Henry Adams, Avant-gardist in Early Music

Abstract

In 1912, when the eminent American historian and author Henry Adams was seventy-four years old, he discovered French medieval music. His work on Chartres had thoroughly acquainted him with medieval France but not with any music. He knew the poetic texts of the trouveres and troubadours, was certainly aware that many, if not all, had been sung, but he had not given the totality of the style any further thought. The sudden discovery of the music roused Adams to a state of almost ecstatic curiosity. Miss Aileen Tone, whom he had recently engaged as a companion, could play the piano. She also possessed a pleasant, natural voice which she had put to good use in the chorus of the Schola Cantorum in New York. The conductor, Kurt Schindler, had given her 6 Old French Christmas Carols which he had published in 1908. They were his transcriptions and piano arrangements drawn from a collection of French chansons by Jean-Baptiste-Theodore Weckerlin, the librarian of the Paris Conservatoire. Henry Adams, enchanted by both Aileen Tone and her music, promptly bought her a Steinway, which he placed in his library; and from November 1912 into the first year of the war in Europe nothing seemed to agitate him more profoundly than his search for, and growing knowledge of, French medieval music.' My first incentive to write the following pages came from a music historian's natural curiosity to identify and posssibly locate the spe-