The Irish Concert.

On Sunday, September 26, New York was fain to rest from its long outing of Saturday. When, however, night had fallen there was no fatigue visible in the smiling faces that gathered for the Irish Concert in Carnegie Hall. In securing the hearty coöperation of Victor Herbert, the famous composer and orchestra leader, the committee had armed itself for a triumph. Mr. Herbert is Irish-born, and of true Irish stock, a grandson of Samuel Lover, the Irish novelist and ballad writer whose “Low-backed Car” and “Rory O’Moore” threaten to outlive most of the lyrics of his generation. In Germany he received his musical education which was thorough. As a student of harmony and counterpoint none surpassed him in avidity to master all that the best could impart. Learning successively to play well nigh every instrument in the orchestra, he became proficient on the violoncello, acting as solo violoncellist in the Royal Court orchestra at Stuttgart, and taking a high rank as a virtuoso. When he came to this country in 1886 it was to take the important post of solo violoncellist under Anton Seidl, the great Wagnerian conductor at the Metropolitan opera house. His German was so good that musical people around Fortieth street wondered “how well the Dutchman spoke English,” a curious reversal of Lever’s humorous conceit: “I knew by your French you were English, and I knew by your English you were Irish.” Herbert, however, was not long in the land of the free before his Irish heart made itself known to his fellow-Gaels, and ever since it has beat in unison with them. In music he heard a higher call than being a prominent figure among the instrumentalists of even so famous a Wagnerian as Anton Seidl. When Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore, of loving musical memory, passed away, it was Victor Herbert who was called to succeed him as bandmaster of the 22d regiment, and thereafter waved the magical baton of Gilmore’s wonderful band. To this he added the duties of Kappellmeister to Anton Seidl’s orchestra and to the famous organization of Theodore Thomas. In 1898 he obeyed a call to Pittsburg to head a great orchestra, and remained there six years, his power and talent developing all the while. Returning to New York he recruited an orchestra of his own which soon won popular and critical esteem. But his forte lay in musical composition. The immediate road to success and fortune was, to his mind, by the way of comic opera, and work after work of this nature came sparkling from his brain to the joy of multitudes and to his own rapid enrichment. Still he led his now famous orchestra all over the land, working day and night, for he loved his work. The ambition to do greater things, however, never left him, and passing from mere facile outpouring of the riches of his inspiration he turned to the higher work in the realm of music. His oratorio, “The Captive,” a fine work, first heard at the Worcester (Mass.) musical festival was highly praised. Many of his serious fugitive pieces became popular with musicians and the world of music awaits with pleasant anticipation the grand opera into which he has for some time been putting his soul. He has for years been a member of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, always prompt to make the musical features of its gatherings notable, and always lending freely of his geniality to its symposiums of good fellowship.

Bear with me for this straying into the paths of biography, for Victor Herbert’s personality, his training, and his Irish birthright should be known to every son of Ireland in America, not merely as a matter of race pride but of race inspiration. We pride ourselves on our love of music. The echoes of the olden Celtic harps must be in our souls, but we have done little enough as a people to deserve the exquisite heritage. Our innate love of the art should be broadly cultivated and steadily developed, and in Victor Herbert I see a man who may yet do something great in this way for his race and ours, as he is sure to do in lofty composition for his own enduring fame. That is why I have dwelt on his striking career. In securing his hearty interest in the Irish Concert success was assured, for it brought with it the services of the magnificent orchestra trained for years under the sway of his relentless baton.

We do not lack for solo artists of merit and skill, but in choral music we have not done all we could. In Ireland a modern school of composers is doing work of which we know little here. The mending of this should be a first step in the Irish musical renaissance. If we find poets to write the books and lyrics, and musicians to compose the vibrant measures to fit them, we must have singers to interpret them and instrumentalists to give them the breadth and depth of the full artistic inspiration. Let the little band of sixty or seventy (little as choral renderings go in these days) who came together from the Catholic Oratorio Society for the Irish Concert be the melodious forerunners of Irish choral societies that may gather thousands at a time in one burst of song. At the Irish Concert the chorus sang admirably. May every member thereof be blessed for her or his participation, and their example give heart to a new musical impulse among our people.

