USA > New York > Monroe County > Rochester > Rochester and Monroe County: A history and guide > Part 7
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Rochester labor unions are more representative of skilled than of unskilled labor, but they have wielded an effective bargaining power for the benefit of labor generally. In 1934 the Rochester directory listed 72 labor organizations, most of them skilled craft unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. Among the stronger labor bodies are the printing trades, which have always maintained a high wage scale and high standards of working conditions.
Rochester, however, has always been known as an open shop town. Its leading industrial firms have as a rule opposed collective bargaining, though there has been no discrimination against union men.
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MUSIC
A s a result of the establishment of the Eastman School of Music and the activities of the Civic Music Asso- ciation, Rochester has in recent years acquired wide renown as a music center. But the performance and appre- ciation of good music has been a tradition in Rochester as old as the city itself.
The band was a popular form of ensemble in the early days because it was so well adapted to the limited talents of amateur musicians. In 1817 in the village of Rochester- ยท ville a village band was organized under the leadership of Preston Smith, whose clarinet is now the possession of the Rochester Historical Society. Adams's Brass Band was organized in 1841. Members of this band later formed other units, one of which became the well-known Fifty-Fourth Regiment Band.
Many concerts of secular music were given in the early churches of Rochester. In 1825 a church concert by the Rochester Band included in its program of 26 numbers the DeWitt Clinton Erie Canal March and Hail to the Chief. The first church organ was installed in St. Luke's Church in 1825; the second in St. Paul's Church-now the Strand Theatre Building-soon afterward.
In 1835, the year after Rochester became a city, the Roch- ester Academy of Sacred Music was organized; then came the Mechanics' Musical Association. In the Rochester
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City Garden, which was opened on the south side of Main Street near the present site of the McCurdy department store, fireworks and refreshments were mixed with music.
After 1830, when Germans began to settle in Rochester in large numbers, came the period of the organization of German singing societies. In 1847 the Turnverein built the Turnhalle, which was in time superseded by Germania Hall. The Maennerchor, the longest enduring of all these societies, was started in 1854.
Ole Bull, the Norwegian violinist, first came to Roch- ester in 1844; eight years later he returned with Adelina Patti, then nine years old. In 1845 Christy's Minstrels in- vaded Rochester and began the era of minstrelsy in the city. In 1848 Theodore Thomas was brought here, and in later years returned many times as America's leading orchestral conductor. Anna Bishop, who appeared here in 1851, was the first prima donna to visit Rochester. Two weeks later, on the evenings of July 22 and 24, Jenny Lind sang in Cor- inthian Hall (Old Corinthian, Rochester's most famous amusement place in the pre-Civil War period); tickets for the second evening were sold at auction to the highest bidders; the overflow crowded nearby streets.
Henry Appy came here for the first time in 1852 as a violinist with Madame Emma Bostwick. An enterprising choral organization, the Harmonic, gave the city its first presentations of the great oratorios, Handel's Messiah, Haydn's Creation, and Mendelssohn's Hymn of Praise. The Germania, a New York orchestra, attracted to Rochester in 1854 by the German societies, gave the city its first con- cert by a professional orchestra. The Rochester Musical Union, organized in 1855 with John H. Kalbfleisch as its leading spirit, held its rehearsals in the old city hall.
In a building donated by the Rochester Savings Bank for use by musical organizations, a chorus, known as
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the Rochester Academy of Music, was formed. Henry Appy was called to the city to direct this chorus and to assist in the development of orchestral music. In 1865 John H. Kalbfleisch and William Rebasz formed an or- chestra, which they called the Rochester Philharmonic Society, with Mr. Appy as conductor. For more than 10 years this amateur orchestra of about 50 members gave concerts in Corinthian Hall. More important, it provided early training for Herman and Theodore Dossenbach and Ludwig Schenck, the next generation of leaders in Roch- ester's musical life.
Theodore Thomas brought his orchestra for a perform- ance here in 1869; and from that time until 1892 he visited Rochester every year with few exceptions. Meanwhile all the great musical artists of the day included Rochester on their tours-Christina Nilsson, Annie Louise Cary, Vieux- temps, the violinist, Brignoli, the tenor, and Wieniawski, the violinist and composer who came with Rubenstein.
A performance of Pinafore in 1879 led to the formation of the local Opera Club, which through a long period of years produced all of the important light operas.
