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:
“I fear I agree with your friend in not liking all sermons. Some of them, one has to confess, are rubbish: but then I release my attention from the preacher, and go ahead in any line of thought he may have started: and his after-eloquence acts as a kind of accompaniment—like music while one is reading poetry, which often, to me, adds to the effect.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man: wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Ah, how low I fall when I am tempted by them! Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken and so die.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)