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Musical Courier 1892-04-20: Vol 24 Iss 635, 1892
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1FOREIGN NOTES.
3A New Operetta.—The first performance of the operetta "La Femme à Narcisse"—words by Mr. Fabrin Carré and music by Mr. Louis Varnay—took place at the Théâtre de la Renaissance, Paris, last week and proved a great success. The scene is laid in 1810 in a florist's workshop and the plot is sufficiently bright, the hero being a man who is not in love with his wife. The incidents are ordinary, but there is a good deal of gaiety in the piece. The music is light and may easily become popular.
5Botel Engaged.—Sir Augustus Harris, while at Hamburg recently, engaged for his next Italian opera season Botel, the German tenor, who is said to have a phenomenal voice.
7Caravoglia Dead.—Caravoglia, the once famous Italian opera singer, died recently in London. He had latterly been in retirement and earned a living by teaching vocal music.
9Wagner at the Conservatoire.—At the Paris Conservatoire concert of the 20th ult., the second act of Wagner's "Parsifal" was performed with great artistic success and with unexpectedly enthusiastic applause on the part of the public.
11Cheap Music at Munich and Stuttgart.—The Society for Public Culture at Munich is giving popular concerts with good programs at an entrance fee of 20 pfennige (5 cents). Similar concerts are being given at Stuttgart at only half that price.
13Success of Sondershausen Singers.—In a recent performance of Mozart's "Magic Flute," at the Sondershausen Court Opera, seven pupils from the conservatory of that city took part and met with considerable success. This speaks volumes for the artistic seriousness of study at that institute at which the director, Prof. Carl Schroeder, and Günzburger are the principal vocal teachers.
15Novelties at the Free Musical Union.—At the last concert of that flourishing Berlin organization, the Free Musical Union, on the 17th ult., at Sulzer's Music Hall, the program consisted of the following novelties: Works for voice and piano by W. Freudenberg, for violin and piano by Ingeborg von Bronsart, and for violoncello and piano by Josef Gauby.
17Donizetti's Death Chamber.—At the Vienna exhibition the Baroness Johanna Rota-Basoni-Scotti, of Berganio, will produce an exact counterfeit of the room in which Donizetti expired.
19A Decision Against Gilbert.—Mr. Gilbert, Sir Arthur Sullivan's old partner, has been engaged in a new quarrel with Mr. Horace Sedger, manager of the London Lyric Theatre, where Mr. Gilbert's "The Mountebanks" is running. Mr. Gilbert objected to the discharge of eight choristers at the Lyric, and asked the Chancery Court to grant an injunction, claiming that their discharge caused a serious alteration in the cast of "The Mountebanks" and was a breach of agreement. The judge declined to grant the injunction. He gave it as his opinion that the chorus could not be regarded as part of the cast.
21From the Vienna Exhibition.—From 60,000 to 70,000 Americans have signified their intention of visiting Vienna during the musical and dramatic exhibition to be held there. The traveling bureaus are bespeaking every available room in Vienna for the expected invasion.
23The Milan publisher, Sonzogno, will, during September, give an Italian opera stagione at the theatre of the exhibition, and the performances are to be conducted by Mascagni.
25Berlin Operatic Revivals.—At the Berlin Royal Opera House Gluck's "Armid" and "Iphigenie," Weber's "Euryanthe," Marschner's "Hans Heiling" and Cherubini's "Water Carrier," all of which operas have not been heard there for a long time, will shortly be revived. Immediately after the première of Moszkowski's "Boabdil" a Wagner cyclus will be given.
27Miss Folville's Opera.—Miss Juliette Folville (not Mrs. Ovide Musin) produced a new two act opera, "Atala," at the Lille Opera House a fortnight ago and scored a great success.
29The Schubert Conservatory.—The Schubert Conservatory of Music which has just opened in Hyde Park, which is that portion of the city of Chicago adjacent to Jackson Park and the world's fair, has just published its first catalogue. Mr. C. J. Schubert, its president, is a graduate of the Munich Royal Conservatory, an enthusiastic musician and a pianist of marked ability. Mr. Frederic Vinal, the vocal director, studied his art in Italy and New York under the best masters, and has in his three years' residence in Chicago made for himself an enviable reputation. The head of the violin department, Mr. Henry Nurnberger, is a graduate of the Stuttgart Conservatory of Music and a first violinist in the Thomas Orchestra. The course of study in each of the departments (fourteen in all) is thorough and complete.