Two choral societies of significance were formed in the eighties: the Mendelssohn Vocal Society with Herve D. Wilkins, one of Rochester's leading organists, as conductor, and the Euterpe Club, a singing society under the direction of Henry Greiner, which met in the homes of members. These two groups soon began to combine for concert pur- poses, and eventually united to form the Tuesday Musicale, the acknowledged leader in the development of musical interest in Rochester prior to the founding of the Eastman School and the organizaton of the Rochester Civic Music Association. For 20 years it brought to Rochester individual artists, chamber music ensembles, and symphonic orchestras.
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Detail of Grand Corridor-Eastman School of Music
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In 1882 the Rochester Oratorio Society was organized with Henry Greiner as director. In the same year Rochester held its first music festival with 400 voices. Later the Tues- day Musicale Chorus became the Rochester Festival Chorus under the direction of George Barlow Penny. In recent years music festivals have been frequently held. The annual Com- munity Music Festivals, begun in 1928, were sponsored by the Council for Better Citizenship of the Rochester Chamber of Commerce.
In 1900 the Dossenbach Orchestra, Herman Dossenbach conductor, gave its first concert. Renamed the Rochester Orchestra, for 15 years it gave the city music of a high standard. The Rochester Symphony Orchestra was organ- ized in 1901 with Ludwig Schenck as conductor. After several years of professional public concerts supplementing the work of the Rochester Orchestra, it retired from the professional field and gave free public concerts in the high schools, in the auditoriums, and in Convention Hall.
In 1913 Herman Dossenbach, Alf Klingenberg, and Oscar Gareissen established the Dossenbach-Klingenberg-Gareis- sen Institute, later known as the Institute of Musical Art, which George Eastman purchased from Mr. Klingenberg to serve as the nucleus for the Eastman School of Music. The present era of musical progress in the city of Rochester dates from the opening of the Eastman School of Music in 1922.
THE ROCHESTER CIVIC MUSIC ASSOCIATION
The Rochester Civic Music Association was formed to provide the people of Rochester and vicinity with a varied and comprehensive program of community musical enter- tainment. It is supported by more than 7,000 contributors and at present sponsors nine separate projects, which it lists as follows: the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, the Rochester Civic Orchestra, the Great Artists' Concerts,
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Community Operas, Educational Artists' Concerts, the Metropolitan Opera, Children's Plays, Radio Concerts, and Community Events.
The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra completed its fourteenth season in June 1937. During its first eight seasons it was conducted by Albert Coates and by Eugene Goosens. From 1931 to 1935 distinguished guest conductors were invited. In the fall of 1936 Jose Iturbi became permanent resident conductor. He conducts about ten of the concerts each season.
Using this orchestra as his chief medium of expression, Dr. Howard Hanson, in the American Composer's Concert Series which he instituted, has given nearly 50 concerts devoted entirely to the works of American composers. No project comparable to the American Composer's Series exists elsewhere in the country.
The Rochester Civic Orchestra, under the direction of Guy Fraser Harrison, is composed of some 50 players who are also members of the Philharmonic. For 30 weeks in each year it gives educational concerts for school children, which are broadcast by WHAM. On 21 Sunday evenings it gives a series of concerts in the Eastman Theater, with a nominal admission charge of 25 cents.
The Great Artists' concerts of the Eastman Theater, sponsored by the Civic Music Association, bring to the city the finest musical artists of the world. The Association also presents grand operas with local choruses supporting guest singers in the leading roles, and each spring brings the Metropolitan Opera Company to the city for one perform- ance on the stage of the Eastman Theater.
ROCHESTER COMPOSERS
The best known of the Rochester composers is Howard Hanson, director of the Eastman School of Music, who
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has attained first rank with such works as The Lament of Beowulf, The Romantic Symphony, Nordic Symphony, Pan and the Priest, and the recent Drum Taps, inspired by Walt Whitman's poem and written for orchestra and chorus with a baritone solo. His opera Merry Mount was given its pre- miere by the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York .
In 1932 Herbert Inch was awarded the Prix de Rome by the jury of the American Academy in Rome. His two works in the orchestral field-the Set of Variations for large or- chestra and the Suite for small orchestra-are characteristic. Also worthy of mention among his other works in minor form are a string quartette and a piano quintette. Roch- ester recipients of the Prix de Rome since 1932 are Hunter Johnson, 1933; Kent Kennan, 1936; and Frederick Wolt- mann, 1937.
