The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. IV, Part 56

Author: Winsor, Justin, 1831-1897, ed; Jewett, C. F. (Clarence F.), publisher
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Boston : Osgood
Number of Pages: 760

USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. IV > Part 56

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1 [See the chapter on " Libraries," in the present volume. - ED.]

THE HISTORY OF MUSIC IN BOSTON. 439

(Anna Stone) of New York, Mrs. J. H. Long, Mrs. Mozart and Mrs. Hill; alto, Miss Adelaide Phillipps and Miss J. Twichell; tenor, Mr. Simpson of New York and Mr. C. R. Adams; bass, Mr. Leach and Dr. Guilmette. There were, besides, three miscellaneous orchestral and vocal concerts, with programmes of high character, including symphonies, etc., never before heard in Boston with so large and fine an orchestra. This was during the presidency of Mr. C. F. Chickering, with Mr. L. B. Barnes for the efficient adjutant and secretary. Another Festival was given, on a yet larger scale, on the fiftieth anniversary of the society, in May, 1865. It lasted a whole week, and there were nearly seven hundred singers in the chorus, and one hundred and twelve musicians in the orchestra. The choral works were: Nicolai's Festival Overture, with chorus, on Luther's Chorale, "Ein' feste Burg; " Mendelssohn's Hymn of Praise (first time) ; the Creation ; Israel in Egypt; and Elijah. The afternoon concerts presented Beethoven's Eroica and Seventh Symphony ; the great Symphony in C by Schubert; the Scotch by Mendelssohn; the overtures to Leonore, Coriolan, Midsummer Night's Dream, Bennett's Naiads, Rossini's William Tell, etc .; and Liszt's "symphonic poem," Les Preludes ; with vocal selections by the various solo singers in the oratorios, - Miss Houston, Mrs. Van Zandt, Miss Brain- erd, Mme. Frederici Himmer, Mrs. Kempton, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Cary, Herren Himmer, Hermanns; and others. The society had proved the feas- ibility of musical festivals in this country; but festivals did not become a periodical feature in its plan until our fourth and last period.

In 1861 Dr. J. B. Upham became president of the Handel and Haydn, inspiring it with the same sort of zeal and energy with which he had carried through the project of the Music Hall and Organ, and the Public School Festivals (which came to a too early end). He held the office for ten years, during all which period his efforts were ably seconded by the same secretary, Mr. Barnes, who became his successor. In 1852 Mr. Carl Bergmann, of the Germania, had succeeded Mr. Webb as conductor; and in 1854 Mr. Carl Zerrahn (of the same society) assumed the bâton, which he has since wielded with so much discretion, power, and honor to this day.

The principal additions to the repertoire in these years were: Handel's Solomon, Israel in Egypt, and St. Cecilia's Day (for the choral inauguration of the Great Organ) ; Costa's Eli ; Beethoven's Choral Symphony, and Mendelssohn's Hymn of Praise. A patriotic concert was given in April, 1861, in aid of the Government, at the outbreak of the Rebellion; and another on March 1, 1862, when the Dettingen Te Deum and the Hymn of Praise were sung in joy and gratitude for Union victories.

The Musical Education Society gave Christmas performances of the Messiah in 1852 and 1853; also selections from Handel's Joshua and Feph- thah, and from Mendelssohn's St. Paul in the spring of the latter year. In October, 1853, was formed the Mendelssohn Choral Society, under the presidency of that vigorous organizer in choral as in military matters, the late General B. F. Edmands. It gave the Messiah on the following Christ-

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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. .

mas, with Bergmann for conductor, the Germania Orchestra, and Miss Stone, Mrs. Wentworth, Miss Humphrey, Mr. S. B. Ball, and Mr. F. Meyer for the solo singers. In November, 1854, it gave the Widow of Nain by Lindpaintner; and during the remainder of its existence (through 1857) several more performances of the Messiah, and several good programmes of selections.

