Articles

Vahdah Olcott-Bickford
About Myself:

Article from Rosette July-August 1975
Throughout the vast collection of guitar memorabilia, I located a tattered manuscript of an article Vahdah Olcott-Bickford prepared for submission to the Editor, John George, of the newsletter, "Rosette," for the "Lincoln Guitar Society," in 1975. The manuscript, in the International Guitar Research Archive, was near unreadable and was set aside until we recently located a copy of the actual newsletter, dated July-August 1975.

To the reader: Bear in mind that Vahdah continued to write and even express in daily conversation, through-out her life, the quaint terms and expressions of the Gilded Age on into the 20th century. It was delightful listening to her talk about Teddy Roosevelt and other prominent people, such as the Vanderbilts, Baruchs and others.

Enjoy her story. Remember she is 90 years old at this time and has forgotten some actual events and dates but, not too far off from printed historical data. I was still amazed with her memory at the age of 94.

Ron Purcell,
Director, IGRA

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VAHDAH OLCOTT-BICKFORD (1885-1980)
Concert Artist, Composer, Teacher, Writer,
& Founder of America's First Guitar Society

You asked me to write and tell you about myself. I find it very difficult to write about myself. My husband said that I am a "shrinking violet", blushing unseen beneath its leaves.

You are right about the organization date of the American Guitar Society: 1923 (the last week of September). We had just arrived from my nine years as a New York City resident, in Los Angeles (my childhood home), to make our permanent home. A few guitar teachers and aficionados gave a large party, to meet me and to talk about the possibility of some little club. When the discussion arose, I declared that a kaffee-klatch type of meetings would not interest me in the slightest degree. I was then quizzed as to what sort of stable group I would approve and support. I thereupon expressed the wish that I had buried deep in my heart since I was a little girl, a pre-teenager, of starting a really worthwhile Guitar Society, with definite goals, standards, et cetera. My idea had been inspired by Giuliani's Guitar Society in England, during its short life, and by the German Guitarfreund, which had survived a little longer.

American Guitar Society Orchestra (1920's)
Vahdah Olcott-Bickford (standing, far right, with baton)

There had never been a guitar society in America, and I felt that the time had come. The 25 or 30 participants took to my suggestion like ducks to water, and in moments the first Guitar Society in America was born. Officers were elected, and it was given the working title of "The Los Angeles Guitar Society". The name did not last long enough to get into print, when I suggested it be called "The American Guitar Society" (since there was no other in the country, and had never been one). So they changed the title, and made me the Founder, and Musical Director for Life, so that my ideals and principles could never be changed by time or future officers. Hybrid guitars were already then swarming about, with "Hawaiian Steel Guitars" and plectrum-clawed implements still in the shadows. But those were the days when a guitar was the classic guitar, and there was no need of including the adjective in our title.

However, to be sure of keeping our society protected from hybrids, et cetera, we included in our By-Laws the basic rule that all such hybrids were prohibited on our programs, and that their operators were ineligible for membership. In those days and for some years to come, there was no sound-cinema or television, and little outside amusement to take up the evenings of guitar lovers; and so for several years we had weekly meetings. With the advent of talkies and TV, we settled down to monthly meetings forever.

So now we are not only the first guitar society in America and the Western Hemisphere, but the oldest contributing guitar society in the entire world, having celebrated "with pomp and circumstance" our GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY in 1973.

During this, our first half-century, we have missed but two meetings, one at the Memorial Services of our President, Zarh Myron Bickford (my late beloved husband), who was President from 1924 to the date of his passing in 1961, and at the time of the assassination of President Kennedy. And moreover, we've never closed up for the summer months, but have constantly held our twelve meetings per year.

One of my greatest desires for our Society, because it was so greatly needed by the guitar world, was to establish a Publication Fund; for at that time and clear through World War II, there was no guitar music published in America! So to establish this Fund without pain, I donated for it the entire fees from quite a number of my concerts. Then, when there were still practically no functioning guitar societies in America, we had a Membership-at-Large, so that non-resident members could join at a nominal annual fee of $5.00, which went entirely into the Publication Fund, to be used solely for the publication of good guitar music, with a copy to each member at time of publication.

