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.
V
Aside from purely orchestral organizations there has been in recent years, especially in the larger cities, an increasing number of societies devoted to the study of special phases of musical art and which give occasional illustrative concerts with orchestra. As these are quasi-social in their activities and somewhat restricted in their appeal, their influence on the musical culture of the country generally is not of much account. Quite the opposite, however, is true of the large number of important ensembles devoted to the performance of chamber music. The growth of public interest in the smaller instrumental forms promoted by these ensembles is not the least interesting and significant feature of musical conditions in present-day America. It might not, perhaps, be extreme to say that a real appreciation of chamber music is the identifying mark of true musical cultivation, and the ever-increasing public which patronizes the concerts of chamber music organizations in this country is one of the most encouraging signs patriotic American music-lovers could wish to see.
Probably we must go back to our charming old friends, the cavaliers of Virginia, with their 'chests of viols' and their compositions of Boccherini and Vivaldi, to find the beginnings of chamber-music in America. Undoubtedly small private ensembles antedated orchestras in this country as they did everywhere else. We know that at Governor Penn's house in Philadelphia Francis Hopkinson and his friends met together frequently for musical entertainment, and such gatherings must have been numerous in New York, Boston, Charleston, and other colonial centres of culture. However, we must grope along until well into the nineteenth century before we find a public appearance in America of a chamber music ensemble. The pioneer, as far as we can discover, was a string quartet brought together in 1843 by Uriah C. Hill, founder of the New York Philharmonic. Samuel Johnson, an original member of the Philharmonic, writes about this quartet as follows: 'A miserable failure, artistically and financially. It would be gross flattery to call Mr. Hill a third-rate violinist; Apelles was a good clarinet, but a poor violinist.... Lehmann was a good second flute; Hegelund was a bassoon player and naturally best adapted to that instrument; he was a very small-sized man, with hands too small to grasp the neck of the 'cello. The whole enterprise was dead at its conception.' But perhaps Mr. Johnson did not like Mr. Hill. Richard Grant White said that the soirées of the Hill Quartet 'were well attended and successful.'
In 1846, however, New York was treated to a quartet headed by the great Sivori. 'This was something like a real quartet' according to Samuel Johnson. Three years later Saroni's 'Musical Times' arranged a series of four chamber music concerts in which the best artists in New York appeared. The program of the first concert included Mozart's D minor string quartet, Beethoven's B flat piano trio, and Mendelssohn's D minor piano trio—rather a choice dish. Then came Theodore Eisfeld, who, in 1851, established a string quartet that set a very high mark for its successors to shoot at. At its first concert it presented Haydn's Quartet, No. 78, in B flat, Mendelssohn's trio in D minor, and Beethoven's quartet No. 1, in F major. Eisfeld maintained that standard for several years, clinging religiously to Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Spohr. And, furthermore, his soirées were well patronized. Beyond question he created a real demand for that sort of thing, so that in 1855, at the suggestion of Dr. William Mason, Carl Bergmann instituted a series of soirées for the performance of chamber music and organized a quartet consisting of himself, Theodore Thomas, Joseph Mosenthal, and George Matzka. Mason was pianist. These concerts, known first as the Mason and Bergmann and then as the Mason and Thomas series, were continued every season (except that of 1856-57) until 1866. They improved considerably on the work done by Eisfeld, adding to the names of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven on their programs those of Schumann, Rubinstein, Brahms, Raff, and other contemporaries.
Boston in the meantime had been initiated into the beauties of chamber music by the Harvard Musical Association, which gave a regular series of soirées there every year between 1844 and 1850. Stimulated by the success of these affairs, five professional musicians—August Fries, Francis Riha, Edward Lehman, Thomas Ryan, and Wulf Fries, to wit—organized the Mendelssohn Quintet Club. This was the first important chamber music ensemble in America and for nearly fifty years it continued to cultivate its chosen field, not only in Boston, but all over the United States. Its first concert included Mendelssohn's Quintet, op. 8, a concertante of Kalliwoda for flute, violin and 'cello, and Beethoven's Quintet, op. 4. The Mendelssohn Quintet Club was an active and progressive organization, keeping well up with contemporary composition and frequently augmenting its members so as to give sextets, septets, octets, nonets, and other larger chamber-music forms.
The next noteworthy chamber music organization in the East was the Beethoven Quintet Club formed in Boston in 1873. Then came the era of what we might call the Boston Symphony graduates, viz., the Kneisel Quartet, the Hoffman Quartet, the Adamowski Quartet, and the Longy Club (wind instruments)—all offshoots of the same great orchestra. Of these perhaps the most notable is the Kneisel Quartet (founded in 1884), which has won a deservedly high reputation as well for its splendid interpretations of standard compositions as for its frequent presentation of interesting novelties. Since 1905 the Kneisel Quartet has made New York its headquarters and like the Flonzaleys and other organizations tours the entire country every season. In 1904 Mr. Kneisel's successor as concertmeister of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Prof. Willy Hess, founded the Boston Symphony Quartet, which has since then given concerts of very high standard in Boston and elsewhere. The Longy Club of wind instruments (founded in 1899) is also a noteworthy organization and does work of the highest artistic excellence in a field but slightly exploited. Among other chamber music ensembles which have seen the light in Boston may be mentioned the Theodorowicz Quartet, the Olive Mead Quartet, the Eaton-Hadley Trio, and the Bostonia Quintet Club, composed of string quartet and clarinet.
New York is not quite so well favored in this respect, but it possesses several chamber music organizations of some distinction. Chief of them is the Flonzaley Quartet, which in point of individuality has probably no peer in America. The Barrère Ensemble of woodwinds, headed by George Barrère, first flutist of the New York Symphony Society, is also an organization of exceptional excellence, though it does not possess the perfect balance and all-round finish of the Longy Club. Among others, the Marum Quartet, the Margulies Trio, and the New York Trio are worthy of note.