CHAPTER IX

CHORAL ORGANIZATIONS AND MUSIC FESTIVALS

The Handel and Haydn and other Boston societies--Choral organizations in New York, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere--Cincinnati, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Chicago, and the Far West--Music festivals.

I

Unquestionably an epoch in the cultivation of choral music in America was inaugurated by the foundation of the Boston Handel and Haydn Society in 1815. Whether or not there is anything in the theory that American musical organizations had their genesis in the singing classes of Massachusetts, it may scarcely be denied that the cultivation of ensemble singing received earlier and more serious attention in New England than elsewhere in this country. The reason is sufficiently obvious. The people of New England were a church-going race, and singing, even when Puritan asceticism was most intense, was an essential factor of religious services. As soon as the New England conscience was convinced that good singing was no more frivolous and immoral than bad singing the people turned with characteristic zeal to choral practice and singing societies throughout the land became as common as Sunday-schools. These societies were very distinct in character from other American musical organizations, and the distinction was entirely in their favor. They were the outgrowth of a real and widely felt popular need; they had a practical purpose in which all their members were seriously interested. On the contrary, the other early musical societies for the most part were promoted by wealthy amateurs from motives which at best were not free from suspicion of dilettantism and at worst were purely snobbish.

The nucleus of the Handel and Haydn Society was the choir of the Park Street Church and the moving spirit in its formation was Gottlieb Graupner, whose services to music in Boston we have already noticed. Associated with him were Asa Peabody and Thomas Webb Smith. The society, according to its pre-organization announcement, was formed with the object 'of cultivating and improving a correct taste in the performance of sacred music'--a phrase which recalls the exhortations of the Rev. Thomas Symmes and his colleagues a century earlier. On Christmas evening, 1815, according to the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, the first concert of the society was given 'to a delighted audience of nine hundred and forty-five persons, with the Russian Consul, the well-remembered Mr. Eustaphieve, assisting as one of the performers in the orchestra.' The first program was appropriately devoted altogether to Handel and Haydn.

The growth of the society to a position of commanding artistic stature was rapid. In 1818 it gave a performance of the 'Messiah' complete--possibly for the first time in America.[54] In the following year the 'Creation' was given, and the 'Dettingen Te Deum' followed soon after. It would seem that the society in 1823 unofficially commissioned Beethoven to write an oratorio for its use,[55] and that fact alone would indicate that it had come to take itself very seriously indeed. Masses by Haydn and Mozart, the larger part of Beethoven's 'Mount of Olives,' Handel's 'Samson,' and Donizetti's 'Martyrs' were features of the society's work between 1825 and 1850.

Until 1847 the Handel and Haydn was conducted by its successive presidents, the most notable of whom were Thomas Smith Webb, Lowell Mason, and Jonas Chickering. Then the offices of president and conductor were dissociated. Carl Bergmann became conductor in 1852 and in 1854 he was succeeded by Carl Zerrahn, who occupies a prominent place in the history of musical progress in Boston. He remained with the Handel and Haydn until 1895, after which came Benjamin J. Lang and Emil Mollenhauer, successively.

The Handel and Haydn Society bulks so large in the musical life of Boston that the other choral organizations of the city are somewhat excessively overshadowed. But there are a number of excellent and distinctive societies which deserve more than passing mention. Chief of these is the Choral Art Society organized in 1901 by Mr. Wallace Goodrich, in imitation of the Musical Art Society of New York, for the study and performance of works of the Palestrina school, Bach, and the more modern masters of _a cappella_ music. The Apollo Club, founded in 1871, is one of the best male choruses in the country and the Cecilia Society, dating from 1877, is noted for its presentation of interesting novelties. Of particular importance, too, is the People's Choral Union, a chorus of four hundred voices, recruited from the working classes.

II

The splendid work done by the Sacred Music Society of New York has been noticed in a previous chapter. Unfortunately the society did not live long. During the last five years of its existence it had a robust rival in the Musical Institute, a chorus of one hundred and twenty voices under the leadership of H. C. Timm, which has to its credit performances of Haydn's 'Seasons' (1846) and Schumann's 'Paradise and the Peri' (1848) among others.

In choral as in orchestral matters New York was suffering from too much competition. Out of the débris of the two chief competitors arose, in 1849, the New York Harmonic Society, which lived until 1863 under the successive conductorships of Timm, Eisfeld, Bristow, Bergmann, Morgan, Ritter, and James Peck. In its own way the Harmonic Society was just as important and efficient as the Philharmonic, but longevity decidedly was not a feature of New York choral organizations. Out of the remains of the Harmonic came the Mendelssohn Union, of which Bristow, Morgan, Bergmann, and Theodore Thomas were successively conductors, and then followed the Choral Music Association, a most exclusively fashionable organization.

