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Founded 1932 — the city's orchestra, first era
Twenty-five cents a week: The South Bend Symphony Orchestra was formed in 1932 by Edwyn H. Hames, an Australian violinist teaching in the city, out of his own string students assisted by professional players. The founding ensemble numbered forty-four members, and they were volunteers in the strictest sense: the players paid dues of twenty-five cents a week to cover the rental of music, and they sold the tickets to their own concerts themselves. The wager worked. George Mauer, writing in the South Bend Tribune in 1933, put the founding judgment in print: "if the quality of the performance and the size and enthusiasm of the audience are criteria then the organization will be a permanent one." In 1935 Ella Morris took the helm as the orchestra's president and professionalized it — building a Women's Committee of hundreds of volunteers and a Men's Committee to raise donations, the civic machinery that carried the orchestra for decades.
The Congressional Record's 2008 tribute to the orchestra's seventy-fifth anniversary names her "Ella May Morris" and calls her the orchestra's "first president and concept manager"; the Symphony's own history dates her presidency from 1935, three years after the founding, and the two tellings are printed side by side here rather than reconciled — the institution's own chronology governs its founding year (1932, the date its season-counting also supports), and the tribute's phrasing is preserved as the tribute's. Through the 1940s the membership passed eighty, the ranks were supplemented from Chicago, and the guest artists reached the first rank of the century's concert life — Arthur Rubinstein and Percy Grainger among them. In the 1950s the orchestra became mostly local, and its own history states the fact that ties the institution to the city's industry: many of its players worked full-time in factories, including Studebaker.
Van Cliburn and Glenn Gould played with it in that decade. Hames conducted for forty years — in 1972 he conducted his final concert, completing a tenure the orchestra's history calls one of the longest of any American conductor. The institution's corporate record — its incorporation, boards, and mergers as an organization — stands in the Nonprofits record; this is its music.
Sources:
- South Bend Symphony Orchestra, published history (southbendsymphony.org, "About"), read first-hand — the 1932 founding by Edwyn H. Hames from his string students assisted by professionals; 44 members; the 25-cents-a-week dues and players selling their own tickets; the George Mauer Tribune quotation of 1933; Ella Morris taking the helm as president in 1935 and the Women's and Men's Committees; 1940s membership over 80 and the Rubinstein and Grainger guest appearances; 1950s players working full-time at Studebaker and the Cliburn and Gould appearances; Hames's final concert in 1972 after 40 years.
- Congressional Record, vol. 154 no. 69, Extensions of Remarks (April 29, 2008), "Honoring the 75th Anniversary of the South Bend Symphony Orchestra" — "Ella May Morris" as "first president and concept manager"; the 75th anniversary dated 2008, implying 1933, against the institution's own 1932.
- Nonprofits section of this history (np-arts) — the Symphony's corporate skeleton, cross-referenced.