This is no longer needed, since publications for guitar now abound, both domestic and imported. During World War II, imports disappeared. Now, the problem for guitarists is that of finding enough money to buy the tremendous output of good music from the world around! An exciting time to start a library, no shortages anywhere, excepting in the wallet, thanks to the wicked "inflation" with which we are all cursed.

So I composed, transcribed and edited some twenty albums worthwhile of guitar music, under the aegis of the American Guitar Society. Some were reprints of old masters, works long out-of-print, from my own library, which I took this way of giving back to the Guitar World, of course without a cent of pay. They naturally were small editions, which made their production more costly. Some treasures, such as works by Napolean Coste, I arranged to have hand-copied in Europe, at a rather fantastic cost to use in these albums. Some of these manuscripts had never been published, remaining in manuscript throughout the ages. Some that had been popular with the cognoscenti of their day, were long forgotten, or never heard of in our country. Par example, Bobrowicz, a great Polish guitarist and a pupil of Giuliani, the average young American concert soloist of today would think one were talking about a new antibiotic.

About the concert stage: When I traveled over much of the United States as a concert soloiste, there was little or no competition, no feminine artists, and the few that were, did not go on tours. The outstanding soloists of that time were William Foden (elderly when I was a pre-teenager), of Saint Louis and New Jersey; and Manuel Y. Ferrier (my most famous teacher), living in Berkely and teaching in San Francisco. Also a few other teachers, notably Jennie Durkee of Chicago, and George Krick of Germantown, Pennsylvania, both star pupils of Foden, and both teachers rather than concert artists, though Krick was one guitar soloist for an American Guild Convention Center. I attended that; and in following Guild Conventions, I was Guitar Soliste in Cleveland, New York City, Providence, Boston, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Washington D.C. (two consecutive years).

One of my great dreams for the American Guitar Society was to promote the Guitar in Ensemble with chamber music instruments. In 1922, while residing in New York City, I had been engaged as Guild Soliste in Town Hall. I played the Giuliani Concerto No. 36 with String Quartet. Town Hall sold out, and they sold standing room until the Fire Department stopped them, and turned away hundreds more. The String Quartet that accompanied me was the following:

• First Violin: Lacy Coe (for six years First Assistant to Leopold Auer)

• Second Violin: Mr. Jackson (Second Assistant to Auer)

• Viola: Zarh Myron Bickford (my husband, First Viola in the Springfield, Massachusetts Symphony)

• Cello: Willhelm Durieux (First 'Cellist with the Philadelphia Symphony)

Following this in New York City, and with the same Quartet, I played the Premiere American performance of the now famous Boccherini Quintet in D; and a bit later, also with the same Quartet, the Premiere New York performance of the Schubert Quartet with Guitar.

In New York City in 1920, at the Italian Musical Celebration, with Enrico Caruso as one of the judges, I was awarded the Gold Medal and Diploma. I was the only feminine contestant of some 65 from all over the country. This was for the performance of my husband's Concerto Romantico, with the composer (Zarh Myron Bickford) at the piano. This composition also won First Prize in Italy, later that year.

My concerts were under the management of Mr. Len Behymer of Los Angeles, who managed all world-famed stars on the West Coast for many years. During my years in New York City, I did many concerts there and Eastern States; and also taught at the two most exclusive girls' schools in New York City: The Finch School, and Miss Gardener's School. I also had many private pupils from distinguished families, such as Bernard Baruch's daughter Renee, Mrs George Vanderbilt and her daughter Cornelia, Mrs. High, wife of the Founder of the High Museum, and Samuel T. Shaw, Founder of the Salamagundi Club and Donor of the famed Shaw Prize for best paintings. Mr. Shaw had studied Guitar from the age of seven, and with several famous teachers in Europe, and with Charles de Janon. He was a faithful pupil of mine from my first week of New Jersey residency, and during the entire nine years thereof. I also had a pupil for years, Nina Varesea Russell, who brought Llobet to America, and who studied with him in Europe.

