Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

6. Chamber music.

Few concerts devoted to chamber music were given publicly in New York before 1850. In 1851 Theodor Eisfeld initiated a series of quartet concerts including works by Haydn, Beethoven and Mendelssohn; these were succeeded in 1855 by the renowned Mason and Thomas Chamber Music Soirées, which continued until 1868. Their fine programmes included music by Schubert, Schumann and Bach. On 27 November 1855 William Mason, Theodore Thomas and Carl Bergmann gave the first performance of Brahms’s Trio op.8. The New York Trio, founded about 1867 by Bernardus Boekelman, was active until 1888. The Kneisel Quartet (1885–1917) and the Flonzaley Quartet (1903–29), founded by the New Yorker Edward J. De Coppet, played frequently in private homes and at public concerts. The People’s Symphony Concerts, a series of public chamber music concerts, were inaugurated in 1902. In 1914 the pianist Carolyn Beebe founded the New York Chamber Music Society, a group of about 12 musicians who gave regular concerts at the Plaza Hotel and elsewhere for about 25 years. The Society of the Friends of Music (1913–31) was chiefly a sponsoring organization that introduced many unfamiliar works to New York, among them Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony op.9 and Mahler’s Eighth Symphony (April 1916). The Barrère Ensemble, a wind group organized in 1910 by the flautist Georges Barrère, expanded in 1915 to become the Little Symphony.

In 1936 the New Friends of Music began an annual series of 16 concerts with a repertory ranging from solo sonatas to works for chamber orchestra, carefully selected to review certain eras or specific composers; the series lasted until 1953. While groups like the New Friends of Music concentrated on 18th- and 19th-century music, contemporary music was presented in regular concerts sponsored by the League of Composers and the American section of the International Society for Contemporary Music (both founded in 1923; they merged in 1954) and the National Association for American Composers and Conductors (1933). The music of young composers was heard in the Composers’ Forum, active in New York until 1940 from its foundation in 1935 by Ashley Pettis; it was revived and sponsored jointly by the New York Public Library and Columbia University from 1947 to 1980, when it was reorganized independently. Early music became popular in performances by the New York Pro Musica (1952–74), founded by the conductor Noah Greenberg; the 13th-century Play of Daniel was performed in costume in 1958 and aroused an interest in period performance.

In 1925 40 chamber groups were identified as resident or as annual visitors; 50 years later at least 70 were resident and the number of visitors had increased. The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, founded in 1968 by Charles Wadsworth with the support of Alice Tully, gives a series of programmes emphasizing unfamiliar repertory performed by outstanding musicians. Other mixed professional ensembles include the New York Chamber Soloists (1957), Tashi (1974), the New York Philharmonia Virtuosi, the Bronx Arts Ensemble and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra (1972). The Juilliard (1946), Galimir, Guarneri (1964), Composers, American (1974), Concord, Emerson (1976) and Orion (1987) string quartets are based in New York, as are the American Brass Quintet and the New York (1947) and Dorian woodwind quintets. Ensembles specializing in contemporary music have included the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble (founded in 1960 by Arthur Weisberg), the Group for Contemporary Music (founded in 1962 by Harvey Sollberger and Charles Wuorinen), Continuum (founded in 1967 by Cheryl Seltzer and Joel Sachs as the Performers’ Committee for 20th-Century Music), Speculum Musicae (1971), Parnassus, the Da Capo Chamber Players, and the New York New Music Ensemble, as well as several professional associations (see §§9 and 13 below). Professional ensembles specializing in early music include the Waverly Consort, the Ensemble for Early Music, the Western Wind, Music for a While, Pomerium Musices, the New York Renaissance Band, Calliope, Concert Royal, Anonymous 4 and the New York Cornet and Sackbut Ensemble. The Bach Aria Group (1946), the New York Collegium (founded in 1998 under the direction of Gustav Leonhardt) and the Neue Bach Band are the leading specialist Baroque ensembles.

New York

7. Choral societies.

The earliest choral societies included a Handel and Haydn Society, which sang the first part of The Creation on 10 June 1818 at St Paul’s (in Trinity Parish), and the New York Choral Society, under James Swindells, which sang there before Lafayette during his visit in July 1824. The first established group on record is the Sacred Music Society (1823–49), which sang Messiah (using Mozart’s accompaniments) under U.C. Hill in November 1831; the society had a chorus of 73 and an orchestra of 38 at that time, and the receipts of $900 imply a large audience. In 1838 the society performed Mendelssohn’s St Paul and Mozart’s Requiem. The first serious rival to the Sacred Music Society was the Musical Institute, founded in 1844 and directed by H.C. Timm. In 1849 the two groups merged to form the New York Harmonic Society, their first concert being a performance of Mendelssohn’s Elijah (June 1851) in Tripler Hall. The society lasted until 1868 and its conductors included Timm, Eisfeld, Bristow, Bergmann, F.L. Ritter and James Peck. An ambitious splinter group, the Mendelssohn Society, formed in 1863, was short-lived. In 1869 Peck directed the socially orientated Church Music Association; in 1873 Thomas imported a Boston chorus for a festival concert, an action considered an insult to the vocal and choral forces of New York.