The complaint from which New York choral societies were suffering at that time might accurately be diagnosed as anemia and it was fortunate that for several years previously there had been a large influx to the city of red Germanic blood. In 1847 a number of these lusty Germans got together and formed a male chorus which they called _Deutscher Liederkranz_. There was life in the _Liederkranz_, and art and sincerity and enthusiasm and everything that ought to be in a musical society. It gave a tremendous impulse to the art of choral singing in New York and the extent of its influence in the musical life of the community cannot easily be overestimated. The list of important works performed by it would be too long to quote here, but we may mention, as illustrating the quality of its taste, Mozart's _Requiem_, Mendelssohn's _Walpurgisnacht_, Haydn's _Schöpfung_, Schumann's _Des Sänger's Fluch_, Schubert's _Chor der Geister über dem Wasser_ and _Die Verschworenen_, Liszt's _Prometheus_, Meyerbeer's 'Ninth Psalm,' Bruch's _Odysseus_, Brahms' _Ein deutsches Requiem_ and _Schicksalslied_, and Hoffman's _Melusine_ and _Aschenbrödel_. There has been nothing anemic about the _Liederkranz_. In 1856 it admitted women to its choruses. This step had been contemplated for some years and in connection therewith there had been vigorous warfare within the ranks of the society. As a result the anti-feminist irreconcilables seceded in 1854 and formed the _Männergesangverein Arion_, which has since travelled at a musical pace as lively as that of its parent.

Unfortunately we have not space to speak of the splendid work accomplished by the Arion during the sixty years of its existence. Not the least of its services to music in America was the introduction of Dr. Leopold Damrosch, who conducted it for several years. In 1873 it occurred to Dr. Damrosch that New York needed a society which would give the larger forms of choral music in a competent fashion. The Mendelssohn Union and the Church Music Association still existed. Both had done excellent work, the latter having been responsible for the first performance in America of Beethoven's Mass in D. But, possibly because of their own peculiar lack of vigorous life, they failed to attract the public. That the need for such an organization as the Oratorio Society, which Dr. Damrosch founded in 1873, was very real is sufficiently proved by its rapid success. The new society avoided the mistake made by all its predecessors in starting too pretentiously and began with a few modest concerts of a miscellaneous nature. But by the time death deprived it of its founder in 1885 it had placed to its credit achievements in choral music such as had never been approached by any other organization in New York, or, in fact, elsewhere in America. These included the great choral classics: Beethoven's 'Ninth Symphony,' Bach's 'St. Matthew's Passion,' Handel's 'Messiah' and 'Judas Maccabæus,' Mendelssohn's 'Elijah' and 'St. Paul,' Haydn's 'Creation,' Brahms' 'A German Requiem,' and others, together with first performances in America of Berlioz's _Damnation de Faust_ and _Requiem_, Frederick H. Cowen's 'St. Ursula,' Leopold Damrosch's 'Ruth and Naomi' and 'Sulamith,' Kiel's _Christus_, and Liszt's _Christus_. We may also mention performances in concert form of Gluck's _Orpheus_, Berlioz's _Les Troyens_, and Wagner's _Parsifal_ (excerpts).

[Illustration: American Pioneer Conductors: Anton Seidl, Theodore Thomas, Dr. Leopold Damrosch.]

