Kun Arpad - A Violin Prodigy

 

On April 26, 1901 a weekly newspaper in Utah, the The Coalville Times, carried the following telegraphic wire report on Kun Arpad, a young Hungarian violinist:

Seven-year Wonder

At one of the interesting "five o'clocks" of the enterprising Paris Figaro a little 7-year-old violin virtuoso from Hungary was on the program, who promises to be the musical sensation of the world for some time to come. There is only one objection to the youthful artist, and that is his very unmelodious name — Kun Arpad, which is not a nom de theater. Still, it has a familiar gypsy sound, not by any means as unpronounceable as Bjornstjerne Bjornson and the names of other men who have become famous despite their patronymics.

Kun Arpad is a juvenile virtuoso par excellence. His repertoire embraces some of the most classical pieces of renowned composers, and he plays with wonderful feeling. The musical critic of the Figaro says that during some of the pathetic selections there was not a dry eye in the audience. The little fellow seems transformed into a celestial being while playing, and when away from the stage and romping with his little companions he is as mundanely  mischievous as any urchins of his age. He will make a tour of Europe and America with that excellent Viennese musician, Rodolphe Berger, who will accompany him on the piano. Kun Arpad's forte at the Figaro "five o'clock" was a "Romance," by Mendelssohn, and "Le Mouvement Perpetuille" of  Paginini, which the little violinist executes with wonderful alacrity, not losing a note and beating time with his feet. I predict from what I have read in the Paris papers that Chicago will go wild over the diminutive chap during his season here.

Coalville, Utah whose population in 1900 was 1,252 citizens, was unlikely to play host to such a musical prodigy. But the editor obviously thought the local coal miners and farmers would want to keep up with the current fashions and celebrities making news in the rest of the world.

SS Kronprinz Wilhelm
Source: Wikipedia

                

In fact the report on this young violinist playing an American concert tour was a bit premature, as Kun Arpad, accompanied by his mother and grandmother would not reach the United States until June 1903. They arrived in New York on the SS Kronprinz Wilhelm from Cherbourg, and as Kun's concerts in France were less profitable than they had hoped, they traveled steerage class to save money.

Within days they had made the newspapers, but not in the way they may have planned. Kun's mother, Mrs. Maria Arpad had signed a contract with a promoter, named Siegmund B. Steinmann, to handle concerts of her son in return for a third of the proceeds. But when the man began to take the child away, she regretted her decision and tried to recover her son. This led to charges of kidnapping and stolen scrapbooks and then counter-charges of broken contracts, which all together created a small summer sensation in New York City's theater district. One imagines that there was some element of language miscommunication too.
 
By July 3rd, Kun and his mother had either changed managers or resolved the difficulties with Steinmann, and Arpad was booked to appear at Madison Square Garden in a summer variety show called "Venice in New York" for ten concerts at $100 a night. The attraction featured "splashing fountains and cool gondola rides, as well as quaint folk songs, with mandolin and zither accompaniment .. encored nightly."

There were several theater "gardens" like this in the city, each in competition for new vaudeville acts. After advertising Madison Square Garden's cooler qualities, the headliner was Duss and his Incomparable Orchestra. But Duss already had a violin soloist, Mr. Nahan Franko (1861-1930). 

 

Franko, a native of New Orleans had made his solo debut years before at New York's Steinway Hall at the age of 8, and then toured with the soprano Adelina Patti as a child violinist. After study in Europe, he returned to New York to take the position of concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in 1883. Playing in a cool theater during the opera's summer off-season must have been a nice change. 

Before Kun could demonstrate his talent on the violin, the theater needed to attain a special permit for underage performers from the mayor's office. The plan was to suspend all smoking and drinking by the patrons for the short time that young Kun would be on stage. But the politics of New York in the 1900's were more complicated than Kun and his mother could ever imagine, and after his first appearance on July 3rd, further concerts were canceled.

