From Bayreuth to the Ureweras Michael Balling and the revival of the Viola Alta

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 23, Issue 2, 1 October 1990, Page 157

From Bayreuth to the Ureweras Michael Balling and the revival of the Viola Alta

JOHN M. THOMSON

Many strange and curious instruments appeared in nineteenth century New Zealand, none more so than the ‘Turkophone’ and its ‘new and wonderful version the Turkophonini’ introduced to Wellington by Ali-Ben-Sou Alle in 1855. The century proved to be one of hyperactivity: musical experiments abounded. Some instruments established themselves such as the Boehm flute and the saxophone and some had a brief efflorescence such as the eighteenth century glass harmonica in new guises as the ‘glassophone’, or the ‘fairy glasses’ as it was known to the Maori who heard it played in Salvation Army ensembles.

Amongst those that seemed set fair to succeed was an improved viola, known as the viola alta, which looked like an outsize viola or large tenor viol, with a body around eighteen inches in length but which had a more powerful tone than its familiar relative and seemed to require more than usual strength to play. The brain child of a viola player Hermann Ritter (1849-1926), it was introduced to New Zealand by one of his most gifted pupils, Michael Balling, best known as the founder of the Nelson School of Music. Ritter felt that this new version of an older instrument gave the viola improved resonance and a more brilliant tone. He took as his model an instrument described in Antonio Bagatella’s Regale peria Construzione di Violini, published in Padua in 1786, and he believed his own version of it had clarity and increased power coupled with a striking delicacy and richness. He went to great lengths to have this instrument adopted by orchestras and soloists and gained the interest of Wagner, who asked him to take part in the Bayreuth Festival. By 1889 five of Ritter’s pupils were playing the viola alta in the Bayreuth orchestra and the originator of the instrument had toured Europe, and as well had composed and arranged a good deal of music for it.

Michael Balling (1866-1925) came from Heidingsfeld, near the baroque city of Wurzburg, and had won a viola alta as a prize given by his teacher. At first he responded negatively to this gift as he feared it would spoil his violin playing. Ritter eventually persuaded Balling to practise long slow notes for six months until he had mastered the new instrument, at which point he too became a decided advocate. 1 Balling joined the Bayreuth orchestra and as its youngest member sat in the last desk at the back. Felix Mottl, the conductor, soon noticed his abilities and moved him into the firsts. From this point on his ascent

was rapid and he was asked to execute many solos. Invitations to the exclusive musical evenings held at Wagner’s house ‘Wahnfried’ followed, where Balling met leading musical personalities of the day, such as Ernst von Wolzogen, the Wagner proselytizer, the conductor Hans Richter and the composer Humperdinck. At this stage of his career fate deflected him to New Zealand.

The fuller story of how Michael Balling came to Nelson in 1893 as conductor of the Harmonic Society, a substitute for a certain Herr Schultz who had originally accepted the position, is told elsewhere. 2 Balling’s reasons for accepting the engagement are not known other than that he is reported to have been suffering from a nervous breakdown: a long sea voyage followed by new surroundings might have been expected to work its customary beneficence. On his arrival in Nelson, Balling was immediately drawn into the activities of the town. At his first concert it is noteworthy that not only did the Nelson public welcome Balling himself with a warmth that soon became fervour, but also accepted quite without question, the viola alta. ‘Herr Balling received a cordial welcome on his appearance on stage and the audience was evidently awaiting with deep interest his performance on the viola alta of Lorelei, a paraphrase by himself, wrote the Nelson Colonist.

