History
BMC: The First Thirty Years
by Thomas W. Joiner
Chapter 1
The Brevard Music Center was born in 1936, a year when worldwide events overshadowed the modest beginnings of the Davidson College Music School-Camp for Boys. Lauritz Melchoir and Kirsten Flagstad were holding opera audiences spellbound, King Edward VIII abdicated the throne of England, Hitler's armies occupied the Rhineland, and Jesse Owens brought home three gold medals from the Berlin Olympics.
Music was a major influence in the life of the founder of Brevard, James Christian Pfohl, as his father, J. Keneth Pfohl, a Moravian bishop, was pastor of the famous "Home Church" of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and his mother, Bessie Whittington Pfohl, was organist and director of the church choir. Pfohl was born in 1912 in an atmosphere of music that few people are privileged to know. In the Pfohl home the mother played the piano, the father sang, and each of the six children played an instrument—flute, violin, viola, cello, harp, and trumpet. On Easter morning Jim's Uncle Bernard led the bands through the streets of Salem as a part of the traditional Moravian sunrise service, arousing the people in the early dawn to come and worship.
The seed for the Brevard Music Center was planted in Pfohl's mind in 1929 when he was a camper at the National Music Camp at Interlochen, Michigan. He won a scholarship as a string bass player. "Your making me learn the string bass was the best thing that ever happened to me," Pfohl said to C. D. "Major" Kutchinski, his high school orchestra director, in 1947 when Kutchinski returned to Brevard to play viola in the Festival Orchestra, directed by his former student. Kutchinski organized the first North Carolina All-State Orchestra in 1928 with at least one representative from each county in the state. Pfohl had been the state champion in cornet for the past three years, but one county sent a single applicant for All-State, a cornetist. Kutchinski explained, "Pfohl was terribly disappointed that he couldn't be in the orchestra, so I told him we were short on string basses. If he could learn the instrument in two weeks and play the part, I would take him to All-State." Pfohl accepted the challenge and indeed proved his capabilities by winning fourth chair out of ten. Continuing with his success on the string bass, Pfohl earned the principal bass position in the All-Southern Orchestra conducted by Joe Maddy. Maddy selected Pfohl as the single recipient of a full scholarship to Interlochen for the summer of 1929. At Interlochen Pfohl made up his mind that he would begin a music camp in the mountains of western North Carolina.
When Pfohl finished high school, he taught orchestra and band for a year in Forsyth County before entering the University of North Carolina. For two summers Pfohl served as a counselor at the Wainwright Band and Orchestra Camp located in Oliver Lake, Indiana. "I learned about the organization and administration of a music camp at Wainwright," explained Pfohl. He entered the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor where he studied organ with Palmer Christian, taught string bass to pay his tuition, and directed the choir and played organ in the First Congregational Church. He earned his bachelor of music degree in two years and married Miss Louise Nelson, an instructor of piano at Michigan. Pfohl then became director of music at Davidson College at the age of twenty-one. Three years later (1936) Pfohl began the Davidson Music School-Camp for Boys.
Approximately thirty campers and eight faculty members embarked on a program which included full band and sectional rehearsals, private lessons, recreation, and evening sessions of faculty performances and lectures. Students, attending primarily from the North Carolina area, were housed in the college dormitories and ate in the school cafeteria. Included among those early campers was future Senator Jesse Helms (tuba) from Monroe. The camp ran for six weeks, giving outdoor concerts on Sunday afternoons. Parents and families from the Davidson-Charlotte area travelled to the campus to hear the student band performances. Financial organization was simple—tuition was charged and bills paid through Davidson, with music and instruments loaned from the college's music department. The camp operated on this modest scale for seven years, but Pfohl would not be content until his camp became coeducational. The presence of the 24th College Training Detachment, Army Air Forces, on the Davidson campus also made the operation of a music camp impractical.
Pfohl became music director of Queens College in Charlotte, a Presbyterian college for women, in addition to his duties at Davidson. He discussed with Dr. Hunter Blakely, President of Queens, the possibility of moving the camp to the Charlotte campus. In 1943 the music school-camp opened at Queens with fifty girls and sixty boys in residence. Rehearsals were held outdoors with concerts given in the center of the campus. The program remained virtually identical to that of the Davidson years. Although attendance at concerts improved because of the convenient location, Pfohl quickly realized that a city was not the place for a summer camp. After one season at Queens, he began the search for the perfect setting for his "well-balanced program of outdoor recreation and instruction in music and art."
Pfohl and his wife Louise were determined to save their war-time gas rations during that final summer at Queens in order to travel to the North Carolina mountains in search of a campsite. Brevard had been in the back of Pfohl's mind for some time because of the numerous summer camps located there. After the Queens camp concluded the Pfohls drove to Brevard, staying at the Colonial Inn. Wanting to save gas, they walked to the abandoned campsite of the Transylvania Camp for Boys. Pfohl recalls, "It was a hot day walking up that last hill. When I looked inside the stone pillar gates I saw an empty lake, an old cow grazing in the field around the lake, and a few buildings. My wife and I knew immediately 'This is the spot.' We looked at no other sites."
