Some Men Who Have Done Things. III: Evan Stephens

Some Men Who Have Done Things. BY JOHN HENRY EVANS OF THE LATTER-DAY SAINTS' UNIVERSITY

III. — Evan Stephens. THE GREAT COMMONER IN MUSIC.

Thirty odd years ago two missionaries from Ogden preached one afternoon in Willard. Now it happened that a beardless youth of seventeen led the choir there and played the organ, using hands and feet for the instru- ment and head for the sing- ers. After the services, one of the men said to the other: "Here's a musical genius, but he won't stay long in

Willard." And he didn't. About the same time another preacher audaciously told a Willard congregation that they were harboring a genius in their choir leader, and that presently somebody would come and take him away from them. Immedi- ately the Willardites were inconsolable. They acted as if their singing master had EVAN STEPHENS. just received a hundred of- Director Salt Lake Tabernacle Choir. fers, and was on the point of

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accepting themall. "Don't you leave us, my boy," they expos- tulated;"you won't find anyone that will love you more than we do." But the young genius did leave' them, notwithstanding, and though he found none to give him greater love, he widened beyond all reckoning the circle of his admiring friends. That man was Evan Stephens. The very name got to be a name to conjure with in after years. It became associated with big things in music. Over all "Mormondom" was it known. Over all America, too; for "Evan Stephens" and the " 'Mormon' tabernacle choir" have become familiar to tens of thousands who know noth- ing else about the Saints and their faith. Indeed, the writer has met obscure persons in far-off England and Wales, whose notions of the West were dismal as three rainy days, but whose musical recollections included the name, Evan Stephens. But we are getting ahead of our story. Three and forty years have now elapsed since the Stephens family reached Willard, fresh from Wales, and a bedraggled trip across the plains with an ox team. There is a fine story con- nected with this journey, but it is too long to set down here. The family purse had sadly dwindled to an American quarter, two dimes, and a nickel. Luckily, however, a son and a daughter lived there, having immigrated to Utah some years before. Evan was now twelve years old, and as untouched by the divine fire as if he had hailed from a land where music was unknown. Young Stephens' first job in the new home was herding sheep. He husked corn at the same time, going up now and then to the top of an old shed to see that his flock did not stray where his broken English would have to be brought into too violent a requi- sition. For this toilsome vigilance he received nothing but the privilege of herding sheep and husking corn, and the prospects of a scolding if any of the sheep went astray. Presently he got another place at an advanced wage; he got his board, and at the end of the year, a suit of clothes to boot for good service. Like the other, it was farm work, only more so. But he gave satisfaction, which proved that the future musician was getting on in the world. From seventeen to twenty he was still on the farm, getting by now a small pittance. This meant extremely hard work and long hours, in consequence of which he had scant time for unbending. Four-

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teen hours a day the work beckoned him insistently —plowing and sowing and reaping and a thousand and one things that cry out to be done on the farm. And then there were the chores. Meantime the Utah and Northern Railroad was under way, and so, like many others along the line, he worked on it for some ready

cash. Whether it was this that gave him a taste for railroading, I do not know. Maybe, it was the need for ready cash. Anyhow, his twentieth year found him a section hand on the newly-completed

railway at a dollar and thirty-seven cents a day. It should also be known that during these early years when work was slack on the farm, he had helped to build some of the best houses in Willard. That is the way Evan Stephens puts it. But between you and me, his part of this "building" process was carrying the hod!

A refreshing passage in this first record tells us that the boy liked every sort of work on the farm — except threshing, and the threshing he disliked merely because the dust had a nasty habit of getting into his throat, as, indeed, it has with all boys. So, you see, this was not a case of genius pining under the lash of manual labor, and waiting for some fairy prince to carry him off to free- dom and a higher work. Not at all. Evan Stephens did not know that he was a genius. Only his friends from a distance knew that. He was too modest even to suspect it. And so he took the world as it came, plodding along as if he were made of the same inner stuff with his fellows. No; that is not quite correct, either. He only appeared to be going on in that way. In reality he was leading an altogether different sort of life. For one evening something happened. It was the first year

after his arrival at Willard, while he worked for his board. The choir came to the house for practice. Now, whenever this body of singers came to your house in those days you just had to sing, that was all; and so young Evan was induced to join the choir. That marked a distinct epoch in his life. He discovered himself there and then. It was like suddenly finding yourself in love. The world all at once took on a new look. The face of things changed. Instantly there was rhythm in the soughing of the wind, in the rustling of the leaves, in the grass and the trees and the flowers, in whatever lived and moved and had its being. And the boy's foot-

