History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 57

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed
Publication date: 1890
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & co
Number of Pages: 1034

USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I > Part 57

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Between 1825 and 1850 Cambridge became the residence of a series of men eminent in literature : Professor H. W. Longfellow, Rev. Dr. Palfrey, Pro- fessors Bowen and Lovering and the two Wymans, Rev. Dr. Walker and Rev. Convers Francis. The latter had the choicest private library in Cambridge, though surpassed in some directions by that of Thomas Dowse, now in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and at a later period by that of George Livermore. Professors Joel Parker, Simon Greenleaf and Theophilus Parsons, of the Law School, were also authors. A group of eminent foreigners also arrived here and became conuected with the university : Professors Charles Follen, Charles Beck, Francis Sales and Pietro Bachi, all authors or editors, to whom was afterwards to be added the gifted and attractive Agassiz. His name suggests that, on the scientific side also, there were men in Cambridge who gave to science a literary attraction ; Thomas Nuttall in botany and ornithology, followed later by Wilson Flagg, who wrote on similar subjects; Dr. T. W. Harris, the pioneer American entomologist,-worthily succeeded at the present day by Samnel H. Scudder,- Prof. John Frisbie and Prof. John Farrar. Cam- bridge lias also been the source of editorship of some important and influential periodicals, looking in dif- ferent directions. William Lloyd Garrison lived here for some years while editing the Liberator; Rev. Thomas Whittemore, while conducting the Trumpet, he being also president of the Cambridge Bank and representing Cambridge in the Legislature ; and Rev. Edward Abbott was founder and editor of the Literary World. There were also in Cambridge women of literary tastes and achievements. Margaret Fuller Os- soli, a native of Cambridge, was the most eminent of these; but the list includes also Mrs. John Farrar, Miss Caroline F. Orne, Miss Sarah S. Jacobs, Mrs. Elizabeth C. Agassiz, Mrs. Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Mrs. Mary A. Denison and Miss Charlotte F. Bates. Mrs. James Russell Lowell (Maria White) also wrote here some of her thoughtful and tender poems.

With the more recent expansion of the university, the list of resident authors has become almost co- extensive with the list of instructors, and a special calendar is published at intervals, giving the biblio- graphy of their work. Other former students of the university, in some of its departments, have taken up their abode here and done literary work, among whom might be named Rev. A. B. Muzzey, Christopher P. Cranch, John Fiske, Joseph Henry Allen and many others. The leader of American letters, Ralph Waldo Emerson, was himself a resident of Cambridge and taught a school here before he went to Concord, but before he became an author.

Among authors who have resided here, though without present or past connection with the univer- sity, may be named Joseph E. Worcester, W. J. Rolfe, W. D. Howells, T. B. Aldrich, H. E. Scudder, John Bartlett, Francis Wharton, Melville M. Bigelow, Rev. A. V. S. Allen, Rev. G. Z. Gray, Rev. C. H. Spaulding, Arthur Gilman, William Winter, George P. Lath- rop, Oscar Fay Adams and W. M. Griswold. Provi- sion has been made in the new Public Library building for a special collection of the works of our native and our resident authors-not including those who were simply here as students in the university-and should this plan be carried out in its fullness, it is doubtful whether Boston or New York can show a similar col- lection of greater variety or of more intrinsic value.

CHAPTER VIII.

CAMBRIDGE-(Continued).

MUSICAL.

BY WILLIAM F. APTHORP.

LIFE in university towns has a peculiar physiog- nomy, and life in Cambridge has never been quite exempt from this peculiarity. But in very few re- spects can the every-day life in Cambridge have been more singular than in its relation to Music. The musical history of Cambridge, taken as an aggregation of facts and occurrences, comes nearer to being a blank page than that of almost any town of its size and age in the country. Just what one would have expected to be the prime fostering influence to musical activity in the daily life of the place-Harvard College- worked for a long while, if indirectly, rather in the opposite direction. It seems paradoxical, at first sight, that the University, which was for many years virtually, although not officially, one of the most act- ive centres of musical life in the town, should bave, in another way, been an obstacle in the path of all larger developments in the public culture of the art, such as we find in most other towns of about the same size, and of far less intellectual and artistic im-

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portance. But this seeming paradox is seen really to be none, on closer inspection ; its reason is not hard to discover.

