IV
Perhaps the most striking feature of recent musical history in the United States is the remarkable growth of musical culture in the West. So rapid has been this growth, so widely has it spread, so numerous and varied are the activities it has brought in its train that it would be impossible to follow it in any detail. The number of musical clubs and organizations which have sprung up in recent years in the vast territory between the Mississippi and the Pacific is too great even to be catalogued in a general sketch of this nature. In many of the large cities, however, some of these organizations have reached a position of national importance and rival the best products of the older cities of the East. Notable among those is the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, which is generally conceded to rank with the Boston Symphony, the Theodore Thomas Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic. It owes its inception entirely to Emil Oberhoffer, who started it as a support for the chorus of the Philharmonic Society of Minneapolis, of which he was conductor. He succeeded in obtaining a guarantee of $30,000 for three years, then one of $90,000 for three years, and finally one of $65,000 annually for three years. With that backing he was able to organize and perfect an orchestral body which has few equals in America and of which he still remains conductor. During its first season the orchestra gave six concerts. Since then the number has increased to forty annually. After its regular season the orchestra makes a spring tour extending from Winnipeg in the North to Birmingham, Ala., in the South, and from Akron in the East to Wichita in the West. St. Paul also has an excellent orchestra, organized in 1905, which gives a season of ten concerts, seventeen popular Sunday afternoon concerts, and three children's concerts—so that, on the whole, the twin cities are very generously supplied with orchestral music.
San Francisco, curiously enough, has been somewhat tardy in orchestral matters and it was not until 1911 that it organized an orchestra of any importance. So far the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, under the leadership of Henry Hadley, has done excellent work. During its three seasons it has given five symphonies of Beethoven, three of Brahms, one of Dvořák, one of César Franck, two of Hadley, one of Haydn, three of Mozart, one of Rachmaninoff, two of Schubert, one of Schumann, and three of Tschaikowsky, besides compositions by Bach, Berlioz, Bizet, Borodine, Chadwick, Debussy, Elgar, Goldmark, Gounod, Grieg, Victor Herbert, Humperdinck, Lalo, Liszt, MacDowell, Massenet, Mendelssohn, Moszkowski, Nicolai, Ravel, Reger, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Rossini, Rubinstein, Saint-Saëns, Sibelius, Smetana, Johann Strauss, Richard Strauss, Svendsen, Coleridge Taylor, Verdi, Wagner, Weber, and many others—it would be impossible to conceive of a more catholic assemblage.
Seattle has a fine symphony orchestra of its own, and in the Southwest Denver shines as the possessor of an ambitious symphonic organization. Since 1907 St. Louis has had a good orchestra under the leadership of Carl Zach. In 1911 The Kansas City Musical Club, a women's organization, succeeded in promoting an Orchestra Association to guarantee the losses of an orchestra which is doing good work under the leadership of Carl Busch. Los Angeles, Wichita, Cleveland, Detroit, and other Western and Middle Western cities also have creditable orchestras of their own.
Returning East we note the orchestra of the Peabody Institute in Baltimore and the symphony orchestras of Atlanta, Washington, New Haven, and Buffalo. These are all relatively modest organizations, but they supplement excellently the work of the large visiting orchestras. Philadelphia, however, possesses an orchestra which has now definitely taken its place among the greatest in the country. It is the outgrowth of about fifty amateur and semi-professional musicians who, between 1893 and 1900, gave a few concerts each season at the Academy of Music under the leadership of Dr. W. W. Gilchrist. These men formed the nucleus of a permanent orchestra of seventy-two players, which was organized in 1900. Fritz Scheel, then conducting an orchestra at one of Philadelphia's summer parks, was appointed conductor. Under him the important formative work was solidly accomplished and when Carl Pohlig, first court conductor at Stuttgart, came over as conductor in 1907 he found at his disposal a finished ensemble. Pohlig was succeeded by Leopold Stokowski in 1912. The latter's knowledge of American traditions and artistic needs, gained at first while conductor of the Cincinnati orchestra, served to put him in sympathy with the musical desires and ideals of his public and the success of the orchestra under his leadership has been very marked. Besides its regular season of fifty-one concerts (season of 1913-14) the Philadelphia orchestra gives a number of popular concerts, fills many engagements in nearby towns and cities, and makes two tours of a week each in the Middle West and New England.
'Believing that a great orchestral organization should have an educational influence'—we quote from the prospectus of the Philadelphia orchestra—'he (Mr. Stokowski) chooses the compositions to be played from all periods and all schools and arranges his programs in the manner which he considers most likely to prove both pleasure-giving and enlightening. The list of programs for the past season (1913-14) included two devoted wholly to Wagner, one of which was made up of excerpts from the four operas of the "Ring," presented in their natural sequence. From Bach to Richard Strauss, from Gluck to Erich Korngold—the repertory, though kept always up to his high standard, is inclusive and comprehensive. It touches upon all fields of music, faltering before no technical requirements—there is nothing in the most modern range of the most complicated orchestral works that the orchestra has not at one time or another essayed, one of its achievements being the entirely successful performance of Richard Strauss's tremendous Sinfonia Domestica.'
Altogether, in orchestral matters America has sufficient reason to be proud of her attainments. Of course, one cannot argue from the existence of good orchestras the coincidence of a high or widely diffused state of musical culture. They are to some extent the joint product of money and civic pride. But their educational influence is beyond question and thus we may at least argue from the increasing number of good orchestras in America a bright promise for the future.