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steps unconsciously took on a rhythmic swing as he trod his way, high-spirited,to and from the field. It was a great moment for

Evan Stephens, and for the whole of "Mormondom," that evening with the choir in the little town that nestled, and still nestles, under the protecting brows of that rough old mountain up there in Box Elder county. The musical impulse thus received grew into an abiding passion. John Stephens, Evan's brother, loved music and had an organ in his home — an incredibly small organ— which he let young Evan play. The rest of the family wanted it distinctly understood that they would not be responsible for anything that might happen to the valued instrument — which shows what they thought of his musical talents.Very likely though, they had never heard of that evening with the choir. Well, nothing at all happened to the — organ, but something befel the young musician he learned to play with incredible rapidity and skill. Afterwards, in his insati- able hunt for compositions, he stumbled upon a book of music. Eureka! He pocketed it forthwith as a pearl of great price, which it was, for printed music was rare, in Willard, as Lowell's day in June. Not that the boy knew how to read music, but he meant to learn, and that, in him, was like knowing. So whenever he got a spare moment, out came the book for a fresh reading, or rather, singing. Now, as it happened, it contained "Jerusalem, my Glorious Home," and one or two more which he knew. He therefore picked out others from these, and in that way learned the musical scale and the meaning of the hundred odd little marks out of which the song birds get such melody. As for the rest, it came easy enough. He borrowed what- ever he could of music, in print or manuscript, ate everything whole, so to speak, and looked about hungrily for more. Once he came upon a soiled copy of the Messiah. We need no higher proof of his musical ability than the fact that he, a stripling of thirteen or fourteen, newly awakened, could even understand this great classic, let alone being profoundly moved by its great har- monies. From now on he was constantly associated with every- thing musical and dramatic in the town. When the ward purchased an organ, Evan was made organist, and later choir leader, though without resigning his place at the instrument. It was at

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this time the missionaries discovered the genius lurking in

Willard. Meantime, Stephens had become, by natural gravitation, the musical nucleus of the town. The young people gathered about him. Feeling the need of education — for Evan had only one or — two short winters of schooling the young men of the town met for the purpose of studying. They had no teacher, but the more advanced taught the others. It was a sort of mutual improve- 1 ment association. Stephens example in joining the choir was fol- lowed by every other young man in Willard. When Evan went to work on the railroad as section hand, he bought a house and lot — a two-room, adobe structure with dirt roof — for which he agreed to pay five hundred dollars. Here he batched it, drawing around him all the music-lovers of the town. And here they met to practice for glee club, choir, and dramatic presentations. To facilitate this work, Evan invested in a small organ, which could be carried about from place to place wherever they went. Meanwhile, too, he yearned for some adequate means of self- expression, not only in the composition of songs, hymns, and musical plays, but likewise in the better sense of reaching a wider public, in uplifting as many as possible to the delights of the divine art. Some of his compositions were published in the Juvenile Instructor, and two operatics were played, not only at Willard, but at Logan. It was at this time that Stephens took up first with the training of children, the thing that brought him into prominence. "Throughout my life," said he in explanation of this work with others, when he got nothing for it, "I have found my greatest joy and my greatest usefulness to others to be one and the same thing." The instinct of the genuine artist, this, which impels him to give rather than to be always receiving. And this is the cen- tral fact in Evan Steptens' life, the fact that will best explain what he has done. In his twenty-fourth year he was on the gravel train, which ran north, and sometimes stayed between Willard and Logan for days. At such times Evan amused and instructed himself, when he was not working, by playing on the organ, — for he carried the instrument with him. Often the young people came from Willard, and then how all the unpopulous region became alive with song!

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Another thing happened on one of these occasions. Alex. Lewis, of Logan, leader of the choir there, came into camp one day. Now the organist in the temple city had gone on a mission, and they wanted his place filled. "This youth on the gravel train is my man," thought Lewis. And so an offer was made him. But Evan, remembering how he was loved at Willard, said he would go if they found him a place with more money than he was getting. Thus he thought to throw discouragement in the way. First thing he knew, however, they sent him word that they had got him a place at fifty cents a day more than his present wage. Afterwards he learned that the "place" was not what he thought it was — it