The orchestral concerts during this whole period were tentative and wavering, changing form and method of attack repeatedly, although they never altogether ceased. Those of the Musical Fund were continued until 1855. In November, 1854, a small occasional orchestra was made up by some of the musicians ("the cream of the Musical Fund," several of the disbanded Germania, and the Mendelssohn Quintette Club), which gave cheap afternoon concerts, combining symphony and lighter things in fair proportions. These concerts, easily given, inexpensive, very moderately re- munerative to the musicians, were kept alive through periods when all else failed. Indeed, a series of them was given every year down to the spring of 1868. In 1855 a course of six subscription concerts was arranged by . a committee of gentlemen, - Messrs. Perkins, Upham, Edward Grattan (British Consul), Dwight, and C. F. Chickering, - with Carl Zerrahn con- ducting fifty-four musicians. The programmes were as choice as the taste and means at the disposal of the committee could make them. In 1856 M. Jullien, with his famous travelling orchestra, gave brilliant and sensa- tional performances in the Boston Music Hall, exciting wonder and applause. We have already mentioned the Beethoven Statue Festival of that year. An earnest attempt was made to establish a Beethoven Concert Society with a very large orchestra, but it failed for lack of the one thousand five hundred subscribers it required. The problem of a complete and perma- nent orchestra for Boston was agitated even then; but its day had not arrived. In 1857 Mr. Zerrahn began his annual seasons of Philharmonic Concerts, keeping alive the interest in classical symphony-music, relieved by lighter or more brilliant works, and introducing not a little that was new. To him we were indebted for our best privileges in this kind, almost stead- ily until the spring of 1863. Then the nation was in the middle of the great war, and subscriptions naturally fell off. Shining bait for the more general public was held up in programmes, but with only this result, that the stanch supporters of the classical - the sole sure nucleus of any audi- ence for the highest kind of music - lost their confidence ; and the supply ceased altogether, with the exception of the little Orchestral Union after- noon concerts, or "rehearsals," and the occasional nice entertainments to which friends were invited by a little amateur orchestra, the Mozart Club, during 1860-64 and later. This club had been long in existence under other names, keeping wholly in the shade, - possibly the same Alpheus- Arethusa stream of the old Graupner " Philo-harmonic " finding its way un- derground to reappear in a new form at this time. None of these acorns grew to a great oak. There was renewed call for the "Grand Boston Or-

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THE HISTORY OF MUSIC IN BOSTON.

chestra " which should make summer of "the winter of our discontent." Conductor Zerrahn was inexhaustible in conjuring up new schemes and programmes; but the time was not yet: we must wait until the war is over! Then perhaps - ?

Meanwhile in smaller circles much was done for music. Choice spirits were the centres of such circles. That year of promise with which this period opened, with a rainbow on the cloud from the departing Swedish singer, - the year 1852, which gave us the Music Hall, and in which appeared an organ for the frank and honest utterance and interchange of opinion, for the expression of the best earnest thought and aspiration of the true friends of music, -was also happy in the abiding presence here of several artist teachers of the true stamp. One particularly, a Ger- man who had been under the immediate influence of Mendelssohn and Schumann; one of the finest instances of Leipsic culture, embodying the best traditions of that school; at home in Bach and Beethoven, in Schumann and Chopin; an eminently poetic, genial interpreter of their piano-forte compositions, - Otto Dresel, took up his abode here in the autumn of that year. By taste and temperament he shrank from publicity. He preferred to work in private and congenial circles, where alike by his performance and by his remarkable critical intelligence, seconded by rare powers of conver- sation, he soon began to exercise an influence which can hardly be over- rated. He became unprofessedly, by silent and unconscious magnetism, a teacher of teachers. All the best younger artists drew inspiration from his thought and his example. He entered with self-sacrificing earnestness, and with a vividness of insight, an intensity of will and work, into every musical movement here which he could see was really for good. In his own little concerts and recitals, which were frequent nearly every season through this period and later, he set the model of pure, interesting pro- grammes, often calling in the aid of brother artists - violinists, 'cellists, the Quintette Club, etc. - to bring out trios and quartets ; or other pianists, as once Jaell and Scharfenberg in the production for the first time here of the Triple Concertos of Sebastian Bach. Probably no other person has ever introduced among us so large and choice a repertoire of the finest works of the master composers from Bach to Chopin, and even later. He often contributed a fine rendering of a Beethoven or a Mendelssohn concerto in the orchestral concerts. He formed private vocal clubs, which met in houses, and under his severe, inspiring discipline, studied cantatas, choruses, etc. of Bach, Gluck, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Schumann, Robert Franz, and others quite unknown in America before; and these gave quickening sug- gestion to other singing-clubs which have sprung up from time to time. But one of his greatest services, a work peculiarly his own, was his intro- duction of the poetic songs of Robert Franz, of whom he has been the confidential friend and fellow-laborer, in the secret of the first conception and elaboration of these songs from the beginning, as well as of the admi- rable work which Franz has done in the completion of the Bach and Handel

VOL. IV. - 56.