Initially Mayor Seth Low granted the permit, but this was an era of intense struggle between labor and business interests, and one of the powerful forces in the city was the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, also known as the Gerry Society. Named after after one of its co-founders, Elbridge Thomas Gerry , this organization had been fighting for children's rights and establishing protective services in New York since 1874. One of their missions was to guard children from the immoral influences of theaters and other amusement activities. Kun Arpad, child violinist, now became a political pawn in a larger game.

On pressure from the Gerry Society, who protested that at Kun's first appearance the theater management failed to prevent smoking or drinking by the audience, Mayor Low revoked his permission. New York City had only recently in 1898 consolidated its boroughs under one municipal government, and Low, the former president of Columbia University, had won election in 1902 as mayor on a platform of fighting the corruption of Tammany Hall which had dominated Manhattan politics in the previous century.

The theater and Mrs. Arpad engaged yet another lawyer and on July 17 made an appeal to Mayor Low. Despite the best efforts of Kun and his mother pleading their case, the Mayor was unmoved and refused to renew his consent. In Boston, the Journal of Education said: "Why should one little boy be denied the privilege of working in a shop by day while another is allowed to work at night, work that is vastly more harmful?" A 9 year-old boy playing a violin was no match for the political machines at work here.

In August, Kun's name appeared again in the newspapers, but this time in the society section, where he was described as entertaining guests at a few house parties in Newport, Rhode Island, the fashionable address for New England's wealthy elite. Yet this must have seemed a dead end for the talented violinist and his ambitious parent, and by the following year 1904, Kun's name appears back in Europe in concert reports from Paris and London.

In the November 1905 edition of The Strad , a magazine for string musicians, was this brief mention:

Another young violinist has made his bow to a London audience, Kun Arpad by name, twelve years of age, who like von Reuter and Lionel Ovenden, is also a composer. One can only hope that the dual role will not be encouraged beyond the point of discovering which career he has the most talent for. At this age it is natural to find the executive ability ahead of composition, and he played the first movement of a Concerto of his own, and Wieniawski's "Airs Russes" with an excellent technique.

But every child prodigy eventually grows up, and by 1910 Kun's short pants had less appeal, so he added a more adult title of composer to his promotional postcard.

 

 

 

By 1912 he is listed in the German Wer Ist ~ Who Is, (bottom of page 887) as living back in Budapest, no longer a Wunderkind.

 

Degeners Wer ist's?
Volume 6, 1912

 

 

 

But after that year the trail goes cold. Did Kun Arpad survive the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire? Did he serve in the Kaiser's army with the thousands of other young men in the Great War? Was his life cut short by the influenza epidemic of 1918? The second World War? The post-war communist period? I can find no answers.

The first decade of the 20th century saw many musicians from Europe trying to expand their careers in America. The free market of America's numerous concert halls offered opportunities for making money that were constrained in Europe by older conservative traditions. The number of young musical geniuses was also very competitive. Every generation seems to produce dozens of shooting stars trying to capture the public's attention. The story of Kun Arpad is an example of how challenging that could be.

 

 

 

UPDATE:

For more postcards and history
of Kun Arpad,
check out my story
Three Boys in Sailor Suits
from 16 May 2014.

EVEN MORE UPDATES:
5 April 2023

When I wrote this story about the violin prodigy, Kun Arpad, now almost twelve years ago, I thought I had probably collected all of his postcards and probably reached an end to what little biography I could provide him. However I continue to find new and different postcards of him and to uncover small clues to his life. Some of these have come from people who read my blog and share my interest in this young musician and have sent me newspaper clippings that help tell his story. The next image helpfully establishes that Kun Arpad was once in Cairo, Egypt.

