Arthur Fiedler Stamp

**This Arthur Fiedler stamp is a part of the Legends of American Music series. Make sure to check out my hub page dedicated to this long-running and important project of the United States Postal Service.

Regular readers of this blog know that I have mixed feelings about the Legends of American Music series. This huge multi-year stamp project by the United States features more than seventy musicians across musical styles. The stamps are in genre sets and this is where the problems begin. Some of the sets, like jazz, are rather large and musically and generationally diverse. Others, namely country & western, are small and limiting. The U.S. rule disallowing living people from appearing on stamps left out important musicians, which really weakened sets like the one for rock & roll.

Perhaps more problematic are the stamps featuring classical musicians. There are several sets: opera singers, composers & conductors, film composers. For the most part, many of these musicians are just not as important or influential as the pop musician stamps, nor of European classical musicians who appear on many stamps. The sets are uneven, and feature a number of non-American born musicians.

The composer & conductor set, for example, is strange because it leaves out Leonard Bernstein, perhaps the best known American conductor. It includes Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy, neither of whom was born in the United States. It just does not make much sense. However, one highlight among the set is the inclusion of the important Boston-born Arthur Fiedler whose career with the Boston Pops Orchestras was legendary.

Arthur Fiedler

Arthur Fiedler was born to Austrian Jewish immigrants in Boston in 1894. His father was a violinist in the Boston Symphony Orchestra and his mother was an accomplished piano. In 1910, the family moved to Vienna and from there to Berlin where Arthur studied violin at the Hochschule für Musik Berlin. Fiedler went back to Boston in 1915 and was soon in the Boston Symphony Orchestra playing violin. In addition, Fiedler played piano, organ, and percussion, picking up extra gigs to support himself as a musician.

In 1924, Fiedler formed a chamber orchestra made up of other members of the Boston Symphony, which he called the Boston Sinfonietta. He conducted this group in a series of free outdoor concerts for the public. They became very popular and led, in 1930, to his appointment as the eighteenth conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra. While this position was typically held by a junior conductor who stayed for a short time, Fiedler turned it into a prestigious post and held the position for fifty years.

Musical Career

Under his direction, the Boston Pops became one of the most famous orchestras in the United States. During his tenure, the orchestra was the most recorded in the world. His programming included everything from light classical music, to the first full recording of Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin, to Broadway songs, and arrangements of Beatles music. He was also the first to program excerpts from a film score, performing pieces from Dmitri Tiomkin’s score for Duel in the Sun in 1946. His outdoor concerts with the Pops Orchestra at the Hatch Memorial Shell were often nationally televised, making him a national and international celebrity.

Even as he was at the Boston Pops, he held other positions, such as conducting the San Francisco Pops Orchestra for twenty-six years. He was also a popular guest conductor in orchestras around the world. Among his most famous, was conducting the national broadcast celebrating the opening of Walt Disney World in 1972. His fiftieth season with the Boston Pops began on May 1st, 1979. He died two months later on July 10.

The Stamp

The Arthur Fiedler stamp was a part of eight stamps feature classical composers and conductors. The stamps were first available on September 12, 1997. The designs for these stamps were by Burton Silverman and by and large, they are better than other stamps in the Legends series. Many of the stamps in other sets are cartoonish, whereas the classical composers and conductors are more traditional portraits. This stamp features a portrait of the composer with his baton held high as if in the middle of leading an orchestral performance.

Fred Collins Cachet

I also have a beautiful hand-decorated cachet with a first day of issue cancellation. The overall image is drawn in ink, then watercolors are hand-painted to complete the work. On this envelope, Fiedler stands on the left, his body facing right with his arms outstretched, holding a baton in his right hand. Again, he looks as if he might be conducting. His head turns to his right, facing out towards the viewer. Behind him is a cityscape of Fiedler’s beloved Boston, specifically showing the outdoor concert venue, the Hatch Memorial Shell, where Fiedler famously conducted the Boston Pops.

Fred Collins began making hand decorated cachets in 1978 and is well known throughout the philatelic community for his specialized pieces. He makes a new design for each U.S. stamp issue and limits the run of his designs to a few hundred. You can see more of his work on his website.

Of course, you should check out some of Fiedler’s performances. Here is a 1978 national broadcast of a July Fourth concert. Enjoy!