The great house was filled to its capacity with a representative Irish gathering and presented a fine picture of comely women and handsome men. The Hudson-Fulton Celebration Commission had given the concert official place in its programme; the visiting guests of the Commission were invited. Governor Hughes of the State of New York, who boasts of Irish blood, and our one-time mayor and one-time president of Columbia College, Seth Low, as chairman of the Commission’s reception committee, occupied with the governor’s staff the central box on the grand tier. It was a “warm house,” then, that greeted the entry of the orchestra and the chorus on the broad stage, and listened raptly to what proved a fine concert of Irish music, deserving all the applause it received. And this was the programme:—

1. Overture—“Maritana,” W. V. Wallace
Orchestra.
2. Song—(a) “Ban-Chnoic Eireann, O” Mac Conmara
Lyric—(b) “The Penal Days” Davis
Mrs. Helen O’Donnell.
3. Chorus—(a) “The Minstrel Boy” Moore
(b) “Oft in the Stilly Night” Balfe
Catholic Oratorio Society.
4. Song (Irish)—“Thuit ar an m-bu-adharg” MacHale
Lyric (b)—“Sweet Harp of the Days That Are Gone,” words by Samuel Lover; music by his grandson, Victor Herbert.
Mr. William Ludwig.
5. Irish Symphony—(a) “Andante Con Moto” (two movements)
(b) “Allegretto Motto Vivace” V. Villiers Stanford
Orchestra.
6. Irish Rhapsody—“Erin, Oh, Erin” composed by Victor Herbert and dedicated to the Gaelic Society
Orchestra.
7. Song—“An Irish Noel” Augusta Holmes
Madame Selma Kronold.
8. Chorus—(a) “Hath Sorrow Thy Young Days” Balfe
(b) “The Fenian War Song” Sir. R. P. Stewart
Catholic Oratorio Society.
9. Song—(a) “Irish Reaper’s Harvest Hymn” Keegan
(b) “Old Ireland Shall Be Free” (words by J. J. Rooney, old air arranged by Victor Herbert)
Mr. William Ludwig.
10. American Fantasy Victor Herbert
Orchestra.
11. Anthem—“The Star Spangled Banner”
Orchestra and Chorus.

Singers and players performed delightfully. Mrs. O’Donnell, Madame Kronold and William Ludwig—that famous veteran of the German opera and great interpreter of Irish ballads—all won new laurels. Mr. Ludwig’s rendition of the spirited song by John J. Rooney, author of so many fine lyrics and ballads, was particularly impressive. But it was the work of Victor Herbert’s orchestra that lifted the occasion to its real height. The performance of Villiers Stanford’s Irish symphony and Herbert’s own Irish rhapsody was as true and fine as could be conceived, and in every way worthy of the brilliant compositions themselves. The chorus gave the Balfe lyric and “Oft in the Stilly Night” with fine shading and their singing of “The Fenian War Song” won an encore that would not be denied.

As a whole the concert gave an impression profoundly gratifying to all connected with it. I have said that it was conceived in the first place by Jeremiah Lawlor. It is right to add that Major E. T. McCrystal, chairman of the Concert committee, worked hard with Mr. Lawlor for the result achieved. To Mr. Lawlor, Seth Low wrote after the concert that he found it “most enjoyable,” and added:—

“The music itself was interesting, and it was rendered in a way worthy of all admiration. I think that those who have labored so hard for so many years to awaken interest in Gaelic culture have not only done a service for the members of the Irish race in this country, but, as illustrated by this really beautiful concert, they have rendered a valuable service to the whole country.”

It is a pleasure to bear out Mr. Low, and to formulate the hope that the Irish Concert of that Sunday evening may be parent of great effort among our people to justify to themselves and the world their boasted love of the art that made Ireland famous a thousand years ago.