Umschlaggestaltung: Leonore Wienstrath
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Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de.
Information bibliographique de Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek a répertorié cette publication dans la Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; les données bibliographiques détaillées peuvent être consultées sur Internet à l'adresse http://dnb.ddb.de.
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Charles Daniels
Thank you, my friend!
“People remain what they are even if their faces crumble.”1
Bertolt Brecht
The audio book version of THE BOARD appears on Claudio Records, Catalogue No. CA4729-9, and may be ordered directly at www.claudiorecords.com or from your local bookseller or CD shop.
1 Bertolt Brecht: In the Jungle of Cities, Scene 9. Original: Im Dickicht der Städte: “Der Mensch bleibt, was er ist, auch wenn sein Gesicht zerfällt“. (Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin, Germany, 1973).
In Amsterdam, amid the vitality and tourist throngs in this great city, there exists a magical place. Although prominent on the maps of this metropolis, Vondelpark draws those to it who seek distance. It promises the visitor a moment or a few hours of remoteness from the brutal present or from the merciless past.
Yesterday, sitting alone in this park, Amsterdam's Camelot of the spirit, I began to remember the many, many years and the incidents in life that led me to write this book. What inspired me to begin this narrative was the knowledge, learned on the previous evening, that a dear friend, a brilliant man and one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century will never again be able to share his gifts with the world. The degenerative muscle disease that has befallen him is incurable. I spoke with him yesterday and, afterwards, motivated by the obvious sorrow in his heart; I began to re-trace the years and to catalogue the hurt that so many have lived who have chosen to spend their lives in the arts. Somehow, speaking with him had completed this circle.
It is not to say that this man in Amsterdam has been, directly or even indirectly, a protagonist here or one of the subjects of this book. Others have had that dubious honor. What, however, is intended in this story is to show the fragility of life devoted to music and to do so through one example of how it must not always be. For those who have made this decision to trust their lives to this mechanism of communication, to this language of the spirit, to this pure form of intellect, they soon learn that their livelihoods and those of their families and loved-ones often hang on the thinnest of threads.
We deceive ourselves. We forget, especially in the United States, how the function or dysfunction of the administration of an arts institution can destroy lives, dreams and careers. Naïve as it may be, we forget the role of the boards of directors which govern these institutions, persons with the responsibility of stewardship but amateurs in the increasingly complex constellation of musicians, unions, funders, law, marketing and the public. In our passion to create we allow ourselves to sit back in awe of their collective might and often passively watch the rape of the thing we love best, of the vision to which we have dedicated our lives.
Yesterday, in Vondelpark, across from the film institute, I watched the birds and listened for the captive parrots who have long been the star residents of this green island in the midst of a European capital of art and culture. Sitting there, my thoughts went back to the incidents in the United States, to a place called Pottstown, Pennsylvania, and to a cultural milestone that had been built there but to fall prey to the wrecker’s ball of board incompetence and fiscal and social irresponsibility.
As my friend in Amsterdam and his family battle with other circumstances, not in any way related to this story, which have torn him from the midst of life, I think back to others who are and were direct victims of Pottstown's exercise in human disdain. There was the Music Director, a brilliantly talented woman who gave of herself to make of a second-rate orchestra one of which she and the community could be proud. She knew what this would mean to her and to her future and to her husband, himself an accomplished musician, and she made of this orchestra a second self. She became the ensemble, lending extraordinary creativity, financial assistance and patience to the development of an orchestra in which she believed and for which she sacrificed so much. For this reason alone, the deception and the indignation she lived and has continued to live in subsequent years has magnified the hurt and the depth of this loss.
There are or were those musicians who looked proudly upon what was being created here. They have also been deceived. They had given their trust to a board of directors that had not earned that trust. Some have gone on to other endeavors but for others, those who fought to keep this dream alive, the void goes beyond the mere loss of income and of prestige in their community. Their tragedy is to be seen and judged on a much deeper, personal level. These men and women have been emotionally violated. Some, the more intelligent of them, now know and understand what had happened there. They know who, stealthily and with intent, conspired to undo that which would have been, and was beginning to become, the one note of distinction in a forgotten, abandoned, impoverished and drug-ridden community.