Dr. Damrosch was succeeded by his son Walter, who conducted the society until 1889, introducing to America Berlioz's _Te Deum_, his own 'Scarlet Letter' and 'Manila Te Deum,' Gounod's 'Redemption,' Edward Grell's _Missa Solemnis_, George Henschel's _Stabat Mater_, Gustav Mahler's 'Choral Symphony' (No. 2), Horatio Parker's 'St. Christopher,' Saint-Saëns' 'Samson and Delilah,' Heinrich Schütz's 'Seven Last Words,' Edgar Tinel's 'St. Francis of Assisi,' and Tschaikowsky's 'Legend,' _Pater noster_, and _Eugen Onegin_. He also gave a complete version in concert form of _Parsifal_. Frank Damrosch, another son of Dr. Damrosch, became conductor of the society in 1889. In the meantime Mr. Andrew Carnegie had become interested in the work and it was mainly this interest which led him to build the Carnegie Music Hall. The Oratorio Society, which had given its concerts successively in Steinway Hall, the Academy of Music, and the Metropolitan Opera House, moved to the new hall in 1891, celebrating the event with a festival made memorable by the presence of Tschaikowsky as a guest conductor. During his twelve years as conductor of the society Mr. Frank Damrosch raised its repertory to eighty-six compositions, adding fourteen works to the list. Several of these were given for the first time in America, including Sir Edward Elgar's 'The Apostles' and 'The Kingdom,' Gabriel Pierné's 'The Children's Crusade,' Strauss's 'Taillefer,' and Wolf-Ferrari's _La vita nuova_. Other important performances were Bach's 'B Minor Mass' and Beethoven's 'Mass in D.' Chicago anticipated the Oratorio Society by three days in the first American performance of Elgar's 'The Dream of Gerontius.' In 1912 it collaborated with the Symphony Society in a Brahms festival, singing 'Nenia,' the 'Triumphal Hymn,' and 'A German Requiem.' Frank Damrosch resigned in the same year and was succeeded by Louis Koemmenich. The novelties of Mr. Koemmenich's first two seasons were Otto Taubmann's _Eine Deutsche Messe_ and Georg Schumann's 'Ruth,' and there were two performances of the 'Ninth Symphony' in conjunction with the Symphony Society at a Beethoven festival in 1914.

In 1893 Frank Damrosch organized a professional chorus under the title of the Musical Art Society, for the performance of _a cappella_ works of Bach, the Palestrina school, and more modern masters. The society was quite different from any choral organization that had ever been formed in America, aiming at the interpretation of a style of music that is in the highest degree difficult and unusual. To cover acceptably the field of _a cappella_ music from Josquin des Près, Palestrina, Orlando di Lasso, Eccard, Gabrieli and Orlando Gibbons to Debussy, d'Indy and Richard Strauss is an artistic enterprise which only a chorus of artists, one would think, would venture to undertake. The Musical Art Society has succeeded very well in its difficult task and its concerts are invariably among the most interesting events of the New York season. Its repertory to date includes the names of over one hundred composers, with special emphasis on Palestrina, Bach, and Brahms, and it includes also a large number of delightful old _Minnelieder_, mediæval hymns and German, Scandinavian, Scotch, French, Bohemian, and English folk-songs.

Similar work is done by the Schola Cantorum, under Kurt Schindler, which has given especially interesting programs of old troubadour songs and madrigals of the French renaissance. It was originally organized, under the auspices of the MacDowell Club, as the MacDowell Chorus. The Lambord Choral Society, organized under the conductorship of Benjamin Lambord in 1912, is devoted to the study and performance of small, rarely heard choral works by modern composers. During its first season its activities included a series of chamber music concerts, as well as a concert with chorus and orchestra in celebration of the centenary of Wagner's birth. The Modern Music Society was organized in 1913, with the Lambord Choral Society as one of its constituent parts. The new society made its first public appearance with a noteworthy concert devoted altogether to works of modern American composers, its avowed purpose being the encouragement of native composition.

Among other New York choral organizations may be mentioned the United Singers and the People's Choral Union, which may be cited as a prominent example of community music in a large city. The People's Choral Union and Singing Classes were established in 1892 by Frank Damrosch in close affiliation with the work of the Cooper Institute, established to disseminate knowledge and culture among the people,

## particularly working men and women.

In Brooklyn the Oratorio Society and the Choral Society are probably the best of a number of good choruses, though in Brooklyn, as in most big cities, there are several German singing societies which excel in their own particular field.

Considering its great musical activity, Philadelphia is not especially conspicuous for its choral organizations, but the Orpheus Club, a male chorus founded in 1872, the Cecilia Society, founded in 1875, and the Philadelphia Chorus Society are worthy of mention. By far the most interesting centre of choral music in Pennsylvania is the Moravian settlement of Bethlehem, which since its foundation in 1741 has been cultivating that branch of musical art with splendid sincerity and idealism. As early as 1811 Haydn's 'Creation' was performed there; Bach's great B minor Mass was given by the Bach Choir of Bethlehem for the first time in America in 1900, and in 1903 the choir held a Bach festival during which it performed the entire 'Christmas Oratorio,' the _Magnificat_, 'St. Matthew's Passion,' and the B minor Mass.

Of course, every city and town of any size in the East has one or more singing societies which do their own fair share in entertaining and improving it musically. It would be impossible to enumerate them. New England is, as it always has been, an especially lively centre of choral work, and such cities as Portland, Me., Springfield and Concord, Mass., Burlington, Vt., and New Haven, Conn., possess highly trained and efficient choruses. Of particular interest is the Worcester County Musical Association, of Worcester, Mass., an outgrowth of the old musical conventions held for the purpose of promoting church music. It was organized in 1863 and for a few years confined itself to psalm-tunes and simple, sentimental cantatas; but it soon graduated to Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Rossini, Verdi, Gounod, and other serious composers of oratorios and masses. The annual festivals of the association now rank among the most important events of the American musical year.

