causes, but during the past twenty years their places have been supplied by other organizations. One goes and another comes, and just now, under the fresh impulse given to them by the great scheme of choral music at the World's Fair, the societies organized since 1870 are in an unusually flourishing condition. Among these societies in New England are the Cecilia (mixed chorus on some occasions), and Apollo Club (male chorus), of Boston, both conducted by Mr. B. J. Lang, whose term of musical service in that city has been well-nigh commensurate with that of the veteran Zerrahn, with whom also he has been closely associated in the service of the Handel and Haydn Society. Mr. Lang has been the conductor of the Apollo from its start, twenty-two years ago, and has made its influence felt as far west as Chicago, for the well-known Apollo Club of the latter city was modelled upon the lines of its namesake in Boston. It has also done signal service for American composers, to whose works it has devoted special consideration. The other representative societies of New England are the Hosmer Hall Choral Society, of Hartford, Conn., and the Arion, of Providence, R. I., both of which are in flourishing condition. The latter is especially noticeable as being the final successful outcome of many attempts to organize a choral society in that city, and to Mr. Jules Jordan belongs the credit.

The Oratorio Society, conducted by Mr. Walter Damrosch, stands at the head of the New York societies which have been organized since 1870. Although oratorios have declined in public favor, with the single exception of the "Messiah," which is still the "stock piece" for the Christmas festivity, the Oratorio Society has held its ground firmly since 1873, performing the standard oratorios with the assistance of the

Symphony Society, with which it has always been closely affiliated, and giving a festival in 1881 which was one of the notable musical events in this country. Upon the death of Dr. Leopold Damrosch, its founder, the direction passed into the hands of his son, Walter, whose administration has been continuously

Dudley Buck.

prosperous. The opening of the new Carnegie Music Hall has given it a permanent home, and under its present auspices there does not seem to be any sufficient reason why it should not continue to be the representative of the oratorio until the fickle public once more returns to its former love for this highest and noblest of all forms of choral music. The Musurgia (male chorus) and the Rubinstein (female chorus) also hold a high place among the New York societies. The former, organized by Mr. William R. Chapman, has recently elected Mr. Frank Damrosch its conductor, while Mr. Chapman leads the Rubinstein, a somewhat unique organization and the best of its class in the country. He conducts also the Apollo Club, the Metropolitan Musical Society, and several other societies in

other localities of the State.

Across the river the leading vocal society of Brooklyn is the Apollo Club, conducted

Anton Seidl.

by the veteran leader and well-known organist, teacher, and composer, Dudley Buck, whose church music has made him famous in this country and whose secular music, especially his cantatas, has given him not only an American but a European reputation. The club is now in its fifteenth season and can boast a longer life than any other choral association in Brooklyn. It is an evidence of its remarkable success that during this period no director or member ever has been called upon for an assessment to cover a deficiency. Mr. Buck has been its conductor from the beginning, and it need hardly be said that it has risen to a high position among similar clubs in this country, both by its excellent singing and by the

high character of its programmes, for Mr. Buck has not been content with limiting the club to pretty and easy part songs, which are always tempting by their jingle and catching quality, but has given special consideration to male voice English compositions of large proportions as well as to some of his own choice works, which are now to be found in the repertory of every male voice club in the country making any pretensions to more than ordinary programmes and performances. Mr. Buck, indeed, has made a deep and strong impression upon the musical art of this country, not only by his enrichment of its church music, which he was largely instrumental in rescuing from its "pennyroyal" conditions, but by his own dramatic compositions.

In Orange, N. J., in Albany, as well as in New York City, where he conducts the Orpheus Society, Mr. Arthur Mees is doing substantial service for music by the high standard which he maintains, and similarly good work is done for Buffalo by Mr. Mischka, the leader of the Vocal Society, and the German society, the Liedertafel.

