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Graduate School
of the University of Cincinnati
in partial fulfillment of the
Doctor of Philosophy
by
Nell Stemmermann
In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript
and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed,
a note will indicate the deletion.
UMI 3641355
Published by ProQuest LLC (2014). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author.
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ABSTRACT
from October 1871 to December 1897. From February 1883 it was known as The Musical
Visitor. The monthly journal printed music by contemporary American and European composers
as well as earlier works. The editors, Frank H. King, Charles A. Daniell, Frank N. Scott, and
James R. Murray, commented on composers, music, and issues of the day in both Europe and the
United States. The Visitor reprinted and commented on articles of interest from other journals
and newspapers, such as the London Musical Times, Chicago Inter-Ocean, Appleton’s Journal,
and Scribner’s. Correspondents included Louis C. Elson of Boston and Frederick J. Crowest
from London, and unnamed writers from various U.S. cities. Noted composers and educators of
the day, such as George F. Root and Frederic W. Root, contributed series of articles. The Church
Company included advertisements from music teachers in the Cincinnati area and for its
The Visitor is an important source of information about musical life and attitudes in
post-bellum America, but it has been underutilized as a source of information about musical life
and culture during this time. It overlapped Dwight’s Journal of Music (1852–1881) by ten years
and The Etude (1883–1957) by fourteen years. Unlike Dwight’s Journal, which promoted the
music of such Europeans as Bach, Beethoven, Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn, and Rossini, the
Visitor promoted the music of both Americans and Europeans. Whereas The Etude focused on
piano technique and music for the piano, the Visitor provided vocal and instrumental music for
the family, and music for church services from January 1886 until September 1895. It has been
underutilized as a source of information about musical life and culture during this time. This
study provides an examination of attitudes toward class, nationalism, and musical taste in the
Visitor during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The Visitor was a sounding board for
ii
people from various parts of the country and abroad. Appendices include a chronological listing
of music printed in the Visitor and an alphabetical list of composers with their dates and the
iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First I want to thank my adviser, Dr. bruce mcclung, for helping me to find my topic. His
Visitor. As a result of an assignment to find a subject in the journal and follow its course through
a few issues, I found it to be a compelling source that was yet to be explored. His guidance,
careful reading, and patience have been invaluable. Committee members Dr. Edward Nowacki
I wish to thank the librarians and staff of several institutions: the University of
Cincinnati’s Albino Gorno Memorial Music Library (Mark Palkovic and David Sandor), the
Langsam Library (interlibrary loan department, especially Mikaila Korday), the Public Library
of Cincinnati and Hamilton County Genealogy and Local History Department (James Mainger
and Jeanne Strauss-DeGroote). The Newberry Library of Chicago generously supplied missing
copies of the Visitor as did the Cincinnati Historical Society. Helen Bridge of the Little Compton
I am grateful to my colleagues and divas Dr. Sandra Johnson, Dr. Jewel Smith, and
Dr. Kristy Swift for their encouragement and support. I also thank Mike Wagner for his
My family has been most patient and supportive during this process. I am especially
grateful to my late beloved husband, Grant N. Stemmermann, whose support made all things
possible.
July 2014
Cincinnati, Ohio
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract ii
Acknowledgments iv
Introduction 1
Chapter 3 Conflict and Compromise: American Nationalism and European Influence 111
Brass Bands, Presidents, and Commercialism 113
European Training, the Star System, and Performances of
American Musicians 132
Comments Regarding Dvořák’s Time in the United States 154
Artists Visiting Cincinnati and Portraits in the Visitor 158
Chapter 4 Composers Represented in the Visitor 174
Pseudonyms and Initials 175
Winners of the Visitor’s 1876 Poll of Most Popular Instrumental
and Vocal Composers 176
Women Composers in the Visitor 207
Composers Residing in Cincinnati 211
Composers Born or Residing in the United States 220
European Composers Who Were Not Poll Winners 242
Chapter 5 Music in the Visitor 260
Church Music 264
Dedications and Commemorative Works 274
Sacred Vocal Music 275
Keyboard Voluntaries for Church Service 279
Secular Vocal Music 282
Music for Piano or Organ 293
Chamber Music 305
v
Bibliography 321
vi
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1.8 Frank King and Julia Rive-King’s Gravesite, Spring Grove Cemetery,
Cincinnati 39
vii
COPYRIGHT PERMISSION
All images pertaining to the Church family and homestead are reproduced by permission
of the Little Compton Historical Society.
viii
INTRODUCTION
The thirty-five years between the end of the Civil War and the turn of the century marked
a period of economic expansion in the United States. An increasing proportion of U.S. citizens
were the children of European immigrants. First generation Americans shared cultural tastes with
their parents, but also acquired a gloss of the American culture that had developed in the two
hundred years since the establishment of Jamestown and the Plymouth colony. Differences in
education, occupation, religion, and economic status produced a variety of lifestyles, each with
its own cultural preferences. Nowhere was this variety more conspicuous than in musical taste.
Church’s Musical Visitor catered to the whole spectrum of these tastes, and its life span
coincides with this period of the country’s cultural development.
John Church and Company of Cincinnati published Church’s Musical Visitor: A Journal
Devoted to Music and the Fine Arts, a monthly journal, from October 1871 to December 1897.
The first issue laid out the guiding principles and intended audience for the periodical. Directed
to the family circle, with an ample record of events in the musical, dramatic, and fine arts worlds,
Church’s Musical Visitor (hereafter, the Visitor) claimed its tone would be neither too high nor
too low, attractive to the professional, the amateur, and the masses at large. The editor and
publisher had separate departments, and the Visitor prohibited advertising in its editorial
columns. Its democratic policy ensured that “all men and all interests” were considered equal; its
aim was not limited to promoting home or local interests. The issues, measuring 9½ in. by 12 in.
(24 cm by 31 cm), initially contained twenty-four pages, but expanded by 1881 to thirty-two
pages, devoted to musical art and literature, and commissioned compositions, poetry, and
serialized fiction. Continuous page numbering within a volume began with Volume 5 in 1875.
The number of issues had increased from twelve to fifteen (October 1881 to December 1882) in
order to make subsequent January issues number one. Commissioned engravings accompanied
articles on visiting artists. The Visitor sought correspondents from both the United States and
1
Europe.1 The first editor, Frank H. King, claimed that the value of the music printed in each issue
was worth more than the annual subscription cost of one dollar.2 Church’s targeted audience or
subscribers comprised music teachers, school principals, and professional musicians, including
church organists, choristers, and ministers, who received discounts on music and book
purchases.3 Church solicited subscribers from across the United States and Canada. Special
terms were made available to clubs of five or more from January 1886 until August 1896.4
The title and subtitle of the journal changed three times during its twenty-six year
history. The Visitor announced in October 1875 that the subscribers and “all of the old
attractions” of the Song Messenger of Chicago would be added to the Visitor, which would
henceforth include “more than double the amount of music.”5 This increase was evident with a
notice on the bottom of the music pages: “From The Album of the Chicago Musical College.”6
In November 1875 the Visitor was subtitled An Independent Journal of Music. [With which is
Incorporated “Root’s Song Messenger,” Established 1862]. In many ways the Visitor was a
continuation of that journal. Frederic W. Root would continue as editor and contribute a monthly
column “Feuilleton from Chicago.” Root invited publishers to send sheet music and music books
to him for review, and continued to report on conventions in the country. In September 1876 the
Visitor announced that Dr. George F. Root would contribute a monthly column entitled “Normal
1
Frank H. King, ed., “All Aboard!,” “To Our Friends and Patrons,” “A Peep into the Future,” Church’s
Musical Visitor 1, no. 1 (1871): 4–6.
2
Frank H. King, ed., “Editors Notes and Reviews,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 2 (1871): 9. The
subscription cost increased to $1.50 per year beginning with the second volume; announced the previous month.
Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 12 (September 1872): 6.
3
“Publishers Department,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 1 (October 1871): 12.
4
“Important Information for Choirs, Choral Unions and Other Singing Societies,” The Musical Visitor 15,
no. 1 (January 1886): 10. The Visitor was going to provide “Anthems and Choir Pieces” for opening, closing and
occasional use, and Organ Voluntaries. Clubs of five or more would pay $1.00 per year instead of the usual
subscription cost of $1.50. The Musical Visitor 25, no. 8 (August 1896): 227.
5
Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 1 (October 1875): 8.
6
The Album of the Chicago Musical College was a collection of music published by Chicago’s Chandler
and Curtiss in 1874.
2
Corner,” and “this important addition . . . will be welcomed by all.”7 Beginning in February 1883
the journal was known as The Musical Visitor: An Independent Journal of Music. [With which is
Incorporated “Root’s Song Messenger,” Established 1862]. The January 1894 issue is entitled
The Musical Visitor: A Magazine of Musical Literature and Music (copyright by the John
Church Company).
perform at home remains a little-known branch of the sheet music industry,” the heyday of
which fell between 1820 and 1920.8 The majority of music published in household magazines
came from musicians who were significant performers and teachers in their regions who were
active as composers of published songs, solo piano works, hymns, and pedagogical works.9
Music-making in the home was believed to contribute greatly to the morality of the family. 10 She
claims that the music published in magazines in the United States during the nineteenth
century clearly reflects the development of taste in popular music.11 This study reinforces
Miller’s findings, although its focus is a music periodical rather than a household magazine.
Periodicals, 1853–1899, which surveyed 296 periodicals and mentions Church’s Musical
Visitor, along with Brainard’s Musical World (Cleveland, 1864–1895), Orpheus (New York,
1865–1880), and The Folio (Boston 1869–1896), as having “relatively long lives” indicating “a
substantial readership. An interesting sidelight is that two of these successful periodicals were
7
“Editor’s Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 12 (September 1876): 317.
8
Bonny H. Miller, “Household Periodicals: An Unstudied Source of American Music,” Fontes artis
musicae 42 (1995): 311–12.
9
Ibid., 312.
10
Ibid., 318.
11
Ibid., 313.
3
published in what was then regarded as the West.”12 Her listing of the editors for the Visitor
is incorrect, and does not include Charles A. Daniell, who served during two different time
periods.13 In her master’s thesis, Vera Flandorf examined the history of American music
periodicals and how they served music professionals and readers. Flandorf noted changes in
ownership or editorship, and changes in content or format of the periodical. She considered size,
price, frequency, index, and content. The most long-lived music journals were those founded by
music dealers and were associated with musical centers with schools, teachers, and performers.
Monthly journals that contained music, portraits and illustrations, biographies, editorials, concert
reviews, articles on music history, news of music and musicians, music teaching materials, book
reviews, and calendars of events contributed to longevity. The Visitor met all of these
requirements. Flandorf errs, however, in concluding that the Visitor was edited by John Church
and ceased publication at his death in April 1890, and that Church’s music publishing business
was continued by his son-in-law R. B. Burchard.14 Church’s daughter did not marry Mr.
Burchard until June 19, 1897. According to editor James R. Murray, Church’s business partner,
John B. Trevor, was manager of the John Church Company at the time of Church’s death; in
May 1891 Murray referred to Trevor as president and manager of the company.15
Marcia Lebow’s dissertation on Dwight’s Journal of Music deals largely with its editor,
John Sullivan Dwight, and his background and role as critic and musicologist. Unlike the
Visitor, Dwight’s Journal was initially published weekly, then bi-weekly. For Dwight, music was
12
Mary Veronica Davison, “American Music Periodicals, 1853–1899” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota,
1973), 199.
13
Ibid., 355.
14
Vera S. Flandorf, “Music Periodicals in the United States: A Survey of Their History and Content” (MA
thesis, University of Chicago, 1952), 129. According to Ernst C. Krohn, Church’s son-in-law R. B. Burchard
became president of the Church Company at Church’s death. Ernst C. Krohn, “Church,” in The Grove Dictionary of
American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 2:263.
15
“City Notes,” Musical Visitor 20, no. 5 (May 1891): 122.
4
not “mere entertainment,” but an “expression of ‘pure art’” with a social mission.16 When
Dwight announced the end of publication in 1881 because of lack of support in subscriptions and
advertising, the Visitor responded: “So ends the career of another musical paper. It could hardly
be called a ‘peoples’ paper,’ yet it doubtless had a use . . . . Whatever may have been its
influence . . . from the first it has nobly held to its convictions . . . . Peace to its ashes, and rest
In his dissertation Travis Suttle Rivers discusses the pedagogical intent of The Etude
magazine. Its first editor, Theodore Presser, was interested in bringing “high culture––the genteel
tradition” to piano teachers and their students.18 The Visitor reviewed The Etude in December
1883, describing it as “a monthly publication for teachers and pianists. Edited and published by
Theodore Presser, Lynchburg, Va. It is a new venture in a field but little worked as yet, and if the
plan has any chance of success, and we think it has, it is in the right hands now to make a ‘sure
thing of it.’”19 The Visitor carried advertisements for The Etude and reprinted some of its
articles. Presser’s focus changed in 1888 from “a strictly technical journal” and over time added
musical taste in the Visitor during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. I intend to
demonstrate that the Visitor was a sounding board for people from various parts of the country
and abroad.20 It has been underutilized as a source of information about musical life and culture
16
Marcia Wilson Lebow, “A Systematic Examination of the Journal of Music and Art edited by John
Sullivan Dwight: 1852–1881, Boston, Massachusetts” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1969), 22.
17
The Musical Visitor 10, no. 11 (August 1881): 298.
18
Travis Suttle Rivers, “The Etude Magazine: A Mirror of the Genteel Tradition in American Music” (PhD
diss., University of Iowa, 1974), 33–34.
19
“Books and Magazines,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 12 (December 1883): 324.
20
Many correspondents used pseudonyms, for example, “Musicus” wrote from St. Louis in January 1872;
the March 1872 Visitor printed correspondence from “Murillo” in Boston, “Arion” in New York, “Orpheus” in
5
during this time. Whereas Dwight’s Journal of Music in Boston (1852–1881) has been
reprinted21 and is frequently quoted, the Visitor is scarcely mentioned. According to Marcia
Lebow, the reprint of Dwight’s Journal in 1968 facilitates research “within this treasury of
information about American musical history.”22 What does the Visitor tell us about what
American historian Lawrence Levine has called the development of “highbrow/lowbrow” music
anecdotes, articles, and music printed in the Visitor sheds light on several topics, such as
attitudes regarding class, audience behavior and etiquette, and nationalism. Whose music was
being commissioned and printed in this periodical and what does this reveal about the editors’
biases?
Chicago, “E.C.T.” in Indianapolis, “Mignon” in Philadelphia, and “Delta” in New Orleans. A writer from
Columbus, Georgia, describes Theodore Thomas’s concert at the Opera House, with pianist Marie Krebs, on
February 12, 1872. Many in the audience had anticipated “having their nerves disagreeably disturbed by the
combination of so many instruments; their surprise can be better imagined than described, when the deliciously soft
and melodious strains produced by the orchestra greeted their ears.” Miss Krebs performed “Home, Sweet Home” as
an encore, “which will ever be remembered by all present.” A letter from a Kansas reader in April 1873 commented
on the term “segue.” A letter from “Lawe” in Milan, Italy, in May 1873 provided information on American students
studying in the city. A regular column, “Music in London,” from “C.,” Frederick J. Crowest, began in 1878.
21
Dwight’s Journal of Music: A Paper of Art and Literature (Reprint: New York, Arno Press, Johnson
Reprint Company, 1968).
22
Lebow, “A Systematic Examination of the Journal of Music and Art edited by John Sullivan Dwight,” iv.
23
Lawrence W. Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). Ralph Locke takes issue with Levine’s development of
“highbrow/lowbrow” music as an oversimplified portrayal of the concert as “an event created and controlled by a
small social elite . . . assuring themselves with a pleasant evening’s entertainment . . . and lording it over the lower
classes.” Locke makes the point that Levine gives “inadequate consideration” to the “musicians’ and music lovers’
desire for an intense aesthetic experience.” Ralph P. Locke, “Music Lovers, Patrons, and the ‘Sacralization’ of
Culture in America,” 19th-century Music 17, no. 2 (Autumn 1993):150, 158. Levine decried the bifurcation of
American culture into highbrow/lowbrow in the late nineteenth century. But according to Joseph Horowitz,
“Levine’s perspective is skewed by his populist bias.” Horowitz points out that during the Seidl era (1885–1898),
the “mixed audience of Germans, genteel intellectuals, and Seidl Society-types hushed the shareholders” at the
Metropolitan opera. In 1891 the box holders rebelled against German opera, “after which the house was flooded
with Italians. Renewed German pressure forced the Met to take Wagner and Seidl back.” Joseph Horowitz,
“Sermons in Tones: Sacralization as a Theme in American Classical Music,” American Music 16, no. 3 (Autumn
1998): 334.
6
Standard histories of American music have largely overlooked Cincinnati.24 When music
in Cincinnati is discussed, the focus is usually on the May Festival, which began in 1873 with
conductor Theodore Thomas, or the beer-drinking German choral societies. Historian Robert
Vitz has written that New York, Boston, and Chicago have received ample attention as cultural
centers; yet, Cincinnati contributed significantly to the country’s cultural development during
much of the nineteenth century. The city supported and trained painters, sculptors, actors
and musicians who achieved success in the eastern United States and Europe. Vitz considers
Church’s Musical Visitor to be “one of the nation’s most important music journals, and it
provided the West with a serious journal comparable to the leading Boston publications. It also
provided Cincinnati with an important voice in support of its own activities.” Church was
Cincinnati’s largest dealer in musical instruments and had “an extensive reputation as a publisher
of sheet music and music books.” He was a board member of the Music Festival Association and
participated in “most of the community’s musical enterprises.”25 Church was elected treasurer of
William Osborne’s Music in Ohio is the first study to treat the state as a whole and
Cincinnati receives ample coverage, including a chapter on Cincinnati’s pre-Civil War musical
24
Richard Crawford, America’s Musical Life: A History (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001); Charles Hamm,
Music in the New World (New York: W. W. Norton, 1983); David Nicholls, ed. The Cambridge History of American
Music (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Gilbert Chase, America’s Music: From the Pilgrims to
the Present (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1987).
25
Robert C. Vitz, The Queen and the Arts: Cultural Life in Nineteenth-century Cincinnati (Kent, OH: Kent
State University Press, 1989), ix, 75. Vitz includes the Visitor as one of his primary sources.
26
“Editor’s Notes and Reviews,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 5 (February 1872): 9. The Visitor reported
in December 1891 that a pipe organ for the new YMCA building was a gift of the John Church Company and W. H.
Doane. Arrangements had been made prior to Church’s death in April 1890. The Musical Visitor 20, no. 12
(December 1891): 316. The Harmonic Society, founded in 1864, was an English-language singing society largely
consisting of Anglo-rather than German-Americans. L. C. Hopkins served as the society’s first president; Carl Barus
directed the singing. Vitz, The Queen and the Arts, 64.
7
activities, societies, and teachers.27 He covers the founding of Clara Baur’s Conservatory of
Music, the May Festival, and the College of Music. Of the city’s publishers, Osborne considers
John Church to have had the widest influence and mentions The Musical Visitor as “a
monthly musical paper of national reputation,” edited by James R. Murray (from May 1881 to
December 1897) on the fifth floor of their new building at 72–74 West Fourth Street. Osborne
describes the company’s new headquarters in 1878 and activities on each of its five floors.28
Osborne does not document the information for Frank A. Lee’s leadership of the company after
Church’s death in 1890.29 According to the Visitor, Church’s business partner, John B. Trevor,
did not retire until November 1892, when his shares were sold to five stockholders, including
Frank Lee and William Hooper. Lee was managing the company when Hooper, president of the
company, died in July 1894. Lee was elected president and general manager on March 7, 1895.30
traveling opera troupes who visited Cincinnati up to 1860. Vernon Paul Schroeder’s master’s
thesis, “Cincinnati’s Musical Growth, 1870–1875,” marks 1870 as a turning point in its
musical history: there was an emerging middle and upper class to support the arts as patrons, and
a large enough population with educational centers to demand all the different forms of music,
professional and amateur.31 Larry Robert Wolz’s dissertation, “Opera in Cincinnati: The Years
before the Zoo, 1801–1920,” covers the history of opera productions, theatres and opera houses
in Cincinnati prior to the first season of Cincinnati Summer Opera in 1920. Wolz gleaned
27
William Osborne, Music in Ohio (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2004). Osborne includes
Church’s Musical Visitor in the index but not in the bibliography.
28
Ibid., Music in Ohio, 514–16.
29
Ibid., 516.
30
“The John Church Co.,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 11 (November 1892): 308; “Death of William
Hooper: President of the John Church Company,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 8 (August 1894): 205; “City Notes,”
The Musical Visitor 24, no. 4 (April 1895): 98.
31
Vernon Paul Schroeder, “Cincinnati’s Musical Growth, 1870–1875” (MM thesis, University of
Cincinnati, 1971), 125.
8
information from period newspapers and memoirs but did not utilize the Visitor. R. Allen Lott’s
From Paris to Peoria covers touring European virtuosi who performed in Cincinnati between
1846 and 1876. Lott did utilize the Visitor, but it can tell us even more about music making in
Cincinnati’s economic, social, and political background in the late nineteenth century. He
emphasizes the patronage of individuals and groups in building high culture in the city and
focuses on the histories of the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the
city’s art and music schools, and the cultural festivals.32 According to Cahall, Vitz’s approach in
The Queen and the Arts relied “too heavily on the economic explanation for Cincinnati’s cultural
development” at the expense of “other social forces at work in the city.” Rather, Americans saw
the arts as helping to solve issues of class conflict and morality, and “nineteenth-century
Americans read avidly and benefited from a proliferation of newspapers and national journals,
It was Charles Dickens’s favorite American city, and Longfellow’s 1854 poem “Catawba Wine”
refers to Cincinnati as “the Queen of the West.” In 1854 such cities as Cincinnati, Louisville,
Chicago, and Minneapolis were considered part of the American West.34 Harriet Beecher Stowe
based Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) on information gathered while living in Cincinnati from 1832
to 1850. Stephen Foster’s Cincinnati years (1846 to 1850) left a permanent imprint on his music.
Cincinnati was the sixth largest city and the third largest center of manufacturing in the United
32
Michael C. Cahall, “Jewels in the Crown: The Fine and Performing Arts in Cincinnati, Ohio, 1865–1919”
(PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1991). Cahall relied on the Visitor as one of his primary
sources.
33
Ibid., 7, 15, 19.
34
Crawford, America’s Musical Life, 284.
9
States in 1852 with a substantial population of German immigrants.35
A survey of the music printed in the journal in terms of style, genres, and level of
difficulty indicates musical preferences in the late nineteenth century and targeted audience for
sheet music sales. Dedications of songs to women or choral works to men reveal gender norms.
Did the music published in the journal change over time, for example, as to level of difficulty,
bilingual song texts, and titles of works? Church sometimes provided grade levels for musical
works printed in the journal, which can be used as a yardstick to determine the pedagogical
focus. A chronological listing of the works by composer, title, and genre, and an alphabetical
listing of composers, tell us how many musical works were printed in the Visitor and how many
John Church apparently took to heart Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1837 essay titled “An
American Scholar,” which called for American independence from European cultural models.
Beginning with the first issue, the Visitor called for American artists and performers to be
considered equal, if not superior to, their European counterparts. Conversely the Visitor made
frequent mention of European musical experience and training of American singers and
instrumentalists, a boon to a concert career.37 The support for American nationalism is further
complicated by the fact that European immigrants remained connected to their ancestral lands.
The influx of Germans mid-century was important to the growth and development of the city’s
cultural institutions. For example, Clara Baur based her Cincinnati Conservatory of Music on the
35
For more on Cincinnati’s musical history, see bruce d. mcclung, “Cincinnati,” in The Grove Dictionary of
American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 2:271–77.
36
Thomas Christensen has shown how transcriptions of symphonies, chamber music, choral works, and
opera for piano enabled nineteenth-century music lovers to become familiar with large-scale works in their homes,
making them known to a wider audience, and moving these works from the public to the private sphere. Thomas
Christensen, “Four-hand Piano Transcription and Geographies of Nineteenth-century Musical Reception,” Journal
of the American Musicological Society 52 (1999): 255–98.
37
Elam Douglas Bomberger, “The German Musical Training of American Students, 1850–1900” (PhD
diss., University of Maryland, 1991).
10
Stuttgart Hochschule für Musik where she had studied,38 and the rival College of Music of
Cincinnati established in 1878 employed European faculty. Thus, American nationalism in the
George F. Root, W. S. B. Mathews, and Louis Charles Elson of Boston. Other correspondents,
writing from Chicago, New York, St. Louis, New Orleans, and London, attest to the journal’s
widespread circulation and influence.39 Correspondence came from across the United States,
Canada, England, Germany, and France. In June 1876 the Visitor printed correspondence from
Montreal, Canada.40 In March 1880 “Foreign Notes” came from Germany about such topics as
the Leipzig Gewandhaus Concerts, a Dresden theater for operetta, and the Berlin opera.41 In
April 1880 readers were informed about opera offerings, and attitudes toward Berlioz and
Wagner in “Parisian Musical Pickings.”42 The May issue provided more information on operas,
April 1876 that the Visitor had agents available in towns on the East Coast, and in Port Ryerse,
Ontario, as well as in such states as Tennessee, Texas, and Iowa.44 According to the editor in
March 1877, the publisher was printing nine thousand copies of the Visitor each month. It was
38
“Our Music Schools,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 10 (July 1874): 7. The article mentions that Clara
Baur’s Conservatory was established in December 1867. Carolyn Livingston incorrectly claims Clara Baur founded
the school in 1868. Carolyn Livingston, “Baur, Clara” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed.
Charles Hiroshi Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 1:381.
39
Circulation figures, except for those printed in the Visitor itself, are unavailable.
40
“Canadian Correspondence,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 9 (June 1876): 235.
41
“Foreign Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 6 (March 1880): 164.
42
“Parisian Musical Pickings,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 7 (April 1880): 186.
43
“Parisian Musical Pickings,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 8 (May 1880): 215.
44
“Publishers Department,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 7 (April 1876): 180.
11
sent “into every State and Territory.”45 In the same issue Eastern readers were advised that the
publisher had opened an office in New York City, at 805 Broadway, “for the convenience of
their friends and themselves.”46 The editor announced in June 1880 that “Music in the Southern
Hemisphere is at last to have a journalistic representative.” The Visitor had received a request
for an “exchange” with the Colonial Musical Monthly published in Melbourne, Australia.47
A letter to the editor from a reader in South Africa appeared in the September issue. C. T. Varley
was following a discussion of the term “natural” being carried on by George Root and others.48 It
was reported in November 1881 that the mailing list included regular subscribers in Japan, South
Africa, Spain, and England.49 Subscriptions to the Visitor increased when the journal was
adopted as the official organ of the Chautauqua Musical Reading club in 1883.50 According to
Lebow, estimates for the circulation of Dwight’s Journal range from 500 to 2,000.51 The Etude’s
circulation in 1897 was 19,380; it had merged with Brainard’s Musical World in 1895. The
Etude’s circulation peaked in 1917 with 228,554 subscribers; circulation had dropped to 53,000
45
Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 6 (March 1877): 150. In August 1876, however, the Visitor polled its
“thirteen thousand readers,” for their favorite composers. “Who Is Your Favorite Composer?” Church’s Musical
Visitor 5, no. 11 (August 1876): 289. In March 1877 Chicago editor Frederic W. Root, “our Chicago Feuilletonist”
inquired affirmatively that “The circulation of the Visitor is pretty large now, isn’t it, Mr. Editor,” and C. A. Daniell
responded that “probably the number printed of this journal reaches a figure higher than the aggregate of all the
other music journals combined, leaving but two out of the count. Very few of the musical papers reach a circulation
of more than 3,000 copies–very few have ever reached that point. The Visitor prints three times that number of
copies, which represents a large circulation indeed for a musical monthly.” Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 6 (March
1877): 150. The difference in numbers may refer to the number of readers within households rather than subscribers.
46
Ibid., 149.
47
“Short Visits,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 9 (June 1880): 248.
48
C. T. Varley, “From South Africa,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 12 (September 1880): 330.
49
“Our Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 2 (November 1881): 44.
50
The Musical Visitor 12, no. 10 (October 1883): 262.
51
Lebow, “A Systematic Examination of the Journal of Music and Art edited by John Sullivan Dwight,”
46–47.
12
at its demise forty years later.52 According to a poll of its readers in 1876, the Visitor’s
circulation was thirteen thousand.53 According to the editor in March 1877, the Visitor was
The Visitor is available on microfilm and online through the Proquest American
Periodical Series. Ninety-one copies were unavailable through these sources. The Public
Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County owns hard copies, as does the Cincinnati Historical
Society; the Newberry Library of Chicago also provided copies. I have been able to locate all but
three issues: September 1887, August 1893, and September 1894. The Historical Society of
Little Compton, Rhode Island, provided background information on the Church family and
photographs of the homestead and the family. I was unable to locate subscription records for the
Visitor, any of Church’s personal letters, or a diary. Church’s catalog was sold to Theodore
Presser in 1930,55 and Presser’s firm was acquired by Carl Fischer in 2004.56 I have been unable
A systematic reading of the Visitor helped to discern the names and tenures of the editors,
along with investigating Williams’ Cincinnati Directory. Although John Church was a private
person, I gleaned information on him from the Visitor as to his travels and membership in
different organizations in Cincinnati. Given his New England Puritan connection, David Hackett
52
Rivers, “The Etude Magazine,” 94, 107, 176, 231. According to Davison, Presser served as editor until
1907 with associate editors Eugene E. Ayres (1888–1893), Arthur L. Manchester (1893–1895), Theodore Stearns
(1895–1896), and Winton J. Baltzell (1897–1907). Davison, “American Music Periodicals, 1853–1899,” 107.
According to Rivers, the following served as editors after 1907: James Francis Cooke (1907–1949), John Briggs
(1950–1951), and Guy McCoy (1951–1957). Rivers, “The Etude Magazine,” 47.
53
“Who Is Your Favorite Composer?,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 11 (August 1876): 289.
54
Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 6 (March 1877): 150.
55
Ernst C. Krohn, “Church,” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi
Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 2:263.
56
W. Thomas Marrocco, Mark Jacobs, Warren Storey Smith, and Leah Branstetter, “Presser,” in The Grove
Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013),
6:594–95.
13
Fischer’s cultural study was beneficial.57 M. Leslie Petteys’ dissertation on Julie-Rivé King was
helpful in finding information on Frank H. King.58 Information for C. A. Daniell and Frank N.
Appendix A is a chronological listing of the music printed in the Visitor with the
composer’s name, if known, title of the work, genre, and page numbers. In some cases, the
music did not have complete information as to composer or original title. When the Visitor
included music for church services from January 1886 until September 1895, I used a collection
of organ music compiled and arranged by editor James R. Murray in order to help identify
composers. In several instances the surname of the composer was available but not the
original title. It was often necessary to check the music against the composer’s thematic
catalogue to determine the opus number and title, such as for Robert Schumann’s keyboard
works.
Identification and dates for the composers listed in Appendix B has come from a number
of sources, including the Music Lovers’ Encyclopedia, rev. and ed. Deems Taylor; Baker’s
American Musicians, ed. E. Douglas Bomberger; Music Publishing in Chicago before 1871: The
Firm of Root and Cady 1858–1871 by Dena J. Epstein; A Handbook of American Music and
Musical Institutions, Firms, and Societies, ed. F. O. Jones; The Universal Handbook of
Musical Literature by Franz Pazdirek; The Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers, ed.
Julie Ann Sadie and Rhian Samuel; The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd
ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, and The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed.
57
David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1989).
58
M. Leslie Petteys, “Julie Rivé-King, American Pianist” (DMA thesis, University of Missouri-Kansas
City, 1987).
14
Charles Hiroshi Garrett. The Visitor published a series of columns titled “Memoranda of
Musical Events,” and “How to Pronounce Musicians’ Names,” which were also helpful.
E. Douglas Bomberger’s Index to Music Published in The Etude Magazine59 served as a model
for my chronological and alphabetical listings of music and composers in the Visitor. A
comparison of composer’s names and works with those in Bomberger’s Index assisted in
identifying names and dates as well as revealing works which had been reprinted in The Etude.
A study of Church’s Musical Visitor documents Cincinnati’s musical history and its place
in the musical development of the United States during the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
Changes over time in content and purpose of the journal reveal changes in cultural attitudes. The
longevity of the Visitor may also be partly ascribed to its ability to reinvent itself. Columns came
and went and a variety of topics were presented, ranging from organ grinders to music education
and church services. News and opinions regarding art and drama under such columns as “Chisel
and Brush” or “Sock and Buskin” were eventually dropped in favor of more space devoted to
music and musicians. The Visitor’s music, articles, advertisements, and announcements
encompass a wide range of topics, with correspondents far and near, letters to the editor, and
anecdotes about European and American artists. In sum, John Church tried to provide something
for everyone.
59
E. Douglas Bomberger, An Index to the Music Published in The Etude Magazine, 1883–1957, Music
Library Association Index and Bibliography Series 31 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2004).
15
CHAPTER 1
In America there are but few wealthy persons; nearly all Americans have to take a
profession. Now, every profession requires an apprenticeship. The Americans can devote
to general education only the early years of life. At fifteen they enter upon their calling,
and thus their education generally ends at the age when ours begins. If it is continued
beyond that point, it aims only towards a particular specialized and profitable purpose;
one studies science as one takes up a business; and one takes up only those applications
whose immediate practicality is recognized.
In America there is, strictly speaking, no adolescence: at the close of boyhood the man
appears and begins to trace out his own path.
—Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
In his study of political institutions and the legal system during his visit to the United
States in 1831–1832, Tocqueville also described the customs and culture that contributed to
America’s economic success in the early nineteenth century,1 namely the Puritan work ethic and
moral code:
Public opinion . . . gently represses that love of wealth which promotes the commercial
greatness and the prosperity of the nation, and it especially condemns that laxity of
morals which diverts the human mind from the pursuit of well-being and disturbs the
internal order of domestic life which is so necessary to success in business. . . . The
Americans . . . adapt themselves to orderly habits; and . . . they make it a matter of honor
to live chastely. . . . In a democracy like the United States, where fortunes are scanty and
insecure, everybody works, and work opens a way to everything . . . . I have sometimes
met in America with young men of wealth . . . who had been compelled to embrace a
profession.2
Historian David Hackett Fischer elaborates: the Puritan work ethic contributed to the New
England economy and consisted of two callings—a duty to live a godly life and a duty to one’s
vocation. Puritans believed that success in one’s calling was a way of serving God in the world.3
1
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 2 vols, with an introduction, notes, and bibliographies by
Phillips Bradley (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945). The first volume was published in 1830, the second in 1835.
2
Ibid., 2:237. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines “work ethic” (1951) as a noun: “a belief in
work as a moral good.”
3
David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1989), 6–9, 155–56. The first “folkway” deals with Puritans from the east of England who settled in
16
Cultural historian Richard Tarnas has described the Protestant work ethic as that of Calvinist
Christians who pursued their worldly vocations “with spiritual and moral fervor in order to
realize the Kingdom of God on earth.”4 The Calvinist Christian could find himself among the
elect if he unceasingly and successfully applied himself to disciplined work. The resulting
material productivity, combined with “ascetic renunciation of selfish pleasure and frivolous
John Church (1834–1890) came from a long line of ancestors who exemplified
what we today call the Puritan work ethic. Church moved from Boston to Cincinnati in 1859 and
developed a successful music publishing business and music dealership with branches in
Chicago and New York.6 From October 1871 to January 1883 his company published a monthly
journal entitled Church’s Musical Visitor; from February 1883 through December 1897 the title
moral code, conforming to a standard of right and wrong behavior. Tocqueville noted, “Although
Massachusetts from 1629 to 1640. The second folkway follows the Royalist elite and indentured servants from
southern England to Virginia; the third folkway deals with those moving from the North Midlands of England and
Wales to the Delaware Valley; the fourth refers to those moving from the northern borders of Britain and Ireland to
Appalachia. Fischer defines “folkway” as “the normative structure of values, customs and meanings that exist in
any culture.” He discusses, among other things, family ways, naming ways, food ways, work ways, and time ways.
According to Fischer, “strong echoes” of the four British folkways are still heard in dialects of American speech,
and in patterns of life, politics, and ideas of freedom. His central thesis is that “the legacy of four British folkways in
early America remains the most powerful determinant of a voluntary society in the United States today.”
4
Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World
View (New York: Ballantine Books, 1993), 245.
5
Ibid., 246.
6
Walter Sutton, The Western Book Trade: Cincinnati as a Nineteenth-century Publishing and Book-trade
Center (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1961), 82. Sutton includes the “long-lived” John Church Company
as one of the leading music publishing houses before the Civil War. William Osborne considers John Church’s firm
“the Cincinnati publisher with the widest influence.” William Osborne, Music in Ohio (Kent, OH: Kent State
University Press, 2004), 514.
17
the puritanical strictness which presided over the establishment of the English colonies in
America is now much relaxed, remarkable traces of it are still found in their habits and laws.”7
He included an appendix dealing with a law promulgated in Massachusetts in 1792 regarding the
observation of the Sabbath. One could not open a store or a workshop, or attend a concert, a
dance or a show, nor hunt or fish or play games without being subjected to a fine. Inn-, store-,
and tavernkeepers were not to serve anyone unless they were from out of town, lest they be
subjected to a fine and possibly lose their licenses. Travel deemed unnecessary was also subject
to a fine. Tocqueville noted that similar laws were enacted in New York in 1827 and 1828.8
Fischer discusses how certain offenses were punished by various forms of public humiliation.
For example, a dishonest baker might be forced to stand in the stocks with a lump of dough on
his head. Criminals were often required to wear “a badge of shame” in a contrasting color on
their clothing, such as the letter “A” for adultery, “B” for blasphemy or burglary, “D” for
considers the Puritans as Reformed Protestants. They were “fueled by a perpetual burning desire
to be better,” and their judgments were as hard on themselves as they were on others.10 The
Puritans’ emphasis on hard work and moral behavior is a recurring theme in the Visitor and in
7
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 2:339.
8
Ibid., 2:339–40. In New York no one was allowed to frequent houses where liquor was sold, and travel
was allowed only when necessary.
9
Fischer, Albion’s Seed, 195. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, a romance published in 1850,
immortalized the scarlet letter “A” for adulteress.
10
Richard Crawford, America’s Musical Life: A History (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2001),
29.
18
The Church Family: History and Background
Richard Church (1608–1668) established the family in New England. He was a carpenter,
relocated to Plymouth. In 1635 or 1636 he married Elizabeth Warren (d. 1670), daughter of
Richard Warren, one of the heads of families and signers of the Compact made on the
Mayflower in 1620. They had fourteen children.11 There followed seven fecund generations of
Churches, each with three to eleven children. With the exception of Richard, the family
memorial manifests the Puritans’ practice of using biblical forenames within the family, often
passed on to the next generation, and the importance of “the innermost nuclear ring.”12 “John”
11
Bureau of Military and Civic Achievement, Washington, DC, Mayflower Descendants and Their
Marriages for Two Generations after the Landing, including a Short History of the Founding of the Church of the
Pilgrim Founders of New England (Baltimore: Genealogical Publications, 1972; originally published as 2nd ed.
Washington, 1922), 3, 7, 33–34. One of their sons was named “Caleb,” and another was named “Joseph.” See
Figure l. l. It seems unlikely that Richard Warren would have allowed his daughter to marry a man who was not a
Puritan.
12
According to Robert Charles Anderson, Richard Church married a daughter of one of the Mayflower
passengers in 163l. Anderson, The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1633 (Boston: New
England Historic Genealogical Society, 1995), 360–64; Benjamin Franklin Wilbour, comp., “The Church Family” in
Little Compton Families (Little Compton, RI: Little Compton Historical Society, 1974), 166–86. Wilbour refers to a
“myth” (180–81) that the renowned Colonel Benjamin Church of King Philip’s [also called Metacom, Wampanoag
Indian chief, ca. 1638–1676] and other Indian wars was an ancestor of Ebenezer Church. Thus, John Church was not
a descendant of Colonel Benjamin Church as reported by editor James R. Murray in The Musical Visitor 18, no. 10
(October 1889): 261, and in George F. Root’s autobiography, The Story of a Musical Life (Cincinnati: John Church,
1891; repr., New York: Da Capo Press, 1970), 209.
13
For “naming ways,” see Fischer, Albion’s Seed, 8, 70, 94–96.
19
Figure 1.1. Church Family Memorial, Little Compton, Rhode Island. Courtesy of the Little
Compton Historical Society.
The family moved to Little Compton (now in Rhode Island) late in the seventeenth century. John
Church’s grandfather Joseph (1764–1840), a soldier in the Revolutionary War, volunteered for
service at the age of twelve in place of his father, Ebenezer (1725–1825), who had been drafted.
Having survived this experience, Joseph married and fathered eight children. John (1794–1882),
hereafter identified as Sr., the oldest of Joseph’s children, was born on the family’s large estate
where he was “trained in all rural labors and virtues, blessed with rich family lore and
20
examples”14 (see Fig. 1.2).
Figure 1.2. John Church Sr. (1794–1882). Courtesy of the Little Compton Historical Society.
Early in the century “he learned many and valuable lessons of industry, economy, and probity.”15
In 1812 he moved to Providence where he founded the firm of Church and Sweet and became a
successful builder and developer whose interests extended far beyond that city. He is credited
14
The obituary for Church’s father by “F. D.” was reprinted from the Providence, Rhode Island Journal
dated November 21, 1882. “Col. John Church,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 15 (December 1882): 408.
15
Ibid.
21
with building churches in Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina. Colonel
of the second regiment of the Providence infantry, Church escorted General Lafayette when he
visited Providence in 1824. Returning to Little Compton in the 1840s, he “built a beautiful home
on land that had been in his family since 1687.”16 He was a “lifelong member of the
Congregational Church.”17 A prosperous man, Church actively engaged in politics, and served
as a director of several banks and an insurance company.18 Yet his son, John (1834–1890),
hereafter identified as Jr., a future advocate of the arts in Cincinnati, did not receive a college
education. Instead, at the age of fourteen, he went to Boston to work for music publisher Oliver
Ditson.19
John Church Jr. had been born in Providence, Rhode Island, on May 9, 1834. Six years
later the family moved to Little Compton, Rhode Island, where his father purchased for his own
use three hundred acres of land which had been in the family since 1674, and built a homestead
16
Wilbour, “The Church Family,” 184.
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid.
19
Much of the information on John Church Jr. comes from his obituary. “The Death of John Church,” The
Musical Visitor 19, no. 5 (May 1890): 120.
20
Ibid.
22
Figure 1.3. “Oldacre” built by John Church Sr. Courtesy of the Little Compton Historical
Society.
Church spent eleven years in Boston (1848–59) learning the music business under Oliver Ditson
(1811–1888). His apprenticeship there would later be recalled in the Visitor.21 He learned “how
to take down shutters, build furnace fires, and sweep out two hundred feet of store before
breakfast.”22 The apprentices were grateful when it was someone else’s turn on a cold morning.
“A willing boy got lots of healthy exercise at Ditson’s . . . and a good business education that
enabled him to ‘paddle his own canoe’ as he got older.”23 According to Church’s obituary in the
Visitor: “He applied himself so closely to his duties that his health became affected so seriously
that in 1854 it was thought that he was threatened with quick consumption. He started on a
21
“A Benefit,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 6 (March 1874): 8–9.
22
Ibid., 9.
23
Ibid.
23
voyage to South America for rest and change, hoping to arrest the dreaded disease. He returned
in six months fully restored to health and resumed his place in Ditson’s store” until April 1859.24
In April 1859 Ditson sent Church to Cincinnati to straighten out the affairs at the music
publisher Truax and Baldwin, of which “Mr. Ditson took possession in order to save what was
due him.”25 Church bought one-half of the assets from Ditson on April 21, 1859, and changed
the name of the firm to John Church, Jr.26 In December 1864 he married Carrie Corwin (1843–
1878), daughter of Daniel W. Corwin (1812–1886),27 with whom he would have three children:
Corwin 1866–1873, Edith Russell 1868–1942, and Alice 1870–1876.28 On March 1, 1869, he
purchased the remaining half of the business from Ditson and Company and associating himself
with his former bookkeeper, J. B. Trevor, changed the firm’s name to John Church and
24
“The Death of John Church.” Oliver Ditson’s obituary in the Visitor recalled a similar education. His life
and career are traced, beginning with his apprenticeship under a Boston bookseller at age thirteen. A lack of formal
education meant “his position was one of unceasing drudgery.” However, after nine years of hard work, honesty,
and frugality, “he became a member of the firm.” Ditson relied on his own judgment in the selection and preparation
of the music for publication. “Intelligence, energy, and system were shown in himself, and required in all associated
with him.” “Oliver Ditson,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 1 (January 1889): 10. The obituary goes on to describe
Ditson’s appearance and demeanor in flattering terms. Osborne, however, presents a different view, based on one of
Ditson’s dealings with Benjamin R. Hanby (1833–1867). Ditson was apparently a shrewd businessman; John
Church and editor James R. Murray seemed to be unaware of some of his practices. Osborne, Music in Ohio, 422–
24.
25
“The Death of John Church.”
26
Ibid.
27
Apparently Daniel W. Corwin was a man of some influence in Cincinnati. Charles Theodore Greve,
Centennial History of Cincinnati and Representative Citizens (Chicago: Biographical Publishing, 1904), 1: 706,
745, 1020. A list of managers for the Buckeye Ball on April 8, 1844, included Daniel Corwin; he was a member of a
committee formed in October 1844 to settle a dispute between the rail companies and city officials—crowding on
the streets was interrupting the flow of goods and people. Corwin had been an early director of the Franklin Bank, in
1834 (incorporated February 9, 1833). For the timing of his marriage, see Fischer, Albion’s Seed, 163–64. Many
Puritans married during the months of November and December, contrary to the Anglican prohibition against
marriage during the period before Christmas. Corwin, along with John Church, Jr., was a member of the Finance
Committee of a proposed musical festival in Cincinnati, “The Cincinnati Musical Festival of 1873,” Church’s
Musical Visitor 2, no. 2 (November 1872): 6.
28
“The Death of John Church”; Wilbour, “The Church Family,” in Little Compton Families, 186; “The
Burchard Family,” ibid., 128–29. Edith Russell Church was named after her paternal aunt Susan (Mrs. Edward
Russell). Puritans also used biblical names for women, such as Susanna; names were passed down to the next
generation and in this case it was a married name within the family. Fischer, Albion’s Seed, 70, 94, 96. Edith Russell
Church continued the tradition when she married Roswell B. Burchard: her oldest son was named John Church; one
of her daughters, Edith Russell Church; and another, Susan Church.
24
Company.29 On February 23, 1872, Church purchased the book catalog of the Chicago firm Root
and Cady, which had suffered crippling losses following the Great Fire on October 9, 187130
Church was elected treasurer of the Board of Directors of Cincinnati’s Harmonic Society (an
English-language singing society) in 1872.31 That same year, in Boston, he was chosen to be
Vice President of the Board of Trade of the Music Publishers at their June 19 meeting.32 A year
later Church was elected President of the Board of Music Trade of the United States at their
annual meeting, held in Newport, Rhode Island.33 On November 1, 1883, the Everett Piano
Company was organized in Boston with John Church as president.34 John Church and Company,
and subsequently the John Church Company, marketed Everett pianos. Advertisements began
appearing regularly in the Visitor for the Everett Piano, available in Cincinnati beginning in May
1883,35 and later at the Chicago branch of Root and Sons and in New York.
Church also brought relatives to Cincinnati and Chicago to work in the music business.
His nephew Albert T. Church died on May 26, 1865, in Cincinnati at the age of eighteen.36
29
“The Death of John Church.”
30
Dena J. Epstein, Music Publishing in Chicago before 1871: The Firm of Root and Cady 1858–1871
(Detroit: Information Coordinators, 1969), 81.
31
Frank H. King, “Editor’s Notes and Reviews,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 5 (February 1872): 9.
The Society had been formed in 1864 but dissolved in 1880 when the May Festival Association decided to establish
a permanent chorus which attracted members of local societies. Osborne, Music in Ohio, 210; Robert C. Vitz, The
Queen & the Arts: Cultural Life in Nineteenth-century Cincinnati (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1989),
64, 122.
32
Frank H. King, “Editor’s Notes and Reviews,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 11 (August 1872): 10.
33
“Editor’s Notes and Reviews,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 11 (August 1873): 9.
34
“The Death of John Church.” According to an article reprinted from the Boston Globe dated September 7,
1887, the Everett Piano Company had been organized in 1884. John Church was president, Colonel William Moore
treasurer and manager; and directors were J. B. Trevor, E. T. Russell, and E. V. Church. E. V. Church was his
nephew and Russell was likely Church’s brother-in-law Edward T. Russell. “Everett Piano Company’s Factory: A
Full Description of the Most Complete Manufactory in the World,” The Musical Visitor 16, no. 10 (October 1887):
262–63. The article includes a history of the company and a description of the factory.
35
The Musical Visitor 12, no. 5 (May 1883): 140.
36
Wilbour, “The Church Family,” in Little Compton Families, 186. I have been unable to locate a record of
his nephew’s death.
25
Another nephew, Edmund V. Church, managed the Root and Sons Music Company in Chicago
from 1881 until his death in 1910.37 He had been one of the incorporators of the Musical
Merchandise Board of Trade, organized “to protect the trade from unjust exactions, to gather
information as to the standing of merchants, with a view to prevent fraudulent failures, to bring
about uniformity in the customs of the trade, and to promote friendly feeling among the
members.”38 In 1894 Church was elected President of the Chicago Music Trade Association.39
James R. Murray, editor of the Visitor from May 1881, provides an occasional glimpse
into John Church’s life and character. Church summered in the East. An entry in the Visitor of
October 1882 notes that he had returned to Cincinnati on September 18 but had been
immediately recalled due to “the serious illness of his father” in Little Compton.40 We learn in
the December 1884 issue that Church had returned from his summer vacation on the East Coast
with mackerel and Cape Cod turkeys for Murray and another dozen or more Cincinnati
families.41 Church must have remained on good terms with Oliver Ditson. Murray reprinted a
clipping from an unnamed source in the December 1885 issue of the Visitor: “Our Mr. John
Church, one of Mr. Ditson’s ‘boys,’ dined with the veteran publisher” on the occasion of his
seventy-fourth birthday.42 A notice in the August 1888 issue reveals that Church had been
37
It was announced that Church, manager of the Chicago branch and a director of the John Church
Company, died February 1, 1910. “John Church Co. Meeting,” The Music Trade Review, February 19, 1910, 27.
Murray claims that E. V. Church, manager of the Chicago branch, had been in Cincinnati for the annual
stockholders meeting of the John Church Company. “City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 3 (March 1894): 68.
38
The Musical Visitor 14, no. 11 (November 1885): 292.
39
“Notes and Gossip,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 3 (March 1894): 69.
40
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 11, no. 13 (October 1882): 353. His father’s obituary in the
Providence, Rhode Island Journal, dated November 21, 1882, was reprinted in the Visitor. “Col. John Church,”
Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 15 (December 1882): 408.
41
The Musical Visitor 13, no. 12 (December 1884): 320. Presumably the turkeys were for Thanksgiving,
one of the festivals instituted by the Puritans in lieu of Christian feasts and saints’ days. See Fischer, Albion’s Seed,
138, 163–64, 166.
42
The Musical Visitor 14, no. 12 (December 1885): 320. The first issue of the Visitor to have The John
Church Company on the cover was April 1885.
26
entertaining a number of Cincinnatians and other friends at his “elegant colonial mansion at
Little Compton, RI.”43 Apparently Church also had a congenial relationship with his long-time
business partner, John B. Trevor. Murray includes an account of a day trip from Naples to
Pompeii with the two men and their daughters, as recounted in a letter from Jennie N. Trevor.
In 1886 Church moved from Cincinnati to Boston to take care of his business interests in
New York and Boston (not mentioned in the Visitor until his obituary) and possibly to be close
to his family. Murray visited “Little Compton by the sea” for a few days during the summer of
1889. He enjoyed the hospitality of Church and his daughter, who spend the summers “at the
palatial family mansion (see Figure 1.4).”45 According to the Little Compton Historical Society,
“Oldacre” underwent a major renovation by Edith Church, Church’s daughter, in the late
1800s.46
43
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 8 (August 1888): 206.
44
A portion of a private letter from Jennie N. Trevor in Naples appeared in the Visitor. “A Visit to
Pompeii,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 5 (May 1889): 115.
45
The Musical Visitor 18, no. 10 (October 1889): 261. The 1864 Williams’ Cincinnati Directory lists John
Church boarding at the Burnett House. After his marriage in December of that year his address is given as a house at
71 West 8th Street. Thereafter his address changes frequently: in 1866 to 138 Smith; in 1867 to 144 Elm; in 1868 to
E. Walnut Hills; in 1869 to Woodburn; in 1873 to a house at 428 West 6th; in 1874, to a house at 359 West 4th; in
1876 to boarding at the Grand Hotel, apparently until he moved to Boston in 1886. These frequent moves were not
uncommon at the time. M. Leslie Petteys reports that the Cincinnati-based Rivé family moved almost yearly
between 1871–1882. M. Leslie Petteys, “Julie Rivé-King, American Pianist” (DMA thesis, University of Missouri-
Kansas City, 1987), 24. According to Steven J. Ross, “the introduction of inclined planes and electric cable cars in
the 1870s and 1880s” and expanded railroad routes and omnibus lines enabled people to relocate to hilltop areas for
the cleaner air and more open spaces of such areas as Walnut Hills, Clifton, Mount Adams, or Avondale. Steven J.
Ross, Workers on the Edge: Work, Leisure, and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788–1890 (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1987), 237–39. The Rivés and Churches may have moved, of course, for other reasons.
“The expansion of streetcar systems and . . . regional railroad networks dramatically increased residential
instability” between 1840 and 1900 in U.S. cities. “Movement between cities paralleled the frantic residential shifts
within cities” (emphases original). Mobility and change represented the norm, as “rich and poor alike freely changed
residences and jobs” in search of happiness and success. Paul S. Boyer et al., The Enduring Vision: A History of the
American People, Concise 2nd ed. (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Company, 1995), 406, 407.
46
E-mail to author from Helen Bridge, May 22, 2007.
27
Figure 1.4. “Oldacre” today. Courtesy of the Little Compton Historical Society.
Church died from pneumonia on April 19, 1890, at the home of his sister Susan (Mrs.
Edward Russell). His sister’s home had been his base of operations when he was in Boston, and
his daughter lived there as well. Church was buried in Little Compton “beside his father and
mother whom he so loved and revered.”47 John Church had strong family ties, typical of the
Puritan families described by Fischer. He was survived by his daughter, Miss Edith Russell
Church.48
47
“The Death of John Church.” Wilbour incorrectly gives Little Compton as the place of death, an error
verified by Helen Bridge of the Little Compton Historical Society, e-mail to author, May 30, 2007. Wilbour, “The
Church Family,” Little Compton Families.
48
Ibid.; Jeffrey G. Herbert, Index of Death Notices and Marriage Notices in the Cincinnati Daily Gazette
1827–1881 (Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1993), 76–78. Carrie Church died January 1, 1878; Alice died March 10,
1876. Corwin’s death notice appeared on November 26, 1873, but no death date is given. It is unclear why Church’s
obituary in the Visitor does not include his wife’s name or the names of his two children who had pre-deceased him.
According to Cincinnati’s Spring Grove Cemetery records, Alice Church died of diphtheria in Boston; Corwin
Church died of scarlet fever in Cincinnati. Daniel W. Corwin, Carrie Corwin Church, Corwin Church, and Alice
Church are buried in a family lot for the heirs of David Loring in Spring Grove Cemetery in Section 42, lot 19,
spaces 27, 21, 18, and 20, respectively. Carrie Corwin Church’s ancestors had come from the East: David Loring
(1784–1849) had been born in Fairhaven, Massachusetts; his wife, Maria Lowey Loring (1786–1868), had been
born in Nantucket, Massachusetts. The cause of death for Carrie Church on New Year’s Day was given as “nervous
shock.” According to the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, “nervous shock,” disease, or grief could account for
28
John Church had been one of the founders of the Cincinnati May Festival and had served
on every Board, except one.49 Granville Howe credits Church with the financial success of the
second Festival, held in 1875.50 Church had made arrangements to attend the 1890 May Festival,
spending the month of May in Cincinnati along with his daughter. According to Murray,
business partner John B. Trevor had been the manager of the John Church Company at the time
of Church’s death. Murray later refers to Mr. Trevor as president and manager of the John
Church Company. 51 The May 1890 issue of the Visitor contains testimonials to Church from the
“more or less non-moral acts of self-destruction.” Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (New York: C. Scribner’s
Sons, 1925), 23:22. Her residence and place of death was given as McMillan Street; her husband had been boarding
at the Grand Hotel since 1876, according to Williams’ Cincinnati Directory. Mrs. Church had filed for divorce,
alimony, and custody of Edith on May 24, 1877. “Church vs. Church: A Divorce Suit in High Life,” Cincinnati
Enquirer, May 25, 1877, 8. The details of their domestic life and her move back to her parents home on McMillan
Street in 1874 were retold. “A Mother’s Woe: Brief Sketch of a Sad Domestic Life, Mrs. John Church, Jun., Dies of
Grief,” Cincinnati Enquirer, January 2, 1878, 4. The Enquirer provided another account on January 3 with details of
their separation and legal matters, and that Mr. Church had been told by Mrs. Church’s physician that her condition
had been improving. “Mrs. Church: The Other Side of a Painful Story,” Cincinnati Enquirer, January 3, 1878, 4.
The account also mentioned that John Church’s store had been closed on January 2. The Enquirer followed up with
a five-column account. “Husband and Wife: The Church Affair as It Stands To-Day,” Cincinnati Enquirer, January
4, 1878, 8. Mrs. Church’s funeral was conducted by the Reverend R. H. Goddard at the residence of an aunt, Mrs.
George Carlisle, 319 West Sixth Street, followed by a private burial. “At Rest: Funeral Services Over the Remains
of Mrs. John Church, Jun.,” Cincinnati Enquirer, January 5, 1878, 8. The Chicago Daily Tribune reprinted an
account from the Cincinnati Commercial. “Crime: A Cincinnati Tragedy,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 6, 1878,
2.
49
According to American historian Michael Cahall, John Church and four other members resigned from the
Cincinnati Musical Festival Association following the 1878 May Festival in a dispute over the proceeds. President
George Ward Nichols wanted to give $15,000 to pay off the Music Hall organ, whereas Church and the majority of
the board members wanted to create an endowment fund for the chorus. Thus, Church was not a member of the
board for the 1880 festival. In March 1880 the chorus refused to perform for the upcoming festival unless Nichols
resigned, which he did. Michael Cahall, “Jewels in the Queen’s Crown: The Fine and Performing Arts in Cincinnati,
Ohio, 1865–1919” (PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1991), 254, 256.
50
Granville L. Howe and W. S. B. Mathews, eds., A Hundred Years of Music in America (Chicago: G. L.
Howe, 1889), 314.
51
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 5 (May 1891), 122. According to Ernst C. Krohn, at Church’s
death his son-in-law, R. B. Burchard, became president. Ernst C. Krohn, “Church,” in The New Grove Dictionary of
Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001),
5:823. This does not seem possible, however, since Church’s daughter did not marry Roswell B. Burchard until June
26, 1897. Editor James R. Murray was invited to the wedding at Oldacre, but it is unclear if he was able to attend.
“Current Notes and News,” Musical Visitor 26, no. 7 (July 1897): 193. Burchard served as Speaker of the House of
Representatives of Rhode Island from 1907 to 1909 and as Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island from 1913 to 1915.
He was a correspondent for the New York Herald, New York Mail and Express, and Forest and Stream; he was also
editor of the American Canoeist and yachting editor of Outing magazine. Carlton C. Brownell, ed., Notes on Little
Compton, From Records Collected by Benjamin Franklin Wilbour (Little Compton, RI: Little Compton Historical
Society, 1970), 269.
29
May Festival Association and the Clough and Warren Organ Company, and the music therein
dedicated to his memory serves as further evidence of the high esteem Church enjoyed in the
community and the music trade. George F. Root found it hard to believe Church was gone:
“Ever since the dark days after the great fire, when the strong house, of which Mr. Church was
the chief, took hold of and sustained us in the crippled state in which the great disaster left us, he
has been a true friend—kind without pretention [sic] and generous without ostentation; a wise
52
“The Death of John Church.” Root was referring to the great Chicago Fire of October 1871, and John
Church and Company. He wrote more about Church in his autobiography, The Story of a Musical Life.
30
Figure 1.5. Painting of John Church Jr., late nineteenth century, by Sydney Burleigh. On
permanent display at the Wilbor House Museum, headquarters of, and courtesy of, the Little
Compton Historical Society.
31
The reverse side of the Church family memorial represents John Jr. as the last surviving male
member of the family; his headstone, however, is not adorned (see Figs. 1.6 and 1.7).
Figure 1.6. Reverse side of the Church Family Memorial. Photograph courtesy of the Little
Compton Historical Society.
Figure 1.7. John Church’s headstone. Photograph courtesy of the Little Compton Historical
Society.
32
After Church’s death there were changes in the firm. The New York Times published an
announcement from Cincinnati on September 24, 1892, that the John Church Company had
incorporated the Everett Piano Company of Boston, Root and Sons Music Company of Chicago,
the Harvard Piano Company of Boston, and the Royal Manufacturing Company of Cincinnati,
with a capital interest of $5,000,000. Five men were involved in the new venture: William N.
Hobart, Edward Rawson, A. Howard Hinkle, Frank A. Lee, and William Hooper. Mr. Lee was
then vice president of the John Church Company. Mr. Hooper would probably be president
of the new company with Mr. Lee its general manager. John B. Trevor was then president of
the Everett Piano Company; Col. William Moore was its secretary and treasurer. The Royal
Manufacturing Company produced instruments such as the violin, guitar, mandolin, banjo, and
drums.53 The Visitor announced John B. Trevor’s retirement in November 1892 and the sale of
his shares to stockholders Lee, Hooper, Rawson, Hobart, and Hinkle.54 William Hooper was
president of the company at the time of his death on July 18, 1894; Frank A. Lee was managing
the company at that time.55 At the company’s annual election on March 7, 1895, Lee became
president and general manager, Rawson vice president, and Hinkle treasurer.56 Frank A. Lee had
also been a member of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Association Company in 1894.57 Part
53
“Musical–Instrument Combine: John Church and Co. Arrange to Consolidate Their Business,” New York
Times, September 24, 1892. Col. William Moore died on March 13, 1895. “Death of Col. Wm. Moore,” The
Musical Visitor 24, no. 4 (April 1895): 97.
54
“The John Church Co.,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 11 (November 1892): 308. According to William
Osborne, Frank A. Lee led the company after Church’s death in 1890. However, it is more likely that John B. Trevor
was in charge until his retirement in 1892. Osborne, Music in Ohio, 516.
55
“Death of William Hooper: President of the John Church Company,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 8
(August 1894): 205.
56
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 4 (April 1895): 98. It was announced in 1897 that Lee had also
been elected president of the Manufacturers’ Club of Cincinnati, “one of the most important clubs in the city,” for it
influences the regulation and extension of the city’s business interests. “City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 4
(April 1897): 108.
57
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra: Centennial Portraits (Cincinnati: Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra,
1994), 8.
33
of the John Church Company was reportedly sold to Theodore Presser in 1898.58
In 1918 the John Church Company had elected Joseph Rawson a director following the
death of Edward Rawson. The Board reelected Frank A. Lee as president and August Beall as
secretary.59According to The Music Trades in March 1919, the John Church Company had
elected a new board of directors at its annual meeting held in Cincinnati on March 3. The board
Hunt. Hunt was elected vice president and August Beall remained secretary. The office of
president was left vacant at the time. Frank A. Lee would continue to serve as advisor and
consultant. Reportedly the stockholders’ meeting had been the largest in years. The company
was coming out of the difficulties “occasioned by war times.”60 R. B. Burchard became president
in 1920.61 In 1921 he was introduced to the Chicago Piano Club and gave a talk on the trade as a
union of commercialism with art. “In all of my years of political and business associations, I
have never known a body of men that sized up any better than the piano crowd at the
conventions. I believe that the mission which is ours is a wonderful mission, and one that we
shall be proud of as the years go on.”62 Burchard resigned as president in 1926 and was
58
Travis Suttle Rivers, “The Etude Magazine: A Mirror of the Genteel Tradition in American Music” (PhD
diss., University of Iowa, 1974), 42–43.
59
“Men and Matters,” Cincinnati Enquirer, February 20, 1918, 13. Frank A. Lee was still serving as
president in 1909. “Offer From Church Company For Norwood Plant of Smith and Nixon Piano Company,”
Cincinnati Enquirer, June 15, 1909, 5.
60
“John Church Co. Elects,” The Music Trades 57 (March 8, 1919): 9.
61
“Good Advertising in Cincinnati,” The Music Trade Review, March 6, 1920, 21.
62
“From Our Chicago Office,” The Music Trade Review, May 21, 1921, 32. It was noted that Col. R. B.
Burchard had served as Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island.
63
“New Stores and Changes Among Retail Music Dealers During the Past Month: Ohio,” The Music Trade
Review, May 1, 1926, 19.
34
The Editors of the Visitor
The editors of the Visitor were Frank H. King, Charles A. Daniell, Frank N. Scott, and
James R. Murray.64 A paucity of biographical information exists for them; what little is known
can be found in the Visitor. The editors and their writings exemplify the Puritan work ethic and
moral code. Concern with moral issues and family life is evident in their writings. I have been
unable to find any information regarding a denominational affiliation for Charles A. Daniell or
Frank N. Scott. Frank H. King’s marriage service was performed by a Presbyterian minister.
James R. Murray was apparently baptized in the Congregational church but may have converted,
under George Root’s influence, to the Swedenborgian Church of the New Jerusalem.
In many instances in the Visitor, an author’s name does not appear for an article. If
material was borrowed from another source, it was the policy of the journal to give credit to the
writer or journal. It may be safe to assume, however, that it was adapted or written by the editor
at that time. It was advantageous for the current editor to have his music printed in the Visitor.
Neither Frank King nor Frank Scott had any music printed in the journal. A perusal of Appendix
A (Chronological listing of music appearing in the Visitor) reveals that Charles A. Daniell’s
music appeared during his tenure; James R. Murray’s was published mostly after May 1881
FRANK H. KING
From October 1871 through December 1872, the first editor for the Visitor was
Franklin Homer King (1838–1900). According to M. Leslie Petteys, King had been born in Ohio,
had served in an Ohio regiment during the Civil War, and had been a prisoner of war in
64
American Periodicals, 1741–1900 gives the editor’s name as J. R. Murphy. American Periodicals: An
Index to the Microfilm Collections: American Periodicals 18th Century, American Periodicals 1800-1850,
American Periodicals 1850–1900, Civil War and Reconstruction, ed. Jean Hoornstra and Trudy Heath (Ann Arbor:
University Microfilms International, 1979), 149.
35
Libby prison in Richmond, Virginia, and the Andersonville prison in Georgia.65 Little is known
about his early life and education; however, after his death Musical America described him as a
good musician, a “hard-working man, who was one of the pioneers in the musical industries, and
certainly did a vast deal to spread musical culture, in the early days throughout the Western
country.”66 King was further described as “a big man,” who weighed about three hundred
pounds.67
Writers to the Visitor provided testimonials to King’s competence. In June 1872 a New
York correspondent, writing under the pseudonym of “Arion,” reported that Frank King had
previously written a correct and graphic description of the Engel organ.68 Another writer,
“Scudo” from Yellow Springs, Ohio, praised King for his critical prowess and independence.69
Prior to his employment by the Church Company, King had edited the Commercial and the
King became the tour manager for Cincinnati-born pianist Julia Rivé, possibly in 1874,
and married her on June 28, 1877.71 Most likely it was King who had favorably reviewed her
performance on October 16, 1871, at a benefit concert organized by her mother, Caroline Rivé,
for the victims of the Chicago Fire. Julia Rivé had performed Chopin’s “Polonaise in A-flat
65
The best source of information on Frank H. King is Petteys, “Julie Rivé–King.”
66
“Mephisto’s Musings,” Musical America 8 (June 13, 1908): 13, quoted in ibid., 57.
67
Petteys, “Julie Rivé-King,” 58. Photos of Frank King can be found in the Helen King Boyer Collection,
Special Collections, University Library, Georgetown University, Washington, DC.
68
Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 9 (June 1872): 2.
69
Frank H. King, “Sifting the Wheat from the Chaff,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 11
(August 1872): 6.
70
Petteys, “Julie Rivé-King,” 59–60.
71
Ibid., 61, 63. The ceremony was performed by a Presbyterian minister. Julia Rivé was also referred to
under the less formal “Julie.” Their marriage was reported in August 1877. Miss Julia Rivé “is now Mrs. Frank H.
King.” “Our Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 11 (August 1877): 285. The Visitor announced in
1879 that Frank H. King “has been appointed to an important position on the staff of manager Haverly.” That month
Rivé-King was beginning a series of concerts with the “well-known contralto,” Miss Anna Drasdil of New York.
“Musical People,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 1 (October 1879): 14.
36
major,” Litolff’s “Spinning Song,” and Liszt’s “Wedding March.” King had called her “one of
King was also a composer: Root and Cady published his temperance song “The Happy
Daughters” in 1869.73 The words were by Robert Morris, LLD. The song and chorus (SATB)
are prefaced with a brief description of a man who gives up drinking after his wife dies. He
becomes a temperance worker, and a passerby hears the song as it was sung by the happy
daughters. The song is in B-flat major with a waltz tempo. The daughters’ misery is depicted
with a shift to the relative minor, chromaticism, softer dynamic levels, and tempo changes. The
chorus concerns the daughters, who create a happy domestic scene for their father, who no
longer stumbles nor slurs his speech when he returns home early. John Church and Company
published three more of King’s songs in 1866. Petteys credits King with thirteen published
compositions, but notes that he also contributed to music published under his wife’s name. Julie
Rivé–King wrote to her sister-in-law on March 27, 1907, that Frank wrote the themes while she
helped him with the passage-work.74 Though Church had published some of King’s
Some moral issues attracted King’s attention: in music criticism, in music education, and
in the power of music. One of the problems with music criticism is that it can affect public
morals if, for example, a critic is paid by the performer for a good review. “A lie is a lie,”
whether it is told for a penny or for a dollar.75 King urged parents who were not musical to
educate their children in the art. Music is a potent influence when made around the family hearth.
72
Frank H. King, “Madame Rive’s Concert,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 2 (November 1871): 9.
Petteys credits Rivé-King with a single performance of Litolff’s “Spinning Song” in 1872, but this is either a
misprint or an additional performance. Petteys, “Julie Rivé-King,” 356.
73
Epstein, Music Publishing in Chicago before 1871, 120, 155, 172.
74
Petteys, “Julie Rivé-King,” 86, 337–38.
75
Frank H. King, “Musical Criticism,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 2 (November 1872): 5–6.
37
Sweet sound soothes irritable nerves, and “banishes impure and idle thoughts, and greatly
diminishes its innate tendency.”76 In “Popular Fallacies Properly Harmonized,” King writes that
music is not merely a fashion of the day, it is a necessity of human life and a requisite for
“Christian civilization.”77 Music is heard in nature, in the home in a mother’s lullaby, or when
the voices of the family blend in evening hymns of praise and thanksgiving. Sacred music gives
pleasure on Sunday. He ends by pointing out that “the moral power of music” has a positive
Frank King died on February 9, 1900, in New York; Julie Rivé-King died on July 24,
1937, in Indianapolis. In accordance with her wishes, she was buried with her husband in
Cincinnati’s Spring Grove Cemetery.79 Whereas Rivé-King enjoyed more public renown during
her lifetime than her husband, who had been content to live in her shadow, her ashes were buried
76
Frank H. King, “Value of Musical Instruction,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 3 (December 1872): 6.
77
Frank H. King, “Popular Fallacies Properly Harmonized,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 1 (October
1872): 10.
78
Ibid.
79
Mary Hubbell Osburn, Ohio Composers and Musical Authors (Columbus, OH: F. J. Heer, 1942), 158;
Petteys, “Julie Rivé-King,” 127. According to Spring Grove Cemetery records, Frank King is buried in Section 73,
lot 143, space 9, his wife in space 9c, with her ashes placed at the foot of his tomb. The lot was owned by Rivé-
King’s maternal aunt, Henrietta Staub Kitchell (d. 1903), who is buried in space 10. Kitchell’s sister, Caroline Rivé
(died October 31, 1882), is buried in space 7. Kitchell placed advertisements in the Visitor as a teacher of vocal and
instrumental music until May 1891. There seems to be some confusion as to the identity of Henrietta Kitchell.
According to Petteys she was a cousin and former student of Rivé-King, Mrs. Robert I. Blakeman (née Henrietta
Kitchell), who came to her assistance in 1937 before her death in Indianapolis.
80
James R. Murray, “Music and Musicians,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 3 (March 1883): 71. For example,
Murray does not present King as a former editor but rather as Julia Rivé’s husband: “Frank King, husband of the
celebrated pianist, Julia Rivé King, paid us a brief visit recently. Mrs. King is to make a tour across the continent
with the Thomas orchestra this spring.” Perhaps this is not surprising since King wrote, for example, that he favored
the idea of women reporters in an August 1872 editorial. “‘Lady’ Reporters,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 11
(August 1872): 7. W. S. B. Mathews credits King with ensuring that critics attended his wife’s concerts in order to
write meaningful reviews, not just an obligatory sentence or two. W. S. B. Mathews, “Editorial Bric-a-Brac,”
Music 19 (December 1900): 154–55. King accomplished this by making the acquaintance of managing editors and
business managers throughout the country. Julia Rivé-King returned to Cincinnati as soloist with Theodore Thomas
and his Chicago Orchestra on March 1, 1892. She performed “a new” Fantaisie de Concert by Tschaikowsky. Frank
King is not mentioned as having visited the Church Company offices at that time. “City Notes,” The Musical Visitor
21, no. 4 (April 1892): 101–2. This performance by Rivé-King is not mentioned in Petteys, “Julie Rivé-King,” or in
38
Figure 1.8. Frank King and Julie Rivé-King’s Gravesite, Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati (see
foreground of photo). Photo courtesy of Peggy Grant.
Following King’s tenure the name of an editor does not appear again at the head of the
Visitor’s editorial columns until January 1892. At that time James R. Murray, editor since May
1881, added his name.81 Music bibliographer William Weichlein suggests that following King’s
tenure, John Church served as editor from January 1873 through April 1881.82 According to
Ezra Schabas, Theodore Thomas: America’s Conductor and Builder of Orchestras: 1835–1905 (Urbana and
Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989).
81
The Musical Visitor 21, no. 1 (January 1892): 8. “J. R. Murray, Editor,” is added without comment.
Petteys writes that after King’s tenure, “no editor was listed in subsequent issues of Church’s Musical Visitor.”
Petteys, “Julie Rivé-King,” 60, n70. This is technically correct, since the journal was renamed The Musical Visitor
in February 1883.
82
William J. Weichlein, A Checklist of American Music Periodicals, 1850–1900 (Detroit: Information
Coordinators, 1970), 29.
39
Mary Davison, Frank N. Scott was the editor during 1873, and Frank H. King again from
January 1874 through January 1884, with James R. Murray filling the position from February
1885 through the last issue of December 1897.83 Vera Flandorf opined that John Church was
the sole editor of the Visitor.84 According to items in the Visitor, however, Frank N. Scott was
the editor from September to December of 1873. The September 1873 issue announced, “The
editorial pages have been trusted to new and efficient hands” but no name was given.85 In
Scott, who has had charge of the Visitor for several months,”86 was no longer connected with it
or Church’s publishing company. The Visitor was now supervised by “his successor, who was
also his pre-decessor,”87 referring to Charles A. Daniell (see below). Possibly Church himself
ended with the comment, “But so long as the Visitor is a good musical paper, its readers do not
care who makes it so.”88 One is reminded, perhaps, of the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain––it
matters not who performs the good works so long as they are done.
FRANK N. SCOTT
According to Vera Flandorf, Scott had been a voice teacher and director of the Caecilian
Glee Club in Indianapolis, and had edited Benham’s Music Review until the Baldwin Music
83
Mary Veronica Davison, “American Music Periodicals, 1853–1899” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota,
1973), 355. According to Petteys, Frank King was apparently affiliated with the Decker Brothers Piano Company
prior to 1874 and about this time became Rivé’s manager; they married in 1877 and resided mainly in New York
after their marriage. Petteys, “Julie Rivé-King,” 61, 66.
84
Vera S. Flandorf, “Music Periodicals in the United States: A Survey of Their History and Content” (MA
thesis, University of Chicago, 1952), 129. Flandorf also wrote that the journal was discontinued after John Church’s
death on April 19, 1890, and that his son-in-law, R. B. Burchard, continued the music publishing business.
85
“Our Future,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 12 (September 1873): 8.
86
“Editor’s Notes and Reviews,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 4 (January 1874): 10.
87
Ibid.
88
“Editor’s Notes and Reviews,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 4 (January 1874): 10.
40
Company purchased the Benham firm and moved it to Cincinnati.89 He began writing articles for
the Visitor in February of 1872 with “American Choral Societies,” signed “F. N. S.” The article
has a nationalistic bent, asserting that American choral societies are formed in order to perform
works of the masters and are “inferior to none among the family of nations.” We are “essentially
a singing people.”90 The essay was continued in the April issue. Scott cited as evidence of his
assertion that church choirs, community choral societies, and county musical conventions had
been the result of music education taught in public schools as instituted by Lowell Mason in
Boston.91
In September 1873 Scott made the business of seating at Pike’s Opera House a moral
issue. During a season of the English Opera Company, which included Clara Louise Kellogg,
ushers may have taken bribes from men wishing to be smuggled into $2 seats, having paid the $1
admission fee, thus defrauding the theater owner. The issue had been addressed in the
correspondence column of the local papers, and Scott felt the question to be of “considerable
importance” to his readers. For him it was a question of morality and equity. In the same column
he complained about the current literary offerings to the public, with “sickly sentimentality,
raving romance, mawkish memoir, and hysteric history.”92 A good book, with soul, intellect,
teachings, and divine brain-power, had moral worth and intellectual force. In the October 1873
issue Scott complained that contemporary organists strove too much for effect. They treated the
organ as a secular orchestra, and “the music performed in the churches is purely and simply
89
Flandorf, “Music Periodicals in the United States,” 53. Flandorf does not give a date for the move.
Benham’s Musical Review published in Indianapolis from January 1870 until June 1879. The name of the journal
was changed to Baldwin’s Musical Review and was published in Cincinnati from July 1879 until June 1883.
Davison, “American Music Periodicals,” 317.
90
F. N. S., “American Choral Societies,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 5 (February 1872): 5. See, for
example, the diverse history of choral music in the Queen City. Cincinnati Musical Festival Association, A City That
Sings: Cincinnati’s Choral Tradition 1800–2012, ed. Catherine Roma (Wilmington, OH: Orange Frazer Press,
2012).
91
F. N. S., “American Choral Societies–No. 2,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 1 (April 1872): 6.
92
“Editor’s Notes and Reviews,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 3 (December 1873): 8–9.
41
theatrical.”93 Though Scott’s tenure as an editor of the Visitor was brief, he, like King, addressed
moral issues.
In the same issue of the Visitor, Scott began a series of articles on composers titled
“Gleanings from Musical History.”94 “The writer––or perhaps it were better to style him the
editor––of this series, is well known as a musical writer; having, for a number of years past, been
connected with the press (more latterly with the musical press), in which field he is somewhat
well known as a writer upon musical matters.”95 According to Mary Davison, Scott served as the
editor for several journals: Western Musical Review (October 1866–December 1869); Benham’s
1873); the Folio (July 1887–January 1888); Gatcomb’s Banjo and Guitar Gazette
(January/February 1891–June 1896), and the Leader (December 1891 until sometime in
In the October 1873 issue of the Visitor, Scott took aim at his immediate predecessor.
Daniell had reprinted an entry from the Sunday Sentinel in the September issue of the
Musical Echo. The Sentinel had considered the August issue of Church’s Musical Visitor (and
contain “a good deal of music, such as it is.”97 Scott agreed with “Bro. Daniell” that “the
article is ‘unkind’ to him [emphases original], and the full force of the ‘unkindness’ lies in the
fact that he was in charge of the editorial columns of the Visitor for some months prior to
August, at his door must needs rest much of the responsibility if the Visitor was, indeed, ‘not a
first-class publication.’” Scott continued his attack on Daniell in the editorial column. The
93
Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 1 (October 1873): 2.
94
F. N. S., “Gleanings from Musical History,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 1 (October 1873): 3
95
“Our Musical Articles,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 1 (October 1873): 6
96
Davison, “American Music Periodicals,” 317.
97
“Unkind,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 1 (October 1873): 7.
42
September Echo “contains a delicious lump of editorial coolness, almost as refreshing as Arctic
soda . . . . It was our intention to have this number of the Echo illustrated, but rather than delay
the issue we postpone the idea, etc., etc.”98 Since the issue apparently arrived on schedule, Scott
“would really like to know our friends [sic] real idea (confidential) concerning a ‘delayed’
issue.” In the same column Scott again referred to the September issue of the Echo and our
“esteemed friend Daniell.” The Visitor’s August issue related the salary of Cincinnati organists
as ranging “from $2,500 to $3,000.”99 Daniell had printed the amount as $2,000 in the Echo, and
Scott advised him not to “go down and blow up poor Walters for not following copy, as we both
know you wrote it as published.” Furthermore, he beseeched Daniell to be more careful in his
quotations, “as accuracy is a vital element in journalism.” Daniell had also mentioned in the
Musical Echo that Boston had three theaters, “where once the puritan hub had seven”; Scott
Responded, “Please name the seven.”100 Scott’s more or less personal attacks on Daniell may
have been partly responsible for his departure from John Church and Company. The reason for
CHARLES A. DANIELL
Williams’ Cincinnati Directory of June 1879.101 In the June 1873 and June 1874 Directories his
name had appeared as a clerk at 66 West Fourth Street (John Church and Company). By the
printing of the 1875 Directory, Daniell had been promoted to editor of the Visitor and was so
98
“Editor’s Notes & Reviews,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 1 (October 1873): 9.
99
“Our Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 11 (August 1873): 10.
100
“Sock & Buskin,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 1 (October 1873): 11.
101
Williams’ Cincinnati Directory, 213.
43
listed through 1881.102 Thus, Daniell may have served as editor from January through August of
1873, and from January 1874 through April 1881, though he was not cited as such in the
Visitor.103 When Daniell visited the Church Company while in Cincinnati during the summer of
1895, Murray mentioned him as his predecessor on the Visitor staff.104 According to Davison,
Daniell had edited the Musical Echo, published in Milwaukee from 1873 to 1875, as well as
Musical People, published in Cincinnati and New York, from May 1880 to 1884.105 Apparently
Daniell had been editing the Musical Echo while he was employed by John Church and
Company. Some of Daniell’s music was printed in the Visitor under the pseudonym of D. C.
Addison.106
Daniell was also interested in moral issues. He took a New York minister to task for
Daniell countered with “the Apostolic command––the scriptural order to teach in song” and
questioned whether the minister was qualified to preach.107 He included a “Service of Songs”
with a history of the hymns and their authors by Hezekiah Butterworth in the Visitor’s February
1881 issue.108 Daniell reprinted part of the chapter “New England Psalmody” from J. S.
Curwen’s then-new Studies in Worship Music, regarding Dr. George Root’s efforts to reform
102
Ibid., 1873, 230; 1874, 249; 1875, 76; 1880, 266; 1881, 277.
103
Daniell mentioned in the December 1880 issue: “During eight of these nine years it has been under the
present editorial management.” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 3 (December 1880): 70.
104
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 8 (August 1895): 210.
105
Davison, “American Music Periodicals,” 128–29, 223, 369, 440.
106
Daniell also contributed articles under the initials D. C. A. William Cushing, Initials and Pseudonyms: A
Dictionary of Literary Disguises (1885; repr., Waltham, MA: Mark Press, 1963), 403, cited in Sandra Jean Graham,
“Reframing Negro Spirituals in the Late Nineteenth Century,” in Music, American Made: Essays in Honor of John
Graziano, ed. John Koegel (Sterling Heights, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2011), 620, n35.
107
“Musical Topics of the Month,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 4 (January 1881): 95.
108
“Service of Songs with Connected Readings: The Religious Experiences of Writers of Hymns,”
Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 5 (February 1881): 123–26.
44
church music, so that both the choir and the congregation joined in the psalmody.109 Daniell also
suggested that a “true use of the Sabbath is the culture of the mind.” Libraries and museums
should be “thrown open to business men, clubs, and others who have often nothing but a bare
bedroom to go to.” It would provide opportunities for self-education. Great numbers of people
who work six days a week were “practically debarred from enjoying the great libraries and art
collections in the cities.” Contemplating great works of art would create a desire “to live for
something higher and better.” Daniell concluded that the Sabbath should be a day of spiritual
culture for those who do not lack opportunities of physical and mental culture during the week.
They could rightly devote it entirely to their religious feelings, and would be the better and holier
for it.110
August 8, 1895; Murray reprinted it in the September Visitor.111 In November 1896 Murray
109
“Studies in Worship Music,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 6 (March 1881): 162.
110
“Sunday a Day of Spiritual Culture,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 6 (March 1881): 162.
111
C. A. Daniell, “Dr. Geo. F. Root,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 9 (September 1895): 230.
45
defended his predecessor. When Daniell inadvertently credited Lefébure-Wély for composing
“The Maiden’s Prayer” in a sketch appearing in Presto, he had corrected the error
“almost immediately,” but musical papers continued to reprint it.112 Murray questioned the
musical intelligence of editors who used the article uncritically: “Of Mr. Daniells’ [sic] high
musical and general culture and education we have personal knowledge and can readily see how
in the hurry and bustle of office work a slip of the pen like this might occur, but it does not ‘let
out’ those who have copied the article after his prompt correction.”113 The last reference to
Daniell appears in the February 1897 issue of the Visitor, where Murray agreed with Daniell’s
opinion, published in a recent issue of Presto, on the current state of music criticism––that more
JAMES R. MURRAY
In May 1881 the teacher, composer, and writer James Ramsey Murray (1841–1905)
became chief director of publications and editor of the Visitor. He remained in that position until
the last issue in December 1897. Murray had been born on March 17, 1841, at Ballardvale, a tiny
village in Andover, Massachusetts, to Walter and Christine Morrison Murray, members of the
South Parish Congregational Church.115 His parents had immigrated to the United States in 1840
46
from Roxburgh, Scotland. Murray had received his early education in Andover’s public school;
George Root’s autobiography tells us that Murray had also attended his North Reading,
Massachusetts, Normal School for teachers (in that location from 1856–1859).116 According to F.