Edward Royce, leader of the composition department of the Eastman School of Music since 1925, has composed two symphonic poems, The Fire Bringers and Far Ocean. His best known works-Two Sets of Piano Pieces and the Variations in A Minor-are written for the piano. One of his later works is Variations for Organ.
Bernard Rogers is largely known for his orchestral com- positions. To the Fallen, first played by the New York Phil- harmonic orchestra, and Prelude to Hamlet are symphonic poems. Adonais, a symphony; The Raising of Lazarus, for chorus and orchestra; The Marriage of Aude, an opera; and Exodus, a choral work based on the Old Testament, are all well known. Early in 1936 the New York Philharmonic pro- duced Mr. Rogers's Once Upon a Time Suite, which received its first public performance two years before in one of Dr. Hanson's American Composer's Series concerts.
Paul White, assistant conductor of the Civic Orchestra and one of the faculty of the Eastman School of Music, is attracting increasing attention as a composer of merit and
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distinction. His Five Miniatures, for the piano, are often included in musical programs in Rochester and other cities. Perhaps the best known works of Mr. White are The Voyage of the Mayflower, the String Quintette, and Symphony in E Minor.
Burrill Phillips has composed Ballet, Princess and the Puppet; Symphony Concertante; and Selections from McGuffy's Readers.
Gardner Read is known for his characteristic Sketches of a City (Chicago, Cincinnati, etc.) and the Four Nocturnes for Voice and Orchestra. In the spring of 1937 Mr. Read was awarded the prize offered by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra for the best symphonic work submitted in a country-wide competition.
THE DAVID HOCHSTEIN SCHOOL OF MUSIC
The David Hochstein School of Music, 12 Hoeltzer Street, was organized in 1920 as a memorial to David Hochstein, Rochester's soldier-musician who lost his life in the Meuse- Argonne campaign of 1918. Mrs. James Sibley Watson purchased the Hochstein property for the purpose of estab- lishing a school to further the musical education of children at very low cost.
The school is under the direction of Samuel Belov, former conductor of the Eastman School Symphony orchestra and a member of the School's faculty. The close connection of the David Hochstein School with the Eastman School of Music enables exceptional students to carry on their studies at the latter institution.
ART
Paul Hinds is said to have been the city's first resident painter, practicing the art of portrait and miniature painting about 1820. George Arnold (1825) did ornamental and figure
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painting. In 1840 he painted The Rochester Cadets upon a banner which was presented by the ladies of the city to the cadets. J. L. D. Mathies and his nephew, the well-known William Page of New York, were working in Rochester in the late 1820's. Some of their pictures still are appreciated by art lovers: Red Jacket, Old Roman in Chains, and Children of Israel Crossing the Red Sea. Daniel Steel is remembered for his portraits of Horace Gay and General Vincent Mathews. Eugene Sintzenich (1840), well known for his landscapes, was employed by Abelard Reynolds to make a painting of Niagara for the old Reynolds Arcade.
Grove S. Gilbert was probably the Rochester artist with the greatest natural talent. Historians give the date of his birth at Clinton, New York, as 1805 and of his appearance in Rochester as 1834. After 1834 he had a studio at the corner of Main and State Streets, but he painted portraits of Rochesterians as early as 1830. He was elected honorary member of the National Academy of Design in 1878. It has been said of him that if he had been more ambitious and had used his great talent to advance his own interests, his artistic excellence would have been more widely known. Eminent artists came often to study his methods, but his technique eluded careful study and he was unable to teach it-in fact, at times he was unable to apply it himself. Gilbert executed many portraits of the Rochester city fathers; a number of his works hang on the walls of the Council Chambers in the City Hall. He died in 1885.
George L. Herdle, first director of the Memorial Art Gallery and for 22 years president of the Rochester Art Club, was an artist of great vision and a sensitive landscape painter. In the permanent collection of the gallery he is represented by a landscape in oils entitled Autumn. J. Guernsey Mitchell, internationally known sculptor, is rep- resented in Rochester by his statue of Dr. Martin Brewer
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Anderson on the Prince Street campus of the University and by his Mercury, popularly known as The Flying Mercury, atop the City Hall annex, a conspicuous object on the Rochester skyline since 1881. It was derived from Giovanni da Bologna's figure in the Bargello in Florence.