III

In the West Cincinnati takes the lead as a pioneer in choral music. As early as 1819 there was a Haydn Society in Cincinnati which seems to have been the successor of an older organization. Its first concert was devoted to Handel and Haydn, and its second included also Mozart. Soon afterward were born the Episcopal Singing Society and the Euterpean Society. Then came the Sacred Music Society and the Amateur Musical Association. The latter gave the 'Creation' in 1853. Coincidentally there grew up a number of Männerchor societies, which in 1849, collaborating with several similar bodies in neighboring towns, organized the first of the great _Sängerfeste_ already mentioned. In 1856 the Cecilia Society came into being and inaugurated a new era for choral music in Cincinnati. At its first concert it performed Mendelssohn's 'Forty-second Psalm,' a cantata of Mozart, a chorus for female voices from Spontini's _Vestale_, Haydn's 'Come, Gentle Spring,' and some choruses from Schneider's 'Last Judgment.' Subsequently it presented other works of Haydn, Mozart, and Mendelssohn, as well as compositions of Beethoven, Schumann, Handel, Gluck, Gade, Neukomm, Weber, and Wagner.

The next important society in Cincinnati was the Cincinnati Harmonic, out of which grew the Festival Chorus Society. The latter was organized in connection with the Cincinnati May Festivals which started in 1873 and in which thirty-six societies from the West and Northwest, including over one thousand singers, participated. The stimulation furnished by this and subsequent coöperative festivals resulted, as Theodore Thomas hopefully predicted, in sending 'new life and vigor into the whole musical body of the West.' Cincinnati still retains its

## activity in choral music and possesses a large number of excellent

singing societies, most of which are German. Among these we may mention the Männerchor and the Orpheus as perhaps the most conspicuous.

It would indeed be impossible to estimate fully the value the influence exercised by Germans and German singing societies had on the cultivation of music in America. In Milwaukee, for example, the _Musikverein_, organized in 1849, stood for years as a beacon light of musical culture, shedding its rays far and near over the artistic darkness of the newly settled West. 'The elements of which the _Musik-Verein_ was composed,' says Ritter, 'were many-sided. There were to be found that German indigenous growth, the _Männerchor_ (male chorus), the orchestra, the chorus composed of male and female voices, amateurs performing the different solo parts. The whole field of modern musical forms was cultivated by those enthusiastic German colonists, the male-chorus glee, the cantata, the oratorio, the opera, chamber music in its divers forms, the overture, the symphony were placed on the programs of this active society. Its musical life was a rich one and its influence through the West was of great bearing on a healthy musical development.'

There are over twenty German choruses in Milwaukee; in St. Louis there are probably as many, while in Chicago the number is beyond count--there are certainly more than one hundred. St. Louis started its musical life rather early and established a Philharmonic Society in 1838. Seven years later a Polyhymnia Society was formed and about the same time a Cecilian Society and an Oratorio Society came into being. A new Philharmonic Society was organized in 1859 and later came the St. Louis Choral Society. These, of course, leave out of account the German societies, of which the most prominent are the _Liederkranz_, the _Socialer Sängerchor_, the _Germania Sängerbund_, the Orpheus, and the _Schweizer Männerchor_. As early as 1858 Chicago had a Musical Union devoted to the study of oratorio. During the eight years of its existence it gave the principal oratorio classics, including the 'Creation,' 'Messiah,' and 'Elijah.' It was succeeded by the Oratorio Society, which persevered, under the conductorship of Hans Balatka, until the great fire. After the fire it was revived, but in 1873 its library and effects were again burned and further attempts to continue it were unavailing. The summer of 1872 saw the organization of the Apollo Club, which is to-day the only society of importance in Chicago devoted to the cultivation of oratorio music. There is also a Chicago Musical Art Society patterned after the Musical Art Society of New York and doing similar work. These are the chief agencies for the cultivation of choral music in Chicago, apart from the multitude of German societies to which we have already alluded.

San Francisco had an oratorio society, organized by Rudolph Herold, as early as 1860, and soon afterward a Handel and Haydn Society entered the field. The fact that these societies received support during several years of competitive existence speaks well for the state of musical cultivation in San Francisco at that date. And certainly the city has not deteriorated musically since then, if we may judge from the number of choral societies now active there.

