San Francisco had an oratorio society, organized by Rudolph Herold, as early as 1860, and soon afterward a Handel and Haydn Society entered the field. The fact that these societies received support during several years of competitive existence speaks well for the state of musical cultivation in San Francisco at that date. And certainly the city has not deteriorated musically since then, if we may judge from the number of choral societies now active there.
The most notable of these is the Loring Club, a male chorus, founded in 1876, which gives concerts of unusual artistic excellence. Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland—in fact all the coast cities—are wide-awake and progressive musical centres and possess efficient organizations devoted to church work. It would be impossible to note all of them. Indeed, the compass of a bulky volume would scarcely inclose reference to all the choral societies at present active in the United States. There is scarcely a community in the land which does not possess one or more such societies, ranging in character from church choirs to the most pretentious of choral organizations. Many of them, especially in such cities as Baltimore, Washington, New Orleans, Richmond, Louisville, Dallas, Denver, and Kansas City, compare favorably with the more widely known societies of New York, Boston, and Chicago. We must also advert again to the work of the German singing societies, which flourish in practically every city in the country, and to the less widespread activities of the Scandinavian singing societies in such centres as Lindsborg, Kansas. These supplement splendidly the work of the native American societies, which, to tell the truth, are more exclusively devoted to the classics of sacred music than is good for their æsthetic health. Altogether the cultivation of choral music is carried on most vigorously throughout the length and breadth of America. It must be admitted that, except in certain circumscribed localities—Massachusetts, for example—it has not yet struck root among the people. It is still carried on chiefly by social coteries, by churches, by artistic circles, by people with aspirations. Americans do not get together and sing from an inward urge to sing, as do the Germans and other people implanted in our midst. Possibly that will come with the racial homogeneity which this great crucible of a country is striving to bring forth. In the meantime, everything that an eager, ambitious, and optimistic people can do to overcome its musical handicaps is now being done by the people of America and the multiplicity and activity of its choral organizations are symptomatic of the energy of its endeavor.
In the meantime the only choral organization in the American continent that can compare with the premier European ensembles has been developed in Canada. The fact is not without its significance. The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, to which we refer, stands out among American choirs even more prominently than does the Boston Symphony Orchestra among American orchestras, and its marked preëminence has been acknowledged without a dissentient voice by the whole body of critical opinion in this country. It was founded in 1894 by Sir Edmund Walker, Dr. A. S. Vogt, Dr. Harold Clark and Messrs. W. E. Rundle, W. H. Elliott, A. E. Huestis, and T. Harold Mason, and since the beginning it has been under the conductorship of Dr. Vogt. The general policy of the Toronto Choir is the study and performance of works concerning practically the whole range of choral composition, including all forms of a cappella work, operatic excerpts, standard oratorios, cantatas and lesser forms. Among the more important works performed by the choir may be mentioned Brahms' 'German Requiem,' Verdi's 'Manzoni Requiem,' Bach's 'B Minor Mass,' Wolf-Ferrari's 'The New Life,' Elgar's 'King Olaf,' 'Caractacus' and 'The Music Makers,' Pierné's 'The Children's Crusade' and Coleridge-Taylor's 'Hiawatha' and 'A Tale of Old Japan.' Included also in the repertory of the choir are smaller works by Palestrina, Lotti, Elgar, Hugo Wolf, Granville Bantock, Percy Pitt, Max Reger, Tschaikowsky, Moussorgsky, Sibelius, Rachmaninoff, Gretchaninoff, Brahms, Richard Strauss, Nowowiejski, and others. Besides its annual cycle of five festival performances at home the Toronto Choir has made frequent visits to the more important musical centres of the United States. It has given three concerts in Chicago, two in Cleveland, seven in Buffalo, four in New York, and one in Boston.
As indicating the impression made by this organization on the centres of musical culture in the United States we may quote the following from Philip Hale's criticism of its first performance in Boston: 'It is not too much to say that its performance was a revelation to even those who heard the celebrated choruses of this country and in European cities. Other choruses may show a high degree of technical perfection; they may be conspicuous for decisive attack, perfect intonation, unvarying precision, fleetness in rapid passages, the management of breath or distribution of singers that insures musical and rhetorical phrasing. The Mendelssohn Choir is thus conspicuous, but it has other qualities that are rare in choirs even for a small and carefully selected number. This choir of Toronto is remarkable for exquisite tonal quality. In piano passages the tone is as though disembodied. There is no thought of massed singers or of any individual singer. The vigor of these singers never approached coarseness, and in fortissimos that were "as the voice of many waters" there was always the suggestion of reserve force, so that there was beauty in strength. There were delicate nuances in the performance, sudden and surprising contrasts without disturbance in rhythm and without loss in purity of intonation. These nuances and contrasts were apparently spontaneous.' H. T. Parker wrote on the same occasion: 'In our musical generation Boston has heard no such choral singing as that of the Mendelssohn Choir in Symphony Hall, last evening, and applauded no choral conductor of such ability as its leader, Dr. Vogt. Now, whether the singers be one or two hundred, a beautiful tone, an expressive tone, a varied tone, is the sum and the substance, the beginning and the end of musical impartment. No choir, no choral conductor, has so mastered these secrets or gone so far in high and various attainment in them as Dr. Vogt and these Torontans. It seems almost pedagogical, before these higher achievements of the Mendelssohn Choir, to rehearse the technical skill of the choristers and their conductor—their fidelity to the true pitch, their decisiveness of attack, their precision of utterance, their separate and collective command of vocal technique, their sense of pace and rhythm. Like unanimity and a unique sensitiveness equally distinguished the singing of the choir on its expressive, its poetizing, its dramatizing side.'
