs. Jay Sternberg, Mrs. Lyle Clark, Mrs. Madeline Schutzbank, Mrs. Isabella Lewis, Miss Elizabeth Chadwick, James Freudenthal, Cameron Peck, Dean John Crowder, and Herman Novick, director of music at Temple Emanuel and longtime treasurer of the organization. Present chairman is Dr. M. M. R. Schneck, head of the department of philosophy at the University of Arizona.

Harry Rickel, through his studies in California, was in touch with the well-established “Evenings on the Roof” group, under the directorship of musicologist and critic Peter Yates and his pianist wife, Frances Mullen (their garage roof was the “hall” for the first few seasons of chamber concerts given for their friends and neighbors by top caliber California musicians). Yates acted as a non-paid agent for a number of musicians to supply the Arizona Friends of Music with artists for Sunday afternoon concerts, provided they were able to return to California for their regular jobs on Monday mornings!

Because Arizona Friends of Music was a non-profit group and the price of the tickets was purposely kept very low, the musicians who often drove their own cars from Los Angeles were paid very little more than their expenses. In all cases, they were most happy to play their favorite chamber music for Tucson’s small but attentive public. The harassed Tucson committee, with the constant and patient assistance of families, friends, and occasional gratefully received donations of cash, was able to house and sometimes feed these musicians and present them in the Tucson Women’s Club – patently unsuited to chamber music, but the only possible hall in 1948.

As originally conceived, the purpose of the Arizona Friends of Music has been, within the boundaries of taste and money, to present chamber musicians of the greatest possible musical reputation playing music of the contemporary and all other periods – with emphasis on the unfamiliar. The music was predominately unfamiliar from the past and present; the instruments were both ancient and modern, some handmade by the musicians.

The Agricultural Hall of the University of Arizona was secured for Sunday afternoon concerts in the second season. Musicians Ingolf Dahl, Wesley Kuhnle, Sol Babitz, Kurt Reher, Eudice Shapiro, Frances Mullen (giving the first performance here of the controversial “Concord Sonata” of Charles Ives), Kalman Bloch, Alice Ehlers with a superb program of the Bach Goldberg Variations on her specially made harpsichord – all have played here under the auspices of Arizona Friends of Music to an ever more appreciate audience.

Unfortunately, the series of four or five concerts was not being sustained by the low priced subscriptions. The shaky financial base of the organization was periodically stabilized by constant donations of whatever amounts of cash could be spared by the determined board members and loyal listeners. Invaluable intermission comments by George Rosenberg, frankly presenting the problems and appealing for help, were a feature of Sunday afternoons. Once he had to announce postponement of a concert because a cellist failed to catch a plane in Phoenix.

The major obstacle was lack of money. Since there was no office, no telephone, and no clerical help, all the mountainous paper work and endless detail was handled by two or three members. A postal card was sent to each subscriber before each concert as a reminder, programs were mimeographed, and the sparse advertising copy was worked out by board members. Over the years, in spite of the fact that there is still no office, no telephone, and no paid help, it has been possible to have printed programs, printed tickets, adequate advertising, and efficient secretarial and treasurer work done by the faithful team of Coretz and Novick.

Just about the time the hard-pressed board members, after a series of financially gloomy meetings, had decided to disband and hope for success another year, much-needed help materialized. Through the efforts of enthusiastic University of Arizona faculty members, the Friends of Music were able to use the small, modern, acoustically sound Liberal Arts Auditorium for all concerts and rehearsals in exchange for setting aside one-third of the audience room at no charge to students. This arrangement has worked to the mutual benefit of both groups, creating an increasing audience for chamber music from the university student body.

Arizona Friends of Music was able to weather its most serious financial crisis with the concrete support of the University and the devoted public. Prices were lowered, an all-out subscription campaign was launched, and an ambitious season was announced: the Pasquier Trio, Amadeus Quartet, and the new Quartetto Italiano (cancelled because of illness but brilliantly replaced by the Hollywood String Quartet).

Through the ten rocky, often exasperating years, board members have been called upon to perform a large variety of tasks in the line of duty. One Sunday afternoon concert was held up until a special cake of soap could be bought for a finicky pianist to wash his hands with; the favorite living room reading lamp of one faculty member was a fixture at concerts for several years, pouring direct light on the music stands; husbands, wives, children – to say nothing of family cars and telephones, and guest rooms were often on call.

Many generous people offered cash when they could not help in other ways. All of Tucson’s chamber music public has helped to keep non-profit Arizona Friends of Music progressing toward the common goal: the best possible balanced chamber music concerts at the lowest cost.

In the tenth season of the organization there is a regular pattern of evening concerts presented in the compact, centrally located Liberal Arts Hall; there is the gracious bequest by the late Mrs. Jean Serrano of $24,000 which is now invested for the perpetual benefit of the Tucson chamber music public; and there is proof that years of hard work and dedication to an idea have produced a respected, secure musical institution in Tucson – Arizona Friends of Music.