The most notable of these is the Loring Club, a male chorus, founded in 1876, which gives concerts of unusual artistic excellence. Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland--in fact all the coast cities--are wide-awake and progressive musical centres and possess efficient organizations devoted to church work. It would be impossible to note all of them. Indeed, the compass of a bulky volume would scarcely inclose reference to all the choral societies at present active in the United States. There is scarcely a community in the land which does not possess one or more such societies, ranging in character from church choirs to the most pretentious of choral organizations. Many of them, especially in such cities as Baltimore, Washington, New Orleans, Richmond, Louisville, Dallas, Denver, and Kansas City, compare favorably with the more widely known societies of New York, Boston, and Chicago. We must also advert again to the work of the German singing societies, which flourish in practically every city in the country, and to the less widespread activities of the Scandinavian singing societies in such centres as Lindsborg, Kansas. These supplement splendidly the work of the native American societies, which, to tell the truth, are more exclusively devoted to the classics of sacred music than is good for their æsthetic health. Altogether the cultivation of choral music is carried on most vigorously throughout the length and breadth of America. It must be admitted that, except in certain circumscribed localities--Massachusetts, for example--it has not yet struck root among the people. It is still carried on chiefly by social coteries, by churches, by artistic circles, by people with aspirations. Americans do not get together and sing from an inward urge to sing, as do the Germans and other people implanted in our midst. Possibly that will come with the racial homogeneity which this great crucible of a country is striving to bring forth. In the meantime, everything that an eager, ambitious, and optimistic people can do to overcome its musical handicaps is now being done by the people of America and the multiplicity and activity of its choral organizations are symptomatic of the energy of its endeavor.

In the meantime the only choral organization in the American continent that can compare with the premier European ensembles has been developed in Canada. The fact is not without its significance. The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, to which we refer, stands out among American choirs even more prominently than does the Boston Symphony Orchestra among American orchestras, and its marked preëminence has been acknowledged without a dissentient voice by the whole body of critical opinion in this country. It was founded in 1894 by Sir Edmund Walker, Dr. A. S. Vogt, Dr. Harold Clark and Messrs. W. E. Rundle, W. H. Elliott, A. E. Huestis, and T. Harold Mason, and since the beginning it has been under the conductorship of Dr. Vogt. The general policy of the Toronto Choir is the study and performance of works concerning practically the whole range of choral composition, including all forms of _a cappella_ work, operatic excerpts, standard oratorios, cantatas and lesser forms. Among the more important works performed by the choir may be mentioned Brahms' 'German Requiem,' Verdi's 'Manzoni Requiem,' Bach's 'B Minor Mass,' Wolf-Ferrari's 'The New Life,' Elgar's 'King Olaf,' 'Caractacus' and 'The Music Makers,' Pierné's 'The Children's Crusade' and Coleridge-Taylor's 'Hiawatha' and 'A Tale of Old Japan.' Included also in the repertory of the choir are smaller works by Palestrina, Lotti, Elgar, Hugo Wolf, Granville Bantock, Percy Pitt, Max Reger, Tschaikowsky, Moussorgsky, Sibelius, Rachmaninoff, Gretchaninoff, Brahms, Richard Strauss, Nowowiejski, and others. Besides its annual cycle of five festival performances at home the Toronto Choir has made frequent visits to the more important musical centres of the United States. It has given three concerts in Chicago, two in Cleveland, seven in Buffalo, four in New York, and one in Boston.

As indicating the impression made by this organization on the centres of musical culture in the United States we may quote the following from Philip Hale's criticism of its first performance in Boston: 'It is not too much to say that its performance was a revelation to even those who heard the celebrated choruses of this country and in European cities. Other choruses may show a high degree of technical perfection; they may be conspicuous for decisive attack, perfect intonation, unvarying precision, fleetness in rapid passages, the management of breath or distribution of singers that insures musical and rhetorical phrasing. The Mendelssohn Choir is thus conspicuous, but it has other qualities that are rare in choirs even for a small and carefully selected number. This choir of Toronto is remarkable for exquisite tonal quality. In piano passages the tone is as though disembodied. There is no thought of massed singers or of any individual singer. The vigor of these singers never approached coarseness, and in fortissimos that were "as the voice of many waters" there was always the suggestion of reserve force, so that there was beauty in strength. There were delicate nuances in the performance, sudden and surprising contrasts without disturbance in rhythm and without loss in purity of intonation. These nuances and contrasts were apparently spontaneous.' H. T. Parker wrote on the same occasion: 'In our musical generation Boston has heard no such choral singing as that of the Mendelssohn Choir in Symphony Hall, last evening, and applauded no choral conductor of such ability as its leader, Dr. Vogt. Now, whether the singers be one or two hundred, a beautiful tone, an expressive tone, a varied tone, is the sum and the substance, the beginning and the end of musical impartment. No choir, no choral conductor, has so mastered these secrets or gone so far in high and various attainment in them as Dr. Vogt and these Torontans. It seems almost pedagogical, before these higher achievements of the Mendelssohn Choir, to rehearse the technical skill of the choristers and their conductor--their fidelity to the true pitch, their decisiveness of attack, their precision of utterance, their separate and collective command of vocal technique, their sense of pace and rhythm. Like unanimity and a unique sensitiveness equally distinguished the singing of the choir on its expressive, its poetizing, its dramatizing side.'

