552
PARTISAN REVIEW
me as a
goy.
And at the age of fony-five I didn't very much like
elbowing my way into the literary world other than by my writing. I
had many friends lhere. Individually, I could be chummy and happy
with them. BUl of course in literature as in music there was a kind of
Jewish Mafia thal passed the jobs around among themselves.
Trilling:
I'd like you to talk aboul this very specifically, if you
wouldn't mind.
Thomson:
I had previously seen in New York during the early twenties
and before-and lhis continued-that lhere was a German Mafia.
The German musical community, which was the governing body in
American music before and during World War I, was not too happy
about the rise lO favor of French music and, even more dangerous
to them, the adoption at Columbia and Harvard of a French
pedagogy. The music world in New York was still governed by
German and German-educated musicians. ,I won'l say lhey were nOl
in many cases Jewish, like the Damrosch family, but it was their
Germanness which was the source of their solidarity . They didn 't
like the idea of the Boslon Symphony Orchestra having a French
conductor, Pierre Monteux, and lhey managed, by dirty cracks and
underground dealings, as far as I cou ld figure oul, to see thal he
didn't sell out in New York when the Boston Symphony came here,
It
sold out in Boston and everywhere else on tour, but not in New
York, Consequenlly, al the end of five years Monteux was let out,
and Serge Koussevitzky was employed. Serge Koussevitzky was not
German, but he was Jewish and that helped, and as we were getting
on into the twenlies, Jewishness was approaching the sacred status
that it acquired in the 1930s with perseculion and manyrdom,
Trilling:
You say lhat Monteux cou ld not sell out his New York
concerts but-
Thomson:
In spite of the fact that he was Jewish. You see, his
Jewishness didn'l count.
It
was the fact that he was French and nOl
German that mC!ttered.
Trilling:
Were lhere nameable individuals who subverted that enter-
prise? Agencies?
Thomson:
Oh no, no, no.
Trilling:
Critics? Who was doing it?
Thomson:
The important establishments, which were the Institule of
Musical An here on Claremont Avenue, which was established by
Walter Damrosch 's brother Frank, and whose chief pedagogue in
musical theory and composition was Percy Goetschins, a very
learned German-American. The German pedagogy of composition