In a few moments the audience became, as it were, spellbound with the performance, which was given with really dramatic power. The artist at once displayed himself, and the instrument now gave expression to the most delicate feeling, and then the audience was affected as by a grand organ. No one even moved, and the stillness that prevailed was a higher compliment to the performer than were the recalls with which he was honoured at the conclusion. 3

Balling was equally successful as a conductor: ‘We heartily congratulate Herr Balling on his success and certainly his marked ability was highly appreciated . . Of Mendelssohn’s Overture Walpurgis Night, the Colonist wrote: ‘the result was quite a revelation’. 4 Balling introduced the viola alta at a variety of musical occasions in the town and would play until late at night at the Musical Evening Society. Frederick Gibbs, headmaster of the Central School, who along with the shipping agent j. H. Cock became a firm friend, noted in his diary that only a man of enormous strength and reach could attempt to hold it. 5 At meetings held after the Harmonic Society practices Balling would often play well into the early hours of the morning. If there had been a poor attendance he would refuse to conduct, entertaining those present with improvisations at the piano. During his holidays Balling travelled throughout New Zealand giving concerts. On one memorable occasion he ventured into the heavilyforested Urewera country, still a Maori stronghold and particularly difficult for a European to penetrate. He succeeded in charming his way into the hearts of his Maori listeners through the force of his personality, being entertained as a royal visitor and showered with

valuable presents. Balling later spoke highly of Maori music, especially of the traditional waiata. He had witnessed funeral rites and haka and on some such ceremonial occasion had played viola solos for a chief who had presented him with a carved stick (probably a tokotoko) inlaid with paua shell. 6

Balling’s enduring and unique contribution to Nelson’s musical life culminated in his setting up the School of Music, declared open on 8 June 1894. The prospectus described him as ‘for six years Solo Viola Player at Wagner Festivals in Bayreuth’. 7 At a concert held two weeks beforehand, on 22 May 1894, the Nelson Colonist had written that ‘Mr Balling’s great talent is so fully appreciated that it is needless to say more than that he delighted his hearers last evening’. 8 Balling dominated the Nelson scene through the magnetism of his personality and the power of his musical gifts, whether as lecturer, conductor or performer. 9 But within a year or two, almost inevitably, Nelson proved too remote and small to contain his gifts and Europe began to attract him once more. By the end of 1895 he was anxious to leave but before doing so he made a farewell tour of New Zealand with the English musician and composer Maughan Barnett (1867-1938), playing his viola alta in remote towns as well as cities. Their programme usually included a sonata by Rubinstein, which in Wanganui was hailed as a work of ‘nobility and grandeur . . . Herr Balling goes to Europe and we are sure that his career there will be one that is well justified by his capacity as a musician and as an artist and by the nobility of his instrument’. 10 At a Farewell Grand Concert in Nelson on 3 February 1896 Balling was presented with a silver inkstand to which he responded with graceful compliments: ‘Nelson is not a large place’, he said, ‘and some may say it is a sleepy hollow, but I find it can recognize the good’. 11

On arriving in London, Balling determined to renew his campaign for the acceptance of the viola alta. A small collection of programmes, press cuttings etc., the manuscript of an address Balling gave to the London section of the Incorporated Society of Musicians, a letter from Hermann Ritter, and two editions of the classic book on the subject, E. Adema’s Hermann Ritter und seine Viola Alta (Wurzburg, 1881, 1894), came into the possession of Ashley Heenan some years ago and which he generously made available to the author. They lay for some years as an annex to New Zealand material until the present occasion seemed an apposite moment to record the light they throw on what may well have been Balling’s last attempt to win recognition for an instrument to which he had become devoted. The documents themselves evoke the atmosphere of the time and complement Balling’s activities in Nelson. They include a striking photograph of Ritter, his instrument lying on a table behind him. Unfortunately there are no manuscript letters from Balling. 12 Ritter himself had demonstated his viola alta earlier in London, for the Musical Times of January 1886 gives an account of the occasion,

remarking that it is ‘fast superseding the old viola in Germany’. 13 The third edition of Ritter’s Die Viola-alta oder Altgeige is reviewed in the same issue. Ritter’s letter, written from Wurzburg on 7 November 1896, is addressed ‘Dear Sir’ and informs the (unknown) recipient ‘I shall not fail to give my permission for translating the two small books in English ... I beg you to give my compliments to Herr Balling’. 14 An early announcement of Balling’s plans appeared in the Musical Courier. ‘The viola-alta, which excited the admiration of Wagner and Rubinstein, will be played by its greatest exponent at Queen’s Hall next Wednesday afternoon. The opportunity for musicians to hear this comparatively unknown instrument will be improved, and we may look for a rare treat’. 15 The same article describes Balling’s New Zealand sojourn:

He had been led to believe that music was in an advanced state there, but found the reverse. He took a philosophical view of the matter, however, and started the first school of music in New Zealand at Nelson. He was obliged to act as principal, conductor and teacher of the various departments which he sought to establish.