31A Ministerial Choirmaster.
33REV. MILLER HAGEMAN, OF BROOKLYN, THE ONLY CLERGYMAN IN THIS COUNTRY WHO CONDUCTS HIS OWN CHOIR WITH THE BATON—THE HISTORY OF THE BROOKLYN PHILHARMONIC CLUB, AND THE MINISTER'S CONNECTION WITH IT.
35THI Rev. Miller Hageman, of Brooklyn, is the only minister, so far as we know, in this country who drills, organizes and conducts his own choir in his own church. There was one notable exception to this but a few years ago in the city of New Brunswick, N. J., where Rev. Dr. Hartranft, the pastor of the College Church and the lifelong friend of Dr. Damrosch, of the New York Symphony Society, trained and led with the baton a picked choir in the First Dutch Church.
37Mr. Hageman was in the habit of taking an evening walk with Dr. Hartranft and takes pleasure in acknowledging that he first caught from that splendid scholar and musician the idea of a clergyman thoroughly equipped for the service, personally conducting his own choir and congregation. The two ministers sang and studied together the most difficult music and finally took Emil Agramonte, the famous accompanist and coach, to New Brunswick, and at the house of Mrs. James Nelson at Woodlawn formed a musical society of the best talent of that city that the college and the town combined could afford, and rendering in a really reputable fashion the great works of the masters.
39During that time Mr. Hageman studied personally with Agramonte, from whom afterward he received a most gratifying recommendatory letter in reference not only to his voice but also to his general ability as a note reader and a musician. Shortly afterward, when Mr. Hageman was called to be the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn, E. D., he put into practice the ideas which he had received from Dr. Damrosch's New Brunswick friend and pupil. He organized in connection with his church a musical society, which was known as the Brooklyn Choral Union and which was supported by an orchestra. In connection with the society he became widely known and did no little good in discovering fine singers and introducing them for the first time to the favorable attention of the public.
41Miss Emma Thursby, that song charmer, made her first popular hit in that old church, when she sang "The Image of the Rose" in front of the Princeton College Club, who accompanied her in humming chords. It was Miller Hageman who first brought out of vocal obscurity Cathrene Cavanagh and made her known. She now sings in the Central Congregational Church. It was Mr. Hageman who first introduced at a subsequent college concert the four famous Meigs sisters and paved the way for their great success. These and many more have owed their musical history to Mr. Hageman.
43About the same time he created and conducted the Princeton Choral Union, composed of students of the college, members of the professors' families and ladies and gentlemen of the town. The president of the board of trustees of that society was no less a man than the celebrated and worldwide famed geographer Arnold Guyot. Dr. McCosh and the professors of the college all generously supported the subscription concerts given by Mr. Hageman and attended in person. At the close of Mr. Hageman's connection with that society, when the Stuyvesant Avenue Church—which he built and owned personally—was ready for his ministry, he received from the Princeton Club as a gift a beautiful baton, the entire musical library of the club and a testimonial letter recommending him as a conductor of music to any society with which he might desire to connect himself.
45After taking charge of the Stuyvesant Avenue Church Mr. Hageman built on an original plan a boxed gallery, capable of seating fifty soloists, and overarching in the shape of a horseshoe the platform, thus rising from the ground floor to the roof. He conducted all these singers with the baton at every service.
47Nearly a year ago on the organization of the City Pulpit in Avon Hall, on Bedford avenue, Mr. Hageman, realizing the power of music to draw the people, organized a choir and put Dr. Gamage, the musical editor of the "Citizen," at the head of it as conductor. His services were most efficient, but owing to his duties he found himself at last unable to continue. Mr. John Dewes then took his place and conducted for some time, but upon receiving a high salaried position Mr. Hageman found himself without a leader. There was nothing for him to do but to stand in the gap himself. This he immediately did. The result has been most gratifying.
49The Brooklyn Philharmonic Club is the outgrowth of the City Pulpit choir, and in turn constitutes that choir itself.
51The Brooklyn Philharmonic Club.
53This club was organized in the Bedford room of the Arcanum Hall on the evening of Saturday, March 5, 1892. It was started with seventeen charter members. The Rev. Miller Hageman was unanimously elected musical director of the society; Mr. Edward A. Pryce, president; Mrs. F. E. Warner, presidentess; Miss A. T. Ward, the artist, first vice-president, at the head of a list of vice-presidents, which is being steadily filled. Miss Jeanette Murden was chosen as the accompanist to the society and also its secretary, and Mr. Alfred W. Carlsen, formerly of the Copenhagen Musical Society, was appointed first coach for notation, tempo, voice building and librarian, &c. Mrs. P. F. Burd was elected treasurer and Mr. P. F. Burd marshal at arms.
