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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 November 2010
Like many midwestern cities in the nineteenth century, Cincinnati, Ohio, was home to large numbers of German immigrant musicians, among them the founders of the Cincinnati Grand Orchestra in 1872. Their model of musician-based organization eventually ran counter to the prestige-building potential of Western art music, which made it attractive to local civic leaders determined to earn respect for their city at a national level. The successful Cincinnati May festivals beginning in 1873 under the artistic leadership of conductor Theodore Thomas brought the city the desired renown. But the musical monumentality needed for large festival performances could not be obtained locally, leaving Cincinnati's players with opportunities to perform at a high level but without a way to define their performance as a significant achievement in the world of high art. Although their orchestra was ultimately unsuccessful, however, these musicians demonstrated an agency that transcends their historical obscurity and helps incorporate aesthetic and practical aspects of institution-building into the social arguments common to discussions of Western art music in the United States.
1 “Cincinnati,” Scribner's Monthly, Aug. 1875, 510.Google ScholarFor help in identifying and obtaining sources for this article, I thank Anne Shepherd and staff of the Cincinnati Historical Society Library (CHS), Steve Headley and staff of the Magazine and Newspapers Department, Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Glenn Canner and staff of the Interlibrary Loan office at Gelman Library, George Washington University, and staff members at the Library of Congress. For encouraging my study of American orchestras and this project in particular, I am grateful to Adrienne Fried Block, Joseph Horowitz, and John Spitzer. And finally, I appreciate the careful reading of the anonymous Jgape evaluators, which led to numerous improvements in the final product.
2 Thomas, Louis R., “A History of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra to 1931” (PhD diss., University of Cincinnati, 1972)Google Scholar;Vitz, Robert C., The Queen and the Arts: Cultural Life in Nineteenth- Century Cincinnati (Kent, OH, 1989),Google Scholarand notes 11, 18, and 38 below. I am especially grateful for extensive research notes that Prof. Joseph F. Holliday (d. 1979) placed on deposit at the Cincinnati Historical Society (CHS) library. For a study similar to Vitz's, seeCahall, Michael Charles, “Jewels in the Queen's Crown: The Fine and Performing Arts in Cincinnati, Ohio, 1865–1919” (PhD diss. University of Illinois, 1991)Google Scholar.
3 On European art music and social class in the nineteenth century,Levine, Lawrence, Highbrow/ Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge, MA, 1988)Google Scholarhas been extremely influential and subject to variant readings and critiques. For examples of the latter, seeLocke, Ralph P., “Music Lovers, Patrons, and the ‘Sacralization’ of Culture in America,” 19th-Century Music 17 (Fall 1993): 149–73; andCrossRefGoogle ScholarHorowitz, Joseph, Classical Music in America: A History of Its Rise and Fall (New York, 2005), 88–91, 250–53, and passimGoogle Scholar.
4 Subscribers were permitted to buy additional tickets for guests.Shanet, Howard, Philharmonic: A History of New York's Orchestra (New York, 1975), 3, 80, 95, 106–07Google Scholar.
5 For a comprehensive, annotated list of American symphony orchestras, seeHart, Philip, Orpheus in the New World: The Symphony Orchestra as an American Cultural Institution (New York, 1973),Google Scholarapp. A. The St. Louis Symphony evolved from a merger of two ensembles founded in 1880 and 1881, respectively. The name St. Louis Symphony Society was adopted in 1907.
6 Miller, Zane L., Boss Cox's Cincinnati: Urban Politics in the Progressive Era (New York, 1968), 5.Google ScholarThe Cincinnati nickname “Queen of the West” was popularized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem “Catawba Wine” (1854).
7 Hessler, Sherry O., “‘The Great Disturbing Cause’ and the Decline of the Queen City,” Bulletin of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio 20 (July 1962): 170–85;Google ScholarHurley, Daniel, Cincinnati, the Queen City (Cincinnati, 1982), 56–60;Google ScholarRoss, Steven J., Workers On the Edge: Work, Leisure, and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788–1890 (New York, 1985), 240–42.Google ScholarOn the historiography of the 1877 strikes, see Introduction toThe Great Strikes of 1877, ed. Stowell, David O. (Urbana, 2008), 1–13Google Scholar.