The writer also mentioned that Balling ‘is now preparing a book on his adventures’. Three Wednesday afternoon recitals were planned in the small recital room of Queen’s Hall at 3 p.m. on 28 October, 4 and 11 November, 1896, in association with the pianist Mr Carl Weber, the vocalists Miss Large, Mile de Andre, and the accompanist Signor Tramezzani. The programme for the second of these recitals (that for the first is not with the collection), included Nardini’s Sonata for viola alta and piano with Balling and Carl Weber, and Ritter’s Italian Suite for the new instrument, a solo by Balling, who also played a Sarabande, Air and Gavotte by J. S. Bach. Songs and piano solos were interspersed. The same pattern occupied the third and final programme with Balling playing works by Ritter, Vieuxtemps and Mayer-Olbersleben. Balling afterwards compiled a brochure of press criticisms, naturally selecting the most favourable. The Standard wrote:

So distinct are the advantages in many points possessed by the viola alta, that is is somewhat surprising that the instrument, which had gained the approval of Wagner, Liszt, and Rubinstein, and was used in the orchestra at the first Bayreuth Festival, should not have come into general use in this country. As a solo instrument its merits are undoubted, and it could have, apparently, no better exponent than Herr Balling. 16

Balling’s executant skills and abilities were recognized and the special qualities of the viola alta appreciated, as in the Globe : ‘The upper register, in particular, seems capable of producing that peculiarly penetrating and almost nasal tone which has hitherto been entirely associated with the cello, and has indeed constituted one of its prinicpal charms’. An extreme view had been expressed by the Manchester Guardian critic of

29 October 1896: ‘lt is merely obsolete and useless, that is all’. This did not appear in Balling’s selection. On Sunday 31 January 1897 he gave a recital for the Musical Society of Balliol College with H. H. Joachim on the violin and the music historian Ernest Walker (who had also written a Romance in B flat as a solo for Balling) as pianist and accompanist. No doubt Balling gave other recitals but no programmes of these exist in the present collection. Balling made what must have been his strongest appeal for the instrument in a carefully prepared lecture for the London branch of the Incorporated Society of Musicians which he delivered in February 1897. The manuscript in Balling’s hand runs to forty-four pages, secured with a metal pin, and it is corrected throughout. The initial opening paragraph has been deleted, yet it throws light on Balling’s personality:

Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, before beginning this paper may I ask to be excused if you find my pronunciation at fault. If there be in your opinion, flaw or defect in any view brought forward, —I shall be glad if you will remember that not one is so expressed that it will not readily lend itself to some modication. The actual opening paragraph was certainly not apologetic and infinitely more forceful: It is a well-known fact that every new thing which is brought forward must fight its way through all the conservatism, jealousy, suspicion, and, worst of all, laziness which is piled up in every direction, and around everything. Further, it has been experienced often enough, that the better new things are, the greater appear to be the difficulties put in their way, although their success is all the greater afterwards in spite of this.

Balling went on to give a full scientific account of the processes by which Ritter had arrived at the shape and dimensions of the viola alta. He describes its initial trial when Hans von Biilow was conducting the small orchestra of the Duke of Meiningen. The concert-master Fleischauer played the viola obbligato in Berlioz’ Harold in Italy, making such an impression that Biilow at once ordered several instruments for his ensemble. We do not known where these were made nor by whom. Perhaps they were costly, far above normal viola prices, and this may well have been a deterrent to their wider adoption. Balling went on to detail Wagner’s association with and praise for the larger viola and quoted the composer’s congratulatory letter. This is still of interest as confirming Wagner’s extraordinary sense of the potentials of the orchestra.