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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

scores. Nowhere, even in Germany, have the songs of Franz become so widely known, so keenly appreciated, and so much in vogue in parlor and in concert room, as here, through Mr. Dresel's influence, in Boston. Very many, perhaps one half of these two or three hundred songs, have been republished here with English and German words. If this seems like post obit eulogy, it may be excused on the ground that the subject of it has for some years past, it may be feared for an indefinite period, withdrawn him- self from Boston, and is now living and teaching in Leipsic, as well as working and studying with his old friend Franz, now totally deaf, in Handel's birthplace, Halle; also on the ground that the object of this paper is to trace the influences which have brought Boston where it stands to-day in music, and that such an influence as we have just described, so quickening and far-reaching although individual, cannot be ignored.

Fortunate was it for us also that we had, already settled here for several years, one of the best interpreters of the Franz songs in the musician- like, expressive, genial singer, August Kreissmann, whose long painful ill- ness and recent death in Germany has been so seriously deplored. He was a master also in the songs and arias of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann; the leader for many years of the Orpheus singing-club of Germans, and the teacher of some of our best public singers during the time of which we speak.

There was another gentle, modest artist at the same time, strong in artistic faith and character, - the young pianist Joseph Trenkle, whose ex- ample was all in the right direction, but whose health compelled him after a few years to emigrate to San Francisco, where he was held in great esteem, and died Nov. 19, 1878. A little later, in 1856, came another young pianist, also from the Leipsic school, - Hugo Leonhard, who has done much here to inspire an interest in the works of Beethoven and the other great ones, but especially of Schumann; but, alas! as it was with Schumann, so it was finally with this enthusiastic follower; his reason was beclouded, and his too short career was closed in the autumn of 1879. In 1858 came, from New York, Julius Eichberg, an artistic violinist and a thorough musician of the Belgian School, who has been identified in many useful ways in the whole musical progress here from that time to this. Of his work, more hereafter.

These all came from Germany. In 1854 two of our own Boston aspi- rants brought home fruits of study from the Conservatorium of Leipsic. Mr. J. C. D. Parker was the first son of Harvard to forsake a dry profession (the Law) and follow the ruling passion of his life, devoting it profession- . ally to the " higher law" of music. He at once became quietly but stead- ily active as pianist, organist, composer, teacher, and director of a vocal club. His taste and influence have been wholly classical and most uncom- promising. He has given trio concerts, played in the best symphony and chamber courses, and has been and is a valued though a quiet member in the councils of the most important movements. His vocal club (the Parker

THE HISTORY OF MUSIC IN BOSTON. . 443

Club) of amateurs, mixed voices, formed in 1862, for many years gave interesting concerts to invited audiences in the old Chickering Hall, and was the means of introducing numerous important works (though only with piano-forte accompaniment), among others the Comala of Gade, the Walpurgis Night of Mendelssohn, the Flight into Egypt of Berlioz, Schu- mann's Paradise and the Peri and Pilgrimage of the Rose, etc., besides many choice part-songs, some of the favorites being of Mr. Parker's own composition. The other young Bostonian who came back that year was the pianist William Mason (son of. Dr. Lowell Mason), who after a few seasons settled in New York, where he ranks among the foremost teachers and pianists. Another young pianist and organist, who had removed here from Salem shortly before this, Mr. B. J. Lang, was beginning to make his mark in concert rooms, and giving promise of the prominent position he - has since attained. In 1861 the young organist John K. Paine, now the honored Musical Professor at Harvard, returned from his severe and patient studies in Berlin, equipped at all points in the armor of complete musician- ship, as he has since proved by his numerous compositions in the least and largest forms. At that time he was our chief exponent, practically, of the great organ music of Bach, and of Thiele, Ritter, and the other more im- portant recent German writers for the organ, not neglecting Mendelssohn. Of native singers it is enough to name Miss Adelaide Phillipps and Mr. Charles R. Adams, both of whom have had careers abroad, the latter having held-the position of principal tenor in the Imperial Opera at Vienna for nine years.

All these have been more or less important factors in the movement which has tended to make Boston musical. Among the transient stars that shed light upon us in this period were the pianists Alfred Jaell (1851-54), Scharfenberg of New York, Gottschalk (1853), Robert Heller (1854), Satter (1855 and later), and Thalberg (1857); the organist G. W. Mor- gan of New York (1856) ; the violinists, Ole Bull (second visit, 1853), the young Paul Julien and Camilla Urso (about 1852); and of singers, Mme. Alboni and Mme. Sontag (1852), Mme. Lagrange (1855), Mme. Johannsen (1857), and Carl Formes (1858). More names will occur in connection with the opera.