Eugene C. Colby, teacher, painter, etcher, and first principal of Mechanics Institute, had a marked influence on the art of Rochester. Carl W. Peters, landscape painter, three times winner of the Hallgarten Prize of the National Academy of Design of New York City, executed the murals in the Genesee Valley Trust Building and in the Madison and Charlotte high schools. Peters has been widely recog- nized and his canvasses are found in the leading galleries of the country.
The first gallery of art in Rochester was opened in 1825 by J. L. D. Mathies and William Page of New York. In 1843 an exhibition of European paintings was opened. A gallery of fine arts was established in 1854 under the name of the Rochester Gallery of Fine Arts. In 1860 the Rochester Academy of Music and Art was incorporated for the purpose of encouraging the study of music, painting, statuary, and the other fine arts. In 1870 an art gallery was opened over the Rochester Savings Bank. Here were exhibited such paintings as Church's Under Niagara and Bierstadt's Light and Shadow. Later the Rochester Academy of Art was or- ganized in the large hall of the old Free Academy to pro- mote an interest in art by conducting exhibitions and maintaining a school of design. Under its auspices Hiram Sibley exhibited in 1874 a large collection of paintings which he had purchased in Italy and hoped to make the nucleus of a public art gallery. This venture proving pre- mature, Mr. Sibley hung his paintings on the second floor of Sibley Hall, the building he had just presented to the University for a library.
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The Rochester Art Club was organized in 1877 from a sketching club, formed three years earlier, which met in the studio of John Z. Wood, and attracted to its membership J. Francis Murphy, Henry W. Ranger, and other New York artists. The charter members of 1877 were James Hogarth Dennis, Harvey Ellis, John Z. Wood, J. Guernsey Mitchell, James Somerville, and Horatio Walker. For nearly forty years the Rochester Art Club labored earnestly to foster an interest in art by holding annual exhibitions of American art and agitating for a public art gallery. It now has a membership of 225 and conducts bi-monthly exhibits of the work of its members and of invited artists and craftsmen in its clubhouse at 38 South Washington Street.
The Powers Art Gallery, which housed the collection of Daniel Powers, was opened in 1875 in four rooms. By the time the collection was broken up after the death of Mr. Powers in 1897, the exhibit had grown to occupy 30 rooms in addition to the "grand salon," the "rotunda," and the halls of the Powers Building and was considered one of the show places of the city. While Mr. Powers had started as a collector of copies of Old Masters in European museums, he soon developed an expert knowledge of such masters as Claude Lorrain, Gustave Courbet, the men of the Barbizon School, Delacroix, de Hooch, and Teniers.
Today the art interest of the city is to a large extent cen- tered in the activities of the Memorial Art Gallery, located on the Prince Street Campus of the University of Rochester.
The Mechanics Institute has had an art department since 1855, housed after 1910 in the Bevier Memorial Building, which gives instruction in illustration and advertising art, design, interior decoration, and art education.
The public schools of Rochester give extensive courses in many branches of art and handicraft. In addition to classes
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Memorial Art Gallery, Prince Street Campus, University of Rochester
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in drawing and painting, the high schools provide courses in leather and metal craft, woodcraft, pottery, photography, wrought-iron work, modeling, and commercial art. In the elementary schools two 45-minute periods per week are devoted to instruction in art.
LITERATURE
The Life and Adventures of James Durand, published in 1820 by E. Peck & Company, Rochester's first publisher, was for nearly a century believed to be the first book published in the city; but now bibliophiles award that honor to The Whole Duty of Woman, published by the same company in 1819. Leslie Linkfield, published anonymously in 1826, is accepted as the first work of fiction by a Rochester author. William Morgan's book, Illustration of Masonry, was first printed in Batavia in 1826 and created a furore; the next year 12 editions were published in Rochester, some of them now very rare.
The first novel about Rochester, Laurie Todd by John Galt, was published in New York in 1830. Nathaniel Hawthorne, after visiting the city on a trip to Niagara Falls in 1834, wrote a vivid description of Rochester as it appeared in the year it was incorporated as a city. In Their Wedding Journey, first published in 1871, William Dean Howells devoted a chapter entitled "The Enchanted City" to an account of the Rochester of that period.
Through the years the native and adopted sons and daughters of Rochester have made contributions in the realm of creative literature and in the allied fields of letters -in history, politics, science, religion, and philosophy.
Taste for the best in poetry and literature was fostered by such works as Asahel C. Kendrick's Poetical Favorites, in
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three volumes, Joseph O'Connor's poems and essays, and Rossiter Johnson's Little Classics.