O. Jones, Murray had “studied music with Dr. [George F.] Root, Lowell Mason, [William B.]
Bradbury, [George J.] Webb, and Eugene Thayer.”117 Murray wrote that as a boy, he had been
offered the position of organist at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in Marblehead, Massachusetts.
The organ, installed in 1817, had formerly been at St. Paul’s Church in New York and had been
“played on the occasion of Washington’s inaugural in 1789.”118 Like Frank King, he had served
in the Union Army during the war,119 after which he had been employed as an editor in Chicago
for Root and Cady’s Song Messenger of the Northwest from January 1867 until the Fire in
October 1871. He had married Isabel Maria Taylor, whom he had known since childhood, in
116
Hall, Biography of Gospel Song and Hymn Writers, 209; George F. Root, The Story of a Musical Life,
120–21. Murray dedicated his hymn “Unto Him That Loved Us” to the Free Church Choir, Andover, Massachusetts.
The Musical Visitor 19, no. 7 (July 1890): 184–85.
117
F. O. Jones, A Handbook of American Music and Musicians, Containing Biographies of American
Musicians and Histories of the Principal Musical Institutions, Firms, and Societies (Canaseraga, NY, 1886; repr.,
New York: Da Capo Press, 1971), 104. Thayer is quoted in the Visitor regarding the power of music to sustain the
soul. “Why Music Exists,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 7 (July 1883): 181. In Thayer’s obituary, Murray provides
information about his organ teacher, who had recently shot himself. He described Thayer as “of a peculiar
temperament,” inclined to pessimism, “easily elated, and as easily depressed.” Apparently Thayer had fewer
students of late than usual. Murray could not believe that the act was premeditated: “He was doubtless in a state of
mental aberration when the fatal shot was fired.” He was survived by his wife, two daughters, and a son, for whom
William Sherwood gave a benefit concert. The Musical Visitor 18, no. 8 (August 1889): 205. Douglas Bomberger
notes that Thayer had been plagued by depression for several years and had resigned his position at Holy Trinity
Church in New York the year prior to his suicide. E. Douglas Bomberger, ed., Brainard’s Biographies of American
Musicians, Music Reference Collection 79 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 266. William Osborne does not
mention suicide, William Osborne, “Thayer, W[hitney] Eugene,” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd
ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 8:167–68, but John Ogasapian relates
that Thayer’s declining health forced him to retire in May 1885, and was at Sherwood’s summer music school in
Burlington, Vermont, when he committed suicide. John Ogasapian, “Thayer, W[hitney] Eugene,” in The New Grove
Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2001), 25:340.
118
The Musical Visitor 20, no. 9 (September 1891): 232.
119
Epstein, Music Publishing in Chicago before 1871, 43. While serving in the army, Murray composed
“the widely successful sentimental ballad ‘Daisy Deane,’” published by Root & Cady in 1863.
47
1868.120 Murray had returned to his birthplace after the Fire; his friends had arranged a benefit
concert and found pupils for him.121 George Root had again offered the editorship of the Song
Messenger to Murray in 1873, but Murray had declined, responding from Andover that he would
write an occasional column for the paper. Since the Chicago Fire he had been “teaching, writing,
conducting, etc.,” and working in the public schools of Andover and Lawrence.122 Jacob Hall
mentioned that Murray had also been active as a temperance worker during this time.123
In June 1881 Church apparently broke with his long-standing tradition of not naming his
editor with the announcement that James R. Murray had assumed editorial management of the
Visitor in May:
Mr. Murray was for many years the editor of the Song Messenger of the Northwest (now
incorporated with the Visitor), and is widely known as the author of musical works of
great merit . . . . Mr. Murray will also hereafter write exclusively for our house, in all of
the departments of musical composition in which he has become so deservedly successful
and well known.124
A statement from the Boston Times dated July 3 appeared in the August 1881 issue: “Ever since
Mr. James R. Murray has assumed the editorial management of Church’s Musical Visitor, this
able journal of music has taken on a new lease of life and each department has been improved
and its scope enlarged. We congratulate Mr. Murray and his readers.”125 In the same issue, a
120
Hall, Biography of Gospel Song and Hymn Writers, 210.
121
Epstein, Music Publishing in Chicago before 1871, 81. Murray’s song about the Fire, “Pity the
Homeless; or Burnt Out,” was published in Boston in 1871 by White, Smith and Perry. It was dedicated to Root and
Cady. The Visitor’s Chicago correspondent described Root and Cady’s office before the Fire as a place “where used
to congregate the popular composers of songs, and book compilers. In the little room many desks were crowded,
together with a small cabinet organ. At one of the desks Mr. J. R. Murray corrected proofs and wrote his regrets
upon rejected MSS; at another, Dr. Root himself presided; while composers whose works were going through the
press occupied the other seats.” P. N. Phoebus, “Chicago,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 4 (January 1880): 107.
122
G. F. R., “Some Items,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 7 (July 1891): 172–73. Root provides information he
had omitted from his biography.
123
Hall, Biography of Gospel Song and Hymn Writers, 210.
124
Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 6 (June 1881): 242.
125
“Publisher’s Department,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 11 (August 1881): 305.
48
reader from Davenport, Iowa, provided another testimonial for the new editor. The Visitor “has
always been edited with scrupulous and pains-taking, as its well-furnished pages have testified;
but the announcement of Mr. J. R. Murray as the future editor, is the sure pledge that . . . these
pages will not only maintain their high character, but will grow in every feature of
excellence.”126
Murray continued to enjoy an excellent reputation as an editor. The February 1883 issue
included quotes from other papers, including New York’s Spirit of the Times that the Visitor
“not only contains a vast amount of music, but the editorials are spicy and full of instruction.
They take the place of a music teacher.” The Cincinnati Enquirer wrote of the Visitor: “Its
editorials are well written and spicy, it contains much of the current musical news, and has in
addition well selected musical compositions.”127 Murray quoted another testimonial that had
appeared in the Buffalo Times on December 6, 1891: “The Musical Visitor is one of the
handsomest and best edited musical papers that reaches the Times office.”128
Murray was the first to issue an editorial disclaimer for the Visitor in August 1881: “The
Editor wishes it to be remembered that he does not hold himself in any way responsible for the
practical use to the public at large and believes in a thorough discussion of both sides of a
subject, provided the discussion be free from personalities.” Murray would not tolerate
“vituperation” or “personal flings” at those who held opposing views.129 At that time the issue of
126
D. E. J[ones], “Correspondence,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 11 (August 1881): 302. The writer
was identified in the next issue as the Reverend Darius E. Jones (1815–1881) in an obituary. “Gone Home,”
Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 12 (September 1881): 327. He had been a representative of John Church and
Company for the last four years. Murray had known him in Chicago, where Root and Cady had published Jones’s
hymn-tune book, Songs for the New Life (1869).
127
“A Little Egotism,” Church’s Musical Visitor 12, no. 2 (February 1883): 40.
128
James R. Murray, “As Good as a Christmas Gift,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 1 (January 1892): 10.
129
Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 11 (August 1881): 298.
49
tonic sol-fa was heating up, with contributions from both sides. The tonic sol-fa method of
teaching sight singing to Sunday School children had begun in England with Congregationalist
minister the Reverend John Curwen. A problem had arisen when Curwen failed to link his
system with the ability to read staff notation. In 1870 had Curwen introduced hand signals as an
aid to instruction, and by the late nineteenth century Curwen’s defenders mistakenly advocated
the method as superior to staff notation.130 The August 1881 issue also contained an article on
Curwen’s system. “The attempt to introduce the Tonic-sol-fa notation into America, is very
much like bringing coal to Newcastle.” More attention should be given to “the study of
underlying principles, rather than to new-fangled methods of representation,” which would save
time and money.131 The Visitor printed a lengthy letter from H. E. Holt of Boston to the editor of
the London Musical Times which had been refused. Mr. Holt gave his reasons and opinions as to
“why the Tonic Sol-fa notation should not be used in public schools,” citing his long experience
in teaching children. Holt took exception to John Stainer’s complaint that he could not teach
Apparently Church had changed his mind in January 1874 that readers did not care
who edited his paper. In December 1882 a subscriber had asked, “Will you please tell me who
edits the Visitor now,” and “Can we have his portrait in the paper sometime?” Murray coyly
responded to the first question with “We do,” and humorously to the second: “Cincinnati is full
of superior engravers, but they one and all . . . refuse to entertain for a moment the proposition to
out our portrait . . . . One artist excused himself on the ground of wishing to remain in Cincinnati
130
See Bernarr Rainbow, “Tonic Sol-fa,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed.,
ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 25:603–7.
131
“Once More,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 11 (August 1881): 299.
132
“A Reply to a Reply,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 7 (July 1883): 174–75.
50
in business, but that he would be obliged to leave the city if he undertook the job.”133 Murray
“great men of history . . . of short stature” to discourage any one from looking “down on little
A full-page advertisement for the December 1883 Visitor announced that its
thirteenth volume would begin in 1884 and singled out thirteen contributors for its “Galaxy of
Talent,” many of whom wrote exclusively for the journal: George F. Root (“The Greatest
American Teacher and Composer”), William F. Sherwin (“Of the New England Conservatory of
Boston, unexcelled in his specialties”), Frederic W. Root (“The Great Voice Teacher”), Orlando
Composer and Teacher”), Paul Pastnor (“Whose essays are always extensively copied as soon as
they appear”), Louis C. Elson (“One of Boston’s Best Critics”), Edmond E. Ayres (“Lecturer on
Musical History at Chautauqua, and Secretary of the Chautauqua Musical Reading Club”), Eben
Travel are so much admired”), John Howard (“The Musical Philosopher”), Theodore Presser
(“Originator of the Music Teachers’ National Association”), and James R. Murray (“Editor of
the Visitor”).135 George F. Root and his son Frederic were also among the winners in the
133
James R. Murray, “The Question Box,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 15 (December 1882): 412. A
portrait of Murray can be found in Howe and Mathews, eds., A Hundred Years of Music in America, 407, and in
Hall, Biography of Gospel Song and Hymn Writers, 208. Murray’s portrait also appeared on the sheet music cover
for his “Carl Pretzel Waltz,” published in 1871 by Root and Cady. Epstein, Music Publishing in Chicago before
1871, 129, 175.
134
“Little Men,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 7 (July 1884): 180.
135
The Musical Visitor 12, no. 12 (December 1883): iv. Boston correspondent Louis Elson wrote under the
pseudonym “Proteus” (Greek god of the sea, who had the gift of prophecy; also known as the shepherd of the seals);
George S. Gordon wrote under the pseudonym of “Scythian” (belonging to an ancient nomadic people who
inhabited Scythia). Gordon was identified as a lawyer from Huntsville, Alabama. Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no.
15 (December 1882): 408. John Howard critiqued performances and wrote several articles on the voice and
physiology, which included information obtained from autopsies. He also placed advertisements in the Visitor for
his voice method and advertisements as a teacher. Eben E. Rexford contributed poems, short stories, and articles on
song form. He had been appointed postmaster at Shiocton, Wisconsin. Since his annual salary was only $242, the
Visitor hoped it would be able to continue to purchase his poems and stories. The Musical Visitor 14, no. 8 (August
51
Visitor’s 1876 poll for most popular vocal composers. The advertisement mentioned that
“the Musical Visitor is the official organ of the Chautauqua musical reading club.” It appears that
the advertisement was directed toward both current and future subscribers.
Murray was well respected within the musical community. He was invited to present
papers for various state music teachers’ associations and for local gatherings in Cincinnati. A
letter from “J. S. B.” in May 1884, under the heading “The Indiana Music Teachers State
Association,” announced that a meeting that would take place in Shelbyville from June 23 to 26,
in which gentlemen from adjoining states who possess national reputations would take active
part. The list included James R. Murray, editor of the Musical Visitor.136 A report on the “Ohio
paper“Stray Shots,” which had criticized the teaching profession “from various points of
view.”137 His stated purpose had not been to find fault but to stimulate “more careful and
intelligent work.”138 At the Columbus meeting of the Ohio M.T.A. (June 27–29, 1888), President
Blumenschein recommended that Mr. Karl Merz of Wooster and Mr. James R. Murray of
Cincinnati be made life members of the association: “Their services have been of inestimable
benefit to our cause, and should meet their just reward at the hands of this convention.”139 The
1885): 206. Rexford wrote the words for H. P. Danks’s “Silver Threads Among the Gold” (1872). More information
about Rexford can be found in Hall, Biography of Gospel Song and Hymn Writers, 257–60. In 1881 the Visitor
announced that William F. Sherwin would be in charge of the Church Company’s Sunday School Department.
Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 5 (February 1881): 130. According to Howe, Sherwin’s specialties included the
reform and improvement of music for Sunday school. Howe, A Hundred Years of Music in America, 392–94. He left
Cincinnati in late 1883 to direct the chorus at the New England Conservatory. “W. F. Sherwin,” The Musical Visitor
12, no. 11 (November 1883): 291; “City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 12 (December 1883): 321. Sherwin
continued to contribute articles; his obituary appeared in the Visitor. The Musical Visitor 17, no. 5 (May 1888): 120.
Theodore Presser began publishing and editing The Etude in October 1883.
136
“The Indiana Music Teachers State Association,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 5 (May 1884): 124.
137
“Ohio Music Teachers,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 2 (February 1885): 40.
138
Ibid.
139
“The Ohio M.T.A.,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 8 (August 1888): 205.
52
article does not mention if the recommendation passed. According to Granville L. Howe,
Murray “gained no slight reputation as a musical journalist” as editor of the Visitor.140 Murray
was also apparently invited to present a paper at the World’s Columbian Exposition, held in
Chicago in 1893, but he failed to mention it. John Howard reported that he was sorry to have
choir in an article promoting unison singing,142 and later announced that on April 11, 1888, he
would speak on “English Music” to the Young People’s League of the New Church at the corner
of Fourth and John Streets.143 England had been the theme of a series of papers and musical
entertainments given for the League. Murray reported that he also had the pleasure of
giving an address on “Foundational Art Principles and Methods of Study” to Miss Grace Mayo’s
piano class on January 18, 1890.144 Mrs. John B. Trevor (wife of John Church’s business
partner) had loaned “her beautiful and spacious parlors” in her Mt. Auburn home for the
recital.145 In 1896 Murray announced that he would address the Men’s Club of Mt. Auburn at
Mt. Auburn Presbyterian Church on March 3. His topic would be “The Power of Music; What It
Is and How It Acts.”146 He admitted that his views would be quite different from those
commonly accepted, but he did not reveal what those views were.
140
Howe and Mathews, eds., A Hundred Years of Music in America, 408. Howe incorrectly gives 1842 as
Murray’s birth year.
141
John Howard, “Chicago Experiences,” The Musical Visitor 22, no. 12 (December 1893): 308. I have
been unable to determine the subject of Murray’s paper.
142
“Unison Singing,” The Musical Visitor 16, no. 7 (July 1887): 177–78. Murray was likely choir director
at the Mt. Auburn Baptist Church. He dedicated works to the choir. See Appendix A: April 1886 and November
1890.
143
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 4 (April 1888): 93.
144
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 19, no. 2 (February 1890): 37.
145
Ibid.
146
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 25, no. 3 (March 1896): 88–89. Murray repeated the address for the
Lyceum Club by special request. “City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 25, no. 6 (June 1896): 174.
53
Murray not only edited the Visitor but also contributed music and poems to its pages.
Advertisements for his compositions, method books, or edited collections published by Church
comments or testimonials regarding his works. For example, an ad for a new Christmas cantata
with a text by Hezekiah Butterworth and music by Murray titled The New Santa Claus, or, The
Good Old Candy Man began appearing in November 1888.147 On an editorial page of the
December issue, Murray claimed: “Our new cantata for Christmas has seemingly fallen into kind
and welcoming hands. Many have spoken favorably of it, and some whose opinions we highly
prize have sent us flattering notices of it. It will be given in several places in this vicinity, and we
shall be pleased to hear of its performances elsewhere.”148 An advertisement for the work
appeared on the first page of the same issue. Hence the editorial comment, while not violating
the paper’s principle of keeping advertising material out of the editorial columns, could be
considered a conflict of interest. A claim had been made in the October issue that testimonials, if
According to F. O. Jones, Murray was known as a composer of songs and light vocal
pieces and a compiler of various collections for schools and Sunday schools. His Pure
Diamonds, Heavenward, and Royal Gems for Sunday school had been very successful; Pure
Diamonds alone had sold more than a half million copies.150 Granville Howe opined, however,
that Murray’s best compositions for children had been written “since he went to Cincinnati in
147
The Musical Visitor 17, no. 11 (November 1888): i.
148
The Musical Visitor 17, no. 12 (December 1888): i, 316.
149
“Publisher’s Notes,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 10 (October 1888): 262.
150
Jones, A Handbook of American Music and Musicians, 104. All three collections were published by S.
Brainard’s Sons: Pure Diamonds: A Choice Collection of New Words for the Sunday School, Praise Meetings,
Prayer Meetings, and the Social Circle (1872); Heavenward: A Choice Collection of Sacred Songs, Adapted to the
Wants of Sunday Schools, Praise Meetings, the Home Circle (1877); and Royal Gems: A New and Choice Collection
of Sunday School Songs ,Composed, Selected and Adapted by Jas. R. Murray (1880).
54
1881.”151
credited Murray with introducing his “Battle Cry of Freedom” to his unit during the war. Murray
had written a poem in honor of George Root’s seventieth birthday and printed it in the Visitor in
1890. Root reprinted the poem in his autobiography and noted, “Of all the communications” he
had received on that occasion, the poem by Murray printed in the Visitor “moved” him the
most.152
151
Howe and Mathews, eds., A Hundred Years of Music in America, 408. This would possibly include his
“Away in a Manger,” which appeared in Dainty Songs for Little Lads and Lasses: For Use in the Kindergarten,
School and Home, published by the John Church Company in 1887. Marilyn K. Stulken writes that this hymn is
frequently called “Luther’s Cradle Hymn,” but the tune is by Murray and initialed “J. R. M.” The blame for long
being unrecognized as the composer lies with Murray himself, since in the collection the hymn was labeled
“Luther’s Cradle Hymn. Composed by Martin Luther for his children, and still sung by German mothers to their
little ones.” Marilyn K. Stulken, Hymnal Companion to the Lutheran Book of Worship (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1981), 67.
152
James R. Murray, “To Dr. Geo. F. Root, on His Seventieth Birthday,” The Musical Visitor 19, no. 11
(November 1890): 283; Root, The Story of a Musical Life, 141, 220–21.
55
George Root died on August 6, 1895, at his summer cottage on Bailey’s Island near Portland,
Maine; his portrait graced the cover of the Visitor’s September “Memorial Number” in his honor.
Clara Louise Burnham contributed a loving tribute to her father, including the comment that
work was his greatest enjoyment and that he never took an absolute vacation from it. Root was
buried alongside his parents (as had been the case with John Church) in North Reading,
Massachusetts.153
56
Some of Murrays’s poems that appeared in the Visitor combined religion and nature. “A
Night Cap” (November 1885) was a bedtime prayer for safe passage through the night. “En
route” (January 1888) was a reassurance that angels watch over us. “Geduld” appeared in March
1884 and was prefaced with quotes from “an invalid friend” and Milton. It called for patience
and reminded that one can still do good in the world in spite of physical ailments or
limitations.154 His “Singers of the Mystic Clime” were angels, some of them deceased loved ones
who guide with their song. The poem had first appeared in January 1883 and was reprinted by
Murray referred to his family in various ways. In April 1890 he wrote a poem honoring
his recently deceased mother, Christine Murray: “1811 C. M. 1890.”156 In the same issue,
“Winthrop, the editor’s son,” provided a riddle involving scales, strings, keys, and stout legs. An
advertisement in the March issue revealed the answer—the Everett Piano.157 Murray commented
on the practical aspects of life missing from Carl Reinecke’s new set of eighteen piano pieces
depicting “the whole story of life—birth, christening, childhood . . . family joys, death”; to them
Murray added “measles, toothache, losing an umbrella, missing the train, or editing a musical
paper.”158 Because a poem entitled “Green Apples” by Thomas Culiar, printed in September
Musical Visitor 24, no. 9 (September 1895): 259. Perhaps Clara Burnham was anxious to preserve an image of
family unity.
154
The Musical Visitor 14, no. 11 (November 1885): 283; The Musical Visitor 17, no. 1 (January 1888): 3;
The Musical Visitor 13, no. 3 (March 1884): 59.
155
The Musical Visitor 12, no. 1 (January 1883): 3; The Musical Visitor 13, no. 6 (June 1884): 149.
156
James R. Murray, “1811 C. M. 1890,” The Musical Visitor 19, no. 4 (April 1890): 87. This poem is also
religious in tone.
157
“Musical Hopper,” The Musical Visitor 19, no. 4 (April 1890): 95; The Musical Visitor 19, no. 3 (March
1890): 85. Murray’s son had been born February 14, 1877 (Spring Grove Cemetery records), so he would have been
thirteen at the time.
158
“Musical Hopper,” The Musical Visitor 19, no. 3 (March 1890): 68. Murray is likely referring to
Reinecke’s op. 202, From the Cradle to the Grave, a set of sixteen fantasy pieces for piano published in 1888.
Murray apparently misremembered the number of pieces as eighteen.
57
1885, was not related to music, Murray added a footnote: “This poem is indirectly
appropriate to this magazine, as the subject of it effects [sic] musicians directly as it did Billy, as
recorded in these sententious lines. The Editor of the Visitor has ‘been there.’”159
The Puritan ethic found its way into the pages of the Visitor, where success in music was
not due to genius or European study, and keeping oneself busy also kept one out of trouble.
Miss Laura B. Woolwine of Cincinnati (who took the stage name Laura Bellini) was held up as
an example of success achieved not just due to study in Europe, but through hard work. She had
recently enjoyed “a remarkably successful debut” in Europe and had learned that “genius is only
another name for toil.”160 In the same issue Jules E. Perkins of Boston had been considered
incapable of singing in tune, but following six years of “earnest hard work” with Signor Perini in
Milan, he had been engaged by Mapleson for the Drury Lane Theatre in London.161 Editor
Charles A. Daniell began a series of condensed biographies of eminent musicians in April 1875.
He prefaced the list with the comment that art was not a matter of race, nationality, or creed.
“But it must be remembered, and the fact is ever prominent in the lives of all the following great
ones, that there is no excellence without labor” (emphasis original).162 A few years later Daniell
praised one of the “eminent song mistresses” Miss Emma Abbott (born in Bloomington, Illinois):
“Only by hard study, and a real love of her profession, she gained her present high place.”163
James R. Murray reiterated the work ethic. He included Beethoven, Mozart, and Felix
159
Thomas Culiar, “Green Apples,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 9 (September 1885): 238.
160
“Milan, Italy,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 5 (February 1874): 6.
161
“Jules E. Perkins,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 5 (February 1874): 9–10.
162
“Condensed Biographical Chronology of Eminent Musicians,” Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 7 (April
1875): 7.
163
“The Musical Month,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 1 (October 1879): 3.
58
Mendelssohn in a list of composers who “may have had more than usual talent in their
specialties, but the greatest gift they each possessed . . . was the gift of hard work.” The
penultimate paragraph assumed readers’ familiarity with Dickens’s David Copperfield: “The
thoroughly gifted are the hard workers. Mediocre talent holds back, waiting, Micawber-like, for
something to turn up, that will place it high above its fellows.”164 In “Advice to a Young Man,”
Murray repeated the work ethic: “Don’t be afraid of killing yourself with over-work. . . . The
busier you are the less devilry you will be apt to get into,” including “editing a paper.”165 In May
1885 he advised young music pupils that persistence pays: Most “great masters of the art . . .
did not rely so much on their superior talent for advancement and fame, as upon hard work and
plenty of it.”166 In “A Short Preach” in January 1891, Murray instructed: “Strict attention to
duty . . . is of more importance to you than to your employer,” lest one lose his self-respect,
honesty, and character, which are of more value than money. This applied to everyone in all
walks of life. For Murray it was a moral issue: “We should do right because it is right, and not
because we are fully paid for doing it . . . . [W]e serve our Creator most and best through faithful
service to our fellow-men.”167 A year later Murray continued in this vein: “Sound work should
be the watchword of every music-teacher and pupil. Character expresses itself in work. . . . An
honest man does his whole work honestly, not because it is to be supervised and examined, but
because he is incapable of doing it in any other way.”168 In the same editorial column, Murray
164
James R. Murray, “Genius—Hard Work,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 11 (August 1881): 299. Mr.
Wilkins Micawber was a likeable but impecunious and impractical man who was always waiting for something to
turn up.
165
James R. Murray, “Advice to a Young Man,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 1 (January 1884): 14.
166
The Musical Visitor 14, no. 5 (May 1885): 122.
167
James R. Murray, “A Short Preach,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 1 (January 1891): 9. According to
Fischer, the Puritans did not glorify what we might call “capitalist enterprise,” and “they condemned the pursuit of
wealth for its own sake.” Fischer, Albion’s Seed, 156.
168
The Musical Visitor 21, no. 3 (March 1892): 64.
59
referred once again to the work ethic and genius: “Having a talent does not excuse laziness. The
more genius, the more hard work.”169 He used Mozart, whose practice reportedly wore the piano
keys to wood, and Bach, who sat up all night to copy scores, as role models.170 Murray disabused
his readers of the popular idea recently conveyed by a writer that geniuses are born and things
just come to them. Murray considered it an act of “kindness to undeceive” any such person and
Murray continued to promote the work ethic through the Visitor’s final issue. The
last installment in a series of articles on teaching and studying concludes: “One can always
endure drudgery and hard work if it can be shown him that the end of it all compensates. Let the
teacher. . . [inspire] the student to high ideals above and beyond them, inciting him to reach them
at any cost to himself of time and labor. Finis coronat opus [The end crowns the work].”172
Music, morals, and the hearth were combined in a description of a concert held at a
church. “The most delightful concert of the month was that given for the benefit of the Church of
Our Savior, Mt. Auburn. . . . The stage was beautifully arranged, and made to look like a cosy
[sic] home parlor. . . .”173 Murray also suggested that a home orchestra, created by adding such
orchestral instruments as the violin and flute to the music of the piano, enhanced the music. It
also kept “your boy” out of the saloon and beer garden.174 The concern for domestic music-
169
Ibid., 65.
170
Murray reinforced J. S. Bach’s work ethic in a series of composers’ biographies, which he wrote using
the Socratic method: “Q. What was the chief characteristic of his youth? A. Indefatigable industry in the study of
music.” Murray claimed that Bach had copied by moonlight over a period of six months a music book that had been
withheld from him. James R. Murray, “Musical Catechism for Young Students, I – Bach,” The Musical Visitor 26,
no. 5 (May 1897): 116.
171
The Musical Visitor 25, no. 10 (October 1896): 283.
172
James R. Murray, “Closing Hints,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 12 (December1897): 331–32.
173
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 19, no. 1 (January 1890): 9–10.
174
“Give the Fiddle a Chance,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 10 (October 1888): 261.
60
making expressed in the Visitor bolsters musicologist Bonny H. Miller’s findings: music in
the home was believed to “contribute greatly to the morality of the family.”175
The Visitor also advocated attending orchestral concerts to promote moral behavior.
Murray reported on the season of Sunday afternoon concerts by the Cincinnati Orchestra which
These concerts certainly do draw from less desirable surroundings those who really prefer
to listen to music in a decent place . . . . Last year several fathers and mothers came to
Mr. Ballenberg to thank him for inaugurating these concerts, as they had been the means
of weaning their children from the beer-garden and questionable concert room, and . . . an
opportunity to gratify a love for music in a place free from temptation, and in the
company of respectable men and women.176
Murray also promoted the moral benefits of music festivals: to the communities where
they were held; to the composers who were commissioned to write choral works; and to the
singers who performed them. Murray made the point that festival rehearsals provided a moral
benefit to the community and to the family. Young people did not seek “amusements of a
questionable character” and families looked forward to the “practice hour” in the home circle. In
175
Bonny H. Miller, “Household Periodicals: An Unstudied Source of American Music,” Fontes artis
musicae 42 (1995): 318.
176
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 11 (November 1889): 289–90. William Osborne suggests that
the Sunday afternoon popular concerts during the 1889–1890 season at Music Hall, underwritten by Ballenberg and
conducted by Michael Brand, survived until 1895 because they were “inexpensive.” Osborne, Music in Ohio, 213.
Robert Vitz expresses a similar opinion, in that the orchestra revived by Brand and Ballenberg deserted “serious
music for more profitable popular concerts.” Vitz, The Queen and the Arts, 125. It seems, however, that venue and
audience were more important than ticket price to at least some of those in attendance. This entry in the Visitor
called attention to the tension between the Anglo and German communities in nineteenth-century Cincinnati. Ross,
Workers on the Edge, 172–74. The Germans who immigrated to Cincinnati following the 1848 political revolutions
settled in an enclave known as “Over-the-Rhine,” where they established German businesses, newspapers, beer
gardens, churches, and theaters. Their “fondness for drink and their tendency to violate the sanctity of the Sabbath”
caused nativist resentment. William L. Downard, The Cincinnati Brewing Industry: A Social and Economic History
(Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1973), 11, 25, 28. Prior to 1850, Cincinnati’s brewing industry was “decidedly
non-German” in character; the brewers were generally English or Scots. The new brewers of the 1850s, however,
were predominantly German. Between 1860 and 1890, Cincinnati’s beer output tripled, with 1,200,000 barrels
produced by 1890.
177
James R. Murray, “Musical Festival Associations,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 3 (March 1885): 66–67.
61
Music education in the schools provided another means of promoting morality.
Murray chose to reprint an article from the Journal of Education regarding the moral force of
vocal music and how it functions: “. . . when a child learns some truth expressed in the words of
a favorite song, its influence goes with him at all times.” The impressions learned in childhood
were considered to be the most lasting, and thus vocal music was one of the most influential
agents in forming and molding character. Songs containing moral precepts developed the
censorship. Apparently “purification of the stage, both musical and dramatic” was then a current
issue.179 Murray approved of plays and operas that have “a noble purpose, above that of
entertainment alone.”180 At issue was a letter written by New York manager P. Harris, who had
given notice that anything offensive to his audience (mostly of women and children) would not
be permitted and subject to a $20 fine for each offense, for words such as “God, Devil, Damn, or
Lord, or any double entendre [emphasis original].”181 If the company manager was uncertain of
any possible offending words or acts, “refer them to the Management who will decide.”182
Harris’s letter had been ridiculed in an unnamed New York musical paper, and Murray
castigated its writer for not being “capable of seeing the difference between a proper use of the
above words and a profane one.”183 Murray expressed a similar concern in the April 1889 issue,
lamenting the decline of opera from the French opéra comique and the operettas of Gilbert and
178
James R. Murray, “Music in Education,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 7 (July 1897): 173.
179
James R. Murray, “Stage Reform,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 7 (July 1885): 179.
180
Ibid.
181
Ibid.
182
Ibid.
183
James R. Murray, “Stage Reform,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 7 (July 1897): 173.
62
Sullivan to burlesque. According to Murray, the latter was calculated to showcase the singer with
“little regard for the sentiment of the situation or sustaining the unity of the story,” with “a stage
picture . . . and . . . unrestricted license to the comedians.”184 However, Murray could show a
lighter side, when in March 1891 he noted that traditionally during Lent it was wrong to attend
theater productions where performers spoke their parts, but in most operas, as they were usually
performed, it was nearly impossible to understand the words. Thus, they “can do no harm . . . as
things are now, it is perfectly safe to hear any kind of music in Lent.”185 The question of
appropriate entertainment, however, returned in 1892. At issue was “what kind of life, what part
people.”186 Murray wrote that latter day comic operas are debasing—their only reason for being
is to display a woman’s form. Managers could entertain and amuse the public, however, and
appropriate plays, such as “The Old Homestead,” “Men and Women,” “Esmeralda,” and
England childhood. As late as thirty or forty years ago, New England boyhood days had
“retained the flavor and influence of earlier puritanism.”188 Its “stern teachings” and “strict
184
James R. Murray, “Degenerating Comic Opera,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 4 (April 1889): 90–91.
185
The Musical Visitor 20, no. 3 (March 1891): 65.
186
James R. Murray, “The Theater and Comic Opera,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 4 (April 1892): 101.
187
According to The Oxford Companion to American Literature, 6th ed., The Old Homestead (1886) was “a
homely rural drama of Yankee life” by Denham Thompson (1833–1911). Thompson was a Pennsylvania-born
itinerant actor and dramatist. The play was popular for more than twenty years. Edward S. Willard (1853–1915)
performed in H. A. Jones’s “now-familiar play” Middleman (1889) in New York in November 1892. “Mr. Willard
Home Again,” New York Times, November 22, 1892, 5. Henry Arthur Jones (1851–1929) was a conservative
English playwright who contributed to Victorian “Society” drama. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th ed., s.v. “Jones,
Henry Arthur.”
188
James R. Murray, “Some First Impressions,” The Musical Visitor 22, no. 11 (November 1893): 293.
63
observance of law and custom” no doubt resulted in “sturdy, fearless men and women,” but it
had been difficult for a boy to endure.189 Murray expressed interest in Miss Earle’s The Sabbath
in Puritan New England published in 1891.190 According to her, children had been subjected to
strict supervision during the church service and some had rebelled in various ways, such as
whittling or cutting the woodwork and benches of the meeting houses. They had been fined for
smiling or laughing if caught, or had received raps or blows from a watchful constable or
Murray’s “last great labor” for the John Church Company was “seeing through the press
five volumes of Wagner’s music dramas,” in full score with the original German text and “a
smooth and excellent English translation.”192 According to Spring Grove Cemetery records,
Murray died of Addison’s disease on March 10, 1905, at his home, 2342 Auburn Avenue, one
week before his sixty-fourth birthday. His death notice appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer on
March 13, 1905, and indicated that a service was to be held at the New Jerusalem Church at the
corner of Oak and Winslow.193 His ashes were buried in Spring Grove Cemetery, along with the
189
Ibid. Murray’s description of Puritan practices accords with Crawford’s comment that the Puritans were
as hard on themselves as they were on others. Crawford, America’s Musical Life, 29.
190
Alice Morse Earle, The Sabbath in Puritan New England (New York: Scribner, 1891). Miss Earle
(1853–1911) was a Massachusetts scholar whose works also include Customs and Fashions in Old New England
(1893), Colonial Days in Old New York (1897), Child Life in Colonial Days (1899), and Two Centuries of Costume
(1903). The Oxford Companion to American Literature, 6th ed.
191
James R. Murray, “Puritan Boys in Church,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 3 (March 1892): 62–63.
192
Hall, Biography of Gospel Song and Hymn Writers, 211. An unexpected finding regarding personnel
comes from a student report from a local school’s field trip to Church’s firm in 1896. A student commented on the
“many bright, young ladies busily engaged in putting music on metal plates; there were also several men engravers,
all under the direction of an accomplished artisan from Leipzig, Germany.” This was apparently another field of
employment available to musically educated women. May Hoban, “A Visit to ‘Church’s,’” The Musical Visitor 25,
no. 4 (April 1896): 116–17.
193
Murray was likely raised as a Congregationalist, but his subsequent membership in the Church of the
New Jerusalem may have been influenced by George Root. Root and his wife joined the Chicago Society of the
New Jerusalem in 1864. Carder, George Root, Civil War Songwriter, 223, n125. Carder also notes that George Root
was baptized on September 8, 1822, in the Congregational Church, Sheffield, Massachusetts. Ibid., 211, n12.
Epstein, Music Publishing in Chicago before 1871, 20.
64
remains of his wife, who died in 1920, and his son, Winthrop (1877–1934).194
The editorial page of the last issue of the Visitor announced that it would make its new
plan available to the public at a later date.195 The John Church Company made at least part of
this plan known through the Music Trade Review in March 1898. Because the catalogue of their
publications was now sufficiently strong, they could devote their time and capital, which
had been partly invested in outside publications, and all their energies to the sale of their own
goods.196 The same issue of the Review included an advertisement by the John Church Company
For twenty-six years, from October 1871 through December 1897, the Visitor had
educated and entertained its readers. The editors had been Frank H. King, October
1871–December 1872; Charles A. Daniell, ca. January 1873–August 1873; Frank N. Scott,
September 1873–December 1873; Charles A. Daniell, January 1874–April 1881; and James R.
Murray, May 1881–December 1897. For the home circle, the editors linked music and morals,
and actively advised music students to work hard. Historian Michael Cahall has claimed that the
post-Civil War elite patrons of the arts in Cincinnati, including the editors of the Visitor, were
overwhelmingly Protestant. “Primary documents reveal that patrons viewed the arts as a means
of improving the community,” and music made the greatest contribution. Their efforts were
motivated by a desire to elevate the city’s moral tone, which they felt was threatened by
194
Spring Grove Cemetery records. For some reason Murray’s ashes were not interred at Cincinnati’s
Spring Grove Cemetery until October 6, 1905.
195
The Musical Visitor 26, no. 12 (December 1897): 331.
196
“John Church Co’s Announcement: Will in Future Push Exclusively Their Own Goods–A Rare
Opportunity Afforded to Dealers–The Church Co. Intend to Be in the Lead in All Branches,” The Music Trade
Review, March 19, 1898, 17.
197
“Act Quickly,” The Music Trade Review, March 19, 1898, 12. Discounts were not applicable, however,
to John Church Company publications. Church’s Company was no longer going to wholesale books and sheet music
that it did not publish.
65
industrialization and urbanization.198 Apparently Tocqueville did have his finger on the
American pulse.
198
Cahall, “Jewels in the Queen’s Crown,” 426, 429, 431, 435–37.
66
CHAPTER 2
U.S. society” began during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The emergence of large-
scale business on a national level, the growing centrality of cities, and the rise of a consumer
culture threatened traditional sources of authority, “the social and cultural primacy of local
equal to the spread of industrial capitalism earlier in the century.” The history of rural experience
between 1870 and 1930 is “a story of change and continuity [emphasis original], and of
country’s well-being (agrarianism) and shared with urban workers the producers’ ethic, of “those
who actually made or grew things”; however, they also emphasized “the superiority of country
life over city life.” Farmers initially resisted changes in road administration and educational
reform because of concerns about cost, school location and consolidation, loss of self-
government, and “animosity toward the pretensions of nearby villagers and the arrogance of
outside experts.” Rural northerners “reacted to the changing role of the village which mediated
between an urban society that was on the rise and the surrounding countryside that was not.”1
Consumer and popular culture also arrived in rural America during this period, initially through
mail-order catalogues.
Writers to the Visitor expressed attitudes, sometimes cloaked in humor, regarding rural
versus urban dwellers and audience behavior and etiquette in the United States versus Europe.
They included topics such as the demand for encores, disturbances during performances, and
1
Hal S. Barron, Mixed Harvest: The Second Great Transformation in the Rural North, 1870–1930 (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 8, 11–14, 44, 77.
67
concert fashion. Some articles on these topics had previously appeared in other journals or
newspapers. The Visitor promoted an educated musical public by publishing opinions on issues
of the day from critics, conductors, performers, and educators, and from paid correspondents at
home and abroad. In September 1872 editor Frank H. King wrote that the Visitor’s “earnest
efforts to instruct and entertain have been duly appreciated” by our readers.2
the nineteenth century. Issues such as continued interaction between American and European
musical cultures and audience behavior need to be addressed.3 This chapter will explore how
audiences in the United States and Europe behaved and dressed during the last third of the
nineteenth century in order to demonstrate how the Visitor participated in defining class structure
and audience deportment. The Visitor also sheds light on such issues as what did Americans
know or imagine about European audience behavior?; what was expected of the concert, opera,
or oratorio audience?; was there a bias against the rural population?; and was rivalry displayed
Stereotyped differences between rural and urban populations found their way into the
Visitor, including the choice or use of musical instruments, genres, education, church choirs, and
advertising. Some of the advertisements and music printed in the Visitor addressed rural
subscribers, such as piano pieces with “Granger” [farmer] in the title, instruction books for
tuning the piano or the organ, and self-instruction on instruments. Writers expressed both
positive and negative views of these different communities, occasionally using dialect to mock
2
Frank H. King, “The Past and Future,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 12 (September 1872): 6.
3
Katherine K. Preston, “American Musical Life of the Late Nineteenth Century,” American Music 21
(2003): 255.
68
the rural dweller.
An anecdote regarding a country girl’s naïveté poked fun at her for not knowing the
difference between [Carl Maria von] Weber, the composer, and the New York City piano
manufacturer. A “laughable incident” reportedly occurred when Mr. [Albert] Weber was asked
by “a blooming young miss of about sixteen, evidently from the rural districts,” to play his
famous “Last Thought Waltz.” He played the waltz but added a variation of his own at the
conclusion. The girl thanked him and mentioned that she had not heard that part of it before but
admired it very much. She departed to tell her friends that “she had heard the great composer
play his favorite waltz.”4 In the same issue, a writer claimed that the melodeon could be found
only in rural districts, whereas the piano or organ would be heard in respectable homes in our
leading cities,5 in other words, a more advanced population. Several years later, a columnist
described a rural woman thus: “An old lady from the rural districts called at the Emerson piano
warerooms the other day and wanted ‘one of the best pianos made by Ralph Waldo Emerson.’
She was told that ‘the philosopher did not make pianos, but that his ideas, only, were like the
4
Frank H. King, “Weber’s Last Thought Waltz,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 2 (November 1871): 3.
The author apparently did not know that the waltz was not by Weber, but, by Carl Gottlieb Reissiger (1798–1859),
Music Lovers’ Encyclopedia. A manuscript copy was found among Weber’s papers. John Rutter and Manfred
Fensterer, “Reissiger, Carl Gottlieb,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed.,
21:170–72. The fifth of Reissiger’s Danses brillantes pour le pianoforte, op. 26 (1822), known as “Webers letzte
Gedanke,” enjoyed widespread popularity. Weber conducted the premiere of Reissiger’s opera Didone abbandonata
at Dresden in 1824. Correspondence regarding how the waltz got its name appeared in Dwight’s. Dwight’s Journal
of Music 29, no. 23 (January 29, 1870): 178. A response from A. W. T[hayer] in Trieste, “Weber’s ‘Last Waltz’
Again,” appeared later that year. Dwight’s Journal of Music 30, no. 2 (April 9, 1870): 219.
5
Frank H. King, “Musical Instruments,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 2 (November 1871): 7. George F.
Root mentioned in his autobiography that pianos were rare in country towns as of 1838. George F. Root, The Story
of A Musical Life (Cincinnati: John Church, 1891; repr., New York: Da Capo, 1970), 10. During the last third of the
nineteenth century, mail-order magazines and catalogues marketed music and musical instruments, among other
things, to rural women as “a way to achieve a more stylish and genteel way of living.” The parlor piano was the
costliest symbol of the new sensibility. Barron, Mixed Harvest, 160, 162–63.
69
Emerson piano.’ She purchased and went home happy.”6 Such anecdotes likely made the
The first issue of Church’s Musical Visitor contained an article on church choirs. The
unnamed author recounted past urban church practices regarding the choir and its leader and
compared them to contemporary rural settings. Formerly, the leader of the choir had been
required to be a member of the church in which he sang. He had to be able to sing without a
score or perform any of the four parts; rehearsals had been considered a “waste of time and lamp
oil.” These ideas were evidently still held in many rural districts. A “city ‘professor’ would be
laughed in the face were he to apply to one of your old backwoods deacons for such a position.”
Pastors had asserted, as recently as ten or fifteen years ago, that they had more trouble with the
choristers than anyone else in their church. They could be “fretful, ignorant, and in some
instances, profane” during rehearsals. Pastors were then hired to conduct services while the
choirmaster had charge of the choir. They are both under the control of the church’s trustees or
wardens.8
Two months later the Visitor reprinted an article about village choirs by George P. Upton,
music critic for the Chicago Tribune, who wrote under the pseudonym “Peregrine Pickle.” Upton
stereotyped the members of the choir as follows: the alto dressed in blue always sings the
loudest, followed by the soprano dressed in white, then the young grocery clerk who sings tenor
and is engaged to the soprano, and finally the deacon. Upton pointedly ridiculed the old deacon
who sings bass, but weakly, having long been “hallooing at the oxen,” and described the choir’s
6
“Our Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 5 (February 1882): 135. William P. Emerson
began manufacturing pianos in Boston in 1849; he died in 1871. Alfred Dolge, Pianos and Their Makers (Covina,
CA: Covina Publishing Company, 1911), 292–93.
7
John Church and Company advertised and sold Weber and Emerson pianos; the manufacturers were likely
the source of this stories.
8
“Choir Leaders,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 1 (October 1871): 4–5.
70
performance in terms of a horse race: “And away go the four––alto leading, soprano a neck
behind, tenor a length, and bass distanced when they come in on the last measure––the old
deacon gets lost in the maze of flats, sharps, and naturals. . . . He manages, however, to get in
before the organ.” At the conclusion of the choir’s “heterogeneous and suspicious praise to
God,” the deacon sits down, covers his head with a bandanna to keep the flies away, falls asleep,
and dreams of how much money the broomcorn will bring in.9 About twenty years later, editor
James R. Murray quoted from Miss Alice M. Earle’s recently published The Sabbath in
Puritan New England regarding country church practice. She had heard an aged deacon singing
countertenor who shrieked above the other choir members, but “did not at all discontent their
accustomed ears.” The practice had continued until women were admitted to the Puritan choir.10
Comments such as these were not used in discussions of urban choirs. Thus, the country church
choir did not measure up to city standards in the opinion of urban musicians.
Writers sometimes used dialect to mock the country dweller. Editor James R. Murray
chose to reprint an account from the Boston Transcript regarding “Fogg” and his uncle from the
country, “the bucolic relation,” who did not understand that the conductor’s baton was not being
used to threaten the players in the theater orchestra.11 New England dialect underscores locale
and the uncle’s lack of education, substituting “wal” for well, “warn’t” for wasn’t, “orchestree”
9
Peregrine Pickle, “Village Choirs,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 3 (December 1871): 5. According to
Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, broomcorn refers to any of several tall cultivated sorghums whose stiff-
branched panicles are used in making brooms and brushes. Since Upton mentioned “oxen,” “flies,” and raising
“broomcorn,” he was referring to a rural choir.
10
James R. Murray, “Singing ‘Counter,’” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 3 (March 1892): 65. Alice Morse
Earle (1853–1911) was a Massachusetts scholar; five of her works were published between 1891 and 1903. The
Oxford Companion to American Literature, 6th ed. Edward Dickinson refers to Earle’s book as a source of “rich
gratification” regarding the conflict between “puritanic tradition and the growing perception of the claims of fitness
and beauty.” Edward Dickinson, Music in the History of the Western Church (New York: Haskell House, 1969),
391.
11
The Musical Visitor 13, no. 7 (July 1884): 183. Coincidentally, a cartoon of “Hans von Bülow
Conducting” by Hans Schliessmann appeared in Le Figaro in 1884, which could be seen as threatening to the
orchestra. Richard Leppert and Stephen Zank in Piano Roles: Three Hundred Years of Life with the Piano, ed.
James Parakilas, et al. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 267. It is unknown whether this cartoon
inspired the account in the Boston Transcript.
71
for orchestra, and “sot” for sat.12
In addition to mocking the rural musicians and church choirs, the Visitor also took the
needs and tastes of rural musicians seriously. In a short article regarding the need for ministers to
be musically educated, the author deemed that the necessity was greatest in rural churches.
Editor Frank H. King noted that the issue was being discussed in England but was also worthy of
consideration in this country. Ministers should be able to lead their congregations in singing such
familiar hymn tunes as the OLD HUNDREDTH, SHARON, or CORONATION. The need was not great
in cities but rather in country villages and rural areas where congregations were less able to pay
12
“Local color” in fiction emphasized dialect and landscape to portray a district such as that found in
“Down East humor.” The Oxford Companion to American Literature, 6th ed. The local-color movement came into
special prominence in the United States following the Civil War. For information on New England dialect, see
David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press,
1989), 58–62.
13
Eben E. Rexford, “The Trouble in Our Choir: And How It Was Settled. As Told to the Visitor by Deacon
Green,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 2 (February 1885): 31–32. Rexford (1848–1916) was an organist for more than
twenty years for the Congregational Church in Shiocton, Wisconsin. He also contributed short stories to several
eastern journals. J. H. Hall, Biography of Gospel Song and Hymn Writers (New York: Fleming H. Revell Company,
1914; repr., New York: AMS Press, 1971), 257–60; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1865–
1885 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1967), 416, 511. I am indebted to my adviser for pointing out that Rexford’s
story is also a Biblical metaphor from the Acts of the Apostles in the chapters regarding Saul’s conversion. Saul
worked against the apostles until he was brought down, the scales fell from his eyes, and he thereafter worked in
concert with them.
72
for musical expenses.14
rural audiences were more likely to prefer ballads to florid arias. She distinguished between a
cultivated audience and the mass of people who constituted audiences in country towns.15
Rudersdorff’s claim was partially substantiated by Walton Perkins, who in 1890 wrote a short
essay on the style and functions of ballads to express feelings or to preserve history. The “simple
ballad will touch more hearts than will the most intricate aria. Many of the world’s greatest
artists are remembered more for their singing of some simple song than for the most difficult aria
which took years of study to accomplish.”16 Editor James R. Murray reported four years later
that foreign opera and instrumental music had become a fad. He noted, however, that audiences
reacted more positively to a ballad sung in English since it was more easily understood and
appreciated.17 These comments suggest that ballads could please an audience for a variety of
The Visitor directed some of the music printed in its pages toward the farmer. “Grangers’
Waltz,” a piano solo by H. D. Sofge, was “Dedicated to the ‘Grangers’ of the West by John
Church and Company.”18 Frank Howard’s “The Grange Polka” was another solo piano piece
14
Frank H. King, “The Musical Education of Ministers,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 8 (May 1872): 6.
15
“Madame Rudersdorff,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 12 (September 1872): 4, reprinted from the
Boston Post, n. d. For more information on Rudersdorff, see E. Douglas Bomberger, ed., Brainard’s Biographies of
American Musicians, Music Reference Collection 79 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 243–45, and F. O.
Jones, A Handbook of American Music and Musicians (Canaseraga, NY, 1886; repr., New York: Da Capo Press,
1971), 149. Her pupils included Emma Thursby, Carlotta Patti, and Minnie Hauk. An article regarding Rudersdorff
ends: “With the woman and her frailties the Visitor has nothing to do, neither has anybody else, and we would
advise a cultivation of that charity and good taste which will leave her and her faults with her Maker.” “Recent
Deaths Among Musicians,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 7 (April 1882): 186. No hint of scandal was mentioned
in Brainard’s Biographies or in A Handbook of American Music and Musicians.
16
Walton Perkins, “Ballads and Ballad Singing,” Musical Visitor 19, no. 7 (July 1890): 179. Perkins also
wrote for the Chicago InterOcean. Ezra Schabas, Theodore Thomas: America’s Conductor and Builder of
Orchestras, 1835–1905 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 240.
17
James R. Murray, “Sing in English,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 1 (January 1894): 8.
18
H. D. Sofge, “Grangers’ Waltz,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 12 (September 1873): 17–20.
73
intended for rural subscribers.19 In the same issue an ad appeared for “A Song Book for the
Grange and all Farmers’ Associations,” The Trumpet of Reform, a collection of songs, hymns,
chants, and set pieces by George F. Root, “For All Industrious and Reform Organizations.” The
book contained words and music especially prepared for mass meetings, picnics, and
celebrations, including songs on temperance, patriotism, Thanksgiving, funerals, the New Year,
and anniversaries. “Up to this time no good Farmer Song Book has been issued,” and while it
was intended for general use by the Grange and club, “many pieces will be found appropriate for
the entertainment of the Family Circle.”20 John Church and Company promoted music in a
domestic setting, including rural households, and gatherings such as those mentioned.
Rural pianists needed to be able to tune their instruments. A review in the Visitor for
“The True Piano-Tuner” referred to it as “an instructive little pamphlet for pianists, and
especially those who live distant from the cities, where good tuners are not accessible.”21 An
advertisement appeared in January 1883 for a manual entitled Organ Voicing and Tuning sold by
John Church and Company, which was intended, as emphasized in bold print, for rural use.22
Advertisements for Ryan’s True Instructor, for students” with or without a master” for fifteen
different instruments, could be used in rural districts for directed or self-study, including the
19
Frank Howard, “The Grange Polka,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 9 (June 1874): 16–17. Frank
Howard was a pseudonym for Delos Gardner Spalding (1833–1884). Dena J. Epstein, Music Publishing in Chicago
before 1871: The Firm of Root and Cady, 1858–1871 (Detroit: Information Coordinators, 1969), 154.
20
“Publishers Department,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 9 (June 1874): 12. John Church and Company
published The Trumpet of Reform in 1874. P. H. Carder, George F. Root, Civil War Songwriter: A Biography
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2008), 186–87. Carder substitutes the term “industrial” for industrious in
her discussion of unions. Barron quotes a song from The Trumpet of Reform, “The Middle-Man,” for whom the
farmers had no use. The Grange opposed monopolies such as the railroads and promoted cooperatives in order to
eliminate middlemen as a way of saving money for their members. Barron, Mixed Harvest, 166.
21
“New Music Books,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 7 (April 1881): 189.
22
Church’s Musical Visitor 12, no. 1 (January 1883): 27.
23
Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 1 (October 1874): 26.
74
The Visitor called upon touring artists to aid music instruction and cultivate an elevated
taste in rural areas. John C. Fillmore of Ripon, Wisconsin, wrote an article titled “Travelling
Concert Troops as Educators,” which had appeared in Dwight’s Journal of Music on May 12,
1877. Fillmore had requested that pianists, violinists, and vocalists from the eastern United States
perform “artistic renderings of the best music” for the audiences’ edification because teachers
and their pupils in the West lacked the opportunity to hear great music performed well. The
“conscientious teacher” depended on the visiting artist to reinforce his teaching and kindle
enthusiasm for the best music. Fillmore had implored the travelling artist to “be above the vulgar
composed largely of uncultivated people, totally ignorant of good music. . . .”24 Visiting
virtuosos were welcome, but some members of the local community did not want to be merely
humored.
Four years later the Reverend Cyrus Thomas of New Lisbon, Wisconsin, reported to the
Visitor that he perceived vocal music in rural communities to be in a low state of affairs and
offered six remedies: 1) Traveling musicians should perform a better grade of music rather than
catering to the base demand. 2) There should be more songs and choruses of a moderate range.
3) Music should be taught regularly in our public schools, and greater care should be taken in the
selection of teachers. 4) Parlor concerts should be given more frequently since they provide
opportunities for skilled amateurs to present their choice pieces before small, select, and
appreciative audiences. In our villages it is “more difficult to get an appreciative audience than
skillful performers of good music.” 5) “We need greater musical conscientiousness. By this I
mean . . . there should be the highest regard for the highest success” such as that wrought by
24
Irving Sablosky, What They Heard: Music in America, 1852–1881, From the Pages of Dwight’s Journal
of Music (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986), 196–200. John Comfort Fillmore was on the
faculty of Ripon College (founded in 1851) from 1868–1878. Sue Carole de Vale and Michael V. Pisani, “Fillmore,
Charles Comfort” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi Garrett (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2013), 3:282–83.
75
Jenny Lind [emphases original]. 6) All of these can be brought about through honest and
advertisement in 1897 for A Music Reader for Ungraded Schools, Village Schools, and
However, rural music teachers came under scrutiny. In 1881 teacher Warren Walters
accused piano teachers, especially those in rural areas, of concentrating on pieces and technique
while neglecting music theory, history, and biography.27 Two years later in an article on Paganini
Walters again expressed a negative view of the rural population: “The rustics, the unlearned in
art, could only account for his wonder-working by declaring they saw the evil one, with his
traditional horns and tail, standing behind the violinist directing his bow.”28 According to
musicologist Mary Veronica Davison, while city residents in the 1870s were able to indulge in
more cultural activities than their rural counterparts, many individuals living in the remoter
sections were vitally interested and actively engaged in musical pursuits such as were
possible under the circumstances. “Many of the smaller places were fortunate enough to
have a musically trained individual nearby to guide and teach.” Evidence of increased interest in
music appeared in the purchase of musical instruments, sheet music, and instruction books.29
25
Cyrus Thomas, “Musical Needs of Our Western Villages,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 9 (June
1881): 240–41. We do not know if he had read Fillmore’s correspondence previously published in Dwight’s
Journal. Jenny Lind toured the United States from 1850 to 1852.
26
The Musical Visitor 26, no. 6 (June 1897): 168.
27
Warren Walters, “Not Right,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 10 (July 1881): 266. Walters was
subsequently identified as a retired teacher. “Cui Bono?,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 4 (January 1882): 101.
His death in Philadelphia was also covered in The Musical Visitor 12, no. 9 (September 1883): 234. Walters also
contributed short stories, advice to piano teachers and students, and music criticism to the Visitor.
28
Warren Walters, “The Wizzard [sic] of the Violin,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 6 (June 1883): 149.
29
Mary Veronica Davison, “American Music Periodicals, 1853–1899” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota,
1973), 94. Dale Cockrell implies that rural areas did not have music teachers, “who were necessarily located in
population centers.” Dale Cockrell, “Nineteenth-century Popular Music,” in The Cambridge History of American
Music, ed. David Nicholls (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 184. The Visitor supported
76
Walters remained unimpressed with the efforts or progress made by rural music teachers.
Lila Moore wrote, sometimes pejoratively, about the difficulties facing the country music
teacher. She considered the majority of rural patrons to be ignorant and unappreciative of the
teacher’s efforts, and to have a “low standard of popular taste.” Peer pressure was apparently
another obstacle, since pupils “cannot reasonably be expected to desire anything more than to
play as well as their acquaintances.” The teacher, according to Moore, needed to induce pupils to
procure suitable music for study purposes. The rewards appeared, however, when one sees “the
healthier tastes of one’s pupils” when they “tire of the vapid and common.” Moore proposed that
Europe and America could achieve equality: “Those who labor patiently to develop a spirit of
true music in the highways and hedges play an important part.”30 By way of contrast, the Visitor
reprinted an article from the New York Sun regarding challenges facing the piano teacher of “the
fashionable girl,” who is busy with social engagements, making it difficult to set a day for the
lesson. She arrives late “from a shopping expedition or a luncheon” and must prepare herself for
“a five o’clock tea.” The girl has not practiced and plays badly, after which her “languid mother
comes drooping in, wrapped in a fur-bordered velvet arrangement, to talk about her daughter’s
progress and ask if she isn’t very musical. . . .”31 Irrespective of class and locale, the music
On the other hand, a letter from H. B. R. in East Saginaw, Michigan, reported excellent
concerts given by amateurs who had performed works that had been presented at Cincinnati’s
Davison’s statement cited above. During the past year, so much attention had been paid to music education that
“every village, hamlet, and cross-roads in the country, has its teachers of music, while cities are well supplied with
competent instruction in all departments of this ennobling science.” The article goes on to say that a good musical
education is available to “every youth in the land.” “Musical Instruction,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 2
(November 1872): 8.
30
Lila Moore, “The Country Music Teacher,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 9 (September 1888): 234.
31
“How Some Girls Study Music,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 5 (May 1889): 119.
77
first May Festival in 1873. The writer invited [John] Church to “come up and see us, and witness
what is being achieved for music in the ‘rural districts.’”32 In the subsequent issue the new editor
Charles A. Daniell reiterated the invitation for music news from city or country.33 Similarly,
Frank H. King had solicited correspondence and contributions “from any locality.”34 A few years
hence teacher John Howard recounted his early experience as a piano teacher in rural Vermont.
He described the expenses and difficulties of travel, especially during the winter months.
Howard referred to one of the farmers as “one of nature’s noblemen. Hearty, liberal, capable, and
above all, warm-hearted, he gradually inspired me with respect and admiration, as well as
affection.” Bankruptcy forced Howard to give up the effort, but he would “never forget the
conventions, and his report of November 1883 reads: “Wisconsin has musical talent in rich
abundance, not alone in the larger cities, but scattered throughout all the towns and hamlets.”36
Frederic W. Root’s ninth annual concert held at Chicago’s Central Music Hall on
February 10, 1892, provided a positive remembrance of rural life. One of his works, “The Old
Melodeon,” had been sung by eight young ladies and “attracted a great deal of attention.” The
old farm house and the melodeon were fondly remembered.37 Pianist and music critic Arthur
32
Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 3 (December 1873): 5.
33
“Editor’s Notes and Reviews,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 4 (January 1874): 10.
34
Frank H. King, ed., “Editor’s Notes and Reviews,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 2 (November 1871):
9.
35
John Howard, “The ‘Professor’ in Rural Vermont,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 3 (December 1879):
61–62. Howard gives an account of a lady’s performance of The Battle of Buena Vista. He was startled by her shrill
exclamations, “Charge of the light brigade” and “Rattle of the musketry.” The lowest keys were pounded along with
a shrill “Roar of the cannon.” He discovered that “these explanatory remarks were written above the notes of the
music and were supposed to belong to the performance.”
36
W. F. Sherwin, “Music in Wisconsin,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 11 (November 1883): 292. William
Fisk Sherwin (1826–1888) had been in charge of John Church and Company’s Sunday School Department since
about February 1881. In the December 1883 issue, he was included in a list of the Visitor’s “Galaxy of Talent” (“Of
the New England Conservatory of Boston, unexcelled in his specialties”).
37
“Here and There,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 3 (March 1892): 68.
78
Loesser described the melodeon as “The American Piano’s Little Country Cousin.” Intended for
domestic use by the lower class and costing less than a piano, the melodeon’s niche market
consisted of residents of small towns, villages, and rural settings.38
According to James R. Murray in 1891, the Harvest and Thanksgiving service was
rapidly gaining in popularity. “This service should not be confined to the farming districts or
country churches.”39 Thus Murray promoted a positive influence from rural to urban. In 1897
Murray made the point that both rural and urban teachers and pupils had need of a musical
dictionary, such as the one edited by W. S. B. Mathews and Emil Liebling. Murray cited an
example of a city teacher whose pupil did not understand what Ten. [tenuto] meant, assuming the
Both negative and positive views of the rural population appeared in the Visitor and at
times in close proximity. It seems incongruous that the house organ of a music publishing
company would have fun at the expense of some of its subscribers and potential customers; thus
John Church and his editors walked a fine line. Humor may have been employed in an effort to
cloak stereotypes. By the end of the century, however, the cultural gap between rural and urban
subscribers appears to have narrowed, at least as depicted in the Visitor, aided by the marketing
of mail-order sheet music, instruction books, instruments, and music journals. The industrial
revolution had helped to connect rural and urban communities. Trains delivered farm goods to
the cities, and mass-produced instruments could be delivered by rail to rural customers. Music
journals printed and promoted the sales of sheet music, instruction books, and instruments
38
Arthur Loesser, Men, Women, and Pianos: A Social History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954),
518–20.
39
The Musical Visitor 20, no. 10 (October 1891): 260.
40
The Musical Visitor 26, no. 2 (February 1897): 51.
41
Davison, “American Music Periodicals,” 47, 94–95, 140–42, 199, 207–8.
79
Audience Behavior and Etiquette
While Visitor columnists often did not include first-hand accounts of rural audiences,
writers on audience behavior and etiquette included foreign correspondents and Americans who
had traveled to Europe and related their experiences. Articles frequently addressed complaints
about encores, or disturbances during performances, such as talking, laughing, loud whispers,
humming, latecomers, or early departures. Reports of beer drinking and fashion included critical
comments for readers’ benefit. The critic and columnist encouraged the audience to influence
fellow members’ behavior as well as programming and ticket prices. Venues discussed include
theaters, concert halls, churches, and occasionally schools. Critics, editors, conductors,
Frank H. King reprinted, possibly from the Boston Transcript, an entry regarding
complaints that had been sent to Boston newspapers about concert nuisances, such as humming
and loud talking, which were silenced by writing a note to the offender. King prefaced the entry
with a note claiming that Boston still suffered from some barbaric practices and made the
following point at the end: “Out West here, among the savages, the recording of such incidents
would not astonish our supposed-to-be-prim and always decorous friends of the East.”42 King’s
comment reveals a musical rivalry between Cincinnati and the cities and journals of the east. The
rivalry was mutual. Six years later, the cover of Puck’s magazine featured Theodore Thomas in
Cincinnati conducting the orchestra for an audience of swine. In other words, Thomas had
concerts would be free from “earthly concert nuisances” in order to hear the best singers and
composers. He did not want to be “annoyed by a garrulous angel” sitting behind him,
42
“Concert Room Nuisances,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 4 (January 1872): 6.
43
Puck 4, no. 83 (October 9, 1878): cover.
80
commenting on an angel’s wings or the way another angel made the way to her seat. Upton
concluded with the thought: “It would be horrible to think of an eternity of music with an
eternity of nuisance.”44
George S. Gordon reported on the rude behavior of the upper class in Naples.45 He and
three others had attended Verdi’s La Traviata at the Mercadante Theater and had been seated in
“orchestra chairs, the best seats in the house.” According to Gordon, members of the lower
classes, in the “pea-nut” gallery, had been more attentive and appreciative than the majority of
the other listeners. On the other hand, two men seated in front of them were fine specimens of
the “Italian jackass.” They had stood, “opera glasses in hand, with their backs to the stage,
sweeping the rows of faces with an air of imperturbable impudence,” which seemed to be their
greatest pleasure. After intermission they had returned late to their seats with impatient sighs.
When they started “humming all the familiar airs with a nasal emphasis and imbecile falsetto,
and . . . ruining the effect of a pleasant solo by improvising a prelude to it,” Gordon could not
restrain an indignant hiss. He made the point that his comments applied to Italian women also,
who “hold levees in their boxes” and pay the least possible attention to the stage.46 Another
report to the Visitor concurred that humming was a problem with Italian audiences. The
complaint referred to those Italians “who have good ears” and hum along with the singers. The
writer recalled an incident in Milan where the offended party had complained to the hummer that
he could not hear him because the tenor was too loud.47 A bit of sarcasm had succeeded in
44
Peregrine Pickle [George P. Upton], “Concert Nuisances,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 8 (May 1873):
4.
45
Gordon was identified in Church’s Musical Visitor as a lawyer from Huntsville, Alabama. Church’s
Musical Visitor 11, no. 15 (December 1882): 408. A year later he was included in the list of the Visitor’s “Galaxy of
Talent,” for his much- admired reminiscences of European travels. The Musical Visitor 12, no. 12 (December 1883):
iv.
46
Geo[rge] S. Gordon, “Some Musical Experiences in Naples,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 6 (March
1881): 152–53.
47
“The Humming Nuisance,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 12 (September 1881): 332.
81
silencing the hummer.
Previously in 1880 the Visitor had praised American audiences. The nuisance of
conversing during a musical performance was becoming a thing of the past; such “vulgarity was
no longer common.” In France and Italy, however, “where music is prettily supposed to be
essential to life itself, it seems to be considered a sign of knowledge to gabble during the
uninteresting portion of familiar operas.” The lack of attention supposedly proved “that one
knows the opera by heart, and silence is resumed only when some favorite air is being sung.”48
Charles A. Daniell reprinted a paragraph from the London Musical World regarding
recent regulations at the Imperial Opera House in Vienna forbidding artists to acknowledge
applause or accept recalls during an act. Herr [Georg?] Müller apparently had ignored the rule
when he stepped forward and bowed his gratitude during the performance of Auber’s Fra
Diavolo. When Müller left the stage he was fined forty-five florins, equal to about three percent
of his month’s salary. Daniell opined that this would be “a worthy reform” in the United States,
“to check the vanity of singers and actors, who do not hesitate to mar the symmetry of a
performance by thus stepping out of the artist into the individual.” He named Christine Nilsson,
Pauline Lucca, and Clara Louise Kellogg as offenders who bow and smile at the audience even if
the applause happens in the “mad scene” from Lucia or in the “superb” love scene in Act 4 of
Les Huguenots.49
H. S. Perkins wrote from Europe about the “disgusting” claque system in the theaters of
Paris and other cities. The claque is “attended to by a squad of uncouth-looking customers,
occupying a special place in the theater, who are employed to ‘do’ the applauding, led by a
horny-handed chap, who gives the signal at the proper time and place, looking most wondrous
48
Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 9 (June 1880): 245.
49
“A Stage Nuisance,” Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 5 (February 1875): 7. For an interesting list of
regulations imposed on the audiences on November 8, 1897, see Marcel Prawy, The Vienna Opera (New York:
Praeger Publishers, 1970), 214.
82
wise and self-satisfied.”50 As the articles about the rural dwellers made urban musicians feel
superior, these articles seem destined to make the American feel superior to the European.
Ethnic tensions could also lead to uncivil audience behavior both abroad and at home. In
December 1885 editor James R. Murray reprinted a dispatch from Vienna regarding the unruly
audience for the first night of Dvořák’s opera Šelma sedlák. Dated November 19, the dispatch
read: “The Czechs in the audience kept up an incessant applause, which provoked counter
storms of hissing, the excitement finally culminating in an uproar. Many arrests were made
before order was restored.”51 Editor Frank N. Scott’s report on the Harmonic Society’s benefit
concert, given during the past winter for Miss Emma Cranch before she left for Europe, evinced
During the evening a party of ladies and gentlemen “from over the Rhine” came into the
hall and seated themselves quite ostentatiously. After looking at the audience, hearing a
chorus and solo, one of the gentlemen, holding a programme before him, said quite
loudly: “Who is this Miss Crank, anyway?” “Why,” replied another, “don’t you know?
She is a crack singer that goes about the country, and that’s her troupe sitting behind
there!”52
Cincinnati in the late 1840s and early 1850s “chose to isolate themselves geographically,
economically, socially, and politically.” They moved to the northern perimeter of the city known
churches, theaters, schools, and musical and literary societies. The Germans’ desire to preserve
their way of life caused the native-born English-speaking residents to view them as “a single and
50
“Correspondence: Notes by the Way––from London to Paris,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 3
(December 1875): 63.
51
The Musical Visitor 14, no. 12 (December 1885): 320.
52
“Editor’s Notes and Reviews,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 1 (October 1873): 9.
83
highly suspect body.”53 Music and beer at Saengerfests had apparently become an issue within
Many of the leading Germans of late are complaining strongly of the present character of
the German singing societies of the country. They are concerned because the societies are
not what they once were. . . . Instead of laboring for music’s sake alone, their attention is
occupied partially in calculating the number of kegs of beer that will be required to stand
a musical siege of a certain number of days. Until this matter is rectified, our German
friends must expect to meet with a less degree of success than fell to them when they
were more wholly devoted to music and its superior charms.54
A reader of the Visitor in 1881 might have formed the opinion that audiences in Germany
were better behaved than those in other countries. Organist and theorist Edward M. Bowman
described in copious detail Wagner’s Ring in Berlin, including audience behavior: “A late comer
or anyone who made the least noticeable noise was at all times unceremoniously hissed. And to
have heard anyone talking, or whispering, or a young couple doing their courting . . . would have
been monstrous! Alas! Alas! When will we in America imitate such a worthy example?” There
had been no applause until the final curtain at the end of each of the four nights. He continued:
“You can scarcely imagine the almost terrific demonstration of the enthusiastic audience. I had
always considered Italians or Irish audiences to be the most demonstrative, but I have never seen
either of them more so than were the Germans on this occasion.” Bowman explained that there
had been nothing to provoke applause during the course of an act, or a delay in the progress of
the story, since neither the prima donna nor anyone else came to the front of the stage to sing to
53
Steven J. Ross, Workers on the Edge: Work, Leisure, and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788–
1890 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 172–73. The Harmonic Society, founded in 1864, consisted
largely of Anglo-Americans. Edward P. Cranch, Emma Cranch’s father, had been a member of Cincinnati’s Semi-
Colon Club, where “the spirit of New England permeated.” Robert C. Vitz, The Queen and the Arts: Culture Life in
Nineteenth-century Cincinnati (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1985), 19–20, 64, 279 n53.
54
“Music vs. Beer,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 1 (October 1871): 6. Editor Frank H. King accused the
editor of the Folio in Boston of plagiarizing the article in its December issue. “Our Exchanges,” Church’s Musical
Visitor 1, no. 4 (January 1872): 9.
84
the audience.55
Germany. The Munich government had abolished the claque; artists had been forbidden to
acknowledge applause except for first performances or on benefit nights. Loud talk had been
prohibited in all German theaters. The government had mandated that all lights be turned off
except for the stage area while the act is in progress. Women’s hats were not allowed to obstruct
the view in Berlin’s theaters.56 Murray applauded a new rule at the Munich Opera House:
performers would not acknowledge applause either during or at the end of an act. “Now when
they are killed they stay killed, and do not come before the curtain after death, bowing
acknowledgments.”57 A few months later the topic of recalls on the German operatic stage again
appeared on the Visitor’s pages. Munich had taken the lead in “proscribing recalls, encores, and
bouquets,” followed by theaters in Dresden, Weimar, Karlsruhe, and Stuttgart. Count Hochberg
in Berlin had issued a manifesto expressing the wishes of the artists of the royal theaters that
no more recalls will be heeded except by the authors and composers who were not present for the
first performance. Curiously, the article mentioned that the old system would be revived the next
season in Munich, in order to keep “the artists in direct touch with the public.”58
Bouquets
During the late nineteenth century, the practice of presenting bouquets to performers in
America and in Europe could occur at any time during a performance. “An habitué of opera and
55
E. M. Bowman, “Wagner’s Trilogy,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 1 (October 1881): 7. Bowman’s
account of the Ring cycle had been written for the St. Louis Spectator but was sent to the Visitor by its editors. “Our
Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 11 (August 1881): 303. See also the entry for Bowman in
Bomberger, Brainard’s Biographies of American Musicians, 43–44.
56
The Musical Visitor 20, no. 8 (August 1891): 203.
57
Ibid., 204.
58
The Musical Visitor 20, no. 12 (December 1891): 315.
85
other musical entertainments” requested that the Visitor protest the “ridiculous custom of
breaking in upon the performance by sending up flowers and boxes of candy from the front, for
the conductor or ‘double bass’ to hand over to the intended recipient.”59 An article reprinted from
the London Times reported that encores had been on the decline, which the author considered to
be a good thing. Bouquets thrown during opera performances, however, remained an evergreen
problem. The singers had to stop and pick them up from the stage, which interrupted the action,
as did an encore; if the bouquet landed between two lady singers, for whom was it intended?
This could lead to jealousy later in the green room. The columnist in the Times had been
delighted to hear that the practice had been abolished at the Royal Theater in Munich and hoped
that other establishments would follow suit. The audience should show its appreciation at
appropriate times, such as curtain calls at the end of an act. Throwing a bouquet was not a
spontaneous tribute and was “a positive offence to all real music-lovers.”60 In 1886 the Visitor’s
London correspondent reported on Clara Schumann’s performances as follows: “At her rentrée
the audience in the orchestra [section] threw flowers at her in accordance with the German plan,
first introduced in England at the last Norwich Festival, where Mr. A. C. Mackenzie suffered
some slight inconvenience when the thorn of one of the roses stuck in his scantily protected
head.”61
Americans who attended debuts of their compatriots also bestowed bouquets during a
performance. Three-fourths of the audience members who attended the debut of American
soprano Gertrude Griswold in Faust at London’s Royal Italian Opera consisted of U.S. citizens.
The practice of passing flowers to the singers via the orchestra, condemned in the Visitor, was
described as follows: “A large number of bouquets, the offering of the artist’s American friends,
59
The Musical Visitor 13, no. 5 (May 1884): 122.
60
“Encores and Bouquets,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 1 (October 1881): 11.
61
“Music in England: Madame Schumann,” The Musical Visitor 15, no. 5 (May 1886): 115.
86
were from time to time in the course of the evening handed across the orchestra by the ushers.”
Despite such displays, however, the audience was reportedly not too warm in its applause for
The following month the Visitor reprinted a short entry from Life magazine that had
informed readers what had happened to the floral offerings given to some of the prima donnas. In
one case, the flowers had been immediately sold. A great prima donna “disposes by contract of
all the bouquets she receives.” Many fine singers had excellent business qualifications and knew
how to look after their own interests. By contrast, Pauline Lucca had sent her flowers to the local
hospitals.63
Despite such recriminations, the practice of presenting bouquets to singers during the
performance did not cease. At the 1891 Chicago premiere of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana,
“the nuisance of floral offerings during the play was very manifest.” When Minnie Hauk was
lying at the steps of the church door, “a long line of ushers rushed down the aisles burdened with
huge baskets and bouquets of beautiful roses. The prima donna had the good sense not to notice
them, and the tributes of admiring friends were handed to her during the intermission.”64
In 1894 the Visitor reported that impresario Maurice Grau of the Metropolitan Opera had
forbidden the gifts of flowers to performers on stage. Apparently there were doubts about the
source of many of the floral pieces being handed over the footlights.65 Had the artists or their
62
“Music in London,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 8 (August 1884): 203–4. For more information on
Griswold, see Jones, A Handbook of American Music and Musicians, 68. Griswold was “an American singer who
had given promise of good things in Europe.” Henry E. Krehbiel, Chapters of Opera (New York: Henry Holt and
Company, 1908), 160–61. Beginning in November 1887, ads for the faculty at the National Conservatory included
Griswold as a teacher of voice. Emanuel Rubin, “Jeannette Meyer Thurber (1850–1946): Music for a Democracy” in
Cultivating Music in America: Women Patrons and Activists since 1860, ed. Ralph P. Locke and Cyrilla Barr
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 149.
63
The Musical Visitor 13, no. 9 (September 1884): 234.
64
The Musical Visitor 20, no. 11 (November 1891): 288.
65
James R. Murray, “Editorial Notes,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 1 (January 1894): 10. The Visitor was
likely referring to an article in the New York Times. Mr. Grau had ordered that no more flowers were to be “passed
87
managers been responsible for the flowers? This prevalence of this activity could be inferred by
a previous article in the Visitor that had reported that members of a theatrical company in
Portland, Oregon, did not purchase bouquets to be delivered to themselves by the ushers during
the performance.66
Encores/Excessive applause
The issue of encores and excessive applause also received much attention. They could
interrupt the action of an opera or lengthen a concert program. Many columnists considered it
improper to repeat sections of an oratorio or Requiem. According to the Visitor, the audience’s
role is to listen to, rather than applaud or interrupt, the performer. Distractions like these could
not be tolerated in church, where some oratorios were performed. Soloists could feel appreciated
The first appearance of an eminent European artist in the United States could elicit an
overly enthusiastic, even “alarming,” response from the audience. Stamping and yelling greeted
distinguished newcomers, which “must cause them to pray for deliverance from their friends.”
Furthermore, there was no good reason for an artist to have to do more than was published in
the program. The New York debut of Theresa Tietjens was reported in the Visitor:
Thrice the fair singer returned in obedience to the applause of the multitude, and thrice
she bowed her acknowledgement of the honor. But this was not sufficient. . . a noisy part
of the audience insisted that she should sing once more there and then. Very gracefully,
across the footlights, no matter who the artist may be.” The article described the “massive fragments of this floral
breastwork” that were carried down the aisle at different times during the performance, and the trophy “lifted with
infinite care over the footlights, and handed to Mlle. Eames, the Reszkes, and other artists.” While some members of
the audience appreciated the beauty and scent of the flowers, others were irritated by the interruption. It was
suggested that the “singers pay for the flowers, and the cards affixed to them are mere fancy inventions.” “No
Flowers for Opera Stars: Enforcement of A New Rule at the Metropolian. By Manager Grau’s Edict No More floral
Trophies Are to Be Passed Over the Footlights––Mmes. Calve and Melba Opposed to the Custom, but Other Singers
Are Indignant—An Episode of Mr. “Toff” Mapleson’s Husbandly Adulation.” New York Times, December 5, 1893,
9.
66
“A Chinese Theater,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 2 (October 1880): 9.
67
“Inaudible Sympathy,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 8 (May 1881): 211.
88
she complied. Afterward, the same compliment had to be paid to two other performers,
notwithstanding the warning hisses of a large number of people. The consequence was
that the performances were lengthened an additional half hour, and when the intermission
arrived at least one-third of the house left, not to return. When Tietjens again sang, her
eyes rested on row after row of empty seats.68
In December 1879 the Visitor reported that the encore system was becoming “more and
unreasonable hour.” Managers and performers were called upon to educate the audience. The
problem was especially “out of order” in opera, hindering the progress and enjoyment of the
production.69 A subsequent Visitor article added to the list of reasons to curb the encore nuisance
as had been discussed in the London Musical Standard. The encore not only tested the patience
of some audience members but taxed favorite singers, whose voices “are not to be trifled with.”
The Musical Standard compared the dishonest expectation of an encore to the “purchaser of a
bun at a confectioner’s, who enjoys the edible delicacy so much that he calls for another without
any intention of paying for the second. . . .” The singers should agree among themselves to
decline, and conductors of concerts should “strike boldly into the next item in the programme.”
Some “vain vocalists,” however, brought “encore songs” with them, which encourages the
wrong-doing.70 Apparently some of the Visitor’s readers took the issue to heart. The report of a
concert given on February 27, 1880, at Wilmington, Pennsylvania, mentioned a notice posted on
the bottom of the program: “No encores will be permitted.”71 However, other performers
continued the practice. Later that year a correspondent reported that Ole Bull and Emma Thursby
had given a concert at the Academy in Baltimore. The house had been crowded and while Miss
68
Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 2 (November 1875): 36.
69
Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 3 (December 1879): 72.
70
Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 4 (January 1880): 97.
71
“The Musical Union: Concert and News Notes, Compiled from Our Correspondence and Exchanges,”
Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 7 (April 1880): 192.
89
Thursby “sustained her reputation,” the great violinist began “to show the effects of age. He was
very obliging, playing four encores. He was down for one solo only.”72
contributed a lengthy article on the continuing problem of encores in England. He bemoaned not
only the repetition of numbers in operas or oratorios, such as “He was despised” from Messiah,
but of whole scenes as well. According to Crowest: “We are the laughing stock of musical
Europe, and I doubt not of America, too.” He placed the burden of changing the system on solo
vocalists or instrumentalists. If “leading musical artists . . . will exercise their power . . . a serious
stain upon this country’s musical reputation” could be wiped away. He described the crowds as
“capable of growing excited and making things unpleasant . . . whistling, shouting, cat-calling,
howling, barking, kicking, stamping, and knocking . . . which convert our theaters and concert-
rooms into perfect pandemoniums.”73 In the subsequent issue another columnist reported on a
similar incident for the opening concert of Cincinnati’s fifth May Festival (1882). The “Dies
Irae” from Mozart’s Requiem “was given with such tremendous power and effect that the
audience forgot the proprieties of the occasion and vociferously demanded an encore.”74
Theodore Thomas had a policy of not allowing encores at the May Festival. After the
performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the sixth May Festival, soprano Christine
Nilsson had been recalled four or five times, but she did not perform any encores, which Thomas
72
Columbus, “Baltimore, Md.,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 9 (June 1880): 246–47.
73
Frederick J. Crowest, “Encores, or No Encores?,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 8 (May 1882): 209–
11. Steven Baur refers to Crowest as “an 1882 commentator.” Steven Baur, “Music, Morals, and Social
Management: Mendelssohn in Post-Civil War America,” American Music 19 (Spring 2001): 88. Crowest’s
comments were restricted to audiences in England. Baur furthermore claims that during the second half of the
nineteenth century “music journalists launched a print campaign to ban the only convention that granted audiences
any role in influencing the content of musical performances––the encore.” Baur, “Music, Morals, and Social
Management: Mendelssohn in Post-Civil War America,” American Music 19 (Spring 2001): 87. Editors, columnists,
and performers writing in the Visitor afforded the audience more influence than that singular role.
74
“The May Festival,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 9 (June 1882): 233–35.
90
forbade.75 Murray later reported that at the eighth May Festival, the audience recalled celebrated
British tenor Edward Lloyd four times after singing “Cujus animam” from Rossini’s Stabat
Mater. This time the reason that Theodore Thomas refused a solo encore was that it had been
The Visitor reprinted a quote from British tenor John Sims Reeves in the Graphic
regarding “the encore fiend.” Reeves considered the encore-monger to care nothing about
symmetry, or cohesiveness, whether oratorio, lyric stage, benefit, or ballad concert. If his
demand was not met, “He will hoot, and bray, and hiss when an attempt is made to perform the
next piece.”77 Unlike Reeves, British critic Joseph Bennett opined: “Encores are not the fault of
the public, but of the artists, who love them. There is guilt on both sides. Love of praise and
greed of gain.”78 Murray quoted a British writer on the problem of encores, noting that the same
situation exists in the United States. The concert singer must give three or four songs when paid
for only two. He witnessed an absurd sight when the prima donna of the opera suddenly changes
from a mad lady, to acknowledge vociferous applause and bouquets, then quickly returns to her
state of distraction. After a magnificent performance of the finale, the instrumentalist must repeat
it, demanded by three-fourths of the audience.79 Murray responded to the current issue of pianist
Rafael Joseffy’s refusal to play an encore after performing a Brahms concerto. Joseffy was
Charles A. Daniell discussed the relationship between an audience and the virtuoso in a
75
“The Sixth May Festival,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 6 (June 1884): 143–45.
76
“The Centennial May Musical Festival,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 6 (June 1888): 144.
77
The Musical Visitor 19, no. 3 (March 1890): 64. It is unknown which Graphic was quoted.
78
The Musical Visitor 23, no. 5 (May 1894): 120.
79
“The Encore Fiend,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 1 (January 1895): 3.
80
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 25, no. 3 (March 1896): 189.
91
positive light provided the encore performed was a simple melody. The virtuoso, “after a
prolonged display of bewildering skill, condescends to perform some simple, familiar selection
that all his listeners are familiar with.” Daniell then suggested that the simple melody, frequently
performed in a bungling manner, “becomes so purified . . . that he begins, through the simple
medium, to be comprehended and relished.”81 Thus, the encore could serve a useful purpose for
the virtuoso.
In 1882 Murray commented on the “very wise rule” that at the London Royal Academy
of Music concerts, no encore or recall was allowed; this was printed at the top of each program.82
He later suggested that if an encore is performed, the performer should announce the title of the
piece. This will enhance the listeners’ enjoyment, especially if the audience does not have to
guess at the meaning of the words.83 On the Visitor’s next page, however, encores, especially if
overdone, were portrayed not only as a nuisance that lengthened the program, but as unfair to the
performer, even a form of extortion.84 Humor was also enlisted in the cause of reform when
Murray provided a definition of the encore: “A fiendish invention, which, while it apparently
flatters the performer, is really devised to procure for an audience more than its money’s worth,
that the “childishness which seems to characterize musical audiences in the matter of applause,”
81
Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 6 (March 1875): 8.
