New book by founder of Gretna Music celebrates 50 years of music excellence

Gretna Music has welcomed local, regional, national, and international musicians to the stage of its open-air pavilion surrounded by Mount Gretna’s wooded land and vibrant arts scene, and a new book by the founder of Gretna Music welcomes readers into the evolution of the music organization over the past half-century.

Carl Ellenberger, physician, musician, and founder of the music organization originally called Music at Gretna, and Suzanne Stewart, executive director of the music organization temporarily called Music at/from Gretna with the preposition based on the performance venue, spoke with LebTown about Mozart in the Woods: Gretna Music’s 50 Years.

“Carl Ellenberger founded it, but it’s really been fabulous board members and staff and volunteers that have kept it going throughout the 50 years — all staying true to the mission of what Carl started,” Stewart said. “Carl wanted to bring in excellent musicians to perform, and we’ve never strayed from that.”

Read More: New book ‘Mozart in the Woods’ chronicles history of Gretna Music

Ellenberger was inspired by his unique perspective as the founder of the music organization that was preparing to celebrate its 50th anniversary, and he decided to write a book about Gretna Music that is part history and part memoir.

“I wanted to document all of the many different reasons that a small classical and jazz music festival lasted for so long in our rapidly changing culture in an unknown tiny little place that almost went out of existence during the Depression and the World Wars,” in comparison to the booming Hershey area, he said.

Ellenberger embarked on the writing process in 2023 and completed a draft of the book in the fall of 2024. The 208-page book was published by Outskirts Press on April 25, 2025, and can be purchased at Gretna Music on concert days or shipped to your residence.

“The way that I do these kinds of things are not in an organized fashion. I write a little here and a little there. And then I go back, and I rewrite,” Ellenberger said. He said he rewrote Mozart in the Woods dozens of times and still feels, when he opens the book, that he could have written it differently.

“That’s sort of like one of my predecessors, Oliver Sacks, who wrote medical narrative history. They had to tear the manuscript out of his hand to take it to the press because he would never stop revising it,” he added.

While the writing process behind the book was a solo endeavor, Ellenberger mentions up to a thousand people who were involved with Gretna Music within the book.

“Starting with my very first wife, who actually just passed away. … She and I were one of the first two musicians to move into Mount Gretna, and people heard the sounds of the flutes and pianos from our cottage, and they said, ‘Hey, maybe you could play a concert for the whole community.’ And that’s how it really got started,” Ellenberger said.

Over the past half-century, Gretna Music has invited more than 2,100 musicians to its stage, including more than 50 Grammy winners and at least one musician from every continent except Antarctica, with the support of about 120 board members, dozens of staff members, and countless interns and volunteers.

Not only have the musicians on the stage of Gretna Music changed over the years, but also the stage itself, with the rebuilding of the Mount Gretna Playhouse by the summer of 1995 in response to its roof collapsing the previous winter.

“Among all of the outdoor and indoor places that I’ve heard music, which are one in the hundreds, the Gretna Playhouse is one of the best,” Ellenberger said. “You can hear and see from every one of the 700 seats. The acoustics are really good, sometimes interrupted by birds and dogs and motorbikes. But otherwise it’s a very comfortable setting.”

Amidst these changes over the past half-century, Gretna Music’s standards have stayed the same. The music organization does not host rock ‘n’ roll, country, or tribute performances but rather mostly focuses on classical, jazz, and chamber performances.

“We don’t choose musicians with the intent of filling up the seats, saying, ‘When are we going to bring the most, sell the most tickets?’ … We have a lot of people who have professional careers as music teachers or musicians or have listened to music all their lives. We know the whole universe of good music, and we say that one of the things we can do is to bring the best of these musicians to our little place in the county and show the people that come what good music can be,” Ellenberger said.

“We’d like to say that our artists and our audience members are intellectually curious. So, we’re not just presenting the same old, same old Beethoven, Bach, and Brahms,” Stewart said. “A good example is the concert on Sunday was with Telegraph Quartet. And the first half was Rebecca Clarke, who … had to pretend she was a man and use a man’s name when she was a composer during her lifetime, and it wasn’t until some scholars really looked into it that they uncovered her work. So, there’s groups out there now playing under Rebecca Clarke’s name for the first time.”

Telegraph Quartet’s performance also featured music by living composer Kenji Bunch as well as Beethoven. “There’s such a vast amount of excellent music out there that we try to expand people’s opportunities to hear really interesting music that otherwise they wouldn’t hear or even know about,” Stewart added.

Gretna Music has also made an effort to make its performances more accessible. From its first season through the early 2000s, according to Stewart, Gretna Music offered youth ages 18 and under tickets for $1.

Nowadays, that ticket price does not even cover the processing fees behind it, so Gretna Music now offers youth 18 and under tickets for $5. But the music organization also offers an adult who brings a youth 18 and under their ticket for $5 as well, so the pair can watch a performance for $10.

In addition, Gretna Music now offers half-price tickets for adults between the ages of 19 and 30, a 10% discount for military members, special pricing for staff, faculty, and students from local schools and colleges, and a pay-what-you-will option for every concert so you can still watch the performance even if you can not afford the lowest ticket price.

Through its focus on the quality of its performances and the accessibility of those performances, Gretna Music introduced many Lebanon Countians to music ensembles, genres, and styles that they either were not familiar with or were not familiar with them being performed at that level.

“They came out to not only sit in the audience, but they said, ‘How can we help?’ They volunteered and contributed funds and told their friends,” Ellenberger said. “We built a small but dedicated community of people who wanted to make sure the thing would sustain.”

During the 2024 season, Gretna Music sold tickets to 750 new households and offered free tickets to more than 650 community members, showcasing the music organization’s commitment to making its performances more accessible.

Learn more about Gretna Music and the music organization’s 50th season happening now through Saturday, Sept. 13, at gretnamusic.org.