I
Unquestionably an epoch in the cultivation of choral music in America was inaugurated by the foundation of the Boston Handel and Haydn Society in 1815. Whether or not there is anything in the theory that American musical organizations had their genesis in the singing classes of Massachusetts, it may scarcely be denied that the cultivation of ensemble singing received earlier and more serious attention in New England than elsewhere in this country. The reason is sufficiently obvious. The people of New England were a church-going race, and singing, even when Puritan asceticism was most intense, was an essential factor of religious services. As soon as the New England conscience was convinced that good singing was no more frivolous and immoral than bad singing the people turned with characteristic zeal to choral practice and singing societies throughout the land became as common as Sunday-schools. These societies were very distinct in character from other American musical organizations, and the distinction was entirely in their favor. They were the outgrowth of a real and widely felt popular need; they had a practical purpose in which all their members were seriously interested. On the contrary, the other early musical societies for the most part were promoted by wealthy amateurs from motives which at best were not free from suspicion of dilettantism and at worst were purely snobbish.
The nucleus of the Handel and Haydn Society was the choir of the Park Street Church and the moving spirit in its formation was Gottlieb Graupner, whose services to music in Boston we have already noticed. Associated with him were Asa Peabody and Thomas Webb Smith. The society, according to its pre-organization announcement, was formed with the object 'of cultivating and improving a correct taste in the performance of sacred music'—a phrase which recalls the exhortations of the Rev. Thomas Symmes and his colleagues a century earlier. On Christmas evening, 1815, according to the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, the first concert of the society was given 'to a delighted audience of nine hundred and forty-five persons, with the Russian Consul, the well-remembered Mr. Eustaphieve, assisting as one of the performers in the orchestra.' The first program was appropriately devoted altogether to Handel and Haydn.
The growth of the society to a position of commanding artistic stature was rapid. In 1818 it gave a performance of the 'Messiah' complete—possibly for the first time in America.[54] In the following year the 'Creation' was given, and the 'Dettingen Te Deum' followed soon after. It would seem that the society in 1823 unofficially commissioned Beethoven to write an oratorio for its use,[55] and that fact alone would indicate that it had come to take itself very seriously indeed. Masses by Haydn and Mozart, the larger part of Beethoven's 'Mount of Olives,' Handel's 'Samson,' and Donizetti's 'Martyrs' were features of the society's work between 1825 and 1850.
Until 1847 the Handel and Haydn was conducted by its successive presidents, the most notable of whom were Thomas Smith Webb, Lowell Mason, and Jonas Chickering. Then the offices of president and conductor were dissociated. Carl Bergmann became conductor in 1852 and in 1854 he was succeeded by Carl Zerrahn, who occupies a prominent place in the history of musical progress in Boston. He remained with the Handel and Haydn until 1895, after which came Benjamin J. Lang and Emil Mollenhauer, successively.
The Handel and Haydn Society bulks so large in the musical life of Boston that the other choral organizations of the city are somewhat excessively overshadowed. But there are a number of excellent and distinctive societies which deserve more than passing mention. Chief of these is the Choral Art Society organized in 1901 by Mr. Wallace Goodrich, in imitation of the Musical Art Society of New York, for the study and performance of works of the Palestrina school, Bach, and the more modern masters of a cappella music. The Apollo Club, founded in 1871, is one of the best male choruses in the country and the Cecilia Society, dating from 1877, is noted for its presentation of interesting novelties. Of particular importance, too, is the People's Choral Union, a chorus of four hundred voices, recruited from the working classes.