82
“Our Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 6 (March 1882): 162. Presumably Murray was
differentiating between a performer being called back to the stage by the audience for a bow, not necessarily for an
encore.
83
The Musical Visitor 22, no. 6 (June 1893): 152.
84
James R. Murray, “Too Much Encore,” The Musical Visitor 22, no. 6 (June 1893): 153.
85
James R. Murray, “Definitions Up to Date,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 11 (November 1894): 294.
92
say stupid, especially when a phlegmatic American audience explodes itself like a mob of
excitable Italians or Spanish bull fighters.” He also considered it mean for an audience to “insist
on having every other piece repeated.”86 On the other hand, in a brief report on Madame [Emma]
Albani in New York, a writer mentioned that her opera performances had included singing by the
audience between acts since applause was insufficient to verify their enthusiasm.87
Theodore Thomas used various means to embarrass talkers during performances, such
as a continued drum roll or laughter from the orchestra. Music-loving neighbors would applaud
emphatically until the “ill-bred chatter” ceased or Thomas stopped the performance. According
to the Tribune, Thomas had said, “He would wait until the ladies and gentlemen had quite
finished.”88 In the same issue, the Visitor announced Theodore Thomas’s expectations for
Cincinnati’s first May Festival (1873): latecomers would not be seated until the end of a
movement, and noise would not be allowed.89 Thomas was not, of course, the first to attempt to
impose these standards of behavior, but one of the most ardent supporters of such reforms.90
following program for a concert at the music school of Mrs. Josephine C. Neave in Salibsury,
86
“Why? Where? Who?,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 22 (August 1882): 300.
87
James R. Murray, “Notes and Gossip,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 3 (March 1892): 68.
88
“Theo. Thomas as a Reformer,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 10 (July 1873): 9. The likely source for
this information is the New York Daily Tribune. Thomas had been in New York for his series of summer concerts at
Central Park Garden beginning May 14, 1873. Ezra Schabas, Theodore Thomas: American Conductor and Builder
of Orchestras, 1835–1905 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 52, 58.
89
“Having It Well Done,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 10 (July 1873): 5, reprinted from Lakeside
Monthly.
90
In 1570 Baïf and Thibault drew up statutes for their Academy of Poetry and Music, so that listeners
would be educated and purged of any “barbarities” that might remain. Listeners were not allowed to talk or make
noise; the door would be opened at the end of each performance to admit latecomers. Leo Treitler, gen. ed., Strunk’s
Source Readings in Music History, rev. ed. (New York: Norton, 1998), 338–41.
93
North Carolina in 1877:
The unceasing conversation of the thoughtless at concerts, besides annoying the more
attentive portion of the audience, disconcerts the performers, rendering it impossible for
them to do their best; therefore silence is respectfully requested from all during the
music.91
Apparently the problem continued as seen in the program for the closing concerts of the Neave
N.B. The too common practice of loud chattering and giggling at Concerts, by the
thoughtless, is extremely discourteous and irritating to the more attentive of the audience,
as well as to the young performers. It distracts attention, ruins the proper rendition of the
music and dramatic colloquy, and is an abomination that cannot be sufficiently
reprehended. Therefore, with this grave remonstrance, silence is respectfully requested
and expected from all, during music and dialogue.92
Some writers disagreed on the issue of keeping time to the music. In 1884 Ruth Chandler
wrote from Evansville, Indiana, suggesting that audiences audibly mark time:
There is nothing even in nature so sublime as a symphony of Beethoven’s with the pulse
of a great audience to beat time to its measure. . . . There is no act or science on which . . .
we find so much transparent ignorance. Many persons affect emotional sensitiveness and
ostentatiously exhibit all the violent symptoms of an emotion it is clearly impossible for
them to feel or appreciate. . . . There are some people who are so indifferent to music that
they are almost annoyed by the slightest mental strain required to follow it. There are
others who . . . derive very little real pleasure . . . about the same delight they would from
eating a favorite dish. Music belongs to the high and the low, the rich and the poor, and,
with the latter, it often fills the void of an empty life and lightens the burdens of toil and
poverty which would be hard to endure without its influence.93
Chandler had an unusually democratic view of who constituted an audience. On the other
hand, the Visitor printed a notice of a humorous skit performed in Liverpool, England, on how
not to behave at a concert had poked fun at humming and other concert nuisances. Be sure to
arrive late, and do not apologize for crushing toes. Beat time with your foot, and hum along with
91
“Editor’s Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 9 (June 1877): 236.
92
“Concerts and Conventions,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 8 (August 1884): 208.
93
Ruth Chandler, “Written Music,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 7 (April 1882): 183.
94
the melodies.94
Chicago and elsewhere. First, undue demands were made on soloists who were not paid by clubs
and churches. This set a bad example for the young by making music seem an unworthy art.
Second, talking during performance showed a lack of appreciation and was “a crying evil in
church meetings of a social nature . . . indulged in by all classes, from priest, music committee,
first families, down to the last families.” Talking created “discordant tones” while music was
being performed [emphases original]. According to Blackman, the problem could be solved
through training in day schools by having students hear the discord, then removing it, leaving
only musical sounds. Blackman went so far as to criticize and to label Theodore Thomas “that
bad man” for not addressing the situation, despite the conductor’s efforts.95 In the subsequent
issue Blackman complained about noisy audiences, including performers, while praising the
recent Saengerfest in Chicago as a potent force in the formation of the country’s musical
character through the training of local talent. A large number of people had walked, talked, and
laughed during performances, and sometimes included choir members when not performing.
Blackman’s solution: no one should buy a ticket unless he lives up to the rule or law that when
music is being performed, no other sounds should be heard; signals could be used to alert the
audience a minute or so before music is resumed as they do for opera. Covering up the defects of
a performance by walking or talking only prolongs the existence of mediocre talent. Blackman
concluded by advising the members of the Saengerbund to frown upon all things that hinder a
94
“Philharmonic Etiquette,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 6 (June 1884): 147.
95
O. Blackman, “A Criticism of Chicago Musical Matters, with a Backhanded Whack at Other Cities and
Towns,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 10 (July 1881): 266. Blackman, part of the Visitor’s “Galaxy of Talent,”
was described in December 1883 as superintendent of music in the Chicago public schools; his given name was not
revealed until 1893. “Music-Teachers at the World’s Fair,” The Musical Visitor 22, no. 3 (March 1893): 68.
95
successful performance, “though railroads, shop-keepers and beer sellers reap a rich harvest.”96
For Blackman, rude behavior was not indicative of class, but it could be corrected through
education.
Others wrote about church or oratorio audiences. In 1882 Murray commented that he was
pleased to see that the tradition of standing for the Messiah’s “Hallelujah Chorus” was beginning
to take hold in America, as a display of “good taste.”97 He must have wondered, however, at the
“Angels ever bright and fair” at the Handel commemoration in Westminster Abbey on July 14,
1885. Her singing caused “many of the congregation, who, forgetting they were in a sacred
edifice, mounted the chairs, and tried to spy the prima donna through opera-glasses.”98 Dwight
had reprinted an article from the New Nation of May 14, 1864, that included a reference to the
breach of etiquette in using lorgnettes or opera glasses outside opera or theater performances.99
A New York critic in 1874 tried to influence audience behavior by threatening to publish
the portraits of the leading idiots in each town of the country. He was referring to opera or
theater-goers who spend the whole evening in a loud whisper criticizing a singer who sings flat,
In these instances the critic fled, lest he commit “justifiable homicide and be made an object of
public sympathy and admiration.”100 Ten years later, another example of using humor in service
96
O. Blackman, “The Chicago Saengerfest, with a Few More Whacks at Concert Audiences, etc., etc.,”
Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 11 (August 1881): 293–94.
97
Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 5 (February 1882): 131. George II reportedly began the custom of
standing for the “Hallelujah chorus” at the first London performance of Messiah in 1743. However, neither the King
nor any member of the royal family is recorded as having attended the Messiah during Handel’s lifetime. Richard
Luckett, Handel’s Messiah: A Celebration (London, UK: Victor Gollancz, 1992), 175–76.
98
“Musical Events in England,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 9 (September 1885): 230.
99
Sablosky, What They Heard, 55–57.
100
“The Theatrical Idiot,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 5 (February 1874): 6, reprinted from the New
York Graphic.
96
improving audience behavior appeared in the Visitor:
Frank White frequently addressed the nuisance of talking, but it continued. White called
upon the audience “as a body,” to make “a determined stance” against the “human magpies.”
Thus far the problem had mostly been dealt with by musicians and performers with the “requisite
moral pluck.” Theodore Thomas had conducted the first performance of Lakmé at the Academy
A young lady who occupied a proscenium box with a party of friends carried on a loud
and lively conversation to the great annoyance of both performers and audience. Mr.
Thomas sent an attendant to her with the message that if she continued he would rise and
ask the audience to decide by vote whether they preferred to hear her conversation or the
music. This had the desired effect, and for the rest of the evening there was not a quieter
person in the house than she.102
White then related a story of Ole Bull when he played in Lucca for the Duke and the Queen
Dowager of Naples, and an audience of other nobles and musicians. The introduction had
been played by the pianist but the lively conversation had continued, with the Queen Dowager
taking a prominent part, so Ole Bull placed his violin under his arm. The Duke inquired as to
whether he desired anything. He responded that he was quite ready but did not want to interrupt
the conversation. Thereupon the Duke whispered a few words to her and “the spirited young
101
The Musical Visitor 13, no. 7 (July 1884): 180.
102
Frank White, “Talkative Auditors,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 2 (February 1888): 34–35. White must
have been referring to the American premier of Lakmé at the New York Academy of Music on March 1, 1886,
conducted by Thomas. David Ewen, Encyclopedia of the Opera, 2nd ed. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1963), 251,
509.
97
artist was not annoyed by conversation again.” White continued with other examples and ended
with an appeal to audiences and artists to cooperate in ending the nuisance.103 He likely
mentioned the Ole Bull incident to address a long-standing problem of audience behavior that
transcended class.
Columnists also addressed another form of disruptive behavior: leaving before the end of
a performance. Boston correspondent Louis Elson complained about the audience at a Cecelia
[sic] Club concert at Music Hall on May 15, 1884, which had featured Mendelssohn’s Athalie
and the last part of Schumann’s Faust. The latter was Elson’s favorite since it “truly reflects the
spirit of Goethe’s poem.” Elson reported that its finale had been “accompanied by creaking
boots, slamming doors, and other evidences of a departing audience.” This caused Elson to
Editor Frank H. King commended a Cincinnati audience for not leaving a performance
before it ended. A “strange occurrence took place” during Miss Jane Coombs’s engagement at
Pike’s Opera House in 1871. “The usual noise, confusion, and rushing for the door before the
curtain fell at the close of the play was unobserved . . . and all of us were astonished. . . . It is to
be hoped that the habit of marring the entire evening’s entertainment by making a grand
stampede for the door before the end” will come to an end. “It ought to be hissed until no one
Murray noted that rudeness in public seemed to prevail in France and England, and
quoted the Musical Times. Mr. [Charles] Lamoureux had “stopped the band” during the
performance of an overture when a man was noticed leaving the concert room. The conductor
103
White, “Talkative Auditors,” 34–35. This incident took place when Ole Bull visited Lucca during the
summer of 1834. Sara C. Bull, Ole Bull: A Memoir (Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1886; repr., New
York: Da Capo, 1981), 61, 63–64, 254.
104
The Musical Visitor 13, no. 7 (July 1884): 181. Louis C. Elson was a member of the Visitor’s “Galaxy of
Talent” as “One of Boston’s Best Critics.” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 12 (December 1883): iv.
105
Frank H. King, “Commendable,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 2 (November 1871): 7.
98
turned around and gestured as if to say, “Do as you like.” The Musical Times reporter hoped that
“the French conductor will not have imitators in England. Outrages on the liberty of the
subject . . . are not to be tolerated in this happy land. It is one of the dearest prerogatives of the
free-born Briton to annoy his neighbors.”106 This report accords with a previous account in the
Visitor regarding an incident in the English provinces. The manager had evicted a male member
of the audience who hissed a performer. The judge had decided in favor of the “right of the
public to hiss.” When a performer puts herself or himself before the public, they are liable to
disapproval.107 British visitor Joseph Hatton, who had attended theaters in various U.S. cities in
1881, concluded that American audiences were better behaved than the English: “They are more
respectful to the actors. However bad the play they never hiss. . . . If it is particularly bad they
leave before the last act. . . . They are dignified and quiet.”108 Hatton’s report is further evidence
Apparently New York papers had been congratulating themselves on the improved social
atmosphere of the opera house during the 1889–1890 season. More people had not put on their
coats until the music had ended and there was “less talking at the front of the boxes.” Murray
commented that critics may soon be relieved from the necessity of pointing out that it is a sign of
“good breeding to appear quietly interested in the opera.”109 This note of optimism, however,
was short lived. In the subsequent issue, a New York reporter complained about box holders at
Perotti: “The first four acts . . . were sung to an ad libitum of conversation and loud laughter
106
The Musical Visitor 19, no. 2 (February 1890): 36.
107
“Gleanings,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 15 (December 1882): 410.
108
Joseph Hatton, “American Audiences and Actors,” Theatre 3 (May 1881): 257, quoted in Lawrence W.
Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1988), 194.
109
The Musical Visitor 18, no. 12 (December 1889): 316.
99
from chatter boxes 9 and 11. Even Perotti, who brought down the house, failed to disturb the
conversation of these gabblers, and their voices could be heard even above the crash of the
orchestra and the crescendo of the tenor’s high C.”110 Murray continued his campaign against
noisy box holders at the Metropolitan Opera House. Apparently the box patrons of the Met, “the
select 400,” had been continuing their “loud and constant conversation during performances.”
Murray commented that rudeness in public indulged in by anyone is not mistaken for culture.111
Murray’s editorial page in March 1892 included a reference to a writer who had described “the
conduct of the upper 400 of New York,” in the boxes at the opera in terms of disgust. Their
“loud laughter, uplifted voices, and a degree of décolleté transgressing the bounds of decency”
would not be tolerated elsewhere.112 The Visitor’s New York correspondent reported: “The opera
at the Metropolitan still attracts large audiences, despite the incessant chatter and laughing in the
boxes whose occupants should know how to behave in such places, but don’t.” The only operas
mentioned were Wagner’s Tannhäuser and Lohengrin conducted by Anton Seidl.113 A notice
appeared in their boxes on January 15, 1891: “Many complaints having been made to the
directors of the Opera House of the annoyance produced by the talking in the boxes during
performance, the Board requests that it be discontinued. By order of the Board of Directors.”114
The noisy box holders at the Metropolitan were apparently rivaled by the audience for
Walter Damrosch’s Roof Concerts at Madison Square. Damrosch addressed the “Ladies and
Gentlemen of the Audience: This is not a brass band. You will all enjoy the softer portions of the
110
“New York Notes,” The Musical Visitor 19, no. 1 (January 1890): 12.
111
The Musical Visitor 19, no. 2 (February 1890): 36.
112
The Musical Visitor 21, no. 3 (March 1892): 64.
113
“Music in New York,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 1 (January 1891): 10.
114
Irving Kolodin, The Metropolitan Opera: A Candid History of America’s Foremost Lyric Theater from
Its Opening in 1883 to Its Removal to Lincoln Center in 1966 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), 53. According to
Kolodin, the rude behavior of the box holders was due in part to Siegmund and Sieglinde’s incestuous relationship
and the audience’s overexposure to German opera.
100
music much better if you will assist in keeping your neighbors quiet.”115
America transformed public spaces (including theaters, music halls, opera houses, and parks)
through “rules, systems of taste, and canons of behavior,” and “left behind them––firmly planted
world and represented the standards, if not the total way of life, they believed in.”116 Evidence in
the Visitor suggests that the middle class also contributed to the transformation.
Programming
Issues of programming found in the Visitor included the audience’s demand for variety,
type of music presented, and influence it was encouraged to wield. A St. Louis correspondent
wrote in 1872 that theater managers understand the public demand for variety, whether for a new
singer or for a new opera.117 Later, in 1883, George F. Root reported on Theodore Thomas’s
“Wagner Night” concert series in Chicago. Root considered 10 percent of the audience to be
connoisseurs, who “seem to fill the eye of the conductor far more than the 90 per cent, who
cannot get beyond music of a medium grade.” Root quoted from a letter to the editor of the
Chicago Herald from what he considered to be a member of the “long suffering” audience who
had been present at a recent “Wagner Night” concert. The writer had complained of “disjointed
sound, under the pretense that it is music . . . unflagging Wagner Weariness. Crash, bang,
squeak, drone . . . which would have frightened the rocks that listened to Orpheus out of their
senses.” Root had attended one of these concerts and found nothing to say against the program or
performance. He recommended that those who do not understand Wagner’s music should not
115
The Musical Visitor 21, no. 9 (September 1892): 248.
116
Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow, 176–77.
117
Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 1 (October 1872): 3.
101
attend the next “Wagner Night” concert.118
Occasionally the issue of programming and beer made its way into the Visitor. Elson
announced that in Boston, Mr. Adolph Neuendorff had added a new feature, “Composer’s
Nights,” featuring works of a single composer, great or little, “from Suppé and Strauss to
Mozart.” Elson noted: “There is a difference in the audiences on the different nights. The
German element is strongest on the Mozart and Weber nights.” He credited the management for
maintaining absolute order: “People in Boston, prim, puritanical Boston, thought that the
moment beer was permitted to mingle with music, everything would go to the demnition bow-
wows in the art and social world. Instead of this they find not only that a heavy police force is
not needed, but that audiences are not much different from those at symphony concerts. . . .”119
In the same issue Elson contributed “Beer and Boston Music” regarding the promenade concerts
held nightly at Music Hall, where “refreshments are sold. Mirabile Dictu! [Wonderful to tell!]
Beer also flows there. I never thought to see Gambrinus wedded to the muses in staid old
Boston.” Music Hall had been “transformed into a summer garden, with flowers, shrubbery and
electric lights. The Aladdin who has done this is named Higginson.” In 1881 businessman Henry
Lee Higginson had founded the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the popular and promenade
concerts so that the “musicians who desire it can have employment the year round.” Some of the
orchestra members did not care to play dances, marches, or light overtures, but “the public flood
Elson’s attitude toward Germans and beer was different from that expressed previously
118
G. F. R., “Here and There,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 9 (September 1883): 230. According to Joseph
Horowitz: “By the 1890s, Wagner’s genius had become an American article of faith.” Joseph Horowitz, Wagner
Nights: An American History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 46.
119
Proteus [Louis Elson], “Music in Boston,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 9 (September 1885): 237.
120
Proteus [Louis Elson], “Beer and Boston Music,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 9 (September 1885): 238.
Gambrinus is the patron saint of beer. Following the closure of his Germania Theater in New York City in 1883,
Adolf Neuendorff conducted the promenade concerts in Boston from 1884 to 1889. John Koegel, “The Development
of the German Musical Stage in New York City, 1840–1890,” in European Music and Musicians in New York City
1840–1900, ed. John Graziano (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006), 159.
102
in a letter dated December 16, 1872, from the Visitor’s New York correspondent. “Arion” had
complained that Sunday concert audiences were dwindling. He had blamed “the music and the
jingle of glasses in the lager-beer saloons” where people chat and drink “they hear Beethoven,
such as it is, for fifteen or twenty cents, unless they are highly educated, they will be apt to stray
in that direction.” Sunday concerts did not draw out the wealthy and fashionable of New York,
and “any element outside this is never very reliable regarding its patronage of entertainments not
identified with the sock and buskin.”121 For Arion in New York, ethnic rivalry played itself out
with regard to class and type of entertainment enjoyed by the German community. In September
1872 editor Frank H. King had discussed Cincinnati’s free summer concerts in the parks and beer
gardens. King had mentioned that some “first-class bands” participated, such as the Newport
Barracks, Currier’s, and the Germania. “The beer-garden concerts have grown into favor largely
this summer, with various classes of people, including some of the wealthy families.”
Cincinnati’s band concerts had attracted a mixed audience. King further promoted the city: “No
city west of New York enjoys as much public amusement in this line as does Cincinnati.”122
Murray reported on the issue of operas being sung in different languages by different
characters. For example, Faust had been performed in New York with two characters singing in
Italian and the rest in German. One of the singers forgot his part, so he had mumbled “baby
talk.” Murray blamed both the performers and the audience for being “at fault” for these
“incongruities.” He also reported that in Brussels Amalie Materna had sung Die Walküre in
Murray commented on the approaching concert and opera season in November 1891.
Patti, Lehmann, Paderewski, Joseffy, and others would be “landing in this country by the
121
Arion, “Correspondence,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 4 (January 1873): 4.
122
Frank H. King, “Home Amusements,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 12 (September 1872): 10.
123
The Musical Visitor 18, no. 7 (July 1889): 176.
103
wholesale.” As long as people were curious to see and hear the celebrities, it would pay for them
to come. Murray hoped that the presence of “so many song-birds” in the country would have the
“effect of putting prices to see and hear them at reasonable rates.” Once the novelty wore off,
Murray believed that it would be difficult to get “good audiences for them all.”124 In Murray’s
opinion music critics, unless they enjoyed a “world-wide reputation and proven mental power,”
were not as influential as the audience in determining an artist’s career because its members were
The Visitor encouraged the audience to study the scores before attending the May
Festival concerts. “A party of sixty of the first people of Grand Rapids, Mich., are not only
coming to the [fifth] festival, but have sent to John Church and Company for all the music, and
are holding weekly soirees to study it, in order to appreciate it the better.”126 The issue of
Performers could also make requests of the audience. The Visitor reprinted a portion of a
performer’s plea to the audience from the July 1892 issue of Music. Blind American pianist
Edward Baxter Perry had requested that the audience leave thoughts of daily care at home in
order to help establish rapport with the performer. Avoid audible disturbances during the
performance. Arrive on time, as a common courtesy to the artist and the audience. If you
must leave before the final number, do so before it commences.127 An actress had some of the
same advice for the audience, whether theater, opera, or concert. Dress well but do not wear a
hat. Do not talk during the performance. It is “ill bred” to read aloud for the benefit of those
around you. Arrive on time. Modest behavior will show your good breeding. Others did not
124
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 11 (November 1891): 290.
125
“The Critic,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 4 (April 1897): 88.
126
“May Festival Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 8 (May 1882): 208.
127
“Courtesy between Artist and Audience,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 8 (August 1892): 238.
104
come to see you or your dress––they came to see the performance.128
Pianist, teacher, composer, and writer Emil Liebling described his ideal concert with an
audience of four to five hundred sincere music lovers, who pay a respectable ticket price and are
promptly seated by 8:00 p.m. Invited “brother artists of standing” grace the occasion. Musical
editors of leading papers should know the works to be performed and will not sit by the door in
order to slip out at the earliest convenience. The audience will leave with a sense of being
temporarily lifted from the everyday into a higher realm. As to encores, Liebling contended that
they were usually “an imposition on the artist, or a questionable compliment by overzealous and
injudicious friends” to whom the artist bowed his acknowledgment. There were towns where the
worst member of the audience would be the leading music teacher who has no use for you. He
wanted no outside influence or eye-opener. If he did come to the concert he was likely to sit
where he would be seen and heard, delivering “such oracular utterances sotto voce as: bad touch,
too much pedal, still arm, not enough devitalization, no soul.” In the case of a singer, the
whispers were “slightly varied to: bad breath, indistinct enunciation, faulty use of glottis, etc.”
Liebling continued his diatribe. The local teacher’s wisdom would be reflected in the next day’s
paper, invariably in his favor, and “by that time the artist has left, and, as the French say, ‘The
absent are always wrong.’”129 Liebling brought a different slant to the requests of traveling
musicians made previously by John C. Fillmore and Cyrus Thomas. Whereas they had been
128
The Musical Visitor 23, no. 1 (January 1894): 8.
129
Emil Liebling, “An Ideal Concert,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 5 (May 1897): 116–17. Liebling’s
portrait was included on the cover of the June 1896 issue of the Visitor, and his biography appeared on pp. 151–52.
The advice from Perry and Liebling suggests that American audiences were not yet fully respectful of the pianist
and committed to an aesthetic experience, following the earlier tours of European virtuosos in the 1840s through
1876. R. Allen Lott, From Paris to Peoria: How European Piano Virtuosos Brought Classical Music to the
American Heartland (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), ix, xi, 283, 291–92. A list of “Prominent Pianists
and Teachers who are or have been identified with the American Pianoforte,” included Sigismund Thalberg,
Leopold de Meyer, Anton Rubinstein, Hans von Bülow, and Emil Liebling. Daniel Spillane, History of the American
Pianoforte (New York: n.p., 1890; repr., New York, Da Capo Press, 1969), 363. Liebling’s teachers included Kullak
and Liszt, and his repertoire included works by Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. Jones, A Handbook of American
Music and Musicians, 86–87.
105
concerned with bringing “the best music” to rural audiences for their edification and as an aid to
local teachers, Liebling seemed to be addressing a later and presumably more sophisticated
Although John Church and Company advertised and sold pianos, the editor did not censor
criticism of the instrument, such as the following example. While the pianoforte was the most
widely used instrument, the most important in the dissemination of musical culture, it “is not
very popular as a concert instrument. The attention of an audience easily falls away from piano
playing whether in the parlor or in the concert room.” This indifference had led to “making
conversation during piano playing common among people who would deem such conduct rude
in the case of violin playing or singing.”131 The problem mentioned here does not appear to be
one of class, but suggests that variety in instruments could aid in maintaining the audience’s
attention. This may have contributed to Perry’s and Liebling’s requests for a more respectful
audience.
In one of the last issues of the Visitor, editor James R. Murray agreed with Louis
Lombard’s recent article, “Music for the People,” regarding programming. A performance
consisting exclusively of Bach or Wagner would not be wise. An audience demands variety. If
light and heavy numbers were combined in a program, many listeners who are now repelled
could be coaxed into attending. “The public should be led by gradual steps to the Parthenon.”132
130
According to Levine, by the turn of the century, “Performers and audiences had to submit to creators and
become mere instruments of the will, mere auditors . . . of the artist.” Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow, 184–85.
Liebling’s “Ideal Concert” in 1897 suggests otherwise.
131
The Musical Visitor 13, no. 8 (August 1884): 206.
132
The Musical Visitor 26, no. 7 (July 1897): 191. In 1880 the Visitor printed a song adapted from one of
Chopin’s “most pleasing melodies” and permitted us “to prove how full of the ‘popular’ element even the classics
may be.” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 5 (February 1880): 132. The comment suggests that people can appreciate
both popular and classical music.
106
Fashion
The Visitor frequently addressed the problem of women’s large hats in various venues,
but columnists also addressed other issues. In an early issue of the Visitor, editor Frank H. King
recommended proper concert dress for guest conductors. He hoped that the next time Max
Maretzek came to Cincinnati to conduct he would remove his cape and don his gloves. He would
also be pleased to see Mr. Adolph Neuendorf in gloves for his next appearance.133
Historian Joseph E. Holliday has written that for Cincinnati’s opera festivals an item of
fashion in the 1880s was the “bonnet,” which caused a reporter to complain that it was “a serious
drawback to the enjoyment of people whose seats are in the parquet.” Holliday also mentioned
that an “unusual social practice was the champagne and oyster lunch served during intermissions
to the numerous callers at the box of Mr. and Mrs. Bugher.” Mr. A. Hamilton Bugher had been
chairman of the Citizens Committee for general arrangements for the opera festival.134 Women’s
hats had also been an issue as early as the 1870s. In 1873 an item appeared regarding high
bonnets worn at concerts, lectures, and theatrical performances. In some Chicago venues, women
were apparently required to take back seats. When the complaint centered on the church, both
men and women were scrutinized for having “no higher purpose than to see high hats and
bonnets.”135
Fashion and the opera received much attention, occasionally suggesting that dress was
more important than the opera itself. A Boston “Hubbite” reported: “Fashion marts are busy
preparing for the opera season . . . as the immensity of opera-going carries with it the all-
important question, What shall I wear? . . . Lovers of new dresses and other pretties will find
133
Frank H. King, “Home Amusements: Matinee,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 6 (March 1872):
8–9. Maretzek had conducted for the Strakosch Italian Opera Company as had Neuendorf for Wachtel’s German
Opera Company during the most recent winter opera season.
134
Joseph E. Holliday, “Cincinnati’s Opera Festivals During the Gilded Age,” Bulletin of the Cincinnati
Historical Society 24, no. 2 (April 1966): 135, 139.
135
“Our Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 7 (April 1873): 11.
107
plenty to tempt them.”136 In some instances, criticism regarding fashion and the opera was
mentioned in its particular: “White ermine capes, which were once so fashionable, have once
more made their appearance at the opera, and promises [sic] to become quite the rage.”137 Notice
was given in 1878 that “some elegant mits for opera come as high as $30 a pair.”138
In preparation for Cincinnati’s fifth May Festival, the Visitor reported: “The leaders of
fashion have decided that it will not be ‘the thing’ for ladies to wear large hats at the Festival.”139
Apparently it was not considered courteous to voice complaints regarding hats. A reprint from
the Musical Times in 1879 regarding “pyramidal and colossal bonnets” had condemned wearing
hats as an “an outrage.” However, this “feeling is not openly avowed, courtesy forbidding its
open utterance, but it nevertheless is strong.”140 Some years later, James R. Murray noted that
beginning November 1, 1893, ladies would not be admitted into the orchestra stalls of the Paris
Opera unless they removed their hats.141 He wished that such a requirement could be universal.
The problem of large hats was not restricted to theaters or opera houses. The program for the first
concert held in the new building for the Neave Music School in Salisbury, North Carolina, also
included a reference to women’s hats. It would be impossible to see the performers if women
wore “daytime, outdoor head-dresses.” The principal suggested a light scarf for the night air,
Elson provided insight into Boston’s audience behavior. “It is a strange fact that the
136
“Boston,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 12 (September 1873): 5.
137
“Our Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 4 (January 1873): 10.
138
“Our Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 8, no. 3 (December 1878): 79.
139
“May Festival Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 8 (May 1882): 208.
140
“The Battle of the Bonnets,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 2 (November 1879): 41.
141
The Musical Visitor 22, no. 11 (November 1893): 292.
142
The Musical Visitor 23, no. 4 (April 1894): 92–93.
108
public rehearsals of the orchestra on Friday afternoons are far more fashionable than the
concerts . . . on Saturday evenings.” The concerts are better “but it is a society fad (and Boston is
the home of fads) to be present on Friday afternoons.”143 Elson referred to women who attended
the matinee rehearsals as he addressed the situation again in his next correspondence. The Friday
afternoon rehearsals were “feminine” and more fashionable than the Saturday evening concert.
The ticket price for the rehearsal was more than twice that of the concert. He concluded by
mentioning that the audience for grand opera in Boston had not been cultivated for this “best of
musical forms.” The audience for the symphony and opera were “entirely different in their
composition.”144
Women’s couture on stage also came under close scrutiny. Contralto Annie Louise Cary
expressed anxiety about appearing in tights: “I don’t suppose I’ll ever get over stage fright. I
don’t like to appear in tights either. I suppose it’s because I’m an American girl.” Cary admitted
that she never put on tights without thinking of a story told about her by “a wicked
newspaperman” some years ago. “It said that a party of ladies were [sic] praising me up in a
parlor one morning, and saying how modest and nice I was in dress and actions. ‘So unlike the
general run of these opera singers,’ said one of the ladies, and, turning to a gentleman, she said:
‘By the way, Mr. Jones, were you at the opera last night; how was Miss Cary dressed?’ ‘In
tights,’ was the answer, and the conversation changed.”145 In December 1885 Murray gleaned the
following from another source: “Mme. Nevada is hardly to blame for displaying her wedding
trosseau [sic] upon the stage, as there is a certain demand for this sort of thing among women of
143
Proteus [Louis Elson], “Music in Boston,” The Musical Visitor 19, no. 11 (November 1890): 291. The
Boston Symphony Orchestra still offers Friday matinees.
144
Proteus [Louis Elson], “Music in Boston,” The Musical Visitor 19, no. 12 (December 1890): 318–19.
145
“Our Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 9 (June 1881): 247. Cary was popular as
Siebel, a trouser role, in Gounod’s Faust. Krehbiel, Chapters of Opera, 92.
109
fashion, but it is not art and is in very bad taste.”146
Men’s concert fashion was rarely mentioned, but the dangers of a ready-made coat were
illustrated in the following report. While Heinrich Zoellner had been conducting the chorus, his
“ready-made” coat had begun to rip up the back until it was nearly torn in half. This had caused
much amusement for the audience and surprise to the chorus at a concert of the Seventeenth
National Saengerfest held in 1894 at Madison Square Garden in New York City. “When he
turned his back to the singers a mighty roar shook the building to the foundation.” When he
Columnists for the Visitor encouraged a reverential attitude of the audience whether for
opera house, theater, or church, and regardless of class. It was considered bad form for anyone to
disrupt the performance and others’ enjoyment of it, and was disrespectful to the performers. The
problem of thoughtless behavior extended to school concerts as well, and silence was requested
of all in attendance at Mrs. Neave’s music school in North Carolina. In much of the reporting in
the Visitor, upper-class audience members, whether in the United States or Europe, were not, for
the most part, singled out as exemplary. Lawrence Levine’s theory of the “sacralization of
culture” has exaggerated the influence of the elite at the expense of the majority. His emphasis
on social control overlooks, for the most part, audience behavior. The issue of proper behavior
was not restricted to class or locale, and ethnic tensions surface in reports. In addition, the
audience was called upon to help control ticket prices and to influence programming. The Visitor
reported on the proceedings and the humor, even sarcasm, used in an attempt to bring about
146
“Gleanings,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 12 (December 1885): 324. Nevada’s real name was Emma
Wixom. The soprano’s surname was taken from her home town near Nevada City, CA. Baker’s Biographical
Dictionary of Musicians, 8th ed.
147
“Notes and Gossip,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 8 (August 1894): 207. The marketing of men’s clothing
had been “dominated by ready-to-wear goods since the standardization of sizes and the conversion of uniform
manufactures” following the Civil War. Barron, Mixed Harvest, 173.
110
CHAPTER 3
consciousness exalting one nation above all others, and placing primary emphasis on promotion
of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups.2 Richard
Taruskin defines nationalism as “the doctrine or theory according to which the primary
determinant of human character and destiny, and the primary object of social and political
allegiance, is the particular nation to which an individual belongs.” Taruskin’s introduction to the
term ends with “nationalism is an attitude.”3 Studies in American nationalism in music have
most often focused on Czech composer Antonín Dvořák’s arrival in New York in the fall of 1892
to direct the National Conservatory of Music and the reception of his Symphony no. 9, “From the
The interaction between the United States and Europe also figured prominently in the
1
Katherine K. Preston, “American Musical Life of the Late Nineteenth Century, American Music 21
(2003): 255–59.
2
Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, s.v. “nationalism,” a noun dating from 1844.
3
Richard Taruskin, “Nationalism,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., ed.
Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 17:689.
4
Charles Hamm, Music in the New World (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979), 410–16; Richard Crawford,
America’s Musical Life: A History (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), 383–84.
111
pages of the Visitor from its inception in October 1871 to December 1897. In the Visitor,
Cincinnati publisher John Church and his editors promoted American musicians and artists as
equal, if not sometimes superior, to their European counterparts.5 On one hand, an 1874 article
on songwriters mentioned the prominence of the English language, “but ingrafted [sic] upon that
language are words and phrases which sprung up in our American soil. They may not always be
refined, classical, or elegant, but they sprang forth because they were needed, like plants
indigenous to the soil.”6 Perhaps the author was mindful of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1837 lecture
entitled “The American Scholar,” which advocated American independence from European
cultural models.7 On the other hand, the Visitor also made frequent mention of European musical
concert career. E. Douglas Bomberger has studied the German musical training of nearly five
thousand American students in Germany from 1850 to 1900. He has concluded, “The high
numbers suggest that Americans assumed the professional training for musicians in Germany
was superior to anything available in their own country at that time, and . . . many of them
received a thorough technical basis during their student days in Leipzig, Stuttgart, and Berlin.”8
Thus, expedience tempered American nationalism in the arts. This chapter will address music for
5
“A Gratifying Innovation,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 1 (October 1871): 5; “The Advent of European
Artists,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 2 (November 1871): 6.
6
“The Song-Writer,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 12 (September 1874): 9.
7
Emerson visited and lectured in Cincinnati five times between 1850 and 1867. Robert C. Vitz, The Queen
and the Arts: Cultural Life in Nineteenth-century Cincinnati (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1989), 54–55.
According to Dale Patrick Brown, Emerson presented three lectures for the Mercantile Library Association:
in 1852 on “The Anglo Saxon,” in 1857 on “The Conduct of Life,” and in 1860 on “Manners.” Dale Patrick Brown,
Brilliance and Balderdash: Early Lectures at Cincinnati’s Mercantile Library (Cincinnati: The Mercantile Library,
2007), 18–23, 131, 144, 149. The Visitor editor James R. Murray quoted Emerson on music and rhyme in 1889.
James R. Murray, “Editorial Notes,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 2 (February 1889): 36.
8
Elam Douglas Bomberger, “The German Musical Training of American Students, 1850–1900” (PhD diss.,
University of Maryland, 1991), 38–39. Bomberger suggests, however, that given the “lure of European travel” some
of the students who attended the Dresden and Stuttgart Conservatories “may have used a music conservatory to give
some structure to what was really more of a sight-seeing or cultural visit.” Bomberger, “The German Musical
Training of American Students,” 219.
112
presidents and election campaigns amid lingering tensions in the post-bellum period, European
versus American training and performance, and issues surrounding touring artists and the “star”
system, as well as music criticism, in order to demonstrate the Visitor’s role in a bourgeoning
American nationalism.
The Visitor’s advertisements, articles, and music provide a window on the contemporary
musical scene and on such national concerns as unity following the Civil War, the temperance
movement, and domestic prosperity. Brass bands, popular in the late nineteenth century, were a
useful part of presidential campaigns. According to author Irwin Silber, “From 1840 to 1916,
Composer and author Mary Hubbell Osburn has noted that American campaign songs
have “frequently centered in Ohio” since many presidents had been born there.10 Five of the
seven Ohio-born presidents were elected during the Visitor’s run (October 1871–December
1897). In addition, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union was formed on November 18,
1874, in Cleveland, Ohio. Its goal was to ban the sale and consumption of alcohol. The single-
issue Prohibition Party fielded candidates in the presidential elections of 1888 and 1892, and
John Church and Company published and advertised temperance songs for various candidates.
The first issue of the Visitor included an advertisement for brass band music published by
Church and instruments sold by his company, along with this notice: “ATTENTION BRASS
BANDS. In view of the approaching Presidential Campaign, we take this method of calling the
9
Irwin Silber, Songs America Voted By (Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1988), 18.
10
Mary Hubbell Osburn, Ohio Composers and Musical Authors (Columbus: F. J. Heer Printing Company,
1942), 10, 146–47. Presidents born in Ohio include Ulysses S. Grant (in office 1869–1877), Rutherford B. Hayes
(1877–1881), James A. Garfield (1881), Benjamin Harrison (1889–1893), William McKinley (1897–1901), William
Howard Taft (1909–1913), and Warren G. Harding (1921–1923). Hayes had served as governor of Ohio from 1868
to 1876; McKinley had been Ohio’s governor from 1892 to 1896.
113
attention of Military Bands, Amateurs, Musicians and the public generally to our extensive stock
of really First Class Brass and German Silver Band Instruments.”11 The following year Ulysses
S. Grant ran for a second term against Horace Greeley, editor of the New-York Tribune,
nominated at a convention held in Cincinnati in May 1872. The main issue continued to be
Reconstruction, and Grant’s prestige as a war hero helped to carry the day for Republicans.12
Advertisements for music published by John Church and Company usually appeared
under the “Publishers Department” or “Monthly Bulletin of New Music.” Church published and
advertised (Oskar?) Pape’s “Greeley Campaign March” for piano as “Brilliant and Stirring.”13
Some campaign music and song texts were also printed in the journal. Pape’s “Campaign:
Grand March” for piano appeared in the July issue.14 Generic piano pieces were useful for
any candidate’s campaign, regardless of party affiliation. A reelection song for Grant, “Four
Years More,” a quartet for men’s voices (TTBB) with a tempo indication of “Con Electo,” and
words and music by Philip P. Bliss, appeared in the June 1872 issue. Addressed to men of the
North and South, East and West, it indicated a desire for peace in the land and for farmers
11
Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 1 (October 1871): 24.
12
William A. DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, 3rd ed. (New York: Barricade Books,
1991), 267. Horace Greeley’s What I Know of Farming had been published in 1871. In a Cincinnati performance of
Balfe’s Bohemian Girl in November, bass Edward Seguin as Devilshoof “took the audience by storm” when he
departed from the text. When he entered Arline’s apartment, he exposed “his want of familiarity with civilized life
by using face powder on his shoes, and looking curiously at the books and other articles in the room. Taking a book
he advanced to the footlights, looked at the pages a moment, and read the title, ‘What I Know about Farming.’ It was
so irresistibly droll, so delicate and timely a suggestion of a popular humor, that, in spite of the artistic sin, there was
no technical goose present to rebuke it. Everybody laughed, and laughed again. Horace Greeley himself would have
laughed at it.” “Home Amusements,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 3 (December 1872): 8–9. Greeley died on
November 29, 1872, prior to electoral balloting; the Visitor’s deadline for publication had been November 20.
Presumably many in the audience would have voted for their Ohio native Grant, who carried the state of Ohio.
According to Dale Patrick Brown, Greeley had attended the convention held in Cincinnati. Brown, Brilliance and
Balderdash, 6. However, biographer James Parton claims that Greeley was in New York at the time. He responded
to the nomination by telegram on May 3. Greeley’s nomination was greeted with caricature and burlesque. During
one of his campaign tours of New England by train, he observed a scarecrow with a sign that read “what I know
about being defeated.” James Parton, The Life of Horace Greeley: Editor of the New-York Tribune, from his Birth to
the Present Time, 7th ed. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1885), 544–45, 549.
13
“Publishers Department,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 9 (June 1872): 21.
14
Oskar Pape, “Campaign: Grand March,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 10 (July 1872): 16–19.
114
and a concern for national unity, noting in the third stanza that the “sons of the Southland fall in
line.”15 Keyboard accompaniment made the song accessible for domestic settings. In November
1872, however, editor Frank H. King faulted Grant for a slow response in providing funds for
exhibits at the upcoming Vienna Exposition. Artisans and instrument makers would be rushed,
resulting in less than perfect workmanship from the country that plays “second fiddle” to none.16
Grant’s death in 1885 brought forth the following message from the Reverend Dr.
Newman who had been at his bedside: “Gen. Grant can lie down to his everlasting rest as
peacefully and fearlessly as befits the greatest Christian soldier the world has ever known.” The
obituary continued: “The South and the North unite to do honor to his memory. The East and
15
Pro Phundo Basso [Philip P. Bliss], “Four Years More,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 9 (June 1872):
18–20. The three stanzas for the song were printed under the “Publishers Department,” in the same issue on p. 21.
Grant, in his inaugural address delivered on March 4, 1873, stated that he would work toward “the restoration of
good feeling between different sections of our common country.” James M. McPherson, gen. ed., “To the Best of My
Ability”: The American Presidents, rev. ed. (New York: DK Publishing, 2004), 377.
Stand by the Union, soldiers true, Four years more, Four years more;
Stand by the old Red, White and Blue, four years more!
Peace to the Nation, East and West; peace to the land we love the best;
Peace to the “Farmer,” let him rest, four years more!
List’ to Columbia’s earnest call, Four years more, Four years more!
GRANT her the favor, voters all, four years more!
Tell to the world that men are true, tell to the world both old and new,
Tell to the world that GRANT WILL DO, four years more!
Men of the Northland all combine, Four years more, Four years more!
Sons of the Southland fall in line, four years more;
U. S. A. for government, U. S. N. for armament;
U. S. G. for President, Four years more!
In a related vein, a letter to the editor of the Visitor from a writer in New Orleans in February 1872 read in part: “I
observe that you publish entertaining correspondence from Boston, New York, and other cities, East and West, but
have so far left New Orleans out in the cold. While it is true that we are (unfortunately, perhaps), a long way from
the ‘finished edge,’ it is also true that we have theaters, and concerts, and opera occasionally here, so I venture to
creep in uninvited, with the implied understanding that you thrust me out if I am not wanted.” The writer goes on to
report on activities at theaters, the Academy of Music, and the Opera House, ending with “if you publish this, expect
to hear again from Delta.” Delta, “New Orleans,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 5 (February 1872): 5.
16
Frank H. King, ed., “The Vienna Exposition,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 2 (November 1872): 8. An
editorial in 1879 faulted the “more prominent” American piano manufacturers for their poor showing at the 1878
Paris Exposition. The controversies “growing out of their contest at the Centennial Exhibition” resulted in fewer
exhibits. “Surely this is not a record for the country that produces the best pianos in the world to be proud of.”
Church’s Musical Visitor 8, no. 10 (July 1879): 272.
115
West rival each other in appropriately recognizing the great loss that has come upon the nation.”
Editor James R. Murray reminisced about his first glimpse of General Grant in the wilderness, on
May 5, 1864, less than an hour prior to the battle. Murray had subsequently seen him again: “Our
last interview with him was in Chicago just before his elevation to the Presidency. After a
pleasant evening spent on the porch of his brother’s house which adjoined ours, he gave us a
hearty grasp of the hand, and a kind good night, leaving us with a pleasant impression . . . of
greatness allied to humility, of dignity combined with gentleness.”17 A funeral march for piano
Grant, appeared in the same August 1885 issue.18 Clearly Murray remembered Grant as “simple
and unpretentious,” as read an advertisement for the funeral march published by the John Church
Company.19 The Visitor made no reference, however, to his time in office. According to historian
Michael Les Benedict, “Ulysses S. Grant is commonly considered a great general who made a
terrible president . . . and it’s likely that many of Grant’s contemporaries would have agreed with
this assessment.” Grant was “blasted for his partisanship and for winking at corruption all around
him.”20
The theme of reform dominated the hotly contested Centennial year presidential
campaign between Ohio’s Republican Governor Rutherford B. Hayes and New York’s
multimillionaire governor Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. The Republicans had nominated Hayes at
a convention held in Cincinnati in June 1876.21 That month the Visitor had advertised two
17
“General Grant. Died, July 23, 1885,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 8 (August 1885): 206–7. The Battle of
the Wilderness [in Virginia] took place May 5–12, 1864; the most famous of Grant’s war horses was named
“Cincinnati.” Jean Edward Smith, Grant (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), 303, 316–33.
18
“The Nation Mourns,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 8 (August 1885): 212–14. The trio of the march is
based on an “Air by P. P. Bliss.” I have been unable to identify it.
19
The Musical Visitor 14, no. 8 (August 1885): i.
20
Michael Les Benedict, “Ulysses S. Grant,” in McPherson, “To the Best of My Ability,” 132.
21
DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, 284.
116
marches for the campaign: “Gov. Hayes’ Grand March” and “Gen. Bristow’s Grand March,”
both by (Sidney?) Ryan.22 Benjamin H. Bristow had served as Secretary of the Treasury from
1874 to 1876 under President Grant. Bristow had “purged corrupt officials and exposed the
Whiskey Ring scandal” and was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.23
Hayes’s heroism as a Civil War general and “his record as a reform governor” made him an
attractive candidate.24 In July the Visitor advertised five vocal and three instrumental works for
the Republican candidate. The Publishers Department Bulletin ended with the notice:
“Democratic Campaign Music will be announced in this journal as soon as the Candidates are
known.”25 The following month Church advertised ten works for the Republican ticket and three
for the ticket of Tilden and Hendricks.26 In the same issue the editor commented on the
campaign:
It is not well to mix art with politics; the pure atmosphere of the one must not be tainted
with the corruption of the other. . . . But if there is a possibility of politics being in any
degree purified by the injection of a little art into its diseased corporosity [sic], there is
reason to hope for reform during the present campaign; that is, if there is any of the purity
of art in the “hurrah” songs that are pouring in such a flood from the music presses.
Never before has there been so many as now, and no one will dispute the influence of
22
“Publishers Department,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 9 (June 1876): 236. The bulletin read that “both
of the eminent men . . . have a good and equal chance for achieving victory.” Campaign songs could be composed
for the nomination process as well.
23
DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, 269.
24
James A. Rawley, “Rutherford B. Hayes,” in McPherson, “To the Best of My Ability,” 141.
25
“Publishers Department,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 10 (July 1876): 264. Two of the works for
Hayes were composed by Asa Hutchinson of the Hutchinson Family. “See the People Turning Out” was sung at the
nomination of Hayes and Wheeler at Cincinnati on June 16. The fifth verse of “For Hayes, a Blaze of Golden
Days!” includes “Freedom for whites, blacks, women, and all!” Like the Hutchinson family, Lucy Webb Hayes was
well known for her political views on slavery, suffrage, and temperance. Dale Cockrell, “Hutchinson,” in The Grove
Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013),
4:287–88; DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, 282–83.
26
“Publishers Department,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 11 (August 1876): 292, 307.
117
these hastily made songs in forming the popular opinion and shaping the final result of
the campaign.27
A new advertisement for Hayes in September for a “stirring quartet” by Philip P. Bliss
referred to the Civil War: “Stand by the union, soldiers true––Vote for Hayes; Stand by the old
Red, White, and Blue––Vote for Hayes! Vote for Hayes!”28 Tilden won the popular vote but lost
the election. Hayes’s congressional supporters agreed to remove the remaining Federal troops
from the South, ending Reconstruction, in exchange for allowing the Hayes victory to stand. In
his inaugural address, Hayes assured the citizenry that he would tend to their needs regardless of
An advertisement for band instruments appeared in the August 1880 Visitor “For the
Presidential Campaign”30 between Union Generals James A. Garfield and Winfield S. Hancock.
The same issue advertised three works for each candidate. In September the Visitor advertised
thirteen works for the Republican ticket and eight for the Democrats.31 The Democrats had
27
“Editor’s Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 11 (August 1876): 290.
28
“Campaign Music,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 12 (September 1876): 334.
29
McPherson, “To the Best of My Ability,” 378–79. A letter to the editor from “a valued correspondent”
and “an earnest musician” in Louisiana complained about “[Gen.] Sheridan’s premature and false statement that we
are a set of ‘banditti.’ God knows we wish to blot out all memory of the late bitter feud, and to feel there is ‘no
North no South,’ and are trying to have ‘good will to all men.’” The editor responded that the Visitor had no wish to
soil its hands with the dirt of “political quagmire.” However, it could feel “for the unpleasant condition of its
Southern friends, and know when a cowardly blow has been leveled at the defenseless. It is unfortunate that in time
of peace we can not revere our warriors in peaceful retirement, and give the statesmen the reins of politics.” The
stories of “‘protection against domestic violence’” could not conceal the “outrages of unconstitutional, unauthorized
military interference on the part of the administration in the South.” “Editor’s Notes and Reviews,” Church’s
Musical Visitor 4, no. 5 (February 1875): 10. Reference was made to an article in Appleton’s Journal that General
Robert E. Lee had “died of a broken heart, on account of the sufferings of the Southern people he could not relieve.”
“Our Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 5 (February 1875): 11. President Hayes attended the
Seventh Industrial Exposition in Cincinnati in September 1879. A parade included music from “a dozen brass
bands,” and streets were crowded with people and “vehicles of every description.” Hayes, and other distinguished
guests, gave speeches at Music Hall on opening night, September 10. “The Seventh Industrial Exposition,” Church’s
Musical Visitor 9, no. 1 (October 1879): 12.
30
“New Political Music,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 11 (August 1880): 305, 318.
31
Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 12 (September 1880): 346.
118
nominated Hancock at their national convention held in Cincinnati in June 1880.32 Apparently
voters could tire of campaign music and activities as described by a writer from Boston:
The election happily is over, and the noisy bass-drum, as it guides the sinuous steps of the
returning torch-bearer, no more assails the affrighted midnight air. Now that peace and
tranquility have once more asserted themselves, and pandemonium is hushed, there will
be an increased attention to the commoner affairs of life.33
Grant’s death in 1885 provided an opportunity for the nation to heal, as had the music for
Garfield’s assassination in 1881. H. R. Palmer’s song and chorus with piano accompaniment
“Peace, Be Still” had been intended to calm the nation after the shooting.34 Charles Guiteau had
shot Garfield on July 2, 1881, but the president did not die until September 19. The following
In expression of just indignation at the awful crime and in profoundest sympathy with
General Garfield and his family there is no North, no South, no East, no West . . . .
Political diplomacy could not have accomplished in years, the fusion which this attempt
upon the life of the President has evidently brought about in these few weeks. The South
especially has been profuse in expressions of love for the victim and disgust and
contempt for the thing called Guiteau. A Southern Governor was the first to propose and
appoint a day of prayer and supplication for the President’s recovery.35
This entry was followed by a quote from the Atlanta Constitutionalist: “If the President recover,
he must visit his Southern friends. We of the South have learned to love him. He would love us if
32
DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, 300.
33
Clifford, “Boston,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 3 (December 1880): 73. Garfield, a moderate social
drinker, “rejected pleas from temperance groups” to take the pledge of abstinence. DeGregorio, The Complete Book
of U.S. Presidents, 296. John Church and Company published and advertised the House of Rechab, a Temperance
Cantata by A. C. Gutterson, promoting total abstinence. The publisher consigned the work “to the temperance
organizations which are striving to reform the dissipated, this Cantata is respectfully dedicated, with the hope that its
representation may not only afford profit and pleasure, but also be an assistant in the cause of reform.” Church’s
Musical Visitor 9, no. 2 (November 1879): 56.
34
H. R. Palmer, “Peace, Be Still,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 11 (August 1881): 298, 310–12. The
text, by Miss M. S. Baker, is in the form of a prayer.
35
“Our President,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 11 (August 1881): 298–99.
119
he knew us better.”36 The Visitor described “God Save Our President!” and “The Nation’s
Prayer” by editor James R. Murray as having “strong, stirring melodies, pleasing harmony and
choice words. They fittingly express the sentiments and prayers of the people at this time, both
for the safety of the nation and the recovery of its honored head.”37
Garfield’s obituary in the October 1881 Visitor refers to him as “our second martyr” and
reprints his words, uttered at the time of Lincoln’s assassination, to comfort and “lighten the
gloom” felt in the country. The obituary ends: “Now cracks a noble heart; Good-night, Sweet
Prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest,”38 which presumed readers’ familiarity with
Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Hamlet, Act 5, scene 2. Garfield’s burial took place on September 26,
1881. That evening a large audience attended a rehearsal of the May Festival chorus led by
Arthur Mees. Selections from Mozart’s Requiem and Handel’s Dettingen Te Deum were
rehearsed on the solemn occasion.39 Three of the four works printed in the October 1881 issue
were a response to Garfield’s death. Thomas P. Westendorf dedicated “Furl the Old Flag, There
Will Be No Rejoicing” to General Garfield’s memory, and James R. Murray composed “Mother
in the Doorway Waiting,” and arranged and partly composed “President Garfield’s Requiem
March.”40
36
Ibid.
37
J. R. Murray, “God Save Our President!” and “The Nation’s Prayer,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 12
(September 1881): 318; “Publishers Department: Two Timely National Songs,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 12
(September 1881): 333.
38
“James A. Garfield,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 1 (October 1881): 10. For more information on
Garfield’s assassination, see James W. Clarke, American Assassins: The Darker Side of Politics (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1982), 204–12. According to Lawrence Levine, Shakespearean drama was parodied in
minstrel shows, thus the American public must have been familiar with his works. Lawrence Levine,
Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1988), 3–4, 13–14, 27.
39
“Home Musical Record,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 2 (November 1881): 39. Both works were
programmed for the 1882 May Festival.
40
Thomas P. Westendorf, “Furl the Old Flag, There Will Be No Rejoicing”; James R. Murray, “President
Garfield’s Requiem March” and “Mother in the Doorway Waiting.” Murray prefaced the latter with a scenario:
“President Garfield’s aged mother is stopping with her niece at Hiram. She receives frequent messages from
120
The Visitor first printed George F. Root’s “No Section Lines” in January 1884
and promoted it as a national anthem.41 “We believe it will prove to be the long-sought-
for National song, which America has been looking for so long.”42 The song had been “the
prominent feature of the War Concert held last month at Akron, O[hio]. Dr. Root has written the
national anthem of America.”43Apparently the solo and chorus received insufficient support as a
national anthem; in July of that year it was advertised for campaign use. Like Bliss’s song for
Grant, Root’s number stressed post-Civil War unity.44 C. C. Case’s “Our Nation Forever,”
printed in the October 1883 Visitor, likewise expressed a desire for national unity.45
As late as 1892, Root’s concern for unity included his desire to change the wording of the
last stanza and chorus of his Civil War song “The Battle Cry of Freedom.” He considered
Washington, and spends much of her time at the front door of the house anxiously waiting for the messenger who
brings her the dispatches. She is much agitated by fears of the worst, yet she clings tenaciously to hope.” Church’s
Musical Visitor 11, no. 1 (October 1881): 17–25. According to Wayne Shirley, Garfield’s assassination produced the
greatest outpouring of music during the period 1870–1885, rivaled only by the music written to mourn Grant’s
death. Wayne D. Shirley, “Music Published in America, 1870–1885: Music for Public Occasions,”
http://memory,loc,gov/ammem (accessed May 26, 2007).
41
Geo. F. Root, “No Section Lines,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 1 (January 1884): 16–18.
42
“Publishers Department, New Music, Vocal,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 1 (January 1884): 15.
43
“Concerts and Conventions,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 1 (January 1884): 12.
44
The text for Root’s “No Section Lines” reads:
“Publishers Department,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 1 (January 1884): 15. According to Carl Dahlhaus, the most
important element in a national anthem is “the expression of national pride and emotion.” Furthermore, the “national
significance . . . of a musical phenomenon is to no small degree a matter of the way it is received by audiences . . . .”
Carl Dahlhaus, Between Romanticism and Modernism: Four Studies in the Music of the Later Nineteenth Century,
trans. Mary Whittall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 86–87. Apparently not everyone who heard
“No Section Lines” was convinced that the song would be appropriate as a national anthem.
45
C. C. Case, “Our Nation Forever,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 10 (October 1883): 274–76.
121
changing the last stanza from “And we’ll hurl the rebel from the land we love the best” to “And
if need be we will die for the land we love the best.” In the chorus Root’s “Down with the
traitor, up with the star” would become “Bright in its glory shines every star!”46 Editor Murray
responded: “The old soldiers on both sides have long ago shook hands and made up . . . and we
do not believe that either Union or confederate want the old songs changed one iota from the
Humor and the portable barrel organ also came into play in regard to presidential
elections. An article appeared in June 1884 regarding the use of the barrel organ and popular
tunes. The Irish were targeted with “St. Patrick’s Day,” which “has to be put on almost every
barrel. This is not a revival but is to prevent the musician being mobbed in Irish communities for
daring to come around without it.” Of the dances to be included, the jig was the most important.
The rural resident was similarly disparaged. Something from Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S.
Pinafore would need to be included: “There are folks who live so far up country that Pinafore is
just beginning to be whistled by the young men who affect metropolitan ways.”48 Thus, the
Visitor article demeaned the Irish-American, rural Americans, and Italian-Americans with the
barrel organ. According to Irwin Silber, the 1880 campaign was the first to use Gilbert and
Sullivan, specifically a parody of “When I Was a Lad” from H.M.S. Pinafore, on behalf of a
46
George F. Root, “The Grand Central, New York,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 10 (October 1892): 272.
47
“The Battle Cry of Freedom,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 10 (October 1892): 277. The Civil War was
remembered in art and sculpture as well. Artistic renderings were in demand for veterans’ clubs, soldiers’ homes,
and public buildings. James Hope, for example, painted three views of the Battle of Antietam ca. 1892. Harold
Holzer and Mark E. Neely, Jr., Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: The Civil War in Art (New York: Orion Books,
1993), ix, 12–13. It was noted in 1873 that an equestrian statue of Major-General George H. Thomas was to be
erected in Washington, “and eighty-eight condemned cannon will be melted down for it.” The Society of the Army
of the Cumberland was scheduled to meet in Pittsburgh in September to expedite completion of the project. “Chisel
and Brush,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 11 (August 1873): 11.
48
“What They Are Loaded With: Facts about the Barrel Organs to Be Used in the Campaign of 1884,”
Musical Visitor 13, no. 6 (June 1884): 154. The Republicans were confident of winning over thousands of
traditionally Democrat Irish-American voters. David Saville Muzzey, James G. Blaine: A Political Idol of Other
Days (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1934), 308.
122
political candidate.49
Most of the subsequent month’s advertisements for the 1884 election were for the
Republican ticket of Blaine and Logan.50 An advertisement for band instruments reads:
Music plays a most important part in all Presidential Campaigns. New bands must be
organized, and old ones thoroughly refitted with the Best Instruments. . . . In order to
secure profitable engagements, and plenty of them, leaders and members of bands should
prepare themselves now! The best bands having the best instruments and latest music will
find plenty to do during the campaign.
The Blaine and Logan Campaign Songster, published by John Church and Company, included
biographical sketches of the 1884 nominees and a constitution for campaign clubs. “The aim of
this little work is to supply the Republican party with songs that are worth singing. . . .”51
Apparently presidential campaigns could also be useful for promoting piano sales, as
Hon. James G. Blaine, the Republican candidate for the Presidency, is one of the many
celebrities of national fame who have chosen Knabe pianos. The Plumed Knight selected
a Cabinet Grand rosewood Upright. President [Chester A.] Arthur purchased a Knabe
Grand for the White House not long since. The Knabe pianos should thus play an
important part in restoring harmony among the factions of the grand old party.52
49
Silber, Songs America Voted By, 119.
50
According to Wayne Shirley, there are more campaign songs for James G. Blaine in the Library of
Congress Music Division’s collection than for any other candidate for the 1884 election, but he lost anyway. Shirley,
“Music Published in America, 1870–1885. Union General John A. Logan (1826–1886) founded Decoration Day, or
Memorial Day, when he had flowers placed on the graves of soldiers on May 30, 1868. Encyclopædia Britannica,
15th ed., s.v. “Logan, John A(lexander).”
51
The Musical Visitor 13, no. 7 (July 1884): i, ii.
52
“Musical Hopper,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 7 (July 1884): 182. Blaine (1830–1893) became known as
the “Plumed Knight” for his eloquence and leadership as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Muzzey,
James G. Blaine: A Political Idol of Other Days, 62–63, 71–72, 110. Reformist Republicans who bolted from the
party, known as “Mugwumps,” were unhappy with the choice of Blaine as the presidential candidate; instead they
supported the nomination of Democrat Grover Cleveland. Chester A. Arthur, who succeeded Garfield after his
assassination in 1881, was not supported by “patronage-hungry Stalwarts” in the Republican party. McPherson, “To
the Best of My Ability,” 384. President Arthur ordered a new Knabe rosewood grand piano, which was delivered to
the White House on December 13, 1882. Elise Kirk, Music at the White House: A History of the American Spirit,
Music in American Life (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 126. The Baldwin Piano Company of
Cincinnati presented first lady Helen Taft, a Cincinnati native and graduate of Cincinnati’s College of Music of with
123
John Church and Company advertised and sold Knabe pianos.
A notice appeared in the August Visitor that “campaign music, of all descriptions, for
voices, piano, or brass bands, may be had of our publishers, who were first in the field this
year with music of this character.”53 Eight works were advertised for the candidates: seven for
the Republican ticket of Blaine and Logan, one for Democrat Grover Cleveland, and two
unspecified quicksteps and a march for brass band. Thomas P. Westendorf composed a song and
chorus for Blaine and Logan, and a song and chorus for Cleveland.54 Ohio native William H.
Pontius contributed two generic solo piano works for the 1884 campaign: “We Shall Win
Quickstep” and “Campaign March.”55 The 1884 campaign was focused more on the morality of
the candidates than on political issues. Blaine was accused of profiting from railroad interests as
a member of Congress; Grover Cleveland accepted responsibility for fathering a son out-of-
wedlock.56
John Church and Company published Richard Stahl’s celebratory “Grand Inauguration
March,” op. 246. The march was to be performed by the Marine Band for Cleveland’s
inauguration on March 4, 1885. Stahl dedicated the work to then President-elect Cleveland, who
accepted the dedication in a letter to the composer dated December 20, 1884:
a parlor grand soon after she moved to the White House in 1909. Kirk, Music at the White House, 188; DeGregorio,
The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, 396.
53
The Musical Visitor 13, no. 8 (August 1884): 209.
54
“Stirring Campaign Music” and “Publishers Department,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 8 (August 1884): i,
211.
55
W. H. Pontius, “Campaign March,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 7 (July 1884): 188–91. “We Shall Win
Quickstep,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 8 (August 1884): 212–14. William H. Pontius, active in Ohio, especially in
Mansfield, conducted choral festivals. He composed choral works, and sacred and secular songs. Osburn, Ohio
Composers and Musical Authors, 153.
56
DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, 322, 325–26.
124
Dear Sir: It gives me great pleasure to comply with your request, and consent to the
dedication to me of the “Grand Inauguration March” mentioned in your letter of the 18th
inst.
Yours Truly,
Grover Cleveland.57
Church also published the work in arrangements for piano or full orchestra.
For the 1888 campaign, the John Church Company published and advertised three
campaign songbooks: Republican Campaign Songster, with sketches of Benjamin Harrison and
Levi P. Morton; Democratic Campaign Songster, with sketches of Grover Cleveland and Allen
G. Thurman; and the Prohibition Campaign Songster (for candidates Clinton B. Fisk and John
A. Brooks). Each contained songs and music, and a plan for forming campaign clubs. Of the
sheet music advertised, seven pieces were for Republicans, three for Democrats, and four for the
Prohibition Party, for which Church also published temperance songs.58 William A. May
composed “Prohibition’s Blue and Grey” and dedicated it to Major General R. E. Hudson, of the
“new order” of the Army of the Blue and the Grey.59 This seems to have been an effort aimed not
only at reconciliation, uniting the Union blue with the Confederate gray, but also presenting a
57
“Gleanings: Cleveland Inauguration March,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 2 (February 1885): 42. Richard
Stahl also composed a “Grand Inauguration March,” op. 46, for President Garfield.
58
The Musical Visitor 17, no. 8 (August 1888): i.
59
“Monthly Bulletin of New Music,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 8 (August 1888): iii. This is likely Ralph
Erskine Hudson, publisher and hymn-writer of Alliance, Ohio. His “Roll Away the Stone” had been dedicated to the
Women’s Christian Temperance Union in 1883. Osburn, Ohio Composers and Musical Authors, 104–5. His hymns
can still be found in such hymnals as Na Himeni Haipule Hawaii, Sesquicentennial ed., (Honolulu: Hawaii
Conference United Church of Christ, 1972). The temperance movement, in particular, “called forth much lyrical
effort.” Arthur Loesser, Men, Women and Pianos: A Social History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954), 504. A
brief, humorous entry in the 1885 Visitor is sympathetic with the temperance movement: “A camel will work seven
or eight days without drinking. In this he differs from some men who drink seven or eight days without working.”
“Musical Hopper,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 7 (July 1885): 182. The camel became the animal mascot of the
Prohibition Party in 1908. The democrats were donkeys and the Republicans were elephants. The camel was the
original water wagon, and it could travel faster than the donkey or the elephant. Lisa M. F. Andersen, The Politics of
Prohibition: American Governance and the Prohibition Party, 1869–1933 (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University
Press, 2013), 2.
125
combined front in the temperance movement.60 Editor Murray commented that music plays “an
important part in all political campaigns.” He qualified the statement by noting that “those who
furnish the inspiring sounds for a party organization” are not necessarily themselves of the same
political persuasion.61 There follows an account of a German band leader who had responded to a
query as to whether he was playing for Harrison or Cleveland: “I blays dis year for
The tariff issue dominated the 1888 campaign. Cleveland pledged a reduction and
made it clear that he opposed absolute free trade, while Harrison promised a strong protective
60
Religion was an aid to the temperance cause, but churches in the South had little to do with the
temperance movement “until long after the Civil War, for it was too inextricably linked with abolitionism.” George
W. Ewing, The Well-tempered Lyre: Songs and Verse of the Temperance Movement, Bicentennial Series in
American Music, no. 5 (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1988), 31. Journalist Gail Collins points out
that before the Civil War, temperance movements had been led by men with the goal of reforming drunkards,
“moderation was the byword,” and some members were simply asked to drink nothing stronger than wine.
Beginning in the 1870s, however, the movement emerged as a woman’s issue with the goal of shutting down
saloons and driving all alcoholic beverages out of the country. In December 1873 about eighty women “marched up
to the saloons in Hillsboro, Ohio, demanding that they close forever.” The demonstrations continued for months and
attracted national attention. A reporter from Cincinnati interviewed a Hillsboro man who recounted that he and some
friends had walked into a bar and ordered drinks, when “the rustle of women’s wear attracted their attention,” and
when they looked up, “they saw what they thought was a crowd of a thousand ladies entering.” One of the men saw
his mother and sister, another saw his future mother-in-law. Soon thereafter women in small towns all over the state
were “kneeling in the snow before the town tavern, singing hymns and sometimes taking an ax to the bartender’s
wares.” These ostensibly “spontaneous” attacks on saloons were frequently “urged on by male temperance
lecturers,” occurring in roughly a thousand communities, and “involving tens of thousands of women” for nearly six
months. Gail Collins, America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines (New York:
HarperCollins, 2003), 316–17.
61
Murray had composed “Don’t Give Up the Flags, Boys” and advertised it as “a spirited song and chorus
inspired by the recent order of Mr. Cleveland to send the captured flags back to their original owners. It is
pardonable in an old soldier to boil over at this sycophantic act of a non-combatant, and the author, who, as a boy
musician, was in all the engagements of the Army of the Potomac, from the Wilderness to Petersburg, does not
mince matters in discussing the situation in this song. All the old soldiers and Grand Army Posts should have a
copy.” “Monthly Bulletin of New Music: Vocal,” The Musical Visitor 16, no. 7 (July 1887): iv. Murray placed his
advertisement first in the “Bulletin of New Music”; he was apparently upset about the situation and took the
opportunity to remind readers that Cleveland had not served in the military during the Civil War. According to Dena
Epstein, Murray “volunteered and served in the Union throughout the war.” Dena J. Epstein, Musical Publishing in
Chicago before 1871: The Firm of Root and Cady, 1858–1871, Detroit Studies in Music Bibliography (Detroit:
Information Coordinators, 1969), 43. Cleveland had been drafted in July 1863, but had opted to pay a substitute. In
June 1887 Cleveland ordered the return of captured Confederate flags to the South. Some found the order offensive
so Cleveland looked further into the matter. When he learned that the flags were national property, not subject to
executive order, and could only be returned by an act of Congress, he ordered them to be inventoried and preserved.
Allan Nevins, Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1966), 51–52,
332–34.
62
The Musical Visitor 17, no. 9 (September 1888): 232. The “Monthly Bulletin of New Music” for
September advertised an additional six songs for the campaign. I have been unable to identify Steigenheimer.
126
tariff as a safeguard to domestic industry. The contest was extremely close.63 An advertisement
in the July 1888 issue offered vocal and instrumental music for piano, orchestra, or bands, for
“campaign meetings and processions.”64 Another entry in the same issue suggested an
invigorating campaign season. The John Church Company “will have on hand for the coming
great political campaign, all necessary material for its vigorous prosecution. Songs, marches,
with portraits of the candidates, campaign songsters, drums, fifes, and everything in the musical
line needed in a lively presidential campaign.”65 The Visitor advertised two songs for the
candidates that month: one for Cleveland and another for his running mate, Thurman.66 Murray
added further comments on the musical scene during the campaign of 1888 regarding
instruments, genres, and settings: “Piano shipments must stand aside” in favor of fifes, drums,
and other band instruments. “So also must the sentimental ballad and classic selection give
place . . . to party songs and campaign choruses. If, as the scientists say, every sound produced
sets an air wave in motion, what an invisible hullabaloo will be going on in the mystic ether this
fall.”67 The Visitor also reprinted a testimonial for Church’s decision from the American Art
Journal: “The John Church Company’s list of music for the Presidential campaign is larger than
that offered by any other house. They are having a great run on their marches, quicksteps,
campaign songs and arrangements for orchestra, brass and reed bands.”68 Thomas P. Westendorf
63
DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, 337.
64
“Music for the Presidential Campaign of 1888,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 7 (July 1888): i.
65
“Musical Hopper,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 7 (July 1888): 179.
66
“Monthly Bulletin of New Music,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 7 (July 1888): iii.
67
The Musical Visitor 17, no. 8 (August 1888): 204.
68
Ibid., 208. Benjamin Harrison’s inaugural address on March 4, 1889, mentioned that the country’s “center
of population” in 1880 was “found to be near Cincinnati.” McPherson, “To the Best of My Ability,” 387.
127
composed one song each for the Democrats and for the Republicans, as did “Winthrop.”69 As
Irwin Silber has noted, it was common practice for composers to produce pieces for both
candidates towards the end of the nineteenth century.70 Cleveland won the popular vote by ninety
Advertisements for the 1892 presidential campaign began in May and ended in
November. The foremost campaign issue continued to be the protective tariff. Harrison had
signed the McKinley Tariff of 1890, “which sent consumer prices rocketing,” and Cleveland
campaigned for a reduction in the tariff.71 A song titled “David and Goliath, or ‘I’m a
Democrat’” was advertised as the “First gun of the Presidential campaign of 1892, for tariff
reform, fired from the musical pen of Frank L. Bristow.”72 Church’s advertisements invited
bands and campaign singers to examine new music being prepared for the fall meetings. Drum
corps for the presidential campaign were advised to organize promptly. The Visitor advertised
Church’s new catalogue of drums, fifes, and bugles as “ready, and will be mailed FREE upon
69
“Campaign Song Books,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 8 (August 1888): i, iii. One of Westendorf’s songs,
“What’s the Matter with Harrison, He’s All Right,” is described as “A spirited campaign song founded on the saying
so popular at the Chicago Convention.”
70
Silber, Songs America Voted By, 18.
71
DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, 339, 346, 349; Catherine Clinton, “Benjamin
Harrison,” in McPherson, “To the Best of My Ability,” 171.
72
“Monthly Bulletin of New Music,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 5 (May 1892): 148B. I have been unable
to locate a copy of the song. Frank L. Bristow, identified as Professor of Music at the Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Female
Seminary, conducted a musical convention in Petersburg, Kentucky, and spent his summer vacation with friends in
Covington, Kentucky. “Personal Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 11 (August 1874): 11. He was also
mentioned as President of the Kentucky State Music Teachers’ Association. The Musical Visitor 17, no. 7 (July
1888): 176. In 1891 Bristow was identified as musical director in the public schools of Covington, Kentucky, and
had purchased grounds and buildings for concerts and assemblies during the summer in High Bridge, Kentucky.
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 9 (September 1891): 233. An advertisement for Bristow’s Calisthenic
Exercises and Marches with Pleasing Drills and Music, published by the John Church Company, appeared in the
Visitor. The Musical Visitor 21, no. 5 (May 1892): 148A. Later Bristow is referred to as “the popular Superintendent
of Music in the Covington, Kentucky, Public Schools” and a well-known writer of characteristic pieces for school
exhibitions. A letter from M. Farley in New Iberia, Louisiana, thanked John Church and Company for publishing
Bristow’s “The Jolly Little Waiters,” which had been staged and performed by sixteen children. “City Notes,” The
Musical Visitor 22, no. 7 (July 1893): 181.
128
application.”73 Democrat Grover Cleveland defeated Benjamin Harrison to serve a second term.
The Prohibition candidate had been John Bidwell of California who garnered only 2.2 percent of
the vote.74
The controversial issue of maintaining the gold standard or adopting a silver standard
dominated the 1896 campaign. According to historian Morton Keller, “McKinley became the
leading exponent of the most powerful theme of the late nineteenth-century Republican party:
American nationalism.” McKinley endorsed the gold standard and advocated high tariffs on
foreign goods to “assure prosperity for workingmen, lucrative domestic markets for farmers, and
a united and prosperous people.” Those who supported the gold standard were dubbed
“goldbugs.” William Jennings Bryan’s “call for unlimited coinage of silver carried with
it the promise of monetary inflation that would ease farmer indebtedness.” The Republicans
argued that Bryan’s plan “would create a ‘57-cent dollar’ that robbed workingmen of their just
wages.”75 The John Church Company covered both bases with “Bryan and Free Silver March”
(for piano) and “Gold is the Standard to Win” (song and chorus).76 McKinley won the election
with a sizable electoral majority.77 His inaugural address on March 4, 1897, referred to the
North and the South as no longer divided “along the old lines, but upon principles and policies,”
and he pledged that it would be his “constant aim to. . . permit nothing. . . that will arrest or
disturb this growing sentiment of unity and cooperation, this revival of esteem and
73
The Musical Visitor 21, no. 7 (July 1892): i.
74
Paul S. Boyer, et al., The Enduring Vision: A History of The American People, Concise 2nd ed.
(Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Company, 1995), 456.
75
Morton Keller, “William McKinley,” in McPherson, “To the Best of My Ability,” 175, 176, 178, 393.
Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech at the 1896 Democratic National Convention in Chicago in which he said “You
shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of
gold” is hailed as “perhaps the most memorable address ever delivered before a political convention.” De Gregorio,
The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, 360.
76
“Monthly Bulletin of New Music,” The Musical Visitor 25, no. 9 (September 1896): iii.
77
McPherson, “To the Best of My Ability,” 393.
129
affiliation. . . .”78 McKinley was reelected in 1900 but assassinated on September 6, 1901.
concerts by the U.S. Marine Band on the White House grounds. “An old resident, a former
attaché of the White House,” compared the gatherings of several presidents, from Franklin
Pierce to Chester A. Arthur. The anonymous author opined that the gatherings held by
Democratic Presidents Pierce and James Buchanan had been the “most fashionable.” Their
invited friends had listened to the music from the South Portico. Guests had been served light
refreshments during the afternoon. Though the concerts had been held irregularly during the war,
“President Lincoln enjoyed them very much.” President Grant “looked on usually, but took no
interest in the music.” He described the concerts under the Republican Hayes administration
as being attended by a “mob.” Republican President Arthur, however, had “raised their tone”
during the past two summers in the White House.79 According to the account of retired music
teacher Warren Walters a few years earlier, American presidents had not been “distinguished for
musical gifts.” Thomas Jefferson, however, had been the closest to being a musician with his
love of the violin, including playing for “dancing feet.” John Quincy Adams and General Grant
had not been musically inclined; likewise Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan could not be
classed as musical. Martin van Buren’s fondness of opera was thought to be “a fashionable
affectation” rather than a genuine love of music. James Madison and James Monroe had been
students of music but took no pleasure in it. Andrew Jackson, “Old Hickory,” had displayed “no
musical tendencies,” but he reportedly “loved to hear the negroes sing.” President Polk had been
78
Ibid., 396.
79
“Music for Presidents,” The Musical Visitor 15, no. 1 (January 1886): 12. For the most part, Elise K. Kirk
confirms this account, although she makes no mention of a “mob” attending concerts during the Hayes presidency.
Kirk, Music at the White House, 72–74, 88–89, 103, 108, 131, 136. In 1881 six bound volumes of autographs of
“representative men and women in all departments of American business and professional life” were presented as a
testimonial to Mrs. Hayes. President and Mrs. Hayes were honored for their “exceptionally home-like life . . . while
residents of Washington, and their fondness for home music and sensible concerts.” George Root was in charge of
the musical department and his address appeared in the Visitor, along with the announcement that the volumes were
on exhibition in Chicago. “Autograph Album for Mrs. Hayes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 10 (July 1881):
270.
130
“too grave and dignified to enjoy the wooing of sweet strains; yet he was not insensible to
music.” Lincoln had been fond of “old-fashioned” or simple music, while Hayes and his wife
had preferred the gospel music of Bliss and Sankey. Then-President Garfield had “no decided
musical taste, his mind, doubtless, never having been turned in that direction.”80 In a March 1882
article regarding President Arthur and the Fisk Jubilee Singers, editor Murray began by shaming
“the despicable conduct of some of the hotel managers of Washington” in contrast to that of “our
cultured and manly President in his reception of the Fisk University Jubilee Singers” as had been
presented in a Washington paper. President Arthur had welcomed them in the library and their
agent explained: “We have called to pay our respects, not only because you are President of the
United States, but from the fact that we know you to be a warm and earnest friend of our race,
and that you have espoused our cause in early life; and we look upon you as our friend. If it
would please you, sir, we would only be too happy to sing one of our selections.” When they
sang “Steal Away to Jesus” and “the rich notes swelled and reverberated through the library,” the
President had been “deeply moved, and endeavored to brush away the tears with his hand, but
the fountain which had broken forth under the touching song refused to be staid, and taking from
his pocket his handkerchief he burst into tears and wept like a little child.” After the president
had dried his eyes, “He warmly shook each one by the hand” and said to the Reverend Dr.
Rankin: “Doctor, I have never in my life been so much moved.” President Arthur had cordially
80
Warren Walters, “White House Musicians,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 8 (May 1881): 208–9.
Walters died in Philadelphia in 1883 and had contributed short stories and articles to the Visitor. The Musical Visitor
12, no. 9 (September 1883): 234. According to Kirk, Grant preferred military music and musicians; he had “little
eye for art and less ear for music.” Lincoln was moved most by music associated with the Civil War; he was also
fond of opera. Hymns were frequently performed for President and Mrs. Hayes. Walters was likely correct in his
observation regarding Garfield. There is no evidence to suggest that he was musically minded. Kirk differs in her
opinion of John Quincy Adams in that he was fond of music: “Music to Adams had a special power and message”
and adds that First Lady Dolley Madison added “a touch of pomp” to musical proceedings. Kirk, Music at the White
House, 35–39, 41–42, 78, 80, 86, 103, 113, 115. According to historian Carl Wittke, Lincoln “was very fond of
Negro minstrelsy.” His first hearing of “Dixie” was likely in Chicago in 1860 when he reportedly “applauded
violently” and shouted twice “Let’s have it again!” Wittke points out that by 1861 this “walk-around” became the
battle cry of “half of a disrupted nation.” Carl Wittke, Tambo and Bones: A History of the American Minstrel Stage
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1930), 209.
131
invited them to call on him whenever they were in Washington.81
grief, and the public was apparently interested in the musical tastes of its leaders. Prior to the
advent of the radio, songs, marches, and band music filled the air in support of a candidate
or a movement. Music had also been enlisted in an effort to reunite the country after the Civil
War. John Church and Company helped to provide the music as well as the instruments for
political gatherings, and families could gather around the piano and enjoy the latest offerings.
Partisanship was not openly expressed by the Visitor, but overall there were more campaign
songs advertised for Republican candidates than for Democratic ones. This is not surprising,
given that five Ohio-born Republican presidential candidates were elected during the
Visitor’s run.
Rivalry with Europe over the training of American musicians and competition from
imported leading performers were important issues in the Visitor. Despite the claims that native
musicians could get a musical training in the United States equal, if not superior, to that in
home. A variety of related issues were discussed in the Visitor, among them audience reception,
the lack of a standard for music criticism, morals, and difficult and costly European teachers.
81
“President Arthur and the Jubilee Singers,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 6 (March 1882): 162.
According to Kirk, they sang several melodies, including “Safe in the Arms of Jesus” (text by Fanny Crosby and
music by W. H. Doane), which moved the President to tears. Kirk, Music at the White House, 117, 135. In
November 1881 the Visitor had reported glowing accounts of concerts by the Fisk Jubilee Singers in papers from
Toronto, Canada. But the refusal of some narrow-minded hotel managers to furnish accommodations had served to
draw attention to the singers in a way that was likely to give them “crowded and enthusiastic houses” whenever they
appeared. “Music and Musicians,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 2 (November 1881): 40.
132
The star system
The American tour of soprano Jenny Lind, the “Swedish Nightingale,” in 1850–1851 was
important because “it points dramatically to the new, audience-oriented economics of music in
which the star performer, rather than the composer, reaps the greatest rewards.”82 Twenty years
later an unsigned article in the Visitor disparaged the influx of foreign singers, attributed possibly
to the Franco-Prussian War, to the detriment of native-born performers. The author of the Visitor
article considered Clara Louise Kellogg equal to her Old World counterpart but undervalued: “A
Scandinavian songstress [Christine Nilsson] is able to sing to us at five dollars a head, while our
own prima donna, her equal in every respect, appears before a Boston audience at twenty-five
cents per head. No wonder that foreign journals ridicule us as tow-heads, dupes, etc.!” In some
cases, according to the Visitor, Americans overpay for “the rare privilege of hearing Europe’s
second and third-rate artists.” There were those, of course, that Americans should heartily
welcome and honor, but not, according to the author, to the exclusion of native-born artists.83
Kellogg had been born in South Carolina in 1842 and had trained in the United States.84
According to the Visitor’s New York correspondent, Kellogg could not compete with
foreign talent in the Lucca opera season at the Academy of Music. When Austrian soprano
Pauline Lucca sang, “The house was crowded to the doors by one of the most fashionable and
enthusiastic audiences that I have ever seen here.” But when Miss Kellogg appeared: “To the
82
“P. T. Barnum Brings the Swedish Nightingale to America,” in Music in the Western World: A History in
Documents, Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin, eds. (New York: Schirmer Books, 1984), 385–88.
83
“The Advent of European Artists,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 2 (November 1871): 6. The first issue
of the Visitor had reprinted an entry in the American Register from “Stanley Thorne” who complained that
“Americans pay double to hear the poorest singers of Europe,” who are “thoroughly worn out elsewhere” but are
promoted as prime donne. “Our Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 1 (October 1871): 10. In
December 1871 the Visitor reprinted a report in the Boston Traveller that “some brainless lunatic” had been paying
$25 “for one of Nilsson’s hair-pins picked up in her room.” The chambermaid claimed it was Nilsson’s, but the
writer suggests that it could belong to the chambermaid or perhaps to the lady who stayed in the room prior to
Nilsson. Hair-pins “are so much alike, you can’t always tell.” “Our Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1,
no. 3 (December 1871): 9.
84
H. Wiley Hitchcock and Katherine K. Preston, “Kellogg, Clara Louise” in The Grove Dictionary of
American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 4:596.
