Ernest Schelling

To the general public Ernest Schelling was known as a brilliant professional pianist, an orchestral leader of experience and a composer of concert music of high merit. He was known also to a host of people as a loyal, sympathetic, generous friend, and a delightful companion with an innate gayety and a boyish sense of fun. By thousands of young people whom he had instructed and entertained at his orchestral concerts for children, he was admired and loved as “Uncle Ernest.” His professional career had taken him to practically all the principal music centers of Europe and America and everywhere he won the affection and respect of all with whom he came in contact, from grand dukes to Pullman porters.

Schelling’s somewhat exotic, possibly Oriental, appearance suggested a foreign origin, but his father, though Swiss by birth and a descendant of Friedrich Mesmer, the Austrian mystic, became an American citizen long before Ernest was born in 1876 in Belvedere [Belvidere], New Jersey. Next to his own country, Schelling loved best Switzerland, where about thirty years ago he and his wife bought “Garengo,” a beautiful estate overlooking Lake Geneva, near Nyon. There they spent their summers, entertaining generously and making their home a kind of cosmopolitan artistic center. It was in Switzerland, too, in Berne, that Schelling did important service during the Great War as an officer in the Intelligence Department of the A.E.F.

Paderewski, the Polish pianist and patriot, has spoken recently of Schelling as his “dearest friend,” an expression of feeling that may be taken literally. Their friendship dated back more than forty years, to the time when, as a boy, Schelling went to Switzerland to study with Paderewski and became at once an intimate member of the Polish household. In later years, when the Schellings established their summer home only a few miles from Paderewski’s, the two households were in constant and happy intercourse.

Schelling was too often absent from New York and too busy even when he was here to visit the Century frequently, but he took real pride in his membership, was devoted to the interests of the club and was present at a meeting of the Committee on Admissions a few days only before his death. He gave lavishly of his time and skill whenever a concert at the club called. Centurions will not soon forget his tall and distinguished person—the face of a mystic, the incredibly expressive hands, gentle yet strong, that summed up his whole being, sensitive, kindly, dedicated to beauty.

Geoffrey Parsons
1939 Century Memorials