Let us hope that this improved and exceedingly ennobled instrument will be sent at once to the best orchestras and be recommended to the best viola players for their earnest attention. We must be prepared to meet with much opposition, since the majority of our orchestral viola players, I grieve to say, do not belong to the flourishing string instrumentalists. Enthusiastic leadership in this pioneer work will certainly bring followers, and finally the conductors and intendants will be obliged to encourage the good example set.

Ritter led the violas at the first Bayreuth Festival. When he tried to introduce the viola alta to orchestras throughout Europe the opposition he encountered paralleled that experienced by an earlier innovator Theobald Boehm (1795-1876), inventor of the key system for flutes. Just as Boehm had found the strongest hostility to the new flute came from within the orchestra, so did Ritter:

The viola players of the old type were greatly alarmed and hated the viola alta and its player. They ridiculed both, but with little effect. Anyone who has been for some time a member of one of these old-established orchestras, as we have them in almost every town in Germany, will know what kind of spirit exists among the players. It is pitiful how little they know outside the knowledge of their instrument. But the worst of them all are the viola players of the old type, with very few exceptions . . . It was too large and too loud. Balling dealt expeditiously with these objections. Of particular interest perhaps are his recommendations as to how students should approach the viola alta: The viola has a technique of its own, and this can be obtained from the viola alta, not with the same ease perhaps, as from the ordinary sized tenor, but this matters little. One who wishes to master the viola alta must study it in the same way as the violin —that is to say, from the beginning. And the beginning is to learn how to hold the instrument.

There follows a detailed technical description in which we learn that Balling began to play the instrument at the age of fourteen. He concludes his address with an explanation of the way the viola alta obtained its name in a general summary of string nomenclature. Extracts from his lecture were printed in the Musical Courier in March 1897 and the complete text in the Monthly Journal in July 1897. Events after this are somewhat obscure. It appears however, that Balling joined Benson’s theatre company as leader of the orchestra and wrote a supplementary chorus to Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream which was much admired in its time. The performance began at the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford and continued throughout Britain. Balling seems to have returned to Germany in 1897:

At this time and in the following years of the festival he worked there as solo-repetiteur. It was strange that his return should coincide with the year in which The Ring which he was himself later to conduct at Bayreuth stood in the programme for the first time since 1876. 18 It is in Cosima Wagner’s letters that the most picturesque account of Balling’s return is found: But one of our most gifted outlaws Balling, a Wiirzburger and a Catholic, excommunicated because he conducted some Bach choruses in his Protestant church in Schwerin, who has made his way through India, New Zealand and Brazil, returning home penniless has also stayed for a long time in England.

Cosima Wagner mentions the episode with the touring theatrical company and Balling’s sojourn in Paris and London. ‘He told me that the number and power of the Jews there is terrifying and that they have mixed extensively [with the population]’. 19 Other references to Balling occur in the same source. In 1903 she attends a performance of Kobold , an opera by Siegfried Wagner: ‘I am very much looking forward to hearing it under Balling, who has studied it most carefully. Thanks to Mary’s royal protection he is now as free as a bird in the air and seems to enjoy what gives him similar pleasure’. 20 In 1906 she writes, ‘I am also going through Tristan with Balling and we find his presence stimulating and diverting’. 21 In 1907 she continues

Balling is now with us and is an agreeable addition to our life. The striking impression he retains of people as well as of books and nature are stimulating and the unreservedness and simplicity with which he gives of himself does one good and enlivens daily existence. With a clear delivery he declaims the most varied roles from Sternengebotes [Opera by Sigfried Wagner], which Muller [director of the mustical preparations for the festival] played to us and also with Muller executed an enchanting Mozart sonata with [great] warmth of feeling With him, as with Seidl [one of the most gifted of Bayreuth conductors], I feel as if nature had given him the disposition of a genius whilst it had endowed Mottl [a leading Bayreuth conductor] with a perfect and brilliant talent. 22

