Salute to Cleveland

Abstract

THIS is a significant occasion for the 8,000 members of the Music Educators National Conference. We are now enjoying the generous hospitality of Cleveland. We are participating in the 150th anniversary of a prosperous, high-minded city; in the 100th birthday of organized teaching of music in the public schools of Cleveland; and, in our own fourth visit during the thirty-nine years of our organization, we are here to examine and applaud the outstanding efforts of the musicians of the local schools and those in the rest of the state. We were here first in 1908, just after we were organized, and have come three times since, because our present capable host, Russell V. Morgan, made us want to come again. One of the reasons for meeting here in 1923, 1932, and 1946 was to enjoy the benefits of the remarkable effects of the Cleveland Orchestra on the music education of the community. The founding of this fine orchestra in 1918 resulted from the engagement by The Musical Arts Association of Nikolai Sokoloff to come to Cleveland and make a survey of instrumental music teaching in the schools. For five years, The Musical Arts Association financed the salaries paid to the orchestra and made possible Saturday morning instrumental classes in the schools. It promises well for the music in our country that thirty-eight members of the Cleveland Orchestra had their early instrumental education in the public schools of their own city. Cleveland's program of audience education for children, young people, and adults is a joint enterprise of the Board of Education, the Public library, and the Cleveland Orchestra. Our Conference has gained much from your leaders, including Mrs. Adella Prentiss Hughes, Miss Lillian L. Baldwin and the great conductors and educators associated with this enterprise. It is a source of inspiration to know that the annual attendance of children at your orchestral concerts is 50,000 and that these concerts are but a portion of your well-organized and well-attended yearly musical events. Cleveland has demonstrated that the health and strength of a city flow from a wise combination of industry and art. The Music Educators National Conference salutes you! At the biennial convention in Cleveland, members of the MENC were guests of the Cleveland Orchestra on the occasion of the weekly broadcast concert at Severance Hall, March 30, 1946. During the concert, Peter W. Dykema was introduced and spoke to the assembled audience and the radio listeners. Because of the significance of his remarks, the full text of the script is reproduced here.