Colonel Moore of Florence, South Carolina, owned the camp, then disbanded because of the war. He made the site available for rent with an option to buy. Even though the payments were reasonable, Pfohl had no money to pay the rent. He began to talk to friends about his project and soon organized a four-man partnership that provided enough financial resources to get the new site prepared for campers. The four men were Pfohl, Thomas S. "Cy" Morgan (from Pennsylvania), Robert Neal (of Philadelphia), and F. L. Jackson (treasurer of Davidson College). Each man put up $4,500, Pfohl borrowing his share on his life insurance. The money was primarily used to pay the rent, print brochures, and get the camp underway. The boys' cabins existed then as they do today; one was made into an infirmary. The current site of the auditorium and parking lot contained a nine-hole golf course (with sand greens). The dining hall and lodge were in place as well as a gymnasium that Pfohl converted into a concert hall. During the first season in Transylvania County the forty female campers were housed in Taylor Hall on the campus of Brevard Junior College and the sixty boys remained on the camp grounds. Dr. E. J. Coltrane, president of the college, said, "Brevard College is extremely fortunate in being able to make an arrangement whereby its facilities can be used by the Transylvania Music School-Camp. It is my opinion that this will become one of the outstanding music camps in the Southeast. Mr. Pfohl and his associates know what a good music camp is and have the ability and energy necessary to make it a success." Campers attended from North Carolina, Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Virginia.
The curriculum included two bands, an orchestra, chorus, and instruction in piano, organ, and art. A recreational and athletic program was operated by coach Norman Shepard of Davidson College. Major J. B. O'Neal, supervisor of instrumental music in Fort Pierce, Florida, was associate camp director and Dean of Boys. The faculty included the Pfohls, Merle T. Kessler (violin), Harold Casterton (woodwinds), Virginia Prunty (piano and strings), Mr. and Mrs. Earl Berg (voice, piano and organ), and Frank Crayton (woodwinds). Faculty recitals were presented every Tuesday night in the Brevard College Auditorium and outdoor concerts were held Thursday evenings on the campus lawn. Saturday night was "stunt night." A banguet followed the final concert and included student awards in sports, art, and music. The campers adopted the motto of "the Transylvania Triad: Health, Harmony, and Happiness."
The first season of the Transylvania Music School-Camp was more successful than its directors anticipated. Plans were formulated to create a corporation and to purchase Camp Transylvania from its original owner. By the end of the following winter the camp had been incorporated under the laws of North Carolina with authorized capital stock of $110,000. The officers of the company were Thomas Morgan, president; Pfohl, vice-president; Frank Jackson, treasurer; and Robert Neal, secretary.
The 1945 camp enrolled 135 boys and girls from eight states and Cuba, with a staff of twenty faculty and sixteen counselors. Twenty-two pre-fabricated cabins were brought from Florida and erected by a local crew, enabling the girls to be housed on the camp instead of Brevard College. The curriculum began to expand with concerts and recitals on Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday afternoon. The roots of the current opera workshop emerged even in these early years. The Gilbert and Sullivan operetta HMS Pinafore was presented under the direction of Earl Berg and Pfohl in the Brevard High School auditorium. The hall was filled almost to capacity and the performance was pronounced one of the most outstanding musical productions ever presented to a Brevard audience.
Henry Filmore, president of the American Bandmasters Association, visited the camp and conducted the student ensembles. His impressions of camp Transylvania foreshadowed the illustrious future that lay ahead:
This is one of the best and finest music school-camps in the nation, and I have visited and worked with all of them. The camp is ideally located and enables the students to enjoy a full program of camp life as well as excellent musical instruction of all kinds. It has a good staff, and I have been really surprised how much these young students from all over the South have learned in such a short amount of time. The camp has two good bands and a fine orchestra and chorus.- from the Transylvania Times
Pfohl's efforts to gain renown for his camp soon produced results. Transylvania Music School-Camp concerts were broadcast for five weeks over radio stations WWNC in Asheville and WBT in Charlotte. At a meeting of the Brevard Chamber of Commerce Pfohl announced his plans to hold a music festival at the conclusion of the 1946 camp session, featuring internationally renowned guest artists. President George Wheeler appointed a Transylvania Camp Committee composed of John Smith, chairman; Ed McMahon, and A. H. Harris. Among the duties of this committee were improving the road to the camp, erecting signs, and advertising the programs. McMahon declared, "This is the greatest single thing that has come to our community and its possibilities are unlimited." Approximately thirty representative citizens met on April 2, 1946, at the home of Mrs. S. A. Bullock to discuss plans for the festival. Those in attendance agreed.the ideal approach to sponsoring a festival was to organize a Festival Association. A temporary planning committee included Mrs. A. H. Kizer, chairman; Mrs. Henry N. Carrier, Mrs. Charles Newland, Mrs. Harry Bobst, Mrs. E. J. Coltrane, Mrs. Lehman Kapp, Mrs. S. A. Bullock, H. T. Casterton, and Mr. Pfohl.
Ten days later, on April 12, the Transylvania Music Festival Association was formed with Mrs. Henry N. Carrier, president; Keith Pooser, vice-president; Ralph H. Ramsey, Jr., treasurer; and Mrs. Charles Newland, secretary. A three-day festival, August 9 to 11, would be held at the conclusion of the 1946 camp season. Carrier stated, "Ours is a non-profit organization and we believe that persons from this entire mountain area will attend the festival this year and all the years to come." Pfohl proclaimed, "Talented musicians from all over the United States will provide the music for the festival. It is our ambition to make the festivals each year as famous as those in Interlochen, Michigan, and the Berkshire in Massachusetts."
In eight short years James Christian Pfohl had made his boyhood dream of a mountain music school-camp a reality. With the supportive help and confidence of family and close associates Pfohl established an educationally sound organization devoted to finding and developing the talent of youth. The support of a small southern community in establishing this unique institution was inspiring—and the best was yet to come.
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