That Boston owes its prominent position in the lit- erary and artistic history of our country in a large measure to the proximity of Harvard University has often been said, and is no doubt quite true. For many years Harvard University represented the chief intellectual nucleus in the United States; and the wealth of Boston brought with it that opportunity and leisure which are needful to make the humanities of life seem a necessity. The research and erudition of Harvard were not slow in being mirrored in the culture of Boston. One after another were intel- lectual men drawn from various parts of the country by the brighter, more active and profounder intel- lectual life of Harvard; but many of them, especially those who did not enter into direct, officially recog- nized connection with the University-either in the capacity of teacher or student-found the more bril- liant social life and larger opportunities of Boston more attractive, while the mere three miles that separated the capital from the seat of learning presented no ob- stacle to their enjoying its refining and elevating in- fluence. Thus comparatively few men of intellectual weight-such men as form the mental leaven of a community-have been drawn actually to make Cam- bridge their place of residence, unless for the purpose of special study at the University, or to join the ranks of its professors or tutors. By far the majority preferred Boston ; Harvard was next-door, so to speak, as an ever-near inspiration and resource. Its influ- ence was to be felt, to all intents and purposes, as keenly and pervasively in Boston as in Cambridge itself. This influence of Harvard University upon Boston culture, exerted as it has been both directly and in the way of attracting men of an intellectual or artistic cast to the city, can hardly be overrated. Indeed, in so far as the art of music is concerned, it is a fact that the initiative to much of the active musical life for which Boston has long been noted, and to which she owes her recognized position as one of the chief musial centres of the country, came really from Harvard, if in a wholly unofficial way. But of this more, later on.

The point which it is important to appreciate here is, that what of influence was exerted by the Uni- versity either directly or indirectly upon the in- tellectual, artistic or even specially musical culture and organized musical activity of Boston, was so readily responded to, it bore fruit so soon and of such good quality, that Boston pretty well absorbed it all and there was little left to work efficaciously in Cam- bridge itself. If Harvard often gave the initiative, and, so to speak, sowed the seed, Boston was un- mistakably the fittest soil wherein that seed could sprout, grow and ripen. The very proximity of Boston, the ease of communication between it and Cambridge, and the exceeding activity of musical

life in the capital, in which the resident of the university town could participate at little expense or trouble, acted as an obstacle to Cambridge taking active measures to further the public or organized cultivation of music within her own precincts. What would have been the use? Boston was there, only three miles off- just over the way, as it were- with her concerts, theatres, opera and oratorios, and that was enough. There was not even a chance for local vanity to come into play as an incentive to local action-and heaven knows that Cambridge has always had her fair share of local pride; all competition with Boston in the way of musical enterprise would have been hopeless from the outset. Boston had too much the start, besides having more opportunity, more money and more leisure to attend to such things. Cambridge was wisely content to let Boston make music for her. Thus it came about that many of those incentives to musical activity and enterprise which came originally from Harvard, while they worked with often astonishing efficacy in Boston, failed, and for this very reason, to be productive of any very tangible results in Cambridge itself. Boston was inspired with enough zeal for herself and Cam- bridge too. Naturally it would be idle to claim that all the musical activity for which Boston has long heen noted arose from an impulse given by Harvard University ; but, although by no means all, it is true that no little of the musical activity in Boston can be traced in the end to such a source. Music is not the only department in which Harvard has done some- what more to improve Boston than it has to improve Cambridge.

It has seemed worth while to dwell upon this point at such length, in order to explain the otherwise astounding vacancy of the musical annals of Cam- bridge. For it needs a little explanatory preluding to lead up to a statement such as this : that a New Eng- land town, over two centuries and a half old, which has been for nearly the whole of that period the seat of the first university in the country, which has been an incorporated city for forty-four years, and now has a population of upwards of 60,000 sonls, has never had a theatre nor a music hall ! That is to say, has never had a place especially built for a theatre, nor a hall constructed for the especial purpose of having music publicly performed therein. Much as if Cambridge never had a musical society, association or organization of importance. Butit is not so bad as that, as we shall see in the sequel.