Philadelphia's musical reputation is largely upheld by two musical societies, the Orpheus Club, led by Michael Cross, a conductor well known for his musical attainments and his thorough and earnest work, and the Mendelssohn Club, led by Mr. W. W. Gilchrist, who has been connected with many musical societies during the past eighteen years, and has also achieved considerable reputation as a composer. The experiences of societies in Philadelphia, as a rule, have been neither joyous nor enduring. Their average life has been almost as brief as that of the infant's whose surprise was so tersely recorded on the gravestone; but the Orpheus and the Mendelssohn have proved exceptions to the rule, as the former is now in its twenty-first and the latter in its eighteenth year, and both appear to rest upon a substantial basis. Mr. Gilchrist is also the leader of the Tuesday Club, of Wilmington, Del., and the Germantown (Pa.) Choral Society. The musical entertainment of Pittsburg is supplied by the Mozart Club, James P. McCollum, conductor, who, after the

customary period of storm and stress, has had the satisfaction of seeing his society firmly established and doing good work. The musical interests of Baltimore centre almost exclusively in the concerts given at the Conservatory of Music, connected with the Peabody Institute, under the auspices of Mr. Asgar Hamerik, whose Scandinavian compositions have made his name well known, and in those of the Oratorio Society, conducted by Mr. Fritz Fincke, who is also a member of the Musical Faculty of the Institute. The generous endowment of this institution has placed unusual advantages in Mr. Hamerik's hands, which he has utilized with such rare intelligence and business sagacity that few conservatories of its kind have had a more powerful influence upon the musical culture of the South.

The musical growth of the great West has almost been accomplished since 1870, or within the period I have been hastily sketching. But during that time it has been making rapid strides, and the colossal World's Fair scheme of music, as outlined by Mr. Thomas and his assistants, Mr. W. L. Tomlins, choral director, and Mr. George H. Wilson, Secretary of the Bureau of Music, is destined to greatly accelerate its pace and to exert an influence upon the musical culture of the whole country the far-reaching results of which cannot now be estimated. The great "White City" at Jack son Park will be the centre of national musical activity during 1893, for within its limits will assemble, at various times during the year, nearly every society alluded to in this paper. In addition to the Eastern societies already mentioned, and the Cincinnati and Indianapolis Festival Associations, Ohio will send the Apollo Club, of Cincinnati, and the Cleveland Vocal Society. Michigan will be represented by the Detroit Musical Society and the Choral Union, of Ann Arbor, both under the leadership of Mr. Albert A. Stanley. The latter society has a governing body of its own, but is ultimately under the control of the Musical Society of the University of Michigan, whose aim is to furnish instruction in all branches of music to the

VOL. XIV.-7

students, and at the same time to further a thoughtful appreciation of the art by lectures, choral concerts, and the performances of eminent artists as well as of the leading orchestras of the country. The Students' Chorus numbers two hundred and eighty-five, and no part of the University curriculum is welcomed with more enthusiasm than that over which Mr. Stanley presides. Wisconsin will send its pet society, the Arion, of Milwaukee, under the leadership of Mr. Arthur Weld, who succeeds to the position formerly held by Mr. Tomlins, the present leader of the Apollo Club in Chicago, and under whose direction the Arion has lost none of the prestige which it gained under the former's advanced methods and rigid discipline. Minnesota will be represented by the St. Paul and Minneapolis Choral Associations, both under the leadership of Mr. Samuel A. Baldwin; and Missouri by the St. Louis Choral Symphony Society, Joseph Otten, conductor, an organization which is somewhat unique, as it gives both choral and symphony concerts, four of each kind, during a season. Far-away San Francisco will send its Loring Club, a flourishing male voice society, led by Mr. David W. Loring, formerly of the Apollo Club of Boston.

In the musical progress of the West Chicago now stands foremost, and its strongest impelling force is the Apollo Club, which for more than twenty years has been its principal factor in the cause of musical education, and through the agency of some of its innovations has made its influence felt in a national sense. Its career marks the renaissance of music in that city. The great conflagration of 1871 wiped out everyone of its musical societies, and drove nearly every musician away to seek a living elsewhere, for it was naturally assumed that music would have no opportunity in the partially destroyed city until its material resources were replaced. But it did not have to wait as long as was anticipated. Within a year from that disastrous time the Apollo Club rose like a phoenix. It was originally a männerchor under the direction of Mr. A. W. Dohn, a strict disciplinarian and one of the best equipped musical scholars in the West. He resigned his position in 1875.

