II
A singing club, more social than serious in its purpose, had been formed at Harvard in 1786. In 1808 a novel institution, the 'Pierean Sodality,' was established at the college. This was a singing fraternity, the members of which were linked together by a common interest in music. The Sodality was the germ of the present Department of Music in Harvard University. Out of it there arose in 1837 the 'Harvard Musical Association,' composed of alumni of the college who had been members of the Sodality. The report of the committee on organization admirably described the fraternal function of music and stated the fashion in which this was to be realized by the new association:
'Nothing unites men more than music. It makes brothers of strangers; it makes the most diffident feel at home; the most shy and suspicious it renders frank and full of trust; it overflows the rocks of separation between us; it comes up like a full tide beneath us, and opens a free intercourse of hearts.
'We propose, then, to form an association which shall meet here annually on commencement day: if for nothing more, at least to exchange salutations and review recollections, and feel the common bond of music and old scenes....
'But the ultimate object proposed is the advancement of the cause of music, particularly in this university. We would have it regarded as an important object of attention within its walls, as something which sooner or later must hold its place in every liberal system of education; and that place not accidental or a stolen one, but formally recognized. We that love music feel that it is worthy of its professorship, as well as any other science.'
As we shall see later this high purpose was fulfilled in the establishment of a Department of Music in Harvard on an equal basis with the other departments. The association stated that one of its objects was to collect a musical library, and another to promote the production of great symphonies. This program was greatly extended in the course of the existence of the association; chamber concerts, hitherto unknown in Boston, were given in the winter under the leadership of such artists as Herwig and Hohnstock. These concerts led in 1849 to the organization of the Mendelssohn Quintet Club for the exclusive cultivation of chamber music. In 1852, with the moral backing of the association, J. S. Dwight, one of its leading spirits, established 'Dwight's Journal of Music,' a periodical of the highest aim and most authoritative character. Its publication ceased in 1881.
The 'Handel Society of Dartmouth College,' discussed in another connection, had a fate unworthy of its high character and sadly significant of the low state of musical appreciation in the smaller colleges of the times, and in the 'common people' from which class their students were chiefly drawn. It dwindled and died for lack of recruits. Pity it is that some loyal patron of the college had not provided for the perpetuation of the society, if only as a memorial of Dartmouth's chief glory, even surpassing that of having trained in some measure the classic rhetoric and Olympian accents of the greatest of American orators. Our democracy alone, unaided by college culture, produced Lincoln, in most minds the rival of Webster in perfect phrase and his superior in heart-moving utterance, if not in ear-entrancing tone. It has not yet brought forth the compeers of these in music, since education is required to supply the nurturing musical environment found abroad but hitherto lacking in American life. Had music been permanently established as a part of the curriculum of Dartmouth alone, not to speak of the other colleges, a few young men with a native taste for it would undoubtedly have been found in every class and these would have cherished and transmitted the sacred fire with increasing ardor until the inevitable time arrived when native genius would be kindled into immortal flame.