was striker at the Logan shops —but he had given his word, and that ended it. At Logan he created a sensation. But the job at the depot stuck in his throat. And after a reasonable time he returned to the gravel train among his old friends. The Loganites, though, had got a taste of his genius and would not give up so easily. And so we find him presently back at Logan devoting his whole time to the training of children's choruses and giving private lessons in music. These choruses attracted the attention of some Salt Lake people during the quarterly conferences, and so it was not long before Evan Stephens was induced to come to the city. Partly he came to study, but partly he came to take up his work among the children. He met with instant success. Two hundred chil- dren came under his training. He had besides a glee club, which afterwards became a choral society, A couple of concerts in the theatre had such an effect as to bring him immediately two hundred more children for his chorus. He was now in his twenty-eighth year. A concert in the tabernacle sent his name through "Mor- mondom." New demands came thick and fast. Ogden wanted him one day a week. He accepted and trained five hundred child- ren there. Springville wanted him, and he had another giant class in that place. The University of Utah wanted him. At this request, however, he balked. "My language is too poor, I make too many mistakes in grammar," he said modestly to Dr. Park, when he got his breath. The Doctor had been an attentive listener at his training classes in the old Council House. "I don't want you for

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grammar," explained the president, "1 want you to teach music." And he accepted. Of Evan Stephens' successes after that I need not speak. They are too well known to require it. He has been an uplifting influ- ence in our music. He has trained some of our best singers. He has done more than any other person to raise the tone of our musical numbers from "Jerusalem, my Glorious Home," and "Hard Times, Come Again no More," to classics. He has in- creased our tabernacle choir from seventy-five members to five hundred odd. A glance at the musical programs given by Evan Stephens during the last twenty-five years reveals the immense range of the numbers. There is nothing small about Stephens, except his stature. The sweep of his musical range is tremendous, including the best of the past as well as the best of the present and the significant music of all nations. He has had the signal credit for it is one — to be singing selections from new men at a time when they were decried in the East, and then to see those men come into high prominence and musical favor —which speaks well for his judg- ment and independence. And he has done everything on a large scale. He believes in centralization, rather than individualism. Of course, he believes in ward choirs, choral societies, and so on, but he believes that in any town where there are several wards and much music there

ought to be a union of singers into one central body, and for these reasons: first, only large bodies can produce the massive effects in music, can sing the big things. "You may pile up rocks and earth here to make the heap look like a mountain," is the way he puts it, "but it does not lift the soul like the Wasatch." And then it provides a center for the musical interest. In music, as in everything else, union gives strength and power. Evan Stephens is the true type of the musical man in the Church. His music breathes the spirit and genius of "Mormonism." It is distinctly "Mormon." This is seen in his ideas about what a "Mormon" musician ought to be. First, he should tingle to his finger tips with a passion for music. He should be saturated with music, without losing the spirit of the gospel. Then he should have an intense love for the community — have a desire to give to them the best he can gather. He ought to be endowed abundantly

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"with that all-pervading love to control him so that he will desire to get only in order to give out again —to want all merely to impart." He, therefore, has not much patience with the craving in young musical persons hereabouts for hurrying off to Boston or New York, London or Germany or Paris. In the first place, he thinks that rush- ing off to places where you spend fifteen to twenty-five hundred dol- lars a year of borrowed money impairs your sense of obligation, crush-

es to a considerable extent those finer sensibilities so indispensable in music. And in the next place going away to study for individual

work disqualifies most persons for usefulness to anyone but them- selves. The tendency in the world is the very opposite of what it must necessarily be among the Saints. The measure of a musician in "Mormondom" is the amount of good he is doing, and can do, in the community, in the world, the height he attains in his selfishly individual work.

These are high ideas, and amply justify the title we have given Evan Stephens, the Great Commoner in Music.

Salt Lake City, Utah.

The seals in Bering sea will form a subject for Congressional dis- cussion and action this winter. In April of this year the contract made in 1890, to last for 20 years between the government and the North American Commercial company, will expire. This contract provided that the company should have a monopoly of seal killing on the Pribilof islands, for which it agreed to pay the government about $10 for

each skin. The company agreed to kill only young male seals, and only on land. The company hires natives to do the killing at 75 cents a skin; these skins are sold in London for $30 each. When our country pur- chased Alaska, and the islands along with it, the seal herd numbered mil- lions: now the number is estimated at 150,000. It seems impossible for the government to control the sealing industry, as the seals remain on Pribilof islands only for the breeding season. On going and coming from the islands, Japanese and Canadian "poachers" intercept the seals,

killing both male and female, and so the herd is in danger of extinction. The government is trying to avoid international trouble, and to get the powers to aid in protecting the herd when feeding at sea.