Paul Herman Apel was born in 1882 in the central German city of Gottingen. Departing from Hamburg, Germany, on board the S. S. Pretoria, he arrived in New York City on May 7, 1899. The passenger manifest noted that Apel’s ticket had been purchased by his mother, Antoinette Apel, and that his final destination was Chicago. Seven years later, Apel became a naturalized citizen.
Little is known about Apel’s musical training either before or after his arrival in the U.S. In 1909, reporting on new hires at Baker University in Baldwin City, Kansas, the Baldwin Ledger wrote that Apel, who was being appointed as the head of that university’s string department, “was educated for his profession in Berlin and for the past two seasons [had been] a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.”[1] Three years later, Apel accepted a position as an instructor of music and history at the Port Byron Academy in Illinois. This announcement also included a statement that Apel was “a graduate of the University of Chicago.”[2] In 1915, it was reported that Apel was “probably” going to be appointed to an unnamed school in Louisiana.[3] The report also informed its readers that Apel was “not only reputed to be a highly successful trained band master, but he has a wide reputation as a barytone and an orchestra leader.” Years later, on the occasion of the release of his first book, The Message of Music, the San Bernardino County Sun noted that Apel had been educated not only in the above-named institutions, but also in Gottingen, at the Chicago Conservatory and at Northwestern University.”[4]
Similarly, except for positions in various public schools during the 1910s, it is not known where Apel may have been employed from about 1919 until the early 1950s. In 1955, however, in an article about a tracing company that had succeeded in locating Apel in order to return some stock that he had purchased some years earlier, it was revealed that Apel was at that time a music teacher in Yucaipa, California.[5]
Exactly one week later, likely entirely coincidentally, the same newspaper announced that it was beginning a weekly series of articles, the majority of them about music, written by Paul Apel. These were oftentimes written in a banal style, but even worse, in an uninformed manner that Apel probably thought would appeal to a general readership. For example, in a 1956 article he advised parents that their children should be given “the benefit of piano, violin, trumpet or flute lessons.”[6] Why? Because “more often than not, children with nothing to do in their spare time give vent to their emotions by misdeeds, even acts of violence or crime.”
These columns continued until early 1957, at which point they were re-titled “As We View It.” Lasting until 1963, under this new title Apel rapidly abandoned music as a subject matter, and turned instead to topics that had little, if anything, to do with music. For example, in his article on March 21, 1957, he discussed the subject of compassion.
However, rather than casting music aside altogether, in 1958 he published his first book, The Message of Music, in which he deals with the function and value of music and how to understand and enjoy it. This objective, however, may not have been fully realized; indeed, in one review, the book is described as “curious.”[7] The following year, Apel published his second and final book, Music of the Americas, North and South. Though intended to be an encyclopedic guide to the music and musicians of the Americas, it is, instead, “a hodgepodge of undigested, poorly arranged, and often incorrect, or at least, out-of-date information.”[8]
Although we cannot not recognize Apel as a pioneer of musical Pan-Americanism, we must also recognize that pioneers in a given field or endeavor are not always successful. Furthermore, there were already antecedents, such as Eleanor Hague’s Latin American Music, Past and Present (1934) and Nicolas Slonimsky’s Music of Latin America (1945), that could have provided some important guideposts pointing the way towards a better result. However, although there is much that we do not know about Paul Apel, particularly the circumstances that led him to write a book about the music of the Americas, what we do know about him would seem to suggest that both books may have been written, in all likelihood, as a money-making venture.
Selected Writings
A Study of the Chicago Federation of Musicians, Local No. 10, A. F. of M. (Thesis, University of Chicago, 1915).
The Message of Music (New York: Vantage Press, 1958).
—John L. Walker
[1] “Are Getting Ready,” The Baldwin Ledger, 3 September 1909. Although Apel may have indeed performed with the Chicago Symphony, according to the symphony’s website, he was never a player who was “contracted and rostered for at least one season.”
[2] “Tells of Santiago Harbor,” Moline Daily Dispatch, 1 August 1912.
[3] “State Normal School,” The Town Talk (Alexandria, LA), 14 August 1915.
[4] “Paul Apel Writes New Book on Music,” The San Bernardino County Sun, 19 October 1958.
[5] “Yucaipan More Interested in Musical Notes than ‘C’ Notes,” Yucaipa News-Mirror, 3 November 1955. Apel died in that city on August 14, 1966.
[6] Paul H. Apel, “Develop Musical Talents to Release Those Tensions,” Yucaipa News-Mirror, 5 January 1956.
[7] “Brief Reviews of Some of the New Non-Fiction,” Oakland Tribune, 13 April 1958.
[8] Louis Nichols, “Music Guide is Jumble of Errors,” The Tennessean, 13 July 1958. In this review, Nichols advises readers to not waste their money.