In the earlier days what little music was made was almost exclusively confined to the churches. Cambridge, like many another town, had her fair taste of the old New England psalmody. Those old psalm-tunes, harmonized in the clumsiest fashion, and often incorrectly, formed the staple of people's musi- cal diet in those times, both in and out of the church. It seems incredible now that people should ever have taken to such things for the sake of musical enjoy-

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ment, and it is highly probable that it was largely a sense of association that helped to make them palata- ble. The old tunes had become endeared to most of their votaries early in life, and often, no doubt, for quite other reasons than purely musical ones. No man can but have a certain affection through life for the tunes with which his mother used to sing him to sleep, when he was a child. Besides, people went to church in earnest then, and all that was associated with church-going appealed pleasantly to their taste and imagination. It seems as if the early taste for psalm-singing, for which New England was noted, ---. psalm-singing not only as a part of divine worship, but as a means of social musical recreation,-could only be accounted for in this way ; for, even in the earlier colonial period, intercourse with England and the Continent was easy and frequent enough to give people abundant opportunity for making the acquaint- ance of music that was not only intrinsically better, but infinitely fitter for purposes of recreation than these raw-boned and ill-harmonized old tuues. No doubt, in the beginning, Puritan severity looked con- siderably askance at all purely secular music; and a remnant of this feeling survived for a long time in greater or less vigor. But with all possible arguments in favor of the superior propriety of singing psalms over all other forms of music, a certain force of en- dearing association must have been at work to make this exercise seem not only proper and profitable, but enjoyable as well. True it is that this passion for psalm-singing, for other purposes than those of wor- ship, became deeply ingrained in the New England character ; indeed, it has not been eradicated yet. Go on a summer's Sunday evening into the parlor of almost any country hotel you please, and your ears will be pretty sure to be greeted with a braying and discordant survival of this old practice. Only what is now done of a Sunday evening was then done at any time. Tate and Brady, with the appropriate music, was for a long time what people looked to for their musical solace. Of course, during the first two decades of the present century, the less good of the old tunes had fallen into disuse, the better ones had been reharmonized, and new ones written. Secular music, too, had in a certain measure supplanted the psalm-tunes as a means of home recreation, and a higher class of church music had, little by little, made its way into the Divine service. Instrumental music, too, had for some time been cultivated by amateurs. Yet it is surprising how late it was before an organ was placed in many of the churches. There was no organ in the First Church in Cambridge until 1827-by a curious coincidence, the year of Beetho- ven's death-and it is plain enough from some re- marks in Dr. Holmes's sermon on the occasion (de- livered on September 30th) that this addition was con- sidered no little of an innovation. The learned divine said : "The introduction of an organ, instead of diminishing, should increase the number of singers

in the congregation. It is not, you will remember, intended as a substitute for the voice, but as an aid to it." He could not have been more carefully ex- planatory had a church-organ then been heard of for the first time.

As I have said, the popular musical impulse came first from the churches, in Cambridge as elsewhere in New England, and a general fondness for signing psalm-tunes was the first result. But in Cambridge, whatever attempts were made to indulge this taste in an organized way have long since been forgotten. If any private singing clubs or societies were formed, no trace of them remains; they must have had very fluc- tuating and brief existences. In Boston the Handel and Haydn Society was formed in 1815, and it is likely enough that this rendered either the formation of a similar society in Cambridge unnecessary, or its survi- val impossible.

