Stories about William Thieck

Derek Reaban · Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2011 3:34 pm Post subject:

I received a number of fascinating scans from Lori with details of his career that I would like to share with TH. While I have many pages of different contracts that William Thieck signed, I’m only posting the one from San Francisco. I did read through all of them and found them very entertaining. Here is a brief summary:

1912 Minneapolis Symphony Contract
$50 per week for 23 weeks. Additionally, 2 weeks Ravinia Park Chicago ($50 / wk), 2 week St. Paul Summerfest ($60/wk), and Spring Tour ($60/wk plus railroad fare).

1914 Minneapolis Symphony Contract
32 Weeks, $1920 (i.e. $60 per week)

1917 Minneapolis Symphony Contract
32 Weeks, $2240 (i.e. $70 per week)

1919 Minneapolis Symphony Contract
32 Weeks, $2240 (i.e. $70 per week)

1921 San Francisco Symphony Contract
$100 per week!

San Francisco Symphony Contract

San Francisco Symphony Program

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Derek Reaban
Tempe, Arizona
Tempe Winds / Symphony of the Southwest

Derek Reaban · Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2011 3:35 pm Post subject:

Common Sense Book Cover

Letter from Student

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Derek Reaban
Tempe, Arizona
Tempe Winds / Symphony of the Southwest

Derek Reaban · Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2011 3:35 pm Post subject:

Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra Program

Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra Flyer

Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra Press

Wow! They really liked the Minneapolis Symphony in Boston!

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Derek Reaban
Tempe, Arizona
Tempe Winds / Symphony of the Southwest

Derek Reaban · Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2011 3:36 pm Post subject:

Saint Paul Symphony Orchestra Program

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Derek Reaban
Tempe, Arizona
Tempe Winds / Symphony of the Southwest

thiecktammy · New Member Joined: 13 Mar 2011 Posts: 4

My name is Tammy Brown and I am the great granddaughter of William Thieck. I am a French Horn player with a BM from the University of North Texas and my MM from Southern Methodist University. We have recently been researching my great grandfather's musical history and have found the answers to some of the gaps in his bio, performance and employment history.

We discovered that he actually immigrated to the U.S. on March 28, 1903, the day after his 20th birthday (as per the New Jersey document, currently on page 2). I also found it intriguing that he was playing principal trumpet in Julius Laube's orchestra in Hamburg Germany when he was no older than nineteen (reference the Minneapolis Orchestra flyer on page 3). - If you are interested in more information on Laube and his Orchestra, he was an interesting character and champion of "modern music" and you may reference this link: http://www.tchaikovsky-research.net/en/people/laube_julius.html

My great grandmother, Maria Antonia Weisbach Thieck, who was trained in Leipzig as a Soprano and was reportedly an excellent musician in her own right, saved her husband's programs from St. Paul as well as some of his contracts and correspondence with other conductors and orchestras. We have programs that show him playing principal trumpet with the St. Paul Orchestra from 1909-1911. This should help fill in the gaps in his biography for this time period.

Below is the trumpet line up for the Saint Paul Symphony Orchestra for the 7 programs that we have.

Season 3
1908-1909

Nov 10 1908
First programme
Carl Schulz
Louis Maggio
G. Bestman

March 16 1909
Seventh programme
William Thieck
Louis Maggio
G. Bestman

Season 4
1909-1910

Jan 9 1910
5th pop concert
William Thieck
F. Pierno
M. Joiner
M. Withoff

Feb 15 1910
8th Eve. concert
William Thieck
F. Pierno
M. Joiner
M. Withoff

Season 5
1910-1911

Dec 13 1910
4th Eve concert
William Thieck
G. D'Arpa
F. Pierno
Chas. Wiethoff

Season 6
1911-1912

Nov. 1 1911
First Eve. concert
William Thieck
G. D'Arpa
F.R. Pierno
M. Rabis

Nov 28 1911
3rd Eve concert
William Thieck
G. D'Arpa
F.R. Pierno
M. Rabis

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Tammy Brown
East Texas Symphony French Horn

Great Granddaughter of William Thieck

Thieckgirl · Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2011 8:24 pm Post subject:

Tammy, thanks 4 your input and for posting!!.... I'm trying not to bombard Derek with duplicates of scans he's already posted here for us, so will you check this thread for me, for any duplicate scans?
FYI:
Thieck was Principal trumpet of the Russian Symphony of New York in about 1906-1908...We know he came over on the vessel "Patricia" in 1903....1st record of him registering here as "alien" was 1905.

So from March of 1903 to 1905 we have a gap...My guess is, it was in that time frame, when Wm. Thieck and Marie WEISSBACH met in NY city, at the opera...(She was singing and he was playing in the orchestra, we were always told.).....The romance led to their marriage in 1908.
(Old letters and postcards may yet reveal where he was and what transpired in those years...I'm working on that still.)

Metropolitan opera house is my guess?....What orchestras played there? I've yet to research all that, as well as any other opera houses that may have existed at that time. ANY AND ALL INPUT APPRECIATED!!
Lori
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Lori Brosh,
Granddaughter of William A. Thieck.. b. Mar 27, 1883, d. Nov. 10, 1930.
(Principal trumpet-Minneapolis Symphony 1912-1920, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra 1921-1922)

trumpetdon · Veteran Member Joined: 28 Sep 2003 Posts: 361

I have enjoying following this thread.