My story here as the final chief executive of this institution, is perhaps not so important. In writing this book, however, it is my wish to leave behind a road map for future, young executive directors who may be tempted to risk their talents, vision and livelihoods and show their willingness to take the rudder of such an organization as I did in Pottstown. To these young persons, eager to prove their worth and climb the ladder to success within other, established institutions, this story hopes to make you aware of the many red flags and sometimes insurmountable hurdles that you will certainly confront and that will challenge your sense of justice and self-worth. This book is about such things but also about subjective history, employer responsibility and irresponsibility and, above all, about greed. This book hopes to tell the tale of how a body of unknowing amateurs first engaged experienced professionals to steer their orchestra then usurped the authority given to these professionals and, finally, sabotaged all they had accomplished for the institution and for the community, itself. As with many such ensembles, this board saw itself as more important than the orchestra. In this posturing, they forgot the tale of the “Emperor’s New Clothes”. Years later, after the music director, the chief executive, many musicians, key and influential board members, funders and others had abandoned them, did they finally begin to become aware of their nakedness.
It was, at that point in this devolutionary tale, too late for the community. It was, however, also too late for those who chose to leave this chapter in human arrogance to a hopefully soon-to-be-forgotten past and to risk a new start in a treacherous and unforgiving profession. It was too late for the conductor who, despite talent and creativity and a will to go on, struggles yet with the consequences of her morally correct and personally difficult decision to leave this board and these people and this experience to her past.
It is too late for me and for the personal and financial consequences these years have brought with them and it is too late for my partner there who, with a progressive eye disease and a stroke behind her, is sure that both were exacerbated by the pressures under which I had to live and work, pressures that had damaged my health as well.
However, dear reader, my intent in this book is neither to preach nor to awaken any sense of pity or other feelings for or against those in this story. I tell you these things because, as we all too readily forget, career decisions always bring with them personal developments, be they good or bad. Because living is also an art form, a painting or as many believe, an unwritten novel, these subtle shadows are not to be ignored.
My thoughts return me to that park in which this narrative began. These thoughts remind me of the greatness in every honest and selfless human being, of greatness and potential that can thrive given the right balances in life. This equation brings with it a measure of love, a drop or two of creativity and energy and, above all, a large amount of social responsibility. It is this last ingredient so sorely missing in this tale and which wrecked this vessel on the rocks of inhuman behavior and unthinking selfishness.
With these thoughts I left Vondelpark on that afternoon, thinking of the masses of hurt that go into making art. I thought, too, how important art is for humankind and how thoughtlessly this same humankind can destroy that which makes the spirit so unique among creatures in this universe.
This story of the rise and fall of the Pottstown Symphony Orchestra is more than just the chronology of mismanagement of an organization at the board level in the United States. The systems used to govern arts institutions, worldwide, each vary in ways where such unthinking and self-serving policies as I describe in this book – be they in the context of a board or of another, strictly European administrative structure – can put the organization itself and its survival at risk.
The issues presented here are international ones. They are also issues of local importance. It makes no difference whether the organizational structure of a cultural institution is based on the German/ Austrian “Intendant” model, on the US/UK/Canadian establishment of boards of directors or on a hybrid governance structure which, more or less, derives its authority from either its relationships to governmental support or to private funding or, as is the case here, from its presumed primacy as an integral societal network. Regardless of the structure, the potential for corruption is not and can never be completely eliminated. This potential reaches the stage of an administrative melt-down when those in power forget, or chose to ignore, the rationale behind their position in the organization. This melt-down becomes reality when the “me” element begins to supersede the sense of “we” or “us”. As in any dictatorship, the implosion is slow in coming but is, nevertheless, inevitable. That is what happened in Pottstown.