8 On early criticism of Cincinnati's revival of public spirit and the first Cincinnati Industrial Exposition (1870), seeThomas, L., “Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra,” 4–10Google Scholar.
9 In 1955, the College of Music merged with the Cincinnati Conservatory (founded in 1867). The combined institution was integrated into the University of Cincinnati in 1962.
10 Broyles, Michael, “Music of the Highest Class”: Elitism and Populism in Antebellum Boston (New Haven, 1992).CrossRefGoogle ScholarOn musicians and orchestral groups, see esp. app. 1, “Instrumental Musicians in Boston, 1796–1842.”
11 Ritter, Frederic Louis, Music in America (New York, 1883), 378–79;Google ScholarHolliday, Joseph E., “The Cincinnati Philharmonic and Hopkins Hall Orchestras, 1856–1868,” Bulletin of the Cincinnati Historical Society 26 (April 1968): 158–73;Google ScholarThomas, L., “Cincinnati Symphony,” 25–26.Google ScholarThe Philharmonic's first concert program is reprinted in, Holliday, “The Cincinnati Philharmonic,” 164–65Google Scholar.
12 On the decline in Cincinnati employers' cultural activity from the 1870s to the 1880s, seeHaydu, Jeffrey, “Business Citizenship at Work: Cultural Transposition and Class Formation in Cincinnati, 1870–1910,” American Journal of Sociology 107 (May 2002): 1414–67,CrossRefGoogle Scholaresp. Table I, 1447. Having married into the wealthy Longworth family, cultural leader George Nichols was not an employer of labor.
13 On George Ward Nichols and the May Festival's origins, see Vitz, Queen and the Arts, ch. 4;Cahall, “Jewels in the Queen's Crown,” ch. 5. Cahall notes the demographic similarities between the CMFA leadership and that of the Cincinnati Art Museum (opened in 1886). These include high economic standing, suburban residence, club membership, and Protestant religion. Ibid., 234–35, 430–31.
14 Maria Nichols (later Storer) became best-known as the founder of Cincinnati's Rookwood Pottery. For her account of both institutions, see, Storer, History of the Cincinnati Musical Festivals and of the Rookwood Pottery (Paris, 1919).Google ScholarSee alsoBoehle, Rose Angela, Maria Longworth: A Biography (Dayton, OH, 1990)Google Scholar.
15 Thomas, Theodore, Theodore Thomas: A Musical Autobiography, ed. Upton, George P. (1905; New York, 1964), 79.Google Scholar
16 Even while serving as founding conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1891), Thomas remained May Festival music director until his death in January 1905. His role in establishing the symphony orchestra as a goal for a cultured American city has been widely acknowledged: Philip Hart calls the first chapter of his history of the American symphony orchestra “Before Thomas.” On Thomas, see Hart, Orpheus in the New World, ch. 2; Thomas, Theodore Thomas;Thomas, Rose Fay, Memoirs of Theodore Thomas (New York, 1911)Google Scholar;Russell, Charles Edward, The American Orchestra and Theodore Thomas (1927; Westport, CT, 1971)Google Scholar;for an excellent biography, seeSchabas, Ezra, Theodore Thomas: America's Conductor and Builder of Orchestras, 1835–1905 (Urbana, 1989)Google Scholar;, Horowitz, Classical Music in America, 32–37, 163–71, and passimGoogle Scholar.
17 On German Sängerbund festivals in Cincinnati, see Karen Ahlquist, “Musical Assimilation and ‘the German Element’ at the Cincinnati Sängerfest, 1879,” Musical Quarterly, forthcoming.
18 Cincinnati city directories, 1879–81;Ballenberg obituary, Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, May 30, 1908, 8Google Scholar;Holliday, Joseph E., “Notes on Samuel N. Pike and his Opera House,” Bulletin of the Cincinnati Historical Society 25 (July 1967): 164–83Google Scholar.
19 , CincinnatiTimes-Star, May 8, 1890, 3.Google Scholar
20 “Träumerei” is a piano solo piece from Schumann's collection Kinderscenen (Scenes from Childhood).