133
disgrace of the New York, American element, neither performance was well patronized . . . a
source of the deepest mortification to the fair and gifted cantatrice. It is, however, a fact
universally admitted, that native artists seldom draw, and hence, the constant and growing
demand for foreign talent.”85 A report from the Philadelphia correspondent paints a
different picture, however, regarding Annie Louise Cary’s performance with the Strakosch
Concert Troupe in a program that included Italian soprano Carlotta Patti: “Probably no American
singer, except Miss Kellogg, has won so enviable a position in the hearts of our people, and she
will always be sure of a cordial welcome whenever she may return.” The correspondent,
however, referred to Patti as “peerless.”86 Previously the same year Kellogg had sailed to London
for an opera season. According to the report: “It is . . . peculiarly gratifying to Americans, that
one of their artists is called across the ocean to compete with such artists as Lucca, Nilsson, and
others equally as famous, who will be in London simultaneously contending upon the operatic
stage.”87 Even so, New York audiences were apparently insufficiently impressed with Kellogg in
November. A year later the editor of the Visitor, Charles A. Daniell, encouraged Cincinnatians to
give Kellogg a warmer welcome than she had received in New York. It had been a “national
with an admonition:
Let the people of Cincinnati, who have been the leaders in establishing an advanced
musical standard in the West, be leaders in this also; and when our “peerless Kellogg”
85
Arion, “Correspondence: New York,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 2 (November 1872): 3.
86
Mignon, “Correspondence: Philadelphia,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 2 (November 1872): 4. The
Visitor reprinted an engraving and biography of Carlotta Patti from Watson’s Art Journal. Church’s Musical Visitor
1, no. 11 (August 1872): 1.
87
“Clara Louise Kellogg,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 8 (May 1872): 6. A dispute between Cary and
Kellogg surfaced in a Visitor editorial in 1878. They had been drawn into a controversy over the rendering of a duet.
Their tempers had not cooled off and “journalistic scandal-mongers and the public gossips laid in wait for them.”
Excitement ran high before their appearance in Chicago. The editor concluded, “If they were strange birds from a
foreign clime there might be some sense and reason in it, but under the circumstances it is senseless fuss and folly.”
Church’s Musical Visitor 7, no. 5 (February 1878): 126–27.
134
arrives among us, let us show her that in our city, at least, she is duly appreciated, and
that we, as Americans, are proud of our home song-bird.88
Daniell seized the opportunity to not only promote an American talent but to disparage New
York audiences.
In March 1874 Daniell wrote, “In this age of railroads, telegraphs, and musical
monthlies,” we are “hankering to taste of fruits that grow not in our own clime . . . to regale the
ear with wonderful melodies, sweeter than fancy can conjure up.” He cautioned the reader,
however, that “although this desire to hear and see the great artists may be laudable,” the
difficulties, expenses, and short season available to hear them, made it apparent that Americans
must look closer to home for permanent sources. The interchangeability of artists, however, was
opportunity for a more just comparison of our American artists by well-known standards.”
Daniell hoped thereby that by hearing foreign artists as a basis for comparison, Americans would
come to appreciate their own “native song-birds.”89 At the same time, he added a moral slant to
the issue of visiting artists and nationalism. “It is an expansion of self-love” to foster the
institutions and talent of a man’s own nation. By contrast, the selfish man sought immediate
pleasure and gratification. If he attended a concert, “his ears must be tickled with the music of
foreign artists. He becomes pompous and conceited, and prides himself upon being very
fastidious, intolerant of anything but the very best.” And ultimately, “the interests of the people
88
“Encourage Our Home Artists,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 2 (November 1873): 6. Kellogg had not
trained in Cincinnati but was touted as an American.
89
“Seeing Stars,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 6 (March 1874): 9. In 1872 the idea of songbirds had not
always been seen as a positive. Editor Frank H. King had taken a local minister to task: “A certain minister of this
city is making himself odious by railing at the theater and opera. Calling Patti, Parepa, Nilsson, and Cushman, a
‘nest of unclean birds,’ thus exhibiting himself as an ignorant ass and a graceless maligner. . . . It looks very much as
though there was either a dearth of ideas in his cranium, or that he is a seeker after notoriety, and adopts this course
to advertise himself.” “Concerning the ‘Nest of Unclean Birds,’” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 5 (February 1872):
8.
135
are nothing to him.”90
The Visitor’s New York correspondent blamed critics in that city’s dailies for the
poor reception of native singers. “Arion” felt that there was no standard of music criticism “upon
which a correct and pure taste can be founded.” The dailies were “almost invariably at sixes and
sevens upon the merits of any individual singer or performance.” It had become “an established
fact here, that no native artist, whatever her or his genius or education, will ever draw in this city
for any lengthened period.” In Arion’s opinion, Kellogg was the foremost American soprano at
that time: “[I]t is absolutely refreshing to listen to her after hearing many of those who have
A decade later Frank Marling, a writer to the Visitor, complained that the “American
nation” had made insufficient progress with regard to musical literature, referring “not to musical
compositions” but musical history, biographies of composers, and “a thorough knowledge of the
general principles of musical criticism” through acquaintance with its best exponents.92 He
praised the “sound judgment and taste” of such writers as Henry Chorley, John Pyke
Hullah, John S. Dwight, Dr. Franz Hueffer, and the Reverend Hugh Reginald Haweis.93 Of
The issue of biased music criticism continued unabated: in 1888 Frederic W. Root read
his essay “An American Basis of Musical Criticism” before the Chicago Literary Club,
which was serially published in four issues of the Visitor. Root advocated “a new and broader
basis of criticism” of American musical culture. His basis for criticism included “recognizing our
present position in art” without a sense of inferiority but “with a kind of self-reliance for the
90
Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 6 (March 1874): 10.
91
Arion, “Correspondence: New York,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 3 (December 1872): 3. The
complaint was not new. We read in Matthew: “A prophet is not without honour save in his own country, and in his
own house.” Matthew 13:57 Authorized (King James) Version.
92
Frank Marling, “The Literature of Music,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 2 (February 1884): 37.
93
Frank Marling, “The Literature of Music, Part II,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 3 (March 1884): 63–64.
136
future which our American philosopher has preached to us.” Root likely referred to Emerson’s
1837 lecture calling for less dependence on European cultural models.94 Root was against “the
alien idea,” the European “tendency toward bigotry and exclusiveness,” in favor of American
“tolerance and universality.” While he believed that Americans revere European art, it could not
“speak for humanity everywhere and at all times,” nor impose its tradition of education
“unmodified upon the rest of the world.” Root maintained that the germ of American music was
in English psalmody, with the singing school as “a tributary of democratic church music.” That
music had been based on simplicity for the masses, not just for the privileged few. Root
promoted the singing school as the beginning of “a musical culture distinctively American.”95
The music of the singing school had been used for musical conventions, the home circle, and
later modified for public schools. According to Root, the other germ of American music came
from France, “nurtured first by the Creoles, and then blossomed among the negroes in fantastic
forms and colors. . . . the music, like the words, maintains traces of its French origin. The new
species becomes fully evolved from the old in the songs of the negroes. These have been
generally recognized as constituting a special and peculiar feature of American music.” Root also
asserted that “they are the only distinctively American music.” In anticipating a rebuttal to
Dvořák’s ideas, argued that “the idea of using so fantastic an element as this in the foundations
of a national school of music will hardly commend itself to anyone, and it is probable that there
He continued the following month, accusing “the alien idea” of trying to “fit
everything to the procrustean bed of European method, . . . it enters our concert halls, and, as far
94
Frederic W. Root, “An American Basis of Musical Criticism (Continued),” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 8
(August 1888): 201–2.
95
Frederic W. Root, “An American Basis of Musical Criticism: An Essay Read before the Chicago Literary
Club by Frederic W. Root,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 4 (April 1888): 87–88.
96
Frederic W. Root, “An American Basis of Musical Criticism (Continued),” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 5
(May 1888): 117–18.
137
as possible, banishes the simple melody and plain, comprehensible harmonies to introduce
instead the most involved effort of musical scholasticism. . . . in the name of education.” With
regard to church music, the influence of “the alien idea” had opposed the gospel songs of
Moody. Root maintained that “the quartet choir, a highly satisfactory expedient to some, but
much criticized by others, has been rendered indispensable by the dominance of the alien idea.”
He opined that the professional quartet was “often forced to sing” music beyond their ability.
The alien idea “may be studied to advantage in our drawing-rooms, where pupils of the
conservatories and private teachers give immature and unintelligent performance of what is too
advanced for their attainments.”97 Root had been upset by “a speaker at a convention of the
musical profession of the United States” who dishonored Lowell Mason, without naming him.
Mason’s memory had been “insulted and his work specifically held up to derision” by “those
who plant themselves upon the alien basis of criticism.” Root addressed “our musical leaders, the
able and scholarly foreigners, who minister to certain classes of our people so efficiently, have
not the acquaintance with our entire people necessary to make their leadership final.” He offered
his “suggestions for a new basis of criticism, . . . to supplement and correct what is now accepted
The star system and rivalry with Europe was not strictly a one-way street. Cincinnatian
Marie Van performed the role of Gilda in Verdi’s Rigoletto in Rome, and critics predicted
“a wonderful career” for her. Reportedly audience applause interrupted her September 18, 1880
debut and recalled her to the stage. This was considered all the more remarkable since “Italians
are notoriously opposed to foreigners coming upon their stage and carrying off the laurels.”
97
Frederic W. Root, “An American Basis of Musical Criticism (Continued),” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 6
(June 1888): 145–46. The “quartet choir” consisted of paid singers who replaced the full choir for service music.
Dudley Buck’s “important achievement was to combine the traditions of the solo quartet and full choir. His anthems
and service works contain extensive solo passages interspersed with less demanding choral sections.” Thus, the
same anthem could be sung by a talented choir or vocal quartet.” N. Lee Orr, “Democracy Comes to the Choir Loft:
Dudley Buck and the Popularization of American Sacred Music,” in Music, American Made: Essays in Honor of
John Graziano, ed. John Koegel (Sterling Heights, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2011), 654, 666.
138
Miss Van had studied in Cincinnati under voice teacher Signor A. C. Alfisi and in Rome with
performance in that city. Though the season had been successful, Elson complained of the “evil
effects of the ‘star’ system. . . . He gave us all the old worn-out operas from ‘Trovatore’ to
‘Lucia de Lammermoor,’ with a weak orchestra, a poor chorus, careless mounting, weak tenors,
but famous prime donne.”99 Impresario Max Maretzek similarly denounced the system. He
opined that they should not be called “stars” but rather “from their eccentric and erratic courses,
from their nebulous surroundings, from their doubtful ages, and the uncertainty of their keeping
the exact time of their appearance, ought to be termed musical ‘comets,’ who, after having
reached their perihelion, take, along with their long train of gaseous followers, a downward
course and disappear from public view.”100 In 1884 the Visitor employed humor with regard
to the star system and Adelina Patti: “No, ‘Matron,’ no; Patti has no babies. The family can’t
afford ’em. When they realize that it would cost the youngster in the crib $2,000 every time he
wanted his mother to sing him to sleep, cash up at the door or no concert, they decided that no
The same year Frederic W. Root explained the star system of Italian opera as a necessity.
98
“Home Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 2 (November 1880): 40. Signor Alfisi placed ads in the
Visitor for cultivation of the voice, and English and Italian singing. Maestro Muzio is possibly Emanuele Muzio
(1821–1890), composer, conductor, collaborator of Verdi, and active later as a singing teacher; he had conducted
Rigoletto in 1851. Gustavo Marchesi, “Muzio [Mussio], (Donnino) Emanuele” in The New Grove Dictionary of
Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001),
17:566–67. Mary Jane Phillips-Matz, Verdi: A Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 299. Marie
Van should not be confused with Marie Van Zandt, whose name appears later in this chapter.
99
Proteus [Louis C. Elson], “Music in Boston,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 2 (February 1885): 41.
100
The Musical Visitor 19, no. 4 (April 1890): 96.
101
The Musical Visitor 13, no. 10 (October 1884): 265. According to John Rosselli, Patti was probably the
highest paid opera singer in history. “Her doll-like looks and pure, even vocal emission masked a notable
competence in running her career and a will of iron.” John Rosselli, Singers of Italian Opera: The History of a
Profession (1992; repr., Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 116.
139
At any one time, according to Root, there were only about a dozen such singers available who
could meet the “enormous requirements” that opera places on the prima donna. Those
requirements include the “gifts of voice, intelligence, talent, face, figure and vigor.” A high
demand and short supply had resulted in high prices. The best staging, a fine chorus and
orchestra were not enough to fill the opera house. Rather than condoning the practice, Root
Concert managers also faced pressure from subscribers with regard to singers. A writer
from Baltimore reported on an orchestral concert given on February 16, 1885. The vocal
numbers had been rendered poorly by Miss Geraldine Ulmar. The writer placed the blame not on
the singer, but rather on “the management that could afford Patti” but put Ulmar “upon their
subscribers” instead.103
Clara Louise Kellogg compared European managers with those in the United States.
She claimed that American managers expected “an artist can do equally well under all
circumstances.” Too often the manager took more account of the audience and the box office
than the prima donna’s reputation. In Europe, according to Kellogg, managers demanded less of
foreign talent and audience reception. Murray prefaced the report of “just criticism” of the
musical public as applicable to American audiences as well. The issue in London was the
preference, on the part of all classes, for foreign artists and foreign art to the detriment of
established institutions, such as the loss of Henry Leslie’s choir, “the fairest choir in the world.”
102
Frederic W. Root, “The ‘Star’ Question,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 9 (September 1884): 238.
103
Lacq, “Music in Baltimore,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 3 (March 1885): 70. Geraldine Ulmar had been
a fellow member of the Boston Ideal Opera Company with Adelaide Phillips. E. Douglas Bomberger, ed.,
Brainard’s Biographies of American Musicians (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 222–24.
104
Clara Louise Kellogg, “Thorns in a Singer’s Career,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 7 (July 1885): 173.
Kellogg goes on to discuss Adelina Patti as “a brilliant example of what may be done by care and training.”
140
The audience ran “after every new musical thing, especially if it be foreign, and . . . turn our
eyes from . . . our own established musical societies,” which cannot exist without patronage.
Crowest called on the public to “not withhold support from those institutions which . . . hope to
The prima donna craze seems to have passed its crisis in Europe, and if stars want
engagements they must accept what managers can afford to pay. For instance at the St.
Petersburgh Opera the most expensive stars were once engaged. Now the most successful
season for many years is being carried on with the American soprano Miss [Marie] Van
Zandt as chief artist, at the modest salary of $250 per night.106
The euphoria, however, was short-lived. Six months later the Visitor compared the
system of the current Royal Italian Opera in London with that of 1805: “the difficulty of gaining
admission will be preserved, and this will undoubtedly make Italian opera once more a
fashionable entertainment.” It was questionable, though, whether the aristocratic classes would
be able to “support a thing of this sort, now that prime donne demand ten times the annual salary
of a Lord Chancellor . . . .”107 Six years later the Visitor again reported on the decline of the
prima donna in London. The downfall of such stars as Adelina Patti, Giuditta Pasta, and
Christine Nilsson had been reportedly due to their high pay as well as their “extravagant
demands and caprices.” Primi uomini, such as tenor Jean de Reszke, were now receiving more
105
Frederick J. Crowest, “Music in London,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 1 (October 1881): 8. Henry
Leslie took charge of what became known as the celebrated a cappella choir in 1855. The ensemble took first prize
at the Paris Exhibition in 1878. H. C. Colles and D. Mackerness, “Leslie, Henry (David)” in The New Grove
Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2001), 14:586–87.
106
“Music in England,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 3 (March 1885): 61. Jennie Van Zandt, Marie’s mother,
had changed her surname to Vanzini. F. O. Jones commended Miss Marie Van Zandt as having “sound common
sense, which was manifested in her refusing to Italianize her name.” F. O. Jones, A Handbook of American Music
and Musicians, Containing Biographies of the Principal Musical Institutions, Firms and Societies (Canaseraga, NY,
1886; repr., New York: Da Capo Press, 1971), 169–70. Léo Delibes composed the title role of Lakmé for Marie Van
Zandt. Herman Kline and John C. Ottenberg, “Van Zandt, Marie” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, 2nd ed., ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 26:270.
107
“Quality Opera,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 9 (September 1885): 230.
141
acclaim than previously. And a style change had been made from florid opera to Wagner’s
declamatory music drama.108 Likewise, Louis C. Elson reported on his interview with Ferdinand
Hiller in Cologne in 1884, who had “inquired especially as to the standing of opera in America.
He hoped that we did not use the ‘Star System’ in German opera, as every part ought to be
perfect.”109
As editor of the Visitor, Murray also touched on the issue of foreign conductors. When
Theodore Thomas resigned as leader of the New York Philharmonic Society in 1891, a reporter
had noted that apparently the new director would “come from abroad.” Murray posed the
Later that year the Visitor reprinted an article from the Chicago Inter-Ocean regarding
the upcoming World’s Columbian Exposition. Questions had been raised regarding the
involvement of American artists, musicians, composers, conductors, and teachers. The writer
pleaded let us not send to Germany for a conductor of Beethoven’s symphonies or for foreign
teachers of piano and voice. He took special issue with the Philadelphia committee for
commissioning the Centennial March from Wagner in 1876. If any of our “high-class
composers” such as Paine, Buck, Bristow, Gleason, or Chadwick had composed “such a piece of
cacophony it would have destroyed his reputation.” The author pointed out that “our worthy
Americanized musicians” were not an issue. “All who have won a position by fair and intelligent
means are cordially welcome.” Presumably the author would have included Thomas who was
coming to conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the music for the Exposition.111 The
author’s fears were groundless: programs included works by such American composers as
108
“Decline of the Prima Donna,” The Musical Visitor 19, no. 9 (September 1890): 231. Reprinted from the
St. James Gazette (London).
109
[Louis C. Elson], “Proteus at Home,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 10 (October 1884): 259.
110
“Music and Musicians,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 2 (February 1891): 40.
111
“A Hit from the Shoulder,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 9 (September 1891): 231.
142
George W. Chadwick, Arthur Foote, Edward MacDowell, and John Knowles Paine. A concert by
Douglass), Scott Joplin, Sissieretta Jones, and Harry T. Burleigh, one of many performances
heard in Festival Hall not officially sponsored by the Bureau of Music. Attendees also heard
The issue of going abroad for a music education or performance in order to be successful
at home persisted in the Visitor. In 1891 the Visitor reported that American teachers were
ignored, though they had trained “many musical artists” who do not achieve success here unless
they undergo training under “Herr, Signor, or Mons. Blank,” or have had a successful
performance in Europe.113 Twenty years earlier, the Visitor had reported that a good musical
education was available to every child in the country. “All that now remains to be done,
in order to place the United States above the derisive insinuations of European countries, is to
keep alive and stimulate this growing taste for advancement in the art of music now prevalent
The Visitor often linked musical education, progress, and nationalism: “That we, as a
people, are rapidly achieving a foremost position in musical taste and culture, and that this fact is
daily being more and more conceded, at home and abroad, is become a demonstrated truth.”
Questions were raised as to how to retain what has been achieved and how to add to past
achievements. The answer, according to the Visitor, was to make “musical science” a standard
112
Ezra Schabas, Theodore Thomas: America’s Conductor and Builder of Orchestras, 1895–1905, Music in
American Life (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 195–212; E. Douglas Bomberger, “A Tidal Wave of
Encouragement”: American Composers’ Concerts in the Gilded Age (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), 127–42.
113
“The Alien Spirit in Music,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 9 (September 1891): 228.
114
“Musical Instruction,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 2 (November 1872): 8.
143
branch in the common schools. Thus, “We shall achieve, in the future, still nobler––still grander
triumphs.”115
Yet in the same issue the Visitor reported that two of Cincinnati’s “most promising young
lady musicians, whose attainments prior to availing themselves of the benefit of foreign
instruction, . . . now return to us with greatly enhanced abilities.” Emma Cranch, who had
studied voice in Milan for a year, would now “devote herself to oratorio and concerts.” Pianist
Julia Rivé described a week in Weimar where she played several times for Liszt. Such news was
A few months later, however, the Visitor reported that foreign study was unnecessary. Its
We have the very best voices in the world, requiring only patient development to place
them foremost. What Clara Louise Kellogg has attained through her own indomitable
perseverance, others can also achieve, with proper encouragement. All honor to her, for
she owes not one iota of her glorious talents to foreign teaching. She is emphatically a
home song-bird, her musical education having been gained entirely at home.117
In the same issue, however, the Visitor praised the work ethic of local talent studying abroad
(Josie Jones and Laura Woolwine) as well as those who study at home (Kellogg) for their energy
In January 1877 the Visitor’s editor, Charles A. Daniell, asserted that with the music
send “a large number” of students to Europe. In the case of young women, especially, there were
other considerations than “mere economy against foreign study.” Daniell asserted that schools of
115
“The Necessity of the Hour,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 12 (September 1873): 6.
116
“Cincinnati’s New Musical Artistes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 12 (September 1873): 7–8.
117
“Correspondence: New York,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 3 (December 1873): 4.
118
“Cincinnati Talent Abroad,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 3 (December 1873): 7. An announcement
had appeared in August 1872: “Miss Josie Jones, in company with Mrs. T. D. Lincoln and daughters, left for
Europe, June 30. Miss Jones will complete her musical education at Milan.” “Cincinnati Personals,” Church’s
Musical Visitor 1, no. 11 (August 1872): 9.
144
music in Boston, Chicago, New York, and Cincinnati were fully equal, if not superior, to
“facilities abroad.” The editor predicted that the number of students going to Europe would
diminish each year until the exodus came to an end.119 By way of example, Daniell claimed that
the student performances at the latest concert of the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music showed a
proficiency “seldom excelled” by professionals.120 A year and a half later the editor reported,
“Italy, the sunny land to which our American song birds do so long to fly . . . has five celebrated
academies of music,” for training professional singers and teachers. During the 1876–1877
season, there were reportedly 890 pupils: of these, 271 in Milan, 241 in Naples, and 228 in
Florence. However, Daniell believed that “It is a plain truth that our best native artists have
But three years later a Chicago writer bemoaned the fact that America lost its best young
singers to study in Europe, while “ordinary talent finds its best teachers at home: O Tempora! O
Mores!” C. W. Sykes apparently distinguished between voice training and educating composers.
He mentioned that two promising composers in Chicago, Frederick Grant Gleason and Silas G.
Pratt, “have passed through the highest musical schools of Europe.” Sykes suggested that “we
leave the study of orchestral music to the Germans.” He was encouraged, however, by the fact
that there is “a vast amount of brass-band music study going on in our country. So we shall soon
see a new order of things.”122 Sykes seemed hopeful that American composers could compete
119
Douglas Bomberger has written that an indication of the extent of opportunities for music students in
pre-World War I Berlin is given in a six-volume annual guide for students, Was muss der Musikstudierende von
Berlin wissen? [What must the music students of Berlin know?] published from 1909 to 1914. The guide lists
hundreds of music schools and private teachers with addresses, phone numbers, and subject areas, along with
advertisements for instruments, repair shops, and advice on how to find lodging. Bomberger, “The German Musical
Training of American Students,” 121. It appears that Daniell’s prediction was not fulfilled until 1914.
120
Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 4 (January 1877): 94.
121
Church’s Musical Visitor 7, no. 11 (August 1878): 290.
122
C. W. Sykes, “Chicago as a Musical Center,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 4 (January 1881): 95–96.
Sykes had recently been identified as a “well-known musician” who moved from Buffalo to Chicago. “Personal
Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 2 (November 1880): 42.
145
with Europeans in vocal and band music.
Another short essay that year recommended that foreign music study was unnecessary.
The author mentioned that first-class teaching could also be obtained at home, because of the
importation of foreign talent or the education of American teachers abroad. According to Amy
Fay, America had teachers who were as able to train pupils for the technical demands of the
concert-room as any masters who were to be found abroad. But the Visitor added that America
had few “well-drilled musical organizations” to listen to and learn from, one of the advantages of
study abroad.123 About six months later, editor James R. Murray discussed William Wallace
Gilchrist’s prize-winning composition for the 1882 May Festival. Murray made the point that
Gilchrist had been born and trained in the United States and had won several prizes for his
compositions.124
Theodore Thomas weighed in on the issue of vocal study in Europe. He contended that it
was beneficial to learn technique in the United States and then go to Italy for the sake of
experience, and to learn of other schools and methods. He advised that many American singers
learn operatic airs for which there is no demand and are excluded from appearing in concerts
because they have no repertoire. To send them to Europe is a waste of money and often results in
a “dreadful ruin of moral character.”125 A related comment subsequently appeared in the Visitor.
Three years of “constant study in Italy will make an American girl know too much to sing
Thomas’s reference to the “ruin of moral character” was addressed more fully in an
123
Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 10 (July 1881): 270. Amy Fay’s Music Study in Germany had been
published in 1880.
124
“The Prize Winner,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 5 (February 1882): 128–29.
125
Theodore Thomas, “Musical Possibilities in America,” Scribner’s Monthly, reprinted in Church’s
Musical Visitor 10, no. 6 (March 1881): 155–56.
126
“Musical Hopper,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 11 (November 1883): 295.
146
account by Clara Louise Kellogg upon return from a recent tour in Europe. She had found
“hundreds and hundreds” of American girls studying in Italy, and many of them were “in the
direst distress.” Kellogg had apparently received “piteous letters asking for assistance, pecuniary
and influential,” and she sought out the writers to see what could be done. She investigated the
truth of what they said about the music schools and theatrical agencies. Kellogg mentioned that
some teachers would tell the students they have no chance of a career and tell them to go home.
Not wanting to give up, some pupils would fall into the “hands of less scrupulous masters.” She
“finds herself penniless in Milan . . . often set upon by a certain unscrupulous set of men,
infesting these cities, who will do all in their power, under promise of engagements, to lead her
away where her associations will be such that she will be morally destroyed.” Kellogg advised
mothers to keep their daughters at home, unless they are protected by watchful friends and have
an independent income. After your daughters are trained at home, Kellogg advised, they can be
sent “to Italy for a short period to receive the finishing touches, and to learn roles, and then to
return.” Do not think that “average merit will open the stage doors of Italian opera houses.” She
reportedly helped to send more than fifty American girls back to their homes in the United
States.127
Another reason that the Visitor’s columnists cautioned readers to avoid foreign study was
that celebrated teachers could be difficult with which to work. “Music is said to have a soothing
and quieting effect upon mankind in general. If this is so . . . how is it that . . . the most
celebrated musicians and teachers are, or have been, cross, crabbed, irritable . . . insolent, when
in the act of imparting instruction in the art divine to others?” The author goes on to say that this
is borne out by those who have studied under European masters. Some of them have described
127
Clara Louise Kellogg, quoted in “Young American Girls in Italy,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 12
(September 1881): 322–23. According to Louis C. Elson, Dr. Eben Tourjée, founder of the New England
Conservatory of Music in 1867, soon saw the need to modify the European system, “especially in the matter of
careful protection of female students coming from a distance to a strange city.” Louis C. Elson, History of American
Music, rev. ed., ed. Arthur Elson (New York and London: Macmillan, 1925), 340.
147
fuming and raging by the teacher “when a pupil who is honestly and earnestly trying to master
difficulty chances to make a mistake, or misinterprets a phrase.”128 The Visitor’s next issue
contained a response from a reader defending the role of the teacher, since “the peculiar
moved by passion and emotion.” But the Visitor stood by its position that “thundering down on
the head of a pupil” reveals a lack of self-control which is “lamentable, to say the least.” The
Visitor cited Karl Tausig as an example of a great pianist, but as a teacher “he was a wild
animal.”129 Yet another response to the “irritable” teacher appeared in the same issue. An English
cathedral organist, a Mr. Garrett, had flogged a choir boy for making “a slight mistake in his
singing.” A scandal resulted when the boy’s friends appealed to the authorities. The master’s
defense was that he was following the practice in other cathedrals. The editor hoped the
Novels were also employed in the cause against foreign influence and study. The Visitor
reprinted a chapter from Hezekiah Butterworth’s Up from the Cape: A Plea for Republican
Simplicity recently published by Estes and Lauriat in Boston.131 The book had been intended for
summer reading material; Butterworth’s focus was the moral and political principles of New
England’s past. He was upset by the “aping” of Europeans “in dress, politics, religion, music and
art.” In one instance a Harvard-trained Boston minister claimed he had never heard of P. P. Bliss
and did not know him because he was an American composer.132 The novel includes complaints
about the lack of American music at a classical concert held in Boston; the city was full of
128
“Great but Irritable,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 1 (October 1881): 10.
129
Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 2 (November 1881): 38.
130
“Flogging Up to Pitch,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 2 (November 1881): 39.
131
Hezekiah Butterworth, Up from the Cape: A Plea for Republican Simplicity (Boston: Estes and Lauriat,
1883).
132
Butterworth, Up from the Cape, 11, 68–70.
148
foreign music teachers who taught only the music of their home country. Butterworth suggested
that some of the problems could be remedied by a school for the development of American
music in Boston.133 Editor James R. Murray defended the book, which had “drawn the fire” from
Its author, who is well known to the Visitor readers, can stand the criticism, for he is
conscious that he is right, and it does seem as if the assaults of the pen-warriors are
induced by the fact that he has told an “o’er true tale.” If the critics don’t like it they can
mend their ways as well as their pens.134
A book review promoted Up from the Cape as “true and aggressive,” and “it is little wonder that
the attempt is being made to cry it down. It is too late for that, however, for the book is having a
large sale.”135 According to Butterworth, “that music is the best which proves most helpful to
human experience.” Murray added, “The idea is quite the opposite of that held by the utterly
too-too aesthete who claims that art should be loved for art’s sake alone, and that it becomes
degraded when made practical and subservient to human needs.”136 A letter to George F. Root
from Hezekiah Butterworth had illuminated some of the issues addressed in the novel.
Butterworth reported on a recent War Song Concert held in Boston. Root’s music still leads in
popularity, and the concert was “a reaction” to foreign music and teachers over our own.137
133
“At a Boston Classical Concert,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 9 (September 1883): 227–28. The original
title of chapter 24 was “The Clio Club–Aunt’s Narrative.”
134
The Musical Visitor 12, no. 9 (September 1883): 234.
135
“Books and Magazines,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 9 (September 1883): 238. Though unidentified in
the Visitor, the author was Hezekiah Butterworth.
136
The Musical Visitor 12, no. 9 (September 1883): 234.
137
H[ezekiah] B[utterworth], “The Music of the War,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 6 (June 1883): 154. An
advertisement for Oliver Ditson’s newly published War Songs reads “the love for the old songs has revived . . . . It
contains all the songs recently given at the most successful Grand Army concert in Mechanics’ Grand Hall, Boston.”
“War Songs,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 8 (August 1883): 197. War Song Concerts were popular in the 1880s and
1890s as reported in the Visitor; this was the first indication that at least some of the concerts may have been
functioning as a response to foreign influence. I have been unable to locate a review of the concert.
149
been considered by “Labouchere, the well-known editor of London Truth,” as a story “well
told,” with pointed dialogue and truth underlying the fiction. A friend of his living in Milan
spoke of a city filled with American and English students hoping to become opera singers, but in
reality they were “never likely to ever get an engagement in the chorus of the most insignificant
opera-house.”138 The book was discussed again in the subsequent issue of the Visitor as having
the aim of “persuading American girls who go in high hopes to study music in Europe that they
would do far better to stay at home.” The author expressed concerns over squandered money, a
Bohemian life style in European capitals, despair, and even death. The “graphic description of
different systems of vocal training under the great singing masters of London, Paris, and Milan is
full of interest . . . [Manuel] Garcia . . . tells the girls some things which evidently the authoress
has heard from living lips . . . .” Garcia spoke of his sister, Maria Malibran, whose voice had
little to do with her success, rather “she worked like a slave.”139 A letter to the Visitor a year later
138
“Studying Abroad,” Church’s Musical Visitor 13, no. 7 (July 1884): 181. The book was to be issued in
New York by Fords, Howard and Hulbert. Blanche Roosevelt Tucker had been born in Sandusky, Ohio. Her father,
W. H. Tucker, became Wisconsin’s first senator to Congress. Accompanied by her mother, Roosevelt went to
Europe for vocal study. Stage Struck describes the American colony in Milan: “their poverty, hopes for careers and
preparations for debuts.” Roosevelt also relates “the exaggerated methods of some of the famous teachers of the
epoch, such as Lamperti and his method based on the theory that the voice comes from the stomach.” Charles Matz,
“Blanche Roosevelt,” Opera News 27, no. 20 (March 23, 1963): 26–28. The Visitor noted in 1876: “Miss Blanche
Rosavella (née Tucker), from Chicago, has entered into an important Italian Opera engagement with Mr. Gye, at
Covent Garden, London.” “Our Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 8 (May 1876): 207. Frederic W.
Root reported the following month on her debut at Covent Garden. Though Miss Tucker, or Bianca Rosavella, her
nom de theatre, was favorably reviewed, critics recommend continuing her studies a while longer. According to her
teacher in Paris, Madame Viardot, she was not ready to debut. Root mentioned that during the past two or three
years, “the young lady” had written letters to the Chicago Times and “showed the savoir faire of the writer, and
convinced us that she was one of the kind who manage to command success.” “Feuilleton from Chicago,” Church’s
Musical Visitor 5, no. 9 (June 1876): 230. Blanche Roosevelt appeared as Josephine in Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S.
Pinafore in New York in December 1879. Deane L. Root, American Popular Stage Music, 1860–1880, Studies in
Musicology, no. 44 (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981), 168–69.
139
“Stage Struck,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 8 (August 1884): 209. According to a review of Stage-
Struck, or the Would be Opera-Singer in the London Daily News, the book was “one of the cleverest, freshest, most
original novels” that had recently appeared. The plot revolves around Annabel, who leaves her peaceful, friendly
home in Wisconsin to travel to Milan to study music. “Books and Magazines,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 8
(August 1884): 211. The Visitor had reported the deaths of American students in Milan in 1871 and 1873. William
N. Perkins of Illinois, an “American singer of promise,” died in Milan on October 30, 1871. “Our Musical Hopper,”
Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 4 (January 1872): 10. Miss Clara A. Rice of Lowell, Massachusetts, died on
September 10 in Milan, Italy, where she had studied voice for a year. “Our Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical
Visitor 3, no. 2 (November 1873): 11. A letter to the editor in January 1875 from “A Cincinnatian, at present
sojourning in the ‘hotbed of vocalization,’ Milan, Italy,” reported, “There are too many artists here for the theaters
150
agreed with Roosevelt’s novel. “A pupil of [Salvatore] Marchesi” finds that he, as well as most
other European voice teachers, “is very much overrated, and that better teachers than most of
them can be found in America.”140 Thus, these two novels helped promote a sense of national
community. American students could be well trained at home and avoid the expense and perils of
Charles Holman Black of Indianapolis wrote about financial concerns for Americans who
planned to go to Europe for vocal training. Black was a student in Europe at the time and opined
that most victims of unscrupulous teachers were women. He blamed both the pupils and the
teachers, “the thousands (not an exaggerated number) of charlatans that, like vampires, live upon
the Americans who bring their money to Europe . . . .” A teacher could afford to have his
“charity pupil” because “he charges his American pupil enough to pay for the two.” Most often,
when time and money were spent after one, two, or three years, all the while “being told she is
not quite ready for her debut,” the girl was “cast adrift, hopeless, helpless.” Black claimed that an
exception to this practice was Madame Viardot.141 He offered additional advice the following
month. If you “intend to sing in concerts or the light operas, stay at home and learn your
profession from the artists in your own country––there is at least one in every large city in the
United States . . . and it is not necessary to go to New York or Boston to get the best.”142
that are open this winter.” She knew of a young lady from New York who paid “three thousand francs for the
opportunity of singing” in two operas. “Correspondence: A Dear Debut,” Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 4 (January
1875): 6. An editorial in the same issue, quoting the Milan Gazette in praise of Miss Laura Woolwine of Cincinnati,
adds that “there are some two thousand artists in Milan awaiting engagements” [emphasis original]. “Editor’s Notes
and Reviews,” Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 4 (January 1875): 10.
140
The Musical Visitor 14, no. 10 (October 1885): 262.
141
Charles Holman Black, “Studying Music Abroad: Valuable Advice from Large Experience to Those
Contemplating Foreign Study,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 10 (October 1888): 255.
142
“Studying Music Abroad: Valuable Advice from Large Experience to Those Contemplating Foreign
Study (Concluded from Last Month),” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 11 (November 1888): 286. Black’s father, Prof. J.
S. Black, of Indianapolis, was “one of the most successful vocal teachers in the West.” “Personal Notes,” Church’s
Musical Visitor 1, no. 4 (January 1872): 10; “Musical Notes,” and “Music in Indianapolis,” The Musical Visitor 18,
no. 11 (November 1889): 290, 291; “Here and There,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 5 (May 1892): 131.
151
Shortly after Black’s advice to students, the Reverend J. C. Fernald advocated that vocal
teachers instruct in their native language. English song should be “taught by those for whom it is
their mother tongue.” The same is true for French, German, or Italian, or the words become
German or Italian must not be murdered. Only English speech may be innocently immolated.”143
composers and American singers while he was in Paris. Emma Eames, an American prima
donna from Boston, who was performing the role of Marguerite in Faust, had told Elson that “all
the important part of her study was achieved in America . . . and believes that an artist can gain
all the essential points of a musical education without crossing the water.” Ambroise Thomas,
head of the Paris Conservatoire, had spoken of the fine voices produced in America. Both Jules
Massenet and Thomas had agreed: “You Americans must form your composers at home. Your
great scenery, your beautiful women, must be your inspiration.” Elson concluded: “America has
arrived at a point where it is possible to educate all her musicians at home,” mentioning, of
Foreign study remained an issue. According to Mr. George W. Pepper, the U.S.
Consul at Milan, only one student out of hundreds “received an honest verdict from the master
to the effect that the quality of her voice did not justify her in commencing lessons.” Mr. Pepper
was aware of three students who had been taking lessons to enrich only the teacher. Many
hopefuls would like to enter the Royal Conservatory, where the tuition was low, but few
Americans succeeded.145 In 1897 the Visitor advised potential students of the requirements
143
Rev. J. C. Fernald, “Foreign Teachers of English Song,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 1 (January 1889):
4–5.
144
“Music in the Paris Exposition” [by our Boston Correspondent], The Musical Visitor 18, no. 10 (October
1889): 262–63. Miss Eames was born in Shanghai to American parents. Her first teacher, at the age of five, was in
Bath, Maine. Music Lovers’ Encyclopedia, 136.
145
The Musical Visitor 22, no. 7 (July 1893): 180–81.
152
of M. Jacques Bouhy, a singing teacher in Paris:
He imposes a three years’ course, three lessons a week of half an hour, price five dollars
each; after three years, two lessons a week are allowed. Every pupil has to arrive ten
minutes before his lesson. The board and lodging of the students costs fifteen dollars a
week, to which must be added daily lessons in French at one dollar a lesson, opera class
extra, phonetic lessons (on the fifteen French vowels) six or seven dollars a week,
coaching by the head of the opera class, etc., and the etceteras are as expensive as the
regular items. Judging from results, does this sort of thing pay? 146
American singers who assumed stage names also came under attack in the Visitor. In
1875 the editor complained that it was fashionable to adopt Italian names, while “there is a great
degree of rusticity about the singer who warbles simple English.” Our native talent “ranks among
the very highest” to place English or American opera as high as Italian, “if only our singers
would be true to themselves.”147 The Visitor reported in February 1883 that Margaret Johnston of
Cincinnati, who had spent the past two years studying in Italy, made her operatic debut there
under the name of Signorina Giollini.148 The next year a notice appeared that Miss “Margherita”
Johnston of Cincinnati had “made another success in operatic work abroad. Her stage name is
‘Giollini.’ Why do not American singers stick to American names?”149 In a related vein, Murray
took his “old Friend, Willie Pape,” to task for adopting a foreign spelling and pronunciation of
his name to “Pä-pěh.” When he was court pianist to Queen Victoria, he was still just Willie Pape.
Murray used Pape as an example of American musicians who study abroad and adopt foreign
146
The Musical Visitor 26, no. 7 (July 1897): 101. According to Elizabeth Forbes, Belgian baritone Jacques
Bouhy (1848–1929) “founded and directed the National Conservatory of Music in New York.” He returned to Paris
in 1890. Elizabeth Forbes, “Bouhy, Jacques-(Joseph-André)” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians,
2nd ed., ed, Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 4:93–94. However,
Jeannette Thurber appointed the Bouhy as the Conservatory’s first director, a post he held from 1885 to1889.
Emanuel Rubin, “Jeannette Meyer Thurber (1850–1946),” in Cultivating Music in America: Women Patrons and
Activists since 1860, ed. Ralph P. Locke and Cyrilla Barr (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 148.
147
“Dare to Be What You Are, as Applied to Art,” Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 5 (February 1875):
9–10.
148
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 2 (February 1883): 40.
149
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 11 (November 1884): 291. According to Nicolas Slonimsky,
“Because Italians are proverbially associated with excellence in opera,” many non-Italian singers assumed Italian
names in order to make an opera career. Nicolas Slonimsky, Lectionary of Music: An Entertaining Reference and
Reader’s Companion (New York: Anchor Books, 1990), 392.
153
names and influences, rather than “depending upon real merit to win their way” and sailing
“under their own colors.”150 Murray advised that American singers should retain their own
In addition to the issues surrounding foreign study and the star system, readers could
follow the controversy of importing a foreigner to New York to develop an American school of
music. The controversy found its way into the pages of the Visitor.
Music patron Jeannette Thurber succeeded in bringing Antonín Dvořák to New York to
direct the National Conservatory of Music from fall 1892 until spring 1895.151 However, the
mood expressed in an August 1887 Visitor article on American composers did not bode well for
Dvořák’s arrival. The author claimed that much had been written about “encouraging native art,
and our musical people are being appealed to so frequently to assist in aiding musical enterprises
on patriotic grounds, that it seems proper to inquire what constitutes an American composer.” No
poet or author has claimed to be an American who has not been “born and bred in this country.”
In music a different condition exists, and “one finds persons posing as American composers
whose language plainly betrays their foreign birth and whose customs indicate a cheap European
education. In New York one reads of performances of American authors’ works, but fails to find
a single name but that of foreigners, whose only claim to American citizenship is a few years’
150
The Musical Visitor 26, no. 11 (November 1897): 303. Born in Mobile, Alabama, on February 27, 1850,
William Barnsmore Pape was an American composer and pianist. “How to Pronounce Musicians’ Names,” The
Musical Visitor 26, no. 10 (October 1897): 257. Jones, A Handbook of American Music and Musicians, 128.
151
Dvořák in America, 1892–1895, ed. John C. Tibbetts (Portland: Amadeus Press, 1993). The January
1892 issue of the Visitor noted that the National Conservatory of Music of America in New York desired to
emphasize its engagement of Dr. Antonín Dvořák as director by announcing a competition for the best opera, opera
libretto, piano or violin concerto, symphony, oratorio, suite or cantata. The composer or librettist must be native
born and age thirty-five or younger. The prize money ranged from $200 to $1,000. “Notes and Gossip,” Musical
Visitor 21, no. 1 (January 1892): 10. Emanuel Rubin’s account mentions that in 1892 Mrs. Thurber established a
$500 prize for “American” compositions. Emanuel Rubin, “Jeannette Meyer Thurber (1850–1946): Music for a
Democracy,” in Cultivating Music in America: Women Patrons and Activists since 1860, ed. Ralph P. Locke and
Cyrilla Barr (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 154.
154
residence in this country.” Our composers “must not be forced to feed on husks by the patriotic
American philanthropists, who now have no money to lavish on any aspirant for fame who was
born with the English language on his tongue.”152 Given the recent difficulties of the American
Opera Company, renamed the National Opera Company, the writer may have been referring to
American school of music, and the description of his Symphony no. 9 became issues of
controversy.154 A review of the symphony in the New York Times on December 17, 1893, ends:
The negroes gave us their music and we accepted it, not with proclamations from the
housetops, but with our voices and our hearts in the household. Dr. Dvorak has
penetrated the spirit of this music, and with themes suitable for symphonic treatment, he
has written a beautiful symphony, which throbs with American feelings, which voices the
melancholoy of our Western wastes, and predicts their final subjection to the tremendous
activity of the most energetic of all peoples. We Americans should thank and honor the
Bohemian master who has shown us how to build our national school of music.155
Louis C. Elson sent Dvořák’s statement regarding American music, which was published
in the June issue. Dvořák called for an American school of music to be based on Negro
152
“Encouraging Native Talent,” The Musical Visitor 16, no. 8 (August 1887): 207.
153
Rubin, “Jeannette Meyer Thurber (1850–1946): Music for a Democracy,” 134–63. In February 1887
Boston correspondent Louis C. Elson reported on the performances of the National Opera Company. There were
“some noticeable defects in its vocal department” while the “instrumental work is very prominent.” Proteus [Louis
C. Elson], “Music in Boston,” The Musical Visitor 16, no. 2 (February 1887): 39.
154
For Dvořák’s interview with the New York Herald, see John Clapham, Dvořák (Newton Abbot, UK:
David and Charles, 1979), 119, 197–203; Letter to the New York Herald, “Antonín Dvořák on Negro Melodies,”
May 28, 1893; “For National Music,” Chicago Tribune, August 13, 1893; “Dvořák on His New Work,” New York
Herald, December 15, 1893. According to Robert P. Morgan, during the rise of nationalism in the nineteenth
century, the folk and ethnic music of their own lands was drawn upon principally by composers in countries on the
edges of Europe. Robert P. Morgan, Twentieth-century Music: A History of Musical Style in Modern Europe and
America (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1991), 6. The centennial year, 1876, had brought forth a call for
native music. The writer had referred to patriotic songs such as “America” and “The Star Spangled Banner,” but
they were sung to foreign tunes. We have “the plucky soldiers’ songs called forth by the mighty upheaval between
the North and South. But new times demand new music.” Who will “confer upon his native land a new national
song, that the whole people may rapturously sing, and be proud to own?,” “Our Native Songs,” Church’s Musical
Visitor 5, no. 8 (May 1876): 205.
155
“Dr. Dvorak’s Latest Work,” New York Times, December 17, 1893. The reviewer was most likely
W. J. Henderson, music critic for the New York Times from 1887 to 1902. Ramona H. Matthews and Davide
Ceriani, “Henderson, William James” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi
Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 4:127–28.
155
melodies.156 Elson countered that Dvořák had “not yet had time to make himself familiar with
the entire field on which he is commenting.” There are many different types of folk music and
regions in the country, such as the music of the prairies, plantation, or the New England hills,
which are local, not national. He referred to Theodore Baker’s dissertation on North American
Indian music, which presented “little that is likely to inspire the composer,” and does not present
a “definite picture of any mode of existence to the auditor.”157 Elson conceded that the Negro
music of the South was the mostly likely to inspire American composers, but it could not
Nevertheless, much of it is music that has grown from natural causes, and many of the
tunes in their pathos speak of the consolation which the oppressed sought in tones, while
others in their hearty rhythms speak of jovial merrymakings, or show how music has
lightened toil. Of such a folk-song it can be most truly said, Musica lætitiae comes,
medicina dolorem [Music is a companion to joy and a medicine for pains].158
“the American school.” Since Dvořák spoke little English and was “Bohemian and German to
the core,” Mathews did not believe that Dvořák could “produce anything essentially different
here from what he would while living in Prague,” though new scenes and friends “may serve to
give him a fresh incitation.” Mathews compared Dvořák to Mendelssohn and expressed irritation
that a foreigner was imported and paid handsomely to head the National Conservatory in New
York:
The genial Mendelssohn was no more a Scotchman in writing a symphony bearing that
designation than he was an Italian when writing the next. . . .This is the case with Dr.
Dvorak. And while every new work from his pen will be received with pleasure and
156
The Musical Visitor 22, no. 6 (June 1893): 151. Dvořák later included Native American melodies as well.
157
Theodore Baker, Űber die Musik der nordamerikanischen Wilden (PhD diss., University of Leipzig,
1882).
158
Louis C. Elson, “The Negro Melodies Again,” The Musical Visitor 22, no. 7 (July 1893): 177.
156
admiration, American composers and an American school are not to be imported at
$15,000 a year, or any other sum, but must grow up here native to the soil.159
The Visitor followed this with an anonymous essay on “The American Symphony.” The
author claimed that Dvořák’s “From the New World” is “not American in any sense of the
word.” The true American Symphony has not yet been written. It will be composed by “men of
musical culture” and “inspired by American subjects.” The songs of the southern Negroes and
the distinctive music of the North American Indians cannot be considered national. American
music must be like “our States, e pluribus unum, one formed of many.”160 In the same issue,
nature. The composer, “deeply moved” by the beauty of Minnehaha Falls, proposed to write a
Editor James R. Murray quoted Dvořák: “American men are quite wanting in musical
enthusiasm, and that is one reason why music here is so poor and scarce. The women are better;
they love it, and have talent. But the men only want it for pastime. They want always money,
more money.” Murray asks what brought Dvořák to these shores, was his advent “a purely
missionary one, or does the $15,000 salary guaranteed him by Mrs. Thurber have some influence
in the matter?”162
Apparently it was rumored in 1897 that Dvořák would be returning to New York that
159
W. S. B. Mathews, quoted in The Musical Visitor 24, no. 2 (February 1895): 36–37. Douglas Bomberger
notes that Edward MacDowell may have regretted turning down an offer by Mrs. Thurber to teach at the
Conservatory, “for his letters from the early 1890s reflect a certain amount of resentment over the high salary and
enormous attention showered on Dvořák.” E. Douglas Bomberger, “A Tidal Wave of Encouragement”: American
Composers’ Concerts in the Gilded Age (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), 167.
160
“The American Symphony,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 2 (February 1895): 37.
161
The Musical Visitor 24, no. 2 (February 1895): 36. The second movement of Dvořák’s Sonatina for
Violin and Piano, op. 100, apparently uses a theme inspired by his visit to Minnehaha Falls in September 1893. John
C. Tibbetts, “Sonatina for Violin and Piano, Opus 100,” in Dvořák in America, 1892–1895, ed. John C. Tibbetts
(Portland: Amadeus Press, 1993), 279–81. In 1889 the Visitor had advised native-born composers to use English,
rather than French or German, for titles of works and to find inspiration in American subjects and nature. “American
Composers and their Music,” Musical Visitor 18, no. 9 (September 1889): 233.
162
The Musical Visitor 24, no. 10 (October 1895): 283.
157
autumn. The Visitor posed the question, “Will he bring with him an American symphony written
in his native land, as most of his first American symphony was?”163 The issue shifted to whether
The Visitor reported later that year that Dvořák was working on an opera based on the
subject of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The response in the Visitor was unfavorable:
He evidently is impressed with the idea that negro music is the characteristic American
music, but he is very much mistaken. We venture the prediction that an opera on the
above subject will not be a success for many reasons.164
Will Marion Cook, one of Dvořák’s American students, had begun an opera based on Uncle
Initially the performers whose portraits appeared in the Visitor had been foreign born.
Many hailed from Germany, Austria, Italy, or England. Cincinnati had a large German
population likely appreciative of German artists. By 1840, nearly 30 percent of the population
was German.166 Celebrities performing at Cincinnati’s May Festivals were frequently honored
with portraits in the Visitor. Later, notably beginning in 1894, more Americans were represented,
163
“Current Notes,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 2 (February 1897): 55.
164
“Currrent Notes and News: General,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 10 (October 1897): 277. The Visitor
had reported in January 1892 that Dvořák proposed to write “an opera to an American libretto if he can find one
suitable.” “Dvořák and his American Engagement,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 1 (January 1892): 10.
165
Adrienne Fried Block, “Dvořák’s Long American Reach,” in Dvořák in America, 1892–1895, ed. John
C. Tibbetts (Portland: Amadeus Press, 1993), 173. Excerpts from Cook’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin were performed at the
World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, though it and works by other composers were not officially sponsored by
the Bureau of Music. Bomberger, “A Tidal Wave of Encouragement,” 167. According to John Clapham, there was
a rumor that Dvořák was working on an opera based on Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but it was apparently unfounded. John
Clapham, Antonín Dvořák: Musician and Craftsman (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1966), 282. Clapham does not
mention the issue regarding the opera in his 1979 biography of Dvořák.
166
bruce d. mcclung, “Cincinnati,” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles
Hiroshi Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 2:271.
158
elsewhere but who had relocated to the United States or had become naturalized citizens also
appeared in the Visitor. Dvořák’s arrival in New York in 1892 and the controversy surrounding
his Symphony no. 9, “From the New World,” no doubt influenced this change.
The first visiting artist to have an engraved portrait appear in Church’s Musical Visitor
was German-born pianist Marie Krebs.167 Editor Frank H. King announced: “Other portraits will
be presented occasionally, so that their publication may be considered one of the features of the
concert series that began on October 30, 1871.169 A portrait of British pianist and composer
James M. Wehli appeared in the January 1872 issue, having performed with Christine Nilsson
and Clara Louise Kellogg.170 John Church and Company advertised two of Wehli’s works
published in 1871.171
The Visitor reprinted a biography of Italian soprano Carlotta Patti from Watson’s Art
Journal along with a portrait in August 1872. Although she and her sister Adelina had been born
167
“Miss Marie Krebs,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 2 (November 1871): 1. Born in Dresden in 1851,
Krebs died there in 1900.
168
Frank H. King, ed., “Editor’s Notes and Reviews,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 2 (November 1871):
9.
169
“The Theodore Thomas Orchestra,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 1 (October 1871): 6.
170
Wehli performed at Kellogg’s Cincinnati concerts in December 1870. “City Matters: The Kellogg
Concerts,” Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, December 24, 1870. Christine Nilsson arrived in New York for a series of
concerts beginning on September 19, 1870. James M. Wehli, accompanist and pianist, was among her company of
artists. “Christine Nilsson: Arrival of the Queen of Song––Demonstrations at the Pier––Her Concert Troupe––
Precautions Against Speculation––First Concert on Monday, September 19,” Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, September
17, 1870 [reprint from the New York Herald, September 15]. The Strakosch Opera Company brought Nilsson to
Cincinnati for a short season at Pike’s Opera House in January 1872. Wehli was known to Cincinnati audiences
since at least 1865. He performed “a novel and enjoyable piano-forte interlude” between the acts of Der Freischütz.
The theme was based on Faust; a “rapturous encore produced “Home, Sweet Home” played upon one [the left]
hand.” “Amusements: Pike’s Opera House,” Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, December 7, 1865.
171
“Mr. James M. Wehli,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 4 (January 1872): 1; “Publisher’s Department of
New Music,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 2 (November 1871): 12. Wehli’s “Tyrolienne, Morceau brillante” for
piano, and a song, “The Little Blue Shoes,” can be found at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem (accessed August 18,
2011). A short article in the Visitor derides excellent performers, including Wehli, who played their “third-rate”
compositions to the exclusion of the masters. “Good Performers as Composers,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 8
(May 1872): 7.
159
in Italy, they were “bred up in New York,” and “with all their Italian prestige, America’s claim
to them has never been forgotten here, nor denied by them. . . .” Since the Patti sisters trained in
New York, America was also claiming them.172 Another portrait of Carlotta Patti appeared in the
Visitor in December 1879 after her farewell concert in Cincinnati, along with the comment: “The
Patti sisters began their musical careers in this country––Carlotta in concert, and Adeline in
opera; and both have ever since filled a prominent place in the interest of the musical world.
America has always felt a pride in their triumphs in the old world, and it is with regret that we
The Visitor informed its readers in October 1875 that German-born soprano Theresa
Tietjens, currently touring the United States, would likely visit Cincinnati before returning to
Europe. The Visitor reported that her brother “at one time played the violin in a Cincinnati
beer-garden ‘over the Rhine.’”174 Her portrait, along with an interview, appeared in November
1875.175 Tietjens, however, did not arrive in Cincinnati as scheduled. She had been bothered by
the “varying climate” since arriving in New York and postponed her concerts.176 When she did
appear, her reception was not what it might have been a few weeks earlier. The two concerts,
however, were well attended. As to her singing, “in times agone it was as nearly perfect
as anything can be. . . .” It was expected that Tietjens would sing in Italian opera before the
172
“Carlotta Patti,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 11 (August 1872): 1. For a brief obituary, see “Carlotta
Patti,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 8 (August 1889): 203.
173
“Home Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 3 (December 1879): 74. According to the editor, the
illustrations in this issue were “expressly prepared for the Visitor.” Ibid., 72.
174
“Coming Events,” “Personal Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 1 (October 1875): 9, 11,
respectively.
175
“An Hour’s Talk with Tietjens,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 2 (November 1875): 29–30. It is
unclear where the interview took place.
176
“Editor’s Notes and Reviews,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 3 (December 1875): 66.
160
season was over.177
in the February 1879 issue. She was slated to sing with the Mapleson Opera Company in
February at Cincinnati’s Pike’s Opera House. A brief biography of Gerster in the January Visitor
told of her rapid progress during the past three years after Verdi had been overheard to say that
“she will go far, that girl.”178 Her performance as Lucia was “the chief event” of the week of
Italian opera; the Visitor considered her the “true successor of Jenny Lind.” It described
American soprano Emma Thursby gave three concerts at Pike’s Opera House in February
1880. No portrait appeared in the Visitor but it praised Miss Thursby: “Her voice is of bright,
clear quality, never harsh, and powerful enough for all demands without screaming. She sings
with grace and ease, and with finished method and consummate control of the powers of
expression.” Regrettably the audiences for her Cincinnati performances were “uniformly small.”
On the other hand, she sang for “crowded houses in Chicago.” The Visitor complained: “Europe
can furnish us with no better or more charming concert singer than Miss Thursby, and yet our
people seem insensible to her true merits, while they throng the concert-halls to hear worn-out
177
“Editor’s Notes and Reviews,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 5 (February 1876): 122. In the same issue
there is a report of her meeting at the Burnet House with Mr. William Geisselbrecht who had conducted her 1849
debut in Hamburg. “Mlle. Tietjens’ Debut,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 5 (February 1876): 119.
178
“The Hungarian Nightingale,” Church’s Musical Visitor 8, no. 4 (January 1879): 105. “Mme. Etelka
Gerster,” Church’s Musical Visitor 8, no. 5 (February 1879): 133. She was described as “a blonde as fair as Nilsson”
and “a pupil of the celebrated [Mme. Mathilde] Marchesi school.”
179
“The Musical Month in Cincinnati,” Church’s Musical Visitor 8, no. 6 (March 1879): 162. An ad for
Charles Kunkel’s Gerster Polka, which included her likeness on the title page, appeared in April. “Publisher’s
Department,” Church’s Musical Visitor 8, no. 7 (April 1879): 195. Gerster returned in February 1881 for the Opera
Festival. She “sang and acted charmingly in Lohengrin, Lucia, and Sonnambula.” “Home Notes,” Church’s Musical
Visitor 10, no. 7 (April 1881): 187.
161
Patti, or some other artist of phenomenal name and questionable talents.”180
The February 1877 issue featured American composer Paul P. Bliss who had died on
December 29, 1876. His engraving appeared on the first page and his four last gospel songs
served as the frontispiece. George F. Root, Frederic W. Root, and others contributed memorials
In 1879 the Visitor recognized nine leading conductors of conventions and song
composers in the United States. The circular arrangement of portraits featured George F. Root’s
slightly larger one in the center, surrounded by H. R. Palmer, C. C. Case, Eben E. Tourjée, J. A.
According to a brief editorial, interest in convention and normal music school work was at its
peak during the summer. McGranahan was considered to be Bliss’s successor as a composer of
gospel songs.183
Later that year a full-page illustration of five European composers, “The Great Tone-
180
“Home Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 6 (March 1880): 162. Adelina Patti made her stage debut
in 1859; she had been performing for twenty-one years at that time.
181
G. F. R[oot], “In Memoriam,” Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 5 (February 1877): 117. According to
Frederic W. Root, Bliss had a wide range for a bass voice. This may account for Bliss’s pseudonym of “Pro Phundo
Basso.” Frederic W. Root, “Feuilleton from Chicago,” Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 5 (February 1877): 122.
Details of the accident that took the lives of Bliss and his wife are given on editorial page 124. In March the Visitor
printed Bliss’s eight-measure Lord, Come Away! with five stanzas. Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 6 (March 1877):
143.
182
“Successful Convention Conductors and Song Composers of America,” Church’s Musical Visitor 8, no.
10 (July 1879): frontispiece. Conventions could include those for Sunday Schools. I have been unable to determine
if S. Wesley Martin was born in the United States. J. A. Butterfield was born in England but served as bandmaster in
the Union Army during the Civil War. The Musical Visitor 20, no. 8 (August 1891): 204. Butterfield edited The
Musical Visitor from March 1865 to March 1867 and Butterfield’s Musical Visitor from April to November 1867,
published by J. A. Butterfield and Company in Indianapolis. Mary Veronica Davison, “American Music Periodicals,
1853–1899” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1973), 312. The Visitor had advertised Butterfield’s Ruth, the
Gleaner as an “American opera,” by an “American composer,” remarkable for its historical accuracy and musical
excellence. Church’s Musical Visitor 7, no. 1 (October 1877): 28. Butterfield was elected secretary of the M.T.N.A.
at its meeting in July 1878; he chaired the meeting in the absence of President Eben Tourjée. H. W. F., “The Second
Meeting of the National Music Teachers’ Association,” Church’s Musical Visitor 7, no. 11 (August 1879): 284–85.
Butterfield died in Chicago in 1891. The Musical Visitor 20, no. 8 (August 1891): 204. At that time his Ruth, the
Gleaner was referred to as a cantata.
183
Church’s Musical Visitor 8, no. 10 (July 1879): 272. George F. Root was considered the father of the
National Normal Music School. “Editor’s Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 9 (June 1877): 236.
162
Poets,” Weber, Mozart, Gluck, Beethoven, and Haydn appeared in the Visitor.184 Composer,
poet, and writer D. C. Addison contributed an account of various portraits done of Beethoven,
Handel, and Haydn.185 John Church published and advertised Frederic Crowest’s The Great Tone
Poets, which was serialized in the Visitor.186 Another portrait of Beethoven appeared in the
January 1880 issue, “drawn for the Visitor from the most admired of all the master’s portraits in
steel plate.” The editor commented that there had been “some trouble in securing a satisfactory
portrait of Beethoven . . . , and although the one produced last month was considered excellent,
we offer still another impression this month, which many will prefer.”187
Celebrity soloists for the Cincinnati May Festival in 1884 were primarily Wagnerian
artists. The Visitor honored Austrian Amalie Materna with a portrait in April; and Austrian bass
Emil Scaria, German tenor Hermann Winkelmann, and German-born music director Theodore
Thomas honored with portraits the following month.188 Although Swedish soprano Christine
Nilsson performed at the 1884 Festival, the Visitor did not include her portrait.
Engravings of the soloists for the subsequent May Festival, sopranos Helene Hastreiter
184
“The Great Tone-Poets,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 3 (December 1879): 60, 72.
185
D. C. Addison [C. A. Daniell], “Portraits of the Tone-Poets,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 3
(December 1879): 65–67.
186
“Publishers Department, A New Book for Students of Music,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 3
(December 1879): 77. A series on “The Great Tone Poets” commenced in the Visitor in April 1875. “The Great
Tone Poets: Bach,” Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 7 (April 1875): 1–2.
187
“Beethoven,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 5 (January 1880): 97, 104.
188
“Materna,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 4 (April 1884): 86; “Theodore Thomas,” The Musical Visitor 13,
no. 5 (May 1884): 114; and “Wagner and the May Festival,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 5 (May 1884): 115–16. The
latter included a portrait of Herr Hermann Winkelmann. The same issue incorporated a portrait of Herr Emil Scaria.
H. E. Krehbiel, “The Festival,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 5 (May 1884): 116–17. His death in 1886 was blamed
on Wagnerism, and “Whether the music of the future had any influence on the illness of the late King Ludwig, of
Bavaria, is a disputed point.” Scaria’s “insanity and subsequent decease were undoubtedly due to Wagner’s
music. . . . his mania took the form of howling scraps from the parts of Wotan and Hans Sachs at all hours of the
night.” “Death of Scaria,” The Musical Visitor 15, no. 9 (September 1886): 234. In 1882 Scaria suffered a
breakdown during a performance of Die Walküre and in 1886 another “mental breakdown and soon after died
insane.” Elizabeth Forbes, “Scaria, Emil” in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, ed. Stanley Sadie (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997) 4:199–200. Soprano Amalie Materna earned a worldwide reputation for her role as
Brünnhilde in the Ring at Bayreuth. Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music (New
York: Time Incorporated, 1968), 376.
163
(born in St. Louis) and Emma Juch (born in Vienna of naturalized American parents) and
German-born soprano Lilli Lehmann, appeared in the May 1886 issue.189 A less formal likeness
of Lehmann had been included in the April issue along with American-born tenor William
Candidus. The Visitor provided a brief biography for each. Candidus had performed at the
The Visitor’s editor James R. Murray hoped that the directors for the 1892 May Festival
would select American soloists: “Our singers are so much sought for abroad it would seem
as if some attention should be given them at home.”191 Murray repeated his call to the May
Musical Festival Association to hire American singers for the upcoming festival. Our singers
“are not easily excelled by any of the foreign make. Give them a try.”192 The directors chose
some local performers but no portraits of soloists appeared in the Visitor for that year’s Festival,
189
“Helene Hastreiter,” “Emma Juch,” “Lilli Lehmann,” The Musical Visitor 15, no. 5 (May 1886): 115,
117, and 119, respectively. Emma Juch was currently prima donna of the American Opera Company in New York
and had performed at the 1884May Festival with Materna and Nilsson. According to the Music Lovers’
Encyclopedia, however, Helene Hastreiter had been born in 1858 in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1897 the Visitor
reported that Helen [sic] Hastreiter had been with the American Opera Company and would tour the country the
coming season with her own company. She was once a pupil of Frederic W. Root. “Current Notes and News:
General,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 10 (October 1897): 277. For more information on Hastreiter, Juch, and
Candidus, all of whom performed with the American Opera Company, see Schabas, Theodore Thomas, 150,
151,154,157,161. An entry in the Visitor reported that Dvořák was to conduct his Mass with the Brooklyn Choral
Society. Allegedly Mrs. Thurber declined permission because Emma Juch’s name was on the program. “Notes and
Gossip, The Musical Visitor 22, no. 4 (April 1893): 98. According to John Clapham, “If Mrs. Thurber had not had a
quarrel with Emmy Juch, the solo singer, he would probably have directed” the Brooklyn Choral Society’s
performance of the Stabat Mater at the end of February 1893. Clapham, Dvořák, 117.
190
“Lilli Lehmann,” “William Candidus,” The Musical Visitor 15, no. 4 (April 1886): 89. According to the
Visitor entry, Candidus had been born in 1840; according to F. O. Jones, he was born in 1845. Jones, A Handbook of
American Music and Musicians, s.v. “Candidus, William.” He offered to sing, without pay, for the next Festival. “I
would like, if you will accept it as a token of my appreciation and respect, to come to your next Festival and sing my
part without any charge. I feel that I should enjoy doing it for the love of you all.” The Musical Visitor 15, no. 6
(June 1886): 148. Apparently the directors did not accept his offer. He was a member of the American [National]
Opera Company and performed the role of Lohengrin in January 1886. The Musical Courier “unreservedly praised
William Candidus––brother-in-law of William Steinway, one of the journal’s biggest advertisers––as Lohengrin,
even though he was a modest tenor at best.” Theodore Thomas and William Candidus received salaries of $1,000
per week; Emma Juch received $800. Schabas, Theodore Thomas, 151, 161.
191
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 1 (January 1892): 9.
192
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 2 (February 1892): 38. One of the works performed at the 1892
Festival was Beethoven’s Symphony no. 3. The second movement, “Marche Funèbre,” was associated not with
Napoleon but with Lincoln, “as it followed him from Washington to Springfield, and with Grant’s last march from
Mt. McGregor to Riverside.” “The May Festival,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 6 (June 1892): 151–52.
164
perhaps reflecting Murray’s frustration with the Festival Association.193
The Visitor’s cover in May 1896 featured Hungarian dramatic soprano Katharina Lohse-
Klafsky, a Festival soloist. An article in the same issue described the dissimilarity between
her “imposing, tensely strung stage presence and the modest, housewifely, ingenuous bearing” of
her home life. She died four months later in Hamburg, Germany.194 From 1886 to 1895, Klafsky
had been the principal soprano of the Hamburg Opera. She had also performed at other leading
European opera houses. After her marriage to the conductor Otto Lohse, she had come to the
United States and sang the principal Wagnerian roles for the Damrosch Opera Company with her
husband as conductor. They returned to Hamburg where she made her last performance on
A portrait of Massachusetts native George F. Root had appeared in the January 1892
issue, not as a visiting artist, but because his “writings are familiar to all musical people.” His
portrait had also been featured on the cover of the September 1895 issue, “Memorial Number in
Honor of Dr. Geo. F. Root,” following his death on August 6, 1895.196 The portrait of his son
Frederic W. Root had appeared in the January 1893 issue, as director of Root’s School of Music
Despite the Visitor’s emphasis on American artists, it also featured portraits of European
193
“Cincinnati May Festival,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 5 (May 1892): 130–31. Ida M. Smith, Corinne
Moore-Lawson, and Albert Maish were chosen to sing solos. They did not participate, however, in the “Opera
Night” concert or in Dvořák’s Requiem. “The May Festival,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 6 (June 1892): 151–52.
194
“Katharina Lohse-Klafsky, One of the Soloists of the May Festival,” The Musical Visitor 25, no. 5 (May
1896): cover, 122. The image inside the frame is dark; face not discernible. The Visitor noted that she died in
Hamburg, Germany, on September 22; a few months later it was reported that her husband was suing a German
paper for suggesting that his wife committed suicide. “Current Notes,” The Musical Visitor 25, no. 10 (October
1896): 285; “Current Notes,” The Musical Visitor 25, no. 12 (December 1896): 342.
195
David Ewen, Encyclopedia of the Opera, new enl. ed. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1963), 242. Klafsky
had been born on September 19, 1855, so she would have just turned forty-one.
196
“Geo. F. Root,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 1 (January 1892): 1B; “Dr. Geo. F. Root. 1820–1895,” The
Musical Visitor 24, no. 9 (September 1895): cover.
197
“Frederic W. Root,” The Musical Visitor 22, no. 1 (January 1893): 3.
165
composers. Johannes Brahms merited two portraits in the Visitor. The first appeared in
November 1894, courtesy of The Outlook. The Visitor included a discussion of some of his
works, current reputation, and comparison with Richard Wagner in the same issue.198 The Visitor
reprinted the portrait because of an increased interest in Brahms and his music since his death on
April 3, 1897.199 Wagner was also honored with two engravings in the Visitor. A full-page
March,” which had been included in the previous issue.200 The Visitor reprinted Wagner’s
portrait following his death on February 13, 1883. The issue also included a biography, reception
history, and “On, Romans, On!” from Rienzi for treble voice and piano.201
An engraving of Frédéric Chopin and the manuscript of his Prelude, op. 28, no. 14, had
been produced “expressly” for the Visitor’s December 1878 issue. Chopin’s biography had
begun appearing in the Visitor in February.202 Franz Liszt’s portrait and a facsimile of his letter
to Otto Singer dated August 30, 1878, appeared in the same issue. Singer conducted his Festival
Ode for the dedication of Cincinnati’s Music Hall and Liszt’s Missa Solemnis at the 1878 May
Festival. The Visitor reported that Liszt wished to thank Singer for conducting his Mass and for
198
“Johannes Brahms,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 11 (November 1894): cover, 287.
199
“Johannes Brahms,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 5 (May 1897): cover, 135, 138. The Visitor included a
brief obituary and a description of his funeral.
200
“Richard Wagner,” Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 4 (January 1877): frontispiece, 94–95. The march
had “afforded to the critics such a meaty bone of musical contention, and to the people an excellent opportunity for
advanced study.” Theodore Thomas arranged and abridged the march for piano. “The Work and Mission of My
Life” by Wagner was printed in the Visitor. Church’s Musical Visitor 8, no. 11 (August 1879): 295–97. The Visitor
extracted the article from the August 1879 issue of North American Review. “Wagner and His Work,” Church’s
Musical Visitor 8, no. 11 (August 1879): 301–2.
201
The Musical Visitor 12, no. 3 (March 1883): 58, 62, 66–67, 73–75. Editor Murray appended a preface to
“A Last Letter of Richard Wagner,” written to Mr. Fritzsch in 1882, which appeared on pages 59–60.
202
“Frederic Chopin: His Life, Letters and Works,” Church’s Musical Visitor 7, no. 5 (February 1878):
119–21, 126. Elise J. Allen translated Moritz Karasowski’s biography for the Visitor. Church’s Musical Visitor 8,
no. 3 (December 1878): frontispiece, 72.
166
dedicating to him the cantata The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers.203
After 1892 portraits of several long-term resident musicians of European origin appeared
in the Visitor. Pianist, composer, and writer Emil Liebling’s portrait graced the cover of the
June 1896 issue. Born in 1851 in Pless, Silesia, Liebling came to the United States in
1867.204 Neapolitan Eduardo Marzo had moved to the United States at the age of fifteen. He was
active as a singing teacher, composer, and served as an organist at various New York City
churches. Knighted by the King of Italy in 1884, ten years later Marzo found his portrait on the
cover of the August issue.205 Composer and conductor Julian Edwards, born in Manchester,
England, moved to the United States in 1888 and became an American citizen in 1900. A
reception history and cover portrait appeared in the February 1897 Visitor.206
After 1892 many of the portraits and brief biographies were of American-born theorists,
composers, conductors, teachers, and performers. A number of them also contributed articles to
the Visitor. Ohio-born “A. J. Goodrich, The Theorist,” was the first to have a portrait appear on
203
“Autograph Letter of Franz Liszt,” Church’s Musical Visitor 8, no. 3 (December 1878): 70. An
engraving of Cincinnati’s Music Hall appeared in the February 1878 issue. The Visitor promoted it as “the largest
Music Hall in the world, and in point of acoustics and details of construction it has no equal anywhere.” “The
Cincinnati Music Hall,” Church’s Musical Visitor 7, no. 5 (February 1878): frontispiece. The same issue included an
analysis of Otto Singer’s Ode “prepared by one of the best musical authorities in the country” writing for the
Chicago Tribune. “May Musical Festival: Otto Singer’s Ode,” Church’s Musical Visitor 7, no. 5 (February 1878):
124. The May Festival of 1878 represented “the most majestic, elaborate, and intensely difficult succession of works
ever attempted anywhere.” Church’s Musical Visitor 7, no. 9 (June 1878): 240.
204
“Emil Liebling, Pianist and Composer,” The Musical Visitor 25, no. 6 (June 1896): cover, 151–52.
Liebling resided in Chicago from 1872 until his death in 1914. He contributed articles to the Visitor, and revised and
fingered piano works printed therein. Music Lovers’ Encyclopedia, compiled Rupert Hughes, rev. ed. Deems Taylor
and Russell Kerr (New York: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1939), 261.
205
“Chevalier Eduardo Marzo,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 8 (August 1894): cover, 203; Music Lovers’
Encyclopedia, 281.
206
“Julian Edwards: A Composer of Light Operas Who Has Recently Become Famous,” The Musical
Visitor 26, no. 2 (February 1897): 52. Eric Blom and Jonas Westover, “Edwards, Julian” in The Grove Dictionary of
American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 3:87–88.
According to the Music Lovers’ Encyclopedia, Julian Edwards was “(rightly D. H. Barnard).”
167
the cover in April 1894, as well as a biography and reference to his writings.207 In a spirit of
agreement, the Visitor reprinted an article on Goodrich from Godey’s Magazine in September
1897. The author praised Goodrich for quoting “freely from the thoughtful and original works of
his contemporary fellow countryman to prove his points,” and putting them on a par with foreign
writers.” Furthermore, he was “recognized among scholars abroad as one of the leading spirits of
his time. His success is the more pleasing since he was not only born but educated in this
country.”208 Another Ohio native, voice teacher and conductor D. A. Clippinger, appeared on the
Visitor’s cover in October 1894. After studies in the United States, he had completed his voice
training in Europe. Clippinger was also a faculty member at Root’s Summer Music School in
Silver Lake, New York.209 Composer, pianist, and organist Wilson G. Smith, also born in Ohio,
was portrayed on the cover of the November 1895 issue. The Visitor subsequently announced
that Smith, as director, had reorganized the Conservatory of Music in Bay View, Michigan,
placing it on “a solid foundation of musical excellence.”210 The Visitor also featured Dr. J. W.
207
“A. J. Goodrich,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 4 (April 1894): 90–91. Alfred John Goodrich was self-
taught, except for a year’s instruction from his father. Music Lovers’ Encyclopedia, 177.
208
“A. J. Goodrich and American Music,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 9 (September 1897): 251. Reprinted
from Godey’s Magazine (July 1897). The Visitor announced that Goodrich had “taken a studio in Steinway Hall,
Chicago, and began teaching there September 1.” “Current Notes and News: General,” The Musical Visitor 26, no.
10 (October 1897): 277.
209
“D[avid] A[lva] Clippinger,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 10 (October 1894): cover, 263; Osburn, Ohio
Composers and Musical Authors, 43. Clippinger contributed an article on Puritan church music for the July issue.
He compared the seventeenth-century Puritan church service with current practice and claimed that some of the
Psalms are ridiculously long and could take up to a half-hour to line out and sing while the congregation stood.
Apparently he believed that the Puritans had been ahead of their time in allowing an orchestral instrument, the bass
viol, into the church choir. This was a common error since the music in the Bay Psalm Book, ninth edition (1698),
contained thirteen tunes and their basses taken from John Playford’s Breefe Introduction to the Skill of Musick,
1679. I am indebted to my adviser for bringing this to my attention. Clippinger did not approve of using operatic airs
in hymnbooks because of the difficulty in disassociating them from their original context. “Puritan Church Music,”
Musical Visitor 23, no. 7 (July 1894): 173–74.
210
“Wilson G. Smith: Abridged from an Article by Rupert Hughes,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 11
(November 1895): cover, 293–94; “Current Notes and News,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 6 (June 1897): 165. A
number of Smith’s articles appeared in the Visitor, some as reprints from the Song Journal or from the Pianist and
Organist. The John Church Company also published some of Smith’s works. Smith also coined the phrase “A Tidal
Wave of Encouragement” to characterize the wave of all-American concerts across the country in the 1880s.
E. Douglas Bomberger, “Smith, Wilson G.” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles
Hiroshi Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 7:566–67.
168
Bischoff, born in Chicago to German parents, who had been blind from infancy. Bischoff was
not only a composer and teacher, but also “the well-known organist of the First Congregational
Church in Washington D.C.,” a position he had held for the past twenty years.211 A portrait of
Chicago contralto Miss Margaret Goetz in the June 1894 Visitor accompanied her critique of the
American premiere of Massenet’s Werther in Chicago. The issue included a brief biography and
testimonial to her talents.212 The Visitor honored fellow Chicagoan W. S. B. Mathews with a
The Visitor published a portrait of composer Robert Coverley, born in Portugal but a
naturalized citizen of the United States, on the cover of the January 1895 issue. Bandmasters
Patrick S. Gilmore and Carlo Cappa had made several of Coverley’s marches familiar to the
public through their extended tours.214 Gilmore’s successor was American-born John Philip
Sousa. His portrait appeared on the cover of the January 1897 issue, in addition to a
biography and a notice that he was coming to Music Hall on January 26 with his band and
211
Elsie M. Bond, “Dr. J. W. Bischoff: Organist, Teacher, and Composer,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 12
(December 1895): cover, 326–27. One of his songs published by the John Church Company, “Mistaken,” appeared
in the same issue on pages 331–33.
212
“Stories of the Operas––No. 3. Massenet’s Grand Opera ‘Werther.’ A Critique by Miss Margaret Goetz,”
The Musical Visitor 23, no. 6 (June 1894): 145–46; “Supplement to the Musical Visitor: Miss Margaret Goetz,
Contralto,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 6 (June 1894): 146A. The article mentions that Miss Goetz studied for “four
years with the best American teachers” before continuing her training in Europe. The Visitor later announced that
she was to give a concert at the College of Music on February 9, “on her way south to fulfill concert engagements.
We advise all who love good singing to go and hear her.” “City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 2 (February
1895): 37. The Visitor subsequently announced that a concert consisting wholly of compositions by women was
given at Handel Hall in Chicago on November 15, by Miss Margaret Goetz (mezzo soprano); Miss Minna Wetzler
(pianist) of Cincinnati, Francis Walker (baritone), and A. Yunker (violin). “Music in Chicago,” The Musical Visitor
24, no. 12 (December 1895): 359.
213
J. R. M[urray], “W. S. B. Mathews,” The Musical Visitor 25, no. 10 (October 1896): cover, 265–66.
Mathews contributed a number of articles to the Visitor. The John Church Company also published some of his
works.
214
“Robert Coverley,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 1 (January 1895): cover, 1.
169
soloists (Elizabeth Northrop and Swedish violinist Martina Johnstone).215
The Visitor also honored faculty members of Cincinnati’s College of Music with cover
portraits. Arnold J. Gantvoort, born in Amsterdam in 1857, came to the Unites States in the
summer of 1876. He held positions at other schools before coming to the College of Music in the
fall of 1894 and served as Principal of the Public School Department. He was also President
of the Ohio Music Teachers Association from 1891 to 1894.216 The Visitor announced that Ohio
native Armin W. Doerner, a faculty member at the College from its inception, was leaving to
establish his own piano school and featured his portrait.217 The final cover portrait, of Ohio
native Edwin W. Glover, appeared in October 1897. Trained in the United States and a graduate
of the College of Music, Glover had served as a member of its faculty from 1883 until 1894 but
had resigned to open his own music school. Glover had recently been appointed as musical
170
merited a cover portrait in March 1896. Born in Germany in 1865, Bohlmann began his duties at
Baur’s Conservatory in September 1890. Although he had received “the most flattering offers
from many institutions in America and abroad,” Bohlmann had decided to remain in
Cincinnati.219 The Visitor featured another German-born member of Clara Baur’s piano
department, Georg Krüger, on the cover of the December 1896 issue. Reportedly the attendance
for Krüger’s recitals at the Conservatory had become so large that future recitals would be
accommodated at the Scottish Rite Hall.220 Bohlmann and Krüger revised and fingered
a number of piano works that appeared in the Visitor. Italian violinist and composer Pietro
Adolfo Tirindelli had joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1895. He moved to Cincinnati in
1896. He taught at and led the orchestra at Clara Baur’s Conservatory until leaving for Italy in
1922.221
residents of European origin, took precedence over foreign nationals who did not reside
219
“Theodor Heinrich Frederic Bohlmann,” The Musical Visitor 25, no. 3 (March 1896): cover, 61–62.
According to the Music Lovers’ Encyclopedia, at some point Bohlmann opened a school in Memphis, Tennessee; he
died there in 1926. Bohlmann had continued to provide articles to the Visitor until the final issue in December 1897.
“How to Study Bach” appeared in March, April, and June of 1896. “Piano Concert Music as Played by Theodor F.
Bohlmann: A Valuable Reference List of Pieces for Teachers and Pianists” includes a list of works Bohlmann had
performed in Cincinnati since 1890, thirty-seven of which were reported as first performances in the city. The
articles ends with the comment: “In the musical history of Cincinnati the work of Theodor Bohlmann will always
remain a most prominent feature.” The Musical Visitor 25, no. 4 (April 1896): 96–97. In May 1896 the Visitor
announced that Bohlmann would report on the twentieth anniversary of Wagner’s Ring Cycle. The Musical Visitor
25, no. 5 (May 1896): 143. “Bayreuth and Wagner I,” is a letter dated August 10, 1896, reporting on his medieval
lodgings, Das Rheingold, critical of the costumes and Frau Wagner’s influence. The Musical Visitor 25, no. 10
(October 1896): 261–62. “Bayreuth and Wagner II” includes information regarding Cosima Wagner’s coaching of
singers and leitmotifs for Die Walküre. The Musical Visitor 25, no. 11 (November 1896): 289. “Bayreuth and
Wagner III” covers Siegfried. The Musical Visitor 25, no. 12 (December 1896): 319–20. “Bayreuth and Wagner IV”
reports on Göttderdämmerung and refers to Cosima as “she who must be obeyed,” the audience, size of the
orchestra, and suggests that art patron A. Howard Hinkle erect “an American Bayreuth in Cincinnati.” The Musical
Visitor 26, no. 1 (January 1897): 1–2. Theodor F. Bohlmann, “Studying with Hans von Bulow,” The Musical
Visitor 26, no. 12 (December 1897): 309.
220
“Georg Krüger, Pianist,” “City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 25, no. 12 (December 1896): cover, 340–41.
Krüger had been introduced to readers previously that year. “George Krüger, Pianist,” The Musical Visitor 25, no. 7
(July 1896): 181.
221
“P. A. Tirindelli,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 8 (August 1897): cover, 221–22. His song for treble voice
and piano titled “My Flower” appeared on pages. 217–18. “A Souvenir of Liszt” in the same issue on page 201
concerns Liszt’s commentary on two of Tirindelli’s compositions. For more information, see the entry for Tirindelli
in the Music Lovers’ Encyclopedia.
171
stateside. All told, the Visitor published portraits of nineteen foreign-born performers and
European origin. Nineteen of the thirty-one portraits appeared in the Visitor in 1892 or after.
The trend coincided with Dvořák’s tenure in the United States. Thus, the Visitor’s decision to
provide more portraits of American-born or naturalized citizens than European artists does not
seem coincidental.
The final issue of the Visitor reprinted without comment the following resolutions passed
Whereas, A great movement has been started for the purpose of waking a universal
musical spirit throughout the country with special reference to encouraging musical
composition, as far as practicable, on American subjects, the establishment of various
musical centers, the proper elevation and direction of public entertainments, giving the
best music to the millions of our people at the lowest possible cost, the enlargement and
unification of our musical course of study, and the general advancement of American
musical interests, music students and musicians, therefore––
Resolved, (1) That while the College of Music of Cincinnati gratefully recognizes our
National indebtedness to foreign music-teachers, conductors, and composers, it considers
it a duty to wake up the National musical spirit, in order to bring about the most favorable
condition for the development of a National School of American Music and Musicians.
Resolved, (2) That it is our duty to seek the advancement of American musicians by
encouraging musical composition, as far as practicable, on American subjects.
Resolved, (3) That we, as an institution, heartily endorse the “American Patriotic Musical
League,” in seeking to encourage such high musical aims and ends.222
While the resolution acknowledged the contribution of foreigners, likely referring to, in part,
Dvořák, it was time to establish a permanent American School of Music. Jeannette Thurber had
had good intentions in establishing the National Conservatory of Music of America, but bringing
222
“Current Notes: Local,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 12 (December 1897): 333. The American Patriotic
Musical League had been founded in 1897 with Frederick Grant Gleason as president. Many of America’s
professional musicians, including some who had trained in Germany, were seeking an escape from the Teutonic
domination of America’s musical life. The objective of the League was the “nationalization of music in its various
forms of activity.” Many of the most prominent musicians in the country endorsed the movement. Travis Suttle
Rivers, “The Etude Magazine: A Mirror of the Genteel Tradition in American Music” (PhD diss., University of
Iowa, 1974), 120.