The irrational fear of the board of directors of the Pottstown Symphony Orchestra Association that it would cease to become important as a prima facie social entity if the orchestra were to achieve regional and broader importance, plus the board’s fear of fundraising, led to irrational pronouncements, abuse of employees and a hatred directed at those who sought to effect change and administrative, artistic and financial stability. The despotic elements in this organization went so far as to impeach a fellow board member, one who was also an active fundraiser and tireless advocate for the organization, because he expressed his anger at the stubbornness and the rigidity the board as a whole had assumed, defending itself against the increasing need to care for the organization’s financial health. Thereafter, the internal decay progressed quickly. Within a year, the Pottstown Symphony was on life support. As a musical institution, as a body of persons, it was terminally ill. However, forever in denial, it was to be another two years before the slow removal of its life-support systems, coupled with a level of debt that never disappeared, continued refusal to engage in genuine development campaigns and a deep-rooted denial psychosis, brought the organization to its long-awaited end. At its death, the Pottstown Symphony was still in its youth, in a period that should have promised great things for such an ensemble. It died of its addiction to its own importance and of a potent social drug known as greed and power.
This is the story of an organization that had lost itself or, perhaps, had not really known itself from the beginning. This is a parable of success turned into failure by those for whom success was a threat to their sense of self-importance. It is also the story of undemocratic processes at work and of an incestuous style of governance that chose to deny the advice and direction of professionals, both employees and those at the board level, engaged to make of the Pottstown Symphony an important regional orchestra. Instead of welcoming the attention their ensemble was starting to enjoy, they conspired among themselves to annul the influence of those very persons engaged to fulfill this mission and who had been successful in doing so. As professionals in the thankless business of arts and orchestra management, we are employed at the service of boards of directors compiled or recruited from politics, education, business and the community. This circumstance requires of us a certain but high degree of professionalism, persuasive ability and diplomacy. It is also our mandate to educate those sitting on our boards about the complexities of our and their institution, the interplay of marketing, finance and art and their role as provider and care-giver for the organization. When those entrusted with this care-giver role refuse to accept that with the visibility in their community and with the authority that comes with a seat on the symphony or arts board there also comes a moral and fiscal responsibility and when those members refuse to acknowledge that responsibility and act accordingly to protect their institution from bankruptcy and loss of status, there then exists a condition one can only describe as corrupt. There is passive corruption and active corruption. Passive corruption exists when there has been no warning of the danger to come and the organization sinks into oblivion without board members or staff recognizing the warnings and acting on them. Corruption becomes active when the warnings have been given, the consequences of non-action been made clear and the situation critical. It becomes active when, despite all these things the board and its members see themselves as more important than the institution itself, more valuable than their employees and more significant than the organization’s value to their community. This is what happened in Pottstown and this is the story of an organization that did not need to die but for which there was no reprieve. The Pottstown Symphony was the victim of this same active corruption.
In the chapters to come, I will attempt to highlight and reflect on the individual circumstances, influences at play on many levels of the orchestral administration and its board that led to its fall. This book is for you who are starting out in this business as well as for those who wish to prevent a similar fate from befalling their orchestra or arts organization. My hope is that it highlights the warning signs that lead to such behavior and gives you the tools you need to stop the death march and initiate the changes that must occur if such an institution is to survive.
Cicero wrote: “Quousque tandem abuerte patentia nostra?”2 This very abuse of the patience of a community, of those few patrons loyal to this artistic institution and the loyalty of its hard-working employees and of the few arts professionals on its board as well as of others who worked towards ethical and responsible management, were tested on many levels. It is here, in this story of the Pottstown Symphony Orchestra, that so many of these elements come together, all displaying an abuse of trust and uniting in a constellation of incompetence, power and in the context of a diseased global society, that makes this story a cautionary tale.