IV
One is frequently impelled to wonder at the peculiar trait of human psychology which leads people to gather together for the celebration of festivals. We do not allude here to national festivals, or even local festivals, in honor of some historic event or personage. We have in mind such apparently motiveless gatherings as the majority of music festivals. Some of them, of course, have a very definite purpose, and some, such as the Bayreuth Festival and the Mozart Festival at Salzburg, have a very obvious motive. But most of them seem to have no other raison d'être than the instinctive desire of a number of people to gather into a crowd and make a big noise. Festivals of this sort are extraordinarily common in America. It is difficult to say whether the amount of labor involved in the organization of them could not be more profitably expended. Undoubtedly in territories where musical culture is as yet a delicate, doubtful growth they furnish a decided stimulation. To borrow a phrase from the expressive American slang, they are excellent contrivances for 'whooping things up.' But in a deeper sense they seem in the main rather futile. We may instance the case of the Worcester Festival to which we have already alluded. It has been held annually for fifty-six years and each year it has been very finely planned and carried out. Each year also it has cost much money. Yet during that time it has not brought into the light a single new composer, new singer or new instrumentalist; nor has it made Worcester and its environs any more musical than they have always been. Like most of its kind it is merely an inflated concert and the value of inflated concerts at stated intervals is at least open to discussion.
These festivals are peculiarly American and seem to have grown out of the old musical conventions so dear to the hearts of the psalm-singing New Englanders. As far as we can discover, the first musical convention was instituted at Montpelier, Vermont, by Elijah K. Prouty and Moses Elia Cheney, both singing-school instructors. It seems to have been a combination of concert and musical debate. This was in 1839. Later conventions were held at Newberry, Windsor, Woodstock, Middlebury, and elsewhere in the Green Mountain state. In 1848 Chicago had a musical convention, held at the First Baptist Church, and another four years later under the direction of William Bradbury. Rochester (N. Y.), New York, Richmond, Washington, Quincy (Ill.), Jacksonville (Ill.), and North Reading (Mass.) took up the movement in turn under the direction of George F. Root. All these conventions were purely educational in character and were concerned chiefly with the art of teaching music.
The Worcester Festival, when it started in 1858, was a convention of the same sort, with 'lectures upon the voice; the different styles of church music, ancient and modern; the philosophy of scales, harmony, etc., with singing by the whole class and by select voices; solos by members of the convention and ladies and gentlemen from abroad.' But the promoters of the project—Edward Hamilton and Benjamin F. Baker—hoped that at no distant day it might be possible 'to achieve the performance of the oratorios and other grand works of Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven.' This purpose has been gradually achieved as the educational features of the festival have been dropped. Carl Zerrahn was chief conductor of the festival from 1866 to 1897 and was assisted at various times by W. O. Perkins, George F. Root, Dudley Buck, Victor Herbert, Franz Kneisel, and others. His successors have been George W. Chadwick, Wallace Goodrich, and Arthur Mees, in the order named.
The next festival of importance was the May festival of Cincinnati, started by Theodore Thomas in 1873. Thomas had a peculiar penchant for festivals. Quite probably they were of some value in stirring up interest in choral singing throughout the West. The prospect of going to the city every two years and participating in a big musical jamboree undoubtedly had the effect of stimulating choral societies in the smaller towns. Since 1873 the Cincinnati May Festival has been held regularly under the conductorship of Dr. Otto Singer, Arthur Mees, Frank Van der Stucken, and others. For several years, starting in 1881, the city also held annual opera festivals.
To follow the spread of the festival epidemic from coast to coast would be impossible. Nearly every city and town in the country has at one time or other been infected. With some of them it has become chronic. Boston had it for a time. New York and Chicago later caught it from Theodore Thomas, but recovered quickly. We may also mention the peace jubilees of Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore, which were a particularly virulent form of the trouble. In Maine there have been regular festivals for eighteen years, with centres in Bangor and Portland. They are very big and well-conducted affairs, with a mammoth chorus, a large orchestra and soloists of international reputation. Similar in type are the South Atlantic States musical festivals held at Birmingham and Spartansburg for the last twenty years. Chicago has had a North Shore Festival Association for six seasons. Then there are the festivals of the North American Sängerbund, the North Eastern Sängerbund, and the innumerable Männergesangvereine all over the country; the Youngstown Music Festival, the Albany Music Festival, the festival of the Buffalo Musical Association and the Wednesday Club of Richmond, the Hampden County Festival, and the Kansas Farmers' Easter Festival; festivals in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Bellingham on the coast—a perfectly bewildering array of festivals.