In 1908 Cosima records Michael Balling’s marriage: It also happened that in addition to the previous conductors there was a newcomer who has worked to his utmost limit for Bayreuth. This was Michael Balling. This enthusiastic Wurzburger who made an artistic journey round the world in need and torment, and who has now happily returned, has found a true friend and wife in Mary Levi but a fortunate guide in Cosima, formed a wonderful quartet with Hans Richter, Muck [another leading Bayreuth conductor] and Siegfried Wagner. 23

There one may leave Balling, by now well established back in Europe. He was soon to become conductor of the Halle Orchestra in Manchester in succession to Hans Richter, a post he occupied from 1912 until 1914, when the outbreak of war found him at home in Germany and compelled to relinquish his English position. True to form, his brief career in Manchester was marked by bold initiatives as when he strove for proper financial support for the orchestra and proposed an opera house to make the city the centre of an English school of composers. ‘He was a strong personality in every way and at his first concert had given the impression of a masterful musician’, wrote the official historian of the orchestra, C. B. Rees. 24 Thomas Beecham, as he then was, denigrated Balling as yet another example of German dominance of English music, but Balling has an honoured place in the Halle tradition. 25 From the acclaim accorded him by Dr Kulz in his Bayreuth funeral oration one might select any of a number of telling tributes but one has a special appeal:

There was something of the musically baroque in him with his naturally human modesty and noble simplicity. There was a compulsive way in which he extracted the finest expression from a chorus, which for him came before everything, even before the rectitude of all details . . . He always embraced all great music with his whole personality.

Following his return to Germany Balling seems to have put to one side the cause he had advanced so fervently, the acceptance of the viola alta. There is no mention of his taking it up again although this does not preclude the possibility that he did. But before deciding that it was indeed a lost if idealistic pursuit, it is salutary to compare Balling’s (and Ritter’s) campaigns with a similar one that did suceed, that of Lionel Tertis (1876-1975) who struggled for the recognition of the viola itself. In 1910 Tertis had provided illustrations for a lecture on the viola read

before the incorporated Society of Musicians in London by Mr Stanley Hawley. He played the Bach Chaconne in an exact transposition a fifth below as well as a miscellaneous selection of works. At that time the viola was truly ‘a neglected instrument’ and there followed what became known as ‘the Tertis campaign’ for recognition of its unique tonal qualities. Tertis also encouraged composers to write for it. It is noteworthy in the present context that Tertis played on a large viola ‘to achieve his aim of a rich and resonant C-string tone which bordered on the quality of a cello and avoided the characteristic nasal quality of the smaller viola’. 26 Tertis’s ideal viola may well have resembled the

tone of Ritter’s viola alta. Tertis also designed a large viola in collaboration with the English maker Arthur Richardson which would produce depth of tone. By 1922 Tertis had deserved a full-scale article by the critic Edwin Evans in the March Musical Times. Around 1952 the present writer heard him give a similar lecture in the Senate House of the University of London, but by then it was an account of a battle that had been won on every front even in composition, exemplified by the fine viola concertos of Hindemith and Walton. The viola campaign started with several advantages: players did not need to acquire or learn a new instrument, they had rather to look at an existing one from a fresh point of view. By comparison, that for the viola alta was fraught with almost insuperable difficulties, much greater than those which faced Boehm in the introduction of his keyed flute. It is tantalising nevertheless not to have had first hand experience of how the instrument sounded and how it blended in small and large ensembles. To have heard Michael Balling and Maughan Barnett playing together at Thomas’ Hall on Wednesday 5 February 1896, when Balling played the Ritter and Rubinstein works, might have provided some of the answers.