 

Kun Arpad in Cairo
1913 Hungarian newspaper
Source: a foreign correspondent

This wonderful photo appeared in an unknown Hungarian newspaper in 1913. It shows a teenage Kun Arpad playing his violin while seated on a camel in front of the Sphinx and Great Pyramid. He is identified in the caption:

Egy magyar hegedűművész ϋtlete,
Kun Arpad teveháton notazik a Szfinx elótt a sivatagban.
~
The student of a Hungarian violinist,
Kun Arpad plays music on a camel back in front of the Sphinx in the desert

 

This places him in Cairo before the start of the Great War. He would have been age 19, maybe 20 then. In this era it was quite common for Europeans to visit Egypt and a young violin soloist like Kun may have found concert opportunities there or even a wealthy patron to advance his career. At the beginning of 1913 his name appears in reports of chess tournaments played in Cairo. Evidently he had a talent for the "game of kings", as well as for music.

 

When the war began in 1914, Egypt was technically still a province of the Ottoman Empire. But it was also occupied by British forces who had been there since 1882 guarding the Suez Canal. When  Mehmed V, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, declared war on Britain, France, and Russia in November 1914, Britain responded by placing a Protectorate over Egypt which put an end to Ottoman sovereignty over the country.

As a Hungarian and citizen of the Austria-Hungary Empire, Kun Arpad would have been considered an enemy alien to British authorities. Like many people in the summer of 1914 who found themselves on the wrong side of the border when the conflict began, Kun may have been detained or placed under house arrest. It's also possible he and his mother may have taken British citizenship in 1905-06 when he played several concerts in London. That may have given him some security but not necessarily freedom.

 

But in any case, I suspect it was extremely difficult for a young Hungarian man in his 20s to travel in the Mediterranean region. After all, the war began on the Adriatic coast with Austrian-Hungarian forces invading Serbia; followed by Austria's counterattack against Russia; and then an Austrian offensive assault of Italy. If Kun had returned to Hungary, he would have faced compulsory military service and received no dispensation as a concert artist.  

So it seems he likely spent the war years in Egypt but probably not in any degree of luxury. I have searched for but been unable to find any reports of his activities in this time, but I did uncover a small bureaucratic note that established his death.

 

In a compendium of UK Foreign Office Records, vol. 15, p260, the 1919 Consular Court Records for Alexandria, Egypt has a single line:  Estate of Kun Arpad (file no.) 54. I interpret this to mean Kun died either in 1919 or 1918. Whether he had a will or probate is not mentioned and no other information is available on the cause of his death, but as his name is fairly unique this British government record seems a trustworthy confirmation of the end of his short life. From another citation I received from a correspondent, Kun Arpad's date of birth was 14 July 1892, so in 1918/19 he would have been 26 years old.

I finish with this last coda for his story. Initially my interest was centered on Kun Arpad the child violin prodigy and his charming postcards. But Kun apparently aspired to be a composer too. In November 1905 The Strad magazine reported that Kun Arpad gave a concert of "the first movement of a (Violin) Concerto of his own, and Wieniawski's "Airs Russes" with an excellent technique." That was the extant of the review. But ironically his composition talent did get a blunt posthumous review in 1921. 

London The Musical Courier
10 November 1921

(Calderon & Co., Alexandria, Egypt)

FIRST SYMPHONY (Unfinished Owing to the Death of the Composer)
by Kun Arpad

   This work consists of three finished movements and fifteen pages of the finale.  No attempt has been made to complete it.  The printed score simply comes to an end where the composer left off at the end of a page.  One turns over, expecting more to follow, and finds nothing but an empty sheet.  It is startling, and rather shocking, in its suggestion of how all of us must end in much the same way when our work is done and an empty page is left for the "what might have been."  Few composers round out their lives like Beethoven with his "Ninth," Wagner with "Parsifal," Tschaikowsky (sic) with his "Pathetic."  This symphony of Kun Arpad is not pathetic except that it is unfinished and that it gives us a rather sad picture of a would-be composer with neither great talent not great technic.  It is strictly old fashioned, out of place in this generation.  Who was Kun Arpad?  The name sound vaguely familiar but no available musical dictionary lists it.  It is impossible, therefore, to give any information on the subject.  It is gratifying, however, to know that the MUSICAL COURIER is read at Alexandria, Egypt.

 

 

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