Ernest Henry Schelling was a remarkable American pianist, composer, and conductor. He sucessfully toured Europe and North and South America, wrote numerous works for piano, orchestra and chamber groups which were often performed during his lifetime.
Background
Ernest Henry was born on July 26, 1876 at Belvidere, New Jersey, United States, the second son of his parents and the youngest of their three children.
His father, Felix Schelling, a Swiss from the canton of St. Gall, had been trained in medicine (and to some extent in music) but gave up his professional prospects after the political crises of 1848 and emigrated in 1849 to Louisville, Kentucky, where he met and married Rose Busby White, originally of Cambridge, England. Felix enjoyed some reputation as a philosopher and theosophist; he also did some composing, was at one time director of the St. Louis Conservatory of Music, and made sure that all his children had musical training. The oldest son, Felix Emanuel, after studying piano, left music to become a specialist in Elizabethan literature and a noted professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania.
Ernest was a musical prodigy, making his public debut as a pianist at the age of four (in the Philadelphia Academy of Music).
Education
During his childhood years Schelling studied (1882 - 92) with a long series of leading European masters: Mathias, Moszkowski, Hans Huber, Leschetizky, and others. Brahms, hearing him perform at the age of ten, and also seeing him, exclaimed, "What this boy needs is more oatmeal, more fresh air!"
At sixteen, however, came neuritis of the hands and enforced abandonment of the piano. He tried college, at the University of Pennsylvania, but could not stick it out. (In 1928 the same university awarded him his only degree, an honorary Doctor of Music. )
At twenty, rested from his overwork at the piano, he played for Paderewski and after a time went to Switzerland as the latter's only pupil. He studied for four years (1898 - 1902).
Career
Schelling gave a concert, became disheartened, entered a monastery, changed his mind, left the monastery. Finally, in 1903, he began to play with success and settled down to the master pianist's steady round of touring: from Spain to Russia, to South America, and at last to his own country, where in February 1905 he made his adult American debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
From then until America's entry into World War I Schelling's career brought him money and acclaim as a brilliant technician and a sensitive interpreter. The war itself was a shock to him as to many others; but instead of ignoring it or taking refuge in the usual entertainment activities of the famous artist, he entered earnestly into the life of an army officer, being discharged with the rank of a major (military intelligence) and winning decorations from France, Spain, and Poland and the army's Distinguished Service Medal.
After the war Schelling never returned wholly to the virtuoso's life, partly because of an automobile accident in 1919 that injured his hands. From childhood he had composed, writing orchestral works and chamber music as well as piano pieces, and some of his compositions received both publication and occasional performances. Among these were a Legende symphonique (first performed in 1903) for orchestra, a Suite fantastique (1905) for piano and orchestra, a violin concerto (1916), written for Fritz Kreisler, and especially a series of Impressions from an Artist's Life for piano and orchestra (1915).
In the war's aftermath of bitter disillusionment Schelling created his one work that achieved wide acclaim and (at least between the two wars) repeated performances: A Victory Ball (1923), an orchestral fantasy on Alfred Noyes's bitter Armistice Day poem.
Neither piano playing nor composition offered Schelling the degree of self-expression he was seeking, and in the 1920's he turned chiefly to still another activity, conducting. He was a conductor, served the Baltimore Symphony in that capacity from 1935 to 1938, as "Uncle Ernest, " the leader of children's orchestral concerts from coast to coast.
He inaugurated the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Society's Young People's Concerts on January 26, 1924, and he continued the weekly series until his death, besides appearing as guest conductor of children's concerts with many other orchestras.
Schelling's death came suddenly in New York, the result of a cerebral embolism.
Achievements
Ernest Henry Schelling was best remembered as a conductor, he was the first conductor of the Young People's Concerts of the New York Philharmonic. He was named "Uncle Ernest", as his concerts were designed to encourage the love of music in children. Besides, he wrote orchestral works and chamber music as well as piano pieces. His most popular work was A Victory Ball, a symphonic poem for orchestra, the other famous works - Legende symphonique for orchestra (1903), a Suite fantastique (1905) for piano and orchestra, a series of Impressions from an Artist's Life for piano and orchestra (1915).
Schelling was elected an honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity, the national fraternity for men in music.
Personality
Tall, thin, ascetic looking, with black hair and drooping mustache, Schelling was not the conventionally genial sort of "uncle. " He easily won children over to himself.
Connections
His first wife, whom he had married on May 3, 1905, the former Lucie How Draper of New York, died in 1938; he was survived by his second wife, Helen Huntington ("Peggy") Marshall (a niece of Mrs. Vincent Astor), whom he had married in August 1939. He had no children.