REFERE N C ES 1 See entry on Ritter in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, also entry on viola alta in The New Grove Dictionary of Instruments, 3, p. 760. 2 See J.M. Thomson, ‘Michael Balling in Nelson’, Landfall, 24 (1970), 406-17; also relevant chapter in The Oxford History of New Zealand Music, forthcoming, 1991. 3 Colonist, 30 September 1893, p. 3, col. 5. 4 Colonist, 1 December 1893, p. 3, col. 5-6. 5 See Shonadh Mann, ‘Frederick Giles Gibbs: His Influence on the Social History of Nelson 1890-1950’, (M.A. thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, 1960) subsequently published by the Nelson Historical Society in 1977. 6 These and other incidents in Balling’s life are described in Dr Werner Kulz’s obituary tribute in the Bayreuther Festspielfiihrer 1927 (Bayreuth, 1927), p. 97. Dr Kulz describes the Urewera expedition as ‘an excursion into the jungle’. The author had the opportunity of investigating material on Balling held in the Wagner Archiv at Bayreuth in 1962. 7 Colonist, 17 April 1894, p. 3, col. 2. 8 Colonist, 23 May 1894, p. 3, col. 6. 9 His activities were widely reported as shown in J. Cuthburt Hadden’s Modern Musicians (London, 1913), p. 259.

10 Wanganui Chronicle, 29 October 1895, p. 3, col. 1. 11 Colonist, 4 February 1896, p. 2, col. 5. In a typical gibe, the Triad subsequently suggested that ‘the ink-pot was sold in Leipsic for fifteen shillings’ (issues of 11 August and 10 September 1913, pp. 67 and 126 respectively). The Triad maintained that it had always recognized Balling’s gifts and also intimated that he had confided to them how amusing he had always found Nelson, a view contradicted by F. G. Gibbs who said that on the contrary Balling had never ridiculed Nelson, only the pretensions of the Triad. 12 Mary Grodd, former Director of the Nelson School of Music, began preliminary investigations into the possibility of writing a life of Balling. During these she made contact with Balling’s grand-daughter Nicole who informed her that most of Michael Balling’s papers had been destroyed in an air raid during the war. She provided however, photostat copies of fragments of one of his diaries and a biography of him written posthumously by Hertha Balling, his widow. 13 Quoted in The Mirror of Music, edited by Percy Scholes (London 1947), I, p. 357. 14 He directs the recipient to an article about the ‘Ritter-Viola’ in Musical Notes, no. 11 of June 1894 by a Mr Wolff and to his own Elementartechnik of the Viola Alta, published in Leipzig in English and German in 1876, a reprint of the second edition of 1877 appearing in 1969. 15 Musical Courier, undated, but presumably mid-October 1896. 16 From the brochure ‘Mr Michael Balling and the Viola-Alta’, undated and quotations undated, in the Heenan collection. 17 Musical Courier, 4 March 1897, pp. 130-131; Monthly Journal, 1 July 1897, pp. 127-130. 18 Werner Kulz, Bayreuther Festspielfiihrer 1927. 19 Richard Graf Du Moulin Eckart, Cosima Wagner (Munich, 1931), 11, p. 569. 20 Du Moulin-Eckart, p. 704. 21 Du Moulin-Eckart, p. 797.

22 Anton Seidl (1850-98) was one of the great Wagner conductors of his time, with Richter, Levi, Mottl and Muck. At the Metropolitan Opera and as conductor of the New York Philharmonic Society he aroused an interest in Wagner’s music. He also conducted the world premiere of Dvorak’s ‘New World’ Symphony in Carnegie Hall on 16 December 1893. Felix Mottl (1856-1911) an Austrian conductor, composer and editor, was enlisted to help Hans Richter prepare for the first Wagner festival in 1876 and subsequently became a leading conductor there. He also gave Wagner performances in London. Cosima Wagner’s description is echoed by a critic of the Musical Times who remarked on his ‘singular clearness, delicacy and energy, great rhythmic freedom, and exceptionally strong contrasts of all kinds. Not a detail, not a point was lost’. See entry in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians by David Charlton. 23 Du Moulin-Eckart, p. 829. In fact, Balling’s wife’s name was Hertha. 24 C. B. Rees, One Hundred Years of the Halle (London, 1957), p. 52. 25 Some years ago the present author interviewed the virtuoso bassoonist Archie Camden on his youthful impressions of playing under Balling in the Halle Orchestra. Camden felt he did not quite match Richter but was a considerable musician. Tape in Radio New Zealand Archive, Timaru. 26 See Watson Forbes’ entry on Tertis in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.