172
in a foreigner at a handsome salary to direct it had struck a sour note. The resolution of the
College of Music to establish a National School of American Music and Musicians obliquely
referred to both Thurber’s failure at establishing a uniquely National Conservatory of Music and
Divergent opinions had been expressed in the Visitor on America’s relationship with
Europe and how to limit its influence on American culture. Visiting stars had been both pilloried
and praised. Writers had warned of the potentially damaging moral and financial costs of foreign
study, especially to young women. At the same time, the advantages of foreign study and
performance had once been considered beneficial to one’s career. Humor had been used to
describe star performers, tyrannical teachers, and to lighten the mood during the course of
presidential campaigns. The country strove for unity yet post-bellum tensions lingered, as
witnessed in song texts and inaugural addresses. By the journal’s end, however, Emerson’s idea
of “The American Scholar” had been defended and at least partially fulfilled. The country, and
173
CHAPTER 4
Many of the 604 composers whose music appeared in the Visitor (see Appendix B) used
Nicolas Slonimsky, literary pseudonyms were common at this time. Women often assumed
men’s names to facilitate publication of their works, and professional composers of popular
songs also often wrote under assumed names.1 Some composers in the Visitor employed “Mrs.”
or “Miss” but other women composers did not. In any case, men outnumbered women. It is
impossible to discuss all of the composers whose music appeared in the Visitor since little
information exists for many of them. Several composers also contributed articles, short stories, or
poetry to the Visitor. Articles on composers came from various sources and for various reasons,
such as having their music performed at the Cincinnati May Festival or having toured in the
United States. Some were known for their Civil War songs. A number of composers also had
collections and/or method books published and advertised by John Church and Company.
A survey of these composers will tell us whose music was being printed in the Visitor.
How many of the composers represented in the Visitor were Americans, and how many were
known to have been women? This chapter will address composers’ gender, nationality, and
what subscribers learned about them through items in the Visitor in order to determine the
Visitor’s audience. I discuss the composers who won the Visitor’s 1876 poll of readers’ favorite
vocal and instrumental composers first, followed by women composers, composers residing in
Cincinnati, other composers born or residing in the United States, and European composers who
were not poll winners. Much of the information comes from the journal itself and is
1
Nicolas Slonimsky, Lectionary of Music: An Entertaining Reference and Reader’s Companion (New
York: Anchor Books, 1990), 392. According to Sloninsky, pseudonyms in music are rare, “except where a dignified
composer writes undignified music.” “Professional composers of popular songs often wrote under pseudonyms.”
174
supplemented as needed. A few of them were selected for the Visitor’s “Galaxy of Talent”
Several composers and correspondents to the Visitor used pseudonyms. For example, P.
P. Bliss wrote under “Pro Phundo Basso,” which is also the title of one of his comic songs
published by Root and Cady in Chicago.3 George F. Root was also known as “Wurzel” (German
for root). George W. Persley was actually George W. Brown. Michael Maybrick used the
pseudonym of Stephen Adams. Franz Behr used three pseudonyms: William Cooper, Ch.
Godard, and Francesco d’Orso. Joseph Leopold Roeckel also wrote under the name of Edouard
Dorn. Jean Louis Gobbaerts reversed the letters of his surname to become L. Streabbog. Delos
Gardner Spalding used the name of Frank Howard and may also have used the pseudonym of
“Delos.” James Frederick Swift published under the name of Godfrey Marks. George S. Gordon
also wrote under the nom de plume of Scythian. D. C. Addison, or D. C. A., appeared as Charles
Addison Daniell. He also contributed articles and poetry, and edited the Visitor from January to
August 1873 and again from January 1874 through April 1881. James R. Murray may have used
the clever pseudonym of “Raymur,” and possibly “Winthrop”; they did not appear in the Visitor
until after he became editor in May 1881.4 Music by Daniell and Murray in the Visitor coincided
2
The Musical Visitor 12, no. 12 (December 1883): iv.
3
Dena J. Epstein, Music Publishing in Chicago before 1871: The Firm of Root and Cady, 1858–1871,
Detroit Studies in Music Bibliography, no. 14 (Detroit: Information Coordinators, 1969), 110.
4
For example, both James R. Murray and Winthrop are credited as arrangers of works from Edmond
Audran’s opera-bouffe La Mascotte, printed in the Visitor in February 1882.
175
Winners of the Visitor’s 1876 Poll of Most Popular Instrumental and Vocal Composers
In August 1876 the Visitor polled its subscribers for their favorite composers. As early as
1872 a reader had queried the Visitor as to which American composer was considered the most
popular songwriter.5 The purpose of the 1876 poll was to familiarize readers with the names of
“the most popular song-writers and composers” of modern music and to help them to remember
to “mention the composers’ names” when ordering music by mail. Church’s thirteen thousand
subscribers were asked to vote for “his or her favorite writer of vocal and instrumental music.”
The Visitor promised to print a list of the winners and to publish “a song and piece by the two
composers receiving the largest number of votes.” The subsequent issue would contain music by
Two months later the Visitor announced the thirty-two winners. At that time an additional
reason was given for the poll: to assist the Visitor in its “selection of music for the volume just
beginning, and [to] enable us to give greater pleasure to subscribers than ever before.” Seventeen
composers of vocal music were chosen and ranked as follows: Dr. George F. Root, George W.
Schumann, William Howard Glover, and Verdi. The fifteen composers of instrumental music
were ranked as follows: Johann Strauss, Beethoven, Wagner, C. Kinkel,7 Ryan, A. P. Wyman,
Chopin, S. G. Smith, F. M. Davis, Grobe, Brinley Richards, Wely, Mack, Merz, and Mrs. Clara
H. Scott.8 The Visitor’s subscribers preferred vocal music written by native composers and in
5
“Letter Box,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 10 (July 1872): 5.
6
“Who Is Your Favorite Composer?,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no 11 (August 1876): 289.
7
I have been unable to determine if C. Kinkle is Charles Kinkel, born in 1832 (see Appendix B).
8
“The Chosen Composers,” Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 1 (October 1876): 8–9. Glover was born in
England in 1819 and died in New York in 1875. Joseph A. Bomberger, “Glover, William Howard,” in The Grove
Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013),
176
English, while the Europeans were favored for instrumental music. The winning composers
whose music appeared that month were George F. Root, Harrison Millard, and Johann Strauss
(see Appendix A). Harrison Millard’s single work in the Visitor appeared as a result of the poll.
His song “Kiss Me, Good Bye” had been published by John Church and Company in 1862 but
Music by the following nine poll winners never appeared in the Visitor: J. R. Thomas,
Will S. Hays, J. P. Webster, William Howard Glover, A. P. Wyman, F. M. Davis, Charles Grobe,
E. Mack, and Karl Merz.10 Thus their music must have been known to subscribers through other
means. For example, Karl Merz edited Brainard’s Musical World from May 1873 through
March 1890.11 According to Deane Root, “some of the best-known sentimental song composers
3: 519. Will S. Hays was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1837 and died there in 1907. Dale Cockrell, “Hays,
Will(iam) S(hakespeare),” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi Garrett (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 4:105. Harrison Millard was born in Boston in 1830 and died in New York in
1895. Nicholas Tawa, “Millard, Harrison,” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles
Hiroshi Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 5:492–93. J. R. Thomas was born in Wales in 1830 and
died in New York in 1896. He came to the United States in 1849. Nicholas Tawa, “Thomas, John Rogers,” in The
Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press,
2013), 8:186. Joseph Philbrick Webster was born in New Hampshire in 1819 and died in Wisconsin in 1875. Aaron
Appelstein and Jeffrey Green, “Webster, J. P.,” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2013), 8:448. John Church published and first advertised S. G. Smith’s The Class and School for
Day Schools, Singing Classes, Institutes, Conventions, Etc., Etc. in 1890. The Musical Visitor 19, no. 7 (July 1890):
i, iv. Bonny Miller has provided a list of “male composers whose works appeared frequently in household
magazines,” including some of the poll winners plus a few found in Appendix B: Charles E. Horn, Henry Bishop,
Michael Balfe, George Root, Franz Abt, Arthur Sullivan, and Hart Pease Danks; Bonny H. Miller, “Ladies’
Companion, Ladies’ Canon? Women Composers in American Magazines from Godey’s to the Ladies’ Home
Journal,” in Cecilia Reclaimed: Feminist Perspectives on Gender and Music, ed. Susan C. Cook and Judy S. Tsou
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 181.
9
For more information on Harrison Millard, see Deane L. Root, American Popular Stage Music,
1860–1880, Studies in Musicology, no. 44 (Ann Arbor: UMI Press, 1981), 21–21, 216, 226, 232, 238, or E. Douglas
Bomberger, An Index to Music Published in The Etude Magazine, 1883–1957, Music Library Association, Index
and Bibliography Series 31 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2004), 65, 363. Another of Millard’s vocal works
appeared in The Etude in October 1911.
10
Karl Merz (1836–1890) was born in Germany and died in Ohio. He was an educator, composer, theorist,
and became the editor of Brainard’s Musical World in 1873. Merz spent the last thirty years of his life in Ohio.
Mary Hubbell Osburn, Ohio Composers and Musical Authors (Columbus, OH: F. J. Heer, 1942), 136–38. Merz’s
The Last Will and Testament, a comic operetta for amateurs, was advertised in the Visitor. Church’s Musical Visitor
10, no. 3 (December 1880): 91.
11
Mary Veronica Davison, “American Music Periodicals, 1853–1899” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota,
1973), 307.
177
of the mid-nineteenth century” included Hays,12 and Webster.13 Grobe’s death in Philadelphia
was later reported in the Visitor in January 1880. His published works ran into the thousands, and
he was probably responsible for more “brilliant variations” than any other composer.14
Some of the winning composers’ works had previously been published by Root and Cady
in Chicago, such as Thomas, Webster, Grobe, and Merz.15 In January 1880 the Visitor’s Chicago
correspondent reminisced about the town “before the fire” of October 1871. He mentioned the
firm of Root and Cady and the composers whose works they published. P. P. Bliss was referred
was “the lamented Wyman.”16 He had been born in New Hampshire in 1832 and died in
Pennsylvania in 1872. He composed mostly for the piano, and some of the works had “attained a
wonderful popularity, which is not yet exhausted.” His “Silvery Waves,” published by S.
Brainard’s Sons, sold nearly one million copies.17 George F. Root had composed thirty-seven
songs related to the Civil War, including one each for Abraham Lincoln and General Grant,18
12
Arthur Loesser, Men, Women and Pianos: A Social History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954), 561.
An advertisement for Hays as a music dealer at 168 Fourth Street, Louisville, Kentucky, and agent for Church’s
Musical Visitor appeared in November 1871. Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 2 (November 1871): 22.
13
Root, American Popular Stage Music, 1860–1880, 159.
14
“Musical People,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 4 (January 1880): 103. An advertisement for “Grobe’s
Variations of I’m Waiting, My Darling, for Thee,” published by M. Gray in San Francisco, California, appeared in
the Visitor. Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 2 (November 1872): 24.
15
Epstein, Music Publishing in Chicago before 1871, 153, 157, 162, 163.
16
P. N. Phoebus, “Chicago,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 4 (January 1880): 107.
17
“Wyman, Addison P.,” in F. O. Jones, ed., A Handbook of American Music and Musicians (1886; repr.,
New York: Da Capo Press, 1971), 178–79.
18
Epstein, Music Publishing in Chicago before 1871, 167–71.
178
Poll Winners for Vocal Music
The seventeen poll winners for vocal music will be discussed according to their
placement order. Although George F. Root was best known for his Civil War songs, he was also
admired for his works used in normal music schools. The Visitor considered him “the father of
this style of musical emulation” in the country.19 In 1879 the Visitor reprinted part of an article
from the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser regarding Root. After moving to Chicago, he
encouraged and introduced “many young men of promise” to the public, including H. C. Work,
P. P. Bliss, and H. R. Palmer. The Visitor claimed, “Their influence has been greater upon the
people at large, than has that of Schubert or Mendelssohn. . . . P. P. Bliss has more admirers in
this country than has Beethoven.”20 Root was promoted as “the people’s composer.” Europe was
represented by Strauss as the “Waltz King” and Sir Arthur Sullivan. In the United States, the
distinction belonged to George F. Root, “whose songs are sung in every nook and corner of the
land, from the populous East to the most remote settlement on the broad Western plains.”21 Root
also contributed to the Visitor a series of articles under different titles, such as “Here and There”
and “The Normal Corner,” with information on musical terms, or letters from his travels to
England.22
Following Root’s death, an effort was made to erect a monument in his memory.
Francesco Fanciulli, then leader of the United States Marine Band, suggested that small
donations could be raised from bandsmen and other musicians throughout the country. The idea
19
“The Normal Music Schools,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 12 (September 1874): 6. Richard
Crawford, The Civil War Songbook: Complete Original Sheet Music for 37 Songs, Selected and with an Introduction
by Richard Crawford (New York: Dover Publications, 1977).
20
“Pioneers in Musical Culture,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 1 (October 1879): 13. It was reported in
November that Henry C. Work was “temporarily deranged on account of great family afflictions. We hope this is
not true; but the popular song-writer has had a larger share of trouble than usually falls to the lot of one man.”
“Musical People,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 2 (November 1879): 39.
21
“The People’s Composers,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 9 (June 1880): 245.
22
For example, G. F. R., “Here and There,” The Musical Visitor 16, no. 3 (March 1887): 59–60. Root was
in London at the time.
179
had been endorsed by the musical press, including the Visitor.23 Root was eulogized at the annual
dinner of the Chicago Music Trade Association. As a composer he had written for “the great
mass of the American Republic”: he had composed songs for their homes, their schools, and
their churches. His war songs had “by turns calmed and stirred the mighty heart of the American
people” at a crucial time.24 The site chosen for Root’s monument was Chicago’s Lake-Front
Park. Funds were raised through Chicago’s women’s clubs, War Song concerts, the Grand Army
of the Republic, the music trade, and an appeal for funds would be made through the Associated
Press. Church was secretary of the Root Monument Association. He turned subscription funds
over to Mr. Lyman J. Gage, president of the First National Bank of Chicago, and
be placed in Chicago, “where all of his war songs were written.” It was deemed preferable to
have many small contributions rather than a few large ones, as evidence of a grateful country
rather than a gift from the city of Chicago. The Memorial Committee asked Murray to invite the
help of convention and singing class teachers to acknowledge the help they received from Root.
Conventions could devote one day to Dr. Root’s music, and the various “Chautauquas” could do
likewise.26
23
The Musical Visitor 24, no. 11 (November 1895): 319. Fanciulli succeeded Sousa as leader of the Marine
Band in 1892. Frank J. Cipolla, “Fanciulli, Francesco,” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed.
Charles Hiroshi Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 3:237.
24
“Tribute to Dr. Root,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 12 (December 1895): 328–29.
25
“The Site Chosen for Dr. Root’s Memorial Monument,” The Musical Visitor 25, no. 4 (April 1896): 119.
In January the Visitor had announced that the Music Trade Association of Chicago would arrange for a monument to
Dr. Root, which was estimated at $50,000. The committee in charge consisted of I. N. Camp, P. J. Healy, D. L. Fox,
E. V. Church, and E. S. Conway. The Musical Visitor 25, no. 1 (January 1896): 23. The same entry claimed that
Root’s patriotic cantata Our Flag [with the Stars and Stripes] would appear soon. It would be given under Frederic
W. Root’s direction, “who supplied the last four numbers left unwritten by Dr. Root.”
26
“The Root Memorial,” The Musical Visitor 25, no. 8 (August 1896): 228. The Visitor did not follow up
with a report on the monument. There is a memorial monument to Root at Harmony Vale Cemetery in North
Reading, Massachusetts. On the front is inscribed George Frederick Root, Poet, Teacher, Singer, Patriot”; on the
other sides are “Born August 30 1820 Died August 6 1895”; “His gentle memory is the heritage of his kindred,” and
“He loved God and man and was beloved of both.” P. H. Carder, George F. Root, Civil War Songwriter: A
Biography (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2008), 195. According to Julia Bachrach, Planning and
180
Root was also included in the Visitor’s “Galaxy of Talent” in 1883 as “The Greatest
American Teacher and Composer.”27 Many of George F. Root’s collections of music and
methods were published by John Church, including Model Practice Lessons: A Thoroughly
Graded Elementary Course for Singing Classes, first advertised in December 1891.28 Not
surprisingly, Root had the largest number of works (206) printed in the Visitor (see Appendix B).
published in the Visitor and by Root and Cady prior to the 1876 poll. The Publisher’s
Department had compiled a list of some of their “most successful and desirable of our
publications issued during 1873.” The list had included seven works by Persley; “Far Away
Where Angels Dwell,” printed in the April 1873 issue, was then in its eleventh edition.29 The
Visitor had announced in August 1875 that two of Persley’s songs had been performed at the
on June 29. The program had included “popular modern works and some of the standard older
ones.” Persley’s “Among the Happy Angels” and “Far Away Where Angels Dwell” had been
accompanied by piano and harp.30 According to the Visitor’s Publishing Department, Persley’s
songs had been among the most popular “since the days of S. C. Foster. They are all good,
Development, Chicago Park District, there is no George F. Root memorial monument in Chicago’s Lakefront Park.
Email to author dated May 27, 2014. It may be that any monies raised for Root’s memorial were given to the family
for the memorial that stands in North Reading, Massachusetts.
27
The Musical Visitor 12, no. 12 (December 1883): iv.
28
“Model Practice Lessons: A Thoroughly Graded Elementary Course for Singing Classes,” The Musical
Visitor 20, no. 12 (December 1891): 344. This book is not mentioned in Root’s autobiography published by John
Church the same year. See Appendix to George F. Root, The Story of a Musical Life: An Autobiography (1891,
repr., New York: Da Capo Press, 1970), 223–24.
29
“Publishers Department,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 4 (January 1874): 12.
30
“Our Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 11 (August 1875): 11. “Among the Happy
Angels” was published in the Visitor in August 1874, and “Far Away Where Angels Dwell” appeared in April 1873.
181
without exception.”31 Prior to the 1876 poll, sixteen of Persley’s songs had been published in the
Visitor. Between the time that the poll was announced and the winners were revealed, the Visitor
had published Persley’s “The Little Log Cabin is Gone. Answer to The Little Log Cabin in the
Lane,” with text by Thomas P. Westendorf. When Persley died in 1894, Westendorf wrote a
tribute to his memory. They had first met in Chicago in a music store in 1870. He had listened to
a few of Westendorf’s songs and had encouraged him to complete them for publication.
United States, and many of them have been reprinted in foreign countries.” Persley had been a
minstrel, and many of his songs were performed by minstrel troupes. His “Barney, Take Me
Home Again,” published in the November 1875 Visitor, refers to Westendorf’s famous “I’ll
Take You Home Again, Kathleen.” During the past year Persley had arranged over nine hundred
works, including the overtures to Semiramide, Fra Diavolo, and the Caliph of Bagdad. He
reportedly had worked until a few hours prior to his death. He had suffered from “an incurable
disease” and had been housebound for the past year. He died at home in Chicago on April 3. His
parting words to his wife and daughter were reportedly, “You and Winnie stay here for a little
Philip Paul Bliss had a sense of humor as evinced by his pseudonym of “Pro Phundo
Basso.” His male quartet “Music of Memory” included some creative and humorous instructions.
The interlude after the first stanza was to be played with the “mouthonacomb.” Or, if preferred, it
could be “whistled or played on flutes, violins or piano.”33 His songs gained a wide influence not
only in the United States but in England and Scotland where Moody and Sankey introduced
them. A Scottish paper declared that Bliss’s songs exceeded the “influence and popularity” of
31
“Publishers Department,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 4 (January 1874): 12. The list included his
“Far Away Where Angels Dwell.”
32
Thomas P. Westendorf, “George W. Persley,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 6 (June 1894): 153–54.
33
P. P. Bliss, “Music of Memory,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 4 (January 1874): 19–21.
182
Robert Burns. Bliss’s “great genius” rested in his ability to “adapt happily the thoughts and
ideas” of daily life in simple, sincere songs.34 In 1875 Bliss reported with tongue-in-cheek from
Pittsburgh that “2,500 or 3,000 young men exclusively!” attended his gospel meeting at the opera
house. He also sang to “600 unfortunates” in the penitentiary and to “300 attentive listeners” in
the jail.35 The same year the Visitor reprinted an article from Zion’s Herald regarding the success
of Moody and Sankey in Scotland, attributed in part to singing Bliss’s gospel songs, including
“Hold the Fort,” “More to Follow,” “Jesus Loves Even Me,” and Almost Persuaded.” The Visitor
added, “Scotland is thawing and resolving into pleasant dew, under the beautiful melodies of
Mr. Bliss,” and away from its prejudice against gospel music.36 Church had published and
advertised Bliss’s Gospel Songs for Revivals, Praise Meetings and Sunday Schools in December
1874.37 Bliss’s last letter to the editor of the Visitor had mentioned that he had given up his work
brought forth an outpouring of remembrances. George Root, William Sherwin, and Frederic
Root all contributed articles in Bliss’s memory. George Root recounted their initial contact
and activities as composers and friends, and how Bliss had been humble and grateful to friends
who helped him in his work.39 Sherwin praised Bliss for his works, character, and integrity. His
wife had been a real helpmeet to him. She had a good contralto voice and “supplemented her
34
“Popular Songs,” Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 2 (November 1874): 10. The Visitor reprinted from the
London Daily News an incident regarding Bliss’s Hold the Fort. Bliss’s song in the Moody and Sankey collection of
Gospel Hymns had been sent to an American missionary in Armenia, but had been excised by the Turkish governor
general’s “factotum,” Bukhsheesh Effendi. He had recently inadvertently allowed the passing of a book of letters
from a writer in the New York papers who had “roundly denounced the mis-government he had witnessed in
Armenia during the campaign of 1877.” Effendi thought the hymn referred to “an intended insurrection.” The
Musical Visitor 12, no. 9 (September 1883): 234.
35
“Correspondence: Gospel Meetings in Pittsburgh,” Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 4 (January 1875): 6.
36
“Editor’s Notes and Reviews,” Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 6 (March 1875): 10.
37
Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 3 (December 1874): 27.
38
The Musical Visitor 13, no. 2 (February 1884): 38.
39
G[eorge] F. R[oot], “In Memoriam,” Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 5 (February 1877): 117.
183
husband’s labors most admirably.”40 Frederic Root discussed Bliss’s “Hold the Fort,” which had
been inspired by an incident during the Civil War. He praised Bliss’s character and physical
appearance, the wide range of his bass voice, and his devoted wife.41 Bliss’s wife, whose “Rock
of Ages” had been printed in the Visitor’s December 1872 issue, died with him in the train
derailment and fire at Ashtabula, Ohio.42 A monument to his memory was dedicated in Rome,
Pennsylvania, on July 10, 1877. The Visitor provided a detailed description of the monument
unveiled by Mr. Moody. The front reads: “Erected by the Sunday Schools of the United States
and Great Britain in response to the invitation of D. L. Moody, as a memorial to Philip P. Bliss,
author of ‘Hold the Fort’ and other gospel songs.” The back of the monument describes how
Bliss and his wife “met their death at Ashtabula, Ohio, Friday evening Dec. 29, 1876, by the
falling of a bridge, by which a train of cars was broken into fragments and consumed by fire,
some eighty persons being killed. It is believed that the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Bliss were
consumed to ashes, since nothing recognizable as belong to their earthly tabernacle has ever been
discovered.”43 Soloists, quartets, and children’s choruses performed at a Bliss memorial concert
held at Pike’s Opera House in Cincinnati on February 5, 1878. The concert program included
information on Bliss’s upbringing as well as stories behind some of his gospel songs, including
“Hold the Fort.”44 The Visitor reported that some of his “earlier concert songs of a secular nature
40
Wm. F. Sherwin, “Reminiscences of Mr. Bliss,” Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 5 (February 1877):
117–18. Mrs. Bliss was also his accompanist. J. H. Hall, Biography of Gospel Song and Hymn Writers (New York:
Fleming H. Revell Company, 1914; repr. AMS Press, 1971), 179.
41
Frederic W. Root, “Feuilleton from Chicago,” Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 5 (February 1877):
122–23. Perhaps the wide range of Bliss’s voice accounted for his pseudonym.
42
Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 3 (December 1872): 19, 27. Mrs. Bliss’s sacred song had been included in
The Charm, a collection for Sunday Schools. An advertisement in the same issue for the collection, published by
Church, had mentioned that Bliss was superintendent of the Sunday School at Chicago’s First Congregational
Church.
43
“The Sweet Singer––A Description of the Monument Erected to the Memory of the Late P. P. Bliss,”
Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 12 (September 1877): 311.
44
“Musical Month in Cincinnati,” Church’s Musical Visitor 7, no. 6 (March 1878): 154–55.
184
are worthy of the attention of real artists.” The John Church Company published and advertised
P. P. Bliss’ Most Popular Gospel Melodies, six works transcribed for the piano by Berthold
Marks, in 1885.45 In 1897 the Visitor advertised Gospel Hymns, familiarly called the “Moody
Harrison Millard’s first work in the Visitor appeared in October 1876 after the poll; John
Church had published the song in 1862. Root and Cady had published his “Happy Dreams” in
1864.47 Deane Root discusses Millard’s The Silver Threads of Song published in 1875. Millard’s
“original idea” was to combine a vocal-class text with a children’s operetta, Little Red
Ridinghood, and a musical charade, Excellent. The book includes “well-known tunes with piano
accompaniment, drawn from traditional and popular repertories” with works by other composers
Franz Abt is one of several European composers represented in the poll. His sole work in
the Visitor prior to the poll had been a song, “Sweetheart, Good Night,” in August 1872. The
Visitor had announced in December 1871 that “the great German song-writer, Franz Abt,” was
going to visit the United States. Abt reportedly wanted “to know personally the German singing
unions of America.”49 The Visitor reported on concerts to be held in his honor in New York,50
45
The Musical Visitor 14, no. 12 (December 1885): 311. The works were of “moderate difficulty.”
46
The Musical Visitor 26, no. 2 (February 1897): 56.
47
Epstein, Music Publishing in Chicago before 1871, 98, 157.
48
Root, American Popular Stage Music, 1860–1880, 20–21.
49
“Franz Abt Coming,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 3 (December 1871): 6. Root and Cady had
published five of Abt’s works. Epstein, Music Publishing in Chicago before 1871, 149.
50
Arion, “Correspondence: New York,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1 no. 9 (June 1872): 2. A concert was to
be given at Steinway Hall by the Liederkranz Society in Abt’s honor. He conducted several of his works with such
performers as pianist Marie Krebs, violinist Pablo Sarasate, and organist Henry C. Timm.
185
Boston,51 and a report from Philadelphia52 prior to his arrival in Cincinnati in 1872. He arrived
on June 5 from Pittsburgh and was greeted by “delegations from the Mænnerchor, Orpheus, and
other German singing societies.” His host “had decorated his house lavishly, the exterior being
covered with German and American flags,” and every room filled with flowers and garlands. The
Visitor concluded that Abt’s introduction to “the society of the Queen City” had been “a decided
social success.” That evening’s festivities at Inwood Park included a welcome address, music
furnished by the Germania Band, and dancing. A grand Concert, given at the Exposition Hall on
June 6, was attended by “nearly three thousand people.” The Visitor described Abt’s person and
dress in some detail. The orchestra performed the overtures to Rienzi, Robespierre, and Fidelio.
The Harugarl, St. Cecilia, Druiden, Odd Fellows, Turners, Gemischter, and Gesammte Societies
performed choruses. The only chorus mentioned was the “Hallelujah” chorus from Handel’s
Messiah. Conductors for the evening were Professors Barus, Groscurth, and Abt. When Abt and
the soloist, Mrs. Mueller-Kuntz, began to perform his popular “When the Swallows Homeward
Fly” [Wenn die Schwalben heimwärts ziehn], the audience responded with “a roaring round of
applause.”53 A brief obituary in 1885 mentioned that Abt had been destined to become a
clergyman like his father, but after his father’s death “he gave up the study of theology for that of
music.” A prolific writer, “his melodies were graceful and pleasing, though not always
original.”54
A hint of scandal touched the inclusion of J. R. Thomas in the Visitor’s list of vocal
51
Murillo, “Correspondence: Boston,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 9 (June 1872): 2–3. Abt’s popular
song “When the Swallows Homeward Fly” was conducted by Abt with the first stanza reportedly “sung by the five
thousand sopranos, the second by the five thousand tenors, and the full chorus of twenty thousand in harmony.”
52
“Mignon, “Correspondence: Philadelphia,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 9 (June 1872): 4. Several
choral societies performed at the Academy on May 17; Abt conducted the opening chorus with the combined
societies and accompanied a soprano soloist in one of his songs.
53
“Home Amusements: Herr Franz Abt,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 10 (July 1872): 9.
54
The Musical Visitor 14, no. 5 (May 1885): 122.
186
winners. He was accused of misrepresentation in the February 1880 Visitor. Mrs. Mary E.
Mannix of West Walnut Hills (a suburb of Cincinnati) had sent the manuscript of a song to the
Visitor in 1870 titled “Presentiments,” in which the last line of the first and fourth stanzas end
“The day you will forget me.” At that time she learned that her poem had been set to music by
J. R. Thomas, with the words by “Morgan” and titled “The Day When You’ll Forget Me.” The
Visitor’s editor sent letters to Thomas regarding the charge but there was no response. Thus, it
Horatio Richmond Palmer’s songs had been published in the Visitor beginning in 1872.
Advertisements for his collections of music for singing classes and notices of his convention
work also appeared frequently. Editor C. A. Daniell had noted in 1874 that he was fortunate to be
Middletown, Ohio, the previous month. Some of the most complicated part-songs from Palmer’s
Concert Choruses had been “rendered in a most creditable manner.” Daniell had added that the
Visitor “cannot withhold just commendation when it is eminently fitting.”56 The Visitor
music class in New York City” in 1895 comprised nearly one thousand participants. He was
presented with a gold watch at the closing concert on February 4, following which he left to
conduct the Florida Chautauqua Assembly. Palmer was also scheduled to conduct a music
At the time of the 1876 poll, only two songs by Hart Pease Danks had appeared in the
Visitor. From July 1877 through the Visitor’s last issue in December 1897, his music was
55
Mary E. Mannix, “The Day When You’ll Forget Me,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 5 (February 1880):
136. This is likely John Rogers Thomas; six of his works were published by Root and Cady. Epstein, Music
Publishing in Chicago before 1871, 162. Thomas was born in Wales in 1830 and died in New York in 1896.
Nicholas Tawa, “Thomas, John Rogers,” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi
Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 8:186.
56
“Editor’s Notes and Reviews,” Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 2 (November 1874): 10.
57
“Here and There,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 3 (March 1895): 67.
187
frequently presented. Advertisements for Danks’s Ideal Anthems, a collection of anthems
selected by the composer and published by Church, began in January 1887.58 In 1893 Church
published Danks’s Anthem Crowns, a collection of anthems, canticles, and sentences.59 Interest
in Danks extended to his family. In 1889 the Visitor’s New York correspondent wrote that
Danks’s daughter, Gertrude, made her New York debut at Chickering Hall on December 1. The
correspondent predicted “a most promising future” for the talented young singer and referred to
Danks as “the well-known song writer.”60 The subsequent issue provided a quote from
the Keynote regarding Gertrude: she “possesses a mezzo-soprano voice of a very large
compass; she uses it with rare intelligence, and sings with fine feeling and expression.” She was
Frederic W. Root, eldest son of George Root, contributed articles on singing, vocal
methods, and music criticism. Root was also a member of the Visitor’s 1883 “Galaxy of
Talent” and described as “The Great Voice Teacher.”62 A report in 1885 on one of his
concerts in Chicago, with an intermediate class of ninety women, included a reference to his
father. Root had closed the evening by introducing his father, who had been in the audience. He
had begun the introduction by playing a few notes of some of his father’s songs, including his
war songs, and had concluded by saying that his father “is a better singer than composer.”
George had obliged and had sung for the crowd but apparently had not commented on his son’s
opinion regarding his skill as a composer.63 In 1893 Frederic and his family sailed from New
58
“Ideal Anthems,” Church’s Musical Visitor 16, no. 1 (January 1887): iv.
59
The Musical Visitor 22, no. 12 (December 1893): i.
60
“Music in New York,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 1 (January 1889): 10.
61
“Concerts and Conventions,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 2 (February 1889): 38.
62
The Musical Visitor 12, no. 12 (December 1883): iv.
63
C., “Music in Chicago,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 3 (March 1885): 69.
188
York for Europe where they would remain for about a year.64 A letter to the editor from Root
mentioned that a charity concert had been given onboard for orphaned children of sailors.65
Root’s travelogue continued from Germany, reporting that music in the churches in Paris, Berlin,
and Munich differed from that in the United States. Brass bands play marches and operatic
potpourri during Mass. But in a vast cathedral with a marble floor, the Hallelujah chorus or a
chorale by Luther played by a military band of forty was “impressive to a degree that cannot
easily be described.” Root reported that he had heard Palestrina’s music either in his own works
or music composed in his style.66 A biographical sketch of Root, condensed from The Voice,
under the pseudonym of D. C. Addison. Some of his articles were identified by initials only, such
as his brief biography of Goethe.68 Daniell’s “Side by Side, or Almost an Heir” was serialized by
the Visitor. The story begins with a nationalistic bent: the protagonist is an artist who cannot
afford training in Europe but asks, “Why should I? Is there not grandeur and majestic beauty in
our own land?”69 Addison also contributed an article on vocal music that began “it is too late
now to ignore the influence of the song-writer in forming the tastes and shaping the sentiments of
64
“Here and There,” The Musical Visitor 22, no. 9 (September 1893): 238.
65
F. W. Root, “A Concert in Mid-Ocean,” The Musical Visitor 22, no. 11 (November 1893): 287–88.
66
“Drawing Comparisons: A Letter from Germany by F. W. Root,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 1 (January
1894): 2–3.
67
“Frederic W. Root,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 4 (April 1891): 90. Church published several of his
methods: F. W. Root’s School of Singing (1873); The Song Era (1874); F. W. Root’s Special Edition, No. 2 (1887);
Root’s New Course in Voice Culture and Singing for the Female Voice (1891) and in 1897 as “Newly Revised by
the Author”; Root’s New Course in Voice Culture and Singing for the Male Voice (1891); and F. W. Root’s
Condensed Vocal Method (1897).
68
D. C. A. [C. A. Daniell], “Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Author of Faust,” Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 5
(February 1875): 5. Cushing describes Daniell/Addison as “an American poet of the day.” William Cushing, Initials
and Pseudonyms: A Dictionary of Literary Disguises (1885; repr., Waltham, MA: Mark Press, 1963), 403.
69
D. C. Addison [C.A. Daniell], “Side by Side, or, Almost an Heir,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 11
(August 1872): 2–3.
189
the people.” Once the song is sung in the theater or concert hall, it is “caught up by the thousands
of gallants and gallery-gods, and spread like wild-fire, until it is drummed upon every piano in
the parlors, and whistled, and hummed and hooted at every street corner” and has more power
than “the heaviest article from the editorial pen.” Daniell granted that the power of the composer
is not much greater than that of the writer of the words. However, it had become “a rule to credit
the musician with all there is of merit in the production.” In many cases, however, Daniell
believed that the character of the words may conceal poorly composed music. Addison also
wanted to give credit to the unnamed printer, who Addison claimed did a considerable amount of
the work.70
Most of James McGranahan’s music that the Visitor reprinted is sacred. McGranahan
and his wife visited the editor of the Visitor while in Cincinnati in December 1884 to sing at “the
Moody meetings. Their singing gave great satisfaction and was a prominent feature of all the
services.”71 George Root mentioned McGranahan in his autobiography as a pupil and later
working with him in publishing The Song Messenger and in teaching music education in normal
school sessions.72
Rossini’s sole work did not appear in the Visitor until 1890, a brief funeral march for
keyboard.73 In 1882 a brief article had recounted Rossini as “a very superstitious man.” King
Louis Phillipe evidently had given the composer a magnificent repeater which he carried in his
pocket for six years. One afternoon when he was showing the watch to some friends in a Parisian
café, a stranger approached him and asked if he knew the secrets of his watch. Rossini handed
the watch to him and upon touching a hidden spring, the back of the watch flew open revealing
70
D. C. Addison [C. A. Daniell], “Brief Talks on Musical Topics: Song Literature and Song Music,”
Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 1 (October 1879): 6.
71
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 1 (January 1885): 12.
72
Root, The Story of a Musical Life, 145, 160.
73
I have been unable to identify the source for the funeral march.
190
a miniature portrait of the composer surrounded by enameled Arabic characters. The stranger
declared that he had made the watch but refused to reveal the meaning of the words. Thereafter
Rossini would not wear the watch for fear of an “evil spell.”After Rossini’s death the watch was
Though Robert Schumann was a winner in the vocal poll, only instrumental pieces were
reprinted in the Visitor. His Musical Rules at Home and in Life (Musikalische Haus- und
Lebensregeln), translated by Frédéric Louis Ritter, were reprinted in the Visitor.75 In 1890 some
of Schumann’s Rules were reprinted as an aid to learning “how to listen and to judge” and useful
None of Verdi’s music had been reprinted in the Visitor until 1879 when the Agnus
Dei from his Manzoni Requiem, published by John Church, was performed for the first time at
Cincinnati’s Saengerfest.77 The Visitor had reported in 1874 that the Requiem had attracted
large audiences in Milan and Paris. Verdi had conducted the early performances and was
reportedly “overwhelmed with honors.”78 In 1872 editor Frank H. King had favored Wagner
over Verdi with respect to “knowledge of the orchestra, coupled with the ideal gift of nature” and
74
“Rossini’s Watch,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 9 (June 1882): 243. A repeater is a watch with a
striking mechanism that upon pressure of a spring will indicate the time in hours or quarters and sometimes minutes.
The same article, “Rossini’s Watch,” appeared in the Cambridge Chronicle 38, no. 29 (July 22, 1882): 7. It may
have been copied from the Visitor, or perhaps the article was being circulated at the time. As Marcia Lebow pointed
out regarding reprints, “many a paragraph . . . has been passed round abroad as common property.” Marcia Wilson
Lebow, “A Systematic Examination of the Journal of Music and Art, edited by John Sullivan Dwight: 1852–1881,
Boston, Massachusetts” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1969), 386.
75
“Robert Schumann’s Rules for Young Musicians,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 1 (October 1872): 2.
The first installment of numbers 1 through 38 was printed in October; numbers 39 through 68 were printed in
November. “Robert Schumann’s Rules for Young Musicians,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 2 (November 1872):
2.
76
The Musical Visitor 19, no. 6 (June 1890): 148.
77
“The Musical Month in Cincinnati,” Church’s Musical Visitor 8, no. 8 (May 1879): 218. Root and Cady
had published some of his works. The Agnus Dei, accompanied by commentary, had been printed in January and
February 1879. Church advertised the full orchestral score of the Requiem in October 1880. The Requiem was not
given its first May Festival performance until 1890.
78
“Our Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 11 (August 1874): 11.
191
had credited Theodore Thomas with Wagner’s increased acceptance over the past three years.79
A few months later it was reported that the audience had called for Verdi thirty-eight times
during the first performance of Don Carlos in Naples. His latest opera, Aida, was to be
performed at the San Carlo Theater in Naples during the Carnival season.80 An enthusiastic
review of Aida gleaned from New York papers opined that the prelude dies away “in a true
Wagnerian phrase as the curtain rises upon the first act.”81 A lengthy cablegram reporting on
Falstaff in Milan was favorable. This time “suggestions of Mozart are among the noticeable
features of the opera”; thus, Verdi had returned to the style of his youth.82 The same issue
reported on an interview with Verdi. He suffered initial poverty and disappointment in Busseto.
Workers at La Scala in Milan reportedly stopped their work during the rehearsal of Nabucco to
listen when the choir began to sing “Va pensiero.” The workers had broken out into noisy
applause and cried “Bravo, Bravo, viva il maestro!” At that moment, Verdi “knew what the
future had in store” for him.83 “Verdi’s Triumph at Eighty” was his comic opera Falstaff,
recently performed in Milan. After the performance he reportedly had gone to his hotel “as a
conqueror.” People would not leave the crowded street until “once and yet again he had appeared
79
“Home Amusements: The Thomas Concerts,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 2 (November 1872): 9.
This may have been King’s opinion and that of other critics. According to Larry Wolz, enthusiasm for local
productions of German opera waned after 1870. Verdi won in the vocal category of the Visitor’s 1876 poll while
Wagner won in the instrumental category. When Pike’s Opera House had opened in 1859, the public had been
outraged that their new opera house opened with Flotow’s Martha, a “non-Italian opera by a less-than-great
composer.” The audiences had been “especially enthusiastic about the Verdi operas” that season. However, the critic
for the Cincinnati Enquirer had been appalled at their lack of taste and called Verdi a “hackman.” Larry Robert
Wolz, “Opera in Cincinnati: The Years before the Zoo, 1801–1920” (PhD diss., University of Cincinnati College-
Conservatory of Music, 1983), 77–78, 292.
80
“Our Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 5 (February 1873): 10.
81
“Aida,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 4 (January 1874): 4.
82
“Verdi’s New Opera,” The Musical Visitor 22, no. 3 (March 1893): 63.
83
“An Interview with Verdi: The Story of a Rehearsal,” The Musical Visitor 22, no. 3 (March 1893): 68.
During Verdi’s memorial service on February 27, 1901, Arturo Toscanini had conducted a chorus of 820 voices in
“Va pensiero” from Nabucco. Mary Jane Phillips-Matz, Verdi: A Biography (New York: Oxford University Press,
1993), 765.
192
on the balcony to bow his acknowledgments in the capacity of a popular hero.”84 Reportedly
Verdi gave the autograph score of Falstaff to Ricordi’s daughter. All instrumentalists who
participated in the Milan premiere had “received a photograph and autograph” of Verdi.85
Readers of the Visitor were treated to a description of Verdi’s Villa Sant’ Agata, near his
birthplace. The article describes his early training, his patron “the dealer in drugs” Antonio
Barezzi, whose daughter he married, and the contents of the home. Verdi apparently had
considered “the crowning work of his life” to be the “hospice at Milan for superannuated Italian
The fifteen winners for instrumental music will be discussed below according to their
placement order in the 1876 poll. Europeans were favored in this category. An article on poll
winner Johann Strauss II had appeared in July 1872; he had come to Boston to conduct some of
his works at the World’s Peace Jubilee and International Musical Festival. The Visitor’s editor
claimed that Cincinnati would not feel slighted if he could not visit since he did not bring his
orchestra with him.87 Strauss was then considered the wealthiest composer in Europe; his (and
his father’s) waltzes had made him the best-known and appreciated European composer in the
United States.88 The Thousand and One Nights, op. 346, for solo piano was reprinted three times
in the Visitor: November 1871, “As Performed by Theo. Thomas’ Orchestra”; October 1876; and
May 1881. In a June 1880 article on waltzes, he was called “the greatest of all dance-music
84
“Verdi’s Triumph at Eighty,” The Musical Visitor 22, no. 4 (April 1893): 97.
85
“Notes and Gossip,” The Musical Visitor 22, no. 4 (April 1893): 98. According to Mary Jane Phillips-
Matz, Verdi sent the autograph score to Casa Ricordi. Phillips-Matz, Verdi: A Biography, 718–19.
86
“Verdi at Home (The Review of Reviews),” The Musical Visitor 22, no. 11 (November 1893): 288.
87
The Visitor had previously announced that “the great Strauss” was about to visit the country “with his
orchestra of sixty-two musicians.” “Personal Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 3 (December 1871): 10.
88
“Johann Strauss,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 10 (July 1872): 5–6.
193
composers.” His most widely known and popular waltz, “On the Beautiful Blue Danube,”
appeared in the November 1880 Visitor in an arrangement for piano.89 Readers were also
provided with a synopsis of his 1881 operetta The Merry War [Der lustige Krieg] and a report
that its one-week run in Baltimore by Charles E. Ford and Company had played to “crowded
houses.”90 A brief entry in December 1886 reported that Strauss had a piano “specially arranged”
so that he could “improvise and try his compositions almost inaudibly.” The reason given was to
prevent “piratical neighbors from appropriating his new themes for waltzes and operettas.”91
By 1883, the Visitor published an opinion on Strauss’s three marriages, divorce, and
changes in denomination and nationality. The author claimed that he deserved the title of the
“waltz king” because “he must have done some very lively waltzing to get so completely mixed
up as to his religion and nationality.” Anti-Semitism emerged in telling the tale. Strauss had to
convert to Protestantism and become a naturalized Hungarian citizen “in order to marry a
Hebrew widow, who, in turn, had to become a Christian, he now finds himself . . . step-father to
a little Jew boy, and about to return to the Austrian nationality and the ‘true faith.’”92
Five of Beethoven’s works were presented at Cincinnati’s first May Festival in 1873,
including his Symphonies no. 5 and 9. According to a Visitor article titled “The Ninth at the
Festival” reprinted from Brainard’s Musical World, the adagio possibly represented his
89
“Waltz Writers,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 9 (June 1880): 243. Both waltzes were also printed in
The Etude. Bomberger, An Index to Music Published in The Etude Magazine, 1883–1957, 403.
90
Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 14 (November 1882): 277; Columbus, “Music in Baltimore,” Church’s
Musical Visitor 11, no. 14 (November 1882): 384.
91
The Musical Visitor 15, no. 12 (December 1886): 315.
92
The Musical Visitor 12, no. 8 (August 1883): 206. Strauss’s first wife had died, and he was divorced from
his second wife, but the Pope did not consent to the divorce. Both Strauss and his third wife, Adèle Strauss (née
Deutsch), converted to Protestantism; they did not marry until August 1887, after Duke Ernst of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
had dissolved Strauss’s second marriage in July 1887. Strauss had relinquished his Austrian citizenship and enrolled
“on the nationality register of the dukedom of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.” Peter Kemp, “Strauss II, Johann,” in The New
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., ed. Stanley Sadie (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001),
24:481–83.
194
mourning over deafness or the neglect he suffered. The author rehearsed the myth that his death
had been accompanied by thunder and lightning.93 The same issue contains a fictionalized
account of the creation of “The Moonlight Sonata.” It quoted Beethoven as saying: “No one
understands me. I have genius, but am neglected; I have a heart, but no one to love. I am
Schumann and Chopin had been “poets of the piano,” but “lighter” composers than Beethoven,
who had composed for all instruments. Readers were advised that the spirit and humor of the
master could not be understood unless his works were studied conscientiously, “even
religiously.” There is no mere “pyrotechnic display as in the works of Liszt and others.”95
The March 1882 Visitor included several items on different works by Beethoven in honor
of the fifty-fifth anniversary of his death. Eben E. Rexford contributed his poem “A Sonata of
Beethoven’s,” apparently in response to hearing the “Moonlight” sonata.96 Lady Benedict, wife
of Sir Jules, gave advice on “How to Play Beethoven’s Sonatas.”97 And Warren Walters
considered “Beethoven’s Heroic Symphony” to be his greatest work.98 Likely, it was James R.
Murray who wrote of Beethoven as “The Great Tone Poet,” who had suffered at the hands of his
contemporaries.99
Two years later Mr. J. A. Homan of the Commerical Gazette interviewed Dr. Emmert,
93
“The Ninth at the Festival,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 10 (July 1873): 9. Reprint from Brainard’s
Musical World, no date given.
94
“The Moonlight Sonata,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 20 (July 1873): 2–3.
95
“Beethoven’s Piano Music,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 7 (April 1881): 186.
96
Eben E. Rexford, “A Sonata of Beethoven’s,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 6 (March 1882): 151.
97
Lady Benedict, “How to Play Beethoven’s Sonatas,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 6 (March 1882):
151–53.
98
Warren Walters, “Beethoven’s Heroic Symphony,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 6 (March 1882):
154–55.
99
“The Great Tone Poet,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 6 (March 1882): 158.
195
former Coroner of Hamilton County. Dr. Emmert had reportedly become acquainted with
Beethoven when he was a medical student at the University of Vienna in 1826–1827. Homan
asked Dr. Emmert five questions. The first was, “When and how did you become acquainted
with Beethoven?” One of Emmert’s relatives had been a friend of Beethoven’s and introduced
him to the composer. Homan’s first impressions had been that his hair was unkempt but, contrary
to suppositions, he found Beethoven to be “one of the most social and pleasant men that I have
ever met.” The second question related to “his domestic situation at that time.” Dr. Emmert had
visited Beethoven at his house several times. The housekeeper had been old and ungainly, but a
good cook, and never complained of Beethoven’s “eccentricities.” She had prepared one of his
favorite dishes, Kalbsbraten (roast veal with sauce); Emmert claims he had witnessed “the relish
with which Beethoven punished both meat and sauce.” Third, “Did Beethoven in the years of his
physical decline pay much attention to the subject of music?” Beethoven had been fond of
improvising at the piano, but “it was not agreeable to hear him play. His piano was an old box;
what the Germans call a ‘Rumpelskasten.’” However, his genius for composing had continued to
the end. Homan then asked about Beethoven’s “political tendencies.” Emmert responded that he
had been a “thorough Republican” with little respect for the monarchy. But he had been too
much engaged with music for any activism. Emmert claimed that he had been an eyewitness to
the incident with Goethe when the two passed by members of the Imperial Court. Goethe “made
a very low, respectful obeisance” but “Beethoven hardly lifted his cap, nodded his head very
curtly, and immediately passed on.” Last, “What were Beethoven’s religious tendencies?”
Emmert replied that Beethoven had been “educated a Catholic . . . but religious subjects and
observances caused him very little trouble.” Homan concluded by observing how much pleasure
Dr. Emmert derived from having “conversed and eaten at the same table with the greatest of all
196
musicians––Ludwig van Beethoven.”100 Perhaps Homan meant written communication? Seven
of Beethoven’s works were performed at the 1884 May Festival, including Ah, Perfido!, scene
and aria for soprano and orchestra; Leonore Overtures, nos. 2 and 3; “Twine ye the garlands,”
march and chorus from The Ruins of Athens; minuet and finale from the third Razumovsky
Richard Wagner’s works were represented at every May Festival in Cincinnati during the
Visitor’s run.101 With one exception, transcriptions of his works for keyboard were reprinted in
the Visitor. Interest in his operas/music dramas was exhibited in various ways, such as debates
over the virtues of his works versus Italian opera, accounts of performances, his libretti, and his
letters. Some of the accounts are humorous. When the Visitor mentions his second wife, Cosima,
An unsigned article on Lohengrin in 1874 was pro-German and anti-Italian. Wagner had
been accused by opponents of writing music that was too advanced. Those who sought melodic
forms or memorable tunes would, according to the author, have to look to the Italian lyric drama.
But in Wagner they would find “an eloquently grand dramatic poem, eloquently painted in
musical language” that may require more than one hearing before the listener falls under the
spell of the “music of the future.”102 A subsequent article a few months later heralded his
100
“A Cincinnatian’s Reminiscence of Beethoven,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 4 (April 1884): 91. It was
announced in January 1885 that Dr. Frederic Louis Emmert, whose reminiscences of Beethoven had appeared in the
April 1884 Visitor, had died at the age of seventy-seven. “He came to America in 1840 and has been a resident of
Cincinnati since that time. He was perhaps the only man in this country who could boast of an intimate personal
acquaintance with Beethoven, and had a fund of anecdotes about the great musician.” “City Notes,” The Musical
Visitor 14, no. 1 (January 1885): 12. This account seems highly unlikely. According to Maynard Solomon, by 1822
Beethoven was considered “not merely deaf, but a misanthrope, a recluse, and mentally unbalanced.” Maynard
Solomon, Beethoven, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Schirmer Books, 1998), 331. For accounts of “quest narratives” of
people who visited Beethoven, see K. M. Knittel, “Pilgrimages to Beethoven: Reminiscences by His
Contemporaries,” in Music and Letters 84, no. 1 (February 2003): 19–54.
101
“Wagner’s Funeral,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 3 (March 1883): 71. A cablegram from Bayreuth dated
February 18 gave an account of the funeral.
102
“Lohengrin,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 7 (April 1874): 5. It was reported in 1893 that Louis
Barwolf of Brussels had just completed a mass with themes taken from Lohengrin. He substituted religious texts for
197
dramatic theories and claimed that his ideas were tied to progress.103 In the same issue, editor
C. A. Daniell discussed The Flying Dutchman.104 Daniell considered the discussion of the merits
of Wagner’s works and theories “the most important musical event of the age.”105
In 1882 Louis C. Elson reviewed works by Wagner and Brahms that the Boston
Parsifal. According to Elson, Brahms combines “the intellectual with the emotional in the
highest degrees, and he doesn’t think it necessary to bolster up his music with any theories or
dogmas whatever.” Elson wanted to “test the effect of Wagner” with an “unprepared mind,
without a guide-book,” and went to the concert “in ignorance of what the meaning of the prelude
was. I came away in precisely the same state.” It was “repeated later in the program, in order that
the work might be more thoroughly understood. Alas for the vanity of human hopes!”106
A book review recommended Richard Wagner’s Poem, The Ring of the Nibelung, by
George T. Dippold, published by Henry Holt and Company in New York City. The reviewer
claimed that it is “a very complete account of ancient Teutonic gods and goddesses, giants,
dwarfs, water-sprites, norns, Valkyries, traditions of the Nibelung Myth, etc., etc.” Anyone
interested in the “music of the future” cannot afford to be without this book.107
those of the drama. “It is thus that a fragment of the melody of the Holy Grail has become the Kyrie” (according to
Le Mènestrel). “Notes and Gossip,” The Musical Visitor 22, no. 10 (October 1893): 266.
103
“Richard Wagner and the Tone-Language,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 10 (July 1874): 8.
104
D. C. A. [Charles A. Daniell], “The Flying Dutchman,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 10 (July 1874):
5. Both Wagner and Daniell were poll winners.
105
“Editor’s Notes and Reviews,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 10 (July 1874): 10.
106
Proteus [Louis C. Elson], “Correspondence: Boston, Nov. 15,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 15
(December 1882): 412–13. Elson does not specify which Serenade was performed.
107
“Books and Magazines,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 7 (July 1888): 179.
198
Wagner’s Ring Cycle in Berlin.108 After the audience had been seated, a trumpeter, behind the
curtain, had announced the beginning of the performance, at which time Wagner’s family, then
Wagner, had entered their box in the dress circle. This had been the signal for a fanfare from the
orchestra, conducted by Anton Seidl, and loud calls of “Wagner! Wagner!” from his enthusiasts,
to which he had “responded by coming to the front of the box and bowing toward all quarters of
the audience.” Bowman opined: “It is not necessary to be a Wagner enthusiast to be willing to
join in the ‘Bravo! Bravo! Wagner hoch! Wagner hoch!’ as we did” at the end of each night, or
“to uncover our heads and shout again ‘Wagner hoch!’ as he drove off the last night” with his
carriage filled with laurel wreaths and flowers. Bowman cautioned, however, that not everyone
had been “so excited” by Wagner’s music. He recalled an incident of two men who had been
sitting side by side in the galleries. One man had “shouted himself hoarse and blistered his hands
in his demonstration of approval, while the other had sat through act after act with stolid
indifference or sullen disapproval.” Finally the latter had lost patience and blurted out, “What in
the world do you applaud so for? . . . What would you do if you only heard Mozart? Why, man,
As to the music, Bowman pointed out differences between opera and music drama: the
orchestral preludes are short, no “hodge-podge overture of the principal themes, but rather a
prelude suited to place the audience in the peculiar Stimmung or frame of mind” to follow the
story. Bowman considered this an improvement over “the old school.” He was impressed by the
voice parts, which did not fall into a developed rhythm; there was little or no repetition of words
in the Ring. The orchestra did not simply accompany the voices, rather, the voices become part
of the orchestra. The orchestra illustrates the text, and voices and instruments move on “in one
108
John Church and Company published and advertised Bowman’s Harmony: A Treatise of Historic Points
and Modern Methods of Instruction, calling it “a scholarly essay . . . of interest to all music students and amateurs.”
Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 12 (September 1881): 343. The Visitor announced that the London Royal College
of Organists had conferred the title of A.C.O. upon Mr. E. M. Bowman; reprinted from the Weekly Register. “Music
and Musicians,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 1 (October 1881): 12.
199
richly varied whole.” The Leit-motiven “typify the different characteristics or features of the
opera,” either in their original form or through transformations. According to Bowman, this
allows one to “almost follow the story without understanding the words of the libretto.”109
Some of the reactions to Wagner’s works published in the Visitor were humorous. An
1882 account claimed that the Wagner opera season in London had not been well received, partly
because “no local talent whatever was employed”; the scenery and costumes had been brought
from Bayreuth and left much to be desired. The staging had been comical: “the scene of the
Rhinedaughters in the fish tank, was tolerably well managed.” The dragon split his sides and
proved to be stuffed with straw. “Brünnhilde’s horse . . . was not comfortable at all, and was
immensely enjoyed by the audience, but scarcely so by Woton’s [sic] warrior daughter.”
Complaint was also made that “Herr Naumann [Angelo Neumann] has pulled his wires well. We
were promised Wagner ‘to conduct,’ and we have never even seen the tip of his nose.” It was
“generally conceded that a large portion of the . . . Ring . . . may be missed with profit to those
attending.” Only about half of the music heard during the four evenings was “really
interesting.”110 The Visitor noted: “The letter of congratulations upon the success attending the
Wagner cycle in London received by Herr Neumann from Richard Wagner covered three pages,
and was all in one sentence.”111 An 1883 account of Tannhäuser at Covent Garden had included
two animal supernumeraries. On hearing the beginning of the goatherd’s song [“Frau Holda kam
aus dem Berg hervor”], they had begun to bleat. Mlle Cottino had set them free. One had made
“a hasty and undignified exit” while the other had delivered a “ludicrous solo” at the footlights,
109
E. M. Bowman, “Wagner’s Trilogy,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 1 (October 1881): 7; “Bowman,
E. M.” in Brainard’s Biographies of America Musicians, ed. Bomberger, 43–44.
110
“Wagner Opera Season in London,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 10 (July 1882): 272.
111
“Notes from Abroad,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 10 (July 1882): 267.
200
“as unmelodious as the most ardent admirer of the music of the future could hope to hear.”112
Wagner’s reception in Paris had been guarded after the Franco-Prussian War. Parisian
audiences habitually disliked Wagner’s music. However, the Visitor reported that they had
adored the “Ride of the Valkyries,” which M. [Edouard] Colonne, director of the Châtelet
Concerts, had introduced in a recent program. The piece had to be repeated at the next concert.113
His Lohengrin was to be given its first performance in Paris on February 1, 1882, at the Théâtre
des Nations and would be presented in Italian. The owner of the house was “demanding security
from the manager against any damages that may be done to his property. Evidently he anticipates
an anti-Wagner riot.”114 Ten years later the Visitor reprinted from the Sunday Times an account
of a staging mishap at the Paris Opéra during a performance of Die Walküre. The steampipe used
for the fire scene had loudly burst, followed by a deafening hiss of steam. Brünnhilde, Mlle
Bréval, had rushed off the stage and Wotan, M. Fournets, had “jumped into the orchestra on top
of the musicians.” The audience had headed for the doors, but one of the managers had been able
In 1888 the Visitor reported that Francis Hueffer was translating Wagner’s letters into
English. According to a letter to Liszt written in 1855, Wagner had praised Queen Victoria and
Prince Albert for their courage in speaking up for him, known at the time as “a political outcast
accused of high treason, and with the police at his heels.” Wagner had been grateful for their
112
“A Goat Solo in ‘Tannhäuser,’” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 6 (June 1883): 149. According to Harold
Rosenthal, Tannhäuser was performed at Covent Garden on May 23, 1882. Harold Rosenthal, Two Centuries of
Opera at Covent Garden (London, UK: Putnam, 1958), 206. I have been unable to identify Mlle Cottino.
113
“Foreign Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 7 (April 1881): 189. No dates were provided for the
concerts.
114
“Foreign Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 5 (February 1882): 133.
115
The Musical Visitor 22, no. 11 (November 1893): 293.
116
“English Notes: Wagner’s Opinion of the Queen,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 5 (May 1888): 125.
201
1888.117 The Visitor quoted the Musical Standard regarding the publication of Wagner’s
correspondence by Breitkopf and Härtel. Volume One would not contain explanatory notes or an
index because Mme Wagner had forbidden them.118 Reportedly a letter written by Wagner in
April 1862 regarding the Parisian reception of Tannhäuser had recently been sold at the Hotel
Drouet. The letter did not exhibit “those rancorous feelings” against the Parisian public which he
Editor James Murray had previously commented on the Chicago audiences for Thomas’s
“Wagner night” summer concerts. He noted that there had seemed to be a relationship between
On Wagner nights we sell five times the amount of beer sold on any other night, and the
number of pretzels and seed cakes consumed is enormous. On Mendelssohn nights there
is a notable falling off in the demand for ham sandwiches. I make a profit of 85 percent
on every ham sandwich I sell. This man Mendelssohn does not strike me as being very
much of a musician, anyway. Strauss is the best friend I find in my business, for he
creates a demand for wine. There’s nothing like a Strauss waltz to make a man feel rich,
and to reconcile a woman to the utmost limit of human vanity.120
The restaurateur referenced Mendelssohn’s Jewish heritage, which evidently cut into his profits.
future of the opera” held before the Nineteenth Century Club of New York “as to whether the
mission of music was merely to give pleasure,” Murray defended Wagner’s music as
corresponding to the situation. Even if one does not like the character or passion being depicted,
he should “accept the situation and applaud the good intention of the composer.”121 In the same
117
“Wagner’s Struggles,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 11 (November 1888): 283.
118
The Musical Visitor 18, no. 3 (March 1889): 64.
119
The Musical Visitor 18, no. 4 (April 1889): 96.
120
The Musical Visitor 14, no. 11 (November 1885): 290. Joseph Horowitz mentions that beer and
refreshments were served at Thomas’s New York’s Central Park Garden summer concerts beginning in 1868; the
first “Wagner night” at Central Park Garden was held September 19, 1871. Joseph Horowitz, Wagner Nights: An
American History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 57–58.
121
“The Mission of Music,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 4 (April 1889): 93.
202
issue, the Visitor included a summary of a discussion held in the assembly rooms of the
Metropolitan Opera House on March 13, 1889. Participants had included W. J. Henderson,
Professor Luigi Monti, and H. E. Krehbiel. Henderson had taken a middle ground approach to
“the question now agitating the musical world.” He approved of Wagner’s theories but
questioned them in practice. Henderson had prophesied a fusion of Wagnerism and Italian forms
of opera. Professor Monti had championed Italian opera and had accused Wagner of “spoiling
the human voice.” Monti had cited Bellini’s Norma as an example of uniting the dramatic and
the melodious. According to Monti, Wagner’s operas could be “improved by the elision of all the
vocal parts, and the substitution of pantomimic action to the accompaniment of Wagner’s
splendid orchestration.” Mr. Krehbiel had defended the New German School even though he was
“not an extreme Wagnerian.” He did not subscribe to the theory that “mere beauty” constitutes
the art of music since there is nothing more fleeting than the ideal of beauty. In response to
Monti, Krehbiel had stated that singers were adapting to Wagner’s works; the human voice was
not being spoiled. Italian opera no longer has a voice for the people of the nineteenth century and
“certainly not for a people Teutonic in their origin, like the Germans, the English and the
Americans.”122
In September 1892 H. E. Krehbiel predicted in the New York Tribune that Bayreuth
would fail unless Cosima Wagner and her associates in the administration manifested “less greed
and more art feeling.”123 According to conductor Walter Damrosch, the 1891 Wagner Festival at
Bayreuth had been “a sad disappointment” for genuine music-lovers. Madame Wagner “has
some strange ideas,” which had made the Bayreuth performances inferior to those in other
places. The role of Elisabeth in Tannhäuser had been “attempted by an entirely untutored
amateur” who was not equal to the role. Madame believes that “the movements of the
122
“Discussing Wagner and His Operas: The Nineteenth Century Club Listens to the Opponents and Friends
of the Great Composer,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 4 (April 1889): 96.
123
The Musical Visitor 21, no. 9 (September 1892): 249.
203
performance should be made in time to the music and with its rhythm.” This had given the acting
a mechanical effect. There had been “much dissatisfaction among the pilgrims at Bayreuth,”
which Krehbiel felt had been justified.124 It was subsequently reported that Cosima had
instituted stiff rules at rehearsals, which had resulted in the withdrawal of a prima donna.125 As
early as 1876 it had been noted that “Richard Wagner’s wife, the late Mrs. Von Bülow, has
already made many enemies for the great composer by her overbearing manners.”126 It was
reported in 1893 that she had postponed the Wagner Festival at Bayreuth, fearing that the
The Visitor also questioned Wagner’s sense of morality: “Wagner was certainly a great
musician, but his ideas of morality, if we may judge by the plots of some of his operas, were
such as would bring a blush to the cheek of Leadville, Col.”128 Murray called Wagner “an
inveterate beggar” who was “always importuning Liszt for money in most cringing, and
sometimes most insulting, ways.” Murray quoted from one of his letters to Liszt asking him to
give a benefit concert for an artist in distress” and above all, to send money soon.129
The Damrosch Opera Company presented five of Wagner’s works (Die Walküre,
Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, Die Meistersinger, and Tristan und Isolde) beginning on November 12,
1895, at the Walnut Street Theater in Cincinnati. The general impression was “one of much
124
The Musical Visitor 20, no. 9 (September 1891): 232.
125
“Eccentric Cosima,” The Musical Visitor 22, no. 4 (April 1893): 100.
126
Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 5 (February 1876): 123. Not only was she overbearing, she was also a
divorcée.
127
“Notes and Gossip,” The Musical Visitor 22, no. 6 (June 1893): 154. According to Frederic Spotts,
Cosima produced Wagner Festivals in 1891 and 1894. Frederic Spotts, Bayreuth: A History of the Wagner Festival
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 110.
128
“Musical Hopper,” The Musical Visitor 19, no. 3 (March 1890): 68. This is likely a reference to Horace
Tabor, his Opera House, and his Matchless Mine in Leadville, Colorado. He abandoned his wife for an attractive
young opera singer, which became the subject of Douglas Moore’s 1956 opera The Ballad of Baby Doe. She sings a
lullaby, known as the “Leadville Liebestod,” to her dying husband.
129
The Musical Visitor 19, no. 12 (December 1890): 316.
204
satisfaction.” Likely it was Murray who considered it a week of “great strain, mentally and
physically, however much there is to admire in his wonderful works.” He believed that to make
Wagner’s works “wholly acceptable” the “long, dreary recitatives and dialogues must be
shortened.”130 The Visitor’s treatment of Wagner was even-handed. Both negative and positive
Chopin beginning in February 1878.131 Chopin’s letters to his friend Titus Woyciechowski,
written between 1828 and1831, were reprinted in the Visitor between October 1883 and March
1884.132 The Visitor’s October 1884 issue includes Maria Hyde’s translation of Henry Blaze de
Bury’s reminiscences of Chopin in the Revue des deux Mondes. Included among them are
Chopin’s first success in Paris, and his trip to Majorca with George Sand.133 Romantic
speculation on the cause of Chopin’s death surfaced in 1882. “Chopin . . . died at 39, but music
didn’t kill him. The god of love did that. He died of a broken heart––the victim of the
Pianist George Schneider performed Chopin’s works at his Cincinnati College Hall
recital on November 18, 1884. Likely it was editor James R. Murray who admitted: “We
never admired Chopin much until we heard Mr. Schneider interpret him.”135
Little is known about instrumental poll winner Henry Brinley Richards. According to
the Music Lovers’ Encyclopedia, he was born November 13, 1817, in Carmarthen, Wales, and
130
“The Damrosch Opera Company,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 12 (December 1895): 358.
131
Elise J. Allen, “Frederic Chopin; His Life, Letters and Works by Moritz Karasowski,” Church’s Musical
Visitor 7, no. 5 (February 1878): 119–21.
132
“Chopin’s Letters: Eight Letters to Titus Woyciechowski,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 10 (October
1883): 260–61.
133
“Frederic Chopin,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 10 (October 1884): 260.
134
“Does Music Shorten Life?,” The Musical Visitor 11, no. 5 (February 1882): 130.
135
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 12 (December 1884): 322.
205
died in London on May 1, 1885. He was a popular composer and pianist.
In 1871 the Visitor credited Brinley Richards and Sterndale Bennett with discovering “a
young composer of promise,” Joseph Parry, who had worked in an iron foundry in the United
States and had composed a competitive chorus for the Eisteddfod at Swansea. Parry entered the
Royal Academy of Music and received a musical degree from the University of Cambridge. He
was reportedly returning to the United States to pursue his career.136 The Visitor did not publish
The only woman in the Visitor’s list of winners, Mrs. Clara H. Scott, was praised in 1874
for her “beautiful contributions” to H. R. Palmer’s Songs of Love.137 Four of her piano works had
been published in the Visitor prior to the poll. Her works had also been published by Root and
Cady. Mrs. Scott served as a correspondent to the Visitor from Clinton, Iowa. In 1875 she
reported on the annual festival of the Mendelssohn Society held in Elgin, Illinois.138 The
following year the Visitor reported that Mrs. Scott had been engaged as conductor of the Clinton
Musical Association, and “A better selection could not have been made.” The report went on to
Mrs. Scott is not only a musician of rare ability, but a composer of uncommon excellence
and versatility. Those who are familiar with the pages of “Songs of Love” have enjoyed
the singing of her Sabbath-school songs, and those who are familiar with recent church
music-books have been delighted with her anthems. She is also the writer of some
excellent and popular songs, and young players on the piano will thank her for her “Four-
leaved Clover,” recently published. . . . Mrs. Scott has opened a “School of Music” at
Clinton, and is already doing capital work.139
The Visitor reported in 1882 that Scott, “a musician of fine attainments, a successful
136
“Our Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 3 (December 1871): 9; Peter Crossley-Holland
and Nicholas Temperley, “Parry, Joseph,” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., ed. Stanley
Sadie (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 19:159.
137
“The Normal Music Schools,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 12 (September 1874): 6.
138
“Correspondence: Musical Festival at Elgin, Illinois,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 3 (December
1875): 63.
139
“Musical Items in Iowa,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 11 (August 1876): 291. The Visitor reprinted
the four piano works in the collection in November and December 1875, and February and July 1876.
206
teacher and composer,” had joined its “reportorial staff” from Minneapolis, Minnesota.140 A
letter to the editor from Scott in December 1882 concerned preparations for an upcoming May
Festival to be held there and directed by Theodore Thomas. She ended by warning Cincinnati to
“look well to your laurels, for when this great North-west speaks, she means ‘business.”141 In
February 1883 the Visitor reported that Minneapolis had been suffering from an epidemic,
causing opera, concert, and other troupes “to give it a wide berth.” Its correspondent had not
sent any “advices.”142
music to the Visitor. Many of them are of unknown origin and contributed one or two
compositions (see Appendix B).143 For the most part, they contributed vocal works, and some
Carrie B. (née Wilson) Adams was born in Oxford, Ohio, in 1859 and died in
Portland, Oregon, in 1940. In 1897 the Visitor noted that Adams had directed the Treble Clef
Club in Terre Haute, Indiana, which consisted of seventy-five women. The Club was in its fifth
season and would give its usual Fall Concert. Mrs. Adams was also organist and choir director of
140
“Personal Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 7 (April 1882): 185.
141
C[lara] H. S[cott], “Minneapolis, Dec. 18, 1882,” Church’s Musical Visitor 12, no. 1 (January 1883): 14.
Mrs. Scott did not follow up with a report. Apparently the Festival took place as part of Thomas’s Festival Tour of
1883 of twelve cities, from Memphis to Minneapolis and from Baltimore to San Francisco. The Locke brothers of
California were in charge of arrangements; they turned to Frank King for help as business manager and to his wife,
Julie Rivé-King, as the tour soloist. The tour began April 26 and ended on July 7. The largest choir of the tour was
the Mormon Choir of Salt Lake City with 3,000 voices and the smallest was the Minneapolis choir of 380. Ezra
Schabas, Theodore Thomas: America’s Conductor and Builder of Orchestras, 1835–1905 (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1989), 125–26. Rivé-King performed at six concerts in Minneapolis and St. Paul between May 28
and May 31, 1883. M. Leslie Petteys, “Julie Rivé-King, American Pianist” (DMA thesis, University of Missouri-
Kansas City, 1987), 67, 69–70, 376.
142
“Musical Notes,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 2 (February 1883): 41.
143
For information on Johanna Kinkel, Loïsa Puget, and Constance Faunt Le Roy Runcie, see The
Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers, ed. Julie Anne Sadie and Rhian Samuel (New York: W. W. Norton
and Company, 1995), 249–50, 378–79, 397.
207
the First Congregational Church in Terre Haute. The Church Quartet had presented a ballad
concert under her direction, which was “received with marked favor.”144 The Visitor had
previously reported that the Club had studied Henry Thomas Smart’s cantata King René’s
Daughter “and other minor works” under Allyn Adams, who had also directed a similar club in
Paris, Illinois. The two clubs united in May 1896 for a concert in Illinois and were engaged “for
an evening during the I.M.T.A. in June,” forming a chorus of sixty to seventy voices.145 Adams
served as the associate editor for the Choir Music Journal in Logansport, Indiana, from 1891 to
1900, and edited church music for The Musical Mirror in Lafayette, Indiana, from 1898 to
1901.146 John Church published and advertised her operetta, The National Flower, in July 1893.
At that time the Visitor noted that she was with the Department of Music, Indiana State Normal
School.147 The Etude published one of her vocal works, “Honey Chile,” in November 1910.148
James Murray referred to Emma Louise (née Hindle) Ashford as “a prominent musician”
of Nashville, “a composer of real merit, whose compositions have often appeared in the Visitor,”
and the organist at one of the city’s largest churches. She was scheduled to take a trip in 1894 to
England and the Continent for study and pleasure.149 Ashford reported from Stockport, England,
that she had met J. S. Curwen of “Tonic Sol-Fa fame” and had heard results of his work at the
Fleet Road School, a public school in London. She was favorably impressed with the results of
144
“Current Notes: General,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 12 (December 1897): 333.
145
“Concerts and Conventions,” The Musical Visitor 25, no. 6 (June 1896): 175.
146
Davison, “American Music Periodicals, 1853–1899,” 219, 532, 602.
147
“The National Flower,” The Musical Visitor 22, no. 7 (July 1893): i. For more information on Mrs.
Adams, see Osburn, Ohio Composers and Musical Authors, 369–71, and Hall, Biography of Gospel Song and Hymn
Writers, 15.
148
Bomberger, An Index to Music Published in The Etude Magazine, 1883–1907, 61.
149
“Here and There,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 4 (April 1894): 96.
208
the system.150 Ashford had been born in Delaware and received her first music instruction from
her father; her mother reportedly had “a beautiful soprano voice.” She had sung “even before she
could speak plainly” and studied piano, organ, and guitar. After marriage she had moved to
Chicago where she sang alto in the quartet of St. James Church during Dudley Buck’s tenure as
director and organist. She and her husband had subsequently moved to Nashville, where they
“had charge of the music in a Presbyterian Church and the Jewish Temple simultaneously.”
Ashford studied “advanced harmony, counterpoint, canon and fugue” with Dr. R. H. Peters and
other teachers.151 Her secular works were printed in The Etude152 while her works in the Visitor
were sacred, including such works as “I Will Praise Thee” and “He Leadeth Me.”
The Visitor considered Hannah Atkins one of Cincinnati’s creative musical talents, who
Cincinnati Directory, she resided on Symmes Avenue, Riverside, Cincinnati, in 1878. The
The Visitor published a gospel song by Lucy Young Bliss, wife of Philip P. Bliss, in
December 1872. It came from her husband’s collection of Sunday School songs, The Charm,
published by John Church and Company. Both she and her husband were born in Pennsylvania.
According to J. H. Hall, “Mrs. Bliss was his constant companion, and greatly assisted him in his
work.”154
150
“A Visitor Friend in England,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 10 (October 1894): 264–65. Congregational
minister John Curwen developed a system of musical notation and sight singing in the mid-nineteenth century based
on Guidonian solmization. Curwen’s failure to integrate his system with staff notation led to tonic sol-fa falling into
disrepute. Bernarr Rainbow, “Tonic Sol-fa,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., ed.
Stanley Sadie (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 25:603–7.
151
Hall, Biography of Gospel Song and Hymn Writers, 289–92.
152
Bomberger, An Index to Music Published in The Etude Magazine, 1883–1957, 281.
153
“The Musical Month in Cincinnati,” Church’s Musical Visitor 7, no. 4 (January 1878): 100.
154
Hall, Biography of Gospel Song and Hymn Writers, 181.
209
(née Schneeweiss) Joachim in April 1897. She had been born in Marburg, Styria, in 1839 and
died in Berlin in 1899. She had married violinist Joseph Joachim in 1863. The Music Lovers’
Encyclopedia describes her as an “eminent concert and operatic soprano; then contralto and
teacher.” Joachim was reputedly “among the first to sing complete cycles.” Clara Schumann
appeared on her recital programs as accompanist.155 The Visitor announced in March 1892 that
“Frau Amalie Joachim is going to make a concert tour through the United States, when the gifted
singer proposes to repeat the highly interesting interpretations illustrative of the development of
the German Lied, which have attracted so much attention in German concert-rooms.”156
Fanny Morris Spencer studied piano with Alexander Lambert, and organ and composition
with Samuel P. Warren in New York City. She served as organist at various churches and held
positions in professional associations. She taught at Miss Spence’s School for Girls in New York
City, and the Holbrook Military Academy and Miss Fuller’s School for Girls, both in Ossining,
New York. Spencer was a founding member of the American Guild of Organists in 1896
and a charter member of the Manuscript Society. Her works were published by such firms as
Schirmer, Novello, Ewer and Company, James H. Rogers, and Phelps Music Company. Spencer
was considered one of the leading organists in the country.157 She was referred to as a “hymn
composer” in Elson’s History of American Music.158 The Visitor reprinted her “Tell the Story” in
February 1894.
155
“Joachim, Amalie,” in Karin Pendle and Melinda Boyd, Women in Music: A Research and Information
Guide, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2010), 574.
156
“Foreign Notes,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 3 (March 1892): 67. I found no record of Amalie Joachim
appearing in Cincinnati.
157
William Howard Benjamin, Biographies of Celebrated Organists of America (Albany, NY: Benjamin
Publishing Company, 1908): 130–31. Spencer’s photograph appears on page 130. The Visitor mentioned the
founding of the group and its prospectus. Dudley Buck was honorary president. “The American Guild of
Organists,” The Musical Visitor 25, no. 7 (July 1896): 182.
158
Louis Charles Elson, The History of American Music, rev. ed., ed. Arthur Elson (New York: Macmillan,
1925), 398. Five of Spencer’s songs were performed during a series of Public Meetings of the Manuscript Society
of New York, 1890–1901. E. Douglas Bomberger, “A Tidal Wave of Encouragement”: American Composers’
Concerts in the Gilded Age (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), 203, 212.
210
Elizabeth Stirling was a renowned English organist and composer. She studied piano and
organ with William B. Wilson and Edward Holmes, and music theory with James Alexander
Hamilton and George A. Macfarren. Stirling was elected organist in 1839 at All Saints’, Poplar;
in 1858 she competed for and won the post of organist at St. Andrew Undershaft. She married
organist, lecturer, and conductor Frederick A. Bridge in 1863.159 One of her choral works,
The only information available for Nettie Vernon is that she was from Clinton,
Wisconsin, according to a note on the music, to her “Jesus Loves Me,” published in The Visitor
in April 1875.160
The coverage of women composers in the Visitor was uneven. It is difficult to say why
some women were noticed in the Visitor and others were not. Hannah Atkins lived in
Cincinnati and that may help to account for her inclusion. Scott also served as a
correspondent to the Visitor. Attention was primarily focused on female instrumentalists and
A number of composers living in Cincinnati were also active as teachers, organists, choir
directors, and writers. The Visitor provided ample coverage of “home town” musicians.
The Ohio Music Teachers’ Association held its annual meeting in Cincinnati in 1891.
Members were invited to an afternoon of sight-seeing as well as a ride and refreshments on the
Ohio River via the chartered steamer Bostona, compliments of the John Church Company.
159
Judith Barger, Elizabeth Stirling and the Musical Life of Female Organists in Nineteenth-century
England (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), 70, 101, 111–12.
160
Nettie Vernon, “Jesus Loves Me,” Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 7 (April 1875): 23.
211
Herman Bellstedt provided the music.161 At the same time it was announced that Bellstedt had
been prevailed upon to publish “his celebrated Indian War Dance.” Noted Cincinnati artist Henry
Farny created a design for the title page; the work was published by Church for solo piano
and for full orchestra.162 The following month the Visitor mentioned that the work “has caused
Andrew J. Boex, born in Eindhoven, Holland, left Cincinnati for a summer visit to
Holland in 1891.164 Boex was the organist at St. Xavier’s Church where he led a recent musical
program; his wife was a soprano soloist.165 The June 1891 Visitor shed more light on Boex. His
Press Gavotte had been performed at the Burnett Woods concert on May 21; he was now in
charge of the Enquirer’s music department following J. A. Homan’s resignation. “Our dailies are
moving in the right direction, in selecting capable musical men for such positions.”166 His
advertisement as a teacher of music mentioned that he was also Director of the St. Caecilia
Mænnerchor.167 He organized a boy’s choir of 120 members at St. Xavier’s College; editor
161
“The Ohio Music Teachers’ Meeting,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 8 (August 1891): 206. Bellstedt
moved to Cincinnati in 1872. He was a prodigy cornetist by age fifteen. From 1889 to 1891 Bellstedt had been a
soloist with Patrick Gilmore’s band; from 1904 to 1906 he was a soloist with John Philip Sousa’s band. Raoul F.
Camus, “Bellstedt, Herman” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi Garrett (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 1:422–23.
162
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 8 (August 1891): 205. Artist Henry F. Farny was active in
Cincinnati in the 1890s. Robert C. Vitz, The Queen and the Arts: Cultural Life in Nineteenth-century Cincinnati
(Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1989), 179, 236. The Visitor reported that Mr. Farny had just returned from
a trip to the Sioux Indians in December 1881. He brought back with him, among other things, several musical
instruments. Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 3 (December 1881): 74.
163
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 9 (September 1891): 233.
164
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 8 (August 1891): 205.
165
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 16, no. 1 (January 1887): 9.
166
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 6 (June 1891): 150.
167
“Professional Cards,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 6 (June 1891): ii.
212
James R. Murray advised Boex to “look out for wrinkles and gray hairs.”168 Boex’s Cincinnati
Light Infantry March was performed for Governor-elect McKinley’s inauguration in 1892.169
Boex’s advertisement under “Professional Cards” in April 1893 added, “Revision and correction
of Authors Manuscripts, and Musical settings to Poems a specialty.”170 The Visitor published his
In 1889 Signor H. B. Fabiani was welcomed as “a teacher and composer of note,” who
had moved to Cincinnati. He was in charge of music at the Wesleyan College and would also
“preside at one of the large organs of the city.” The same column noted that the pupils’ recital at
the college on January 25 was of a “high order.”171 Fabiani recalled for the Visitor Rossini’s last
years in Paris; Parisians preferred Rossini’s William Tell because “it was written among them,
for them, and in their language.”172 The Visitor reported in June 1890 that Fabiani had moved to
Malade imaginaire and Lully’s march for the Procession des Apothecaires, which are
performed every year at the Théâtre Français on January 15, Molière’s birthday. The Visitor
reprinted Lully’s “March,” to be repeated ad libitum, in the January 1891 issue and repeated it in
February, with the claim that it had “never before been printed in America.”174
168
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 1 (November 1891): 289. The Visitor reported that Boex’s
overcoat had been stolen while he was “playing a mass at St. Xavier’s one morning” recently. If the thief so desires,
he can “attend the Bellstedt concert on the 21st, as there were five dollars worth of tickets for it in one of the
pockets.” “City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 2 (February 1892): 38.
169
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 1 (January 1892): 9. McKinley was Ohio’s governor from
1892 to 1896. He served with the Twenty-third Ohio Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War, rising from private to
brevet major in March 1865; his commander was Rutherford B. Hayes. William A. DeGregorio, The Complete Book
of U.S. Presidents, 3rd ed. (New York: Barricade Books, 1991), 358.
170
“Professional Cards,” The Musical Visitor 22, no. 4 (April 1893): ii.
171
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 2 (February 1889): 37.
172
“Rossinian Reminiscences,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 3 (March 1889): 61–62.
173
“Concerts and Conventions,” The Musical Visitor 19, no. 6 (June 1890): 149.
174
H. B. Fabiani, “Molière,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 2 (February 1891): 34.
213
J. Winchell Forbes of Cincinnati composed an opera on Irish history, which he
titled Robert Emmett. The Coleman Opera Company was slated to rehearse it in early
September 1888. Mr. Coleman and others had examined the opera and spoke of it “in warm
words of commendation.”175 Between January and March of 1885, Forbes wrote a series of
articles on “What Will Be the Classic Music of the Future?” Forbes admitted that he did not
know what it would be, but he did not consider the music of the future, “the erratic flights of
Wagner and Berlioz,” to be an advancement in art. Forbes also contributed short stories, some in
dialect.
In September 1880 the Visitor announced that opera impresario Max Maretzek would
arrive in Cincinnati the end of the month to head the opera department at the College of
Music.176 Maretzek, “the latest important acquisition to our ranks of resident musicians,” arrived.
His duties included “vocal culture and deportment.”177 Madame Maretzek was also added
“to the long list of teachers” at the College of Music. She would teach stage deportment in the
opera classes and also give lessons on the harp.178 The same column included a story about
Maretzek told by Jerome Hopkins; therefore, it “must be true.” When Maretzek had been
surrounded by creditors some years ago, “a poor young man paid him forty dollars for singing
lessons. But after half a quarter was up, Maretzek frankly assured his pupil that he would never
make a singer,” and he gave the forty dollars back. The editor added: “Such instances are
175
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 8 (August 1888): 206. I can find no evidence that the work was
performed.
176
“Home Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 12 (September 1880): 330.
177
“Home Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 1 (October 1880): 12.
178
“Home Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 3 (December 1880): 72. According to Ruth Henderson,
Maretzek succeeded Theodore Thomas as musical director of the College of Music in September 1880, but resigned
in March 1882 after a dispute with College president Col. George Ward Nichols, who was also owner of a local
pork-packing business. Thomas had resigned under similar circumstances. Mme Maretzek and their son also taught
at the College. Max Maretzek, Further Revelations of an Opera Manager in 19th Century America: The Third Book
of Memoirs by Max Maretzek, edited and annotated by Ruth Henderson, Detroit Monographs in Musicology/Studies
in Music, no. 48 (Sterling Heights, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2006), 104–5.
