Beginnings
The second season, 1867-68, began with a new conductor, Joseph
Mosenthal, who would direct the Club
for the next 29 years. Eleven
men joined the Club in the second year, one of whom was
Alfred Corning Clark, whose magnificent gift of
Mendelssohn Hall at the time of the first jubilee would
shape the Club's second quarter century.
Perfection of technique was almost a fetish with
Mosenthal, and through him the Club came to have an
abandon, an absolute freedom from technical restraint and
a vitality that electrified its audiences. His style at
rehearsal was infamous. The Club would stand. Mosenthal
would shout, pound the bare floor with his foot, then, in
despair at the lack of results from his efforts, he would
throw his baton into a corner and turn his back on the
chorus. The singers would receive the outburst in
undismayed silence and before long Mosenthal would
retrieve his baton and work would start again. A single
voice would stand out and he'd look up and cry "No solos,
gentlemen"; and when the men would lag he'd call out
"Time, gentlemen, no sentiment." The atmosphere is
well-captured in a cartoon by Charles G. Bush, who Joined the Club in 1867, and later was honored as the "Dean of
American Cartoonists."
First concert
The first season began with concerts given on successive evenings, February 21 and 22, 1867, under the baton of Harvey
Schrimpf. The Club was referred to on the
program book cover as the "Amateur Musical Association" and on the inside as the "Male Voice Quartette Club." There were 14 members, eight of whom had been members the previous year. The program of the third concert, given on April 2, does not identify the Club by any name; but the fourth concert, given May 14, 1867, was announced as the
"Private Concert of the Mendelssohn Glee Club." The first song presented by the Club on that evening was "Turkish Drinking Song" by (of course) Felix
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, a song already in the Club's repertoire and one
that would be sung again many times at the 300-plus concerts
that would follow.
Joseph Mosenthal
The second season, 1867-68, began with a new conductor, Joseph
Mosenthal, who would direct the Club
for the next 29 years. The success of the Club in the early
years is due to Mosenthal's personality and musical
attainments more than to any other single cause. Eleven
men joined the Club in the second year, one of whom was
Alfred Corning Clark, whose magnificent gift of
Mendelssohn Hall at the time of the first jubilee would
shape the Club's second quarter century.
Perfection of technique was almost a fetish with
Mosenthal, and through him the Club came to have an
abandon, an absolute freedom from technical restraint and
a vitality that electrified its audiences. His style at
rehearsal was infamous. The Club would stand. Mosenthal
would shout, pound the bare floor with his foot, then, in
despair at the lack of results from his efforts, he would
throw his baton into a corner and turn his back on the
chorus. The singers would receive the outburst in
undismayed silence and before long Mosenthal would
retrieve his baton and work would start again. A single
voice would stand out and he'd look up and cry "No Solos,
Gentlemen"; and when the men would lag he'd call out
"Time, Gentlemen, No Sentiment." The atmosphere is
well-captured in a cartoon by Charles G. Bush, who Joined the Club in 1867, and later was honored as the "Dean of
American Cartoonists."
Early accolades
The Club established itself and quickly acquired a
considerable following within the exclusive social circles
of New York. Club concerts were undeniable successes and
friends of the Club were insatiable. A review of the
Club's program archives reveals that three regular
"private" concerts each year were liberally supplemented
with appearances at cultural and social events, inside and
outside of New York City. The credit for the development
of what was truly a phenomenon can be shared by a number
of men and women, aided by a variety of circumstances.
For one thing, the Club made its concerts as unlike
public concerts of the day as was possible. Audiences then, as now, were chiefly composed of
friends of the members. The singers, and all who
assisted, mingled with the audience and the entertainment had the character of a drawing-room gathering. But more
than anything else, there was a novelty in the effect
produced by a trained chorus of male voices. It was a
character of music to which New York audiences were
entirely unaccustomed. This form of music was almost
never attempted. Yet the greatest of the European masters
had contributed their genius to this form of composition: Lizst, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn!
The Club, through
Mosenthal, developed supreme
confidence in its ability to entertain, and informal
singing proved to lead to the strongest of bonds between
the members. The men seemed pleased to gather at any time
and in almost any place to entertain any and all who would
listen. The Club's written history is replete with notes
of street singing forays through midtown Manhattan long
after midnight, with members stopping, perhaps, before the windows of
some young woman of current favor; and of concerts at
social clubs in the city and its environs. Anton Seidl,
German composer and eminent conductor, sitting one evening
at the Liederkranz Club, turned to his companion, William
Steinway, and said, after the close of a group of songs by
the Club: "That is the most wonderful singing in the
world. I have never heard its like anywhere."
