Robert Russell Bennett: Autobiography Part 1: Orchestre d'Harmonie

The suggestion that I write my autobiography was made at a time when anyone who did not write one risked being called eccentric. It became, and still is, a major sport among the oldsters. Some of the contemporary books are goodreading indeed. One of the best of them is the result of an enormous research job, as is brought out in the introduction to the work. Imagine spending long hours and traveling many miles to find out about oneself: I am sure Iwould be one of the first to be utterly bored by the subject. It was not so easy, however, to dismiss the whole idea as my friends presented it.

The only answer I could think of with any degree of enthusiasm was this one,written purely for whatever pleasure it could give. My own part of the pleasure is mostly in utilizing the musical language of the concert band, with its apparently inexhaustible colors and its fabulous vitality.

The form(if the term has any right being here) is seven short pictures, each about two minutes long, of my own personal seven ages. The two-minute idea may be the result of the loudspeakers spread all over the hotel in Arizona where thepiece was composed. There was no getting out of ear-shot of those two-minute gems - in the dining rooms, around the swimming pools, by the putting green, everywhere-but I honestly do not believe any of them crept into what I waswriting. I do not believe I paid much more than passing attention to them.

Part One:
I. 1894: Cherry Street
II. 1899: South Omaha
III. 1900: Corn, Cows and Music

The three of my seven ages inPart One took us to the legal end of my youth. Gathering up my unspectacular belongings, including my entire fortune of less than two hundred dollars, I swooped down on New York for no more reason than that it was New York and hada street in it called Broadway. The music borrows two or three rhythms from the era, but the only note-for-note quote is what the bugler at Camp Funston played every morning while we put on our shoes. Later, when we get to Paris,