But what general music-loving society in Cambridge apparently did not do, or else did only to little pur- pose, for itself, some of the students of the University did. On November 9, 1786, was formed the Singing Club of Harvard University, a small club of under- graduates. That the main object of the club was for its members to sing together the then current New England psalmody appears from the records of its expenditures, in which several very grim-sounding psalm-tune books are mentioned among the purchases made by the club. Of other music bought there is little mention made ; but now and then we come across small (at times incredibly small) sums of money, dis- bursed for the purchase of musical instruments. So it would seem as if the singers did not sing wholly unaccompanied. Among the original members of this curious little club we find President Kirkland, Judge Samuel Putnam, and in 1799, Leverett Salton- stall. It disbanded in May, 1803. This Singiug Club of Harvard University would hardly have been worth mention here, had it not been the immediate forerunner of another far more important organization, which came in for what legacy of music and musical instruments the older body had to bequeath. This younger organization is one of real historical impor- tance, for it has of later years had an immense, if in- directly exerted, influence upon the musical life of Boston, and by reflection, upon that of Cambridge it- self. Let not the reader, especially if he live in Cam- bridge, smile when I say that this new society was the Pierian Sodality. That the Pierians have never played very well, either in the beginning or since, may be admitted at the outset; the present writer certainly can admit it with a tolerable grace, for he was once a Pierian himself. But the salutary and far reaching influence the Pierian Sodality came in time to exert, was exerted otherwise than through its musi- cal performances.

The Sodality was projected and organized in 1808, by five young sophomores, to wit : Alpheus Bigelow, Benjamin D. Bartlett, Joseph Eaton, John Gardner

HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

and Frederick Kinloch. Its object was the practice and performance of instrumental concerted music by its members. Many distinguished names are in its lists of membership, albeit not many names of musi- cians. George B. Emerson, and Henry K. Oliver, (class of 1817) are to be noted. Later on we find the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop playing the trombone, Francis Boott, the composer, playing the flute, and John S. Dwight, the distinguished critic, playing the clarinet.

The detailed history of the Pierian Sodality be- longs more properly to the annals of Harvard Uni- versity than to those of Cambridge. But a few facts and dates may not be out of the way here. The secretary's records for the first twenty-four years of the Sodality's existence have been totally lost; it is only from the year 1832 that we can begin to follow the club's proceedings accurately. In this year the club was reduced to a single member, who, however, used to hold meetings by himself with laudable regu- larity, and duly record the same. But it is known that the Sodality's orchestra used to furnish music at the College Exhibitions and to give serenades on its own account as early as 1827. This fashion of sere- nading lasted until about 1858, when the Glee Club was formed, and open-air nocturnal performances fell more legitimately to its share. The Glee Club was founded by Josiah Bradlee, Benjamin W. Crownin- shield, John Homans and C. H. Learoyd. It gave its first public concert, in conjunction with the Pier- ians, in Lyceum Hall, March 29, 1858,-a custom which has been kept up, with but few interruptions, ever since. It probably reached its highest point of excellence between 1864 and 1866, when George L. Osgood was leading first tenor. It was he, too, by the way, who, in his capacity of class chorister, put a sudden stop, in 1866, to the time-honored custom of omitting three beats from the measure between the phrases of " Fair Harvard " in the Class Day singing. Before his Class Day, people used to wait for this curious laming of the rhythm, as for one of the regu- lar features of the day, and they were never disap- pointed.

But, to return once more to the Pierian Sodality. It has been already hinted that its historical impor- tance did not reside in its musical performances ; it is important and interesting to us here because of one of its offshoots. It was not unnatural that many of its members, on graduating from the University, should feel not only a deep interest in, but almost a sense of responsibility concerning the musical life of the community they were to begin life in. A large proportion of them were Boston men; the fact of their membership in the Pierian Sodality (that is, in a club of instrumental performers) naturally indi- cated them as ardent music-lovers, while their Uni- versity degree gave assurance that they were men of a certain liberal culture. It is just such men as these who would instinctively dive to the very heart of

musical circles in their after-college life, and more or less take the lead in promoting musical enterprise.