Chamber-concerts, in various forms, kept up a certain interest through all this period ; those given by the pianists being sometimes of the highest interest. The Mendelssohn Quintette Club persevered in its good work, adding, among other things, to the rich repertoire already summarized several of the latest (posthumous) quartets of Beethoven. Its season of 1864-65, however, its sixteenth venture, was doubtfully and tardily deter- mined on. In 1856 and 1857 the German Trio (Messrs. Gärtner, Hause, and Jungnickel) gave programmes, mostly classical, for piano, violin, and 'cello. In 1857 Thalberg was delighting refined audiences at Chickering's. In 1859 Messrs. Eichberg and Leonhard gave choice concerts of violin and piano music at the Meionaon; and in 1861 the same artists associated with them

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the singer Mr. Kreissmann. Mr. Dresel's masterly and subtile illustra- tions of the true piano-forte poets were a continual attraction. In the - season of 1864-65 he gave two series, one of five and one of eight concerts, playing the two triple concertos of Bach with his confrères Parker, Lang, and Leonhard, Mr. Kreissmann contributing fresh flowers of song by Schu- bert, Schumann, Franz, and others.

Flying visits of the opera, Italian and even German, were seldom long to wait for. Even the war created here, as war has elsewhere done in other anxious, gloomy crises, a thirst for this intoxicating innocent diversion in " the times that tried men's souls." We were never for a whole year with- out the opera in some shape. In the spring of 1853 we had both the Alboni and the Sontag party at the Howard Athenaeum. The "year of promise " brought these also. In September, 1854, the large and sumptuous new Bos- ton Theatre, one of the noblest in the world, was opened, - a second waif from the same tidal wave of musical enthusiasm which gave us the great Music Hall two years before. Then came Louisa Pyne, with Harrison, the younger Reeves, and others, bringing operas in English,-Crown Diamonds, Fra Diavolo, the old Beggar's Opera, etc. The carly weeks of 1855 are me- morable for the eagerly thronged performances of that famous lyric.couple, Grisi and Mario, with Badiali and Susini; who, besides the usual run of well worn Italian pieces, gave us Don Giovanni (with our own Lorini-Whiting for Zerlina), and such a con amore, thoroughly delightful rendering of the immortal Barber, before a mere handful of an afternoon audience, as one may hardly hope to see and hear again. In May of that year came Mar- etzek, with Mme. Steffanone, Mme. Bertucca-Maretzek, Mlle. Vestvali, and Signors Badiali, Brignoli, etc., bringing us Rossini's Tell for once, - also the first inoculation of the Rigoletto-Trovatore-Traviata epidemic. In June, Mme. Lagrange appeared in Norma ; and again in January, 1856, with Nantier-Didiée, Elise Hensler, Salviani, Morelli, etc., she brought out Don Giovanni, Semiramide, and, for the first time, Meyerbeer's Prophéte. The same parties came once or twice more that year. From this point troupes and singers multiply so fast as to crowd each other out of the brief hasty record. The most important works first introduced here by one or the other of these parties were the Huguenots, Marriage of Figaro, Magic Flute, Der Freyschütz, Martha, and Gounod's Faust.

More significant, more suggestive of a future, because tending in the same direction with all our elevating experiences of great choral and orchestral music, was our beginning of acquaintance with the one opera of Beethoven, Fidelio. Rude and inadequate as was its first presentation (April, 1857) through the artistic but impatient zeal of Carl Bergmann, who had little to rely upon for its success besides the nobly dramatic, thrill- ing impersonation of the heroic wife by Mme. Johannsen, yet it was an event in the musical life of Boston. The intrinsic depth and beauty of the music made itself felt by those, at least, who meet the intention of a composer half-way when it is only half brought out; and when it came again in

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THE HISTORY OF MUSIC IN BOSTON.