One writer of the time won popular distinction with one poem. In 1862 Joseph Henry Gilmore, professor of rhetoric and English literature in the University of Rochester for 40 years, after preaching a sermon in Philadelphia, wrote almost impromptu the well known hymn, He Leadeth Me. This was first published in the Watchman and Reflector, Boston Baptist newspaper. It was set to music by William B. Bradbury and soon became immensely popular in all Protestant churches. The poem has been translated into many foreign languages. In 1877 was published He Leadeth Me and other Religious Poems. Another poet remembered for one poem is John Luckey McCreery, born in Sweden, Monroe County, N. Y., in 1835. There is No Death was once one of the most widely quoted poems in America. On the poet's tomb in Washington, D. C., is chiseled the first stanza of this poem:
There is no death! The stars go down To rise upon some other shore, And bright in heaven's jeweled crown They shine for evermore.
Thomas Thackery Swinburne was known as the "Poet Laureate of the Genesee." He wrote ballads of the city and of the university that have cast a mantle of romance over both, as well as over the Genesee River. In 1932, opposite the entrance to the River Campus, a tablet was placed upon a huge boulder bearing two stanzas of Swinburne's song, The Genesee.
Creative work is encouraged by the Rochester Poetry Society. Its annual publication, The Oracle, presents selected poems by its members. Edith Willis Forbes, founder and for many years president of the society, has published consid-
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erable verse; her first two volumes are entitled Poems and A Cycle of Sonnets. Elizabeth Evelyn Moore has published more than a hundred lyrics that have been set to music. Three of her poems were included in the Braithwaite An- thology in one year: Mad Woman, Prescience, and Epitaph. In 1925 she received first prize for the best sonnet in the American Poetry Salon's competition. Alice Garland Steel (Mrs. T. Austin Ball) contributes verse to various maga- zines. Eleanor Slater has issued two volumes of verse, one of which, Quest, received the Fairchild Prize. She has also written Everybody's Bishop, a biography of Charles Henry Brent, once head chaplain of the A. E. F. Christine Hamil- ton Watson has written much pleasing verse for American publications. Two books of poems, Crumbled Leaves and Earth Grace, contain her best work.
Adelaide Crapsey is pronounced by many critics the most distinguished poet of Rochester, but, as in the case of Emily Dickinson, her fame did not come until after her death. Miss Crapsey was born in New York City in 1878; the fol- lowing year she became a resident of Rochester when her father became rector of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church. She was a graduate of Vassar and taught history and litera- ture for a number of years. The double burden of teaching and writing taxed her frail health and she passed her last year in Saranac Lake where her window overlooked a grave- yard; this in grim irony she called "Trudeau's Garden." She wrote, "I watch all night and not one ghost comes forth to take its freedom of the midnight hour." There is a brave sentiment and an eternal note in many of the lines she wrote while waiting for the last hour:
Sun and wind and beat of sea, Great Lands stretching endlessly. . . Where be bonds to bind the free? All the world was made for me!
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She died October 8, 1914, at the age of 35. When her volume, Verse, was published in 1915, an eminent critic called the book "one of the most instructive books of poetry that has ever been published in America. It will be an abid- ing shrine where all lovers of poetry may meet its maker's brave spirit." During her last year Miss Crapsey wrote many "cinquaines," a verse form which she originated and in which she was particularly happy. These five-line stanzas owe something to the Japanese "hokku" but are saturated with the poet's own fragile loveliness.
With the publication in 1928 of The Lost Lyrist by Eliza- beth Hollister Frost (Mrs. Walter D. Blair), literary Roch- ester and the country at large were suddenly aware of a new poet of evident sincerity and lyrical charm. Hovering Shadow, Closed Gentian, and Revolving June, the last the official poem of the Rochester Centennial of 1934, all confirm the promise of The Lost Lyrist.
In the nineteenth century Rochester had several prolific writers of fiction which enjoyed popular, if transient, appeal. Isabella McDonald Alden, the noted "Pansy" of the Victorian period, wrote more than 120 books, which were popular among the young people of her generation. Born in Rochester in 1841, Mrs. Alden began writing when she was eight and continued up to the time of her death at the age of 88 at Palo Alto, California, in 1930. The best known are The Chautauqua Series, The Ester Road Series, and The Life of Christ Series.
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