Born in Indiana in 1906, David Van Vactor received his bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University in 1928. He spent the following year in Vienna composing and studying the flute with Josef Niedermeyer, the principal flutist of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. He returned to the US and became the first flutist of the Chicago Civic Orchestra. Later, he again returned to Europe, where he studied flute with Marcel Moyse and composition with Paul Dukas. By 1931, he was the second flutist of the Chicago Symphony. From 1933 to 1934, he was the assistant conductor of the Chicago Civic Orchestra. The following year, Van Vactor earned a master’s degree at Northwestern University.
Throughout this period, Van Vactor also continued to nurture his career as a composer. For example, near the end of 1935 his Concerto Grosso for three flutes and harp was premiered by the Chicago Symphony. Nevertheless, by mid-June of 1936, Van Vactor had taken on an additional line of work as the conductor of the WPA-funded American Concert Orchestra in Chicago.
In 1941, the League of Composers (our nation’s oldest organization devoted to contemporary music), selected five US musicians, musicians (David Van Vactor, flute; Alvin Etler, oboe; Robert McBride, clarinet; John R. Barrows, horn; and Adolph Weiss, bassoon), who the League also sponsored, to present a program of US, Latin American and a sprinkling of European works in nearly every Latin American country. Prior to leaving from Brownsville, Texas, Van Vactor, the spokesman for the group, said the tour is being made “as a musical demonstration of Western Hemisphere unity and goodwill.”[1]
Over the next two months the quintet gave concerts in fourteen countries, the proceeds of which were given to local charities. Writing after their August 26 performance in Bogotá, a local critic commented on the few opportunities that the residents of that city had had “to admire such a select and balanced artistic group,” and praised each member as “a consummate master of his instrument.”[2] The day after their concert on September 7, in Santiago, Chile, an author identified only by his initials, “A. A.,” concluded,
It is therefore to be rejoiced to have in our artistic environment the North American quintet of wind instruments, whose members are, as we could see, in their presentation yesterday, at the Municipal Theater, admirable performers, and not only that, but musicians to the letter, composers of very modern affiliation and of a theoretical preparation uncommon among instrumentalists of this specialty.[3]
Returning to the US, Van Vactor returned to the Chicago Symphony. Meanwhile, his works continued to be performed both in Chicago and at other locales throughout the nation. For example, commissioned in 1943 by the Sixth Marine Corps, his second symphony, Music for the Marines, was premiered by the Indianapolis Symphony. From this same time, Van Vactor became the flute section leader and assistant conductor of the Kansas City Philharmonic Orchestra.
During March 1945, Van Vactor received an invitation from the Chilean government, which had been arranged through the US Department of State, to return to Chile for about seven months as a visiting professor at the University of Chile. In addition, the eminent Chilean composer, Domingo Santa Cruz, had also arranged for Van Vactor to conduct a number of orchestral and chamber concerts while in that country.
While in Chile, Van Vactor worked closely with composer and pedagogue René Amengual, who at that time was the General Secretary of the Instituto de Extensión Musical. Indeed, Amengual composed a suite for flute and piano that the two musicians premiered on August 30, 1945. The following month, the editors of the Revista Musical Chilena praised Van Vactor after conducting Handel’s Water Music and Tchaikovsky’s fourth symphony on August 17, 1945, saying, that Van Vactor “offered us impeccable versions, not only in their details but also in the exact expression of both works.”[4]
During May 1946, Van Vactor announced his resignation as the principal flutist and assistant conductor of the Kansas City orchestra in order to wholly devote his time to his duties at that city’s Conservatory of Music. That same month, the Kansas City Star reported that in June Van Vactor would be flying to South America for a “second season of concert and faculty engagements on invitation from Latin-American governments by arrangement through the State department.”[5] This time, however, in addition to an initial period of six weeks in Chile, Van Vactor would also be visiting Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Peru.
In 1947, Van Vactor became the conductor of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, which was a position that he held for twenty-five years.
However, during mid-1965, he returned to Chile as the first US State Department artist-in-residence in Latin America. In addition to conducting Santiago’s two major symphony orchestras during a five-month stay, his objective was also to conduct chamber orchestras throughout that country, to perform educational concerts (which he had pioneered in Chile during his 1945 visit), and to perform as solo flutist with orchestras and give recitals at the US-Chilean cultural institute in Santiago.
With such an impressive and extensive record, David Van Vactor clearly deserves recognition as a pioneer of musical Pan-Americanism.
-John L. Walker
[1] “Musical Good Will Wings Southward via Brownsville,” Brownsville Herald, 8 August, 1941.
[2] “El Concierto de Ayer,” El Tiempo (Bogotá, Colombia), 27 August, 1941.
[3] “El Quinteto de Instrumentos de Viento,” La Nación (Santiago, Chile), 8 September, 1941.
[4] “Conciertos,” Revista Musical Chilena 6 (October, 1945), 22. This was also the first time that Tchaikovsky’s fourth symphony had been performed in Chile.
[5] “Music and Musicians,” The Kansas City Star, 26 May, 1946.