Similar work is done by the Schola Cantorum, under Kurt Schindler, which has given especially interesting programs of old troubadour songs and madrigals of the French renaissance. It was originally organized, under the auspices of the MacDowell Club, as the MacDowell Chorus. The Lambord Choral Society, organized under the conductorship of Benjamin Lambord in 1912, is devoted to the study and performance of small, rarely heard choral works by modern composers. During its first season its activities included a series of chamber music concerts, as well as a concert with chorus and orchestra in celebration of the centenary of Wagner's birth. The Modern Music Society was organized in 1913, with the Lambord Choral Society as one of its constituent parts. The new society made its first public appearance with a noteworthy concert devoted altogether to works of modern American composers, its avowed purpose being the encouragement of native composition.
Among other New York choral organizations may be mentioned the United Singers and the People's Choral Union, which may be cited as a prominent example of community music in a large city. The People's Choral Union and Singing Classes were established in 1892 by Frank Damrosch in close affiliation with the work of the Cooper Institute, established to disseminate knowledge and culture among the people, particularly working men and women.
In Brooklyn the Oratorio Society and the Choral Society are probably the best of a number of good choruses, though in Brooklyn, as in most big cities, there are several German singing societies which excel in their own particular field.
Considering its great musical activity, Philadelphia is not especially conspicuous for its choral organizations, but the Orpheus Club, a male chorus founded in 1872, the Cecilia Society, founded in 1875, and the Philadelphia Chorus Society are worthy of mention. By far the most interesting centre of choral music in Pennsylvania is the Moravian settlement of Bethlehem, which since its foundation in 1741 has been cultivating that branch of musical art with splendid sincerity and idealism. As early as 1811 Haydn's 'Creation' was performed there; Bach's great B minor Mass was given by the Bach Choir of Bethlehem for the first time in America in 1900, and in 1903 the choir held a Bach festival during which it performed the entire 'Christmas Oratorio,' the Magnificat, 'St. Matthew's Passion,' and the B minor Mass.
Of course, every city and town of any size in the East has one or more singing societies which do their own fair share in entertaining and improving it musically. It would be impossible to enumerate them. New England is, as it always has been, an especially lively centre of choral work, and such cities as Portland, Me., Springfield and Concord, Mass., Burlington, Vt., and New Haven, Conn., possess highly trained and efficient choruses. Of particular interest is the Worcester County Musical Association, of Worcester, Mass., an outgrowth of the old musical conventions held for the purpose of promoting church music. It was organized in 1863 and for a few years confined itself to psalm-tunes and simple, sentimental cantatas; but it soon graduated to Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Rossini, Verdi, Gounod, and other serious composers of oratorios and masses. The annual festivals of the association now rank among the most important events of the American musical year.
III
In the West Cincinnati takes the lead as a pioneer in choral music. As early as 1819 there was a Haydn Society in Cincinnati which seems to have been the successor of an older organization. Its first concert was devoted to Handel and Haydn, and its second included also Mozart. Soon afterward were born the Episcopal Singing Society and the Euterpean Society. Then came the Sacred Music Society and the Amateur Musical Association. The latter gave the 'Creation' in 1853. Coincidentally there grew up a number of Männerchor societies, which in 1849, collaborating with several similar bodies in neighboring towns, organized the first of the great Sängerfeste already mentioned. In 1856 the Cecilia Society came into being and inaugurated a new era for choral music in Cincinnati. At its first concert it performed Mendelssohn's 'Forty-second Psalm,' a cantata of Mozart, a chorus for female voices from Spontini's Vestale, Haydn's 'Come, Gentle Spring,' and some choruses from Schneider's 'Last Judgment.' Subsequently it presented other works of Haydn, Mozart, and Mendelssohn, as well as compositions of Beethoven, Schumann, Handel, Gluck, Gade, Neukomm, Weber, and Wagner.
The next important society in Cincinnati was the Cincinnati Harmonic, out of which grew the Festival Chorus Society. The latter was organized in connection with the Cincinnati May Festivals which started in 1873 and in which thirty-six societies from the West and Northwest, including over one thousand singers, participated. The stimulation furnished by this and subsequent coöperative festivals resulted, as Theodore Thomas hopefully predicted, in sending 'new life and vigor into the whole musical body of the West.' Cincinnati still retains its activity in choral music and possesses a large number of excellent singing societies, most of which are German. Among these we may mention the Männerchor and the Orpheus as perhaps the most conspicuous.
It would indeed be impossible to estimate fully the value the influence exercised by Germans and German singing societies had on the cultivation of music in America. In Milwaukee, for example, the Musikverein, organized in 1849, stood for years as a beacon light of musical culture, shedding its rays far and near over the artistic darkness of the newly settled West. 'The elements of which the Musik-Verein was composed,' says Ritter, 'were many-sided. There were to be found that German indigenous growth, the Männerchor (male chorus), the orchestra, the chorus composed of male and female voices, amateurs performing the different solo parts. The whole field of modern musical forms was cultivated by those enthusiastic German colonists, the male-chorus glee, the cantata, the oratorio, the opera, chamber music in its divers forms, the overture, the symphony were placed on the programs of this active society. Its musical life was a rich one and its influence through the West was of great bearing on a healthy musical development.'
There are over twenty German choruses in Milwaukee; in St. Louis there are probably as many, while in Chicago the number is beyond count—there are certainly more than one hundred. St. Louis started its musical life rather early and established a Philharmonic Society in 1838. Seven years later a Polyhymnia Society was formed and about the same time a Cecilian Society and an Oratorio Society came into being. A new Philharmonic Society was organized in 1859 and later came the St. Louis Choral Society. These, of course, leave out of account the German societies, of which the most prominent are the Liederkranz, the Socialer Sängerchor, the Germania Sängerbund, the Orpheus, and the Schweizer Männerchor. As early as 1858 Chicago had a Musical Union devoted to the study of oratorio. During the eight years of its existence it gave the principal oratorio classics, including the 'Creation,' 'Messiah,' and 'Elijah.' It was succeeded by the Oratorio Society, which persevered, under the conductorship of Hans Balatka, until the great fire. After the fire it was revived, but in 1873 its library and effects were again burned and further attempts to continue it were unavailing. The summer of 1872 saw the organization of the Apollo Club, which is to-day the only society of importance in Chicago devoted to the cultivation of oratorio music. There is also a Chicago Musical Art Society patterned after the Musical Art Society of New York and doing similar work. These are the chief agencies for the cultivation of choral music in Chicago, apart from the multitude of German societies to which we have already alluded.