On July 27, 1837, a circular letter was issued by a committee of the Sodality, calling a general meeting of the honorary and immediate members (that is what would now be called the graduate and active members), to be holden in No. 6, University Hall, on Commencement Day, August 30th. This circular was signed by E. S. Dixwell, J. S. Dwight, Henry Gassett, Jr., C. C. Holmes, J. F. Tuckerman and W. T. Davis. It was proposed to unite the old members into a permanent association for the promotion of musical taste and science in the University. The meeting was attended by from thirty to forty gentle- men, J. M. Wainwright being appointed chairman, and Henry S. Mckean secretary. A report of the committee was read by John S. Dwight, and several resolutions were adopted. Among them was that the Association should meet annually on Commence- ment Day, for the pleasure of social intercourse, and for the discussion of plans for promoting the interests of music in the University. It was like- wise voted that plans be considered for introducing the study of music into the academic course, and for the formation of a musical library. At an adjourned meeting on the following Commencement Day, August 29, 1838, a constitution was adopted, and the style of General Association of Members of the Pierian Sodality of Harvard University was fixed upon. Two years later, at the fourth annual meet- ing, it was voted to sever all connection with the parent society, the Pierian Sodality, and the new title, Harvard Musical Association, was adopted.

The early years of the Association can have been neither very prosperous nor full of hope; for, at. the eighth annual meeting, holden in Lyceum Hall, August 28, 1844, it was proposed that it should dissolve. But this motion was, luckily, never carried through, and the Association, if it did little or noth- ing else, continued to meet every Commencement Day ; indeed, the very next year (1845) it was incor- porated under an act of the Legislature. On March 14, 1848, the Association held its annual meeting (the eleventh) for the first time in Boston, at "the Music Rooms of Mr. Hews, in Washington Street." Henceforth the Harvard Musical Association should be considered as belonging to Boston rather than to Cambridge ; but it still maintained its relations with the University, unofficial though they were, and every Commencement Day it had its room in or near the College Yard, where a light lunch, drink, tobacco and social chit-chat awaited the members. This custom was kept up until shortly after 1860, when it fell into disuse.

This is not the place to speak in detail of the in- fluence the Harvard Musical Association has exerted upon music in Boston. Still a few of the results of its energy may well be detailed here, for they are not uninteresting from the bearing they have had upon

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the musical life of Cambridge. Curiously enough, among the musical enterprises, the inception of which can be traced to the Harvard Musical Association, there are comparatively few in the promotion of which the Association took any official action, or, indeed, in the history of which it appears at all in its corporate capacity. But at its annual suppers it often happened that one or another member would propose a musical scheme, which would then be freely discussed, its value and the best means of carrying it out de- termined. Then such members as felt personally interested in it would unite in pushing it, although the Association, as such, would take no official part in the business. Yet it is noteworthy that hardly a piece of musical enterprise was ever mooted by a member of the Association, without its being dis- cussed quite as fully and freely at these meetings as if it had been really official business. In this way, the building of the Boston Music Hall, the purchase of the Great Organ, the introduction of music into the academic course at Harvard, even to the engagement of John K. Paine as organist and instructor in music at the University, are really quite as traceable to the influence and energy of the Harvard Musical Associ- ation as were its more avowed pieces of enterprise, such as the giving of chamber concerts and the estab- lishment of the symphony concerts, which were given in Boston for seventeen seasons, from 1866-67 to 1882-83.

What is most important to our present purpose is to note that almost all the musical enterprises, trace- able either directly or indirectly to the Harvard Mu- sical Association, were carried out in Boston ; thus the influence of the Association was mainly exerted in the direction of centralizing the best musical ex- ecutive means, and the most favorable conditions for musical performance in the State capital. And so successful were these efforts that, as has already been pointed out, little opportunity or necessity was left for Cambridge to do anything musically for herself. Had Harvard University, in the beginning, shown more disposition to look with favor upon the efforts of the Association to foster the cultivation of music within her own gates, all might have been different. All the original members of the Association were sons of Alma Mater, and very much disposed at first to work harmoniously with their Mother for the good cause of Art. But in the early forties, music was not merely ignored, but positively despised in New Eng- land, save by especially musical people ; and the Overseers and Faculty of Harvard University were by no means ahead of their time in their respect for the art. The most well-meant attempts of the young Association to induce the University officially to rec- ognize the dignity of the art of music were met with rebuff after rebuff, and it is no wonder that its mem- bers soon turned their energies to cultivating the art in a more prurient field, namely in Boston, and inde- pendent of the University. Had it been otherwise,

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History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 57

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed Publication date: 1890 Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & co Number of Pages: 1034

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed
Publication date: 1890
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & co
Number of Pages: 1034