Music
The Wanamaker Organ in Wanamaker's (now Macy's) department store at 13th and Market Streets in Philadelphia, was substantially enlarged by Rodman Wanamaker in 1924. It is presently the world's largest playing pipe organ. Wanamaker sponsored elaborate recitals in the Grand Court of the Philadelphia store, often featuring Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra. As many as 15,000 people attended these admission-free events, at which all display counters and fixtures were removed by an army of workers so that seating could be put in place. Under Wanamaker's guidance famous organists were brought to play the Wanamaker Organs in Philadelphia and New York, including Marcel Dupré, Louis Vierne, Marco Enrico Bossi and Nadia Boulanger. Wanamaker also sponsored a Concert Bureau to book European organists on trans-American concert tours.
In 1926 Wanamaker commissioned a 17-ton bell from founders Gillett & Johnston. It was eventually placed atop the Wanamaker Men's Store at Broad Street and Center Square in the Lincoln-Liberty Building. It was the largest tuned bell in the world when it was cast.
Toward the end of his life, Wanamaker gathered a huge collection of stringed instruments, known as The Cappella, that featured violas and violins from such masters as Guarnerius and Stradivarius. The orchestra concerts ended with Wanamaker's death in 1928, and the stringed instruments were also sold at that time.
Read more about this topic: Rodman Wanamaker
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“Thy remembrance, and repentance, and deep musings are not free
From the music of two voices and the light of one sweet smile.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“While the music is performed, the cameras linger savagely over the faces of the audience. What a bottomless chasm of vacuity they reveal! Those who flock round the Beatles, who scream themselves into hysteria, whose vacant faces flicker over the TV screen, are the least fortunate of their generation, the dull, the idle, the failures . . .”
—Paul Johnson (b. 1928)
“The first condition for making music is not to make a noise.”
—José Bergamín (1895–1983)