August Schmehl

August Schmehl and Harry A. Yerkes were featured on the only xylophone and bells solos made by the Indestructible Company in 1909 and 1910, when Schmehl recorded four bells solos and six xylophone solos. The Columbia Gramaphone Company distributed the two-minute celluloid cylinders made by the Indestructible Company between 1908 and 1912. 

We are offered evidence of the range of Schmehl’s professional career by his appearance in a personnel list for the Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York Orchestra on January 8, 1929. In the program for a performance conducted by Willem Mehgelberg at the National Theatre in Washington DC, Schmehl is included along with four other members of the “Battery” in the orchestra’s percussion section led by S. Goodman, Timpani. The program that afternoon included Johann Christian Bach’s Sinfonia in B-flat Major, Mozart’s Symphony in E flat (K. 543), and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. We know from a Washington Post newspaper clipping buried in the program pages that the concert was attended by Mrs. Calvin Coolidge and Mrs. Herbert Hoover.

This information is taken from William Cahn, The Xylophone in Acoustic Recordings (1877 to 1929). Bloomfield, NY: Cahn Publishing, 1996. The orchestra program comes from the Gerhardt Collection.