Sir Arthur Sullivan
In 1879, Gilbert and Sullivan were in New York
preparing the production of Pirates of Penzance.
Arthur
Sullivan wrote in his diary of December 16: "Went to
concert of the Mendelssohn Glee Club. Heard 'The Long Day Closes.'
Admirably sung and encored." On the program book
for the concert at which Sir Arthur heard his song, the
Club's distinctive emblem appeared for the first time.
So satisfying was
its success that the Club
developed a real missionary zeal. In 1871, the Club
traveled to Boston and gave a concert that received wide
critical and popular acclaim. These were times when
classical music was not well received in the land of the
bean and the cod. The Apollo Club was established shortly
thereafter along the lines of the MGC. The Orpheus Club of
Philadelphia blossomed next, and in 1875, the Orpheus and
its parent club of New York gave joint concerts in both
cities. The clubs commuted to each other's city on the
newly established Pennsylvania Railroad. The Boston
Symphony was founded in 1880, and the Philadelphia
Orchestra was yet a quarter century in the future. The
borough of Brooklyn followed with the formation of the
Apollo Club in 1878. With help from the Mendelssohn Glee
Club of New York, male chorus activity spread during the
remainder of the century throughout the nation and into
Canada.
Clark's gift
By the time of the first jubilee in 1891,
construction was under way on Alfred Corning Clark's most
magnificent of gifts. The next quarter-century of the
Club's history is dominated by the acquisition,
consequences of the use and the aftermath of the loss of
Mendelssohn Hall. Clark's father, Edward,
had amassed a fortune, reputed to be $50 million, as counsel and later partner of Isaac Merritt Singer,
inventor and manufacturer of the sewing machine. Alfred
had become chief stockholder in the Singer Company and, in
addition, had large real estate holdings in New York
City. Among these was a parcel of land, 80 by 100 feet,
on the north side of 40th Street, east of Broadway. While
Alfred Corning Clark had remained an active member of the
Club for only a single season, he had remained close to
the Club through its first quarter century.
While on a trip to Europe in the summer of 1890,
Mosenthal had composed a musical setting for William
Cullen Bryant's famous poem "Thanatopsis." A
cantata-length work, this was surely Mosenthal's
masterpiece. The work was described as "one of the most
remarkable compositions in the repertory of male clubs."
It is said there is perhaps in music no more beautiful
phrase than the one musical sentence to the words "So
shalt thou rest," and that no one who has heard
Mosenthal's music can thereafter read Bryant's poem
without associating the music with it. Clark fell in love
with the music at its first performance by the Club on December 2, 1890. At his request the song was repeated at the
jubilee concert on April 21 of that year and at least five
more times at concerts through 1896. Among these, "Thanatopsis" was sung at the opening of Mendelssohn Hall
on December 6, 1892, with the Orpheus Club of Philadelphia
at the Academy of Music on February 5, 1895, and at the 25th
anniversary of the Apollo of Boston on May 6, 1896.
Alfred Corning Clark had been so impressed with "Thanatopsis" that he decided to finance the construction
of a hall where serious compositions could be performed in
appropriate surroundings.
Mendelssohn Hall
Plans for the new concert hall were drawn by Robert
H. Robertson, then President of the Club and an architect
of note. On the ground floor was an 1,100-seat
auditorium. Compare this with the auditorium of the
Metropolitan Opera House, opened a decade before, at 4,000
seats. Below were quarters for the use of members, a
rehearsal hall, committee rooms, library, smoking room, and
a dressing room for ladies. Above the auditorium were
three floors fitted as bachelor apartments. The auditorium
was 40 feet from floor to ceiling and was lighted by
electricity. The exterior of the building was of gray
rock and oatmeal brick, in a style known as composite, with
classical details. Club initials were conspicuous on the
stone gables. Construction costs exceeded $225,000.