21 Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, Dec. 16, 1872, 8.Google Scholar
22 On the jubilees, seeCipolla, Frank J., “Patrick S. Gilmore: The Boston Years,” American Music 6 (Fall 1988): 281–92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarThe public circular (Nov. 12, 1872) announcing the festival stated its purpose as “elevating the standard of…music, and to bring about harmony of action between the musical societies of the country and especially the West”; quoted in, Schabas, Theodore Thomas, 54Google Scholar.
23 The festival stuck with Thomas's group even though Cincinnati had a symphony orchestra from 1895., Schabas, Theodore Thomas, 57,Google Scholarsays that in 1873, Thomas did not want to conduct the program with the children's chorus.
24 Wagner's controversial 1849 essay, “Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft,” translated literally as “The Art-Work of the Future,” was well-known in the United States by the 1870s and has been reprinted many times since. On Wagner's music and ideas in the United States in this period, seePeretti, Burton W., “Democratic Leitmotivs in the American Reception of Wagner,” 19th-Century Music 13 (Summer 1989): 28–38;CrossRefGoogle ScholarandHorowitz, Joseph, Wagner Nights: An American History (Berkeley, 1994)Google Scholar.
25 Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, Oct. 23, 1875, 8, Oct. 24, 1875, 5.Google Scholar
26 Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, Apr. 1, 1875, 8Google Scholar
27 Cincinnati Musical Festival Association (CMFA) minutes, Feb. 24, Mar. 5, 1875, Cincinnati Historical Society; May Festival program, 1875;Thomas, L., “Cincinnati Symphony,” 737–38Google Scholar.
28 Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, May 12, 1878, 4.Google Scholar
29 Ibid.
30 Cincinnati Gazette, June 9, 1878, 3.Google Scholar
31 Quoted in the Gazette, Oct. 19, 1878, 10. On the inclusion of local players, see also the Gazette, Oct. 8, 1878.
32 Schabas, Theodore Thomas, 97.
33 Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, Dec. 26, 1880, 6; Schabas, Theodore Thomas, 97, says several of the out-of-town faculty members had already moved away from Cincinnati.
34 Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, Oct. 17, 1880, 5, Nov. 28, 1880, 5, Dec. 26, 1880, 6, Apr. 24, 1881, 5; Michael Brand's uncle, Joseph Brand, had introduced bands with winds in addition to brass to Cincinnati's outdoor musical life. Joseph Brand obituary, Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, Jan. 13, 1875, 8.
35 By January 1881, Thomas had resumed tours with his New York group. Schabas, Theodore Thomas, 91, 111.
36 The quarrel received front-page press attention nationwide. For summaries, see the College of Music Board publication, “Correspondence Connected with the Withdrawal of Mr. Theodore Thomas from the College of Music of Cincinnati” (Cincinnati, 1880); Schabas, Theodore Thomas, 97–101; Michael C. Cahall, “Battle on Mount Olympus: The Nichols-Thomas Controversy at the College of Music of Cincinnati,” Queen City History 53 (Fall 1995): 24–32; Vitz, Queen and the Arts, 113–18.
37 1880 Cincinnati May Festival program.
38 See Joseph E. Holliday, “Cincinnati Opera Festivals during the Gilded Age,” Bulletin of the Cincinnati Historical Society 24 (Apr. 1966): 130–49.
39 Katherine K. Preston, Opera on the Road: Traveling Opera Troupes in the United States, 1825–60 (Urbana, 1993).
40 Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, Jan. 31, 1881, 8 (quotation), Feb. 20, 1881, 12,
41 Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, Feb. 20, 1881, 12.
42 A fifth festival under new leadership failed financially in November 1886. Holliday, “Cincinnati Opera Festivals,” 147–49.
43 List given in the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, Feb.12, 1882, 4.
44 Schabas, Theodore Thomas, 114.
45 New York Herald, May 6, 1882, 7.
46 New York Times, May 17–18, 1880. The paper's reporting on the individual concerts was more evenhanded and complimentary; see May 17, 19, 21, 1880.
47 New York Times, May 18, 1880, 4.
48 Louis Ballenberg and Michael Brand to Lucien Wulsin, Oct. 8, 1880, in Wulsin Family Papers, ser. 1, box 23, folder 8, Cincinnati Historical Society Library; Commercial, Apr. 30, 1882; L. Thomas, “Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra,” 71–72.
49 Schabas, Theodore Thomas, 88.