2 Marcus Tullius Cicero: “How long will you abuse our patience?” In Catilinam, I, I, 1
Be it a country, an individual or an organization, the version it tells of its history betrays the moral substance which drives and motivates him or it. The airline, Lufthansa, for example, was reorganized at the aegis of the Allied powers following World War II. In essence, the company was “de-Nazified” by the victors although it had played an important role in the war and existed during the Hitler era thanks to the impressed labor of thousands of imprisoned minorities. The role of Lufthansa has slowly begun to enter our understanding of pre and post war history. The official company narrative told of an airline that began and prospered after the war. Even though several Lufthansa facilities around the world have streets and alleys named after pre-war or impressed and imprisoned laborers, many of them also Jews, the company mentions little or nothing of this dark chapter in its history and many of those impressed during the Nazi era, men and women whose lives were broken by the conditions under which they were tied to this yoke of slavery, have seen no reparations, received no apologies or punitive compensation and no acknowledgement of their suffering. On this topic, the website, “Funding Universe” provides an interesting perspective while also admitting that all major German companies during the NSDAP3 regime were also organs of and under control of the Nazi dictator. “Regarded as an instrument of the state, Lufthansa increasingly came under the control of the ruling Nazi Party. Lufthansa began service to destinations in the Soviet Union during 1940. These routes provided the German Luftwaffe ("air force") with valuable strategic information used in Hitler's surprise invasion of the Soviet Union two years later.”4 More to the point, however, is an article which appeared in the German magazine, Focus, which reported in 2010 on a documentary film produced by the French-German TV Station, ARTE, about Lufthansa and its role as Nazi collaborator before and during World War II. In a report issued by the Deutsche Presse Agentur, Focus reported: “To the history of the airline belongs the fact that, in 1933, immediately following the NAZI assumption of power and behind the mask of civil aviation, the preparation for a completely new dimension in aggressive warfare had begun. The strict regulations of the Treaty of Versailles had forbidden the German Reich to form an air force. For this reason, Germany’s dictator, Adolf Hitler, came to an agreement with the directors of Lufthansa. Behind the curtain of peaceful usage, passenger planes should be produced which at a later time and with simple means could be retooled to accommodate bombs. The new machines were made available to the Lufthansa which used them to train its pilots. And Hitler’s planning assigned still a further role to Lufthansa. The airline was to take over the maintenance and repair of airplanes behind the front lines. For this, in the conquered and occupied lands, local laborers were recruited and in increasing numbers they started using impressed and slave labor.”5
However, Lufthansa goes on and has become one of the great personnel and freight carriers of post-war Europe. Such an organization can, thanks to its size and to its wealth, hide the shadowy past it wishes to forget and, de facto, has forgotten. From time to time someone casts a bit of light into this darkness but, for the most part, no one really cares any more. It all happened so very long ago and, soon, there will be no more survivors and the records, locked in safes in company headquarters around the globe, will never again really see the light of day. They will never be substantially analyzed by historians or by governments. The wealth the company has at its disposal is a powerful defense against this analysis and against the prying eyes of scholars, researchers of all kinds and against an ever-curious justice system.
The same is true for the US corporate giant, IBM. This American conglomerate’s development and sale of its punched-card technology to the Nazis for the administration of the concentration camps before the war and the further development of the system and sale of improved versions of this early computerization to Germany after December 7th 1941, is a scandal that has never genuinely been explored. The fact that the executives at IBM were never called to task during the Nuremberg trials is a further document to the use of history as a means of subjective cleansing.6 In his book, “IBM and the Holocaust”, Edwin Black writes: “Most of the national socialist concentration camps had available to them a so-called Hollerith Department. In certain KZs7 such as, for example, Dachau and Storkow, IBM had installed up to two dozen sorting machines, tabulation machines and printers.8 Other camps possessed punching machines and transferred the cards from there to the central bureaus such as Mauthausen or Berlin.9…Because every step in the life of a prisoner was regulated and recorded, a regular exchange of lists, punched cards and coded documents was made necessary.”10
But what of the history of smaller companies, of persons of less wealth and influence or of an organization which carries a public mandate? For these, there are other rules and expectations. Especially for cultural institutions, the degree of objectivity in their historical narrative betrays the credibility of the organization itself. The ability, in a moral sense, and willingness to look back and evaluate one’s own past in and with a healthy degree of objectivity, also tells of the ability of the group or organization in question to confront and deal with the existential realities it must face.