IV

One is frequently impelled to wonder at the peculiar trait of human psychology which leads people to gather together for the celebration of festivals. We do not allude here to national festivals, or even local festivals, in honor of some historic event or personage. We have in mind such apparently motiveless gatherings as the majority of music festivals. Some of them, of course, have a very definite purpose, and some, such as the Bayreuth Festival and the Mozart Festival at Salzburg, have a very obvious motive. But most of them seem to have no other _raison d'être_ than the instinctive desire of a number of people to gather into a crowd and make a big noise. Festivals of this sort are extraordinarily common in America. It is difficult to say whether the amount of labor involved in the organization of them could not be more profitably expended. Undoubtedly in territories where musical culture is as yet a delicate, doubtful growth they furnish a decided stimulation. To borrow a phrase from the expressive American slang, they are excellent contrivances for 'whooping things up.' But in a deeper sense they seem in the main rather futile. We may instance the case of the Worcester Festival to which we have already alluded. It has been held annually for fifty-six years and each year it has been very finely planned and carried out. Each year also it has cost much money. Yet during that time it has not brought into the light a single new composer, new singer or new instrumentalist; nor has it made Worcester and its environs any more musical than they have always been. Like most of its kind it is merely an inflated concert and the value of inflated concerts at stated intervals is at least open to discussion.

These festivals are peculiarly American and seem to have grown out of the old musical conventions so dear to the hearts of the psalm-singing New Englanders. As far as we can discover, the first musical convention was instituted at Montpelier, Vermont, by Elijah K. Prouty and Moses Elia Cheney, both singing-school instructors. It seems to have been a combination of concert and musical debate. This was in 1839. Later conventions were held at Newberry, Windsor, Woodstock, Middlebury, and elsewhere in the Green Mountain state. In 1848 Chicago had a musical convention, held at the First Baptist Church, and another four years later under the direction of William Bradbury. Rochester (N. Y.), New York, Richmond, Washington, Quincy (Ill.), Jacksonville (Ill.), and North Reading (Mass.) took up the movement in turn under the direction of George F. Root. All these conventions were purely educational in character and were concerned chiefly with the art of teaching music.

The Worcester Festival, when it started in 1858, was a convention of the same sort, with 'lectures upon the voice; the different styles of church music, ancient and modern; the philosophy of scales, harmony, etc., with singing by the whole class and by select voices; solos by members of the convention and ladies and gentlemen from abroad.' But the promoters of the project--Edward Hamilton and Benjamin F. Baker--hoped that at no distant day it might be possible 'to achieve the performance of the oratorios and other grand works of Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven.' This purpose has been gradually achieved as the educational features of the festival have been dropped. Carl Zerrahn was chief conductor of the festival from 1866 to 1897 and was assisted at various times by W. O. Perkins, George F. Root, Dudley Buck, Victor Herbert, Franz Kneisel, and others. His successors have been George W. Chadwick, Wallace Goodrich, and Arthur Mees, in the order named.

The next festival of importance was the May festival of Cincinnati, started by Theodore Thomas in 1873. Thomas had a peculiar penchant for festivals. Quite probably they were of some value in stirring up interest in choral singing throughout the West. The prospect of going to the city every two years and participating in a big musical jamboree undoubtedly had the effect of stimulating choral societies in the smaller towns. Since 1873 the Cincinnati May Festival has been held regularly under the conductorship of Dr. Otto Singer, Arthur Mees, Frank Van der Stucken, and others. For several years, starting in 1881, the city also held annual opera festivals.