214
altogether too rare among our best music teachers.”179 A correspondent from Baltimore related
that Maretzek and his orchestra had been popular there. He had given summer concerts at the
Academy of Music. “He has done his best to give us music that pleases and he has succeeded. It
is useless to speak in his praise. You have stolen him from the East and know what he is.”180
The Baltimore correspondent also referred to the performers, among them a cornetist,
Miss Anna Teresa Berger. The playing of the solo cornetist “is not what her friends claim––
superior to that of Levy and Arbuckle. Yet it must be acknowledged that she is a fine performer,
and for a lady, first class. Her tone is pure, and her double tonguing fine; but she should not use
the latter where the composer has marked triple tonguing.”181 The following month the Visitor
praised Berger for her appearances at Maretzek’s series of summer concerts at the Highland
House: “[S]he is already well known to the musical world as a successful performer . . . the
talented cornetist will return to the Highland House September 12.”182 A report regarding
“Farewell” Symphony as “one of the interesting and effective pieces” performed during the
summer. Apparently he played a joke on the audience. The musicians leave one by one until “the
astonishment of the conductor is complete, and he too is about the leave the stage to seek an
explanation . . . when a musician returns and begins playing.” They return one by one until all
are in their places. This account is followed in the Visitor by a portion of Heribert Rau’s
179
“Home Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 3 (December 1880): 72.
180
“Taking the Lead: The College of Music of Cincinnati,” Church’s Musical Visitor 8, no. 1 (October
1878): 8. This is similar to the response from Eastern cities when Theodore Thomas came to Cincinnati in 1878. The
Visitor quoted papers from Boston and New York on their loss and Cincinnati’s gain. The Boston Advertiser wrote,
“While we begrudge to Cincinnati her acquisition, we can not help congratulating her.” The New York Mail opined,
“The loss of Theodore Thomas to New York is the greatest musical calamity that has ever happened to the
metropolis.”
181
Columbus, “Baltimore,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 11 (August 1881): 302.
182
“Home Musical Record,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 12 (September 1881): 328.
215
biographical romance titled “Mozart.”183
Maretzek resigned from the College of Music in March 1882 “on account of difficulties
with the President [George Ward Nichols]. This makes the eighteenth withdrawal for the same
cause. Surely the fault can not all be on one side.” Editor James R. Murray raised the question:
“Is not this a matter worthy of investigation by the Trustees of the School?”184 The Visitor
183
“The Musicians’ Strike: A Story of Haydn’s Farewell Symphony,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 12
(September 1881): 320–21. According to The Oxford Companion to German Literature, 3rd ed., Heribert Rau, a
German clergyman, wrote a series of novels about poets and composers which he described as “kulturhistorische
Romane.” His three-volume Mozart, ein Kunstlerleben was published in 1858.
184
“Home Musical Record,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 7 (April 1882): 185. According to Henry
Krehbiel, who called on Maretzek at the Burnet House in Cincinnati before he left for New York, Maretzek had
sided with Theodore Thomas in the “split with the business management of the college because of charlatanry in its
business methods.” Henry Edward Krehbiel, Chapters of Opera, Being Historical and Critical Observations and
Records Concerning the Lyric Drama in New York from Its Earliest Days Down to the Present Time, with Over
Seventy Illustrations (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1908), 55–56. The conflict between musical director
Thomas and President Nichols and Thomas’s resignation from the College effective March 1880 deeply affected
Cincinnati’s musical community. “Animosities of the most bitter kind were enkindled. Trivialities were taken up
and harped upon by the friends of both sides with equal mendacity and each one hugged his prejudices close, as
though in fear that in an unguarded moment he might be made the victim of mediation.” It also led, for example, to
the resignation of faculty members B. W. Foley, George Schneider, and Arthur Mees in 1880; they subsequently
formed the Cincinnati Music School. Vincent A. Orlando, “An Historical Study of the Origin and Development of
the College of Music of Cincinnati” (EdD diss., University of Cincinnati, 1946), 57, 200. The Visitor reported that
the College’s 1881 opera festival had been a success, making $7,000 in profit for the school, but at the same time,
“the College of Music continues to be the scene of occasional jarrings and strife, as all institutions occupying a
quasi-public position . . . seem destined to be. The latest move, not suggestive of peace and harmony, was the
departure of Miss Emma Cranch” who resigned from the faculty. “Home Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 7
(April 1881): 187. According to Ezra Schabas, Maretzek resigned on March 10, 1882, for the same reason as
Thomas had two years earlier, “he could not get along with Nichols.” Schabas, Theodore Thomas, 113. According to
Michael Cahall, the reason for Maretzek’s departure was that “Nichols had interfered with Madame Maretzek’s
classes by switching a student from her tutelage to that of Otto Singer.” The opera department also charged Nichols
with “running the school for profit at the expense of its artistic advancement and claimed that there had been a
conspiracy to oust him from his contractual duties as chorus master of the May Festivals.” Michael Charles Cahall,
“Jewels in the Queen’s Crown: The Fine and Performing Arts in Cincinnati, Ohio, 1865–1919” (PhD diss.,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1991), 363–64, 366. Vincent Orlando does not mention Maretzek or his
wife among the College faculty, but does write that “a few who chafed at the drudgery of teaching had but a brief
career with the College.” Orlando, “An Historical Study,” 184. According to Frank E. Tunison “Nichols was known
to be domineering and a good hater. There is no desire to hold George Ward Nichols up to view as a perfect man.”
F. E. Tunison, Presto! From the Singing School to the May Musical Festival (Cincinnati: E. H. Beasley and
Company, 1888), 69, quoted in Orlando, “An Historical Study,” 42. By way of contrast, students at Clara Baur’s
Conservatory of Music, founded in 1867, were “assured of a well-supervised and even homelike atmosphere in
which to pursue their studies.” For decades, women outnumbered men at the Conservatory. “This congenial
atmosphere formed the background for the careers” of three Cincinnati musicians: Julie Rivé-King, Ethel Glenn
Hier, and Marguerite Melville Liszniewska. Karin Pendle, “Cincinnati’s Musical Heritage: Three Women Who
Succeeded,” Queen City Heritage 41, no. 4 (Winter 1883): 41–55. The College of Music and the Conservatory
merged in 1955 and became part of the University of Cincinnati in 1962. bruce d. mcclung, “Cincinnati,” in The
Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press,
2013), 2:273.
216
published Maretzek’s song “The Broken Rose” in March 1881.
The Visitor first advertised Carl Pallat, a teacher of piano and singing at 338
Vine Street, in December 1871.185 He spent the summer of 1872 in “his native city of
Wiesbaden,” where he assisted at the celebrated “subscription concerts.” The Visitor hoped that
he would make Cincinnati his permanent residence.186 He evidently did so since he was among
the faculty members of Clara Baur’s Conservatory who performed at a concert on February 18,
1873; Pallat performed Liszt’s “Rigoletto.”187 Pallat’s piano solo “with orchestral
March 7, 1874.188 The Visitor published his ballad “Gut’ Nacht, ihr Blumen,” with English and
W. T. Porter was the president of the St. Paul M.E. Church Choral Society and had
“again taken charge of the church organ” in 1878.189 Editor James Murray subsequently
described Porter as “a well-known lawyer-musician, of this city, whose church solos have gained
for him an enviable reputation as a composer.” He was also organist of the Mt. Auburn Baptist
Church.”190 In 1893 he was reported to be organist and choir director of Mt. Auburn Baptist
Church.191 The Visitor published several of his sacred works, including “Glory to the Lamb” and
“Baptismal Hymn.”
Otto Singer conducted Cincinnati’s May Festival chorus from 1873 to 1880. He was
185
Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 3 (December 1871): 22.
186
“Cincinnati Personals,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 3 (December 1872): 7.
187
“Home Amusements: Cincinnati Conservatory of Music,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 6 (March
1873): 9.
188
“Music of the Month in Cincinnati: The ‘Orpheus’ Concert,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 8 (May
1874): 10.
189
“Musical Matters in Cincinnati,” Church’s Musical Visitor 8, no. 2 (November 1878): 43.
190
The Musical Visitor 21, no. 10 (October 1892): 276.
191
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 22, no. 11 (November 1893): 294.
217
listed among the faculty of Clara Baur’s Conservatory in July 1874.192 A brief
biography appeared in the Visitor for the second May Festival in 1875.193 The May Festival
Association invited Liszt, one of Singer’s former teachers, to come to Cincinnati for the third
Festival in 1878. Liszt responded that he was “much too old” to make the journey and reported
that he spent his time between Pesth and Weimar, but sent his thanks to Theodore Thomas for
performing his works, which were “often much criticized and even scorned” elsewhere. The May
Festival performed Liszt’s Missa solemnis and his song Die Loreley that year.194 A portion of
Singer’s Festival Ode, commissioned for the dedication of Cincinnati’s new Music Hall in 1878,
appeared in the Visitor in March. The “Interludium” is for organ or two pianos. The Visitor
reprinted an analysis of the Ode from the Chicago Tribune in February 1878.195 The Visitor’s
report on the Festival included a critique of the Ode and summarized it as “a work deserving of a
longer life than it will probably enjoy, as such things are generally laid aside and forgotten soon
after the occasion for which they were written has passed. It contains so much that is good that
we dislike to think that it will be consigned to oblivion now that the great hall has been so well
‘dedicated.’”196
Singer had publicly criticized Theodore Thomas over the College of Music debacle,
siding with George Ward Nichols; Thomas dismissed Singer as chorus director of the May
192
“Our Music Schools: The Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, no. 87 West Seventh St., Miss Clara Baur,
Directress,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 10 (July 1874): 7.
193
Kate Field, “Otto Singer,” Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 9 (June 1875): 7. His biography in F. O.
Jones’s Handbook was reprinted in 1887. “Otto Singer,” The Musical Visitor 16, no. 8 (August 1887): 206–7.
194
“From Franz Liszt,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 9 (June 1874): 6.
195
“May Musical Festival: Otto Singer’s Ode,” Church’s Musical Visitor 7, no. 5 (February 1878): 124.
196
“The Third Cincinnati Musical Festival,” Church’s Musical Visitor 7, no. 9 (June 1878): 233–34.
218
Festival in 1880.197 “At the last concert of the [1880] May Festival,” Thomas introduced Michael
Brand to the chorus as “the musician who would do duty for him” during his trip to Europe. The
Visitor reported, “This action has created some feeling in musical circles, many believing that
Mr. Singer should be permitted to continue as chorus director, in which capacity he has done
such good work for all of the Festivals thus far.”198 The Cincinnati Enquirer also weighed in on
the situation:
Mr. Singer has done the hard work preliminary to all the Festivals held in this city. To
him was allotted the work, because he had the ability, even more than Thomas himself, of
training the choruses. The results of the chorus work are his crown of glory. . . . When
such critics as Carl Zerrahn, Mr. Hassard, Mr. Upton and dozens of others, celebrated and
known as great musicians, say, “This chorus is the best ever heard in America, and
perhaps never excelled in the world,” which they do say, they place a chaplet around the
brow of Mr. Otto Singer that will be fresh and green long after his kind and benevolent
face has ceased to smile upon pupil and friend, and that will bloom when his baton is laid
away never more to be taken up by the soft and gentle hand that has so often led the
Festival chorus through the masses of the glorious choruses of the great religious
composers of a century to two ago.199
Notice was given in 1882 that Singer’s cantata Landing of the Pilgrims would be
performed by the Philharmonic Society of Pittsburgh during the coming season.200 A letter from
Boston correspondent Louis Elson, dated March 19, 1888, reported that he had
It is a strange work, and shows the influence of both Liszt and Wagner; the latter in its
rich modulations, the former in its very peculiar shape, reminding of [sic] Liszt’s great
piano sonata. I admire the skill with which almost everything is evolved from the
introduction, and the two fine fugatos introduced in the later portions of the work; also
197
Robert C. Vitz, “Introduction,” Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Centennial Portraits (Cincinnati:
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, 1994), 13. According to Ezra Schabas, Singer said publicly that Thomas was
jealous of him, “thus leaving Thomas with no alternative but to dismiss him.” Schabas, Theodore Thomas, 102.
198
“Home Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 9 (June 1880): 246.
199
“The Climax of the Fourth May Festival: Otto Singer,” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 22, 1880, 8.
200
“Personals,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 14 (November 1882): 381.
219
the transformation of the motive into the chief theme of the Scherzo. I only hope our
public will appreciate the work, but that may be difficult upon a first hearing.201
The next month Elson reported: “Mr. Singer’s Symphonic Fantasie did not arouse the
public to enthusiasm; all the same, I think it a great work, and one that will gain by repeated
hearing. Its shape, however, with the four regular movements fused into one, is not one that is
Singer’s obituary appeared in the February 1894 Visitor. He had died at his home in New
York City on Wednesday, January 3. He had been ill for about a week but had not given up his
duties. On Tuesday evening he had “played Mozart’s Requiem” before going to bed, where he
was found dead the next morning. The Visitor noted that his arrival in Cincinnati eighteen years
earlier had “created something of a sensation, and one after another he became the director of the
principal choruses of the city,” including the Philharmonic Society, the Musikverein, and the
Grand Opera Festivals. He had been a professor in the College of Music for nearly fifteen years,
teaching theory and piano, and in the former, “he is said to have no superior on the continent.”
While at the College, Mr. Singer was “noted for his strictness, pains-taking, energy, cordialty
[sic], and promptitude, his learning in all that pertains to music being acknowledged.”203
Composers born in Europe who immigrated to the United States and remained for an
extended time, as well as those who were born here, will be considered below. As much as
Frederick Archer was born in England and died in Pittsburgh. The Visitor reported on his
201
Proteus [Louis C. Elson], “Music in Boston,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 4 (April 1888): 94.
202
Proteus [Louis C. Elson], “Music in Boston,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 5 (May 1888): 122.
203
“City Notes: Otto Singer,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 2 (February 1894): 39. A brief notice regarding
Otto Singer, Jr., appeared in July 1897. He was formerly of Cincinnati and had been living in Germany for several
years. He was now in a “fix”; he had to serve two years in the army or leave the country. “City Notes,” The Musical
Visitor 26, no. 7 (July 1897): 192.
220
series of lecture-recitals in Cincinnati in June 1881204 and followed that up with a brief
biography. His “Organ Method” had been universally adopted in England; unusually long fingers
allowed him to play on two or three manuals simultaneously with the same hand. In 1881 Archer
was the organist at Henry Ward Beecher’s church in Brooklyn, New York. President Nichols of
the College of Music had apparently hired him for another series of recitals in Cincinnati the
coming fall.205 In April 1894 it was reported that Archer, “the well-known organist of Chicago,”
would direct the chorus for a musical jubilee to be held in Hutchinson, Kansas, May 8–11.206
Church published Archer’s Organ Book and Archer’s Second Organ Book, a Collection of Short
Pieces for Church or Reed Organs, with or without Pedals in 1885 and 1893, respectively.207
E. H. Bard wrote a series of articles on elocution in 1894 and one in 1895. He also
conducted schools in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.208 Church published and
Maro L. Bartlett presented an essay on “Voice Culture” to the Indiana State Music
Teachers’ Association at Indianapolis on June 23, 1886, which was published in the Visitor in
September and October 1886.210 Barlett discussed vocal methods, the diaphragm, use of the
tongue, phrasing, registers, song selection, and the differences between the German and Italian
204
“Home Musical Record,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 10 (July 1881): 272.
205
“Frederick Archer: England’s Most Distinguished Organist,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 10 (July
1881): 268.
206
“Here and There,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 4 (April 1894): 96.
207
The Musical Visitor 14, no. 12 (December 1885): 340; The Musical Visitor 22, no. 3 (March 1893): i.
208
E. H. Bard explains the term and refers to examples in his book, Musical Elocution, The Musical Visitor
23, no. 1 (January 1894): 5; The Musical Visitor 23, no. 3 (March 1894): 62; The Musical Visitor 23, no. 5 (May
1894): 125; The Musical Visitor 23, no. 7 (July 1894): 175; The Musical Visitor 23, no. 10 (October 1894): 266; The
Musical Visitor 24, no. 3 (March 1895): 61–62; “Here and There,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 10 (October 1894):
262.
209
The Musical Visitor 22, no. 7 (July 1893): i.
210
“Voice Culture,” The Musical Visitor 15, no. 9 (September 1886): 229–30; Musical Visitor 15, no. 10
(October 1886): 257–58.
221
schools of singing. The Visitor subsequently announced in 1886 that he had moved from
Chicago to Des Moines, Iowa, where he would have charge of the music at St. Paul’s Church and
also conduct that city’s Philharmonic Society.211 The Visitor announced an 1887 Des Moines
musical festival, directed by M. L. Bartlett and L. S. Gerberich, to be held on May 17, 18, and
19. Many of the performers were coming from Chicago. Governor Larrabee would give a
wrote in 1888 that his choir sings the music in the Visitor “with cheerful hearts.” Language was
inadequate to “fully express” his admiration for such pieces as the Lord of Hosts (O God of
Church’s Department of Sunday School and Church Music.215 Charles Clinton Case had
been born in Pennsylvania; when he was about four years of age his family moved to Ohio. He
attended singing school and later studied in normal schools with George F. Root, William
Mason, and others. His wife served as accompanist during conventions.216John Church and
published The Harvest of Song in 1878, a Collection of Sacred and Secular Music for Elementary
211
“Musical People,” The Musical Visitor 15, no. 11 (November 1886): 292.
212
“Musical Notes,” The Musical Visitor 16, no. 5 (May 1887): 122.
213
“Musical Notes,” The Musical Visitor 16, no. 11 (November 1887): 290.
214
“The Visitor in Nebraska,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 4 (April 1888): 95.
215
W. F. Sherwin, “Summer Meanderings,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 1 (October 1881): 3.
216
Hall, Biography of Gospel Song and Hymn Writers, 213–16.
222
and Advanced Singing Classes, by Case and James McGranahan.217 Church published another of
Case’s collections, Pyramid of Song, in 1889.218 Church Anthems, by Case and C. C. Williams,
contained works by such composers as W. F. Sherwin, Philip Bliss, and Clara Scott.219 Case
collaborated with Williams again in The Prince of Song, a collection for singing schools, which
the Visitor advertised in 1894.220 Case conducted several Chautauqua assemblies and
Washington, DC, in 1891, which reportedly had a chorus of over eight hundred members.221 He
William Howard Doane was born in Connecticut and died in New Jersey. He began
composing at the age of sixteen; by twenty he was the conductor of the Norwich (Connecticut)
Harmonic Society. He moved to Cincinnati in the 1860s as managing partner of J. A. Fay and
Company, manufacturers of wood-working machinery. The music room of his home on Mount
Auburn contained a pipe organ and a collection of instruments from various parts of the world.223
Church advertised Doane’s Silver Spray, a collection of Sunday School songs, in March 1875.224
Luther Orlando Emerson was born in Parsonsfield, Maine, in 1820 and died in
Hyde Park, Massachusetts, in 1915. The Visitor noted that he conducted the annual convention
217
“The Harvest of Song,” Church’s Musical Visitor 7, no. 10 (July 1878): 267.
218
“Pyramid of Song,” The Musical Visitor18, no. 4 (April 1889): iv.
219
“Church Anthems,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 9 (June 1880): 263.
220
“The Prince of Song,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 1 (January 1894): ii.
221
“Musical Notes and Gossip,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 8 (August 1891): 207.
222
“Concerts and Conventions,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 7 (July 1885): 180.
223
Hall, Biography of Gospel Song and Hymn Writers, 77–81; Osburn, Ohio Composers and Musical
Authors, 58–59; William Osborne, Music in Ohio (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2004), 323–24; Mel R.
Wilhoit, “Doane, William Howard,” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi
Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 2:672.
224
Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 6 (March 1875): 25.
223
of the Rensselaer County (New York) Musical Association, which began on January 19, 1880.225
Emerson compiled several collections of music for churches, singing schools, public schools,
and choral societies, most of which Oliver Ditson published in Boston. He conducted over three
Teachers’ National Association meeting held in Cincinnati in July 1879. His topic was “Our
Church Music: Its Past, Present, and Future.”227 The Visitor published six of his works for
Protestant iconography in Victorian households was the parlor organ. . . . After the Civil War the
simple organs evolved into elaborately carved instruments, which still cost less than half the
price of a piano. The production of parlor organs peaked between 1870 and 1885, and owning a
parlor organ became a symbol of middle-class achievement.” The main purpose of the
instrument was to accompany the singing of hymns and popular songs. By the 1880s more
Catholic homes could afford a parlor organ, and they were advertised in diocesan newspapers.228
The Visitor reprinted Stephen C. Foster’s ’Tis My Father’s Song (The Little Ballad Girl)
225
“Concert and Convention Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 5 (February 1880): 135; Jones, ed., A
Handbook of American Music and Musicians, 54; Hall, Biography of Gospel Song and Hymn Writers, 45–49.
226
Hall, Biography of Gospel Song and Hymn Writers, 45–49; Jones, A Handbook of American Music and
Musicians, 54; Robert M. Copeland and Dale Cockrell, “Emerson, L(uther) O(rlando),” in The Grove Dictionary of
American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 3:134–35.
227
“Programme of the Teachers’ National Association,” Church’s Musical Visitor 8, no. 9 (June 1879): 251.
228
Colleen McDannell, The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840–1900 (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1994), 43–44, 58. The cabinet organ, harmonium, melodeon, and parlor organ are all reed organs
which could be used in homes and small churches in the nineteenth century. Barbara Owen, “Reed Organ,” in The
Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press,
2013), 7:68–70.
224
in 1880.229 The editor wondered: “Why has this pretty ballad, by America’s greatest song-writer,
Carry Me ’long,” or “Old Folks at Home.”230 A curious report on Foster’s music appeared in the
Visitor’s June 1882 issue: “Madame [Etelka] Gerster so overcame a society young man in
Washington with her singing of ‘S’wanee River’ that he rushed out of the opera-house and
bought all the flowers he could lay his hands on, not waiting for the florist’s twine, but tying
them up in his new silk handkerchief, to delight the songstress.”231 In December 1883 the Visitor
announced that Prof. W. C. E. Seeboeck had composed variations on the universally popular
song “Swanee River,” and that Amy Fay would play them at all her concerts.232 Foster’s
popularity continued to be addressed in the Visitor. “Music among Jack Tars” was based
on an interview with a music dealer and printed in the New York Mail and Express. The dealer
mentioned that sailors “like songs connected with the sea, . . . But they have their sentimental
side as well, and many a time I have seen an old salt rub a tear out of the corner of his eye when
he heard . . . ‘the Suwanee River,’ [sic] or some other good old song.”233 In July 1897 the Visitor
announced that July 4 would be the seventy-first anniversary of Foster’s birth, “America’s
sweetest and most original song-writer. The event will be celebrated in Pittsburg, Pa., his native
city. A fund has been started for the purpose of erecting a monument to his memory.” A statue
was erected and dedicated in Pittsburg on September 12, 1900.234 James R. Murray explained in
August that he had recently received many requests for a biographical sketch of Foster, the
229
Stephen C. Foster, “’Tis My Father’s Song,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 9 (June 1880): 250–52.
230
“New Music: Vocal,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 11 (August 1890): 305.
231
“Our Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 9 (June 1882): 244.
232
“Chicago Notes,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 12 (December 1883): 323.
233
“Music among Jack Tars,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 9 (September 1885): 236. Reprint from the New
York Mail and Express.
234
“Current Notes and News,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 7 (July 1897): 192–93. John Tasker Howard,
Stephen Foster: America’s Troubador (1934; repr. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1953), 359.
225
composer of “Old Folks at Home.” This was followed by a reprint about Foster from a
under the nom de plume of Scythian) and music to the Visitor.236 He was included in the list of
contributors in the Visitor’s 1883 “Galaxy of Talent” for his much admired reminiscences
of European travels.237 For example, his report on “A Song Service at the London Foundling
Hospital” appeared in July 1879,238 and “The People’s Music in Southern Italy” in July 1881.239
In September 1881 Gordon provided a detailed description of services, with musical examples, at
All Saints Church in London and another song service at the Foundling Hospital.240 He
recounted his “rambles about London with Dickens in hand” in December 1882. Gordon referred
to several of Dickens’s novels and characters, for example looking for the White Hart Inn from
The Pickwick Papers.241 The Visitor extended its sympathies to Gordon on “the death of his
estimable wife” in 1885.242 Several months later he wrote about two churches in Rome: the
Church of the hermit St. Paul and the Church of the Egyptian hermit St. Onofrio.243 The Visitor
235
“Stephen C. Foster,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 8 (August 1897): 223.
236
Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 15 (December 1882): 408.
237
The Musical Visitor 12, no. 12 (December 1883): iv.
238
George S. Gordon, “A Song Service at the London Foundling Hospital,” Church’s Musical Visitor 8,
no. 10 (July 1879): 268–69.
239
Scythian [George S. Gordon], “The People’s Music in Southern Italy,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10,
no. 10 (July 1881): 264–65. An arrangement for piano of one of the songs he heard in Sorrento appears in the same
issue on p. 284. Gordon also wrote about “Some Musical Experiences in Naples.” Church’s Musical Visitor 10,
no. 6 (March 1881): 152.
240
Geo. S. Gordon, “Musical Services at All Saints Church, and Another Song Service at the Foundling
Hospital,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 12 (September 1881): 319–20.
241
Scythian [George S. Gordon], “Christmas Notes from Dickens’ Rambles,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11,
no. 15 (December 1882): 403.
242
The Musical Visitor 14, no. 3 (March 1885): 66.
243
Geo. S. Gordon, “Two Hermit Churches,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 11 (November 1885): 284.
226
reported Gordon’s death in August 1886 at the age of thirty-five but provided no information
regarding his early demise. He had accompanied John Church to Europe some years earlier.
Gordon was a lawyer, a graduate of the University of Virginia, and sang in the choir of the
Church of the Nativity.244 The Visitor published “Bello Sorrento” which Gordon had transcribed
from the singing of a street minstrel in Sorrento. According to Gordon, it was an example of a
song performed at the conclusion of the tarantella, accompanied by guitar or mandolin.245 The
Visitor had also published his sacred song “Prayer of Mary, Queen of Scots” in May 1883.
August 1879 the Visitor reported that he was residing in St. Louis.246 In 1886 he organized an
May 16, 1887. Several local musicians had volunteered their assistance, including Henry
Schradieck and Charles Baetens of the College of Music. Malmene’s friends suggested that only
his compositions be performed in order that he would “become more widely known.”248 The
following month the Visitor announced that Malmene had been engaged as organist at the First
Baptist Church on Wesley Avenue, where he would “bring talent and good sense to the musical
portion” of the services. Two other entries appeared in the same column, one chastising
Malmene for a “tiresome ‘wait’” of half an hour before the scheduled concert began, along with
244
The Musical Visitor 15, no. 9 (September 1886): 232.
245
Scythian [George S. Gordon], “The People’s Music in Southern Italy,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10,
no. 10 (July 1881): 264.
246
“The Musical Month in Cincinnati: Music Teachers’ National Association,” Church’s Musical Visitor 8,
no. 11 (August 1879): 302.
247
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 15, no. 11 (January 1886): 11.
248
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 16, no. 5 (May 1887): 121–22.
227
a critique of the concert.249 The Visitor announced in April 1887 that Malmene was providing the
musical notices and critiques appearing in Graphic Notes.250 His review of Dr. Hector Chomet’s
book The Influence of Music on Health and Life appeared in November 1887.251 The Visitor
quoted from Malmene’s report on the 1888 May Festival for the Commercial Gazette.252
Malmene was later reported to be in Greenville, Missouri, where he had charge of the choirs at
St. James Episcopal Church and at the Hebrew Synagogue.253 In July 1890 the Visitor noted that
he would return to his former home in St. Louis, to take charge of the Music Department at the
Asylum for the Blind.254 Three years later he moved to Chicago.255 The Visitor published some
of his vocal works to be used for church services, including “Abide with Me” and “Just As I
Am.”
Wagner’s “Hymn of the Pilgrims” from Tannhäuser for the Visitor. He was asked to give an
opinion on F. W. Root’s School of Singing, published in 1873. He responded that his school used
the method, and one reason was that “prima donnas are not made with instruction-books.”256
The John Church Company published M. L. McPhail’s Anthems in 1885, designed for use
by chorus or quartet choirs. The collection included selections and arrangements of works by
Mozart, Concone, Bellini, Tours, Barnby, Smart, and Costa, in addition to original compositions.
249
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 16, no. 6 (June 1887): 149–50.
250
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 16, no. 4 (April 1887): 94.
251
Waldemar Malmene, “The Influence of Music on Health and Life,” The Musical Visitor 16, no. 11
(November 1887): 283–84. Malmene praised Mrs. Laura A. Flint’s translation of the book (published by Putnam in
1875).
252
“The Cincinnati May Musical Festival,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 6 (June 1888): 144.
253
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 5 (May 1889): 121–22.
254
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 19, no. 7 (July 1890): 177.
255
“Here and There,” The Musical Visitor 22, no. 10 (October 1893): 266.
256
“Publishers Department,” Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 4 (January 1875): 12.
228
In 1887 Church published The Crown of Song, a New Collection of Music for Choirs,
Conventions and Singing Classes by McPhail, with Special Contributions by Dr. Geo. F. Root. It
contained glees, anthems, hymn tunes, and choruses.257 McPhail, from Canton, Ohio, contributed
a series of articles to the Visitor on chord structure in September and November of 1886 and
February 1887.258
The Visitor published M. J. Munger’s sacred song “Not Alone” in the August 1876 issue.
Editor Daniell considered it “one of the very best that we have seen from an American
composer.”259 Oliver Ditson published White Robes for the Sunday School: A Choice New
Collection of Songs, Quartets, and Choruses for Sunday-Schools, Devotional Meetings and the
Editor Murray had the second largest number of works printed in the Visitor
after George F. Root. Murray contributed sacred and secular music, such as his quartet for men’s
Tulius Clinton O’Kane was born in Fairfield County, Ohio. He attended Ohio Wesleyan
University in Delaware, Ohio, and received the AB in 1852 and AM in 1855. He served as a
principal in the Cincinnati Public School system from 1857 until 1864.260 John Church and
Company published O’Kane’s Every Sabbath, hymns for Sunday School, in 1874.261 He was
chairman of the Executive Committee of the Ohio Music Teachers’ Convention held in
257
The Musical Visitor 16, no. 1 (January 1887): iv.
258
M. L. McPhail, “A Talk about Chords,” The Musical Visitor 15, no. 9 (September 1886): 231; idem, “A
Further Talk about Chords,” The Musical Visitor 15, no. 11 (November 1886): 286; idem, “Talk about Chords, III,”
Church’s Musical Visitor 16, no. 2 (February 1887): 33–34.
259
“Editor’s Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 11 (August 1876): 290. I have been unable to identify
Munger’s dates or place of birth.
260
Osborne, Music in Ohio, 325; Hall, Biography of Gospel Song and Hymn Writers, 59–63; Osburn, Ohio
Composers and Musical Authors, 144–45.
261
“Every Sabbath,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 8 (May 1874): 27.
229
Delaware, Ohio, December 26–28, 1876, where he was then residing.262
The editor of the Visitor asked Vermont native Silas Gamaliel Pratt to comment on the
1878 May Festival performance of selections from Wagner’s music dramas. Pratt touched on
“the fitness” of presenting the aural without the visual in opera, noting for example that “the
audience was not in sympathy with the composition” during Siegfried’s funeral march.263 Pratt
asserted that vocal selections from the Ring “are inappropriate to concert use.” He disagreed with
the New York Tribune’s correspondent that Thomas’s presentation was “finer and more perfectly
given than at Baireuth” [sic]. Critiques of Pratt’s own music also appeared in the Visitor. The
London Figaro, after fully quoting Pratt’s description of his second symphony, Prodigal Son,
added some harsh criticism: “The middle movement is, it is stated, by far the best, and Mr. Pratt
has been awarded special praise for the marvelous manner in which he has illustrated in the
orchestra the grunts of the swine which the prodigal son tended. While Mr. Pratt was about it, he
might as well have ‘depicted’ in music the indigestion to which the husks that the swine did eat
gave rise.”264 Two years later the Visitor quoted a recent lecture by Pratt on outdoor music. He
had taken the opportunity to voice his support for temperance. The city should “provide a band
of musicians to feed the souls of our people, and thus furnish a healthy occupation for the minds”
of those who are unemployed, rather than leaving them to “brood over their misfortunes, and
congregate in saloons where they rub the itch of their opinions until they have become
communistic sores on the body politic.” Pratt had argued that money spent by the city on evening
outdoor concerts would then not be needed for building prisons or houses of correction or for
prosecuting and arresting criminals. The masses could “spend their evenings in a healthful moral
262
“The Music Teachers’ Convention,” Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 3 (December 1876): 67.
263
S. G. Pratt, “The Meistersinger and Walküre Selections at the May Festival,” Church’s Musical Visitor 7,
no. 9 (June 1878): 239. Pratt was in Bayreuth during the fall of 1875 for rehearsals of the Ring Cycle and for the
performance in 1876. Bomberger, ed., Brainard’s Biographies of American Musicians, 229–33.
264
“Our Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 11 (August 1881): 303.
230
atmosphere,” and dens of vice and “free concert saloons would perish in the rivalry of good
music versus vice.” Pratt had ended with a challenge: “Music, then, challenges the support of
the church on moral grounds, of the commercial interests on grounds of economy, and of the
Fourteen years after the quote from the London Figaro, editor Murray noted that some
English musical papers had announced that Pratt, the composer of the opera Zenobia, had
A special concert of much interest is to be given at the Crystal Palace to-day, October
10th, when works by the American composer, Mr. S. G. Pratt, will be performed. These
will consist of the anniversary overture dedicated to General Grant, and performed here
in his honor during his visit in 1877; an elegy to the General, a symphony titled “Prodigal
Son,” and the overture and vocal excerpts from the opera “Zenobia,” a work which is
duly appreciated across the Atlantic. Misses Griswold and L. Little, Mr. O Harley, and B.
H. Grove, will be the solo vocalists, and the Crystal Palace choir and orchestra will
cooperate in the performances, which will be conducted by Mr. Manns and Mr. Pratt. The
occasion will be a manifestation of the quality of transatlantic musical composition of the
present day.266
A few years later the Visitor reported on Pratt’s recent presentation of “a very enjoyable
event.” For his “Musical Metempsychosis” he had taken one of Stephen Foster’s plantation
melodies, “My Old Kentucky Home, Good Night” as the subject and passed it through all
compositional styles, from Pan to Wagner. The lecture and music had been accompanied by a
series of beautiful pictures, prepared expressly for Mr. Pratt and under his direction. The musical
entertainment had been “unique and gave much satisfaction.”267 In July 1891 the Visitor reported
that Pratt’s “Allegory of the War in Song,” presented for the benefit of the Grant Monument
Association, had been a great success. It would be repeated in October, in addition to a battle
265
“Out-door Music,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 8 (August 1883): 210. The Visitor did not give the
location of the lecture.
266
The Musical Visitor 14, no. 11 (November 1885): 290.
267
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 4 (April 1889): 93. Pratt likely used the stereopticon in his
presentation. Robert Stevenson and Douglas W. Shadle, “Pratt, Silas (Gamaliel),” in The Grove Dictionary of
American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 6:586–87.
231
symphony which Mr. Pratt was then composing.268 The Visitor published one of his songs and
three works for piano, including “Melody,” op. 31, dedicated to Herr Alwin Stahr in Berlin. The
The Visitor announced in 1879 that George H. Rowe, “a popular Boston pianist and
teacher,” had moved to Zanesville, Ohio, and was securing a large class.269 Some months later,
the Visitor noted that the opera The Doctor of Alcantra had been presented at Zanesville under
Rowe’s direction.270 He contributed an article to the Visitor on choosing the right music teacher
from the start; in the same issue the Visitor informed readers that Rowe was doing good musical
work at the Sedalia University in Missouri.271 The next year the Visitor reported that Rowe had
“taken charge of the musical interests of Baylor College” in Belton, Texas.272 A concert report in
1888 reads: “One of the best concerts ever given in the South, was that at Baylor College, March
16th, under the direction of Prof. G. H. Rowe. . . . A feature of the concert was the playing of the
Allen Quartet, the first of its kind ever organized in the South. Its members are the Misses
Cooper and Smith, violins, Miss Arta Bright, viola; Mrs. H. A. Rowe, ’cello.”273 A few months
later, Baylor’s commencement concert on June 5 included Miss Arta M. Bright’s piano recital
“with selections from Bach, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Raff, Liszt, Beethoven, etc.” The
Music Department at Baylor College had made “wonderful progress of late under the direction of
268
“Musical Notes and Gossip,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 7 (July 1891): 178. The editor must have been
referring to The Civil War in Song: A Military and Musical Allegory. He does not mention where it was performed.
269
“Our Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 8, no. 12 (September 1879): 334.
270
“Convention and Concert Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 10 (July 1880): 275. This likely refers
to Julius Eichberg’s comic opera published by Oliver Ditson in Boston ca. 1862.
271
Geo. H. Rowe, “Begin Right,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 9 (September 1885): 231–32; idem, “Concerts
and Conventions,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 9 (September 1885): 235.
272
“Musical People,” The Musical Visitor 15, no. 11 (November 1886): 292.
273
“Concerts, Conventions, Etc.,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 4 (April 1888): 94.
232
Mr. G. H. Rowe.”274 The Visitor also reported that Rowe’s activities as a lecturer and leading
Normal Schools in Texas was having a good impression on “Southern Musical culture.”275 He
also directed the San Marcos, Texas, Chautauqua Music School, which closed with “a grand
concert” on July 26, “which reflected much credit upon the management and all concerned. Mr.
Rowe is a hustler.”276 In 1895 Rowe was teaching at various schools and colleges in Texas and
had his own school in Dallas, Rowe’s Conservatory of Music. He was President of the Texas
Music Teachers Association and Vice President for Texas in the National Association.277 The
John Church Company published Rowe’s The Young Folks’ Musical History Club in 1896. The
Visitor reprinted one of the subjects from the book, “Musical Notation,” in July 1896 and
advertised it as “an attempt to give the outlines of Musical History in story form.”278
Franz Xaver Scharwenka toured the United States beginning in 1891 but stayed until
1898, opening a music school in New York.279 The Visitor included a biography of him in
February 1891.280 In 1893 Scharwenka gave his former pupil Benjamin Guckenberger, director
of the Orpheus Club, the scores of some of the choruses from his new opera, Mataswintha. A
sneak preview of the opera was given in Cincinnati in December, at a “Scharwenka Evening.”
The program included Scharwenka’s Concerto no. 1 for Piano and Orchestra in B-flat Minor, op.
32; the Prelude to the opera; the Grand Duet in act 2, scene 4; the Church Scene in act 3, scene 4;
274
“Musical Notes,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 7 (July 1888): 178. Miss Bright must have been an
accomplished pianist.
275
“Concerts and Conventions,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 6 (June 1889): 150.
276
“Musical Chat,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 9 (September 1889): 235.
277
“Here and There,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 2 (February 1895): 39.
278
“Musical Notation,” The Musical Visitor 25, no. 7 (July 1896): 179–81; “The Young Folks’ Musical
History Club: A Story,” The Musical Visitor 25, no. 7 (July 1896): ii.
279
Charles Suttoni, “Scharwenka, (Franz) Xaver,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians,
2nd ed., ed. Stanley Sadie (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 22:439–40.
280
“Xaver Scharwenka,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 2 (February 1891): 34.
233
and Mataswintha’s Bridal Song in act 2, scene 5.281 A review of the Music Hall concert on
December 28 appeared in the Visitor’s February issue. The performance by “Xaver Scharwenka
and Mr. Guckenberger’s Cincinnati Orpheus scored a distinct success” and there have been
“many urgent requests for a repetition of the concert,” which Mr. Guckenberger will try to
arrange.282
The Visitor reprinted a review from the American Art Journal of twelve new
compositions by Scharwenka published by the John Church Company. The works mentioned
were a barcarolle, the “Liebesliedchen,” and a Scherzo in D major.283 A surprise party was given
for him on January 7 at New York’s Steinway Hall on his forty-fifth birthday.284 Scharwenka
was among a list of seventeen composers under contract to the John Church Company for first
William Fisk Sherwin, born in Massachusetts, was included in the Visitor’s 1883 “Galaxy
of Talent” as a member of the New England Conservatory, “unexcelled in his specialties.”286 The
Visitor announced in 1881 that he would be in charge of Church and Company’s Sunday School
and Church Music Departments. Sherwin was an experienced Sunday School worker and
conductor of conventions and institutes. He had long been associated with the annual assemblies
at Lake Chautauqua and was most welcome in Ohio.287 Sherwin was not stationary; his work in
281
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 22, no. 11 (November 1893): 294.
282
“City Notes: Mataswintha,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 2 (February 1894): 38. Guckenberger opened a
Conservatory of Music in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1896. The first year’s enrollment was eighty; in 1897 the
number had increased to 165. “Current Notes and News: General,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 8 (August 1897):
221.
283
“Notes and Gossip,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 1 (January 1895): 11–12.
284
“Scharwenka’s Surprise Party,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 2 (February 1895): 42.
285
The Musical Visitor 25, no. 1 (January 1896): ii.
286
The Musical Visitor 12, no. 12 (December 1883): iv.
287
Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 5 (February 1881): 130. “Improved Plans,” Church’s Musical Visitor
10, no. 5 (February 1881): i.
234
the West showed that he was the “right man in the right place.” He was engaged to conduct
Sunday School conventions and lectures in Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Rhode
Island, and Nebraska.288 A reprint from the Herald in Grand Rapids, Michigan, described him as
“a genial, witty man, and a most successful leader of a choir, or chorus. A good singer himself,
he has rare power in controlling and bringing out all the vocal power of a large choir and
congregation.”289 He contributed an article, anti-Puritan in tone to the Visitor, on “the early days”
of Sunday School music. They allowed no instruments and children only sang slow-moving
tunes on Watt’s hymns; there was little to excite the interest or stir the emotional nature,
especially in New England. A reaction set in which went too far with the introduction of “secular
airs set to religious words; . . . Wesley’s saying the ‘the devil ought not to have all the good
music’ was travestied.” Sherwin’s answer was “heart-power acting in harmony with evangelical
truth”290 as demonstrated by the collection Heart and Voice, edited by Sherwin and published by
Two months later Sherwin reported that there had been “much complaint concerning the
deportment of choirs.” His somewhat amusing solution to prevent choristers from taking naps,
reading the paper, whispering sentimentalisms, or passing notes on “the blank leaf” of a hymnal,
was to place them at the front of the church. He blamed the misbehavior on the Roman Catholic
Church for having placed the choir in a gallery at the back of the church. Sherwin further
recommended that churches not treat the singers as “mere hirelings.”291 In June 1883 he again
displayed a sense of humor with his rules guaranteed to ruin a volunteer choir, for “he has
often seen the working of this plan, with varied modifications, and has never known it to fail.”
288
“Here and There,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 8 (May 1881): 218.
289
“Personal Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 9 (June 1881): 245.
290
W. F. S[herwin], “Reactions in Sunday School Music,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 8 (May 1881):
215–16. One of his hymns from Heart and Voice appeared in that month’s issue on p. 231.
291
W. F. S[herwin], “Position and Deportment of Church Choirs,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 10
(July 1881): 271–72.
235
The church leaders should keep themselves aloof from the choir; tell them they are too sensitive
and more quarrelsome than others, which may be cured by scarification and frequent blisterings;
keep them singing the same old pieces; criticize them freely; do not invite them to social
functions unless you are going to use them [emphasis original], and when the pastor prays for the
church, he should omit the choir and especially the leader or organist.292 Another problem
Sherwin addressed was “literary piracy.” He railed against borrowing hymns and tunes without
credit in compiling hymn collections. He also decried teaching a hymn by rote from a single
Sherwin apparently felt the need to describe the Chautauqua gatherings for the Visitor’s
subscribers; he and C. C. Case were Musical Directors. It was not “a big Methodist Camp
literature, and art “walk hand in hand” to promote education of the people. Sherwin included the
programs for July and August. In discussing the 1878, 1879, and 1880 Chautauqua gatherings,
Sherwin mentioned that the Fisk Jubilee Singers had been “conspicuously popular” and were
Sherwin also provided a little cultural context for readers. He assured them that “Western
life” is not “devoid of all culture and the refinements of civilized society,” since many of the
residents who crossed the Mississippi River came from the Eastern states. Wisconsin “boasts a
large number of vocal societies.” The chorus of over one hundred at the Sunday School assembly
in Ottawa, Kansas, displayed “devotion to hard work” and promptly responded to the suggestion
292
W. F. Sherwin, “How to Discourage a Choir,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 6 (June 1883): 144–45.
293
W. F. Sherwin, “Literary Piracy,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 4 (April 1883): 88–89.
294
W. F. S[herwin], “Music at Chautauqua,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 6 (June 1883): 153; idem, “Music
in S. S. Conventions and Institutes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 11 (August 1881): 294–95.
295
W. F. Sherwin, “Western Echoes,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 9 (September 1883): 237.
236
Sherwin explained the difference between institutes and conventions for in the East
the two had begun to mingle. The original purpose of the Sunday School Convention was to
kindle enthusiasm, whereas institutes teach and give practical information through specialists and
Sunday-school convention is mainly used for generating enthusiasm and promoting Christian
The Visitor announced in November 1883 that Sherwin was leaving Cincinnati. He had
been engaged as the New England Conservatory of Music’s Chorus Director. He would
continue to conduct musical conventions, Sunday School institutes and give lectures on music.
Sherwin would maintain his cordial relationship with John Church and Company and would
continue to contribute articles to the Visitor.297 Writing from Boston, he reported that the best
church music he had heard was at “the Ruggles Street Baptist, where a superb male quartet,
chorus choir, and trained congregation are mingled in harmonious proportions.”298 The Visitor
informed its readers of Sherwin’s death on April 14, 1888. According to the obituary, he had
been born March 14, 1826, in Ashfield, Massachusetts, where he was interred on April 17. “He
edited alone, or with others, several collections of choir music, Sunday School singing books,
and composed a large number of songs and anthems. “He was especially successful in
conducting large choruses at Chautauqua, Framingham, and other Assembly gatherings.” For
five years Sherwin had been associated with the New England Conservatory of Music as
Chorus Director. Most of his life had been spent in Albany and New York City, but he had
296
W. F. S[herwin], “Sunday-School Conventions and Institutes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 6
(March 1882): 155–56.
297
“W. F. Sherwin,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 11 (November 1883): 291. In February 1883 the Visitor
printed “Rock of Ages” as Sherwin performed it. The lines in italics and quotation marks were sung while the other
lines were recited. His “peculiar rendering” of it was apparently very popular, and the Visitor received “constant
inquiry” for it. “Rock of Ages,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 2 (February 1883): 31.
298
“W. F. Sherwin,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 5 (May 1884): 125.
237
resided in Cincinnati from 1881 to 1883 while employed by John Church and Company. Mr.
Only one work by Joseph Paul Skelly, “Visitor, Speak a Kind Word When You Can,”
appeared in the Visitor in April 1879. Skelly had been born in Ireland and had come to New
York City about age four.300 Skelly had begun composing at the age of fifteen and some of his
works had become “very popular.” His death was noted in August 1895 “in the charity ward” of
The Visitor featured a cover portrait of Pier/Pietro Adolfo Tirindelli in August 1897. He
was a well-known violinist currently residing in Cincinnati. A Visitor article titled “A Souvenir
of Liszt” concerns a Tirindelli mazurka which he had composed in 1880, which he had sent to
his protectress Baroness Helene von Augusz, who in turn had forwarded the work to Liszt, a
close friend of her father. Thus, the manuscript contained Liszt’s comments and signature. The
Visitor reprinted a letter from Liszt to the Baroness, a Sister of Mercy in Graz, dated
September 1, 1880, from the Villa d’ Este in Rome in the same issue.302 The Visitor also
announced that Tirindelli would be in charge of the violin department at the Graninger School of
Music in the Odd Fellows’ Building; he would not go to the College of Music as previously
reported.303 His biography appeared in the same issue. He had been born in Conegliano in 1858,
299
The Musical Visitor 17, no. 5 (May 1888): 120. According to William Brooks and Christopher Mehrens,
Sherwin was born in Buckland, Massachusetts. William Brooks and Christopher E. Mehrens, “Sherwin, William
F(isk)” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi Garrett (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2013), 7:485.
300
William Brooks, “Skelly, Joseph Paul,” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed.
Charles Hiroshi Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 7:534.
301
“Notes and Gossip,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 8 (August 1895): 211.
302
“A Souvenir of Liszt,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 8 (August 1897): 201.
303
The Musical Visitor 26, no. 8 (August 1897): 220. The College of Music was “in a state,” and the
outcome was unknown. “We hope to see the school put on a sound financial and musical basis, and its old-time
vigor and popularity regained, and shall note with pleasure any movement that will help to that desirable end.”
“Current Notes and News: Local,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 8 (August 1897): 220–21.
238
had studied at the Milan Conservatory, had continued his studies in Vienna, and had gone to
Paris, after which he had concertized in various cities on the Continent. He had returned to
Venice and had been elected Director of the Conservatory for three years, during which time he
had been made a Knight of the Crown of Italy. He had come to the United States in 1895, had
joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and had arrived in Cincinnati in 1896. He became a
member of the Cincinnati Orchestra and director of the Violin Department at the Auditorium
School of Music. The Visitor reported that his “compositions are many and varied,” including an
opera, L’Atenaide, first performed in Venice in 1893. Since arriving in Cincinnati he had
published a set of Studies for the Violin, eight songs, and his Nocturne Venetienne, a chorus for
men’s voices, recently performed at an Orpheus Club concert. The John Church Company issued
his “Morceaux pour violin.”304 A few months later the Visitor announced that Tirindelli had
resigned from the Cincinnati Orchestra to work full time at the Graninger School of Music and
on composition. The Visitor lamented, “The orchestra has thus lost its best violinist.”305 The final
issue of the Visitor announced that Tirindelli’s latest opera, Blanc et Noir, would be presented on
December 15 at the Auditorium School of Music; a synopsis of the work was provided. The
libretto by Mme Fredin, wife of the local French Consul, included commedia del l’arte
characters.306 Tirindelli returned to Rome in 1922, where he died on February 6, 1937.307 The
Virginia native Thomas P. Westendorf wrote in the Visitor about the power of music to
reform and described his activities at the House of Refuge in Louisville, Kentucky. Music
helped to shape character and kept the boys’ minds busy. There was a “motto song,” sung
304
“P. A. Tirindelli,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 8 (August 1897): 221–22.; Music Lovers’ Encyclopedia,
437.
305
“Current Notes and News: Local,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 11 (November 1897): 304.
306
“A New Opera,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 12 (December 1897): 333–34.
307
Music Lovers’ Encyclopedia, 437.
239
by the boys at the House of Refuge, that Westendorf claimed does “work that would put many a
hard studied sermon in the shade.” Comic songs also do their part, such as “Old Thompson’s
Mule” with a donkey refrain. There was a daily song service plus regular concerts during the
year to introduce “music of a higher order” to the children.308 Westendorf reported that the
House of Refuge has a “full brass band composed of boys” ranging in age from eight to sixteen
years. Music was not used as a reward but to elevate and reform. A boy from the slums could be
taught to play an instrument and perform for an admiring and sympathetic audience. He “feels,
for the first time in his life, that there is something within himself that can be developed and
improved, and that will win for him a place among men.” Westendorf asserted that in many
cases, “music as used in the Louisville House of Refuge had a powerful reformatory
influence.”309 Westendorf visited Cincinnati in December 1885 and brought with him “a large
number of new songs,” which would be published over time. He published a poem, “Going to
Hear Cappa’s Band,” in the Visitor.310 “The New Year’s Frolic” at the House of Refuge
consisted primarily of vocal and instrumental music performed by the children and was “a most
enjoyable affair.” They sang twenty-two works, most of them composed by their music teacher,
T. P. Westendorf. The Visitor reported, “Some of the songs are now in process of publication,”
presumably by the John Church Company.311 The boys gave concerts outside the
House of Refuge, such as a concert at Louisville’s Knights of Honor Temple. “The local papers
speak very highly of the entertainment, and have warm words of praise for Mr. Westendorf, who
308
[Thomas P.] Westendorf, “Music as a Pastime,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 2 (February 1885): 34–35.
The John Church Company published “Old Thompson’s Mule.” It was advertised under the “Publishers
Department,” with a note that “The minstrels will take hold of it this fall, and beyond doubt it will prove a good card
for them.” “Publishers Department,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 8 (August 1884): 211.
309
Thomas P. Westendorf, “Music and the Bad Boy,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 7 (July 1884): 177.
310
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 15, no. 1 (January 1886): 11; Thomas P. Westendorf, “Going to Hear
Cappa’s Band,” The Musical Visitor 15, no. 1 (January 1886): 12.
311
“Concerts and Conventions,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 2 (February 1885): 40.
240
is well known to the readers of the Visitor.”312 He contributed a lengthy article about the church
services at the House of Refuge; he had “a chorus of about two hundred and fifty boys and fifty
girls.” He relied “largely on the potent influence of music” to help “in our endeavors to reclaim
the wayward youth.”313 Like P. P. Bliss, Westendorf believed in the power of music to influence
behavior.
In 1888 The Visitor reported that Westendorf would leave Louisville in February;
he had been elected Assistant Superintendent of the State Reform School in Pontiac, Illinois. He
was “doing a great and good work in the Reform Schools and we wish for him . . . the same and
greater success than that which has attended his efforts in the past.”314 In 1891 Westendorf was
Westendorf, “It is the grandest country in the world, though it seems to be almost out of it.”315
Apparently Westendorf’s efforts were supported by the public and the press: “His gift of music is
put to good use in the school, and is having a grand effect upon the inmates.” A Washington
paper reported: “The State Reform School . . . will accomplish the results for which it was
intended. It will make good citizens.”316 Westendorf’s daughter, Jennie M. Westendorf, sent a
composition titled “Dream Shadows Gavotte” to the John Church Company. “The young lady is
An article reprinted from the Intelligencer in Seattle predicted that Westendorf would be
remembered for “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.” It ranked with “Home, Sweet Home”
312
“Musical Hopper,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 6 (June 1885): 155.
313
T. P. Westendorf, “Sunday Services at the House of Refuge,” The Musical Visitor 15, no. 11 (November
1886): 285–86.
314
“Musical Notes,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 2 (February 1888): 38.
315
“Here and There,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 10 (October 1891): 262.
316
The Musical Visitor 21, no. 6 (June 1892): 156.
317
“Here and There,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 4 (April 1894): 95.
241
and “Annie Laurie.” Like many writers of popular songs, Westendorf was not a professional
songwriter, but a man of deep feelings. He had composed many other songs but like John
Howard Payne, known for “Home, Sweet Home,” Westendorf “will always be associated with
the beautiful song he wrote in an idle hour.”318 The Visitor published sixteen of Westendorf’s
songs and three instrumental works. The Visitor printed “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen”
in March 1876, and an arrangement of it for flute or violin and piano in February 1883.
The Visitor printed articles and published music by European composers who were not
Thomas Attwood had been a pupil of Mozart. One of his sacred works, “Come, Holy
The Visitor reported that Edmond Audran, the composer of Les noces d’Olivette and
other popular operettas, was “a tenor singer in the Paris Opera House.”319 According to the
Music Lover’s Encyclopedia, Audran’s La Mascotte was given over seventeen hundred times;
James Murray arranged the “Mascotte Polka” for violin or flute and piano, and it appeared in the
The Visitor mentioned Sir Jules Benedict in connection with the 1882 Birmingham
Festival, “notable for one or two peculiar personal events.” (See also Charles Gounod, below.)
Lucy Hooper reported that conductor Benedict had wavered, swayed, and finally sank into the
arms of soloist Marie Roze, while “his alarmed young wife arose from the audience and hurried
318
“Wrote a Great Heart-Song: Thomas P. Westendorf’s Words and Music on Many Lips,” The Musical
Visitor 24, no. 8 (August 1895): 214.
319
“Short Visits,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 7 (April 1881): 187.
242
to the platform. . . . Sir Julius muttered himself from between his blanched lips––overwork.”320
“Eily Mavourneen,” a ballad from Benedict’s opera Lily of Killarney, appeared in the March
1875 Visitor.
The Visitor provided a description of how Gaetano Donizetti came to compose a duet for
the Elixir of Love and part of the servants’ chorus in Don Pasquale in twenty-five minutes while
his host, Luigi Lablache, and Fanny Persiani and Thalberg waited.321 The Visitor’s London
correspondent provided information that “Donizetti’s skull, on show at the Bologna Exhibition,
had aroused some discussion, and elicited an explanation from the composer’s nephew.”
Apparently after the autopsy in 1848, Dr. Carcano kept the composer’s skull for study. When
Donizetti’s remains were reinterred at Bergamo in 1877, the skull was discovered to be missing
and the body was buried without it. When Dr. Carcano died his goods were sold at auction and
the skull was purchased by “a pork-butcher, who used it as a money bowl.” The butcher agreed
to sell the relic at a profit, and the skull was placed in the library at Bergamo.322 “Salut à la
France” from Donizetti’s opera Daughter of the Regiment, arranged for violin and piano,
The Visitor predicted in 1883 that the recently deceased Friedrich von Flotow would only
be remembered for his “pretty opera” Martha, though he had composed many (eighteen) operas
and various kinds of compositions.323 In January 1883 the Visitor reported that Flotow had
320
“Benedict, Costa, Gounod,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 14 (November 1882): 382.
321
Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 10 (July 1874): 7.
322
The Musical Visitor 17, no. 7 (July 1888): 176. According to Mary Ann Smart, an autopsy was
performed and his remains were interred in Bergamo cemetery, but moved to the Cathedral of S. Maria Maggiore in
1875. Mary Ann Smart, “Donizetti, (Domenico) Gaetano (Maria)” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, 2nd ed., ed. Stanley Sadie (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 7:471–97.
323
The Musical Visitor 12, no. 3 (March 1883): 66.
243
become blind from “cataract of the eyes.”324 The Visitor reprinted only one of his vocal works,
The Visitor informed its readers of Charles Gounod’s activities as a conductor of festivals
and performances of his works. He had led his oratorio The Redemption at the 1882 Birmingham
Festival and had declared it to be “the greatest work of his life.” The Visitor included an account
of his “evil genius.” Mrs. [Georgina] Weldon had “tried to force her way into the hall where he
was conducting, but at Gounod’s express desire she was ejected.” According to writer Lucy
Hooper, “when the story of their relations comes to be dispassionately written, it will prove one
of the strangest episodes ever connected with the life of a great composer.”325 In the same issue
the Visitor reported that Theodore Thomas had secured control of the orchestral score of The
Redemption for two years, and it would be “the first work given by the New York Chorus
Society this season.”326 The New York correspondent reported that Thomas had conducted one
performance of The Redemption and two more were to be given.327 Thomas, who had “Exclusive
right of production for the time agreed upon,” later sued J. G. Lennon of Boston for having the
work scored by someone “intimately acquainted with Gounod and his style.”328 Boston
correspondent Louis Elson commented, “Gounod’s Redemption may be harmonious, but its
324
“Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 12, no. 1 (January 1883): 13. Flotow died on January 24,
1883.
325
“Benedict, Costa, Gounod,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 14 (November 1882): 382–83; Steven
Huebner, “Gounod, Charles-François,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., ed. Stanley
Sadie (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 10:215–36.
326
“Our Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no 14 (November 1882): 385. The Redemption was
performed at the 1884 Cincinnati May Festival.
327
K., “Correspondence: Music in New York,” Church’s Musical Visitor 12, no. 1 (January 1883): 13. “K.”
was Alice M. Kellogg, wife of New York publisher of educational journals E. L. Kellogg. Frank Luther Mott, A
History of American Magazines, 1741–1930 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, ca.
1958–1968), 3:177. Kellogg signed her correspondence from New York as Alice M. Kellogg in January 1881.
328
The United States Circuit Court of Appeals issued an injunction against Lennon, preventing him from
performing the work. Schabas, Theodore Thomas, 123.
244
working in Boston thus far has not been so.”329 It was rumored in 1889 that Gounod would be
visiting the United States but the contract had not yet been settled. The plan, however, did not
come to fruition. The scandal regarding Mrs. Weldon continued to dog Gounod: “A gentleman
who knows Gounod well is authority for the explanation that Gounod has denied the contract for
family reasons, since it is well known that the composer of ‘Faust’ is kept closely guarded by the
female members of his household, who fear to let him do anything at all on his own
responsibility. . . . Since Gounod’s escapades with Georgina Weldon, his family has kept guard
over his movements.”330 The Visitor published two of Gounod’s vocal works and seven of his
instrumental works, including “Marche funèbre d’une marionette” for piano in August 1876 and
an anthem for Easter, “Blessed Is He Who Cometh in the Name of the Lord,” in March 1886.
In 1891 the Visitor announced that Alfred Grünfeld, court pianist to the Emperor of
Germany, was coming to the United States and provided a brief biography. He had begun piano
studies at the age of five and had given his first concert at age twelve, performing Mendelssohn’s
C Minor Trio, Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp Minor, and Liszt’s Fantasia on Themes from
Lucretia Borgia. His teachers had been Theodore Kullak and Franz Liszt. Moszkowski had
reportedly praised him as a “piano hero” of the “highest rank.”331 For his U.S. tour, Grünfeld was
accompanied by his brother Heinrich, a ’cellist. The brothers gave a concert at Cincinnati’s
Odeon on March 11, 1892, having just returned from a tour of the West. The Visitor reported that
this was one of the most enjoyable concerts of the season. “Each is unique in his way, and
aroused in turn the enthusiasm of the audience to the highest pitch.”332 Alfred Grünfeld’s “Little
Serenade” for piano appeared in the February 1892 Visitor. His “Romanza,” op. 45, no. 1,
329
“The ‘Redemption’ Difficulty,” Church’s Musical Visitor 12, no. 2 (February 1883): 39; “Proteus”
[Louis C. Elson], “Boston,” Church’s Musical Visitor 12, no. 2 (February 1883): 41.
330
“Gleanings,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 6 (June 1889): 152.
331
“Grünfeld, the Pianist,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 2 (December 1891): 320.
332
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 4 (April 1892): 101.
245
appeared in The Etude in March 1914.
The Visitor initially presented Georg Friederich Handel as “a plagiarist” in a reprint from
the London Orchestra in 1872.333 Thirteen years later the London correspondent pointed out that
six numbers of Saul were “undoubtedly borrowed” from Francesco Antonio Urio’s Te Deum.334
On the other hand, readers were reminded that Handel composed more than just Messiah. He
also composed operas, instrumental music, cantatas, and anthems, and he had the following
inscribed on the cover of his harpsichord: SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI.335 As to Handel’s
voice, it had been “described by one of his contemporaries as ‘simply awful.’ He generally had
the good sense to refrain from singing, but when anything went wrong in the chorus he was
conducting he was very apt to chime in with that awful voice and set the teeth of all hearers on
edge with its roughness.”336 The Visitor reprinted two of his vocal and six of his instrumental
works, including a “Menuet” from Samson in September 1893 and “I Know that My Redeemer
picture” of Haydn deriving inspiration for The Creation from “a wild hurricane on the Channel.”
It claimed that nature cannot elicit a “suitable response in a soul that is intellectually and morally
dead.” Genius is also required.337 A few months later a report of a chamber concert mentions that
the best part of the evening was a Haydn quartet, “perhaps because of our special fondness for
333
“Handel a Plagiarist,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 4 (January 1872): 3. Reprint from the London
Orchestra. The first May Festival in 1873 included the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Messiah; it concluded the evening
concert on May 9. “Although it has been so often heard, the splendid old choral was listened to in breathless silence
to-day by the many thousands.” “Our Musical Feast,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 9 (June 1873): 8–9.
According to the 2000 May Festival program booklet, the audience stood and joined in the “Hallelujah Chorus” in
1873.The chorus had been performed at “All Festivals”; however, it was not performed in 1888. May Festival
program booklet, 166, 209.
334
“Music in England: ‘Saul,’” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 4 (April 1885): 89.
335
“Handel,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 4 (January 1882): 103.
336
“Notable Voices,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 7 (July 1895): 177.
337
“Haydn and Mendelssohn, Pupils of Nature,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 7 (July 1883): 182.
246
Haydn’s compositions of this kind.”338 The May 1896 issue refers to an 1808 book on Haydn,
Letters on the Celebrated Composer Haydn, and gives a list of keys and their “precise meaning
and color.”339 The Visitor reprinted his “Austrian Hymn” in June 1889; otherwise his works were
The Visitor followed Franz Liszt’s activities. In 1871 his oratorio Christus was to be
performed in Vienna and its fourteen scenes were mapped out for readers.340 Liszt’s biography
appeared in May 1882; his Symphony to Dante’s Divine Comedy was being performed on
May 19 at a May Festival matinee. The Visitor claimed that he was widowed in 1865, though
he had never married, and had taken “orders as a priest,” perhaps to make him more acceptable
to its readers.341 The Visitor subsequently announced that Liszt’s piano method was to be
published in Leipzig in three volumes. He “has spent many years in perfecting” it.342 However, it
did not appear. Editor Murray respected Liszt as a pianist but not as a composer. He quoted
Further ammunition came from Henry Krehbiel in the New York Tribune: “His works do not root
in the things which are stable, perennial and of universal acceptance in art.”343 The Visitor
(1890) did not appear in the Visitor until January 1896. A critique of the work by H. E. Krehbiel
appeared in November 1891. He claimed that it was “easier to account for the popularity”
of the work than to “point out any signs of great and original genius in its score. The opera’s
338
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 12 (December 1883): 321.
339
The Musical Visitor 25, no. 5 (May 1896): 125.
340
“Listz’s Grand Oratorio ‘Christus,’” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 2 (November 1871): 8.
341
“The Abbe Franz Liszt,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 8 (May 1882): 209.
342
“Gleanings,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 1 (January 1884): 9.
343
The Musical Visitor 19, no. 12 (December 1890): 316–17.
247
chief charm lies in its naïve forcefulness.” He went on to discuss other aspects of the work and
the influence of other composers.344 The Visitor reported that Queen Victoria saw a performance
of the opera at Windsor Castle, and that this was the first opera she attended after the death of her
husband thirty-one years earlier.345 The Minnie Hauk Opera Company had a week-long
engagement in October 1891 at Pike’s Opera House; Hauk sang in the Cincinnati premiere of
Cavalleria Rusticana. It did not seem to arouse a great amount of enthusiasm.346 The Visitor
reprinted a biography of Mascagni from the London Musical Standard in December 1891.347
The Visitor perpetuated the romantic myth of Felix Mendelssohn’s death from
overwork.348 Though Mendelssohn’s works were frequently mentioned in the Visitor, and
eight of them, including Elijah, had been presented at the first two May Festivals, he was not a
winner in the Visitor’s 1876 poll. The twenty-fifth anniversary of his death (November 4, 1872)
had been “celebrated throughout the towns of Germany by performances of his works.”349 The
Visitor reprinted Ferdinand Hiller’s biography and serialized it as “Mendelssohn” from May to
December 1874. A short article in 1896 recounted incidents from the premiere of Elijah, which
had been conducted by Mendelssohn at Birmingham’s Festival of 1846. His countenance had
changed according to the sentiment of the words. For example, he had been in tears during the
aria “Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in their heavenly Father’s realm.” The day
had been cloudy but sunlight suddenly broke through the clouds at these words, lighting
344
“Cavalleria Rusticana: H. E. Krehbiel’s Estimate,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 11 (November 1891):
290–91.
345
“Foreign Notes,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 1 (January 1892): 12.
346
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 11 (November 1891): 290.
347
“Pietro Mascagni,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 12 (December 1891): 314.
348
“Our Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 9 (June 1872): 11. According to physician John
O’Shea, Mendelssohn died from a stroke, “the curse of the Mendelssohns.” John O’Shea, Was Mozart Poisoned?:
Medical Investigations into the Lives of the Great Composers (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), 118–23.
349
“Our Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 4 (January 1873): 10.
248
Mendelssohn’s face. The writer, a member of the chorus, recalled: “The incident made a deep
impression at the time on the minds of those who witnessed this somewhat mysterious and
startling phenomena.”350 The Visitor also reprinted negative comments about Mendelssohn’s
works and his heirs. For example, the Visitor reported in 1881 that Mendelssohn’s heirs were
exacting a license fee “for every performance of Elijah in England.”351 In a letter from Boston
dated January 17, 1891, Louis Elson reported on the Wagnerites versus Mendelssohn, and was
Mr. Nikisch is not averse to giving Mendelssohn’s works occasionally. We have had the
Italian symphony, the Scotch symphony, and the “Midsummer Night’s Dream” music
recently. This is as it should be, for Mendelssohn has suffered too long from the
animadversion of the rabid ultra-Wagnerites. Wagner may have proved Meyerbeer to
have been a quack, (although one might say that he was a talented man who deliberately
chose a base, ear-tickling and sensational method,) but he has by no means proved
Mendelssohn to be a compound of drawing-room respectability, kid gloves, white cravat,
and milk-and-water.352
Later that year Mendelssohn’s reception was reportedly “having a set-back.” One writer
classified his “Songs Without Words” as without interest to serious musicians, but editor
Murray defended Mendelssohn on the grounds of his oratorios and orchestral works.353 Likely it
was Murray who referred to Mendelssohn as “the prince of euphony and orderly sweetness,”
who always asked whether or not his new compositions sounded good.354 The Visitor reprinted
an excerpt from Harper’s magazine on Mendelssohn by Rev. H. R. Haweis. It was an admirable
account of Mendelssohn’s character as told to him by the sister of Charlotte Sainton-Dolby, for
whom Mendelssohn wrote the contralto role in Elijah.355 The Visitor reprinted eighteen of
Mendelssohn’s works, a number of them for church service.
350
The Musical Visitor 25, no. 9 (September 1896): 259.
351
“European Echoes: Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 4 (January 1881): 106.
352
Proteus [Louis C. Elson], “Music in Yankeeland,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 2 (February 1891): 39.
353
The Musical Visitor 20, no. 6 (June 1891): 148.
354
“Music as a Human Environment,” The Musical Visitor 25, no. 11 (November 1896): 312.
355
“Mendelssohn and the Alto,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 9 (September 1897): 229.
249
The Visitor related that such was Giacomo Meyerbeer’s anxiety to secure favorable
criticism for his works that he expended a large proportion of his income in purchasing the
opinions of public writers. The Visitor claimed that the publishers of Meyerbeer’s operas aver
that of the millions of francs brought by the several works he himself never had as much as
150,000 francs (£ 6,000).356 Dr. Adolph Kohut’s biography of Meyerbeer “contains much of
interest . . . many incidents and anecdotes . . . hitherto unknown to the public.”357 The Visitor
published marches for keyboard from two of Meyerbeer’s operas: the “Coronation March” from
symphonic poem Joan of Arc (1876) in England, which had been attended by several members
of the royal family. A description and critique of the work was less than enthusiastic. The work
was ambitious, but it showed crudity and “other faults of youth.” The mixture of old and new
forms resulted in the composer suffering “the fate of those who sit between two stools.” The
first movement was “far too long” while the fourth movement was “the best of the four.” The last
movement was intended to portray, among other things, Joan’s “apocryphal death on the
battlefield,” and her apotheosis, “or, as it was irreverently termed, the transformation scene.”358
The Visitor published Moszkowski’s “Berceuse,” op. 38, no. 2, in August 1896.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was not a poll winner, but Cincinnati did have a Mozart Club
with membership limited to twenty and directed by Charles Coleman. The chorus members were
356
“Gleanings,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 14 (November 1882): 382.
357
“Meyerbeer,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 4 (April 1891): 91. I was unable to find this biography listed in
the entry for Meyerbeer in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed. Editor Murray must have
been referring to Vol. 12 of Adolf Kohut’s Musiker-biographien published in 1890. The “Prayer and Barcarolle”
from his L’Etoile du nord was scheduled to be performed at the 1873 May Festival. However, soloist Mrs. H. M.
Smith changed her mind and substituted Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi’s “Gratias Agimus Tibi” instead. “Our
Musical Feast: Second Day, May 7th,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 9 (June 1873): 8.
358
“Music in England: Moszkowski’s ‘Joan of Arc,’” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 7 (July 1885): 172.
250
rated as first-class amateur voices; attendance at public rehearsals was by invitation only.359 In
1881 the Visitor included Mozart, along with Beethoven and Mendelssohn, in a list of composers
who “may have had more than usual talent in their specialties, but the greatest gift they each
possessed . . . was the inestimable gift of hard work.”360 Editor Murray once again portrayed
Mozart and Beethoven as having to work at their art, since “young students” had the impression
that these great musicians “never needed instruction or study, and that because of the gift of
genius, they escaped all the drudgery of practice.” The Visitor quoted Mozart as reportedly
saying: “People are mistaken if they think that I had no difficulty in mastering my art. No one
has taken more trouble with studying composition than I. There is scarcely a single celebrated
In preparation for the performance of Mozart’s Requiem at the 1882 May Festival, the
Visitor printed Heribert Rau’s story of its composition and Süssmayr’s involvement. It included
several myths: Mozart was composing it for himself; Süssmayr sat by his bedside taking
dictation; waking after a half-hour nap, Constanze and others were sitting by his bedside; letters
with job offers and requests for compositions were coming in; the dying Mozart sang alto, and he
died at midnight.362 The Requiem was subsequently performed in Boston in 1888. Louis C.
Elson commented on Mozart, “having been starved to death (very nearly) by Vienna,” and the
Requiem as “the flower of funeral music.” He was unconcerned whether Mozart or Süssmayr
composed certain numbers, but was “content to enjoy the whole, believing its beauty to be
sufficient evidence that the mind (and directing hand) of Mozart was present in nearly every
359
Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 2 (November 1871): 8.
360
“Genius––Hard Work,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 11 (August 1881): 299.
361
“Editorial Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 18, no. 2 (February 1889): 36. The source for the quote was
not given.
362
H. Rau, “Requiem Eternam: A Story of Mozart’s Last Composition, and His Death,” Church’s Musical
Visitor 11, no. 8 (May 1882): 205–6. Heribert Rau, Mozart: A Biographical Romance, trans. E. R. Sill (Boston:
Oliver Ditson and Company, 1876).
251
part.”363 The Visitor published nineteen of Mozart’s works for keyboard, some arranged from his
“professors” for being too popular; such enormous success deserves at least recognition. The
writer considered Orphée aux Enfers to be Offenbach’s first important work and La Grande
Duchesse de Gérolstein his most famous.364 After his death in 1880, an obituary in the Visitor
was less kind: “A great deal of his music is set to librettos as vile and indecent as anything that
has been heard upon the stage, and yet, under cover of the music, these operas have attracted
The career of Anton Rubinstein continued to be followed at home and from abroad after
his tour of the United States in 1872–1873, and his compositions continued to be popular. The
Visitor promoted America’s amateur pianists as having made much progress since the 1850s, and
audiences had eagerly attended Rubinstein’s recitals in Cincinnati in 1872 and 1873 because they
were “desirous of catching his style and emulating it.”366 On the other hand, after acknowledging
to piano teachers and pupils that “true progress is necessarily slow” and “patience is a jewel,”
It is a lamentable fact that our concert pianists are not overburdened with care in this
direction. Many of these public performers . . . care more for making “points” here and
there . . . to gain a little brief applause, than for doing artistic work . . . . We have heard
Rubinstein make blunder after blunder . . . and while it may be said that his blunders were
363
Proteus [Louis C. Elson], “Music in Boston,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 5 (May 1888): 122.
364
“Offenbach,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 6 (March 1873): 3.
365
“Jacques Offenbach,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 2 (November 1880): 32–33.
366
“Twenty Years of Musical Culture,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 9 (June 1874): 4; R. Allen Lott,
From Paris to Peoria: How European Piano Virtuosos Brought Classical Music to the American Heartland (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2003)., 215–30.
252
more acceptable than von Bulow’s cold but perfect mechanism, yet they were blemishes
on what otherwise might have been perfect performances.367
A few years later editor Murray quoted from Bettina Walker’s memoirs with regard to
Rubinstein. Her teacher, English composer and pianist Sterndale Bennett, “could not admire
Rubinstein either as an artist or as a composer.” Yet Walker related that she “was always carried
away and transported with delight” whenever she heard him play. She never missed an
opportunity to hear him since she was “enchanted with Rubinstein’s exuberant flights and warm
glow.”368
In 1844 the Visitor announced that Rubinstein’s Tower of Babel would be given during
the Third Biennial Festival of the Cleveland Vocal Society on May 13–15.369 The 1888
Cincinnati May Festival included three works by Rubinstein: “Täglich eilen wir im Fluge,” aria
from The Demon; Paradise Lost; and Russia, for orchestra and organ. Editor Murray disagreed
with Henry Krehbiel’s assessment of Paradise Lost as “weak and commonplace.” According to
Murray, “this evening brought out an audience that was an inspiration in itself. The work is
“powerful,” and “we confess . . . surprise that the Russian composer could have written such
an effective sacred composition, if what we have heard of his lack of religious belief is
true . . . . The orchestration is very effective and is indicative of a master mind.” Giulia
Valda sang “Täglich eilen wir im Fluge” at the Saturday matinee. The Visitor reported that she
had been “the favorite lady singer of the afternoon, and did a wonderful piece of vocal
execution” in this selection. The other female vocalist that afternoon had been Lilli Lehmann.
Russia “is really a medley on a huge scale, introducing characteristic Russian airs, with that
367
“To Teachers and Pupils,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 8 (August 1884): 207.
368
The Musical Visitor 20, no. 3 (March 1891): 65; Bettina Walker, My Musical Experiences (London:
Richard Bentley and Son, 1890), 30.
369
“Concerts and Conventions,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 5 (May 1884): 125.
253
effective orchestration for which Rubinstein is so justly famous.”370 The 1894 May Festival
presented two scenes from his sacred opera Moses. Murray explained that Rubinstein was fond
of writing music on “sacred subjects,” but he did not like the way scenes were usually rendered
in oratorio. His Biblical operas were “designed to be performed with suitable costumes and
scenery.” Reportedly when Rubinstein would hear and see “the sublime characters of the Old
and New Testaments sung by gentlemen in black frocks, with white neckties and yellow gloves,
and a notebook before their faces, or by the ladies in the most modern, often the most
extravagant, toilet,” he was too disturbed to have “any pure enjoyment.”371 The two scenes from
Moses were critiqued: the first one (Scene 3, “Come, daughters of Midia”) was not so bad; at
least it was “singable.” The second (Scene 4, “Cold and Dark”) “is just a conglomeration of
sounds quite as terrifying as the plague of Egypt which it is intended to portray.” The writer,
likely Murray, was “devoutly thankful” that only two of the tableaux were given.372
On November 14, 1889, Julie Rivé-King performed Rubinstein’s Piano Concerto no. 4
with the Cincinnati Orchestra under Michael Brand. The Visitor crowed, she made “a great hit”
and “seems to manage the lion of Russia” as well as she does Chopin.373 Boston correspondent
Louis Elson later compared Rubinstein’s “individualization” to that of the new Boston
370
“The Centennial May Musical Festival,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 6 (June 1888): 144–45. The
Rubinstein family was baptized in July 1831. Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 8th ed. Giulia Valda
was the stage name of Boston native Julia Wheelock, the daughter of Mr. J. B. Wheelock. She was married to “Mr.
Ewen Somerled Cameron, of Balcardine, Argyllshire, a Scotchman of good family and of wealth.” A lengthy sketch
of her career appeared in the Visitor. “The Soloists of the Centennial Musical Festival: Giulia Valda,” The Musical
Visitor 17, no. 5 (May 1888): 122. According to Henry Krehbiel, Valda (Miss Julia Wheelock), prima donna of the
Angelo Grand Italian Opera Company, chose to get “a hearing in her native land” as a Deus ex machina in 1886.
Krehbiel, Chapters of Opera, 162.
371
The Musical Visitor 23, no. 6 (June 1894): 149.
372
“The Eleventh May Music Festival,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 6 (June 1894): 151.
373
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 12 (December 1889): 318.
254
“no harm” and have “never seemed a defect to any right-minded auditor.”374
Apparently Rubinstein had a sense of humor. The Visitor repeated an anecdote regarding
a matinee recital at St. James’s Hall in London. He had supposedly been “accosted by an old
lady in the entrance-hall” who told Mr. Rubinstein that she was not able to purchase a ticket and
asked, “Have you a seat you could let me have?” He had responded that she could have the one
seat at his disposal. The lady had thanked him and asked, “Where is it?” The smiling Rubinstein
According to a correspondent in the New York World who interviewed Rubinstein, his
pessimism was due to his habit of shutting himself up in his room for several days. When asked
if he would come to the United States again in 1893, he responded that he would not and hoped
“to be dead before that date.” Rubinstein also planned to resign as director of the St. Petersburg
Conservatory in 1891 because he could not stand “those fearfully annoying examinations.”376
He did resign from the Conservatory and moved to Germany.377 The August 1891Visitor
reported that the Emperor of Germany had conferred the Cross of the Order of Merit on
Rubinstein.378 The Visitor published his Barcarolle, op. 30, no. 1, in July 1897.
A bizarre item concerning Rubinstein’s brother Nikolai appeared in the Visitor. He had
died in Paris and his coffin had been sent by train to Moscow where he had been buried with
“extraordinary pomp.” Three days later it was learned that a young lady of Lithuanian nobility
had also recently died in Paris. On inspection in Vilnius, however, the coffin had contained the
374
Proteus [Louis C. Elson], “Music in Boston,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 11 (November 1889): 290.
375
“Musical Hopper,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 7 (July 1888): 179.
376
The Musical Visitor 19, no. 12 (December 1890): 315.
377
Rubinstein did not return to the United States after his tour of 1872–1873; he resigned from the St.
Petersburg Conservatory and moved to Berlin in 1891. He did not return to Russia until 1894. Nicolas Slonimsky,
Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 8th ed. (New York: G. Schirmer, 1994), 374.
378
“Musical Notes and Gossip,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 8 (August 1891): 207.
255
body of a man “somewhat past the prime of life.” The coffins had been switched, and it was
In 1895 the Visitor reported that Camille Saint-Saëns’s new work “of a humorous
character,” Le Carnaval des animaux, grande fantaisie zoologique, includes movements devoted
to the lion, tortoise, kangaroo, rooster, elephant “and other creatures.” It was expected that “the
work should be of a high order of originality and genuine humor.”380 Though the work had been
composed in 1886, it was not performed, except for “Le Cygne,” until after his death. Two of his
symphonic poems had been performed at the May Festival, Danse macabre in 1878381 and
Phaéton in 1880. The Carnival of the Animals was not performed at the May Festival until 1958.
A transcription of his Danse macabre for piano was published in the September 1876 Visitor.
Franz Schubert’s serialized biography appeared in the Visitor from December 1876
through March 1877. The Visitor reprinted it from London correspondent Frederick J. Crowest’s
The Great Tone-Poets: Being Short Memoirs of the Greater Musical Composers. Subsequently
the Visitor reported that a “dream story,” regarding his family and difficult relationship with his
father, had been found among Schubert’s papers after his death. The unknown author
described Schubert as impractical and a dreamer.382 Two years later the Visitor credited Schubert
379
“A Strange Incident,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 2 (November 1881): 42. I have been unable to
verify the anecdote.
380
“Notes and Gossip,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 8 (August 1895): 211. His Symphony no. 3 for
Orchestra and Organ, op. 78, was scheduled for the first matinee on Thursday of the 1888 May Festival, but it was
not performed. By the editor [James R. Murray], “The Centennial May Musical Festival,” The Musical Visitor 17,
no. 6 (June 1888): 143–45.
381
Danse macabre was not reviewed in the Visitor but George P. Upton referred to the work as “ghostly,
infernal.” The critic for the Cincinnati Enquirer commented: “By hearing this frequently, one becomes reconciled to
the eccentricities which the composition contains. These same peculiarities are prominent, to a greater or less extent,
in the numerous masterly compositions for orchestra which have come from his pen, or that they are to be looked at
as idiosyncrasies rather than straining for effect. The difficulties, especially for wind instruments were, of course,
easily overcome.” “The Second Day: “The Matinee,” and “Mr. G. P. Upton to the Chicago Tribune,” Cincinnati
Enquirer, May 16, 1880.
382
“Schubert’s Strange Story,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 6 (March 1881): 153.
256
with creating the “German artistic song.”383 The Visitor published nine of Schubert’s works for
keyboard.
Irish bass-baritone Plunket Greene sang Sir Charles Villiers Stanford’s “My Love’s an
Arbutus” at the 1896 May Festival; the Visitor reprinted the song in the July 1896 Visitor.384 A
Visitor article on Stanford’s 1884 comic opera, The Canterbury Pilgrims, pointed out similarities
to Wagner’s Die Meistersinger. For example, the prelude, based on “Sumer is Icumen In,” is
used as a sort of leitmotif. There is also a patter song à la Rossini. The author singled out the love
duet between Hubert and Cicely in the second act: “This duet, even if he had written nothing
else, would justify Dr. Stanford to a claim to be included among the foremost composers of our
day.”385 Stanford’s other opera from 1884, Savonarola, was also considered to exhibit
Wagnerian influence in its use of leitmotifs suggested by the love duet in Tristan und Isolde, and
the funeral march in Götterdämmerung.386 Both articles may have been submitted by the
In 1874 Cincinnati’s Clifton amateurs presented Sir Arthur Sullivan’s operetta, Cox and
Box, or The Long-Lost Brothers “to the entire satisfaction of a first-class and critical
audience.”387 By 1889 the Visitor considered Sullivan “at the head of English musicians” who
had made more money from his compositions than even Meyerbeer. His operettas were very
383
“‘Popular’ and Artistic Songs,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 6 (June 1883): 145. Schubert’s lied “Das
Wanderer” was performed by J. F. Rudolphsen at the 1873 May Festival, though unscheduled. “Our Musical Feast:
Fifth Day, May 10th,” Church’s Musical Visitor (June 1873): 8–9.
384
“Stanford wrote many of his finest songs for Greene, whose remarkable powers of interpretation,
particularly the beauty of his enunciation, made him one of the leading exponents of English song. He believed
passionately that songs should be sung in the language of the audience.” Desmond Shawe-Taylor and Alan Blyth,
“Greene, (Harry) Plunket” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., ed. Stanley Sadie (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2001), l0:365.
385
P. B., “The Canterbury Pilgrims, the New English Opera,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 7 (July 1884):
177. According to Grout, Stanford “attempted to create an English Meistersinger” in The Canterbury Pilgrims.
Donald J. Grout, A Short History of Opera, 3rd ed. with Hermine Weigel Williams (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1988), 576.
386
“The New Opera ‘Savonarola,’” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 8 (August 1884): 199.
387
“Music and the Drama in Cincinnati,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 5 (February 1874): 7.