Alfred Corning Clark, in addition to his interest in
music, was a patron of the visual arts. As part of the
decoration of the interior of Mendelssohn Hall, as the
new building on 40th Street was called, Clark commissioned
Robert Frederick Blum, muralist, colorist, and
illustrator, to do twin panels for either side of the
proscenium arch in the concert hall. The first, begun in
1893 and completed in 1895, was called "Moods of Music."
The frieze was 50 feet long and 12 feet high. Later, Blum
completed the companion piece, a canvas of equal size
entitled "Feast of Bacchus."
The first MGC concert held in Mendelssohn Hall was
on December 6, 1892. Joseph Mosenthal conducted the 55
active members in a program of Mendelssohn, Rheinberger,
Mosenthal, Schubert, and others, including three songs
presented for the first time, and the now venerable "Thanatopsis." Assisting the Club were Mrs. Carl
Alves,
contralto, Maud Powell, violinist, and Samuel P.
Warren, organist. Clearly, an organ was also part of the
fittings of Mendelssohn Hall, although the instrument is
not specifically mentioned in the descriptions.
Winslow Homer
Among the tenants of the apartments at Mendelssohn
Hall was the artist Winslow Homer, whose best-known
painting, Gulf Stream, hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of
Art. Homer at the time was making drawings at $50 a page
for Harper's Weekly. Homer owed the Club $57 for back rent. In a letter dated March 3, 1896, to Club
Treasurer
Charles Scott, he writes that, money being unavailable, he
would undertake to make a crayon sketch of members of the
Club in the rehearsal hall "with their mouths open or
shut." He added in a postscript that the sketch would be
"finished and a good picture." The Club, in that year, was
lacking in foresight in many ways. It refused Homer's
offer.
The year 1896 was a low point for the
MGC. On a
blustery night in January of that year, the long and
affectionate relationship between the Club and Joseph
Mosenthal came to a tragic end. The musician had fought
his way through snow and cold to Mendelssohn Hall where,
exhausted and overcome by exertions, he was laid on a sofa
directly under his own portrait by John Alexander, and
there, half an hour later, surrounded by members of his
beloved Club, he expired. Henry C. Potter, Episcopal
Bishop of New York, presided at the funeral service.
Another loss
Also in that year Alfred Corning Clark died and the
Club found itself facing the loss of Mendelssohn Hall, a scant four years after it had been built. There is no
doubt whatsoever that Clark had erected the hall with the
expectation that it would become a permanent home for the
Club. Upon his death it was found that no steps had been
taken by him to insure the fulfillment of his intention.
His widow, who later married Bishop Potter, was in no
legal position to intercede, but during her lifetime the
Club was permitted to use the building in the way that
Clark had intended, and to lease the rooms on the top
floors as a means of bringing in revenue. Upon her death,
Mendelssohn Hall was lost to the Club and it was forced to
vacate. Sold in 1911 to Philip Lewisohn, it was leased by
him to the Kinemacolor Theater, a company that planned to
show motion pictures in color at "$1 for the best seats." However, the enterprise failed and the
structure was torn down in 1912 to make room for a loft building.
The Blum murals were lost, and speculation as to
what had become of them engaged the
interest of the Club members for years. Then, just before
the centennial jubilee concert in 1965, the murals were
found in the vaults of the Brooklyn Museum and were placed
on display in the entrance hall of the Museum directly
above the main portals.
Third jubilee
With the loss of Mendelssohn Hall in the 46th year
of its existence, and with the third jubilee approaching,
the Club attempted to raise funds for a new home by giving
public concerts. Frederick Bourne, Commodore of the New
York Yacht Club, was chosen to head a building committee.
His plans called for a national tour, but the venture was
never undertaken because the members, for business
reasons, could not get away from New York. However, local
public concerts of the Club were very popular and so well
attended that a newspaper commented that the reason, among
others, was that "few music lovers outside the
hermetically sealed immediate circle of the (Club's)
friends have ever heard it sing." Nevertheless, nothing
approaching the amount needed was ever realized.
The newspaper's comment was justified. The Club,
during its first century, was often described as one of
the most exclusive organizations in the United States.
Admission restrictions were being drawn ever tighter, and
at one point it seemed more difficult to become an
associate member of the Mendelssohn than to enter the
"charmed circle" of the four hundred. People waited for
decades to be admitted as associate members. Each active
and associate member was allowed six tickets for each of
the three annual concerts. No other tickets were issued.
