Early Indianapolis
A verse from Riley’s “Tale of the Airly Days” has pervaded my mind since this topic was assigned me, and, with an insistence which would not be denied has suggested the manner in which I should treat the opening number of the Indianapolis Symphony.
My Allegro is not necessarily a sprightly movement, with gay and merry touches, although these qualities are not lacking; but it is rather the beginning of the composition as well as a harmony of mingled sounds, a concert of voices—the voices of the past.
And so my heart warms towards Riley and his verse when he begs for “plane facts, plane words of the good old fashioned ways—
Don’t tech ’em up like the poets does
Tel theyr all too fine for use.
Tell me a tale of the timber lands
Of the old time pioneers. * * *
Tell of the old log house—about
The loft and the puncheon flore—
The old fi-er-place, with the crane swung out,
And the latch string through the door.”
In thinking of the earliest days one pictures the legislature and Jonathan Jennings, first governor of Indiana, consulting with the Commissioners appointed “to locate and lay out a permanent capital for the State.” It is a matter of history that they decided on the site at the point where Fall Creek flows