I was a student of Arnold Jacobs from roughly 1979 - 1981, and again from 1997 - 1998. In case Mr. Thieck's grand daughters are not aware, for at least 30 years, Mr. Jacobs was considered one of the foremost brass pedagogs in the world.
Mr. Jacobs did not use Mr. Thieck book, The Art of Trumpet Playing in my earlier series of lessons, but we used it extensively in the second series. He also used it in that period with friends of mine . I do not know when he first became aware of the Thieck studies.
Mr. Jacobs had very high regard for these short etudes, and the developmental challenges they covered in a most musical way. I was instructed to play these as "love songs", with attention to the purest tone and clarity. We did not study the text at the beginning of Thieck's book, but it certainly is very compatible with what I learned from Mr. Jacobs.

Don

Derek Reaban · Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 8:28 am Post subject:

Tammy,

Thanks for joining the discussion. It’s certainly been fun seeing all of the old programs and following William Thieck’s career across the country through all of this memorabilia that was passed down through your family. This has been one of my favorite discussions on TH in a long time!

Lori,

I sent an email message to Jeff McMillan this morning who works at the Metropolitan Opera Archives. He has helped me in the past built the list for the Met Opera Trumpet Section. I’m hoping that he will be able to let us know if your grandparents spent any time at the Met between 1903 and 1905. He had done some research for me about 5 years ago when another question about a prominent player came up (Vincent Bach) and we thought he might have been in the Met Opera Orchestra. It turns out that he was not part of the Met Opera, but I thought you would find his message interesting:

Derek Reaban · Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 8:31 am Post subject:

Don,

Very interesting! Thanks for adding the tie in to Mr. Jacobs studio and the Thieck Method. I've been adding some of the exercises from this book into my practice day since Lori contacted me, and they are clearly well conceived.

Hope all is well.
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Derek Reaban
Tempe, Arizona
Tempe Winds / Symphony of the Southwest

RandyTX · Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 8:34 am Post subject:

A most interesting thread. I love seeing this sort of historical information, and wish more like this was available.

I have never seen a copy of this Thieck Method book. Is it available at all currently?
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"Music is like candy, you throw the (w)rappers away."

Derek Reaban · Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 8:54 am Post subject:

trumpetdon · Veteran Member Joined: 28 Sep 2003 Posts: 361

Derek Reaban · Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 1:44 pm Post subject:

I was looking back at some old email messages, and Tom Crown sent a copy of this same photo to me when he was doing research on John Hartl for an upcoming Chicago Symphony trumpet section article in the ITG Journal. I thought I would update this picture with all of the names of the players since he had provided those to me in his earlier message (John Hartl joined the section in 1917 so this photo is between 1917 and 1920 – William Thieck left the orchestra in 1920):

Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra Trumpet Section (1917-1920)

Left to Right: Herman Bossenroth, John Hartl (seated), William Thieck, Albert Koehler
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Derek Reaban
Tempe, Arizona
Tempe Winds / Symphony of the Southwest

thiecktammy · New Member Joined: 13 Mar 2011 Posts: 4

Derek.

I'm not sure if you have copies of these letters from my Aunt Lori or not. They are from the San Francisco Symphony discussing circumnavigating the Union (very interesting indeed) as well as a letter to Mrs. Thieck from Emil Oberhoffer. I have also scanned the first 12 pages of "Common Sense" from 1928. If you would like me to post them, please let me know.

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Tammy Brown
East Texas Symphony French Horn

Great Granddaughter of William Thieck

Derek Reaban · Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 9:30 am Post subject:

RandyTX · Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 11:56 am Post subject:

thiecktammy · New Member Joined: 13 Mar 2011 Posts: 4

Here is the text from the first twelve pages of “Common Sense. Lip and Tone Development. Pressure, Correctly Applied vs. Non Pressure. Qualifications.” By William A. Thieck.
I particularly enjoy the “Preface” and “Qualifications”.

_________________
Tammy Brown
East Texas Symphony French Horn

Great Granddaughter of William Thieck

thiecktammy · New Member Joined: 13 Mar 2011 Posts: 4

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Tammy Brown
East Texas Symphony French Horn

Great Granddaughter of William Thieck

RandyTX · Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 11:18 pm Post subject:

One of the things that jumped out at me in Tammy's recent posts was reference to some particular pieces of the time, that according to the context were rather difficult. Clarke's Bride of the Waves is of course well known, but I had not heard of (or at least remembered) Liberati's Pyramids, "Inflamatus", or "Walters Prize Song".

Apparently David Hickman has recorded Inflamatus, (Rossini) thanks to search engine trolling, on something called the Golden Age of Brass, volume 1.

Walter's Prize Song is apparently from Die Meistersinger, but I can only find that as a piano solo piece currently.

I know a lot of the cornet solo literature from that period is very hard to track down and/or locate, so I'm curious if anyone has leads on these pieces, or similar pieces from this time period. Clarke's compositions aren't hard to find typically, but a lot of the works from the same time period are not nearly as easy to find.

Some of John Haynie's well known solo recordings (and his writings about his performances from years past) reference apparently once well-known works that are all but unobtainable today.

Seeing references like the above by Thieck make me wonder just how many of them have actually been lost, and how many still exist in a piano bench somewhere waiting to be resurrected.

Again, this thread continues to provide all sorts of interesting little pieces of information.
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"Music is like candy, you throw the (w)rappers away."

BRSpringer · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:12 am Post subject:

Thieck's "Common Sense" can be found in the front of "The Art of Trumpet Playing." The text has been revised and edited by Charles Colin.

The last lesson I had with Bill Adam, he had an original copy of the Thieck book on his music stand, well worn and well used. I asked him about Thieck, and he told me that he was principal at San Francisco. Adam knew several of the brass players in the SF Symphony, and they related to him that the year after Thieck left, Harry Glantz replaced him in that chair. They said "the difference between Thieck and Glantz was night and day; Thieck was that much better than Glantz."
That speaks highly of Thieck's playing. Are there any recordings of Thieck?

Barry