The history of the symphony orchestra in Pottstown is one of an organization which had fallen victim to this subjective correction of its own past. On its web site and in its literature, as well as in countless internal documents and during board of directors’ and other meetings and conferences held under the organization’s auspices, the history of the Pottstown Symphony was told as if it were a saga of the heroic act and brilliant idea coming from a single man who, following his death, passed the torch on to the next and subsequent generations. It was Pottstown’s “Tain” or “Nibelungenlied” or its own and unique version of “Paul Bunyan”. The local Pottstown newspaper, The Mercury, summarized this heroic tale in an article it published in February, 1991. The reporter, Andrea Kerr, wrote the following: “Now 35 years have passed since area resident and conductor William F. Lamb realized his dream to bring a symphony orchestra to his hometown. In the spring of 1964, 800 people gathered to hear Lamb and other local musicians perform an inaugural concert at Pottstown High School. Lamb’s dream was such a success that the orchestra is still entertaining music lovers today.”11
Until the orchestra’s demise, presumably sometime in late 2010 or early 2011, this story was and remained the official narrative. Without reservation, this is a wonderful tale. It speaks of the heroic vision of one man who sacrificed all to bring culture to the area and to realize his lifelong dream of standing at the head of an orchestra of his own creation. If taken at face value, there can be no objection to or criticism of this sterling example of American integrity and independent thinking.
Had the symphony not collapsed under the weight of its ponderous mismanagement, this tale would have been told and retold for decades to come. That is, if the weight of economic and moral decay had not had its effect on the orchestra’s future or lack of one.
In any event, the official story told within the Pottstown Symphony seemed to me to be, increasingly, a means of perpetuating the myth which drove the board’s loyalty to the status quo it had created for itself. In particular, the presence of the daughter of the lauded hero and official founder of the Pottstown Symphony on its board and her stubborn insistence that she be recognized as such and that the wishes of her father, as she understood them, were to become the catechism under which the symphony was to operate in perpetuity, became an inviolable principle under which the organization was governed. It was in the best interests of the members of the board of directors to perpetuate this tale. These members of the board, led by a former school teacher and former superintendent of schools, lived and breathed with and gained public acknowledgement from this blood line. This acknowledgement also made them presume to be powerful and influential, a presumption that their increasing debt, failed management style and refusal to fundraise, and the global market crash of 2008 quickly laid to rest.
After the dust had settled, ancient facts began to appear which cast the shadow of doubt on the bright and heroic tale of Mr. Lamb and his dream. Among other documents, there appeared the following passage in a "History of Pottstown”, published in 1953 by the Pottstown Historical Society and to which I was allowed access thanks to the curator of this archive. In this highly interesting story of the town’s history, there appears one paragraph which seems to tell a different if less heroic tale of the first days of the Pottstown Symphony Orchestra.
