6 - New York's Orchestras and the “American” Composer: A Nineteenth-Century View

Summary

On 23 March 1863, William Henry Fry wrote a review of a special orchestral concert at the Academy of Music. Organized by Robert Goldbeck (1839–1908), the concert included the first performance of his new “Victory” Symphony. The work, probably lost, was in three movements: the first, entitled “Peace,” was minimally peaceful, for it presented the hustle and bustle of a noisy city—presumably New York. The second movement, “Struggle,” was equally but differently agitated—by the trumpets of war. The third movement “was rounded off by a species of chorale, to indicate triumph”—a gesture of hope for the Union side in the Civil War then raging. Thus, in two respects, it was American: in its titles and its provenance on American soil.

As to why the work was not introduced by the Philharmonic Society of New- York (then in its twenty-first year), Fry wrote: “We do not know what the Philharmonic Society is instituted for unless its office be equally to offer original American with original European music… . To see, as we do, seventy or eighty musical gentlemen composing the orchestra, apparently content to advertise year in and year out, pieces of foreign production, when equally good pieces can be and are written in this country, is a sorry sight.” Fry's review also noted that Goldbeck, who came to the United States from Germany in 1857, “has become quite Americanised since.” Although the Philharmonic had totally neglected Fry, it had not neglected Goldbeck. In 1856 and 1862, the ensemble had presented selections from the latter's Morceaux symphoniques that won critical praise.

Born in Potsdam in 1839, Goldbeck was trained in piano and composition before he left Europe. He had recently become a naturalized U.S. citizen. Yet such was the attitude toward immigrants that Fry may have been in the minority when he claimed Goldbeck was an American. Goldbeck is one of many immigrant musicians who has an entry in The New Grove Dictionary of American Music. How those included were chosen is explained under the rubric, “What Is American Music”:

In the sense we use it here, it comprehends first of all music made in the United States, by Americans; more ambiguous is the situation regarding music written by foreign composers who retain their national identity while living in the USA.