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August
Schmehl
August Schmehl and Harry A. Yerkes were featured on
the only xylophone and bells solos made by the Indestructible
Company in 1909 and 1910, when Schmehl recorded four
bells solos and six xylophone solos. The Columbia Gramaphone
Company distributed the two-minute celluloid cylinders
made by the Indestructible Company between 1908 and
1912.
We are offered evidence of the range of Schmehl's professional
career by his appearance in a personnel list for the
Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York Orchestra
on January 8, 1929. In the program for a performance
conducted by Willem Mehgelberg at the National Theatre
in Washington DC, Schmehl is included along with four
other members of the “Battery” in the orchestra’s
percussion section led by S. Goodman, Timpani. The program
that afternoon included Johann Christian Bach’s
Sinfonia in B-flat Major, Mozart’s Symphony
in E flat (K. 543), and Beethoven’s Symphony
No. 7. We know from a Washington Post newspaper
clipping buried in the program pages that the concert
was attended by Mrs. Calvin Coolidge and Mrs. Herbert
Hoover.
This
information is taken from William Cahn, The Xylophone
in Acoustic Recordings (1877 to 1929). Bloomfield,
NY: Cahn Publishing, 1996. The orchestra program comes
from the Gerhardt Collection.
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