To follow the spread of the festival epidemic from coast to coast would be impossible. Nearly every city and town in the country has at one time or other been infected. With some of them it has become chronic. Boston had it for a time. New York and Chicago later caught it from Theodore Thomas, but recovered quickly. We may also mention the peace jubilees of Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore, which were a particularly virulent form of the trouble. In Maine there have been regular festivals for eighteen years, with centres in Bangor and Portland. They are very big and well-conducted affairs, with a mammoth chorus, a large orchestra and soloists of international reputation. Similar in type are the South Atlantic States musical festivals held at Birmingham and Spartansburg for the last twenty years. Chicago has had a North Shore Festival Association for six seasons. Then there are the festivals of the North American Sängerbund, the North Eastern Sängerbund, and the innumerable Männergesangvereine all over the country; the Youngstown Music Festival, the Albany Music Festival, the festival of the Buffalo Musical Association and the Wednesday Club of Richmond, the Hampden County Festival, and the Kansas Farmers' Easter Festival; festivals in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Bellingham on the coast--a perfectly bewildering array of festivals.

There are, however, two festivals which stand out from all the others by virtue of their origin and the nature of their activities. The older of these is the Norfolk Festival of the Litchfield County Choral Union, which has now (1914) completed its twenty-eighth season. This is not a drummed-up affair. It is a perfectly natural outgrowth of the numerous old singing societies with which Litchfield county was dotted in the psalm-singing days; it is in the best sense a product of the soil. The Litchfield County Choral Union grew out of the association of neighboring small ensembles for the occasional production of large choral works in a manner which none of them individually could accomplish in an effective manner. The purpose was a very useful one and it has had the effect of raising materially the standard of the choral work among the small societies composing the union. The Norfolk Festival itself, which is a comparatively recent institution, owes most of its present value to the efforts of Robbins Battell, the founder of the professorship of music at Yale, and more specially to the generosity and artistic idealism of Carl Stoeckel, who was, during Mr. Battell's lifetime, his secretary and aid. Mr. Stoeckel, as Mr. Battell's successor, has backed the festival with unstinted liberality. He has enabled it to bring before the public new works of famous as well as little known contemporary composers--particularly American--giving substantial cash prizes for the best new American compositions. He has placed at the disposal of the Litchfield County Choral Union a meeting place in ideal surroundings, modestly termed the 'Music Shed,' and he has brought to the support of the chorus for each festival an orchestra recruited from the best New York and Boston organizations, as well as an array of distinguished soloists. To secure the best possible performance of new works produced at the festival he has spared neither trouble nor expense, as may be instanced by the fact that he brought Jean Sibelius to America to conduct his own compositions. The value of these festivals to all the choral societies and church choirs composing the Litchfield County Union is obvious, but they have a still wider and greater value in introducing to the world the creations of native American composers and in holding up an example of fine artistic idealism which cannot be without its influence on the soul of the nation.

Of peculiar interest is the MacDowell Festival, held annually since 1910 at Peterborough, N. H., under the auspices of the MacDowell Memorial Association. It is a fact that Edward MacDowell did some of his best and most characteristic work--the Norse and Keltic sonatas, the New England Idyls and Fireside Tales, and many songs and choruses--in a log cabin on his farm at Peterborough, 'surrounded by enormous pines facing through a lovely vista Monadnock and the setting sun.' Realizing the value to a creative artist of such inspiring surroundings, he conceived the idea of bequeathing the place as a centre for artists seeking congenial conditions for work and rest. After his death the property was transferred by Mrs. MacDowell to the MacDowell Memorial Association. To quote the language of the deed of gift, 'it is expressly and especially desired that this home of Edward MacDowell shall be a centre of interest to artists working in varied fields, who, being there brought into contact, may learn to appreciate fully the fundamental unity of the separate arts. That in it the individual artist may gain a sympathetic attitude toward the works of artists in fields other than that in which such artist tries to embody the beautiful by recognizing that each part has a special function just so far as it has gained a special medium of expression.'

It is obvious that the beneficent influence of the MacDowell bequest is not confined to music, but it is natural under the circumstances that music should be the main beneficiary. Consequently the MacDowell Festival, which is a sort of annual get-together party, is predominantly a musical event, though the drama and the dance have their share in it. It is valuable primarily as the free expression of æsthetic aspiration unshackled by the deadening fetters of commercialism; and secondarily as a reasonably good opportunity for the American composer to obtain a public hearing. If its intent is finer than its accomplishment that is a fault unfortunately only too common to idealistic enterprises. Locally it accomplishes something of practical artistic value by supporting the MacDowell Choral Club (75 voices) and the MacDowell Choir of Nashua (100 voices), both under the leadership of Eusebius Godfrey Hood, and undoubtedly it exercises a stimulating effect upon those who participate in it.

