[33] So spelled after 1790.
[34] The appearance of a Mozart symphony on a program of 1797 is distinctly noteworthy. Hippeau in Berlioz et son temps quotes from the Journal des Débats of 1801 to the effect that the best orchestra in France, after ten rehearsals, found a symphony of Mozart beyond its power, setting a precedent for the orchestra of the Vienna Opera House, which succumbed to the difficulties of Tristan und Isolde after forty-seven rehearsals—if we remember rightly.
CHAPTER IV
EARLY MUSICAL ORGANIZATIONS
Origin of musical societies—The South; The St. Cecilia of Charleston; Philadelphia and New York in the eighteenth century—The Euterpean Society, the New York Choral Society; Sacred Music Society; other New York Societies—New England in the eighteenth century; the Stoughton Musical Society of Boston; other societies in Boston and elsewhere.
All over the country in the last decade of the eighteenth century there is noticeable a decline in the musical taste of the American people as represented in their public musical life. This was due probably to a variety of causes, chief among which seems to have been the influx, after the Revolution, of a flood of immigrants lacking the culture which the colonists had inherited or through long-settled and prosperous residence acquired. The second decade of the nineteenth century, however, saw a renaissance of musical activity, which was developed into vigorous life chiefly through the agency of definitely constituted musical organizations. The concerts of the eighteenth century, on the whole, were rendered possible by a coöperation between people of culture, which in itself constituted a loose sort of organization. This coöperation, indeed, crystallized about the middle of the century into a number of avowedly musical societies. The history of the earliest of these is wrapped in considerable obscurity and there is an impressive number of them claiming to be called the first. The claim can never satisfactorily be determined, for it is quite impossible to define categorically the limits of a musical organization. Broadly, the term covers any number of people coöperating for a musical purpose, and would include a singing class of half a dozen members as fittingly as a modern orchestra or a musical society of hundreds.
We may, however, define a musical society in the modern sense as a body of people regularly and permanently organized for the carrying out of a definite program of musical education, study or performance. Such societies in America have been an evolution. They have evolved, on the one hand, from coöperation between cultured amateurs for the purpose of giving musical performances and, on the other, from the formation of singing classes for cultivating a proper skill in rendering the psalms. There is, consequently, considerable justification for the course taken by some historians in looking upon these singing classes as the first of our musical organizations, though, as will appear later, they had nothing to do with the formation of our earliest musical societies properly so called, such as the St. Cecilia Society of Charleston, the Musical Society of Boston or the Harmonic Society of New York.
I
As far as we know, the first avowedly musical organization in America was the Orpheus Club, which is said to have existed in Philadelphia in 1759. We possess no information concerning it. Philadelphia at that time contained a goodly number of music lovers. Such men as John Penn, James Brenner, Dr. Kuhn, and Francis Hopkinson, were then engaged in breathing the spirit of life into the dead body of musical Philadelphia. How well they succeeded we have seen in our chapter on early concerts. Musical gatherings were frequent at their homes and it is not impossible that they were prominently concerned in the formation of the Orpheus Club. If they were, the activities of that organization must have been very interesting and we can only regret that no record of them has seen the light.
In default of unimpeachable evidence even of the existence of the Orpheus Club at the time mentioned we must award the title of pioneer among American musical organizations to the St. Cecilia Society of Charleston.[35] This society was founded in 1762. According to the rules, which were 'agreed upon and finally confirmed' in 1773, it consisted of one hundred and twenty members and its main purpose apparently was to give concerts. Until well into the nineteenth century it was the centre of the concert life of Charleston and for many years it seemed indeed to have almost a monopoly of the musical talent, amateur and professional, in the city. It even went as far as Boston to gather properly qualified performers into its fold. In addition to a yearly concert on St. Cecilia's Day, the society gave regular fortnightly concerts during the season. The orchestra was composed of gentlemen performers and professional musicians—the latter engaged by the year. It was the nearest approach to a permanent orchestra that existed in America outside the theatres before the nineteenth century and there is every likelihood that its performances reached a high standard of technical and artistic excellence.
An Orpheus Society apparently existed in Charleston in 1772 and there has been found an allusion to an Amateur Society in 1791. A Harmonic Society also appeared there in 1794. All these societies gave concerts, but there are so few references to them in the contemporary press that we know nothing else definite about them. Probably their activities were to a large extent private and their concerts were confined to members. This would easily account for the absence of their names from the newspaper advertisement. There was a musical society in Baltimore in 1799 and a Harmonic Society in Fredericksburg, Va., in 1784. We know nothing about the former, but the latter, we gather, was 'peculiarly intended for benevolent purposes' and gave concerts on the third Wednesday evening of each month. Whether musical societies also existed in other Southern towns, such as Williamsburg, Richmond, Alexandria, Norfolk, and Petersburg, it is impossible to say. Probably they did. All the chief Virginia towns were of about equal size and importance, and social conditions in all of them were strikingly alike. The existence of a musical society in one of them is prima facie evidence of its existence in the others.