Building of the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston (1850)
Without doubt there were many musical societies in Boston during the early years of the nineteenth century, but, with the exception of the Philharmonic Society, we have been able to discover only the Massachusetts Musical Society, formed in 1807 'for improving the mode of performing sacred music.' It would appear that this society confined its activities exclusively to hymns, with the natural result that few members were attracted to it. It ceased to exist in 1810. Whatever other societies may have existed in Boston were completely overshadowed by the founding of the Handel and Haydn Society in 1815. This famous organization antedates several of the societies we have already mentioned, but the greater part of its career is covered by a later period. We consequently defer treatment of it to the chapter dealing with these important modern societies, of which it may be said to have been the first.
W. D. D.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] Until 1790, as we have previously noted, the name was spelled 'Cæcilia.'
[36] It must not, of course, be forgotten that a comparison between this and a modern orchestral program would be unfair. The program was light, and conspicuously ignored the great Germans, but it was good of its time and kind. It included an oboe solo, which must have been a novelty to New Yorkers.
CHAPTER V
THE BEGINNINGS OF OPERA
Scarcity of theatrical performances in America; Charleston and Tony Aston; New York, Philadelphia, and elsewhere—The Revolution and after; rivalry between New York and Philadelphia—The New Orleans opera.
Accepting the year 1750 as the earliest in which indisputable records appear of opera in New York, writers on American musical history pass over the remainder of the century with a few brief references and escape with evident relief to the arrival of García's Italian troupe in 1825.[37] This willingness to let the dust lie undisturbed on certain phases of our musical development is hardly justifiable in the present instance, for undoubtedly these writers were well aware that opera in America during the eighteenth century was not such an infrequent and sporadic thing as to deserve no extended mention. Mr. H. E. Krehbiel, in his anecdotic and entertaining 'Chapters of Opera,' writes: 'There are traces of ballad opera in America in the early decades of the eighteenth century, and there can exist no doubt at all that French and Italian operas were given in some form, perhaps, as a rule, in the adapted form which prevailed in the London theatres until far into the nineteenth century, before the year 1800, in the towns and cities of the Eastern seaboard which were in most active communication with Great Britain.'
If ballad operas were known in America in the early