New York’s German population had two prominent men's choruses: the Deutscher Liederkranz, which gave its first concert on 17 May 1847 in the Apollo Rooms, and the Männergesangverein Arion, an offshoot formed in 1854. The Liederkranz numbered Thomas, Bergmann, van der Stucken and Leopold Damrosch among its conductors before 1895, while the Arion rose to prominence after getting Damrosch from Breslau to be its director in 1871. The two societies united in 1918 and celebrated a centenary in 1947. In 1866 a professional men’s chorus, the Mendelssohn Glee Club, was formed, which also survived for a century. Its first permanent conductor (from 1867) was the violinist Joseph Mosenthal, a pupil of Spohr and one of the city’s leading church musicians; he died in 1896 while conducting a rehearsal of the group. MacDowell then led the club until 1898; his successors were Arthur Mees, Frank Damrosch, Clarence Dickinson, Nelson Coffin, Ralph Baldwin, Cesare Sodero and Ladislas Helfenbein. During the 20th century the membership shifted from professional to amateur singers, mainly businessmen, who sang popular favourites at private entertainments. Other men’s clubs cultivating light music included the Downtown and University glee clubs, both conducted for many years by Channing Lefebvre and George Mead.

The longest-lived serious choral organization is the Oratorio Society of New York, founded in 1873 by Leopold Damrosch. Its first concert (3 December 1873) included works by Bach, Mozart, Palestrina and Handel sung by a choir of about 50. In May 1874 the society gave Handel’s Samson with orchestra, inaugurating the tradition of oratorio and large choral works that has continued to characterize the society’s repertory. An annual Christmas performance of Messiah was inherited from the late Harmonic Society in 1874 and has continued to be a feature of the group’s programme. Late in the 19th century choruses of 400 to 600 sang Brahms’s German Requiem (1877), Berlioz’s Grande messe des morts (1881), Liszt’s Christus (1887) and Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila (1892), and introduced Parsifal to the USA in concert form (1886). After Leopold Damrosch’s death in 1885 conductors of the Oratorio Society included his sons Walter (1885–98 and 1917–21) and Frank (1898–1912), Albert Stoessel (1921–43), William Strickland (1955–9), T. Charles Lee (1960–73) and Lyndon Woodside (from 1974).

Two organizations encouraging popular participation in music were the People’s Choral Union and Singing Classes, organized in the city’s lower East Side by Frank Damrosch in 1892 and continuing into the 1930s, and the People’s Chorus of New York, founded and from 1916 to 1954 conducted by Lorenzo Camilieri. Both groups sometimes assembled choirs of 1000 voices.

Musical life was enriched by the Musical Art Society, a professional mixed chorus conducted by Frank Damrosch for 26 years from 1894, which performed Palestrina, Bach, and the a cappella repertory. Contemporary choral music including Pfitzner’s Von deutscher Seele (1923) and Honegger’s Le roi David (1925) was presented by the Society of the Friends of Music (1913–31).

The Schola Cantorum grew out of a women’s chorus established by Kurt Schindler in 1909, which became a mixed ensemble in 1910 and adopted its later name in 1912. Schindler conducted the choir until 1926, when Hugh Ross began a long tenure ending only with the group's final concert in 1971. The Schola Cantorum’s programmes often included unfamiliar works; Schindler introduced traditional and religious music from the Basque region and Catalonia, and Ross conducted the New York premières of such works as Bloch’s Sacred Service (1934), Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast (1935), Stravinsky’s Perséphone (1936) and Delius’s Mass of Life (1938).

Baroque music performed in period style characterized the programmes of the Cantata Singers, founded in 1934 by Paul Boepple, remaining active until 1969; later conductors of the ensemble – Arthur Mendel (1936–53), Alfred Mann (1953–9), Thomas Dunn (1959–67) and Robert Hickok (1968–9) – were also noted for their scholarship. The Dessoff Choirs grew out of Margarete Dessoff’s Adesdi Chorus of women’s voices organized in 1924; a mixed choir was begun in 1928, and from 1930 the combined ensembles directed by Dessoff performed under the present name. Boepple conducted the groups (which merged in 1942) from 1937 to 1968; subsequent conductors have been Thomas Sokol (1969–72), Michael Hammond (1973–82), Amy Kaiser (1983–95) and Kent Tritle (from 1996). The Dessoff Choirs perform mixed programmes ranging from Baroque to contemporary music. The Collegiate Chorale was founded in 1941 by Robert Shaw and conducted by him until 1954 with assistance (1949–52) from Margaret Hillis and William Jonson. Later conductors were Mark Orton (1953–4), Ralph Hunter (1954–60), Abraham Kaplan (1961–73), Richard Westenburg (1973–9) and Robert Bass (from 1979); this amateur ensemble has performed both large standard works and contemporary pieces.

Musica Sacra, organized by Westenburg in 1970 at the 5th Avenue Presbyterian Church, has become the most prominent professional choral ensemble in New York. Organizations employing professional choral singers are the National Chorale (founded 1959) led by Martin Josman, the Amor Artis Chorus and Orchestra (1961) led by Johannes Somary, the Gregg Smith Singers (1961), Musica Aeterna (1969), Musica Viva of New York (1977) led by Walter Klauss, Musicians of Melodious Accord (1984) and the New York Concert Singers (1988). The amateur St Cecilia Chorus, formed in 1906 by Victor Harris as a women’s chorus, was expanded to a mixed ensemble in 1964. Other choruses are the Canterbury Choral Society (1952), Masterwork Chorus (1955), the New York Choral Society (1959), Canby Singers (1960), the New Amsterdam Singers (1968–72 as the Master Institute Chorus), the Canticum Novum Singers (1972), the Sine Nomine Singers (1973), the Cappella Nova (1975), the New Calliope Singers (1976), the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus (1980), the Riverside Choral Society (1980) and the Russian Chamber Chorus of New York (1985). The Boys Choir of Harlem (1968) has achieved international renown.

New York