Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

806 SYMPHONY CONCERTS IN U.S. SYMPHONY CONCERTS IN U.S.
Association, aided by committees of ladies
from towns and cities contiguous to Philadelphia,
was organised in 1900. The Orchestra
Association is composed of about 300 men and
women, prominent in social and artistic afi'airs,
who annually guarantee the cost of the enterprise.
Until now (1908) the yearly losses have
ranged from$50, 000 to 170,000, butPhiladelphia
has repeated the story of Chicago in its selfsacrificing
devotion to the ideal which it has set
for itself in respect of orchestral music. The
history of the Philadelphia Orchestra does not
differ essentially from that of a number of the
other institutions discussed in this article ;
though the desire of the city's society element
to have adequate performances of opera as a
feature of the social season was largely instrumental
in its formation. Readers of the article
in this Dictionary on Opera in the U.S. (vol.
iii. pp. 466-472) will have observed that for a
long time in the latter part of the 18th and the
first decades of the 19th centuries Philadelphia
was a vigorous rival of New York in operatic
activity, but that in the course of time
supremacy went to the latter city. So long as
Theodore Thomas was a factor in the orchestral
music of the eastern cities, his orchestra gave
concerts with greater or less regularity in Philadelphia
; but the abandonment of his individual
enterprises in 1891 left the music-lovers of the
old Federal capital without regular concerts of
high-class orchestral music. The Boston Orchestra,
on its travels, supplied the want for
several years, but could not satisfy the ambitions
of a city properly proud of the part which it
had played m the political, commercial, social,
and artistic history of the country. In the
season of 1894-95 there was something like an
awakening of thedormantmusical interests of the
city. In 1895-96 a committee was formed to
promote an opera season, and a season of opera
in English of forty performances was given under
a guarantee with Mr. Gustav Hinrichs as
director. In the next season Mr. Walter
Damrosch supplied local operatic needs ; in
1897-98 Messrs. Damrosch and EUis, and
in 1898-99 Mr. Charles Ellis alone with Mr.
Damrosch as conductor and director. Thereafter,
the local committee of opera guarantors
made annual arrangements for opera from year
to year with Maurice Grau and Heinrioh
Conried.
During this period of operatic interest orchestral
matters were also in a ferment. While
Mr. Hinrichs was director of the opera he gave
orchestral concerts, and tried to develop a symphonic
band out of the material which he found
at hand. In the same season the Musical Fund
Society, an old foundation, created conditions
which made it possible for a local concert orchestra,
the Germania, to increase the number
of its members and to give a series of Friday
afternoon concerts under the direction of William
Stoll, Jr. , a well-known violinist. The concerts
of the Germania continued for two years, whereupon
Henry Gordon Thunder, director of the
Philadelphia Choral Society, took up the work
and out of the same material organised a Philadelphia
Orchestra ; his concerts, Uke those of Mr.
Stoll, however, were tentative in character, and
served chiefly to disclose the inadequacy of the
players. After five years of these praiseworthy
but futile efibrts a number of the most prominent
men and women in social and musical circles
formed the Orchestral Association. Some of
the foremost workers in the new enterprise
were the cultivated amateurs who had formed a
'Symphony Society of Philadelphia' in 1893,
with Dr. W. W. Gilchrist as conductor ; this
Society gave concerts from time to time until
the new orchestra, a brief forerunner of the
present organisation, appeared on the field.
This new orchestra gave two concerts in the
spring of 1900 with Fritz Scheel as conductor.
Mr. Scheel had been an assistant to Dr. von Biilow
in Hamburg, and was a man of fine musical parts
and splendid energy. The success of the two concerts
was such as to induce the Association to
send him abroad to recruit the orchestra, and
make of it a first-class symphonic organisation.
The first regular season of the newly recruited
orchestra was given in 1900-1, and from that
time till his death in February 1907, Mr.
Scheel remained conductor of the band ; he was
succeeded in the season of 1907-8 by Karl
Pohlig. The Philadelphia Orchestra does not
confine its ministrations to Philadelphia, but
besides twenty afternoon and twenty evening
concerts there, gives concerts each year in other
neighbouring towns and cities, such as Wilmington,
Del., Harrisburg, Pa., Trenton, N.J.,
Easton, Pa., Beading, Pa., Baltimore and
Washington. H. E. K.
Pittsburgh.
PiTTSBUKGH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA. The
incentive to organise a permanent concert
orchestra in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, came
with Andrew Carnegie's gift to the city of a
building that should contain a library, art
gallery, museum, and music hall. The building
was dedicated in 1895, and the Art Society
undertook to raise fimds to support an orchestra
for three years. The first season of the Orchestra
was begun on Feb. 27, 1896. Frederic
Archer was conductor. Twenty concerts
were given that year in Pittsburgh, and in
the two years following, twenty in Pittsburgh
and in other towns, seven in the season 1896-97,
and five in 1897-98. Mr. Archer was chiefly
known as an organist, but he had had some experience
in the English provinces as a conductor.
He was succeeded as conductor by Victor Herbert
in 1898. In the season of 1898-99 the concerts
given numbered twenty in Pittsburgh and
ninein other places. The next season the number