Dr. Damrosch was also a pioneer in introducing Wagner to us. Two years after the Metropolitan Opera House was built (1882), Dr. Damrosch was made director and conductor of German opera. He imported some of the great Wagnerian singers, Madame Materna, Marianne Brandt, Mme. Seidl-Kraus, Anton Schott, and others. Wagner opera had come to stay. After a short illness, Dr. Damrosch died (1885) and his son Walter, then nineteen years of age, fell heir to the position of conductor of German opera at the Metropolitan Opera House, and of the Oratorio Society. Through Walter Damrosch’s efforts, Lilli Lehmann, the foremost Wagnerian singer, was engaged for the Metropolitan; he also engaged Emil Fischer, basso, Max Alvary, tenor, Anton Seidl, conductor, and Mme. Lillian Nordica (Lillian Norton), one of the first Americans at the Metropolitan.

Walter Damrosch composed the popular American song, Danny Deever on the poem by Rudyard Kipling. One never can think of this stirring song, without remembering David Bispham, who sang it into fame. Bispham was another native, who was for years a member of the Metropolitan Opera Company, and an oratorio singer. Damrosch is the composer of two grand operas, The Scarlet Letter on a text from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, and Cyrano de Bergerac, of Edmond Rostand’s, made into a libretto by W. J. Henderson. He also wrote incidental music to three Greek Tragedies Iphigenia in Aulis, Medea and Electra, first performed in the open air theatre of the University of California, in Berkeley, by Margaret Anglin and her company.

Damrosch married the daughter of James G. Blaine in 1890, and soon after, he started an opera venture which for several years visited the large cities and brought Wagner into many places where his music had been merely a hearsay. He has been a pioneer in championing the cause of modern composers, and many well known European works have had their first American performances at his New York Symphony concerts.

Dr. Frank Damrosch, older brother of Walter, is an important educator, the head of the Institute of Musical Art, and was once conductor of the Oratorio Society, and of the “Musical Art Society” in which were sung unaccompanied all the lovely motets and madrigals of Palestrina, Lassus, and many others. Dr. Frank Damrosch also founded the People’s Choral Union in which working men and women were taught singing and became members of a chorus of twelve hundred voices which performed the classic oratorios. He also founded the Young People’s Concerts, which have brought to young people of New York the finest music the world has produced. For several years, Mr. Walter Damrosch has had these in charge, and his talks explaining the works performed are quite as enjoyable as the music.

The Mason Family

Another famous family in American music is the Mason family, dating back to Lowell Mason (1792–1872) who was born at Medfield, Massachusetts. His principal work was a collection of hymn tunes which he harmonized, and won him the title of “Father of American Church Music.” He was president and conductor of the Handel and Haydn Society, and was a born teacher. He travelled from one society to another in distant cities, training choruses, giving encouragement and advice. He moved to New York in 1851.

Lowell Mason’s third son, Dr. William Mason (1829–1908), was also a pioneer. In his long life he saw music grow in America from crude beginnings and reach a height that seems almost unbelievable, in one short century. He not only heard but played, piano concertos with orchestras as fine as those he found in Europe when he went to study with Moscheles, Hauptmann, Richter, and Franz Liszt. Mason was one of the young artists permitted to be a friend as well as a pupil of the kindly Music Master. Dr. Mason and Theodore Thomas were the first to give chamber music concerts, and thus introduced many masterpieces of Brahms and Schumann, for as “modernists” they loved to bring new compositions to the public. Dr. Mason in his whole-hearted love of his art, and sincerity and geniality is worthy of our deepest respect and admiration. He composed about fifty piano pieces, and with W. S. B. Mathews he arranged a piano method that was very popular and successful. We feel sure that if you search in that old box of music that mother used to study, you will find a copy. No doubt she played his Silver Spring, Reverie Poetique and Danse Rustique.

Daniel Gregory Mason, one of the foremost composers, lecturers and writers on music, is a nephew of Dr. William Mason. He was born in 1873, was graduated from Harvard University in 1895. His compositions include many works in large form, sonatas, a string quartet on Negro themes, a piano quartet, a symphony, a fugue for piano and orchestra, a Russian Song Cycle, piano pieces; Mr. Mason has written many valuable books on musical subjects and on Music Appreciation, and is at present professor of music at Columbia University.

Gottschalk—the Picturesque

We have been telling you about the composers in the northern part of the United States, and those who had come from Germany like the Damrosch family, but here is one composer and gifted pianist who brought a new color into American music. Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829–1869), born in New Orleans, was the child of an English father and Creole mother, thus mixing Spanish, French and English blood. He was an infant prodigy; he played the piano at four, the organ at six, and at thirteen he went to Paris to study. He was praised by Chopin, and appeared in concerts with Hector Berlioz. He charmed everyone who heard him, and was the first American pianist to receive European honors. The Infanta of Spain made a cake for him and a celebrated bull-fighter gave him a sword! He toured Cuba and North and South America, giving more than a thousand concerts. But the life was too hard on him and he died at the age of forty in Rio Janeiro, Brazil.