and Mr. W. L. Tomlins, its present conductor, was called to the place. Under his administration it was changed to a mixed chorus and greatly extended its area of action as well as its success. It marked the beginning of a new impulse in music, which was destined to blossom in an unexpected manner, to exert an astonishing influence upon the progress of music in the city, and to give the club a national reputation under the leadership of Mr. Tomlins, who not only has special aptitude in training voices and developing tone, but is a musical enthusiast. The club has reached a degree of excellence which challenges superiority in the country. Its ordinary membership is five hundred, but as it will be the nucleus of the choral work at the Fair the chorus has been increased to twelve hundred. One of its grandest achievements from the point of view of social economy is the scheme of wageworkers' concerts, which has given the toiling masses an opportunity to hear high-class concerts at a price easily within their means the programmes and solo artists being the same as those enjoyed by the associate members. Though the success of this scheme to attract the wage-workers was doubted by some of the friends of the club, there has been no uncertainty about it on the part of the beneficiaries themselves. Were the great Auditorium twice its present size it would fail to accommodate all the working people who make application for tickets.

The scheme so successfully inaugurated by the Apollo Club has also been put in operation in Boston and New York with excellent results, a fact which suggests new possibilities for music in its application to some of the problems of the labor question.

Akin to this club in its influence, though operating in other directions, is the Amateur Musical Club, an organization of ladies which had its source in the weekly meeting together of four ladies several years ago to read piano quartettes. Gradually others came in, and thus a regular society of players and singers was formed which now numbers two hundred active members and gives twenty concerts each season. Out of it also has grown the Juvenile

Amateur Club, composed of young girls not yet sufficiently advanced to qualify them for membership in the parent organization. The one is a stepping-stone to the other. Mrs. James S. Gibbs is its President, and Mrs. Theodore Thomas, one of its active spirits, is at the head of a movement to secure a fitting representation of amateur clubs of women in the World's Fair, and to encourage women, not alone singers and players, but composers as well, by the offers of premiums for excellence.

As the great scheme of music at the Fair, indeed, is destined to be the most notable event in the musical records of this country, the table on the opposite page, setting forth the statistics of the various leading societies which have been invited to take part in it (and the most of which have accepted) will prove particularly interesting at the present time.

Having thus hastily sketched the conditions, progress, and influence of the older musical organizations, the German societies, the festival associations, and the representative choral societies which have been founded during the last twenty years, it remains to consider the principal instrumental organizations of the country upon which all of the others so largely depend for their success. The orchestra is the sure foundation of all musical culture, and the essential factor in its development. It is not saying too much to claim that no city can take a commanding place in music, and exert a wide-spread influence upon the progress of the art, until it has its own orchestra, homogeneous in its organization, drilled and disciplined under its own leader, and placed beyond the possibility of doing other than its legitimate work. If this result can be obtained in no other way than by subsidy-individual or otherwise-then it is fortunate that thus far the leading orchestras of this country have commended themselves to the generosity of public-spirited guarantors, who have been willing to take the risk of loss rather than be deprived of the great benefit and educating influences of a first-class band under competent leadership.

By virtue of its age, its long array of

distinguished conductors, its unswerving loyalty to the higher music, and its commanding influence as a popular educator, directly and indirectly, the New York Philharmonic Society holds the first place among American instrumental organizations. Founded in 1842, it has now turned the corner of its first half-century, and during that long period it has uninterruptedly given concerts of the best music performed by professional musicians, to audiences which, like those of the Leipsic Gewandhaus, have come to regard their orchestra and its performances as theirs by right and descent. It exerts an everincreasing influence from the standards of the highest art-forms, untouched by fashion or popular caprice, which have been the bane of so many societies, and unaffected by necessary changes of ad

ministration. In this respect, indeed, it seems to bear a charmed life. Its actual membership (which constitutes the orchestra and manages the affairs of the society) has always been of a high character. Even in its earliest years it had such musicians in its ranks as Alfred Boucher, William Vincent Wallace, Dr. Edward Hodges, Allan Dodworth, Anthony Reiff, D. G. Etienne, H. C. Timm, George Loder, and others, and from those days to the present it has commanded the best talent. During the fifty years of its existence it has steadily advanced in all directions. Its programmes represent the higher music, both in its classical and modern forms. In the earlier ones the society was loyal to the works of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and other composers of their period; in its later, it has done efficient