During the New York years, Carl Fischer published over 50 of my transcriptions and compositions; and I was commissioned by Oliver Ditson of Boston to write a method for Guitar for them. It developed into two volumes of 120 to 130 pages each, and was used by Dr. Perott of London, in the teaching of Julian Bream. After Mr. Bream's first concert in Los Angeles, he told me that he had at the commencement of his studies, memorized all of the dozens of quotations with which I had captioned the pages of my Method and Advanced Course. The Method, now republished by Peer-Southern in New York City, is used by many of the outstanding teachers of the United States and the world.

I enjoyed the honor of being the first Guitarist in the United States to exploit the Guitar in Chamber Music, which I did in the Concerts in Town Hall, the Giuliani Concerto No. 36 and the Boccherini Quintet in D, called "The Guitar Quintet".

I also played in Town Hall with the internationally famous French-Canadian Soprano, Eva Gautier, "Mistress of the Very Ancient Music and of the Modern", when she presented the Premiere of a Percy Grangier composition written for a bevy of stringed instruments and Guitar. Percy Grangier was present, and came up afterward to compliment the young Guitariste.

I also played on stage, a long engagement with Sir Hubert Beerbohm Tree, the world's greatest Shakespearean actor, in his memorable Anniversary of Shakespeare in New York City, in "The Merchant of Venice", which ran a long engagement in New York's largest theatre. I wore a domino, to appear as a young boy in a gondola and in Venitian street scenes, playing the Guitar.

In June of 1960 in Hollywood, I organized the Women's Chamber Music Society, presenting monthly concerts of chamber music, at least half of them featuring the guitar. We employed many of the finest musicians in the region, on all chamber music instruments. This Society functioned happily and regularly until the end of 1973, as Hollywood's only chamber music society, 13 years of chamber music joy with the Guitar.

You, or some of your prominent Society Members, have asked whether there are any guitarists today playing with fingers rather than with nails! I'm holding my hand high! I have always respected the good sense of Sor and Pujol, on that subject. I have written numerous articles on it, for magazines in the past. I was salaried Editor for the Guitar Departments of two magazines for years: first with "The Crescendo", edited by H.F. Odell, in Boston; and later with "The Cadenza", also of Boston, and edited by Walter Jacobs.

My husband said, "Tell them the truth, that in all your life, you have never clawed at a guitar with your talons!" All of my concert playing in the largest concert halls such as New York's Town Hall, was done with my fingers, never with nails. At my great sold-out concert in Town Hall, Mr. Frederick Martin (now head of the Martin Company) was in the audience (though I didn't know it, nor him, though I knew his father). He had recently graduated from Yale. He sent a note to my dressing room, saying that he had never before heard such a wonderfully toned Martin Guitar, and asked whether he might examine it, which he did with great pleasure. This was one of the countless experiences that have proven to me, though my half-century career, that nails do not make it louder, only tinnier, and more metallic sounding. Magnum est veritas et prevailabit: "The purer the tone, the better it carries." Nail-players should not criticize plectrum players, since they themselves are playing with plectra grown on the fingers! How about the queenly Italian harp? Clawing with nails would not get far in that realm! Yet the soft, pure tones of the harp carry over a 100-piece Symphony Orchestra, because of their sweet purity.

I studied the harp, and also the 'cello, with fine teachers; but I gave up both, because of my total enchantment with the Guitar, and it is such a jealous instrument! Even Heinrich Albert, great German Guitarist and Composer, who was so good on violin that he concertized all over Europe, as First Violinist with a Symphony Orchestra, had to give it up for the Guitar. Beethoven had the last word, when he wrote, "The Guitar is a miniature Orchestra."

Normal finger players have been mostly run over by the clawing juggernaut, only a few having the courage and fortitude to keep the faith, against an avalanche of clawers, who loudly ballyhoo that clawing is the only way. A thousand wrongs cannot overturn one right, and all the darkness in the world (or beneath it) cannot extinguish the beautiful light of one small candle. The clawing syndrome has become an epidemic in America, but I am told it is not so in Europe, at least not nearly to the extent prevalent in our country.

Please forgive the overlong tedium of this missive (or should I say 'missile'?). I have difficulty in starting and stopping.

Most sincerely, Vahdah Olcott-Bickford