257
popular in England and the United States and are having “an even greater success in Germany.”
However, the Visitor claimed, Sullivan has composed “much more ambitious work.” Especially
remarkable is his Love of the Wrens, “an attempt to transplant into England the German system
of connected sets of songs.” The work is little known but “exceptionally beautiful . . . and
Ivanhoe, produced at the Royal English Opera House on January 31, 1891.389 The Visitor
published two keyboard works arranged from Ivanhoe, and four of Sullivan’s vocal works.
It is not possible, or even desirable, to discuss all 604 composers whose works appeared
in the Visitor. What is evident is that many of the Americans did more than compose. They were
also writers, critics, poets, editors, performers, choral directors, and teachers, who traveled to
conduct singing schools and conventions, or moved from place to place for employment. The
Visitor kept readers informed of their activities and accomplishments. Opinions were freely
The Visitor’s 1876 poll revealed that subscribers preferred instrumental music composed
by Europeans and vocal music in the English language by Americans. The Visitor included
coverage of Europeans who toured the United States or visited Cincinnati. After the Visitor’s
merger of the Song Messenger in November 1875, the Visitor became a “medium of
communication with the musical public” for George F. Root,390 and Frederic W. Root
contributed amply as well. American composers included lawyers, such as W. T. Porter and
George S. Gordon, or businessmen such as Robert L. Fletcher and George W. Doane. Composers
who provided sacred works and collections for singing schools and conventions were well
represented in the Visitor. Some of the same music and same composers appeared in The Etude
388
The Musical Visitor 18, no. 8 (August 1889): 203. The full title of the song cycle is The Window, or the
Songs of the Wrens based on Tennyson and composed in 1871.
389
“The Story of ‘Ivanhoe,’” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 3 (March 1891): 60–61.
390
Root, The Story of a Musical Life, 161–62.
258
following the Visitor’s demise in December 1897. In nineteenth-century America, music for the
home or church was an important part of people’s lives. The behavior of choirs and their
repertoire received ample attention. The Visitor kept readers informed of composers’ works and
259
CHAPTER 5
The Visitor’s approach to music was democratic: the journal included music of well-
known European composers as well as lesser-known Americans, and music of varying degrees of
difficulty. German and English influence can be seen in bilingual song titles and texts. The
journal included music from collections, sometimes with a number but without the name of
composer or the title of the collection. Music performed at Cincinnati’s May Festivals or by
Theodore Thomas’s orchestra also influenced the choice of music printed in the Visitor. The
editorial page frequently offered commentary on the musical contents of the issue. Critiques on
choirs and choral music also appeared in the Visitor and occasionally reveal distinctions between
Protestants and Catholic practices. The Visitor published and reprinted music to meet the needs
of the home in general and for church services in particular, from January 1886 to September
1895, nearly a third of the journal’s twenty-six year run. Otherwise the music consisted of
dances, marches, instrumental ensembles, choral works, and works for voice and piano.
According to editor Frank H. King, the music was “new” and “carefully selected” to suit
all tastes and capabilities.1 However, he included music of Bach and Mozart as well. Later editor
C. A. Daniell reported that a survey of the music printed in the Visitor, about one hundred fifty
pieces, during the past three years represented all grades of character and difficulty. The Visitor
tried to please everyone but Daniell deemed that “a mistake.” If the music is simple it is “trash”;
if it is brilliant and poetical it is “not popular.” Daniell concluded that trying to please both
classical and popular tastes was like riding two horses at the same time. He proposed to offer
1
“The Visitor,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 3 (December 1871): 6.
260
“better music” [emphasis original] in the next volume (no. 5), which would be both pleasing and
“graded to meet the requirements of the advanced technique and musical cultivation” of our
subscribers.2 The Visitor promoted its liberal supply of music from the John Church Company as
useful for “special practice” or sight reading, especially for those in rural areas who may not
have access to many choices.3 Grading of works was often found in the “Publishers Department”
for new music. The description of grade levels changed over time, likely because of the change
in editors. In August 1874 the Visitor considered grade 3 to be moderately difficult and levels 1
to 4 to be “popular grades.”4 In December 1876 the Visitor provided “A List of Standard Piano
Music for the use of Conscientious Teachers” for grades one to six.5 In January 1883 the
“Publishers Department” described grades 1, 2, and 3 as “popular” or easy grades and grade 4 as
not very difficult.6 As late as March 1897 the Visitor rated grades from 1 to 7, with 1 as “easiest”
and 7 “most difficult.” If two numbers were given, the first was for the voice part and the second
for the piano.7 In addition, the grade level for the same work could be assigned different grades
over time, but usually within a half-grade or one grade level higher.8 The grading of musical
2
“The Visitor Music,” Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 2 (November 1874): 9. Daniell introduced two
works at grade level 5, in November 1874 and Mach 1878, and one at grade level 8 in November 1879.
3
“Reading at Sight,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 7 (April 1881): 187. Many small or rural towns did
not have a music store to supply music or instruments.
4
“Publishers Department,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 11 (August 1874): 12; “Selected Popular
Music,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 11 (August 1874): 23.
5
Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 3 (December 1876): 89.
6
“Publishers Department,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 1 (January 1883): 15.
7
“Monthly Bulletin of New Music,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 3 (March 1897): 84.
8
Douglas Bomberger found the same discrepancy with grade levels for music in The Etude. E. Douglas
Bomberger, An Index to Music Published in The Etude Magazine, 1883–1957 (Lanham, MD: Music Library
Association, 2004), xiv.
261
Daniell made no apologies for including “popular music” in the journal. A paper
presented at the 1876 Delaware, Ohio, Convention had “created some excitement” on the
subject.9 The author, George W. Chadwick, had attacked popular music as a “dreadful and
almost undefinable product of a depraved modern taste,” though his audience had consisted of
“not a few of whom were the very ones” who were providing this “false idol.” Daniell’s response
was that it was fine for musicians to adhere to “the higher and purer standards of music” and to
promote the elevation of public taste, but parents wanted music for the home circle, for “the
relaxation and bond of love which it is intended to be.” He concluded, “The short of it is that
music must be to a great extent ‘Popular,’ or the people will not have it at all.”10 Four months
prior to his departure as editor, Daniell noted that while the music printed in the Visitor had
“been ‘popular,’ often it has been of a high character, representing the greatest masters of
Daniell discussed “Music of the Sabbath” in the July 1874 Visitor. He referred to “our
Puritan forefathers” who had thought it a sin “even to smile” and “a musical instrument was an
abomination” on the holy day. At present there are still some who regard “a piano as something
not to be used on the Sabbath.” Daniell asked what could be “more pleasing, beneficial, and
inducive to the improvement of mind and heart, than music?” Every family that delights in music
“should have a collection of music ready, on purpose, for Sunday use.” He recommended not
9
The paper referred to was mentioned the previous month: “A Brief History of the First Meeting of the
Educational Convention of Music Teachers, at Delaware, Ohio, Dec. 26, 27 and 28, 1876,” which included George
Whitefield Chadwick, professor of music in Olivet College, Michigan, on the subject “The Popular Music of the
Day, and wherein Reform Is Necessary.” Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 5 (February 1877): 119–20. This was the
first meeting of the MTNA, founded by Theodore Presser in 1876. Polly Carder addresses more details of the
meeting. P. H. Carder, George F. Root, Civil War Songwriter: A Biography (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and
Company, 2008), 196.
10
Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 6 (March 1877): 150.
11
Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 3 (December 1880): 70.
262
only sacred songs, but also instrumental music. If you hear “a scrap” from an opera played on the
organ in church, it is not out of place. Only “Bacchanailan songs and frivolous dance-music”
may be objectionable.12
Beginning in December 1877, the Visitor provided a Christmas Service for the “home-
circle or praise-gathering.”13 The issue included an anthem and a carol by George Root, and a
hymn by Thomas Hastings. An 1881 Visitor review praised The Evangelical Hymnal, compiled
by the Reverend C. C. Hall and Sigismund Lasar, and published by A. S. Barnes and Company
for having made no concessions to “popular music.” On the other hand, the Visitor found the
collection “disappointing to two-thirds of the musical worshippers who will look in vain for
many of the simple hymn tunes of American composers which have long since found firm
lodgment in their heart of hearts.”14 Thus, sacred music was tied to nationalism.
In December 1885 editor Murray observed it was most gratifying that “the observance of
Christmas is fast becoming universal. Its growth in popular favor in America is almost
phenomenal. Our forefathers held the observance of this and other religious anniversaries in
abhorrence. The rebound from Rome and the Church of England as well carried the Puritans to
the other extreme.”15 Music in observance of Christmas did not appear in the Visitor until a
12
“Music on the Sabbath,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 10 (July 1874): 9.
13
Church’s Musical Visitor 7, no. 3 (December 1877): 68.
14
“Literary Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 5 (February 1881): 134. The collection was heavily
weighted to such British or Continental composers as Joseph Barnby, Sir John Goss, Henry Smart, Felix
Mendelssohn, George Handel, and Thomas Tallis. The Preface read in part that “the best interests of Hymnody in
America have suffered through the popular use of Hymns and Tunes which perhaps have been more attractive to the
ear than appropriate to the sacred offices of religion. . . . That the tradition of Christians in America have joined
certain admirable Hymns to Tunes of less merit. . . .” The Evangelical Hymnal (New York: A. S. Barnes and
Company, 1880), iii.
15
“Christmas,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 12 (December 1885): 321. In 1659 the General Court of
Massachusetts enacted a law “to punish those who ‘kept Christmas’: anybody who is found observing, by abstinence
from labor, feasting, or any other way, any such days as Christmas day, shall pay for every such offense five
shillings.” The law against celebrating Christmas was repealed in 1681, “but many of the Puritans were not
263
Christmas Carol was included as a December 1874 “Supplement.” After 1874 Christmas music,
secular and sacred, was included in December issues to varying degrees but became more
prominent under Murray’s editorship (1881–1897). The United States Congress had declared
Church Music
Important Information for Choirs, Choral Unions, and other Singing Societies.
The greatest musical need of the choir is good, new Scripture and Hymn Anthems
for opening, closing, and occasional use. This need, the “Musical Visitor” proposes to
supply every month, beginning January, 1886.
It will have each month a sufficient number of choice Anthems and Choir Pieces,
to last a choir until the next issue. In each “Visitor” there will be a number of fine Organ
Voluntaries. In the reading department there will be, besides the usual sketches, stories,
essays, lessons, etc., articles of special interest to choir and chorus members.17
Murray predicted, “When the true scope and influence of the organ voluntary is
thoroughly understood and appreciated there will be a change in the part of the church service
which will be almost revolutionary.” A cautionary note, however, advised, “the voluntary is not
for the purpose of displaying the culture and musical attainments of the organist.” Furthermore,
“not all the music written for the organ, even by the masters, is suitable for the church service.
Bach, the greatest of all organists . . . has written very little music that is adapted for church
reconciled to this action.” Secular “reveling at Christmas in England” offended the Puritans’ moral sense. This
attitude came with them, and it was maintained “for the better part of two centuries in parts of New England.” James
H. Barnett, The American Christmas: A Study in National Culture (New York: Macmillan, 1954), 3, 4.
16
Penne L. Restad, Christmas in America: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 104.
17
The Musical Visitor 15, no. 1 (January 1886): 10. Sacred music had appeared in the Visitor prior to this
time, but music for the church service was a new priority. There were advertisements in the Visitor for the
Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and St. Louis Railroad (Little Miami and Pan-Handle Route) as far back as 1873 for a Sunday
church train from Loveland to Cincinnati leaving at 9:00 a.m. and returning at 2:00 p.m. Church’s Musical Visitor 3,
no. 1 (October 1873): 26.
264
purposes. . . . The works of Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, and others of like ilk, abound in music
that is eminently suited both for the organ and the church.”18
In February the Visitor informed its subscribers that the publishers had changed the scope
of the magazine to meet “the increasing demand throughout the entire country for good new
music” directed to choirs and organists. Each issue would contain twelve to sixteen pages of
“anthems and voluntaries suitable for the opening and closing of church service. If any of the
present subscribers are dissatisfied with this change of plan,” the Visitor promised to refund the
unused portion of their subscription, either in cash or sheet music. Murray mentioned that all of
the choir music, with few exceptions, had been composed for the Visitor and the organ
voluntaries had been “specially prepared from the works of the masters” for the Visitor.19 The
purpose of the opening voluntary was to “affect the emotions and the heart” so that the listener
would “come into that humble and devout frame of mind, which is not only suitable, but
necessary” to engage in the following worship.20 Murray subsequently reminded readers that the
instrumental music printed in the journal “can be played upon the piano or organ, and is of the
18
“The Organ Voluntary,” The Musical Visitor 15, no. 1 (January 1886): 10–11. This perhaps explains why
only two works by Bach appeared in the Visitor: a choral work based on “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” in April
1872, and a “Loure” arranged by Sara Heinze for keyboard, grade 3, based on BWV 1009, in January 1875. The
John Church Company published and advertised in 1888 Murray’s One Hundred Voluntaries: A Special Collection
of Easy and Tasteful Organ Music Selected and Arranged from the Best Writers for pipe or reed organ. The
collection includes a variety of works and includes such well-known composers as Beethoven, Mozart, Handel, and
Haydn. Ninety-six of the organ works were reprinted in the Visitor. The remaining four may have appeared in the
missing September 1887 issue. See Appendix A.
19
“To Old Subscribers,” The Musical Visitor 15, no. 2 (February 1886): 38. The preface to Murray’s
Collection advises performers that the works in the collection could be used either for the opening or closing of the
service. The arrangement of the stops and pedals was left to the discretion of the players. Murray hoped that the
collection would be “readily accorded a prominent place in the musical library of the church and home.” Murray’s
One Hundred Voluntaries, 2.
20
“Voluntaries and Sermons,” The Musical Visitor 15, no. 2 (February 1886): 38–39.
265
best quality, and most of it can be used with good effect as opening or closing voluntaries or
offertories.”21
It was likely Murray who responded to enquiries about the use of interludes in 1883. He
believed the practice of playing interludes between the stanzas of a hymn should be abolished.
The old excuse of the singers needing a break when singing four or five stanzas of a hymn was
weak. In the Roman Catholic churches of Europe, “Grand effects are sometimes produced by
instrumental as well as vocal music,” when organist and orchestra are combined for “musical
display.” The voluntary at the opening of the service, however, can effectively promote the
objects of the service.22 A decade later Frederic Root wrote from Germany comparing European
to American church music. He commented, “Often the music which the bands play during mass
is not what we consider fit for the sanctuary.” The church music printed in the Visitor “is largely
what Abraham Lincoln said of our form of government: it is ‘of the people, by the people, and
for the people.’ Here it might be said to be of the musicians, by the musicians, and for the
musicians.” Root referred to church practice in such European cities as Paris, Berlin, and
Munich.23
Apparently Visitor subscribers received the music for choirs well. Letters of approval
poured into the editor’s office from organists, choir leaders, and ministers.24 Furthermore, many
orders had been received for extra copies of Waldemar Malmene’s anthem “Abide with Me,”
21
The Musical Visitor 20, no. 6 (June 1891): 148.
22
“Interludes,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 3 (March 1883): 67.
23
“Drawing Comparisons. A Letter from Germany by F. W. Root,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 1 (January
1894): 2–3.
24
The Musical Visitor 15, no. 11 (November 1886): 288.
266
which had been published in the September issue.25 Murray had claimed in June 1886 that the
Visitor’s choir music was “the main reliance of a large number of choirs” and that the Visitor had
The Visitor continued to report “the most encouraging words” from choirs and choir
leaders concerning its music for choirs and organists.27 Apparently convention teachers were also
using the music for “drill in suitable music for the church.”28 By May 1888 the Visitor reported
that a large number of choirs were using the choir music almost exclusively, and “various
congregations have expressed special satisfaction in the varied selections performed.”29 The
editor received a letter from a subscriber who “was able to use only one little carol” from another
music journal last Christmas, while “the year before I used everything in the Visitor.”30
According to Mary Davison, journals devoted to church music and choirs fell to 6 percent in the
1880s, compared to 38 percent in the 1850s and 12 percent in the 1860s.31 This lacuna paved the
way for the Visitor to increase its appeal to subscribers. Music for holidays, such as
Thanksgiving or Christmas, often printed the preceding month, gave choirs time to rehearse the
music.
The Visitor issued frequent reports on church choirs. An article on “Choir Discipline” in
1872 supported choir directors and the difficulties they faced. “The question of choir
25
“City Notes,” in ibid.
26
The Musical Visitor 15, no. 6 (June 1886): 148.
27
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 3 (March 1888): 66.
28
The Musical Visitor 17, no. 7 (July 1888): 176.
29
The Musical Visitor 17, no. 5 (May 1888): 120.
30
“Editorial Notes,” 18, no. 2 (February 1889): 36.
31
Mary Veronica Davison, “American Music Periodicals, 1853–1899” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota,
1979), 141.
267
government, as at present administered, is a matter more intricate than the uninitiated would
imagine, and the choir leader, or musical director of a choir, has by no means an easy or pleasant
position. This is true even in paid and quartette choirs, but it is much worse in volunteer
organizations.” The writer continued, “The position of leader or director is seldom appreciated
by churches, and a little attention to the matter on the part of the music committees would lead to
As reported in the Visitor, choristers continued to present difficulties for their leaders.
According to W. T. Giffe, who wrote from Indiana in 1883, the leader must lead in order to
“prevent confusion and grumbling,” such as that found in his church, where he had to toss
pennies in order to decide the tunes to be sung.33 A few years later editor Murray wrote about the
duties and importance of average choir members. They should attend rehearsals and pay
attention to the leader’s directions and suggestions concerning the work at hand. Keep one eye
on the music and one eye on the conductor’s baton. “A reverent attitude of mind and body is
becoming to the choir-singer.” Murray concluded, “The angel with the flaming sword who once
stood at the gates of Eden, now that that occupation is gone, could not find another more useful
During the second half of the nineteenth century, the quartet choir, consisting of paid
singers, replaced the volunteer choir in some churches.35 In 1872 the Visitor ridiculed the issue
32
“Choir Discipline,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 5 (February 1872): 7.
33
W. T. Giffe, “Chorister and Choir,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 10 (October 1883): 260.
34
“The Duties of Choir Members,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 7 (July 1888): 177.
35
Dudley Buck’s “higher-quality choral music” helped to dissolve “the elitist separation between the quartet
choir and the full choir.” His anthems “moved beyond the Mendelssohnian transparency and diatonic harmonic
vocabulary of many English anthems.” Buck employed “the harmonic practices of the modern German school of
Liszt and Wagner, with more frequent use of secondary dominants, augmented sixth chords, diminished seventh
chords, and avoidance of root-position chords.” N. Lee Orr, “Democracy Comes to the Choir Loft: Dudley Buck
268
of using paid singers, especially flamboyant ones. “Theatrical singers are not engaged Sundays,
and their services can be secured at reasonable rates.” When the solemn service is finished, “we
are favored with exquisite snatches from Verdi’s ‘Trovatore,’ Meyerbeer’s ‘Huguenots,’ and
Offenbach’s ‘La Belle Hélène.’”36 In 1876 the Reverend Darius E. Jones complained that the
quartet choir, with its florid song and solos, was appropriate in a concert setting but not in
church. He praised George F. Root’s collection The Choir and Congregation as “a genuine
reform of this mighty evil.”37 According to C. A. Daniell, Root’s collection “will bring about the
most amicable feelings and relations between the singers in the choir loft and the people in the
pews, and lead them to hearty cooperation in the song service.” The collection included anthems,
quartets, duets, trios, solos, and choruses, which are “so arranged as to form inspiring
introductions” to old tunes and hymns in which the choir and congregation might unite.38 In 1880
E. Minshall, organist of the City Temple, London, visited churches in Philadelphia and New
York. He generally did not like the quartet choir, though agreed that anthems should be left to
the choir rather than the congregation. The quartet was more of a “performance” than worshipful
and the choir members misbehaved when not singing. Minshall favored Root’s reform efforts in
and the Popularization of American Sacred Music,” in Music, American Made: Essays in Honor of John Graziano,
ed. John Koegel (Sterling Heights, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2011), 654, 655, 659, 661.
36
“Church Choirs,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 3 (December 1872): 6.
37
D. Eliot Jones, “Rhetorical and Musical Exhibitions,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 7 (April 1876):
172–73. John Church and Company published Root’s The Choir and Congregation in 1875. An entry in 1876
referred to the collection as a “revolution in church music.” “1875 Musical Memorabilia, September 1,” Church’s
Musical Visitor 5, no. 5 (February 1876): 123. Darius Jones was music director at Henry Ward Beecher’s Plymouth
Congregational Church in Brooklyn, New York. He compiled Temple Melodies in 1851. Paul A. Richardson,
“Hymnody,” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi Garrett (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2013), 4:299. The Visitor published Jones’s obituary in the Visitor in 1881. During the last four
years of his life, he was a representative for John Church and Company and had contributed correspondence from
the Midwest as “D. E. J.” “Gone Home,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 12 (September 1881): 327–28.
38
“Artistic Versus Congregational Singing,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 5 (February 1876): 120–21.
269
Choir and Congregation, which he witnessed in practice at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn.39
choir,” the lack of which had “led to the practice of substituting the quartet.” First, you need a
community and congregation large enough to supply and support the volunteer choir. Fifty
voices will provide inspiration. Second, there should be a large well-voiced organ with eight and
four-foot stops to accompany the voices. Third, a church should provide comfortable seating in a
roomy, well-lit, well-ventilated area where the choir can see the minister and be seen by the
congregation. This would discourage “whispering, writing notes, reading newspapers or books,
and going out during the sermon.” Fourth, church rooms should be made available where they
can gather for “innocent amusements” and meet members of the congregation. Last, Bowman
recommended a music director who is a musician and who is knowledgeable about human nature
and can avoid friction with others. He should inspire others by his good example. Of course, the
“pastor and musical director should work together with intelligent sympathy.”40
about similar challenges. He had blamed the “Romish church” for “perching the choir in a high
balcony behind the congregation, not only out of sight but out of mind,” except when they pour
their “music upon the heads of the worshippers below, trusting that if it should fail to reach the
heart through the shoulder-blades, it may at least sweetly trickle down the back hair like the oil
upon Aaron’s beard.” Sherwin had advocated that the choir be placed at the front of the church,
not in the rear, where they are tempted to indulge in naps, read a paper, and whisper or exchange
39
“Church Music in America,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 4 (January 1880): 98–99.
40
“The Chorus Choir,” The Musical Visitor 19, no. 11 (November 1890): 286–87. Bowman contributed
several articles to the Visitor. In 1881 Church published and advertised Bowman’s Harmony: A Treatise of Historic
Points and Modern Methods of Instruction. The same year the London Royal College of Organists conferred the title
of A. C. O. on Bowman. He was the first American thus honored, and a banquet was given at the College in his
honor. “Music and Musicians,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 1 (October 1881): 12.
270
notes on the blank pages of hymnals. Sherwin had advised churches to take “a deeper interest in
the song-service,” which is not a “mere entertainment” and not to treat the choristers as “mere
hirelings.”41
Apparently both the quartet choir and the chorus choir could behave badly during the
ridiculed the prominence given the discussion about the relative merits of the quartet versus
chorus choir, and “severely denounced the spirit which regards and criticizes the choir’s work
from a concert standpoint.” People have moved away from the notion that the choir’s mission is
R. Huntington Woodman from the New York Evangelist. Woodman reminded organists and
singers that “they are in their positions for a quite different purpose than to exhibit their artistic
abilities.” Congregations are also at fault when members exit the church commenting on how
well the soprano soloist sang that day. Woodman recommended that churches needed to place
music and choirs “in proper relation to the other parts of the service,” so the reform movement
could spread “more rapidly.” More of the “personal element” was found in churches with quartet
choirs than elsewhere. “Organ solos seem to lack the personal element more than vocal
numbers.” Yet organists were cautioned not to use improper combinations and “bizarre effects,”
41
W. F. S[herwin], “Position and Deportment of Church Choirs,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 10 (July
1881): 271–72. Sherwin was referring to Psalm 133: 1–2. Instead of a “Song of Ascents” to Jerusalem where the
brothers dwell in unity, like the precious oil upon the head and running down upon the beard of Aaron, the choir had
ascended to the loft where they could misbehave out of sight.
42
“Music at Worship,” The Musical Visitor 20, no. 9 (September 1891): 229. Dr. Blodgett addressed a
gathering in Salem, Massachusetts.
271
which degraded both the music and the musician. Woodman promoted the “impersonal
Editor Murray noted in February 1894 that it was “but a short time ago that the craze for
quartet instead of chorus choirs got hold of music committees; now there seems to be a desire in
some quarters to still further reduce the numbers . . . .” Some churches were evidently planning
to have only an organist and a precentor. In Cincinnati, according to Murray, the Vine Street
Congregational Church was considering the idea, which “already prevails in various parts” of the
city.44 The Visitor announced in April 1894 that the quartet choir of the Mt. Auburn Church of
Our Savior was to be disbanded and replaced by a boy choir.45 Murray later added: “The church
choir is responsible to a certain degree of the musical taste of the congregation, for, in a sense, it
creates and nourishes it. It is, therefore, important that good music be provided. It is the aim of
the Visitor to supply choirs with music for the church service that will be not only interesting but
uplifting.”46
In May 1894 the Visitor reprinted an article that favorably described music at the Ruggles
Street Baptist Church in Boston. The church had an unaccompanied male quartet and a chorus
choir of eighty voices. Congregational hymns were accompanied by organ and cornet; the boys’
choir of twenty-four and the girls’ choir of twenty were accompanied by reed organ. The seating
arrangement for the chorus choir varied, from the back gallery, to one of the side galleries, and
43
R. Huntington Woodman, “Impersonality in Church Music,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 6 (June 1895):
147–48. Woodman edited the church music section of the New York Evangelist from 1894 to 1897. William
Osborne, “Woodman, R[aymond] Huntington,” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles
Hiroshi Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 8:573.
44
“Editorial Notes,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 2 (February 1894): 36.
45
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 4 (April 1894): 94.
46
The Musical Visitor 24, no. 6 (June 1895): 152.
272
“occasionally among the congregation in the pews, massed together, or divided and scattered
After six years of publishing church music, the Visitor hinted at a return to a focus on
secular music with two works for piano included as a “Supplement to The Musical Visitor in
Feburary 1892.” The editor had trusted that the supplementary piano music in the issue would be
of interest.48 In July 1895 the Visitor issued the following “Special Notice”:
revised and fingered by local faculty members of the College of Music or other music schools,
such as Dr. N. J. Elsenheimer, George Schneider, Georg Krüger, and Theodor F. Bohlmann. The
Visitor included sacred or holiday music as a supplement until its final issue in December 1897.
47
“Model Music in a Model Church,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 5 (May 1894): 116–17.
48
The Musical Visitor 21, no. 2 (February 1892): 36; “Little Serenade” by Alfred Grünfeld, and “Four-Leaf
Clover” by Carl Heins, The Musical Visitor 21, no. 2 (February 1892): III–X.
49
“Special Notice,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 7 (July 1895): 180. The notice was repeated in the August
issue.
273
Dedications and Commemorative Works
The Visitor published and reprinted works that had been dedicated to the memory of
presidents or former generals, such as Grant and Garfield. In addition, it included memorial
pieces for composers or poets. The July 1878 issue included an obituary for American poet and
editor William Cullen Bryant and an Elegy for piano in his memory by E. B. Phelps.50
Composers dedicated works to clergy, choirs, quartets, friends, family members, pupils, fellow
composers, and organists who were mainly located in the Midwest or on the East Coast.
Foreigners were also honored, from Ontario, Canada, to Berlin, Germany. The Visitor honored
the city editor in Huntington, Indiana, in March 1895, and editor Murray in May 1886. The
Visitor also recognized heads of organizations, such as the President of the Chautauqua
Assembly in October 1883 (the Visitor was the official organ for the Assembly) and the
Murray dedicated works to a local choir that he directed, Mt. Auburn Baptist Church, in
April 1886, or to welcome the choir back after summer break in November 1890. He also
dedicated a work to the Free Church Choir in his hometown of Andover, Massachusetts, in July
1890. Thomas P. Westendorf dedicated a sacred work, “With Broken and Contrite Spirit,” to the
In the following section, I discuss sacred music first, followed by secular music. The
amount of vocal music in the Visitor exceeded that of instrumental music (see Appendix B), in
50
“William Cullen Bryant,” Church’s Musical Visitor 7, no. 10 (July 1878): 255–56; E. B. Phelps, “Elegy,”
Church’s Musical Visitor 7, no. 10 (July 1878): 268–71.
51
Thomas P. Westendorf, “With Broken and Contrite Spirit,” The Musical Visitor 15, no. 9 (September
1886): 247–49.
274
part, because of the emphasis on domestic and sacred music. In addition, the family could gather
The Visitor provided music appropriate to the liturgical calendar, for Easter, Christmas,
anthems of such other countries as France and Russia also found their way into the service
music. The June 1889 issue included keyboard music mindful of the popular wedding month: a
“Marche Nuptial,” and a “March” [no. 22, “Ecco la Marcia,” from the Finale of Act III]
Sacred vocal music in the Visitor included hymns, anthems, and gospel songs. American
composers are well represented. Despite all of the criticisms of the practice of quartet choirs by
the Reverend Darius E. Jones, E. Minshall, E. M. Bowman, and Dr. Benjamin C. Blodgett, music
from quartet collections was often reprinted. Murray suggested that church choirs sing at least
one stanza of a hymn in unison. “When well done, the effect of unison singing is most
excellent.” Furthermore, if it is not convenient or desirable to have a single voice sing the solos
in some of the Visitor’s music, it can be very effective to have “all voices of a similar quality on
a solo.” Murray suggested as an example, all altos and basses can perform an alto or bass solo
despite the change in clef. Murray believed there was no need to discard a piece of music
because it contained a solo or duet.53 He also advised choirs to elect a librarian to take care of the
52
F. Wachs, “Marche Nuptial,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 6 (June 1889): 164–65; W. A. Mozart, “March,”
The Musical Visitor 18, no. 6 (June 1889): 166–67.
53
“Editorial Notes,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 3 (March 1889): 64.
275
music, since it “should be sung more than once or twice. Take good care of the old Visitors as
In 1881 William Sherwin, head of Church’s Sunday School Department from 1881 to
1883, wrote an article titled “Reactions in Sunday School Music.” He defined the term “classical
as applied to music and hymns.” It does not mean “above the comprehension of any but educated
musicians, or that which was written anywhere outside of America. Rather, it is ‘that which is
chaste, pure, refined,’ wheresoever or by whomsoever produced, and it may be the perfection of
simplicity . . . for example, the opening melody of the ‘dona nobis’ in Mozart’s twelfth Mass.”55
In 1874 the Visitor had reprinted three of T. C. O’Kane’s gospel hymns from his Sunday
School collection Every Sabbath.56 They exhibit typical characteristics of the gospel hymn:
elements of popular music, strophic texts, refrains, homophonic texture, with variety provided by
“echo voices” (rhythmic pattern in soprano and alto repeated by tenor and bass), repeated
rhythmic patterns, often dotted, major tonality, diatonic harmony with occasional chromatic
passing tones of “Barbershop” harmony.57 Robert L. Fletcher, a Chicago businessman who also
composed Gospel hymns, gave permission for his quartet At Last to appear in the October 1892
54
“Editorial Notes,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 5 (May 1889): 120.
55
W. F. S[herwin], “Reactions in Sunday School Music,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 9 (June 1881):
243. Mozart’s “Twelfth Mass” is the spurious Anhang K 232.
56
T. C. O’Kane, “One in Christ” and “The Blood-bought Shore,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 5
(February 1874): 21. “One in Christ” was noted to have been “rendered with thrilling effect at the Evangelical
Alliance, October, 1873.” T. C. O’Kane, “With Joy We Hail the Sacred Day,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 6
(March 1874): 12D.
57
Gospel songs and hymns originated mostly from European American composers living in the northern
states and distributed by publishers in the Northeast and Midwest, incorporating Sunday-school songs. Stephen
Shearon, Harry Eskew, and James C. Downey, “Gospel Music” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd
ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press), 3:550–53.
276
issue. The text is based on a poem by Quaker poet John G. Whittier and the quartet is
accompanied by keyboard.58
The Visitor reprinted 1876 poll winner W. H. Doane’s “The Mother’s Good-Bye,” a
gospel song and chorus (SATB), in the May 1879 issue.59 The son is about to become an orphan;
he is reminded to read the Bible as his mother is leaving him. The verses are preceded by an
introduction and followed by a postlude for “inst.” It is also similar in subject matter to the dying
The Visitor featured sacred music in recognition of John Church’s death on April 19,
1890. James Murray’s heartfelt “Sleep Thy Last Sleep” for unaccompanied voices, dedicated to
Church’s memory, appeared twice, in the April and May issues. F. Vinal arranged two works to
be performed a cappella, including “Yea, Though I Walk” from Arthur Sullivan’s oratorio The
Light of the World.60 George Root contributed a hymn anthem “Sweet Is the Work,”
unaccompanied quartet and chorus, likely as a reference to Church’s New England family
background.62 Thus, the Visitor in its musical remembrance captured Church’s activities as a
music publisher.
In 1885 the Visitor had published Signor H. B. Fabiani’s “Passion Hymn” for treble voice
58
R. L. Fletcher, “At Last,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 10 (October 1892): 276, 284–85.
59
W. H. Doane, “The Mother’s Good-Bye,” Church’s Musical Visitor 8, no. 8 (May 1879): 224–26.
Though Doane was living in Cincinnati at the time, this was his sole contribution to the Visitor.
60
[Arthur] Sullivan, “Yea, Though I Walk,” arr. F. Vinal, The Musical Visitor 19, no. 5 (May 1890):
125–27.
61
G. F. Root, “Sweet Is the Work,” The Musical Visitor 19, no. 5 (May 1890): 128–31.
62
Webbe, “Land of Our Fathers,” The Musical Visitor 19, no. 5 (May 1890): 142.
277
and piano or organ for Good Friday services.63 Henry Harding’s “I Heard the Voice of Jesus
Say” for treble voice, chorus (SATB), and keyboard,64 and “Why Seek Ye the Living among the
Dead,” Edward L. Cranmer’s Easter anthem with solos, duets and quartet or chorus and
keyboard,65 had been among the works for the 1889 Easter service.
The May 1886 issue had included Joseph Barnby’s hymn “Sleep Thy Last Sleep,”66
appropriate for remembering the fallen on Decoration or Memorial Day. M. L. McPhail’s “Come
unto Me, When Shadows Darkly Gather” is a comforting message performed by quartet choir
and organ.67
Anthems, had been included in the Visitor’s November 1885 issue.68 J. R. Murray’s “Thine, O
Lord, Is the Greatness” (SATB and keyboard, October 1894) was subtitled for “Harvest or
Thanksgiving.69
Sacred and secular Christmas music became a regular feature beginning in December
63
Signor [H. B.] Fabiani, “Passion Hymn,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 4 (April 1889): 102–3.
64
Henry Harding, “I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 4 (April 1889): 106–8.
65
Ed. L. Cranmer, “Why Seek Ye the Living among the Dead,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 4 (April 1889):
97–101.
66
J[oseph] Barnby, “Sleep Thy Last Sleep,” The Musical Visitor 15, no. 5 (May 1886): 140.
67
M. L. McPhail, “Come Unto Me, When Shadows Darkly Gather,” The Musical Visitor 15, no. 5 (May
1886): 125–27.
68
J. Concone, “Worship the Lord,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 11 (November 1885): 303–6.
69
J. R. Murray, “Thine, O Lord, Is the Greatness,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 10 (October 1894): 268–69.
278
1876 with George Root’s carol “Glory to God in the Highest.”70 The Visitor reissued three works
designated for “Christmas service” by Root and Thomas Hastings in the December 1877 issue.
Hester Morley’s “Voices in the Air” (Reverie for Christmas Eve) for piano solo could be
performed at home and perhaps for church service.71 Poll winner H. P. Danks’s Christmas
anthem “Blessed Be the Lord” shows some influence of Dudley Buck’s chromaticism in the style
of Liszt and Wagner.72 George Root’s “Glory to Our Savior King” in December 189573 was
reportedly found among his papers after his death, likely composed in response to the editor’s
A song titled “New Year’s Song” by Brahms graced the cover of the January 1884
issue.75 The English text and simple keyboard accompaniment made it accessible to a family
The Visitor included a variety of keyboard music for church services76 from January 1886
until September 1895, from nocturnes to character pieces and from such well-known composers
70
G. F. R[oot], “Glory to God in the Highest,” Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 3 (December 1876): 57–58.
71
Hester Morley, “Voices in the Air,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 12 (December 1884): 332–34.
72
H. P. Danks, “Blessed Be the Lord,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 12 (December 1888): 328–33. N. Lee
Orr, “Democracy Comes to the Choir Loft, 647–72.
73
G. F. Root, “Glory to Our Savior King,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 12 (December 1895): 347–49.
74
“Our Music Pages,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 12 (December 1895): 359.
75
Johann[es] Brahms, “New Year’s Song,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 1 (January 1894): cover. I have been
unable to identify the original title.
76
The Visitor had included a Christmas service with music in its December 1877 issue.
279
Rinck. Any of them could also be performed at home, in keeping with McDannell’s findings
The Visitor published a brief nocturne by Nicolai von Wilm in March 1887 as an organ
voluntary.77 It was likely intended to induce a contemplative mood, or to touch the heart and
mind as suggested previously by Murray. The Visitor included a “Nocturne” for keyboard from
Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream intended for church use in July 1893.78 Franz
Spindler’s arrangement begins with the opening chord sequence and moves to no. 7 (Con molto
The Russian National Hymn (“God Save the Tsar”), composed by General Alexis Lwoff,
appeared twice in the Visitor: in July 1888 for solo keyboard,79 which could have served as a
church voluntary, and in June 1889 as a hymn arranged by Paul Gerhardt.80 The Visitor included
the story of its composition and the Tsar’s gratitude in an excerpt from Lwoff’s memoirs in
August 1886.81 The Visitor reprinted the “Russian Hymn” and Haydn’s “Austrian Hymn” in June
1889.82
The Visitor also reprinted Mozart’s “Kyrie from the 12th Mass,” transcribed for solo
keyboard, in October 1893. An article in 1895 addressed the question of authorship. Likely it
was Murray who admitted that Mozart had no more to do with the mass than he did with the
Pirates of Penzance. Simrock had published the mass in 1816 as number seven; Novello gave it
77
Nicolai v. Wilm, “Nocturne,” The Musical Visitor 16, no. 3 (March 1887): 58.
78
F[elix] Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, “Nocturne,” arr. Franz Spindler, The Musical Visitor 22, no. 7 (July
1893): 198–99.
79
[Alexis Lwoff], “Russian National Hymn,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 7 (July 1888): 198.
80
A[lexis] Lwoff, “The Russian Hymn,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 6 (June 1889): 163.
81
“The Russian National Hymn,” The Musical Visitor 15, no. 8 (August 1886): 207.
82
[Franz Joseph] Haydn, “The Austrian Hymn,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 6 (June 1889): 163.
280
the present number. Otto Jahn had rejected it as “spurious” in his Life of Mozart, and Breitkopf
and Härtel had not included it in their latest edition of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozarts Werke:
The Visitor also published marches for church services. Philipp Scharwenka’s “March for
Festival Occasions,” op. 45, no. 2, was printed for Easter 1886.84 As the last musical entry that
month, it was likely intended as a postlude. The Visitor reprinted two marches to celebrate Easter
in March 1895: the “Festival March” from Handel’s opera Scipione85 and J. R. Murray’s
service would not have been entirely inappropriate. The morally upright character of Scipio is
established in the opening scene, beginning with the “famous march.”87 C. A. Daniell had
previously written that hearing “a scrap” of opera music on the church organ was not
objectionable.
The Visitor reprinted selections from Robert Schumann’s Album für die Jugend, op. 68,
in 1890, including “Moderato” (the first section from no. 38, “Winterzeit”);88 no. 21 as “Lento”;
83
“Who Wrote the ‘Twelfth Mass?,’” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 8 (August 1895): 207. Murray had
previously come to the same conclusion based on Ignaz von Seyfried’s and Otto Jahn’s findings. “Poor ‘Twelfth
Mass,’” Musical Visitor 12, no. 4 (April 1883): 95. Seyfried had been one of Mozart’s pupils and a close friend.
84
Ph[ilipp] Scharwenka, “March for Festival Occasions,” The Musical Visitor 15, no. 4 (April 1886):
110–11.
85
[G. F. Handel], “Festival March,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 3 (March 1895): 85.
86
J. R. Murray, arr., “Easter March,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 3 (March 1895): 86–87.
87
Anthony Hicks, “Scipione,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, ed. Stanley Sadie (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997), 4: 269–70.
88
[Robert] Schumann, “Moderato,” The Musical Visitor 19, no. 6 (June 1890): 167.
281
no. 22 as “Moderato” (actually “Rundgesang”); no. 26 as “Moderato” in August;89 and “Melody”
(actually “Sylvesterlied”), no. 42, in September.90 It is unclear why the Visitor did not include
Xaver Scharwenka’s “Song Without Words,” op. 62, no. 7 (from his Album for Young
Pianists), was one of the last works to be issued as a voluntary in 1895.91 It contains cross-
rhythms but otherwise presents no difficulties for the keyboardist, whether in church or at home.
Considered under this heading are ballads, works for song and chorus, voice and piano
(or possibly harmonium, whichever was available in the home), duets, quartets, topical subjects
The performance venue for these works could vary. Frederic Root’s “The Season at the
Springs” in July 1872 celebrates escaping the summer heat of the city. The light-hearted text, for
unaccompanied mixed voices, expresses not only their relief by being in Saratoga Springs, but
the fun they would experience.92 According to Nicholas Tawa, the “fortunate few” who could
afford the time and money would spend “from two weeks to an entire summer season” at a
summer resort such as Saratoga Springs. “Whether people were away for a few hours or a few
weeks, music came away with them.” The most celebrated resort was Saratoga Springs, where
89
[Robert] Schumann, “Moderato,” “Moderato,” “Lento,” The Musical Visitor 19, no. 8 (August 1890):
220–23.
90
[Robert] Schumann, “Melody,” The Musical Visitor 19, no. 9 (September 1890): 251.
91
Xaver Scharwenka, “Song Without Words,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 8 (August 1895): 216–17.
92
F. W. Root, “The Season at the Springs,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 10 (July 1872): 21.
282
amateurs could sing and play piano or guitar “in the hotel music room.”93 The Visitor serialized
Root’s opera bouffe, Extract of Opera, in September, October, and November 1872. An
advertisement describes the work for four performers (SATB) and keyboard as a “most
entertaining little work for an afterpiece,” taking about twenty minutes to perform.94
Temperance songs
John Church and Company published and advertised collections of temperance songs,
such as The Musical Fountain, for public and social gatherings or the home circle. They were
intended for “the Temperance movement now engrossing public attention.” Once sung, each
“will have more effect than any amount of lecturing.”95 An advertisement for Gospel and
Temperance Songs appeared in the January 1881 issue. The songs were for temperance meetings,
Sabbath Schools, and the home circle.96 Miss Frances Willard, president of the Women’s
Christian Temperance Union, had penned a letter regarding George Root’s latest book of
temperance songs, The Glorious Cause, writing “The more I look the book over the more I think
it is the one we have been waiting for” [emphasis original].97 The Visitor employed her name in
93
Nicholas Tawa, High-Minded and Low-Down: Music in the Lives of Americans, 1800–1861 (Boston:
Northeastern University Press, 2000), 192, 283.
94
“Extract of Opera,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 12 (November 1879): 56.
95
“The Musical Fountain,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 9 (June 1874): 24.
96
“Gospel and Temperance Songs,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 4 (January 1881): 120.
97
“The Glorious Cause,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 9 (September 1888): 233. The WCTU was founded in
1874; Willard served as its president from 1879 to 1898. Women argued that the “saloon was a challenge to
women’s domain, a threat to the family, and a major cause of social disorder and human misery.” Sondra Wieland
Howe, Women Music Educators in the United States: A History (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2014), 48.
283
According to George Ewing, after 1840 most temperance songs were composed by
hymn-writers, including Philip P. Bliss.98 The Visitor printed two temperance songs in the May
1874 issue.99 The first, P. P. Bliss’s “Bring Me the Bowl,” is a duet for soprano and bass
accompanied by keyboard, with associative tonality. The father’s stanzas are in C minor while
the daughter exhorts her father to reform in the key of E-flat major. The daughter is victorious;
the last stanza moves to the “echo voice” of the gospel hymn and they end by singing in
harmonious thirds and sixths in E-flat major. The second, H. R. Palmer’s “Oh Carry Me to My
Mother’s House,” is for treble voice, which could be sung in unison by the Sunday School
children accompanied by keyboard, and followed by a chorus (SATB). A youth had left home
and “drained the goblet’s fiery tide,” but wanted to return home, an updating of the parable of the
prodigal son.
the July 1877 issue. The Visitor reprinted Henry C. Work’s temperance song and chorus “King
Bibler’s Army” in the September 1877 issue. Apparently it was the second and last of his
temperance works.100 It is in 4/4 along with a performance indication of “With feeling and spirit
(not alcoholic).” Either Mr. Work had a sense of humor or he was serious about the message.
Leon Levoy’s temperance song and chorus “Papa’s Pledge and Mine,” referring to the pledge of
98
George W. Ewing, The Well-tempered Lyre: Songs and Verse of the Temperance Movement (Dallas:
Southern Methodist University Press, 1977), 180.
99
P. P. Bliss, “Bring Me the Bowl,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 8 (May 1874): 17–21; H. R. Palmer,
“Oh Carry Me to My Mother’s Home,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 8 (May 1874): 23, from Palmer’s Songs of
Love for the Bible School, published by John Church and Company in 1874.
100
Dale Cockrell, “Work, Henry Clay,” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles
Hiroshi Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 8:580.
101
Leon Levoy, “Papa’s Pledge and Mine,” Church’s Musical Visitor 8, no. 6 (March 1879): 172–74.
284
Ballads
According to C. A. Daniell, the simple ballad brings “a link of fellow-feeling between all
classes of human beings.”102 It is usually narrative, strophic, about love, and with a slow tempo.
James Murray’s ballad “Only One Song Can I Sing” (“She Is mine”) for voice and piano
includes the performance indication “Con Amore.” It has a compass of a twelfth and a short
cadenza.103
Julius Benedict toured the United States with Jenny Lind in 1850, directing most of her
concerts. He composed his most popular opera, Lily of Killarney, in 1862.104 The Visitor
reprinted “Eily Mavourneen,” a ballad from that opera, in March 1875.105 The tempo marking is
andante espressivo, with two strophes, octave leaps, and range of a tenth. Franz Abt also toured
the country and visited Cincinnati in 1872. The Visitor advertised his “Good-night, My Love” as
a “beautiful German ballad,” as sung by (tenor Theodor?) Wachtel. In August 1872 the Visitor
An example of a humorous ballad is the anonymous “Our Minister’s Sermon.” With the
vocal range of a seventh and a simple piano part, it would have been easily performed by
102
D. C. Addison [Charles Addison Daniell], “Brief Talks on Musical Topics: Heart Songs,” Church’s
Musical Visitor 7, no. 5 (February 1878): 123.
103
James R. Murray, “Only One Song Can I Sing,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 14 (November 1882):
386–88.
104
Nicholas Temperley, “Benedict, Sir Julius,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd
ed., ed Stanley Sadie (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 3:240–42.
105
Sir Jules Benedict, “Eily Mavourneen, Ballad, Lily of Killarney,” Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 6
(March 1875): 13–15.
106
“Publishers Department,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 6 (March 1872): 12; Franz Abt, “Sweetheart,
Good Night,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 11 (August 1872): 13–16.
285
amateurs. In each stanza the narrator imagines the faults mentioned by the minister and directs
them at others in the church, until the last stanza, when it is apparent it is about himself.107
The Visitor promoted some of the vocal music it printed as being performed by particular
singers, such as George Henschel’s “Jamie or Robin?” for voice and piano. Henschel dedicated
the work to Miss Lillian Bailey who “sings it at her concerts.”108 Soprano Mrs. Aline Osgood
had been one of the soloists for the May Festival in 1878. The May issue included Silas G.
Pratt’s “Long Agone,” for voice and piano “as sung by Mrs. E. Aline Osgood.”109 The note was
possibly intended to aid sales. Occasionally the Visitor mentioned that music it had included was
subsequently being performed by minstrels, such as W. S. Mullaly’s verse and chorus “Send a
Kiss to Papa.” The Visitor reported that it had been “sung with great success by the well-known
San Francisco Minstrels, at their opera house in New York.” It was also mentioned as a “home
song.”110
The Visitor advertised vocal poll winner and editor C. A. Daniell’s song “White Sails,
Waft Me Away” for voice and piano as “well written. It depends upon the singer to make this
107
“Our Minister’s Sermon,” Church’s Musical Visitor 8, no. 6 (March 1879): 176–77.
108
George Henschel, “Jamie or Robin?” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 4 (January 1880): 110–12;
“Publishers’ Department: Review of the Most Successful Music Issued during 1880,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10,
no. 3 (December 1880): 75.
109
S. G. Pratt, “Long Agone,” Church’s Musical Visitor 7, no. 8 (May 1878): 219–21.
110
W. S. Mullaly, “Send a Kiss to Papa,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 12 (September 1881):
334–37; “Publishers Department,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 4 (January 1882): 108.
111
“Publishers Department,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 5 (February 1872): 12; D. C. Addison [Charles
Addison Daniell], “White Sails Waft Me Away,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 5 (February 1872): 13–15.
286
reception. Daniell dedicated the song to Miss Laura West of Middletown, Ohio. If she was a
Leonie’s “Sleep, My Darling” for voice and piano, is a lullaby.112 Composed in 3/4 meter
with its repeated rhythmic pattern of three quarter notes followed by a half note and quarter note,
is reminiscent of a rocking rhythm. The two stanzas conjure up the image of the child “Pillowed
on thy mother’s breast” while seated in her rocking chair in the first stanza. With only two
stanzas, either the child would fall asleep quickly or be lulled to sleep by rhythmic repetition.
The Visitor also printed excerpts from operas, such as Wagner’s “On, Romans, On!”
from Rienzi for voice and piano in March 1883.113 The Visitor suggested that such singers as
Patti did not like to sing Wagner’s music because the voice is subordinate to the orchestra and
that Wagner wrote more for the future than for the present.114
Italian composer P. A. Tirindelli contributed one vocal work to the Visitor. “My Flower”
for voice and piano is through-composed, with leaps of a sixth and a range from d-flat1 to a-flat2.
The Visitor included it the same month his portrait appeared on the cover.115
The Visitor reprinted German composer and theorist Salomon Jadassohn’s “Far Brighter
Than Fire,” op. 38, no. 1, for treble voices and piano in September 1896.116 Opus 38 is among his
best-known works.117 It is a love duet with harmonious thirds and sixths, both voices within the
112
Leonie, “Sleep, My Darling,” Church’s Musical Visitor 8, no. 8 (May 1879): 235.
113
“On, Romans, On!,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 3 (March 1883): 73–75.
114
“Richard Wagner,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 3 (March 1883): 66.
115
P. A. Tirindelli, “My Flower,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 8 (August 1897): 217–18.
116
S. Jadassohn, “Far Brighter Than Fire,” The Musical Visitor 25, no. 9 (September 1896): 251–54.
117
Janna Saslaw, “Jadassohn, Salomon,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., ed.
Stanley Sadie (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 12:746–47.
287
The Visitor published Austrian singer Amalie Weiss Joachim’s “Swedish Song from a
Dalekarlian Dance” for voice and piano in April 1897. After she married violinist Joseph
Joachim, he insisted that she give up opera. She continued to sing in concerts, however, earning a
reputation as an interpreter of Schumann and Brahms. Her repertoire included traditional and
“folk-influenced song.”118
The Visitor reprinted two of Cécile Chaminade’s songs for soprano or tenor and piano in
French with English translation, “Rosemonde” and “Were I Gard’ner” (“Si j’étais jardinière”).119
“Rosemonde” is slightly less demanding melodically and rhythmically than the latter, with leaps
of a sixth or octave, while the latter has leaps of an octave or ninth and chromatic harmonies.
There is a piano introduction for both songs, but the latter includes an interlude and postlude. “Si
j’étais jardinière” would be suitable for both a talented amateur or concert use. In February 1897
the Visitor noted that Chaminade, “the well-known French composer,” was expected to tour the
Waltz songs
The Visitor printed waltz songs between February 1877 and May 1885. The first
designated as such and by H. W. Fairbank, is for cabinet organ or piano; the others are for voice
and piano. George W. Persley’s “Wake, Love, from Thy Dreams,” a waltz song or duet for tenor
118
Beatrix Borchard, “Joachim [née Schneeweiss], Amalie,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, 2nd ed., ed. Stanley Sadie (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 13:125. Dalecarlia is a mining,
industrial, and agricultural area of central Sweden, also a popular tourist destination. It is now known as “Dalarna.”
Encyclopædia Britannica 15th ed., s.v. “Dalecarlia.”
119
C. Chaminade, “Rosemonde,” The Musical Visitor 25, no. 6 (June 1896): 167–70; C. Chaminade,
“Were I Gard’ner,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 1 (January 1897): 17–21.
120
“Current Notes,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 2 (February 1897): 55. Chaminade did not visit the United
States until fall 1908. Marcia J. Citron, “Chaminade, Cécile (Louise Stéphanie)” in The New Grove Dictionary of
Music and Musicans, 2nd ed., ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001),
5:457–58.
288
and contralto, features a keyboard introduction and three strophes with alternating voices, each
strophe ending in a duet.121 George Root’s “Health is a Rosy Maiden” is a one-stanza waltz song
and chorus. The chorus is repeated, with text for the soloist and vocable “la” in the bass, echoed
by the other voices.122 The Visitor described J. B. Campbell’s “At the Making of the Hay,” as
Later examples of the waltz song include Charles K. Harris’s ubiquitous “After the Ball.”
Likely it was editor Frank King who wrote an article regarding the upcoming Centennial
orators, singers, musicians, and all. We shall need a national anthem to be first rendered upon
this occasion, and some American should write one.”124 The Visitor printed a keyboard version
of “The Star-Spangled Banner” in July 1876, but it did not become the national anthem until
1931.
The Visitor printed “Forever, a Centennial Quartette” by S. C. Hanson in the May 1876
issue to celebrate the occasion.125 The SATB quartet was to be performed “with energy” and
accompanied by piano. George Root’s “Day of Columbia’s Glory,” a Centennial Chorus with
121
Geo. W. Persley, “Wake, Love, from Thy Dreams,” Church’s Musical Visitor 7, no. 5 (February 1878):
132–34.
122
G. F. Root, “Health Is a Rosy Maiden,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 2 (February 1882): 44–46.
123
J. B. Campbell, “At the Making of the Hay,” 14, no. 5 (May 1885): 128–31.
124
“Music at the Forthcoming Centennial Celebration,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. l0 (July 1872): 6.
125
S. C. Hanson, “Forever, A Centennial Quartette,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 8 (May 1876):
215–17.
289
Solos, was published in the July Visitor.126 It celebrated the “Birthday of Liberty,” the adoption
of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, which had been a civic holiday since 1791.
The Visitor featured three works for solo piano: “The President’s March: Hail Columbia,”
“Yankee Doodle,” and “The Star-Spangled Banner,” in the July issue. Thereafter, other musical
references to July 4 include W. F. Sherwin’s “Hail the Day of Freedom’s Birth” for SATB and
piano,127 and “Freedom’s Day” for tenor solo and male quartet. Charles H. Carroll’s “This
A notice regarding Philip P. Bliss’s “Arise and Shine!” (printed in the September 1876
issue) claimed that this is the “great” Centennial song [emphasis original]. It “seems to express
in a wonderfully strong and majestic manner, the serious, satisfactory, as well as joyful, trustful
feeling of all good Americans. It is a song of joy––a hymn of faith which will live in the
Philip P. Bliss’s Irish drinking song “There’s Monny a Shlip” for tenor and chorus
(SATB) and piano employs dialect. The protagonist’s stanzas about unrequited love are in G
minor while the sympathetic chorus (also using dialect) sings in the relative major.130
126
Geo. F. Root, “Day of Columbia’s Glory,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 10 (July 1876): 265–70. Root
mentions “memorable ’76!” in his autobiography. He attended the “great Centennial Celebration in Philadelphia.”
George F. Root, The Story of a Musical Life: An Autobiography (1891; repr., New York: Da Capo Press, 1970), 162.
127
W. F. Sherwin, “Hail the Day of Freedom’s Birth,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 10 (July 1882):
260; W. F. Sherwin, “Freedom’s Day,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 7 (July 1883): 170.
128
Chas. H. Carroll, “This Happy Land of Mine,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 7 (July 1884): 170.
129
“Special Notices,” Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 1 (October 1876): 1.
130
Pro Phundo Basso [Philip P. Bliss], “There’s Monny a Shlip,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 11
(August 1873): 13–14.
290
“Delos” contributed a topical song and chorus about the U.S. financial panic of 1873 with
“Go Work upon a Farm” in 1874. The advice is to go west and find work on a farm.131 Railroad
expansion led to a speculative boom and subsequent crash. Banks closed, the stock market
The text for A. O Hand’s humorous “Punch in the Presence of the Passenjare”133 was
inspired by Mark Twain’s short story “Punch, Brothers, Punch.” It begins with a poem about the
conductor, and the chorus ends with “Punch in the Presence of the Passenjare.” According to the
Visitor, the text is based on “Mark Twain’s literary nightmare.”134 The protagonist cannot get the
words out of his head and the incessant rhythm of the train drives him crazy, illustrated in the
music with a rhythmic ostinato in a march-like 4/4 with three stanzas and chorus. The first page
of the music proposes that the third stanza “may be omitted or used as an encore” suggesting the
song would be taken up by minstrel troupes. It could easily be performed at home as well.
Oscar Wilde visited Cincinnati in February and June of 1882 to give lectures on
aesthetics.135 Church published and advertised “Wilde, Oscar Wilde,” a song and chorus with
words by Eben E. Rexford and “music by the distinguished, aesthetic Japonica Reginald
131
“Delos,” “Go Work upon a Farm,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 6 (March 1874): 0–4. The editor must
have been experimenting with pagination in March 1874; zero does not occur in subsequent issues.
132
Paul S. Boyer, et al., The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People, concise 2nd ed.
(Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Company, 1995), 351–52.
133
A. H. Hand, “Punch in the Presence of the Passenjare,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 7 (April 1876):
189–91.
134
“April Bulletin of New Music,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 7 (April 1876): 180.
135
Robert Herron, “Have Lily, Will Travel: Oscar Wilde in Cincinnati,” Bulletin of the Historical and
Philosophical Society of Ohio 15 (July 1957): 215–33. The first lecture was on “Decorative Arts” and the second on
“Household Decoration.” Herron also noted that after Wilde returned to England, he was quoted as saying that he
considered Cincinnati, along with Chicago and San Francisco, “one of the ‘kindest’ and friendliest cities he had
visited during his entire tour.” Wilde was tried in England and imprisoned from May 1895 to May 1897; there was
no coverage in the Visitor.
291
McGinnis.” Stage directions accompanied the music.136 The following entry appeared in 1882:
“Oscar Wilde regards Mme Patti as a charming music box, but criticizes her singing of ‘Home,
Sweet Home’ in public. He says such songs should be reserved for the drawing-room. He prefers
Nilsson to Patti, both as a singer and an actress, and instances her Margherita in ‘Mefistofele’ as
Text Authors
Vocal music included texts written by composers, poets, clergy, and editors of the
Visitor. Composers frequently used the texts of Eben E. Rexford and Hezekiah Butterworth.
secular text by the Reverend A. Kenyon, “Song of the Whip-poor-will,” appeared in September
1874. Women authors were well represented (see Appendix A). In their role as “guardians of
society’s morals,” women were important authors of religious texts. Since the texts were moral,
“they could allow their names to appear in print with impunity.”138 Fanny Crosby contributed the
text for one of H. R. Palmer’s sacred works in the Visitor. Crosby had been educated at the New
York Institution for the Blind where she excelled in literary and musical studies. She studied
with George Root and wrote the text for several of his cantatas. Crosby began writing hymn texts
at the encouragement of William Bradbury; she may have written as many as eight thousand.139
136
“Publishers Department,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 6 (March 1882): 163.
137
“Our Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 12 (September 1882): 328. Patti was in
Cincinnati in February 1882 to perform in the College of Music’s Opera Festival while Oscar Wilde was in town.
138
Adrienne Fried Block, assisted by Nancy Stewart, “Women in American Music, 1800–1918,” in Women
and Music: A History, 2nd ed., ed. Karin Pendle (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 201.
139
Edith Blumhofer, “Crosby, Fanny (Frances) J(ane),” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd
ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 2:496.
292
Clara Louise (Root) Burnham supplied the texts for six of her father’s hymns in the Visitor;
reviews of several of her novels were also given in the Visitor. Three of Mary B. C. Slade’s texts
were used for sacred music in the Visitor. Slade, of Fall River, Massachusetts, was a popular
hymn writer; she also edited the children’s magazine Wide Awake for several years.140 Paulina
Music for piano or organ in the Visitor included character pieces, dances, etudes,
excerpts, marches, transcriptions, and works related to the May Festival. According to the Visitor
in 1880 Germany supplied the world with the most dance music and every other kind of
instrumental music.142 After the Visitor’s merger with the Song Messenger in November 1875,
music “From the Album of the Chicago Musical College” appeared at the bottom of the page for
some of the pieces.143 From October 1895 to January 1896, the Visitor included a new feature
and column: “Our Music Pages.”144 Thereafter, explanations of signs or terms were occasionally
140
Edward S. Ninde, The Story of the American Hymn (New York: Abingdon Press, 1921), 366–67.
141
I have been unable to locate any personal information for Paulina DuPre.
142
“Dance Music and Those Who Compose It,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 10 (July 1880): 270.
143
The Chicago Academy of Music, founded in 1867 by Florenz Ziegfeld, was renamed the Chicago
Musical College in 1872. Ziegfeld was president until 1916. J. Bradford Robinson, William Kenney, and John
Behling, “Chicago,” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi Garrett (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2013): 2:223. According to P. H. Carder, however, the school had been founded in 1865;
George Root was president of the Chicago Musical College from 1872 to 1876. William A. Root was business
manager from 1870 to 1872, and Charles T. Root served as treasurer from 1872 to 1876. P. H. Carder, George F.
Root, Civil War Songwriter, 185–86. The Visitor reprinted music from the Album of the Chicago Musical College
(Chicago: Chandler and Curtiss, 1874).
144
“Our Music Pages,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 10 (October 1895): 285–86.
293
During the last few years of publication, composers who revised, edited, or fingered
works for piano included Wilson G. Smith,145 N. J. Elsenheimer,146 Emil Liebling, Theodore F.
Bohlmann, George Schneider,147 Jacques Ahrem,148 and Georg Krüger. Portraits and biographies
Galop
The galop was a nineteenth-century ballroom round dance in simple duple time, with the
change of step, or hop, at the end of each musical phrase. The Visitor advertised poll winner
Sidney Ryan’s “Blue-eyed Witch Galop” as multi-purpose: “A good, lively, taking piece of the
popular grade, carefully marked. Good for skating rinks, parlor playing, or teaching.”149
145
Wilson G. Smith, “Xaver Scharwenka,” The Musical Visitor 25, no. 9 (September 1896): 236. Smith
mentioned meeting his “old teacher, Xaver Scharwenka” at the Michigan Music Teachers’ Association.
146
“Current Notes and News: Local,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 8 (August 1897): 220. Mrs. Jennie Busk
Dodge and Dr. N. J. Elsenheimer were opening a school of music in Cincinnati in the fall; Mrs. Dodge would also
continue her school in Walnut Hills. John Church published Dodge’s method The Care of the Voice: Advice to
Young Singers. It was serialized in the Visitor in July and August 1895; ads for the method began appearing in
November 1895. Elsenheimer was a member of the piano faculty at the College of Music from 1891 to 1905.
Vincent A. Orlando, “An Historical Study of the Origin and Development of the College of Music of Cincinnati”
(EdD diss., University of Cincinnati, 1946), 194.
147
George Schneider’s school was located in Pike’s Opera House. “This fine musician and his assistants are
doing a good work, and Mr. Schneider’s Educational Recitals have more than a local reputation.” “Current Notes
and News: Local,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 8 (August 1897): 221. Schneider was also mentioned as a member of
the piano faculty at the College of Music in 1887. Orlando, “An Historical Study,” 190. Apparently teachers had
requested that Schneider’s recital programs be printed in the Visitor, and thereafter they were. “Mr. George
Schneider’s Piano Recitals,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 11 (November 1883): 294.
148
Jacques Ahrem is probably “J. Ahrem” whose works were published by John Church and Company.
Sandra Jean Graham, “Reframing Negro Spirituals in the Late Nineteenth Century,” in Music, American Made:
Essays in Honor of John Graziano, ed. John Koegel (Sterling Heights, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2011 ), 617–19.
149
Sidney Ryan, “Blue-eyed Witch Galop,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 2 (February 1885): 52–54. The first
practical four-wheel roller skate had been designed in 1863. Thereafter, “the first great recreational roller-skating
craze swept the United States and Western Europe, where many rinks were built.” Encyclopaedia Britannica 15th
ed., s.v. “roller-skating.”
294
The Visitor printed an “Oscar Wilde Galop” for piano in the September 1885 issue.150
The advertisement reads: “Already popular. Though not quite as aesthetic as its namesake, it will
please all who like good, tuneful melodies.”151 Other galops in the Visitor display the same
rhythmic characteristic at the end of the phrase, a short note value followed by a longer one.
Gavotte
The gavotte is an eighteenth-century French dance in common or cut time beginning with
a half-measure anacrusis. According to the May 1885 Visitor, gavottes were “all the rage.”152
Some years later organist-composer Eugene Thayer was quoted as saying that a “good gavotte is
The Visitor published August Labitzky’s “First Love,” a gavotte, op. 46, in January 1885
and labeled it moderately difficult.154 Its regular phrasing and marked rhythm makes it functional
as a dance. Celian Kottaun’s “Le Bijou Gavotte,” like Labitzky’s, could function as a dance.155
Mazurka
The mazurka is a Polish dance in triple meter with strong accents on the second or third
beat. Examples in the Visitor range from the “Honor Bright Mazurka” (Second Grade Set) of
150
“Oscar Wilde Galop,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 9 (September 1885): 247–50.
151
“New Music: For the Piano,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 10 (October 1885): 267.
152
“New Music, For the Piano,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 5 (May 1885): 127.
153
“Solid Sense about Musical Form,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 3 (March 1892): 62.
154
A. Labitzky, “First Love: Gavotte,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 1 (January 1885): 20–23.
155
Celian Kottaun, “Le Bijou Gavotte,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 12 (September 1881): 338–40.
295
H. D. Sofge,156 to those of Chopin. A middle ground can be found in F. L. Bristow’s
“Merriment” (Mazurka Elegante) with acciaccature and septuplets.157 The Visitor reprinted four
of Chopin’s mazurkas: op. 7, no. 1 (August 1877); op. 7, no. 2 (January 1878); op. 17, no. 1
(October 1878); and op 24, no. 3 (July 1879). These mazurkas were also reprinted in The Etude,
Polka
The polka is a Bohemian dance in duple meter with repeated eight-measure sections. A
good example is H. D. Sofge’s “Musical Visitor Polka” (Second Grade Set).158 Frank Howard’s
“The Grange Polka” was likely meant to appeal to the rural subscriber (though the time signature
was 3/4, the music was actually notated in 2/4).159 According to the Visitor, it was “a good polka
in which the accent is very strongly marked. Young folks will be delighted with it.”160
“Winthrop” (likely James R. Murray) composed “Merry Christmas Polka” for the December
1882 Visitor. According to the Publisher’s Department, it was of medium difficulty and suitable
for home or public performance.161 Although much of the music in the Visitor was intended for
156
H. D. Sofge, “Honor Bright Mazurka,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 10 (July 1874): 16–18.
157
F. L. Bristow, “Merriment (Mazurka Elegante),” Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 1 (October 1874):
16–18.
158
H. D. Sofge, “Musical Visitor Polka,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 3 (December 1873): 13–14.
159
Frank Howard [pseud. of Delos Gardner Spalding], “The Grange Polka,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3,
no. 9 (June 1874): 16–17.
160
“Publishers Department,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 10 (July 1874): 12. Subscribers were warned
about three men who had swindled the public and defrauded the publishers, including Delos Gardner Spalding,
“alias Frank Howard, who was canvassing in Wisconsin to the misfortune of a good majority.” “Publishers
Department: Beware of Bogus Agents,” Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 3 (December 1876): 71.
161
“Winthrop” and “Merry Christmas Polka,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 15 (December 1882):
415–17; “Publishers Department,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 15 (December 1882): 414. James R. Murray’s
“Away in a Manger” was published in The Etude as a piano solo in December 1941 and again in December 1947.
296
domestic music making, some of the music advertised and printed in the journal could also be
Polka-mazurka
The polka-mazurka differs from the polka (triple time rather than duple) and the mazurka
(accent on the second or third beat). The Visitor published Carl Faust’s “A Love-Duo,” op. 306,
in January 1880. According to the editor: “Much of the most popular dance music of the past
twenty years has been written by Carl Faust, a bandmaster of Breslau. His numerous galops have
been more widely played than those of any other composer.”162 Josef Strauss’s polka-mazurka
“Arm in Arm,” op. 215, appeared in the Visitor in June 1873, and “The Devil’s Darning Needle”
Polonaise
The Polish polonaise is in triple meter, with two sixteenth notes before the second beat,
tripartite, and in a moderately fast tempo. H. W. Fairbank’s “Polonaise” is from his Cabinet
Organ Series.163 The Visitor considered Sidney Ryan’s “Dance of the Fairies” to be of medium
162
“Waltz Writers,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 9 (June 1880): 243. This is Faust’s sole work in the
Visitor.
163
H. W. Fairbank, “Polonaise,” Church’s Musical Visitor 7, no. 1 (October 1877): 19–21.
164
Sidney Ryan, “Dance of the Fairies,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 10 (October 1883): 277–79;
“Publishers Department,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 10 (October 1883): 267.
297
Schottische
The schottische is a social dance in 4/4 with accents on the first and third beat, and four-
measure phrases. The Visitor graded many of them level 3, including poll winner Clara Scott’s
“Clover Schottische.”165 H. W. Fairbank’s “Schottische” for cabinet organ could also be played
on the piano and used for dancing. “The Rising Belle Schottische,” op. 10, by B. Bradshaw was
“Respectfully dedicated to the Belles of Sandwich.”166 I have been unable to identify Bradshaw.
Waltz
The nineteenth-century waltz could be used for dancing and as concert music, such as
those by the Strauss family. Some of the waltzes in the Visitor could also be useful for sight-
reading or for concert use, such as those by Chopin. The Visitor reprinted four of his waltzes:
op. 64, no. 1, the “Minute” waltz (December 1871); op. 64, no. 2 (February 1872); op. 64, no. 3
(February 1873, repeated in December 1873); and op. 70, no. 1 (December 1874). These waltzes,
with the exception of op. 64, no. 3, were also reprinted in The Etude.167
Oscar Pape dedicated his piano waltz titled “May Festival” to Theodore Thomas168 in
recognition of the first Festival in 1873; the Visitor reprinted it in May 1878 for the opening of
Music Hall and the third Festival. Two of poll winner Johann Strauss’s waltzes for piano
appeared in the Visitor, “As Performed by Theo. Thomas’ Orchestra.” The Visitor reprinted his
“Tausend und eine Nacht,” op. 346, three times, in November 1871, October 1876, and May
1881, and his “Blue Danube Waltz,” op. 314, in November 1880. The “Tausend und eine Nacht”
165
Mrs. Clara H. Scott, “Clover Schottische,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 5 (February 1876): 128–30.
166
B. Bradshaw, “The Rising Belle Schottische,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 1 (October 1875): 21–23.
167
The waltzes appeared in The Etude in 1904, 1903, and 1945, respectively.
168
Oscar Pape, “May Festival,” Church’s Musical Visitor 2, no. 8 (May 1873): 13–15.
298
was reprinted under editors Frank H. King, Charles A. Daniell, and James R. Murray. They may
have been unaware that their predecessor had included it, or perhaps it was reprinted by popular
demand.
The Visitor covered the invention of the telephone in 1877. The editor described its
physical characteristics and use in Cincinnati’s businesses and factories, including John
Church’s. The telephone, for example, connected the publisher’s office with the printer’s
establishment “four squares distant.”169 The May 1887 issue included Thomas P. Westendorf’s
Etudes
The Visitor designated only a few works as etudes, and most of them were intended as
teaching pieces. Antoine Levasse’s “Etude” for piano in September 1879 provided practice for
five-note scale patterns, first in the right hand, then the left hand, and finally together. Interest is
added through occasional chromaticism and a change of key.171 George Root’s “Home
Returning” in the same issue offered practice in broken chords for the left hand and parallel
thirds and sixths in the right hand.172 Henry Bishop’s “Home, Sweet Home” became tremolo
169
“Editor’s Notes,” Church’s Musical Visitor 7, no. 2 (November 1877): 40.
170
Thos. P. Westendorf, “Telephone Waltz,” Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 8 (May 1877): 223–25.
171
Antoine Levasse, “Etude,” Church’s Musical Visitor 8, no. 12 (September 1879): 342–43.
172
G. F. R[oot], “Home Returning,” Church’s Musical Visitor 8, no. 12 (September 1879): 344–45.
173
“Home, Sweet Home, Varied,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 7 (April 1881): 201–2.
299
“Etude–Melodie” for piano, a “melodious etude” that afforded “excellent practice in acquiring a
singing tone and legato touch. A note at the bottom of the first page explained the sign for the
damper pedal. Players were advised to practice the etude in sections.174 Smith also transcribed
Niels Gade’s “Spring’s Awakening” for piano. Smith noted that Gade was “one of Denmark’s
greatest composers,” and this piece offered “excellent practice in trill playing and sustained
melody.”175 Transcriptions could serve as didactic works while also making the original piece
Marches
During the late nineteenth century, American composers penned marches, or quick-steps,
for special occasions, such as the dedication of Music Hall in 1878, or the completion of the
Theodore Willbrecht’s “Fountain Grand March” for organ in the December 1871 issue
was dedicated to Henry Probasco, who had been responsible for the fountain in memory of his
brother-in-law and business partner, Tyler Davidson, in downtown Cincinnati. The issue
included a rendering of the fountain, which had been cast in Germany, and was also featured on
In 1876 the Visitor reprinted Wagner’s “Centennial March,” abridged and arranged for
piano by Theodore Thomas. It was prefaced with a German and English text: “He only earns the
right to freedom and to life, who daily is compelled to conquer them.”176 The editor explained
the reason for reprinting the march: “There has been so much talk among the critics concerning
174
“Etude-Melodie,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 7 (July 1897): 180–83.
175
Wilson G. Smith, “Spring’s Awakening,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 5 (May 1897): 119–24.
176
Richard Wagner, “Centennial March,” Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 3 (December 1876): 72–77.
300
Wagner’s Grand Festival March, that we have concluded to give the Visitor subscribers a chance
to judge for themselves.”177 In April 1878 editor Daniell commented that apparently Wagner’s
“Centennial March” had been more appreciated in England than it had in the United States. It
had been played in concerts at the Crystal Palace and other concert settings in London.178 In
1887 a reprint of an article in the New York World by Anton Seidl about Wagner’s “Centennial
March” revealed that “Wagner often expressed his regret that he had accepted the commission
from the ladies of Philadelphia, because he could not grasp the spirit of the subject he wished to
illustrate. He was astonished and flattered at the magnificence of the sum offered, which was
more than he had received, up to that time, for the whole of his operas from German publishers.”
The account continues with telling how he came to compose the work.179
The Visitor also reprinted Johann Strauss’s “Marche Persanne,” op. 289, in September
1876.180 F. Viviani’s “The Silver Trumpets,” a “Grand Processional March” for keyboard
appeared in August 1879. According to the editor, the march had been performed at St. Peter’s in
piano to celebrate the completion of the railroad between Cincinnati and Chattanooga in 1880.182
The grand opening of the railroad, an enterprise of the city of Cincinnati, took place in March
177
Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 3 (December 1876): 66.
178
Church’s Musical Visitor 7, no. 7 (April 1878): 180.
179
“Wagner’s Centennial March,” Church’s Musical Visitor 16, no. 2 (February 1887): 39.
180
J[ohann] Strauss, “Marche Persanne,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 12 (September 1876): 331–33.
181
Church’s Musical Visitor 8, no. 11 (August 1879): 300, 311–14.
182
Adolph Pferdner, “Cincinnati Southern R. R. Inauguration March,” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 7
(April 1880): 197–99.
301
1880, with a parade, a banquet at Music Hall, and addresses by the governors of Tennessee,
W. H. Pontius’s “We Shall Win Quickstep” for piano for the 1884 presidential campaign
appeared in the August issue.184 The work was also advertised as available for brass band.
May Festival
The Visitor published M. H. Strong’s “Cincinnati Music Hall March,” op. 12, for piano
the month the Hall opened for the third May Festival, though it was not performed at the
Festival.185 The Visitor published Otto Singer’s “Sketch from Festival Ode,” composed for the
dedication of Music Hall, for performance on the organ or two pianos.186 In February the Visitor
also reprinted from the Chicago Tribune an analysis of the work by “one of the best musical
authorities in the country.” The “Sketch,” no. 2, is an Interludium for the organ, which leads into
“a fugue on the first chorus, which, as we judge, has been written chiefly to display the
magnificent organ which the Hook Brothers are building for the Music Hall, and which is not
otherwise essential to the harmony of the work.”187 The reviewer was likely W. S. B. Matthews,
183
“Here’s To Our Friends,” Cincinnati Enquirer, March 19, 1880, 4.
184
W. H. Pontius, “We Shall Win Quickstep,” The Music Visitor 13, no. 8 (August 1884): 212–14.
185
M. H. Strong, “Cincinnati Music Hall March,” Church’s Musical Visitor 7, no. 8 (May 1878): 215–18.
186
Otto Singer, “Sketch from Festival Ode,” Church’s Musical Visitor 7, no. 6 (March 1878): 157–60.
187
“May Musical Festival: Otto Singer’s Ode,” Church’s Musical Visitor 7, no. 5 (February 1878): 124–25.
The article goes on to discuss the soloists for the upcoming Festival, Music Hall, and its Hook and Hastings’ organ
(then the largest in the country).
188
Mark N. Grant, Maestros of the Pen: A History of Classical Music Criticism in America, consulting ed.
Eric Friedheim (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998), 73.
302
Nocturne
Some of the music contributed as a result of the merger of the Visitor with the Song
Messenger was demanding of the performer, such as Louis Roehr’s “Nocturne” for piano.
According to the editor, “more advanced players” would be delighted with it. Roehr was director
of the music school in Leitmeritz, Bohemia.189 The work is reminiscent of Chopin’s nocturnes,
with its lyrical melody, arpeggiated chords in the left hand, a cadenza, fioriture passages, parallel
Adolf Gutmann’s “Nocturne Poetique,” revised and edited by Wilson G. Smith, with a
prefatory note that Gutmann, was “a favorite pupil of Chopin,” and the influence of his teacher is
easily discernable in this piece. The Visitor considered it “an excellent preparatory study to
the more intense nocturnes of Chopin.” Gutmann’s nocturne was reprinted in The Etude in
Character pieces express either a mood or an idea defined by the title, such as “Song
Without Words.” “The Evening Bell,” a “descriptive piece” by Mendelssohn was, according to
Mendelssohn, staying with a friend at Norwood, England, in 1829, was obliged, for some
reason or other, to take his departure, deferring his contemplated journey to London,
however, as long as possible, despite the frequent warning of the gate-bell which told him
that his carriage was in attendance. Upon his arrival in town he penned this composition,
the foundation of which is the solitary note of the gate-bell, the same night, and
forwarded it to his host the next day.
189
L. Roehr, “Nocturne,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 8 (May 1876): 218–22; “Editor’s Notes and
Reviews,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 8 (May 1876): 206.
190
Bomberger, An Index to Music Published in The Etude Magazine, 1883–1957, 194.
191
[Felix] Mendelssohn, “The Evening Bell,” Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 6 (March 1877): 162–65.
303
The editor appended a disclaimer: “Whether this is as accurate as it is interesting, is not so
certain as that the piece itself is melodious and worthy of the careful performance of any
pianist.”192
A. Kuchenmeister’s “Amors Erwachen” (“Love Awake”), op. 72, for piano is in rondo
form, triple meter, parallel thirds, and melodic intervals of a third, suggestive of affection.193
“Song Without Words,” no. 7, from Xaver Scharwenka’s op. 62 (Album for Young Pianists),
Gotthold Kunkel’s “In Der Hora: A Picture from Times Long Past,” op. 52, in B minor is
a Stimmungsbild, conjuring up images of scenes from a painting, perhaps, of monks leaving and
returning to their cloister after mass. Marked by “Tempo di Marcia,” the piece begins in the low
register of the organ, followed by programmatic indications in the music such as “Bells,” “Birds
of the night,” “Monks leave the cloister,” “Entering the church,” “Voluntary on the organ,”
“Entrance of the congregation,” and “Monks at the altar.” The music moves through the keys of
B minor, D major, B minor, G minor, and brightens to C major for the “Responsive chant,” and
finally returns to the “Birds of the Night.” The work came from the Album of the Chicago
Musical College.194
Transcriptions from operas, songs, or orchestral works were fairly common in the Visitor,
192
Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 6 (March 1877): 150. Mendelssohn had composed the work for harp and
piano in November 1829; it was published in London in 1876, without an opus number. William A. Pond published
a version for piano in 1877, arranged by Henry Maylath and prefaced with a similar note regarding the Attwood
family in Norwood, England. Reportedly Mendelssohn had sent parts for piano and harp to the Attwoods the
following day.
193
A. Kuchenmiester, “Amors Erwachen,” The Musical Visitor 14, no. 4 (April 1885): 108–10.
194
Gotthold Kunkel, “In Der Hora: A Picture from Times Long Past,” Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 4
(January 1877): 102–7.
304
occasionally related to May Festival programs. The May Festival Chorus performed Wagner’s
Lohengrin at the 1875 Festival. The Visitor included a transcription of its “Prelude” for piano in
May.195 In November 1874 the Visitor published Oscar Mayo’s transcription of the “Hymn of the
Pilgrims” from Tannhäuser.196 Gaetano Braga’s “La Serenata” (“Angel’s Serenade”), a song
with ’cello or violin obbligato, transcribed for piano by J. Rummel, and revised and fingered by
Dr. N. J. Elsenheimer, made this work available to those who might not otherwise have known
it.197
The Visitor also published orchestral works transcribed for piano, such as Saint-Saëns’s
Danse macabre in September 1876198 and the minuet from Mozart’s Symphony no. 39 in E-flat
in July of 1877.199 In recognition of John Church’s death on April 19, 1890, the Visitor included
a piano transcription of the funeral march from Beethoven’s Symphony no. 3.200
Chamber Music
The Visitor published nine works for piano four hands, fewer than one might expect for
home music-making. Four were graded as moderately difficult, one was easy, and the others
were not graded. The duets were either dances (galop, polka, schottische, waltz) or marches,
195
[Richard Wagner], “Prelude” from Lohengrin, Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 8 (May 1875): 22–25.
196
R[ichard] Wagner, “Hymn of the Pilgrims,” Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 2 (November 1874): 16–21.
197
G[aetano] Braga, “La Serenata,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 10 (November 1897): 287–93.
198
Camille Saint-Saëns, “Danse macabre,” Church’s Musical Visitor 5, no. 12 (September 1876): 324–27.
199
Jules Schulhoff, “Minuet de Mozart,” Church’s Musical Visitor 6, no. 10 (July 1877): 269–71.
200
Beethoven, “Marche funèbre,” The Musical Visitor 19, no. 5 (May 1890): 136–37.
305
including Wagner’s “March” from Tannhäuser.201 The Visitor graded “Meadow Spring
Seven works for flute or violin and piano, and three works for violin or flute and piano
were included in the Visitor. Only one of them was graded (Marzials’s “Twickenham Ferry”).203
The Visitor printed an arrangement of a selection from Donizetti’s Daughter of the Regiment for
violin and piano in February 1881.204 Thomas Westendorf arranged his most popular work, “I’ll
Take You Home Again, Kathleen,” for flute or violin and piano.205 James Murray’s “Fanchon
Schottische,” for violin or flute and piano, could easily accompany dancing.206 The Irish were
represented with J. L. Molloy’s “The Kerry Dance” in June 1884.207 A single work for cornet
and piano, arranged from W. H. Pontius’s song entitled “Constancy,” appeared in January
1884.208
Ensemble works also included those for mandolin and guitar. The John Church Company
announced in 1892 that it would manufacture the Imperial Mandolin and Imperial Guitar because
“the mandolin has taken rapid strides to the front,” not only as a parlor but as a concert
instrument, and is beginning to rival the popularity of the guitar.209 Two years later the Visitor
201
Richard Wagner, “March from Tannhäuser,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 2 (February 1883): 50–53.
202
C. Kinkle, “Meadow Spring Schottische,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 15 (December 1882):
422–25.
203
T. Marzials, “Twickenham Ferry,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 7 (July 1883): 194.
204
G. Donizetti, “Salut à la France,” Church’s Musical Visitor 10, no. 5 (February 1881): 145–46.
205
Thomas P. Westendorf, “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen,” The Musical Visitor 12, no. 2 (February
1883): 54.
206
J. R. Murray, “Fanchon Schottische,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 13 (October 1882): 366–68.
207
J. L. Molloy, “The Kerry Dance,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 6 (June 1884): 172–73.
208
W. H. Pontius, “Constancy,” The Musical Visitor 13, no. 1 (January 1884): 25–26.
209
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 21, no. 2 (February 1892): 38.
306
announced that the mandolin had become one of the most popular, or perhaps fashionable,
instruments of the day, rivaling the guitar. The mandolin was heard in the parlor and in the
boudoir, “caressed by the gentle donnas of the western World.” This was followed by a history
and characteristics of the instrument to recommend it: small, lightweight, portable, and for the
most part, readily learned.210 A report of a field trip in 1896 by four young women from
Cincinnati’s Hughes High School to the John Church Company mentioned that they were
impressed by the manufacturing of instruments on the second floor of the building, particularly
the mandolins, and gave a detailed description of the process of making these “delicate,
beautiful” instruments.211 In the early 1890s “the mandolin began to replace the banjo in
popularity among amateur musicians. By the late 1890s mandolin clubs that offered ensemble
The Visitor published six works for mandolin and guitar, and four for solo mandolin,
during its last two years of publication. They were arranged from a variety of sources.
