Music: Loeffler's Birthday

On a farm in Medfield, Mass., there lives a shy recluse, so distinguished in the field of music that three major orchestras arranged programs to celebrate his 70th birthday. He is Composer Charles Martin Tornov Loeffler, an Alsatian who came to the U. S. at 20, played the violin in Manhattan for a year under Theodore Thomas, then joined the Boston Symphony where for 18 years he shared the first violin desk with famed Franz Kneisel.

Composition led Violinist Loeffler to relinquish the routine of orchestra work 28 years ago. His lovely finespun Mort de Tintagiles had already started critics questioning whether, with such meticulous regard for line, he could rightly be classified with Impressionist Debussy. The sensuous Pagan Poem came soon after, inspired by the sorcerous incantations Virgil put in the mouth of a Thessalian girl to draw her truant lover home.

The Pagan Poem was played by Manhattan's Philharmonic-Symphony last week, after Violinist Efrem Zimbalist had given a glowing performance of Brahms's D Major Concerto. Because Composer Loeffler is self-critical to the point of keeping finished work unpublished in his desk, because he scorns cheap workmanship and any form of self-exploitation, much of his music is comparatively unknown. Last week in Boston Sergei Koussevitzky conducted his Canticum Fratis Solis in addition to the Pagan Poem. Fortnight ago when the Cleveland Orchestra dedicated its new hall Conductor Nikolai Sokoloff chose Composer Loeffler to write the special Evocation and Composer Loeffler took one of his rare trips out of retirement to attend its performance.