One cannot omit here a notice of the pageant movement which has grown to quite striking proportions in America within the past few years and which its leading promoters designate as the most significant feature of our present artistic development. The term pageant is not

## particularly definitive. As applied to certain mediæval entertainments

it was sufficiently explicit, but being a convenient and picturesque word it has been borrowed somewhat freely and indiscriminately of recent years. The beginning of the modern pageant occurred in England in 1905 and its father was Sir Gilbert Parker. It is a sort of _tableau vivant_, recreating for a few hours some especially picturesque period of the country's history. The Elizabethan period seems to be preferred. Music enters into it only incidentally. Boston was the first American city to adopt the idea. This was in 1908. Quebec followed soon afterward and Philadelphia staged an elaborate pageant in 1912. All these were modelled after the English type.

In the meantime some Americans, notably William Chauncy Langdon and Arthur Farwell, had been evolving an idea to which they applied the convenient name of pageant but which is fundamentally different from the English type and its imitators. Briefly, the new pageant is a community drama; it is a drama with the place for its hero and the development of the community for its plot. In this novel type of drama the individual is entirely submerged and the historical incidents are chosen rather for their symbolical value than for their intrinsic interest. The spirit informing the history of the community is the dominant theme. Out of this idea, it is claimed, there is being developed a new art-form representatively American and interpretative of the American spirit. The first pageant embodying the community idea was written by William Chauncy Langdon for Thetford, Vt., in 1911. Some of the music was composed by James T. Sleeper, but most of it was adapted. The pageant of St. Johnsbury, Vt., also written by Mr. Langdon, followed in 1912. Brookes C. Peters, a local man, composed most of the music for it. Then came the pageant of Meriden, N. H., in 1913, in which Mr. Langdon and Arthur Farwell collaborated and which was the first pageant composed as a musical art form complete. Mr. Farwell brought to this work a large enthusiasm for the idea and an ardent faith in its possibilities, and he has since taken a very conspicuous part in its development. The pageant of Darien, Conn., in 1913, composed by him to the book of Mr. Langdon, shows considerable progress in the evolution of the pageant as a distinct art-form. Another step in advance was taken by the pageant of Cape Cod in 1914, written by Mr. Langdon with music by Daniel Gregory Mason. The elaborate pageant and masque of St. Louis in 1914 was of a somewhat different order and resembled more closely the English type. The music of the masque was composed by Frederick S. Converse, and, being conceived as an independent art unit rather than as incidental music, may be regarded as a new departure in the 'masque' rather than a development of the pageant-form.

Regarding the musical side of this and other pageants Mr. Langdon says in a letter to the writer: 'So far as I know in no English pageant has there been any attempt to recognize the pageant as a new musical art-form in itself and to develop the music as an art-unit, comparable to the sonata, symphony, or opera. The music has all been incidental music, though often filling quite thoroughly all openings for anything of the kind. Herewith much original composing has been done, and some of it at least very fine composing. The formative idea, or precedent I almost call it, is to be found in the chorus of the Greek drama set to music. So, too, the music written for the Philadelphia pageant of 1912 is of the same type, as that pageant itself was modelled after the English type quite closely rather than following the American departures. But thus far, so far as I know, my pageants are the only ones that regard the pageant as a musical as well as dramatic art-form and seek to work out its development as such.' Certainly the new pageant is one of the most interesting developments in American art, and it is especially interesting in view of the fact that it is a distinctly American idea particularly well calculated, one would think, to be a vehicle for the expression of the American spirit. So far, of course, it is largely an experiment and its history lies rather in the future than in the past. Its susceptibility to national application favors its possibilities considerably.

The lack of such susceptibility lessens the importance of many other local and very characteristic art developments. The most interesting of these are the Grove Plays, or Midsummer High Jinks of the Bohemian Club of San Francisco, which are briefly an expression in drama and music of the spirit of joy. Climate, locale and a body of artists with the sort of traditions indicated by their club name, combine to give these affairs their characteristic flavor, and it is doubtful if they could be imitated successfully under different conditions. But it would seem that similar attempts at local expression, whatever form they may take, are likely to become common in America in the future, and serve as valuable and much-needed stimulants to the creation of a worthy native art.

W. D. D.

FOOTNOTES:

[54] As we have already noticed, the 'Messiah' was performed at Trinity Church, New York, in 1771 and 1772, but there is a reasonable doubt whether on either of these occasions the work was given in its entirety.

[55] See Thayer's 'Life of Beethoven.'

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