Carlo Mora, an employee of the John Church Company, composed “Lullaby (Shut Eye, Baby
Eye),” which F. W. Wessenberg arranged for mandolin and guitar and published in the July
1896 issue.213 Herman Bellstedt’s “Everett Piano March” was arranged for two mandolins and
210
“The Mandolin,” The Musical Visitor 23, no. 12 (December 1894): 325–26.
211
May Hoban, “A Visit to ‘Church’s,’” The Musical Visitor 25, no. 4 (April 1896): 116–17.
212
Paul Ruppa, “Mandolin,” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi
Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 5:357–58.
213
Carlo Mora, “Lullaby (Shut Eye, Baby Eye),” arr. Wessenberg, The Musical Visitor 25, no. 7 (July
1896): 197–98. Two piano solos by Mora were published in The Etude. Bomberger, An Index to Music Published in
The Etude Magazine, 1883–1957, 364. Wessenberg placed ads in the Visitor as a teacher of Mandolin, Banjo, and
Guitar in the Arno Building and at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, and as the Author of Conservatory Method
for Guitar, Modern Method for Mandolin, and The Thorough Banjoist. The Musical Visitor 25, no. 4 (April 1896):
ii.
307
guitar in November 1895.214 The John Church Company manufactured the Everett piano and
popular band leader Herman Bellstedt lived in Cincinnati at that time. F. W. Wessenberg
arranged the “Intermezzo” from Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana for mandolin and guitar,215
An essay by New Yorker Louis in the July 1895 Visitor included an illustration of the
instrument, and he advised that students should “exercise care and judgment in the selection of a
competent instructor [emphasis original]. There are, unfortunately, hundreds who style
themselves thus, who know little, if anything, of the instrument.”217 Church published and
advertised method books, including Charles E. Pratt’s Mandolin Chords and How to Play
Accompaniments in 1895 and Christofaro’s Method for the Mandolin in 1897. The John Church
Company was in step with, and kept readers informed of, recent trends and developments.
Conclusion
The Visitor directed much of the music it printed to the amateur, including music by such
European composers as Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Wagner, and Chaminade. Some of the
music appealed to accomplished pianists and vocalists while also making these composers
known to an American audience. Thus, the Visitor fulfilled its goal of providing something for
214
[Herman] Bellstedt, “Everett Piano March,” arr. Klohr, The Musical Visitor 24, no. 11 (November 1895):
305–7.
215
[Pietro] Mascagni, “Intermezzo,” arr. Wessenberg, The Musical Visitor 25, no. 1 (January 1896): 20–22.
216
L. Boccherini, “Menuet,” arr. Wessenberg, The Musical Visitor 25, no. 11 (November 1896): 310.
217
Louis Tocaben, “The Mandolin––General Hints to Those about to Learn,” The Musical Visitor 24, no. 7
(July 1895): 174–75.
308
Repertoire varied under the leadership of different editors: Frank H. King, Charles A.
Daniell, Frank N. Scott and James R. Murray. King (October 1871–December 1872) included a
work by his successor who wrote under the name of Addison and a sacred work by Mrs. P. P.
Bliss. King began the tradition of printing works in the Visitor “as performed by Theo. Thomas’
Orchestra.” King included works of such Europeans as Chopin, Johann Strauss, Franz Abt, and
Robert Schumann, and such American composers as George F. Root, Frederic W. Root, and P. P.
Bliss. Their works continued to be printed in the Visitor. Grade level 3 is the most common
throughout the Visitor’s run with the exception of January 1886 until September 1895, when
Arthur S. Sullivan, and E. E. Whittemore. Sofge’s piano solo was dedicated to the “Grangers” of
Charles A. Daniell (January 1873–August 1873 and January 1874–April 1881) was the
first editor to include music by women composers, including American poll winner Clara H.
Scott, and Cincinnati composer Hannah Atkins, as well as such women composers as Loïsa
Puget, Elizabeth Stirling, and Johanna Kinkel. Daniell also published temperance songs by
P. P. Bliss and H. R. Palmer beginning in 1874, the same year the Women’s Christian
Secular vocal music, for soloist and chorus, or voice and piano, was popular until the
focus changed during James R. Murray’s tenure (May 1881–December 1897). Murray’s focus on
church music may have been to fill the gap left by journals that had ceased publication. He
arranged excerpts from the works of such composers as Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven to fill the
need for church voluntaries and prepared a collection, Murray’s One Hundred Voluntaries, in
309
1888. Murray also included sacred works by American women composers: Carrie B. Adams, E.
L. Ashford, Mrs. P. P. Bliss, and Fanny M. Spencer. Women not only wrote sacred texts but also
occasionally the music. After the return to a secular focus in 1895, Murray included works by
Murray also addressed the need for chamber music. He included nine piano duets, from
easy to moderately difficult. Daniell had included one work for violin and piano in February
1881; Murray included several works for violin or flute and piano from 1882218 until the focus
changed to church music in 1886; and he published one work for cornet and piano in January
1884. After the return to secular music in September 1895, ten of the works involved mandolin,
The individual tastes of the editors influenced their choices of music, whether secular or
sacred, vocal or instrumental, or solo or ensemble, as well as trying to meet the needs of the
public. Solo piano works were popular throughout the Visitor’s run, prior to and following the
emphasis on the church service. The mandolin and guitar had become popular instruments by the
1890s and the Visitor met that need. Overall, vocal music exceeded that of instrumental in the
Visitor, partly because of the need for music for church choirs or quartets. Despite the change in
focus, the repertoire reflected cultural changes in the late nineteenth century.
218
Murray suggested that a home orchestra, created by adding violin and flute to music of the piano,
enhanced the music. “Give the Fiddle a Chance,” The Musical Visitor 17, no. 10 (October 1888): 261.
310
CONCLUSION
The editorial page of the December 1897 Visitor opened with the announcement:
After an uninterrupted existence of twenty-six years, during which it had held an enviable
position in its special field, The Musical Visitor will be discontinued with this issue, in
order that another plan for accomplishing the same ends it has always had in view may be
inaugurated. The details of the new plan will be made public at a later date.
This was followed by details about reimbursement for subscriptions that would not expire
with the current issue, and patrons were wished a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,
signed “Very truly, The John Church Company.”1 An article with eight “Closing Hints” for
teacher and pupil, promoting the value and advantages of music study and hard work, ended with
Finis coronat opus [the end crowns the work].2 The Visitor promoted the work ethic to the end.
The Visitor, the house organ of the John Church Company from 1871 to 1897, was one of
the longest-lived music journals of its time, along with Brainard’s Musical World (1864–1895)3
and Dwight’s Journal of Music in Boston (1852 to 1881). The Visitor’s end, however, may have
resulted from competition with journals such as The Etude (1883–1957), specializing in articles
dealing with technical aspects and music for the piano.4 In the last few years of its run, the
Visitor had focused more on articles, including reprints from other journals, concerning teaching
and studying the piano and voice and more sophisticated music than previously. Music and
advertisements for mandolin and guitar and began to be featured in the 1890s as well, perhaps in
1
The Musical Visitor 26, no. 12 (December 1897): 331. At least part of their new plan was announced in
The Music Trade Review on March 19, 1898 (see Chapter 1).
2
“Closing Hints,” The Musical Visitor 26, no. 12 (December 1897): 331–32.
3
Mary Veronica Davison, “American Music Periodicals, 1853–1899” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota,
1973), 199.
4
Songs did not appear in The Etude until December 1889 and did not appear regularly until after July 1893.
Travis Suttle Rivers, “The Etude Magazine: A Mirror of the Genteel Tradition in American Music” (PhD diss.,
University of Iowa, 1974), 76. It merged with Brainard’s World in 1895.
311
an effort to gain new subscribers. Competition with player-pianos5 and Edison’s phonograph,
invented in 1877, contributed to a more passive than active musical public. Another factor in the
demise of the Visitor may be related to the inclusion of photographs in magazines, which became
“more popular than songs during the 1890s.”6 The discount for clubs of five or more ended with
the August 1896 issue and may reflect a loss of revenue from diminishing subscriptions. In
addition, the financial panic of 1893 led to a Depression. Like the 1873 panic, it was related to
the railroad industry and spread. By the end of 1893, “74 railroads, 600 banks, and 15,000
Whose music was being printed in this periodical? Were they popular American
composers who are now forgotten? Appendix B reveals a profile of the composers represented in
the Visitor. Many of the names are still familiar to us today. There were more European
composers than American and most were men. The use of initials, in some cases, however,
makes gender and nationality difficult to determine. Of the Americans, Stephen Foster is
probably most familiar to us today; only one of his songs was reprinted in the Visitor. George F.
Root is best known for his Civil War songs and other composers, such as Philip Bliss, for their
hymns or gospel songs; their works are still reprinted in hymnals. Root’s music was the most
published in the Visitor followed by James R. Murray’s. Root’s music and articles in the Visitor
kept him in the public eye. As an editor, Murray could also help to fulfill the need for monthly
5
The Pianista, invented in 1863, was displayed at the Centennial International Exposition held in
Philadelphia in 1876. By the late nineteenth-century, the “domestic self-playing piano” was mass produced, the
transformation aided by the perforated paper roll, already widely in use on self-playing organs. Edmond T. Johnson,
“Player piano,” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles Hiroshi Garrett (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2013), 6:517–19.
6
Bonny H. Miller, “Household Periodicals: An Unstudied Source of American Music,” Fontes artis
musicae 42 (1995): 316.
7
Paul S. Boyer, et al., The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People, Concise 2nd ed. (Lexington,
MA: D. C. Heath and Company, 1995), 456–57.
312
music whether for home or church use. Murray believed that Bach’s music was inappropriate
for church services; works by Handel, Haydn, and Mozart were mostly included as arrangements
Music in the Visitor was graded from level 1 to level 8, with the majority of works at
grade level 3 and appearing between 1871 and 1892. The single work graded at level 8 was
Gustav Lange’s piano solo The Heath (Erika), op. 265, in November 1879. Editor James R.
Murray graded a few works at level 3–4 in 1881, suggesting a slight advance in difficulty. Music
for church service, between January 1886 and September 1895, was rarely graded. Overall, grade
levels remained fairly consistent during the Visitor’s run and reveal a pedagogical focus.
The majority of bilingual song texts were German and English, suggesting that
Americans of German heritage represented a large share of the Visitor’s subscribers. The Visitor
presented only two songs with French and English texts near the end of its run, one in 1896 and
one in 1897, both by Cécile Chaminade. There were two songs in Italian and English, one in
1876 and one in 1885. A single piece having English and Latin texts, Prayer of Mary, Queen of
Transcriptions for piano from symphonies, operas, and other works made them available
to a wider audience. For example, Oscar Mayo’s piano transcription of the “Hymn of the
Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre in September 1876; and Jules Schulhoff’s transcription of the
minuet from Mozart’s Symphony no. 39 in July 1877. The Visitor presented the “Funeral March”
from Beethoven’s Symphony no. 3 for keyboard in May 1890, intended for church services as
well as a memorial for John Church. Thus, transcriptions often served purposes that differed
313
Musical taste had changed somewhat by the Visitor’s end. Most noticeable is
the inclusion, beginning in 1895, of music for guitar and/or mandolin. Music for piano had taken
on a new look, with works revised and fingered by faculty members of Cincinnati’s music
schools. More care was taken with regard to piano instruction than previously, with instructions
John Church tried to meet the musical tastes and needs of subscribers whether for home
or church. Like contemporary domestic magazines, the Visitor included music for the
family to enjoy around the piano. Families could preserve the journal’s music for future use.
Church provided dances, marches, lullabies, “scraps” of opera, songs, hymns, and organ
voluntaries for performers of different abilities, from the farm to the city. During presidential
campaigns, Church provided marches and temperance songs (but not suffrage) for home or
social gatherings, as well as music to mourn the nation’s fallen leaders. Marches for piano were
as popular as dances, with the waltz the most prominent, followed by the polka. Works for voice
and keyboard were reprinted throughout the Visitor’s run. Lullabies are the least represented.
Hymns, anthems, and works for organ were provided for church service for nine years.
The Visitor’s run overlapped with Dwight’s Journal for ten years and with The Etude for
fourteen. John Sullivan Dwight served as sole editor of his journal. He had graduated from
Harvard College and Harvard Divinity School, and had served as a Unitarian minister for a short
time. Dwight had spent six years at the Transcendentalist experiment of Brook Farm where he
taught music and Latin, led musical events, and directed education. Ora Frishberg Saloman’s
investigation of Dwight’s writings from 1835 to 1846 reveals how his study of European
intellectual traditions led to his idealistic vision of Beethoven’s symphonies as a “positive moral
314
and social force.”8 Theodore Presser’s musical education in the United States and Europe, and he
began his music publishing business in 1883, the same year he launched The Etude. The journal
was mostly concerned with technical aspects of piano playing and directed to music teachers and
students. It printed only piano music until December 1889. Presser served as editor until 1907
The Visitor had four editors: Frank H. King, Charles A. Daniell, Frank N. Scott, and
James R. Murray. John Church received on-the-job training under Oliver Ditson in Boston.
Neither John Church nor any of his editors were college educated. Though it is difficult to
determine how much control Church had over his editors’ writings, it is unlikely he would have
unity in the country, Dwight promoted the German classical tradition of Bach, Handel, Haydn,
and Beethoven. Irving Sablosky surveyed Dwight’s writings on musical activities in the United
States, including those of Theodore Thomas. Dwight’s Journal reported on Thomas’s first visit
to Boston in 1869. His orchestra performed better than Boston’s, but Boston’s programming was
superior to that of Thomas. Dwight noted that the “most prominent ingredient” of the concerts
was the “loud and ponderous effect pieces of the Liszt, Wagner, Meyerbeer school.” The
overture to Tannhäuser had never been “so well played (unless at the Opera in Vienna); never
did we enjoy the work so little. It was Wagner exposed; robbed of his glamour, if he ever had
any, by setting him in so strong a light, so mercilessly truthful.” The overture to Rienzi did not
8
Ora Frishberg Saloman, Beethoven’s Symphonies and J. S. Dwight: The Birth of American Music Criticism
(Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1995).
315
fare any better. “Rienzi is unmitigated noise; riot set to music, . . . and in strains coarse and
commonplace.”9
The Visitor, on the other hand, gave Thomas credit for elevating “the musical taste and
appreciation of the people at large” through his orchestral concerts and Festival choral
organizations, even though “some of us may differ with Mr. Thomas in regard to methods of
teaching music in our public schools and conservatories.”10 In 1875 W. S. B. Mathews had
contributed an article to the Visitor on “The Order of Growth of Musical Taste.” Growth in taste
had been accomplished through “intelligent hearing and study,” leading to the last stage, “the
Classic, or the absolutely beautiful,” which included the works of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and
Beethoven. Theodore Thomas’s “great work in cultivating American taste” rested on good music
and a little of the “merely pleasing” such as Schumann.11 In 1888 James R. Murray promoted
Thomas as being responsible for “the present high level of music in America” and quoted the
New York Advertiser: “He found the American public on the level of Gottschalk, Strauss, and
Bellini; but he has raised it now to the highest level––that of Bach, Beethoven and Wagner.”12
The Visitor also challenged Dwight’s opinion of Liszt and Meyerbeer. The Visitor had
announced in 1874 that Cincinnati’s Harmonic Society had scheduled three nights of concerts,
and would perform Handel’s Dettingen Te Deum, Liszt’s Prometheus, and Mendelssohn’s
Elijah. “The achievements of the Harmonic Society are deserving of all admiration and thanks
9
Irving Sablosky, What They Heard: Music in America, 1852–1881, from the Pages of Dwight’s Journal of
Music (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1986), 71–77.
10
“The May Festival,” Church’s Musical Visitor 11, no. 8 (May 1882): 212. The editor was referring to the
response to Thomas’s article on “Musical Possibilities in America,” reprinted from Scribner’s Monthly in March
1881.
11
W. S. B. Mathews, “The Order of Growth of Musical Taste,” Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 8 (May
1875): 1–2.
12
The Musical Visitor 17, no. 6 (June 1888): 148.
316
for their zealous work in the higher plane of art. The elevating influence of the Society is
everywhere seen in the growing taste for highly cultivated music . . . .”13 Otto Singer conducted
Liszt’s Prometheus for the 1875 May Festival. Everyone “was delighted with it.” It was, “withal,
one of the most brilliant performances of the Festival.” The Festival also included three arias
Editor C. A. Daniell reprinted a portion of Wagner’s article in the August 1879 issue of
the North American Review. Wagner had deplored the works of Meyerbeer and Mendelssohn,
but was inspired by Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. His new direction led him to compose A
Faust Overture, Tannhäuser, and Lohengrin. His greatest hope was in America, where the
“Germanic spirit, in untrammeled development, seems to open a new realm for the exercise of its
unconquerable vigor and strength.”15 According to Daniell, Wagner had begun by complaining
that “in his own country hostile influences, coupled with ignorance,” had restrained him from
“all publication of his ideas, and prevented the German people from reading his collected
works.” Daniell responded that these were “cheerful words for the ears of Americans––the
acknowledgment that here alone is offered a free field for the growth and prosperity of art,
reminiscences “revealed the sumptuous style and skill of the great poet and musician.”16 In the
same issue Daniell applauded Wagner as combining poet and musician. There was no doubt that
Wagner had a “correct and clear understanding of the relative position which poetry and music
13
“Music of the Month in Cincinnati,” Church’s Musical Visitor 3, no. 9 (June 1874): 7.
14
“The May Musical Festival,” Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 9 (June 1875): 8–10. The arias included
Catherine’s with two obbligato flutes from L’Etoile du nord; “Pieta, pieta” and “Vaga donna” from Le Prophète.
15
Richard Wagner, “The Work and Mission of My Life,” Church’s Musical Visitor 8, no. 11 (August
1879): 295–97.
16
“Wagner and His Work,” Church’s Musical Visitor 8, no. 11 (August 1879): 301–2.
317
ought to sustain with regard to each other. While he “may or may not be the great genius which
many suppose,” his theory regarding musical drama appears “logical and sound.”17 But Marcia
Lebow points to Wagner’s “effrontery” in claiming Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony as the “corner
stone of his whole theory.” For Dwight, did not “most people come to appreciate pure, or
The Visitor complained about Dwight’s comments regarding Cincinnati’s second May
Festival (1875) which had included works by Wagner, Liszt, and Meyerbeer. “The only
exhibition of an unworthy spirit in the music journals, comes from Mr. John Dwight, who, in his
Journal of Music, endeavors to show that the Cincinnati ‘Thomas Festival’––as he styles it––was
more of a circus than a concert, a sort of musical menagerie, in which strange and new musical
monsters were trotted out to the wonderment of a rude Western crowd, ‘rather new to music.’”
When Dwight died in 1893, James R. Murray described him as “a severe classicist”
whose “ultra views often caused him to write unjustly, and with unnecessary severity, of living
musicians and their music.”20 On the other hand, the Visitor criticized Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore,
“of Peace Jubilee notoriety,” who was about to inaugurate “another monster musical celebration
17
“Why Wagner Wins,” Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 8 (May 1875): 8–9.
18
Marcia Wilson Lebow, “A Systematic Examination of the Journal of Music and Art Edited by John
Sullivan Dwight: 1852–1881, Boston, Massachusetts” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1969),
212.
19
Church’s Musical Visitor 4, no. 10 (July 1875): 8. In November 1879, however, the Visitor was “sorry to
learn that Dwight’s Journal of Music does not meet with the financial success it deserves. Since the change of
publishers [Oliver Ditson, 1858–1878; Houghton Mifflin, 1878–1881], the Journal seems to have drifted away from
the purely musical channels into the broader sea of polite literature, and we miss the skilled pen of the veteran editor
himself in many issues of the paper. In conversation with a Visitor contributor recently, Mr. Dwight expressed the
belief that Cincinnati was going solidly ahead in musical matters; that he expected great things from the western
metropolis.” Church’s Musical Visitor 9, no. 2 (November 1879): 38. In December 1878 the Visitor noted that
Houghton and Company was now publishing Dwight’s Journal, which they “promised to infuse” with new life.
“Musical Literature,” Church’s Musical Visitor 8, no. 3 (December 1878): 76.
20
The Musical Visitor 22, no. 10 (October 1893): 264.
318
in Boston,” and had apparently been a deserter from the British army. When he was stationed in
Canada he had crossed over into Buffalo, New York, without permission and had made Boston
his home, where “he formed a brass band and projected a series of cheap and popular promenade
concerts, from which he doubtless conceived the idea of his monster musical peace jubilee.”21
Gilmore gave a series of concerts in Cincinnati in May 1889 to celebrate the twenty-fifth
anniversary of the Turnerfest of North America. “Mr. G. brought his guns and anvils with him,
and closed each program with anvil and artillery accompaniment, à la Boston Peace Jubilee.”22
Dwight had not fully appreciated Gilmore’s Peace Jubilees,23 but the opportunity to lampoon one
The present study has challenged Lawrence Levine’s concept of the “sacralization of
culture,” which overstates the influence of the elites in transforming public spaces through their
rules of behavior. His focus on the elites at the expense of the middle class does not take into
account the efforts at education, the desire for an aesthetic experience on the part of the
musicians and the audience, and that audiences enjoyed a variety of music, all of which is found
in the Visitor. According to Mary Davison, the consumption of music periodicals was
“principally by the middle class” who wanted to add to their knowledge about European and
American artists who toured the country. The inclusion of music tipped the scales “in favor of
one or another” of the journals. The music was mostly “songs and music in the popular vein” for
21
“Our Musical Hopper,” Church’s Musical Visitor 1, no. 6 (March 1872): 10. I have been unable to find
the reference to Gilmore as a deserter in any other source.
22
“City Notes,” The Musical Visitor 18, no. 6 (June 1889): 149. Gilmore produced three Jubilees in Boston:
the National Peace Jubilee in 1869 to celebrate the end of the Civil War; the World Peace Jubilee in 1872 to
celebrate the end of the Franco-Prussian War; and the third Peace Jubilee to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of
the 1869 Jubilee. Roger L. Hall, “Peace Jubilees,” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., ed. Charles
Hiroshi Garrett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 6:377–78.
23
Lebow, “A Systematic Examination of the Journal of Music and Art Edited by John Sullvian Dwight,
240–41.
319
amateur performers.24 That the Visitor included music for both church and home use for nine
years sets it somewhat apart from its contemporaries, and the Visitor’s columns were not limited
There is more work that can be done with the Visitor. For example, the lives and careers
of Jenny Lind and Ole Bull continued to be followed in the Visitor after their tour beginning in
1850. In addition, American students who studied in Europe, including some of those mentioned
in Douglas Bomberger’s dissertation,25 are mentioned in the Visitor. This warrants further
research into their careers in Europe and the United States. Solo cornetist Anna Teresa Berger,
who appeared with Max Maretzek in Cincinnati and other venues, could be further studied.
Several local singers performed as soloists for the May Festival and at other venues and could be
criticism to the Visitor, which could be compared with their writings in other journals. The
Visitor has more to tell us about the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
24
Davison, “American Music Periodicals,” 209.
25
Bomberger includes alphabetical lists of students by name, state, and city who studied in Germany.
E. Douglas Bomberger, “The “German Musical Training of American Students, 1850–1900” (PhD diss., University
of Maryland, 1991).
320
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334
APPENDIX A
The chronological listing of music printed in the Visitor includes volume/date, composer
(“anon.” if name unavailable), title, genre and/or instrumentation, grade or level of difficulty if
known, and page numbers. Unless voice is specified, “Voice and piano” designates works on
three staves with a vocal line discrete from the accompaniment. Three issues of the Visitor are
missing: September 1887, August 1893, and September 1894. Subtitles are in parentheses and
translations or additional information within brackets. Translations of foreign titles are taken
from the Visitor. The grade or level of difficulty, if provided in the Visitor, may be found in
different issues and may differ between a numbered system (e.g., grade 3), descriptive terms
(e.g., moderate difficulty), or a combination of the two (e.g., grade 3 easy). Pagination for music
printed in the Visitor is irregular and is usually taken from the original publication. The page
numbers used in the listing are the Visitor’s page numbering. Names of text authors, translators,
arrangers, editors, and those who revised, transcribed, or fingered compositions are included.
Dedications to individuals or groups are also noted.
335
Volume 1, number 5 (February 1872)
Addison, D. C. [pseud. of Charles Addison Daniell], arr. White Sails, Waft Me Away. Text
Caroline Dana Howe. Dedicated to Miss Laura West, Middletown, Ohio. Voice
and piano. pp. 13–15.
Chopin, [Frédéric]. Chopin’s Waltzes, op. 64, no. 2. Piano solo. pp. 16–19.
Ryan, [Sidney]. The Overture (Medley). Piano solo, grade 3. pp. 20–21.
336
Pape, Oskar. Campaign (Grand March). Keyboard solo, grade 3. pp. 16–19.
Root, F. W. The Absent, Unforgotten. Text Kate Cameron. SATB and keyboard. p. 20.
Root, F. W. The Season at the Springs. SATB. p. 21.
French, H. A. Summer Rills. SATB. p. 21.
337
Gounod, Ch. Marche Romaine. Piano solo, grade 3. pp. 16–18.
Bliss, P. P. “The Last Bugle” [from The Song Tree]. Bass voice and keyboard. pp. 19–20.
[Root, Geo. F.] The Chase of the Chamois [Etude from The New Musical Curriculum]. Piano
solo, grade 3. p. 21.
338
Volume 2, number 11 (August 1873)
Pro Phundo Basso [pseud. of Philip P. Bliss]. “There’s Monny a Shlip” Irish Song [from The
Song Tree]. Song for tenor and chorus (SATB), and keyboard. pp. 13–14.
Paladilhe, E. “The Serenade” from School of Singing. Arr. Text M[ary] B. C. Slade.
Voice and piano. pp. 15–16.
Bliss, P. P. “Heavenly Love” [from The Song Tree]. Vocal duet (S, Bar.) and organ, grade 3.
pp. 17–18.
Smart, Henry. “By the Blue Sea” from Model Organ Method. Text Frederick Enoch. Voice and
organ. p. 19.
Pro Phundo Basso [pseud. of Philip P. Bliss]. “May Day” (Round of 8 Parts) from The Joy. p. 20.
B[liss], P[hilip] P[aul]. “The Four Rulers” from The Joy. SATB. p. 20.
Palmer, H. R. “Slumber, Dearest” (Serenade) from Concert Choruses. SATB. p. 21.
Beethoven, [Ludwig van]. Hear those Soothing Sounds. Arr. H. R. Palmer. Quartet and chorus
(SATB). p. 21.
339
EDITOR: CHARLES A. DANIELL
340
Palmer, H. R. “Oh Carry Me to My Mother’s Home” (A Temperance Song) from Songs of Love.
Solo and chorus (SATB), and keyboard. p. 23.
McGranahan, James. “Little Lights” from Songs of Love. Gospel hymn. p. 23.
341
Gilmore, H. G. Sunday, Day of Rest. Text W. West. Sacred song and chorus (SATB), and piano.
pp. 19–20.
Sofge, H. D. Round the World Waltz (Second Grade Set). Piano solo. pp. 21–23.
342
Marks, Berthould. The Highland Girl (Mazurka) (with illustration and poem epigraph). Piano
solo. pp. 17–21.
Sofge, H. D. In Earnest Waltz (Second Grade Set). Piano solo. pp. 22–24.
343
Volume 4, number 11 (August 1875)
Bliss, P. P. “The Pensive Old Piano” [a Medley from The Song Tree]. Voice and piano,
grade 3. pp. 13–18.
Beck, Conr. Heimweh [Longing for Home]. Piano solo, grade 3. pp. 19–20.
Bischoff, J. W. Go to Sleep (Cradle Song). Text Mrs. M. F. Butts. Dedicated to my friend
T. Martin Towne. Voice and piano. pp. 21–22.
Whittemore, E. E. Harry Polka. Piano solo, grade 3. pp. 23–25.
344
Volume 5, number 4 (January 1876)
Persley, Geo. W. [pseud. of George W. Brown]. A Letter Came to Me. Text Thos. P.
Westendorf. Solo and chorus (SATB), and piano. pp. 97–99.
Root, G. F. “Sliding Down Hill” [from Home Scenes: First Pieces for the Piano]. Piano solo,
grade 2. pp. 100–101.
Tappert, W. Entsagung [Renunciation]. Piano solo. pp. 102–3.
Heiser, W. Es zieht Herauf die Stille Nacht [The Night Comes On]. Text Wolfgang Müller.
Voice and piano. pp. 104–5.
Henselt, Adolphe [von]. Morgenlied v. W. Müller, Morning Song (Melodie pour le chant). Piano
solo, grade 4. pp. 106–7.
Avison, [Charles]. Sound the Loud Timbrel. Vocal trio (SSA) and chorus (SATB), and keyboard.
pp. 108–9.
345
Roehr, L. Nocturne. Piano solo. pp. 218–22.
346
Root, Geo. F. The Hidden Path. Voice and piano. pp. 21–23.
Goerdeler, R. Love’s Adieu. Dedicated to Miss Kate Buchanan, Independence, Missouri.
Piano solo, grade 3. pp. 24–26.
347
Volume 6, number 6 (March 1877)
Westendorf, Thos. P. Oh, Why Are You Angry with Me, Love? Song and chorus (SATB), and
piano or organ. pp. 156–58.
Addison, D. C. [pseud. of Charles Addison Daniell]. Just Inside the Gates of Gold. Text Arthur
W. French. Solo and chorus (SATB), and piano, grade 2. pp. 159–61.
Mendelssohn, [Felix]. The Evening Bell (Descriptive piece). Piano solo, grade 4. pp. 162–65.
Abt, Franz. Solemn Night. Text Maria Hayes. SATB. pp. 166–68.
348
Volume 6, number 11 (August 1877)
Bliss, P. P. Blessed Are the Peacemakers (Sentence). SATB. p. 278.
Bliss, P. P. God’s Anvil (Chant and chorus). SATB. p. 278.
Danks, H. P. Mother, the Gates Are Open. Text Samuel N. Mitchell. Song and chorus (SATB),
and piano, grade 3. pp. 291–93.
Merrill, H. T. The Mountaineer’s Whistle. Piano solo. pp. 294–98.
Chopin, F. Mazurka, op. 7, no. 1. Piano solo. pp. 299–300.
Westendorf, Thos. P. When That Little Cottage Was My Home. Song and chorus (SATB), and
piano. pp. 301–3.
349
Work, Henry C. Farewell, My Loved One! Solo and chorus (SATB), and piano. pp. 80–82.
Westendorf, Thomas P. Out on the Lake. A Reverie for the Piano or Cabinet Organ, grade 3.
pp. 83–85.
350
Pape, Oscar. May Festival (Valse de Salon). Dedicated to Theodore Thomas. Piano solo, easy.
pp. 222–24.
Balfe, M. W. Killarney. Voice and keyboard. pp. 225–26.
351
Volume 8, number 1 (October 1878)
anon. German. Mowers’ Song. SATB. p. 4.
Butterfield, J. A. Blessed Are the People (Anthem). SATB. p. 4.
Chopin, F. Mazurka, op. 17, no. 1. Piano solo. pp. 16–17.
Masini. I Think of Thee. Arr. Voice and keyboard. p. 18.
Meiser, Carl. March of the Masqueraders. Piano solo. p. 19.
White, Robert. The Step at the Gate. Solo and chorus (SATB), and piano. pp. 20–21.
Meiser, C. Duet Movement. Keyboard solo. p. 22.
anon. John Anderson, My Jo. Transposed and arr. Voice and keyboard. p. 23.
Jarl, J. L. Shady Glen Waltz. Piano solo. p. 24.
R[oot], G. F. An Earnest Aim. Duet (TT) and chorus (SATB), and keyboard. p. 25.
R[oot], G. F. Only Sixteen Dresses to Wear. Text Joe Jot, Jr. Voice and keyboard. p. 26.
352
Verdi, [Giuseppe]. Lamb of God (Agnus Dei) [from Requiem in memory of Alessandro
Manzoni, and commentary]. S, M-S, and chorus (SATB), and piano. pp. 112–15.
Swem, Edmond H. Ex Sigma Chi (Polka Mazurka). Keyboard solo. pp. 116–18.
anon. Bonnie Dundee (One of the most spirited of the old Scotch Border Songs). Arr. Voice and
keyboard. p. 119.
J., J. L., arr. The Soldier’s Release (Theme from Kuhlan). (March). Piano solo. p. 120.
anon., arr. Conjugal Duet. Text P. P. Bliss. Duet (BA), and keyboard. p. 121.
R[oot], G. F. Melodies of Twilight. No. l. Piano solo. p. 122.
Havens, C. A. Beautiful Land on High. Text J. Nicholson. Solo (S or T) and chorus (SATB),
and organ, grade 2. p. 123.
353
Volume 8, number 8 (May 1879)
anon. The Mountain Echo. SATB. p. 210.
Tillinghast, Wm. Summer Days Are Long. Text A. A. Hopkins, Esq., editor “American Rural
Home,” Rochester, NY. Baritone solo and quartet, or trio and chorus (SATB). p. 210.
Doane, W. H. The Mother’s Good-Bye. Solo and chorus (SATB), and piano. pp. 224–26.
Emmet, J. K. Climb Up! Climb Up! (Quickstep). Piano solo, grade 3. pp. 227–29.
Bliss, P. P. The Last Bugle. Vocal solo (B) and keyboard. pp. 230–31.
Heck, L. Seven Elephant March. Piano solo. pp. 232–33.
R[oot], G. F. Spring Greeting. Cabinet organ solo. p. 234.
Leonie. Sleep, My Darling. Voice and keyboard. p. 235.
354
anon. As Down the Sunless Retreats. [Text Thomas Moore]. Duet (AT) and chorus (SATB), and
inst[rument]. p. 322.
Arkwright, Mrs. Treasures of the Deep. Text Mrs. Hemans. Voice and keyboard. pp. 336–37.
Pratt, Charles E., transcr. Emmet’s Lullaby [from J. K. Emmet’s “Close Your Eyes”]. Piano solo,
grade 3. pp. 338–40.
Root, G. F. Echo’s Advice. Recitando. Voice and keyboard. p. 341.
Levasse, Antoine. Etude. Keyboard solo. pp. 342–43.
R[oot], G. F. Home Returning. Keyboard solo. pp. 344–45.
R[oot], G. F. Old Time. Text Mrs. Emily Thornton. Voice and keyboard. p. 346.
Westendorf, Thos. P. When Jesus Walked in Galilee. Dedicated to my friend Peter Caldwell,
Louisville, Kentucky. Hymn. p. 347.
355
Henschel, George. Jamie or Robin? Text Grace F. Coolidge. Voice and piano, grade 3.
pp. 110–12.
Faust, Carl. A Love-Duo (Polka-Mazurka), op. 306. Piano solo, grade 3. pp. 113–15.
Schubert, [Franz]. Aria Religioso [Impromptu, op. 142, no. 2/ D. 935]. [Arr.] Organ solo.
pp. 116–17.
Minard, Jules. Noel. Organ solo. p. 117.
Himmel. Battle Prayer. Piano solo. p. 118.
Mendelssohn, [Felix]. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. Piano solo. p. 118.
Whitmore, C. S. Isle of Beauty, Fare Thee Well! Voice and piano. p. 119.
R[oot], G. F. Fair Luna Smiles. Voice and keyboard. pp. 120–21.
356
Volume 9, number 8 (May 1880)
R[oot], G. F. A Song for May. SATB. p. 208.
Gaines, A. The Foaming Sea. Solo and chorus (SATB), and piano. p. 208.
Buck, Dudley. Scenes from Longfellow’s Golden Legend. Scene 4, “Evening Song.” SATB,
a cappella. pp. 222–25.
Fahrbach, P., Jr. Forever Joyful [Tout à la joie]. Arr. Hermann. Piano solo. pp. 226–28.
R[oot], G. F. A Similar Case (A Recitative Song). Voice and keyboard. pp. 229–30.
Latimer, T. Fear Naught Quick March. Piano solo. p. 231.
anon. Wake, Wake, My Love (Serenade). Voice and keyboard. p. 232.
357
Saunders, Dr. A. A. Do Something for Each Other. Text Charles Swain. Duet and chorus
(SATB). p. 320.
Levoy, Leon. What Answer? Song and chorus (SATB), and piano. pp. 334–36.
Jungmann, Albert. My Native Land [Mein liebes Vaterland], op. 342. Piano solo. pp. 337–40.
Root, Geo. F. Weave the Bright Thoughts. Text Marie Le Baron. Voice and keyboard. p. 341.
anon. Silver Streamlet. Voice and keyboard. p. 342.
Wagner, [Richard]. “Bridal March” from Lohengrin. Piano solo. p. 343.
Kinkel, C. Wavelet Waltz. Keyboard solo, grade 1. p. 344.
anon. Anvil Polka. Piano solo. p. 345.
anon. True Heart Polka. Piano solo. p. 345.
358
R[oot], G. F. Swinging Low. Text C[lara] L[ouise] B[urnham]. Christmas carol. SATB. p. 90.
359
EDITOR: JAMES R. MURRAY
360
Volume 10, number 12 (September 1881)
Murray, J. R. God Save Our President! Text Charles Thom. SATB. p. 318.
Murray, J. R. The Nation’s Prayer. Text E. F. SATB. p. 318.
Mullaly, W. S. Send a Kiss to Papa. Text Frank Dumont. Solo and chorus (SATB), and piano.
pp. 334–37.
Kottaun, Celian. Le Bijou Gavotte. Piano solo, grade 3–4. pp. 338–40.
anon. The Shepherd’s Voice. Keyboard solo. p. 341.
361
[Audran, Edmond.] “The ‘Gobble’ Duet” from La Mascotte. Text Farnie. Arr. Winthrop. Vocal
duet and piano. pp. 136–39.
Schultze, Clemens. Hunting Piece [Jagdstück], op. 36. Piano solo, medium difficulty.
pp. 140–42.
[Audran, Edmond.] “Mascotte Polka” [from La Mascotte]. Arr. J. R. M[urray]. Violin or flute
and piano, easy. pp. 143–45.
Franck, J. Andante. Keyboard solo. p. 146.
362
Murray, J. R. The Ten Virgins, or When the Bridegroom Came. Optional solo and chorus
(SATB), and piano. pp. 282–84.
363
Collin, Aly. L. Sweet Dreams (Nocturne), op. 7. Piano solo, medium difficulty. pp. 23–26.
364
Murray, James R. Where Art Thou? (Quartet for Male Voices). Dedicated to the Mystic Quartet
of Mt. Auburn, Cincinnati. TTBB and keyboard, moderate difficulty. pp. 184–86.
Roeckel, Joseph L. A Modern Pastoral. Text Frederick Langbridge. Voice and piano.
pp. 187–89.
Ryan, Sidney. The Shepherd Boy’s Dream. Piano solo. pp. 190–93.
Marziales, T. Twickenham Ferry. Flute or violin and piano, grade 3. p. 194.
365
Hartsough, Palmer. The Sweet Good-Bye of My Darling. Dedicated to Miss M. Song and chorus
(SATB), and keyboard. pp. 22–24.
Pontius, W. H. Constancy. Arr. from his song. Cornet and piano. pp. 25–26.
366
Pontius, W. H. Campaign March. Piano solo. pp. 188–91.
Towner, D. B. One in Heart and Soul. Text Mrs. C. L. S. Vocal duet (T/MS) and keyboard.
pp. 192–94.
367
Volume 14, number 1 (January 1885)
Lohr, Felix. But Thee Alone [Nur dich allein], op. 82. Trans. J. Ahrem. (English and German
text). Voice and piano. pp. 16–19.
Labitzky, A. First Love (Gavotte), op. 46. Piano solo, moderate difficulty. pp. 20–23.
Towner, D. B. A Home O’er the Sea (Waltz Quartet for Male Voices, senza piano). Text
Mrs. C. L. S. TTBB, a cappella. pp. 24–26.
368
Tosti, F. Paolo. Ave Maria. Trans. “Winthrop.” (Italian and English text). Solo voice (S or T) and
piano. pp. 163–66.
369
Volume 15, number 1 (January 1886)
“Wurzel” [pseud. of George F. Root]. Blessed Are They. Anthem. SATB and piano. pp. 14–18.
Cranmer, Ed. L. Great Is the Lord. Quartet choir and organ. pp. 19–22.
Root, Geo. F. Hours of Holy Time. Hymn Anthem. SATB and piano. pp. 23–25.
Haydn, J. Andante. Organ Voluntary [no. 2, Murray’s One Hundred Organ Voluntaries]. p. 26.
Mozart, W. A. Lento. Organ Voluntary [no. 3, Murray’s One Hundred Organ Voluntaries].
p. 27.
370
Boex, A. J. Hallelujah! Christ Is Risen (Easter anthem). SATB and organ. pp. 106–8.
Muller, J. A. Larghetto. Organ Voluntary [no. 7, Murray’s One Hundred Organ Voluntaries].
p. 109.
Scharwenka, Ph. March for Festival Occasions, op. 45, no. 2. Organ Voluntary [no. 12,
Murray’s One Hundred Organ Voluntaries]. pp. 110–11.
371
Haydn. Slow Movement. Organ Voluntary [no. 18, Murray’s One Hundred Organ
Voluntaries]. p. 194.
Rimbault, [Edward F.]. Andante. Organ Voluntary [no. 20, Murray’s One Hundred Organ
Voluntaries]. p. 195.
372
Rinck, [J. C. H.]. Fughetta. Organ Voluntary [no. 28, Murray’s One Hundred Organ
Voluntaries]. p. 279.
373
Vilbac, R. de O Sanctissima. Organ Voluntary [no. 34, Murray’s One Hundred Organ
Voluntaries]. pp. 54–55.
374
Wilson, Geo. F. Oh, Let Those Whose Sorrow. Dedicated to Deacon Albert G. Sweetser,
Wakefield, Massachusetts. SATB. p. 156.
Tours, Berthold. All Is Peace. Text Edward Oxenford. SATB and keyboard. pp. 157–59.
Hall, J. E. Make a Joyful Noise. S, B, SATB, and keyboard. pp. 160–64.
Moir, F. L. Andante Grazioso. Arr. Organ Voluntary [no. 57, Murray’s One Hundred Organ
Voluntaries]. p. 165.
Mendelssohn, [Felix]. “Marche Funèbre” [from Songs without Words, op. 62, no. 3 /no. 29 in
Murray’s One Hundred Organ Voluntaries]. Organ Voluntary. pp. 166–67.
375
Elvey, Sir George. Blessed Are They That Fear the Lord. Arr. SATB and keyboard. pp. 266–69.
Root, Geo. F. Incline Thine Ear to Me. B, SATB, and keyboard. pp. 270–73.
Murray, J. R., arr. In Heavenly Love Abiding. Text Mrs. Waring. SA, SATB, and optional
keyboard. pp. 274–75.
Collier, Rev. Edward A., arr. Response to the Commandments. SATB. p. 276.
Heetz[?], W. L. Thy Will Be Done. Text Lucy A. Booth. Hymn. p. 276.
Weber. Cradle Song [Wiegenlied]. Arr. Organ Voluntary [no. 64, Murray’s One Hundred
Organ Voluntaries]. p. 277.
Haydn, [Franz] Joseph. Melody. Organ Voluntary [no. 65, Murray’s One Hundred Organ
Voluntaries]. p. 277.
Schubert, Franz. Allegretto (Posthumous work). Organ Voluntary [no. 61, Murray’s One
Hundred Organ Voluntaries]. pp. 278–79.
376
Woodward, Rev. H. H. The Sun Shall Be No More Thy Light by Day. SATB and organ.
pp. 22–25.
Himmel. Introductory Voluntary. Organ Voluntary [no. 77, Murray’s One Hundred Organ
Voluntaries]. p. 26.
L[éfébure-]Wély, [Louis James Alfred]. Sacred Piece. Organ Voluntary [no. 73, Murray’s
One Hundred Organ Voluntaries]. p. 27.
Caldara. Introductory Voluntary. Organ Voluntary [no. 74, Murray’s One Hundred Organ
Voluntaries]. p. 30.
Kozeluch. Introductory Voluntary. Organ Voluntary [no. 75, Murray’s One Hundred
Organ Voluntaries]. p. 30.
377
Volume 17, number 4 (April 1888)
Root, Geo. F. Grant Us Thy Blessing, Our Father. A, SATB, and keyboard. pp. 97–99.
Spohr. “How Lovely Are Thy Dwellings Fair” from Festival Anthem. SATB and keyboard.
pp. 100–101.
Bruce, W. A. Near Babylon’s Rivers. SATB and keyboard. pp. 102–5.
Collier, Rev. E. A. Come unto Me. Hymn. p. 106.
Pontius, W. H. Response. No. 1 (after prayer). SATB. p. 107.
Pontius, W. H. Response. No. 2 (after prayer). SATB. p. 107.
Gounod. Kyrie eleison. Organ Voluntary [no. 78, Murray’s One Hundred Organ Voluntaries].
pp. 108–9.
Batiste. Organ Movement. Organ Voluntary [no. 79, Murray’s One Hundred Organ
Voluntaries]. p. 109.
Haydn. Allegretto. Organ Voluntary [no. 86, Murray’s One Hundred Organ Voluntaries].
p. 110.
Gounod. Motet. Organ Voluntary [no. 87, Murray’s One Hundred Organ Voluntaries]. p. 111.
M[urray], J. R. “Soldiers of Christ, March On” from Royal Praise. Text Alice M. Schoff.
SATB. p. 114.
“Winthrop.” “Brightly Gleams Our Banner” from Royal Praise. Text Rev. T. J. Potter. SATB.
p. 114.
378
Rinck, C. H. Prelude. Organ Voluntary [no. 93, Murray’s One Hundred Organ Voluntaries].
p. 165.
Schubert. Dona nobis. Organ Voluntary [no. 91, Murray’s One Hundred Organ Voluntaries].
p. 166.
anon. Old German. Andante. Organ Voluntary [no. 94, Murray’s One Hundred Organ
Voluntaries]. p. 167.
Murray, J. R. “Before the Bolted Door” from Royal Praise. Text Rev. Lowrie Hofford.
Gospel hymn. p. 170.
Sherwin, W. F. “God’s Care” from Royal Praise. Hymn. p. 170.
379
Beethoven. Andante Cantabile. Keyboard solo. p. 251.
Schubert. Introductory Voluntary. Keyboard solo. p. 254.
380
Volume 18, number 2 (February 1889)
Sanders, Harry. Blessed Sleep. Hymn. p. 41.
Danks, H. P. Set Up Thyself, O God, Above the Heavens. Anthem. pp. 42–45.
Taylor, W. H. Praise Ye the Lord (Sentence). SATB and keyboard. pp. 46–47.
Root, G. F. Every Good Tree. SATB. pp. 48–49.
Knopfel, G. C. Jubilate. SATB. pp. 50–51.
K[nopfel], G. C. Gloria Patri. Hymn anthem, grade 3. p. 51.
Heller, S. Offertory, op. 47. Organ solo. pp. 52–53.
Schluty, J. Prelude. Keyboard solo. p. 53.
Schluty, J. Prelude. Organ solo. pp. 54–55.
anon. Prelude. Keyboard solo. p. 55
Kirkpatrick, Wm. J. Hail the Victor. Text Mrs. R. N. Turner. Easter carol. p. 58.
Sweney, Jno. R. Jesus Is Risen, Sing with Delight. Text E. E. Hewitt. Easter carol. p. 58.
381
Beethoven, L.v. “Adagio” [adapted from the second movement of his Sonata in C Minor,
op. 13]. Keyboard solo. pp. 138–39.
Wachs, F. Theme Fugue. Keyboard solo. p. 142.
Mozart, W. A. “Allegro Moderato” [adapted from the third movement of his Sonata in C Minor,
K. 457]. Keyboard solo. p. 142.
382
Sachs, M. E. Adagio. Piano solo. p. 254.
383
Beethoven. Andante [Adapted from Symphony no. 6, op. 68]. Keyboard solo. pp. 54–55.
Beethoven. Prelude [Adapted from Symphony no. 6, op. 68]. Keyboard solo. p. 55.
Hall, J. E. Sing, Happy Voices. Easter carol. p. 58.
Root, G. F. He Lives! He Lives! Text Mrs. R. N. Turner. Easter carol. p. 58.
384
Root, Geo. F. Star of Endeavor! Text Rev. N. J. Squires. SATB and keyboard. pp. 158–60.
Root, G. F. United Thousands. SATB and keyboard. p. 161.
Mendelssohn. Come unto Me, Ye Weary (Unaccompanied). Arr. F. Vinal. SATB. pp. 162–63.
Dussek. Andantino. Keyboard solo. pp. 164–65.
Czerny, Karl. “Andante espressivo” [from op. 139, no. 34]. Keyboard solo. p. 166.
Schumann, [Robert]. “Moderato” [part 1 of “Winterzeit,” op. 68, no. 38]. Keyboard solo. p. 167.
Hesse. Arie. Keyboard solo. p. 170.
385
Volume 19, number 10 (October 1890)
Root, G. F. Thy Sun Shall No More Go Down. SATB. pp. 265–67.
Cranmer, Ed. L. Who Is Among You. Quartet (SATB) and keyboard. pp. 268–71.
Mendelssohn. Rock of Ages (Unaccompanied). Arr. F. Vinal. SATB. pp. 272–73.
R[oot], G. F. We Come before Thee (Men’s Voices). TTBB. pp. 274–75.
Mendelssohn. Ave Maria. Keyboard solo. pp. 276–77.
Mendelssohn. Air. Keyboard solo. p. 277.
von Weber. Andante. Keyboard solo. pp. 278–79.
von Weber. Prelude. Keyboard solo. p. 279.
386
Gounod, [Charles]. “Reminiscence” from The Redemption. Keyboard solo. p. 25.
Steibelt. “Tempo di menuetto” from Sonata, op. 63. Keyboard solo. pp. 26–27.
Lulli, Jean Baptiste. March. Keyboard solo. p. 30.
387
Sullivan. “Pastorale.” Arr. from Ivanhoe. Keyboard solo. pp. 136–37.
Schubert. Romance. Keyboard solo. p. 138.
Sullivan. “Andante.” Arr. from Ivanhoe. Keyboard solo. p. 139.
R[oot], G. F. Sabbath Morn. Text N. K. Griggs. SATB. p. 142.
388
Kern. Andante grazioso. Keyboard solo. p. 250.
Kern. Larghetto. Keyboard solo. p 251.
Harrington, C. W. An Evening Hymn. Text [Bishop] George W. Doane. SATB. p. 254.
389
Volume 21, number 1 (January 1892)
Murray, J. R. Friend after Friend Departs (for special occasions). Text [James] Montgomery.
Hymn. p. 1A.
Cranmer, E. L. Just as I Am. Respectfully dedicated to my friend and Brother Organist Lawrence
J. Bogart, of the Fischer Piano Co., of New York. Quartet (SATB) and keyboard.
pp. 13–15.
Rose, Clarence D. Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us. Text A. W. Warren. B, SATB, and
keyboard. pp. 16–19.
Hall, J. E. Before Jehovah’s Throne. S, B, Quartet (SATB), and piano or organ. pp. 20–23.
Soderman, A. Swedish Wedding March. Keyboard solo. p. 24.
anon. “Offertory” from The Chapel. Keyboard solo. p. 25.
Battmann. March Majestic. Organ solo. pp. 26–27.
390
Root, G. F. If a Man Love Me. SATB. p. 114.
Robinson, Jas. H. The Lord Is in His Holy Temple (Sentence). SATB. p. 115.
Mayer, Carl. Scherzando. Keyboard solo. pp. 116–17.
Mayer, Carl. March. Keyboard solo. p. 117.
anon. “Andante sostenuto” from The Chapel. Keyboard solo. p. 118.
B[attmann], J. L. Lento. Organ solo. p. 119.
391
anon. Italian chorale. Savior, Breathe an Evening Blessing. Arr. Text James Edmeston. SATB
and keyboard. pp. 226–27.
Forster. Postlude. pp. 228–29.
Forster. Communion. Keyboard solo. pp. 230–31.
Mayer, Carl. Offertory. Keyboard solo. p. 231.
392
Root, G. F. Glory! Glory! Glory! SATB and keyboard (with angels’ chorus, out of sight if
convenient). pp. 337–41.
Cranmer, E. L. Christmas Anthem No. 5. A, T, Bar., SATB, and organ. pp. 342–44.
Murray, J. R. Our Savior and Our King. SATB and keyboard. pp. 346–47.
Fletcher, Robert L. A Song of Peace. S or T solo, Quartet (SATB), and keyboard. pp. 348–49.
Root, Geo. F. Fear Not (Christmas). SATB, optional keyboard. pp. 350–51.
Hecker, J. A Christmas Hymn. SATB. p. 352.
Murray, J. R. He Has Come (Quartet). Text H[oratius] Bonar. Quartet (SATB). p. 353.
Gabriel, Chas. H. On Bended Knee (Quartet for Ladies Voices). SSAA. pp. 354–55.
Leybach, J. Christmas March No. 1. Keyboard solo. p. 356.
Leybach, J. Christmas March No. 2. Organ solo. p. 357.
Schubert, Fr[anz]. Softly Sound My Prayers. Keyboard solo. pp. 358–59.
Mozart, W. A. “Allegretto” [excerpt from K. 310, “Presto”]. Piano solo. p. 359.
393
Cranmer, E. L. Easter Anthem No. 3. SATB and organ. pp. 74–77.
Morey, Fred. L. Hail, Thou Once Despised Jesus! (Easter). SATB and keyboard. pp. 78–81.
Murray, J. R. Jesus Lives! And So Shall I (Easter). Text Rev. Dr. Schaff. SA, Chorus (SATB),
and keyboard. pp. 82–84.
Mayer. Prelude. p. 85.
Clark, [Rev. Frederick] Scotson. Festival March. Arr. pp. 86–87.
395
Root, G. F. Behold I Bring You Good Tidings (Quartet or Semi-Chorus). SATB, optional
accompaniment. pp. 328–31.
Bridge, J. Frederick. Two Thousand Troubled Years (Christmas Part Song). Text Alfred Hayes.
SATB. pp. 332–33.
Squires, F. H. The Voice of the Lord (Christmas Part Song). Text Rev. Dr. S. J. Rowton. SATB
and organ. pp. 334–37.
Holsinger, Geo. B. The Wondrous Story. SATB and keyboard. pp. 338–40.
Murray, J. R. Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus (Hymn Anthem). Text Rev. Chas. Wesley.
SATB and keyboard. pp. 341–43.
Leybach. Christmas March. Keyboard solo. pp. 344–45.
Leybach. Festival March. Keyboard solo. pp. 346–47.
SUPPLEMENT TO THE MUSICAL VISITOR:
Bohm, C[arl] Farewell, op. 115. Melodie. Ed. “Winthrop.” Keyboard solo, moderate
difficulty. pp. 349–52.
396
Battmann. On Gentle Waves. Keyboard solo. pp. 82–83.
B[attmann], J. L. Voices from Afar. Keyboard solo. p. 84.
397
Cranmer, Ed. L. Christ’s Kingdom. Quartet (SATB) and keyboard. pp. 219–22.
Oesten, Theodor. In Springtime [Im Frühling], op. 276, no. 1. Keyboard solo. pp. 223–24.
anon. Old Welsh air. All through the Night. Keyboard solo. p. 225.
398
Volume 24, number 1 (January 1895)
Palmer, H. R. Praise Ye the Lord. Text F[anny] J. Crosby. SATB and keyboard. p. 15.
Cranmer, Ed. L. I Will Love Thee, O Lord. Quartet (SATB) and organ, grade 3. pp. 16–19.
Hall, J. E. Sweet Is the Work. Quartet (SATB) and keyboard, grade 3. pp. 20–23.
Murray, James R. For Thousand Mercies New. Text Adeline. SATB. p. 24.
Leybach. Pastorale. Keyboard solo. p. 25.
Leybach. Land of Beulah. Keyboard solo. p. 26.
399
Volume 24, number 6 (June 1895)
Geissler, C. Romance. Keyboard solo. p. 159.
Scharwenka, Xaver. March, op. 62, no. 1. Keyboard solo. pp. 160–61.
Meredith, I. N. [H.]. Abide with Me. S, A, SATB and keyboard, grade 3. pp. 162–65.
Root, G. F. Glorious Things. SATB, optional accompaniment, grade 2. pp. 166–68.
Murray, J. R. Teach Me, O Lord. Psalm 119:33. SATB and keyboard, grade 3. pp. 169–71.
400
Hitz, Franz. The Lively Mill [Joyeux Moulin]. Rev. and fing. Dr. N. J. Elsenheimer. Piano solo,
intermediate. pp. 297–300.
Lack, Théodore. Arietta, op. 97. Rev. and fing. G. Krüger. Piano solo, not difficult. pp. 301–4.
Bellstedt, [Herman]. Everett Piano March. Arr. John N. Klohr. 2 mandolins and guitar.
pp. 305–7.
Stange, Max. Ah Me, the Heart That’s Breaking [Herzeleide], op. 27, no. 7. Text Carl Lemke
(English and German text). Voice and piano pp. 308–10.
SUPPLEMENT TO THE MUSICAL VISITOR:
Hall, J. E. Let My Mouth Be Filled with Thy Praise. S, T, Quartet or Chorus (SATB), and organ.
pp. 311–14.
Schoff, Mrs. Dr. J. S. Awake! Put On Thy Strength, O Zion. S, SATB, and keyboard, grade 3.
pp. 315–18.
401
Volume 25, number 3 (March 1896)
Wagner, J. F. Unter dem Doppel Adler [Under the Double Eagle], March, op. 159. Piano solo.
pp. 63–65.
Espen, Theodor [pseud. of Karl Gänschals]. In Quiet Night [Im stiller Nacht], op. 27. Piano solo.
pp. 66–69.
Bohm, Carl. Am Bergquell [By the Mountain Spring], op. 327, no. 2. Rev. and fing. Theodor
F. Bohlmann. Piano solo. pp. 70–75.
Murray, James R. The Sea Birds’ Message, or, We Know There Is One to Love Us. Voice
and piano. pp. 76–78.
SUPPLEMENT TO THE MUSICAL VISITOR:
Adams, Mrs. Carrie B. Hark! Hark! The Notes of Joy (Easter Anthem), grade 4. pp. 79–84.
Murray, J. R. Crown Him! (Hymn Anthem), grade 3. pp. 85–86.
402
Mora, Carlo. Lullaby (Shut Eye, Baby Eye). Arr. [F. W.] Wessenberg. Mandolin and guitar.
pp. 197–98.
403
Bachmann, G. Legende. Piano solo. pp. 331–34.
Cowen, F. H. Snowflakes. S or T and keyboard. pp. 335–38.
SUPPLEMENT TO THE MUSICAL VISITOR:
Adams, Carrie B. The Wondrous Story (Christmas Anthem). S or T, SATB, and keyboard,
grade 3. pp. 345–51.
Root, Geo. F. Ye Christian People All Rejoice (Anthem for Christmas and other Festivals).
SATB, grade 3. pp. 352–54.
Danks, H. P. Hark! The Glad Sound (Christmas). S or T, SATB, and keyboard, grade 3.
pp. 355–57.
Murray, J. R. Now Is Come the Salvation (Christmas Anthem). SA, SATB, and keyboard,
grade 3. pp. 358–60.
404
Volume 26, number 4 (April 1897)
Gutmann, A. Nocturne Poetique, op. 16. Rev. and ed. Wilson G. Smith. Piano solo, grade 4.
pp. 91–93.
Godard, Ch. Danse d’Etoiles (Valse), op. 66. Piano solo. pp. 94–100.
Murray, James R. Bright Eyes Waltz. Piano solo, grade 2-1/2. pp. 101–3.
Joachim, Amalie. “Swedish Song: From a Dalekarlian Dance.” (English and German text).
Voice and piano. pp. 104–6.
405
Volume 26, number 9 (September 1897)
Lack, Théodore. Danse Bohémienne [Bohemian Dance] (Impromptu), op. 55, no. 5. Rev. and
fing. Georg Krüger. Piano solo. pp. 231–35.
Duvernoy, J. B. Mazurka, op. 272, no. 3. Rev. and fing. Emil Liebling. Piano solo, grade 3.
pp. 236–38.
Espen, Theodor [pseud. of Karl Gänschals]. Eveline (Mazurka Brillante), op. 4. Piano solo.
pp. 239–41.
“Winthrop.” In Pastures Green. Piano solo, easy. pp. 242–43.
Murray, J. R. Little Sunshine. Voice and piano, grade 3. pp. 244–46.
406
CHRISTMAS SUPPLEMENT TO THE MUSICAL VISITOR:
Murray, J. R. Break Forth into Joy (Christmas). S or T, Quartet or Chorus (SATB), and
keyboard. pp. 337–39.
Danks, H. P. Let the Heavens Rejoice (Christmas Anthem). S or T, SATB, and keyboard.
pp. 340–44.
407
APPENDIX B
408
Name b. US Vocal Instr.
Barnby, J[oseph] (1838–1896) 4 2
Barrows, Robert Y. 1
Bartlett, [Dr.] M[aro] L. (1847–1919) X 2
Batiste, [Antoine-Edouard] (1820–1876) 3
Battmann, J[acques] L[ouis] (1818–1886) 28
Baumfelder, Friedrich (1836–1916) 2
Beaumont, Paul 4
Beck, Conr. H. 1
Becker, C[arl] F[erdinand] (1804–1877) 5
**Beethoven, [Ludwig van] (1770–1827) 3 19
Behr, F[rançois/Franz] (1837–1898) [pseud. William Cooper,
6
Ch. Godard, F[rancesco] d’Orso]
Behrend, A[rthur] H[enry] (1853–1935) 1
Beirly, Alfred 1
Bellini, [Vincenzo] (1801–1835) 1
Bellstedt, [Herman] (1858–1926) 1
Bendel, Franz (1832/3–1874) 1
Benedict, Sir Jules (1804–1885) 1
Benson, J. A[llanson] 1
Berliner, S[elma] 1
Berridge, Arthur 2
Beyer, Carl 1
Bischoff, [Dr.] J. W. (1850–1909) X 2 1
Bishop, Sir Henry (1786–1855) 1
Bizet, [Georges] (1838–1875) 1
Black, J. W. 2
Blackmer, E. T. 1
Blamphin, Charles (1830?–1895) 1
*Bliss, Philip P[aul] (1838–1876) [pseud. Pro Phundo Basso] X 38
Bliss, Mrs. P. P. [Lucy Young Bliss] (1841–1876) X 1
Blose, J[ohann] M. 4
Blosser, H. C. 1
Blum, O. R. 1
Blumenschein, W[illiam] L[eonard] (1849–1916) 1
Blumenthal, [Jakob/Jacques] (1829–1908) 1
Boccherini, L[uigi] (1743–1805) arr. Wessenberg 1
Boex, A[ndrew] J. 1
Bohm, Carl (1844–1920) 8
Bohner, Louis (1787–1860) 1
Bollinger, A. E. 2
Bonnell, J. F. 1
Boyce, Dr. [William?] (1711–1779) 1
Bracewell, W. 1
Bradshaw, B. 1
409
Name b. US Vocal Instr.
Bradsky, [Wenzel] Theodor (1833–1881) 1
Bradt, C. J. 1
Braga, G[aetano] (1829–1907) 1
Brahms, Johannes (1833–1897) 1
Bray, Charles E. 1
Breslaur, Emil (1836–1899) 1
Bridge, J[ohn] Frederick (1844–1924) 1
Briggs, W. A. 1
Bristow, F[rank] L. (1845–1914) 1
Bruce, W. A. 1
Brumback, E. G. 1
Buck, Dudley (1839–1909) X 1
Bulling, George T. 1
Butterfield, J[ames] A[ustin] (1837–1891) 3
C., H. R. 1
Caldara, [Antonio?] (1670–1736) 1
Callcott, Dr. [John George] (1821–1895) 1
Camp, J[ohn] S[pencer] (1858–1946) 1
Campana, Fabio (1819–1882) 3
Campbell, J. B. 1
+Campiglio, Paolo F. 1
Carolan 2
Carroll, Charles H. 1
Case, C[harles] C[linton] (1843–1918) X 8
Cellier, Alfred (1844–1891) 1
Challoner, Robert 1 2
Chaminade, C[écile] (1857–1944) 2
**Chopin, [Frédéric] (1810–1849) 13
Chwatal, F[ranz] X[aver] (1808–1879) 1
Cinna, Oscar de la 1
Clark, [Rev. Frederick] Scotson (1840–1883) 1
Clayton, C. F. 1
Clementi, [Muzio] (1752–1832) 2
Clemm, J. B. O. 1
Clinton, Charles 1
Collan, Carl (1828–1871) 1
Collier, Rev. Edward A. 3
Collin, Aly L. 1
Concone, J. [Paolo Giuseppe] (1801–1861) 2
Concordius [pseud.] 1
Cook, Mrs. T. J. 1
Cooper, William (1837–1898) [pseud. Franz Behr] 2
Costa, Sir [Michael] (1808–1884) 1 1
Cottrau, G[iulio] (1831–1916) 1
410
Name b. US Vocal Instr.
Couldrey, H. R. 1
Cowen, Frederic H. (1852–1935) 3
Cramer 2
Cramer, J[ohann] B[aptist] (1771–1858) 2
Crane, Henry R. 1
Cranmer, Ed[ward] L. 45 1
Cre[i]yghton, Rev. Dr. [Robert] (1636/7–1734) 1
Croisez, A[lexandre] (1814–1886) 1
Crouch, [Frederick Nicholls] (1808–1896) 1
Crozier, E. W. 1
Czerny, [Carl] (1791–1857) 6
Czibulka, Alphons (1842–1894) 2
*Danks, H[art] P[ease] (1834–1903) X 36
Danziger, L. 4
Darnton, C. 1
DeCamp, Evelyn 1
DeKress, Charles R. 1
Delos [pseud. Delos Gardner Spalding?] 1
Demeur, Celestin 1
Dicey, E. A. 1
Dick, [Cotsford?] (1846–1911) 1
Doane, W[illiam] H[oward] (1832–1915) X 1
Donizetti, G[aetano] (1797–1848) 1
Dorn, Edouard (1838–1923) [pseud. of Joseph L. Röckel] 1
Douglas, Malcolm 1
Dungan, J. M. 1
Dunham, J. R. 1
Dussek, [Jan Ladislav] (1760–1812) 1
Duvernoy, J[ean] B[aptiste] (1802–1880) 3
Ehrlich, Gustav 1
Eichberg, O[skar] (1845–1898) 1
Elliott, J[ames] W[illiam] (1833–1915) 1
Ellis, S. A., arr. 1
Ellmenreich, Albert (1816–1905) 1
Elvey, Sir George J[ob] (1816–1893) 2
Emerson, L[uther] O[rlando] (1820–1915) X 1
Emmet, J[oseph] K[line] (1841–1891) X 2
Espen, Theodor [pseud. of Karl Gänschals] (1847–1906) 5
Ewing, A[lexander C.] (1830–1895) 1
Fabiani, Signor [H. B.] 2 1
Fahrbach, P[hilip], Jr. (1843–1894) 1
Fairbank, H. W. 6
Falconier, B. C. 1
Fase, Henry 1
411
Name b. US Vocal Instr.
Faust, Carl (1825–1892) 1
Favart, Paul [pseud. Edwin Benning] 1
Fesca, [Alexander?] (1820–1849) 1
Fink, [Gottfried?] Wilhelm (1783–1846) 3
Fisher, Madeleine 1
Fiske, William O. 1
Fletcher, R[obert] L. 3
Flotow, [Friedrich von] (1812–1883) 1
Flower, Eliza (1803–1846) 1
Fontaine, Ch. 1
Forbes, J. Winchell 1
Fo[e]rster, Alban (1849–1916) 4
Forest, Frank 1
Forster, A[nton] (1867–1915) 4
Foster, Stephen C. (1826–1864) X 1
Fox, Robert 5
Franck, J[oseph?] (1820–1891) 2
French, H. A. 1
Fruehling, Max 1
Gabriel, Charles 1
Gabriel, Charles H[utchinson] (1856–1932) X 1
Gabriel-Marie, [Jean Marie Marie] (1852–1928) 2
Gade, N[iels] W. (1817–1890) 1
Gaines, A. 2
Gallaher, J. J. 1
Gaul, Alfred [Robert] (1837–1913) 2
Gautier, Leonard (1825–1878) 1
Geissler, C. 2
George, J. E. 1
Geza, K. Döme 1
Ghys, Henry (1839–1908) 1
Giese, Theodor 3
Gill, James 1
Gilmore, H. G. 6
Glines, J. E. 1
Gluck, Chr[istoph Willibald, Ritter] von (1714–1787) 1 3
Gobbaerts, [Jean] L[ouis] (1835–1886) [pseud. L. Streabbog] 2
Godard, Ch[arles] (1837–1898) [pseud. Franz Behr] 1
Goerdeler, Richard 3 4
Goltermann, G[eorg Eduard] (1824–1898) 2
Goodeve, Arthur 1
Gordon, George S. (1851–1886) X 1 1
Gosfi, Henrie 1
Goss, Sir John (1800–1880) 1
412
Name b. US Vocal Instr.
Gotze, Joh. (1791–1861) 1
Gounod, Charles (1818–1893) 2 7
Gowen, Edw. H. 1
Graben-Hoffmann, [Gustav H.] (1820–1900) 1
Grape, John T[homas] (1835–1915) X 3
Graun, C[arl] H[einrich] (1703/4–1759) 4
Grünfeld, Alfred (1852–1924) 1
Guest, A. M. 1
Gurlitt, C[ornelius] (1820–1901) 1
Gutmann, A[dolf] (1819–1882) 1
Hall, J. E. 16
Halls, R. George 1
Hand, A. O. 2
Handel, G[eorge] F[riederich] (1685–1759) 2 6
Hanson, S. C. 1
Harding, Henry 1
Harrington, C. W. 1
Hartmann, J[ohann] P[eter] E[milius] (1805–1900) 1
Hartshorne, W. Irving 1
Hartsough, Palmer (1844–1932) 1
Hasse, J[ohann] A[dolf] (1699–1783) 1
Hastie, William A. 2
Hastings, Dr. Thomas (1784–1872) X 1
Hatton, J[ohn] L[iptrot] (1808–1886) 2
Havens, A. W. 1
Havens, C(harles) A(rthur) (b. 1842) 3 1
Haydn, F[ranz] J[oseph] (1732–1809) 1 16
Haydn, [Johann] M[ichael] (1737–1806) 1
Heck, L. 1
Hecker, J. [A.] 1
Heetz[?], W. L. (unclear copy) 1
Heffley, Irvin J. 1
Heins, Carl (1859–1923) 1
Heiser, W. 1
Heiser, Wilhelm (1816–1897) 1
Heller, Stephen (1813–1888) 2
Henkel 1
Henrion, Paul (1819–1901) 1
Henry, J. A. 2
Henschel, George (1850–1934) 1
Henselt, A[dolf von] (1814–1889) 1 1
Hermann 1
Herrling, J. M. 1
Hershey, J. C. 1
413
Name b. US Vocal Instr.
Herz, H[enri] (1803–1888) 1
Hesse 1
Hester, Mrs. Sallie A. 1
Heyer, Karl [Charles] Otto (1832–1897) 4
Hiles, H[enry] (1826–1904) 1
Hill, Jerome 2
Hill, R. N. 1
Hime, E. L. 1
Himmel 3
Hitz, Franz (b. 1828) 1
Holsinger, Geo. B. (1857–1908) X 2
Hook, Albert 3 1
Hopkins, Dr. J. L. X 1
Horn, C[harles] E[dward] (1786–1849) 1
Howard, Frank (1833–1884) [pseud. Delos Gardner Spalding] X 1 1
Huber, Hans (1852–1921) 2
Hull, P. G. 1
Hummel, [Johann Nepomuk?] (1778–1837) 1
Hunter, Will. B. 1
Hutchins, C. E. 1
Hyde, D[orsey] W. 6
J., J. L., arr. 1
Jadassohn, S[alomon] (1831–1902) 3
Jansen, F. Gustav (1831–1910) 1
Jarl, J. L. 4
Joachim, Amalie [Schneeweiss] (1839–1899) 1
Joetze, F. 1
Jolie, M. 1
Juncker, Aug. W. 1
Jungmann, Albert (1824–1892) 1
Kalkbrenner, [Frédéric/Friedrich] (1785–1849) 1
Keil, Phil. P. 2
Kern 10
Kern, Carl Aug. 1
Kiallmark, [George Frederick] (1804–1887) 1 3
Kimball, E. S. 1
Kinkel, Charles (b. 1832) 2
Kinkel, Johanna (1810–1858) 1
**Kinkle, C. 2
Kirkpatrick, William J[ames] (1838–1921) X 1
Kissinger, J. H. 1
Kleber, L. P. 1
Knecht, Justin H. (1752–1817) 1 1
Knopfel, G. C. 23
414
Name b. US Vocal Instr.
Kohler, Oscar 1
Kohnemann, W. 1
Koss, H[enning] von (b. 1855) 1
Kottaun, Celian 2
Kozeluch, [Leopold Anton] (1747–1818) 1
Kraus, Jos[eph] (1756–1792) 1
Krug, D[iederich] (1821–1880) 2
Krutch, Emil 1
Kuchenmeister, A. 1
Küchenmeister, Wilhelm 1
Kuhlau, [Friedrich] (1786–1832) 3
Kunkel, Gotthold 1
Labitzky, A[ugust] (1832–1903) 1
Lack, Theódor (1846–1921) 7
Lackey, Chas. A. 1
Lamothe, [George] 1
Landown, R. 3
Lange, Gustav (1830–1889) 3
Latimer, S. 2
Latimer, T. 1
**Lefébure-Wély, L[ouis James Alfred] (1817–1869) 4
Leftwich, C. R. 1
Lege, W[ilhelm?] (1841–1893) 1
Leinad, L. 1
Lenz, L. 1
Leonie 1
Levasse, Antoine 6
Levoy, Leon 9 1
Lewis, Charles L. 1 1
Leybach, J. [Ignace Xavier Joseph] (1817–1891) 17
Lichner, H[einrich] (1829–1898) 4
Lickl, C. [Karl?] G[eorg] (1801–1877) 1
Lindahl, Albert 1
Lindsay, Mathew 2
Lippitt, F. J. 1
Liszt, [Franz] (1811–1886) 1
Lockwood, C. T. (1834/5–1870) 1
Löw, Josef (1834–1886) 2
Lohr, Felix 1
Lott, E. M. 2
Ludovic, G. 5
Lulli[y], Jean-Baptiste (1632–1687) 1
Lutz, [Johann Baptist] W[ilhelm] Meyer (1828–1903) 1
Lwoff, Alexis [L’vov, Aleksey] (1798–1870) 1 1
415
Name b. US Vocal Instr.
Lyman, Arthur H. 1
Lyte, G. E. 1
Mackintosh, K. 1
“Macy” 1
Malmene, Waldemar (1833?–1906) 4
Manchester, W. N. 1
Maretzek, Max (1821–1897) 1
Marks, B[erthould] 2
Marks, Godfrey (1847–1931) [pseud. James Frederick Swift] 1
Martin, S. Wesley (b. 1839) 3
Martini 1
Marzial[e]s, Theo. (1850–1920) 1 1
Mascagni, [Pietro] (1863–1945) 1
Masini 1
Mason, Dr. [Lowell] (1792–1872) X 2
Massenet, Jules (1842–1912) 1
Matheson, J. 1
Mayer, Carl 6
Mayo, Oscar (b. ca. 1836) 2
McCabe, C[harles] C[aldwell] (1836–1906) X 1
*McGranahan, James (1840–1907) X 8
McPhail, M. L. 10
Meares, George D. 1
Meininger, J. C. 1
Meiser, Carl 4
Mendelssohn[-Bartholdy], Felix (1809–1847) 6 12
Meredith, I[saac] [H.] (1872–1962) X 1
Merkel, Gustav (1827–1885) 1
Merrill, H[iram] T. 1
Métra, [Jules Louis] Oliv[i]er (1830–1889) 1
Metzdorff, Richard (1844–1919) 1
Meyerbeer, [Giacomo] (1791–1864) 2
Michael, M. 1
Michaelis, Gustav (1828–1887) 2
*Millard, Harrison (1830–1895) X 1
Miller, Dr. C. C. 1
Minard, Jules 1
Moir, F[rank] L[ewis] (1852–1904) 1
Molloy, J[ames] L[yman] (1837–1909) 2 1
Moore, Edwin 1
+Mora, Carlo 1
Morey, Fred L. 18 2
Mori, F[rank?] (1820–1873) 1
Morley, Hester 2
416
Name b. US Vocal Instr.
Morton, J. V. 1
Moszkowski, Maurice [Moritz] (1854–1925) 1
Mozart, W[olfgang] A[madeus] (1756–1791) 1 19
Muhling, [August?] (1786–1847) 1
Mullaly, W. S. 2
Müller, A[ugust?] E[berhard?] (1767–1817) 1
Muller, F. 1
Muller, J. A. 1
Munger, M. J. 1
Munoz, Julian 1
Murden, H. S. 1
+Murray, James R[amsey] (1841–1905) [pseud. Raymur? and X 109 16
Winthrop?]
Nottingham, Charles H. 1
Novello, V[incent] (1781–1861) 1
Oberthür, Charles (1819–1895) 1
Oesten, Theodor (1813–1870) 6
Offenbach, [Jacques] (1819–1880) 1
O’Kane, T[ulius] C[linton] (1830–1912) X 3
Operti, G[iuseppe] (d. 1886?) 1
Orr, R. Porter 1
d’Orso, F[rancesco] (1837–1898) [pseud. Franz Behr] 1
Pache, Johannes (1857–1897) 2
Paladilhe, E[mile] (1844–1926) 1
Pallat, Carl 1
*Palmer, H[oratio] R[ichmond] (1834–1907) X 15
Pape, C. O. 1
Pape, Oskar 4
Pardue, L. F. 1
Pascal, [Florian] (1847–1923) [pseud. Joseph Benjamin 2 1
Williams, Jr.]
Pearse, Anna E. 1
Peebles, E. D. 1
Peri, [Achille?] (1812–1880), arr. Wessenberg 1
*Persley, George W. (1840–1894) [pseud. Geo. W. Brown] X 24
Pferdner, Adolph 1
Phelps, Edward B. (1828/9–1888)
Pinsuti, Ciro (1829–1888) 1 1
Pleyel, [Ignace?] (1757–1831) 1
Plumpton, Alfred (1840–1902) 1
Pontius, W[illiam] H. (1860–1937) X 6 3
Porter, H[elen?] W. 2
Porter, W. T. 6
Pratt, Charles E. (1841–1902) X 1 1
417
Name b. US Vocal Instr.
Pratt, S[ilas] G[amaliel] (1846–1916) X 1 3
Pressel, Gustav [A.] (1827–1890) 4
Proch, [Heinrich] (1809–1878) 1
Puget, Louisa (1810–1889) 1
Quick, H. H. 1
R., W. J. 1
Rae, George, Jr. 1
Raff, J[oseph Joachim] (1822–1882) 2
Ravina, [Jean] Henri (1818–1906) 2
Reden, Karl 1
Reichard 1
Reinecke, Carl (1824–1910) 5
Resch, Johann (1830–1889) 1
Reuter, E. J. 1
Reynolds, Walter Guernsey (1873–1953) X 1
**Richards, [Henry] Brinley (1817–1885) 1
Ries, F[erdinand] (1784–1838) 1
Righini, Vincenzo (1756–1812) 2
Rimbault, [Edward Francis] (1816–1876) 1
Rinck, J[ohann] C[hristian] H[einrich] (1770–1846) 8
Robinson, James H. 6
Roeckel, Joseph L. (1838–1923) [pseud. Edouard Dorn] 4
Roehr, L[ouis] (b. 1821) 1
Rooke, W[illiam] M[ichael] 1
*Root, Frederic[k] W. (1846–1916) X 13
*Root, George F. (1820–1895) [pseud. Wurzel] X 184 22
Rose, Clarence D. 2
*Rossini, Gioacchino (1792–1868) 1
Rowe, G[eorge] H. X 1
Rubinstein, Anton (1829–1894) 1
Runcie, Constance Faunt Le Roy (1836–1911) X 1
Rutledge, John T. 1
**Ryan, Sydney 9 3
Saboly, [Nicolas] (1614–1675) 1
Sachs, M[elchior] E[rnst] (1843–1917) 14
Sack, Carl 1
Saint-Saëns, Camille (1835–1921) 1
Sanders, Harry 1
Sanford, H[arriet] 1
Sarchet, John H. 1
Sarti, [Giuseppe] (1729–1802) 1
Saunders, Dr. A. A. 1
Schaeffer, Hermann 1
Scharwenka, [Ludwig] Philipp (1847–1917) 3
418
Name b. US Vocal Instr.
Scharwenka, [Franz] Xaver (1850–1924) 3
Schluty, J. 2
Schmidt, Hans 1
Schmitt, J. 1
Schneider, Erwin 2
Schneider, Fr[iedrich] (1786–1853) 1
Schoff, Mrs. Dr. J. S. 2
Schonacker, H[ubert] J. (1842–1912) X 1
Schroeter, Max 1
Schubert, Franz (1797–1828) 9
Schütt, Eduard (1856–1933) 1
Schulhoff, Jules (1825–1898) 1
Schultze, Clemens 2
*Schumann, [Robert] (1810–1856) 9
Schuster, Wenzel 1
Schwalm, R[obert] (1845–1912) 1
**Scott, Mrs. Clara H. (1841–1897) X 4
Seager, Mrs. L. D. 1
Sedgwick, A[lfred Blair] (ca. 1821–1878) 1
Sennewald, Fritz 1
Seyfried, [Ignaz Xavier, Ritter von?] (1776–1841) 1
+Sherwin, W[illiam] F[isk] (1826–1888) X 12
Shields, Mrs. Henry 1
Shryock, J. W. 1
Siewert, Heinrich 1
Singer, Otto (1833–1894) 1
Skelly, J[oseph] P[aul] (1850–1895) 1
Slie, J. S. 4
Smart, Henry (1813–1879) 2 1
Smith, Jno. Benjamin 2
**Smith, S[ydney] G. (1839–1899) 2
Söderman[n], A[ugust] [Johan] (1832–1876) 1
Sofge, H[enry] D. 12
Sothern, J. R. 1
Spence, Oscar 1
Spencer, Fanny M[orris] (1867–1943) X 1
Spindler, F[ritz] (1817–1905) 3
Spofforth, [Reginald] (1770–1827) 1
Spohr, [Ludwig] (1784–1859) 1 2
Squires, F. H. 1
Stahl, Richard (1860?–1899) 1
Stanford, C[harles] Villiers (1852–1924) 1
Stange, Max (1856–1932) 2
Stanley, [Charles] J[ohn] (1712–1786) 1
419
Name b. US Vocal Instr.
Stebbins, George C[oles] (1846–1945) X 3
Steel, Robert William 1
Steele, Clarence T. 5
Steibelt, [Daniel] (1765–1823) 2
Steinhagen, P. 1
Stenglin, V. von 1
Stewart, James E. 1
Stirling, [Elizabeth] (1819–1895) 1
**Strauss II, Johann (1825–1899) 6
Strauss, Josef (1827–1870) 2
Streabbog, L. (1835–1886) [pseud. Jean Louis Gobbaerts] 1
Strong, M. H. 1
Sudds, W[illiam] F. (1843–1920) 1
Sullivan, arr. Vinal 1
Sullivan, Arthur [S.] (1842–1900) 4 2
Suppé, Franz von (1819–1895) 1
Sutton, W. S. 1
Swem, Edmond H. 1
Sweney, John R[obson] (1837–1899) X 4
Taggart, Helen W. 1
Tallis, [Thomas] (ca. 1505–1585) 1
Tanner, Miss Jeannie I. 1
Tappert, W[ilhelm] (1830–1907) 1
Taylor, R. S[tewart] 1
Taylor, W. H. 1
Tenney, J[ohn] H[arrison] (b. 1840) X 1
Thallon, Robert, Jr. 2
Thompson, Dr. 1
Thurston, W. P. 4
Tillinghast, Wm. 1
Tirindelli, P[ier/Pietro] A[dolfo] (1858–1937) 1
Titcomb, C. G. 1
Tosti, F[rancesco] Paolo (1846–1916) 2
Tours, Berthold (1838–1897) 3 1
Towne, T[homas] Martin (1835–1911/12) X 2
Towner, D[aniel] B[rink] (1850–1919) X 4
Treloar, W. M. 1
Tucker, Henry C. (?1826–1882) X 2
Turpin, Harry B. 1
Vance, J. P. 1
Vava 1
*Verdi, [Giuseppe] (1813–1901) 2 1
Vernon, Nettie 1
Vilbac[k], [Alphonse Charles] R[enaud] de (1829–1884) 4
420
Name b. US Vocal Instr.
Viviani, F. 1
Voss, C[harles] H. (1815–1882) 1
W., E. E. 1
Wachs, F. 5
Wachs, Paul (1851–1915) 1
Wade, John F[rancis] (1711/12–1786) 1
Wagner, J[osef] F[ranz] (1856–1908) 2
**Wagner, [Wilhelm] Richard (1813–1883) 1 9
Waldteufel, Emil[e] (1837–1915) 2
Wanhall [Vanhal], J[ohan] [Baptiste] (1739–1813) 1
Warlamoff [Varlamov], [Aleksandr] (1801–1848) 1
Watson, M. 1
W[ebb], G[eorge] J[ames] (1803–1887) 1
Webbe 1
Weber 1 1
Weber, [Carl M.?] von (1786–1826) 2
Weiss, C. A. 1
Wellings, Milton (b. 1850) 1
Wély, Charles 1
Wessenberg, F. W. 1
Westbrook, [William J.?] (1831–1894) 1
Westendorf, Thomas P[aine] (1848–1923) X 16 3
Westhoff, F. W. 3
White, Robert 1
Whitmore, C[harles] S[hapland] (1805–1877) 1
Whittemore, E. E. (d. 1876) 2 3
Wiley, R. T. 1
Wilhelm, Karl (1815–1873) 1
Willbrecht, Theo. 1
Williams, C[harles] C. (1852–1882) X 3
Williams, W. A. 1
Wilm, N[icolai] von (1834–1911) 2
Wilson, George F. 2 1
Wilson, G[renville] D[ean] (1833–1897) X 1
Wimpfheimer, Albert 1
Winter 1
Wolff, Bernh[ard] (1835–1906) 1
Wood, A. L. 1
Woodward, Rev. H. H. 1
Work, Henry C[lay] (1832–1884) X 4
Worley, D. B. 2
Wyman, C. M. 2
Yoder, D. C. 1
TOTAL 52 1106 798
421