“It had only been recently that Pottstown has had wider opportunities in music. Successful choral groups, like the Meistersingers and the Melody Maids have been formed. For a number of years the Pottstown Symphony Orchestra has continually rehearsed and given concerts, its conductor, Mr. Kenneth Morse, persisting in spite of numerous handicaps.”12
Where was Mr. Lamb in 1953 and in the years prior to the publication of this book? How could an orchestra that gave its first concert in the “spring of 1964” have “rehearsed and given concerts” in 1953 and earlier? Why did Mr. Morse disappear from the official history of the Pottstown Symphony and for what reason did he vanish from it? Above all, what were these "numerous handicaps" that hindered Mr. Morse in the realization of his vision for this orchestra? Had Mr. Morse also fallen victim to the apathy that, over 50 years later, would seal the death of this ensemble? This same source gives us somewhat more insight into these origins. The authors continue: “The most sustained interest seems to have been in a band. Amilitary band played here in 1799, but whether that was a local organization is not known. Later in the century there was Andre’s Cornet Band, formed about 1845. It continued for decades until it re-formed as the Pottstown band. In recent years the names of William F. Lamb, Senior and Junior, have been associated with its leadership. The Lambs have also been leaders in music instruction through their long-established studio.”13
Further research revealed that the origins of the Pottstown Symphony are even older than suggested by Chancellor and Wendell. The symphony seems to have initially been founded by Kenneth Morse in the year 1940. The ensemble, originally called the Pottstown Civic Symphony, enjoyed, initially, a shortened life span haven fallen victim to the national need to do something about Hitler and Mussolini and to the charms of “Rosie the Riveter”. Decisive as well was the issue of conscription in the early years of the war and the uncertainties that came with impending military service. The conscription laws in effect at the start of WWII provided for a draft age anywhere between 18 and 65 years old, although seldom were men older than 45 called up for duty. An anomaly is also the provision in that law that made the drafting of women possible in times of war. Although there doesn’t seem to have been any instances of women being called into service, the eventuality was provided for. It is also important to note that, in 1940, the life expectancy of males was 63.1 years and of females 66.8, which, with the issue of conscription, the genuine danger of being injured or killed in action in a foreign theatre, and the need to support a family, afforded little reserve time for such activities as an amateur orchestra. The Pottstown Mercury reports, however, a revitalization of the orchestra following the war. ”Laudable is the decision of the Pottstown Recreation Commission to sponsor a local civic symphony orchestra. Such sponsorship will mean much to the cultural advancement of the community. Kenneth Morse, a Pottstown accountant, formed a Pottstown Symphony Orchestra before World War II. With the aid of some of his friends of nearby cities, he presented a fine musical organization to Pottstown audiences. Unfortunately, the war came on and interest in Mr. Morse’s project lagged… We are glad to see Frances Donnon of the Recreation Commission taking up this fine work. Too often, people think of recreation as only playground work. There’s a great deal of recreation in music as well as other hobbies that may be enjoyed by adults”14 According to the account in the Pottstown Mercury, Mr. Morse also seems to have been highly respected in the area: “He is an accomplished director, a fine inspiration to amateur musicians.”15 It is evident from subsequent articles in the years following 1948, that this, second attempt at founding a Pottstown Symphony, proved to be successful. The Pottstown Mercury from 16 November 1953 briefly notes continuing rehearsals of this orchestra, still under the baton of Kenneth Morse: “The Pottstown Civic Symphony Orchestra will hold a rehearsal tonight at 8 o’clock at the Moose auditorium.”16 Evidently not only the support of the Pottstown Recreation Commission but also that of the then existing Moose Lodge contributed substantially to the survival of the Pottstown Symphony. In 1953, The Mercury reported the following: “Kenneth Morse, director of the Pottstown Civic Symphony Orchestra of the Moose lodge, last night announced that rehearsals would be held during summer months. Morse said the purpose of the summer rehearsals is to hold practice for new members wishing to become familiar with symphonic work to obtain experience necessary to join the orchestra in the Fall… ’The Lodge is co-operating with the orchestra’, Morse said, ‘so that Pottstown may have a recognized symphony in the community.’”17