May and in October, 1864, in the German Opera seasons of Anschütz and of Grover, each with a company much more complete, although composed essentially of the same singers (Johannsen, Frederici, Canissa, Himmer, Habelmann, Hermanns, Formes, etc.), it got a lasting hold upon the sym- pathies of all true music lovers. These companies, besides Fidelio, gave Don Juan, Zauberflöte, Freyschütz, The Huguenots, Robert le Diable, Die Weisse Dame, Faust, Die Fidinn, Nicolai's Lustige Weiber, Flotow's Stra- della, and parts of Wagner's Tannhäuser and Gounod's Mireille. But the promise ended there, the happy combination was soon scattered to the winds. Even so it has been with all experiences of opera, exotic charmer, here and in all this country, with the exception of the French Opera in New Orleans. Nowhere has it taken root and grown into a self-supporting institution; and therefore even the few words here spent upon it might have been spared in view of the little it has contributed to real prog- ress here in musical taste and culture, to say nothing of original produc- tion. Yet it has not been without its influence, as we have said before. It has introduced a great variety of more or less beautiful and genial arias, scenas, and concerted vocal pieces into the common currency of concert room and parlor, and made glad the (re)publishers. It has given us shining models of good singing, and sharpened the critical perception of the listen- ers. It has kept alive a certain musical enthusiasm at times when most ears and souls were dull to any other music; and it has kept from dying out the dream, the hope of a " good time coming," when we shall have opera, true opera, as an established national and local institution, even should it have to be indigenous and native to the soil. Then it will mean something here, and will fulfil its meaning, building up its rightful, glorious side of the com- plete living temple of an undying art-religion here and in other centres of this great Republic.

FOURTH PERIOD, 1865-81. - The war is over! There is now time to think again of music. And the first problem which presents itself is that of the Orchestra. Are we to have any symphonies? The little Orchestral Union was all that we had left, and that did not furnish what the old Academy, the Fund, the Germania, and Mr. Zerrahn's Philharmonics had accustomed us to look to as the best part of our musical birthright. A new hope dawned, and in a quarter not professional. At one of the annual dinners of the Harvard Musical Association (January, 1865) the matter was discussed, and it was agreed to give six symphony concerts in the winter of 1866-67, to be entirely under the control of a committee of its members, who should select the conductor and the orchestra, procure a guarantee subscription, and arrange the programmes. The orchestral means of Boston, to be sure, were limited. To make the most of such means as there were, and to employ them in the gratification and improvement of the taste for ivhat is best, - the master-works in symphony, concerto, overture, etc, -this was the design and only motive; this would delight and educate

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good music lovers, and at the same time give our drudging, multifariously preoccupied musicians some chance and encouragement to work together now and then as artists in the nobler spirit of their art. The first step in the working-plan was to bespeak for them the best kind of audience, its nucleus to be members of the Association and their friends, who were sup- posed to have social influence enough, besides the musical attraction, to insure a well-filled hall. The strength of the enterprise lay in these guar- antees : 1. Disinterestedness : it was not a money-making speculation; it had no motive but good music and the hope of doing a good thing for art in Boston; - in that, it took up the tradition of the old Academy. 2. The guarantee of the nucleus of fit audience, - persons of taste and culture, subscribing beforehand to make the concerts financially safe, and likely to increase the number by the attraction of their own example. 3. Pure pro- grammes, above all need of catering to low tastes; here should be at least one set of concerts in which we might hear only composers of unques- tioned excellence, and into which should enter nothing vulgar, coarse, " sensational," but only such as outlives fashion. 4. The guarantee to the musicians both of a better kind of work and somewhat better pay than they were wont to find. It was hoped that the experiment would " pave the way to a permanent organization of orchestral concerts, whose periodical recur- rence and high, uncompromising character might be always counted on in Boston." It was in fact a plan whereby the real lovers of good music should take the initiative in such concerts and control them, keeping the pro- grammes up to a higher standard than they are likely to conform to in the hands of those who give concerts only to make money.

There was an orchestra of fifty musicians, and Mr. Carl Zerrahn was appointed to the conductorship, which he has honorably held to this day. The first season was a marked success; a new interest was awakened, -so much so that the number of concerts was increased to eight the second year, and afterward to ten. For six or eight years the audience steadily in- creased,-more than one season yielding a surplus of several thousand dollars. This was set aside, partly for the purchase of music, but mainly as a concert fund, which has made good all losses since the public patronage began to fall off; so that in fact for sixteen years these concerts have been self-sup- porting, and will still go on. In ten seasons (1865-75) the Association had given just one hundred concerts, including several benefits.1 In the tenth

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The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. IV, Part 56

Author: Winsor, Justin, 1831-1897, ed; Jewett, C. F. (Clarence F.), publisher Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Boston : Osgood Number of Pages: 760

Author: Winsor, Justin, 1831-1897, ed; Jewett, C. F. (Clarence F.), publisher
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Boston : Osgood
Number of Pages: 760