Concert tickets were in such great demand that the Club
secretary made a point of recording the exact number used
at each concert. There were a number of incidents of
counterfeiting over the years. Formal dress was so
strictly adhered to that members or guests appearing
otherwise at concerts were turned away at the door.
Despite the restrictions, attendance at regularly
scheduled concerts ranged from 1,200 to 1,400. Carriages
with horses and coachmen attached would populate curbsides
for blocks around Mendelssohn Hall on concert nights. The
Club found it desirable to throw its dress rehearsal open to music lovers not fortunate enough to have access
through usual means.
Admission
requirements
Singing memberships were equally difficult to
obtain. Two things were necessary for admission. First,
the applicant had to have a voice of exceptional quality
and range in his part and, second, he had to be able to
read music at sight with tolerable accuracy. The active
membership has always been made up of a mixture of
amateurs and professionals. During the Mendelssohn Hall
days, there was only a single city block separating the
MGC from the Metropolitan Opera. Many a professional
singer, male and female, made the trip with great pleasure
and to their great advantage.
Golden anniversary
The golden anniversary concert was held in the grand
concert hall of the Hotel Astor on April 11, 1916. No
special note was made of the jubilee in the program.
Louis Koemmenich conducted 59 active members in a program
that included a first performance of a song dedicated to
the MGC, "Balaklava" by Bruno Huhn. The words were the
famous Tennyson poem on the charge of the light brigade in
the Crimean war. The second, third, and fourth jubilees
each fell within a year of the involvement of the United
States in a major war. The fifth jubilee, we hope, looks
forward on a vista of peace.
The 50th anniversary of the American Telephone
and Telegraph Company occurred in 1916. The MGC and AT&T
decided to join in the promotion of the world's first
transcontinental concert by wire. This project was
undertaken on the evening of February 9, 1916. The wire
distance from New York to Los Angeles was 3,875 miles.
The prospect of an interchange of voices over so great a
distance impressed the two gatherings that were to take
part with a sense of the miraculous. The MGC was in the
banquet room of the Waldorf-Astoria, and the Ellis Glee
Club in the Gamut room in Los Angeles. Each of the 450
present at the Waldorf held a telephone receiver to the
ear.
The telephonic connection was established by the
"skip and stop method" across the country: New York to
Pittsburgh, to Chicago, to Omaha, to Denver, to Salt Lake
City, to San Francisco, and then to Los Angeles. Louis
Koemmenich and Jean Baptiste Poudin conducted for the respective
clubs. Unfortunately, reception was so blurry and indistinct that it was
necessary to refer to the program notes to identify the sounds.
Reviewing the event, Music America expressed the opinion that "this long
distance concert idea will be even more practicable when the device for
transmitting the sound tone is further perfected ... our grandchildren
will doubtless see nothing epoch-making in (such a concert)."
Notable members
Among the professionals who valued membership in the
MGC in the early twentieth century were Richard Crooks of
whom one critic said that there were tears in his
singing. Another wrote that Crooks could sing "I love
you" to an audience of a thousand women and every one
would believe he meant it for her alone. Oley Speaks,
concert baritone and composer, was vice president of the
Club for a time. He wrote over 200 songs in his long
career, including "Morning" and the two on our program
this evening.
Herbert Witherspoon, operatic and concert basso,
joined the Met in 1908 and later became its general
manager. Cesare Sodero, conductor of the Club from 1934
to 1947, was principal conductor of Verdi operas at the
Met in the early and mid-forties. The litany of names of
great singers and instrumentalists who have either been
active members or who have performed with the Club is
formidable.
Diamond jubilee
The diamond jubilee concert was presented at the
grand ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria on April 22, 1941.
Cesare Sodero conducted a chorus of 76 actives, among whom
were Harvey Enders, one of the Club's most prolific
composers and song writers, and John Royer Bogue. Then, as
many times in his long career with the Club, John Bogue
had a solo. He performed incidental music in the Club's
performance of the Welsh folk song "All Through the
Night."
The centennial concert, held at the Biltmore on May
16, 1966, was a grand affair. The gala was organized by
Bob Pierce, our long-time member and frequent president.
The archives are filled with congratulatory notes from
prominent politicians and musicians. The conductor was
John Royer Bogue, at his second jubilee, leading 67 active
members. The program featured as soloist Nadja Witkowika,
soprano, who offered a selection of favorites.
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