In the chronology of the Pottstown Symphony during its early years, the initial support of the Pottstown Recreation Commission seems to have disappeared sometime in the early or mid-1950’s. Again, The Mercury reports on the support the symphony received which seems at this point to have come entirely from the Moose Lodge. “The 7:45 p.m. rehearsal at the Moose auditorium will include Schubert’s sixth and Beethoven’s fifth symphonies… John Atkinson and Albert Piazza are on the Moose music committee. The local lodge sponsors the symphony project.”18
It is my belief that the probable rationale behind this decision to selectively retell the history of the Pottstown Symphony and to relegate Mr. Morse to eternal anonymity was a commercial one. It is known that Mr. Lamb was a highly esteemed, professional musician in the region. He played trumpet in the Pottstown Town Band and, until 1963, was also its music director. He is reported to have also played in the fledgling Pottstown Symphony. At the start of World War II, Lamb became the solo trumpeter for the United States Military Band in Washington, DC and continued to perform with the band until the end of the war, in 1945. Sometime after late 1946 or early 1947, he was also the owner of Lamb’s Music House in Pottstown, a business he inherited from his father, W.F. Lamb who retired in January 194719. With relative certainty, one can surmise that Lamb’s Music House profited from the sale of sheet music and of instruments, from replacement parts for instruments and from repairs and from the giving of music lessons there. This is normal for such an establishment and the retail music business functions very much the same today as it did in 1953 or 1964. The Pottstown Mercury in its article on Mr. Lamb’s retirement, points out that Mr. Lamb was regarded as a “civic leader,”20 a factor which the available facts lead this author to conclude that he may have also had an influence on the Recreation Commission in its early decision to support the founding of a Pottstown Symphony in 1940 and 1948. It is also interesting to note, however, that there are no further records to be found which tell of the development and/ or of the fate of the Pottstown Symphony in the years following 1953 and until 1963 or 1964. An attempt to research these records was defeated by the inordinate and misplaced loyalty of a hired researcher to the preservation of the status quo in Pottstown. Upon learning of the nature of this book, she withdrew from the project entirely, refusing to further assist this author in the search for the genuine origins of the Pottstown Symphony. Also, no obituary for Mr. Morse has been found although 1940 census records for an accountant (bookkeeper per the census document) by the same name and living in Pottstown at the time indicate that he was born in 1910 on Long Island, in Nassau County, New York. Further research, however, shows that he had died in Portland, Maine in 1983 at the age of 73. There is also suggestion of a connection with the New England Music Camp in the vicinity of Portland which was supported by a patron of the Pottstown Symphony who later would protest against any thought of a name-change for the orchestra and who, probably, would also have known Mr. Morse both in Pottstown as well as in Maine since, as you will recall, Morse spent his final years in that state and the above mentioned associate had been affiliated with the camp since 1981. At the time he founded the Pottstown Symphony, Kenneth Morse was 30 years old. He was the sole Kenneth Morse in the community and the sole accountant in Pottstown with the family name Morse so it is highly unlikely that he could have been confused with another Morse living in Pottstown at this time. He was also an associate of Raymond Elliott, the president of the then 1st Federal Bank, later known as the Susquehanna Savings and Loan, who was an accomplished violinist. It was Elliott who, reportedly, also played in the Pottstown Symphony under Morse and who, during his time in the military, performed along with Virgil Fox at Ft. Dix in New Jersey. In 1953, the Pottstown Mercury makes mention of an Elliott String Ensemble and of its performance in concert at the Grace Lutheran Church in Royersford, PA.21 This attests to, at least, a hint of professional activity by Mr. Elliott outside of his role as an accountant and bank president. Interestingly, Morse and Elliott were both accountants and both would have had a professional association which expanded to also encompass their musical cooperation under the umbrella of the Pottstown Symphony. Unfortunately, the Pottstown Mercury article doesn’t see fit to mention the names of the individual musicians however, knowing of the association it is highly likely that the contrabass player in the Elliott String Ensemble was, most probably, Kenneth Morse.
