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Edward
Joseph Collins: An American Composer (continued)
BY ERIK ERIKSSON
A convivial man, one who enjoyed the company
of friends, Collins often partied late into the night. The next
day found him berating himself for what he viewed as failures of
application and self-discipline. Still, while he was in Chicago,
the pattern was difficult to break and he continued the cycle of
nighttime socialization followed by regret and resolve the next
day. Even more, these writings reveal the loneliness of the creative
man—the individual who is sensitive to the darker side of
many with whom he must interact and who struggles with his work
even as he deals with those who he feels have ignored what is most
noble in man.
In his own compositions, he moved steadily
away from the mix of German counterpoint and Romanticism which had
been his daily bread while a student in Berlin and responded to
a growing affinity for the impressionists of the early twentieth
century. Debussy was increasingly valued (Clair de Lune
was a composition that never failed to draw a rapturous response
when he performed it). Ravel became perhaps the most significant
of all icons.
Having married Frieda Mayer and thus into a
family of wealth, Collins’s middle years were spent with his
wife and young family in the large and art-filled Mayer residence
on Sheridan Road in Chicago (at the very corner where today Sheridan
Road and Lake Shore Drive intersect). His father-in-law was an avid
follower of Post-Impressionist art and a devoted partisan of the
Taos School: the walls of the home were three tiers deep with his
estimable collection.
Time away from Chicago was valued by Collins
for the opportunity it brought for creativity as well as a sense
that he was master of his own domain, even if—initially—it
was a rented one. Despite the troublesome need to maintain and update
the property he eventually purchased in Door County, Wisconsin,
he welcomed the feeling that he had, at last, gained ownership of
his own home.
The Composer’s Life
Collins was born in Joliet, Illinois on 10
November 1886 to Irish-American parents. While previous biographies
had given his birth year as 1889, data from both the 1900 U. S.
Census and St. Patrick’s Parish birth and baptismal records
confirm the earlier date. Edward was the youngest of nine children
born to Peter and Bridget (McIntyre) Collins, both of whom came
from Ireland—he from County Meath in the north, she from Belfast—and
were active in the Catholic parish, around which family activities
frequently revolved.
All of the nine children exhibited musical
talent at an early age, and Edward’s gifts were allowed to
manifest themselves under the encouraging guidance of his siblings.
By the age of nine, he was already giving concerts in his own community.
He later recalled his first teacher, Mr. Shafer
as “a splendid type.” Shafer was uncompromising as he
“scathingly denounced all and sundry pretenders to musicianship.”
Collins learned years later that Shafer had died poor and alone.
At the age of fourteen, Collins began instruction
under Rudolf Ganz in Chicago. Advancing at a remarkable pace, he
was invited by Ganz in 1906 to travel with him to Berlin to study
further at the Königliche Hochschule für Musik.
There his instructors in composition, organ performance, ensemble
playing, and conducting included Max Bruch, Robert Kahn, Friedrich
Gernsheim, José Viana da Mota, and Englebert Humperdinck.
He played timpani in the school orchestra for four years and took
advantage of every opportunity to conduct school ensembles.
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