55The various committees, such as the membership committee, the reception committee, the executive committee, the committee on music, &c., are all filled by intelligent musicians. The chorus is built upon the whole chord chromatically considered, i.e., the different registers are all brought out in their closest possible shades of song culture. At the bottom of the chord the basso profundo; next, the bass; next, the baritone; next, the alto; next, the contralto; next, the mezzo soprano; next, the soprano; next, the soprano sopracuto; next, the tenor, and finally, the contralto tenor. Each of these divisions is led by a stake singer. So far the appointments for stake singers, which are in the nature of honorable appointments, are as follows: Arthur Keyes, basso; Kenneth Smith, bass; Emil Laabst, baritone; Mrs. F. E. Warner, flag alto; Miss Hattie Hayward, first soprano flag; contralto, Miss Maud Mason; first contralto flag, Mrs. H. D. Waterbury; second flag contralto sopracuto unfilled, but about to be filled; first flag tenor, Robert Leckie, interchangeable with Alfred W. Carlsen; first flag tenor contralto, James P. Harper. These stake singers are expected to steady the tempo and drag through this division.
57The great aim of the Philharmonic Club is in the rendition of the classics of the great masters, to interpret them with fidelity in their declamative, recitative and elocutionary form, or, in other words, to teach men and women to speak when they sing. The whole Philharmonic Club will, when thoroughly organized, constitute the choir of the City Pulpit Church, be conducted personally by the Rev. Miller Hageman, and create for that congregation and for all who wish to follow its lead a new departure in ecclesiastical music, namely, the popular rendering of great sacred choruses like Beethoven's "Hallelujah" chorus by the whole church.
59The Philharmonic Club, in the pursuance of such an exacted musical ambition, has a high moral aim in view: First, to implicate every person in the congregation in the act of worshipful praise rather than to allow a chorus of head singers to do it for them by proxy; second, to make the church a school for the interpretation of high religious art in music, and third, to wean away from the saloons the young men of the city and to redeem their lives into higher paths by the sanctity of song. The club will give two annual concerts, besides several minor ones, to the substantial encouragement and recognition of all worthy and really meritorious singers. It will offer prizes for the best voice in each register; for the best reader; for the best tempist; the best phraseur, &c.
61All soloists in the society, male or female, are required to take the destra in their hand and submit themselves successively to a drill which shall make each and every one of them a phraseological conductor. It is the aim of the society to equip itself with a full orchestra, fidicinal and brass. The society will also establish within itself a bureau of communication, by which any young man or woman who combines note reading with fine vocal attainments may be introduced to the attention of the different church choirs of the city and managers, and may in that way be enabled to find a money market for their gift.
63Since the first meeting of the club its growth has been steady, new members having been proposed at each successive meeting. The society at present numbers, together with the orchestra which has just been completed, sixty strong. The requirement for admission is that each person shall be a soloist and separately drilled. The names of the members of the society as constituted at present are as follows:
65Miller Hageman. Louise Miller Hofman.
66F. E. Warner. Hattie Hayward.
67Maud Mason. Margaret Smith.
68H. D. Waterbury. Arthur Keyes.
69Kenneth Smith. Alfred W. Carlsen.
70James P. Harper. Robert Leckie.
71Burton Hayward. P. F. Burd.
72Mrs. P. F. Burd. Jeanette Murden.
73Henrietta Murden. Avis Mead.
74Josephine Nichols. Annie Smith.
75Agatha Smith. Ida Polhemus.
76A. T. Ward. Edward A. Price.
77Emil Laabst. Jacob Faber.
78H. D. Waterbury. Cora Mason.
79Edith B. Cowlishaw. Mamie Ridley.
80August Maier. Belle Richter.
81— Lindewall. Miss Horton.
82Miss Tidiway. Miss Nichols.
83Robert Olmstead. James Olmstead.
84Arthur McGowan. Mrs. Haff.
86The remaining number of singers, not including the orchestra, are placed on probation for the present. The greater part of these probationary singers will be received into full membership, but until that is done their names will remain with the membership committee. THE MUSICAL COURIER will be furnished in the near future with the names and instruments of the orchestra.
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