This revised story of the creation of the Pottstown Symphony is further supported by empirical evidence supplied by the United States Census. Every 10 years, the US Government engages in a count of its citizens which also includes their professional designations, ages and data on the demographics of the communities in which people live. When applied to the years between 1940 and 1960, the period between the founding of the Pottstown Symphony by Mr. Morse and the presumed re-founding by William Lamb, the statistics point directly to a probable association between the two. In 1940, the population of the USA was 123,164,569. This population increased by close to 30 million persons in 1950 and by another 28 million in 1960 for a total population in 1960 of 179,323,17522. Parallel to this, the core community in Pottstown increased by an average of 3,000 persons in each of these 10 year periods, with this population reaching a peak in 1960 of 26,14423. Statistically, the US Government reported approximately 160,000 persons in the USA in each of the census reports of 1940, 1950 and 1960, persons who indicated their profession as either professional musician or as a composer24. On the average, this would mean that 0.12% of the US population consisted of professional musicians, a figure which, when extended to the Pottstown population, would mean that there were an average of between 24 and 31 professional musicians in Pottstown in each of the census periods ending in 1940, 1950 and 1960. However, this figure does not take into account those who would have only expressed interest in pop music or those who simply called themselves “professionals” without the ability to actively engage in a career as a working musician. Also, the statistically small numbers of persons interested in classical music would have reduced this figure substantially so that this author surmises that there would have been no more than between 15 and 20 classically trained musicians in Pottstown who also were technically capable of performing in a symphony orchestra and would or could have shown the interest in doing so. It is hardly thinkable that these musicians, this small number of between 15 and 20 professionals, would also not have known one another, would not have performed together and, in Pottstown, would not have all congregated in and around Lamb’s Music Shop. This fact casts a light on the dubious reporting by The Mercury in an article published on 23 October 1963: “Former musicians and persons with a passion for music have a chance to become part of the first Pottstown orchestra, which is being organized by William F. Lamb Jr., former director of the famed Pottstown Band.”25 If we assume that Kenneth Morse’s orchestra would have existed past December 1953, and there is no reason to conclude that it did not, the gap between the end of that ensemble’s history and the beginning of that for Mr. Lamb’s ensemble would not have been more than a few years.
It is my presumption that at some time around 1960, if not shortly before, the Pottstown Civic Symphony under Kenneth Morse had, for whatever reasons, probably financial, simply ceased to function. It was in 1962 or 1963 that the first murmurs regarding a Pottstown Symphony under William Lamb began to be heard. The methodology of his recruitment of players for this resurrected orchestra was very similar to that of Mr. Morse. This methodology was, simply, to recruit his musicians from outside the region, something Morse had done repeatedly and with great success. This same article in The Mercury from 23 October 1963 documents this as follows: “Lamb noted that the invitation to become a member of the first Pottstown Orchestra extends not only to the immediate Pottstown area, but to those persons living in Boyertown, Northern Chester County, Spring City, Royersford, Birdsboro and other areas.”26 Also conspicuous in this report is the undeniable fact that this Pottstown orchestra was anything but a “professional” one. The call for players went out as follows: “Are you an out-of-towner who played violin in high school but since have played little? Does your musical taste hunger for participation in the big sound of an orchestra?”27 This is hardly the appeal for a fully-professional orchestra and echoes the same arguments made by Mr. Morse just a few years before: “Morse said the purpose of the summer rehearsals is to hold practice for new members wishing to become familiar with symphonic work to obtain experience necessary to join the orchestra in the fall.”28
At the risk of being accused of an over-prejudicial evaluation of these facts, I must come to the irreversible conclusion that either influential persons associated with the symphony board or, indeed, Mr. Lamb and his family, thought it best to ban Mr. Morse to the purgatory of anonymity and to re-tell the symphony's creation story, this time in their private and very unique image and likeness. This makes good business sense so long as the music store remained open. After it closed its doors, this tale became a means to an end and added to Mr. Lamb’s credibility within the Pottstown School system where he had become head of music. The telling and re-telling of this version of history later made of the power brokers on the Pottstown Symphony’s board of directors, together with the surviving daughter of the presumed and much lauded, creative founder of the symphony a work of historical continuity in the eyes of the Pottstown folk who, conveniently, forgot that Mr. Morse had ever lived.