Part 17 (2/2)

[Sidenote: _Bach's choir._]

”In 1791 the Commemoration was celebrated by a choir of five hundred and a band of three hundred and seventy-five. In May, 1786, Johann Adam Hiller, one of Bach's successors as cantor of the St. Thomas School in Leipsic, directed what was termed a _Ma.s.senauffuhrung_ of 'The Messiah,' in the Domkirche, in Berlin. His 'ma.s.ses' consisted of one hundred and eighteen singers and one hundred and eighty-six instrumentalists. In Handel's operas, and sometimes even in his oratorios, the _tutti_ meant, in his time, little more than a union of all the solo singers; and even Bach's Pa.s.sion music and church cantatas, which seem as much designed for numbers as the double choruses of 'Israel,'

were rendered in the St. Thomas Church by a ludicrously small choir. Of this fact a record is preserved in the archives of Leipsic. In August, 1730, Bach submitted to the authorities a plan for a church choir of the pupils in his care. In this plan his singers numbered twelve, there being one princ.i.p.al and two ripienists in each voice; with characteristic modesty he barely suggests a preference for sixteen. The circ.u.mstance that in the same doc.u.ment he asked for at least eighteen instrumentalists (two more if flutes were used), taken in connection with the figures given relative to the 'Messiah' performances, gives an insight into the relations between the vocal and the instrumental parts of a choral performance in those days.”[H]

[Sidenote: _Proportion of voices and instruments._]

This relation has been more than reversed since then, the orchestras at modern oratorio performances seldom being one-fifth as large as the choir. This difference, however, is due largely to the changed character of modern music, that of to-day treating the instruments as independent agents of expression instead of using them chiefly to support the voices and add sonority to the tonal ma.s.s, as was done by Handel and most of the composers of his day.

[Sidenote: _Glee unions and male choirs._]

I omit from consideration the Glee Unions of England, and the quartets, which correspond to them, in this country. They are not cultivators of choral music, and the music which they sing is an insignificant factor in culture. The male choirs, too, need not detain us long, since it may be said without injustice that their mission is more social than artistic. In these choirs the subdivision into parts is, as a rule, into two tenor voices, first and second, and two ba.s.s, first and second. In the glee unions, the effect of whose singing is fairly well imitated by the college clubs of the United States (pitiful things, indeed, from an artistic point of view), there is a survival of an old element in the male alto singing above the melody voice, generally in a painful falsetto. This abomination is unknown to the German part-songs for men's voices, which are written normally, but are in the long run monotonous in color for want of the variety in timbre and register which the female voices contribute in a mixed choir.

[Sidenote: _Women's choirs._]

There are choirs also composed exclusively of women, but they are even more unsatisfactory than the male choirs, for the reason that the absence of the ba.s.s voice leaves their harmony without sufficient foundation. Generally, music for these choirs is written for three parts, two sopranos and contralto, with the result that it hovers, suspended like Mahomet's coffin, between heaven and earth. When a fourth part is added it is a second contralto, which is generally carried down to the tones that are hollow and unnatural.

[Sidenote: _Boys' choirs._]

The subst.i.tution of boys for women in Episcopal Church choirs has grown extensively within the last ten years in the United States, very much to the promotion of aesthetic sentimentality in the congregations, but without improving the character of wors.h.i.+p-music. Boys' voices are practically limitless in an upward direction, and are naturally clear and penetrating. Ravis.h.i.+ng effects can be produced with them, but it is false art to use pa.s.sionless voices in music conceived for the mature and emotional voices of adults; and very little of the old English Cathedral music, written for choirs of boys and men, is preserved in the service lists to-day.

[Sidenote: _Mixed choirs._]

The only satisfactory choirs are the mixed choirs of men and women.

Upon them has devolved the cultivation of artistic choral music in our public concert-rooms. As we know such choirs now, they are of comparatively recent origin, and it is a singular commentary upon the way in which musical history is written, that the fact should have so long been overlooked that the credit of organizing the first belongs to the United States. A little reflection will show this fact, which seems somewhat startling at first blush, to be entirely natural. Large singing societies are of necessity made up of amateurs, and the want of professional musicians in America compelled the people to enlist amateurs at a time when in Europe choral activity rested on the church, theatre, and inst.i.tute choristers, who were practically professionals.

[Sidenote: _Origin of amateur singing societies._]

[Sidenote: _The German record._]

[Sidenote: _American priority._]

[Sidenote: _The American record._]

As the hitherto accepted record stands, the first amateur singing society was the Singakademie of Berlin, which Carl Friedrich Fasch, accompanist to the royal flautist, Frederick the Great, called into existence in 1791. A few dates will show how slow the other cities of musical Germany were in following Berlin's example. In 1818 there were only ten amateur choirs in all Germany. Leipsic organized one in 1800, Stettin in 1800, Munster in 1804, Dresden in 1807, Potsdam in 1814, Bremen in 1815, Chemnitz in 1817, Schwabisch-Hall in 1817, and Innsbruck in 1818. The Berlin Singakademie is still in existence, but so also is the Stoughton Musical Society in Stoughton, Ma.s.s., which was founded on November 7, 1786. Mr. Charles C. Perkins, historian of the Handel and Haydn Society, whose foundation was coincident with the sixth society in Germany (Bremen, 1815), enumerates the following predecessors of that venerable organization: the Stoughton Musical Society, 1786; Independent Musical Society, ”established at Boston in the same year, which gave a concert at King's Chapel in 1788, and took part there in commemorating the death of Was.h.i.+ngton (December 14, 1799) on his first succeeding birthday;” the Franklin, 1804; the Salem, 1806; Ma.s.sachusetts Musical, 1807; Lock Hospital, 1812, and the Norfolk Musical, the date of whose foundation is not given by Mr.

Perkins.

[Sidenote: _Choirs in the West._]

When the Bremen Singakademie was organized there were already choirs in the United States as far west as Cincinnati. In that city they were merely church choirs at first, but within a few years they had combined into a large body and were giving concerts at which some of the choruses of Handel and Haydn were sung. That their performances, as well as those of the New England societies, were cruder than those of their European rivals may well be believed, but with this I have nothing to do. I am simply seeking to establish the priority of the United States in amateur choral culture. The number of American cities in which oratorios are performed annually is now about fifty.

[Sidenote: _The size of choirs._]

[Sidenote: _Large numbers not essential._]

[Sidenote: _How ”divisions” used to be sung._]

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