Finding Their Voices - Amherst College

As the Germania soon found, socialist principles were remarkably well suited to
cohesiveness as an ensemble. Its socialist organization meant that while performing, it
was every member’s “holy duty” never to exhibit individual mannerisms, resulting in a
quality of sound that had been unheard of in nineteenth-century America. Every member
was considered to be the equal of every other member, leading to a mutual respect
amongst the players that would last throughout Germania’s existence. After a very short
time performing in London and Berlin, the group decided to emigrate to America.
Armed with letters of recommendation from a variety of sources in London and
Berlin, as soon as the orchestra arrived in the New World it made waves in the world of
American music. Its first concert, attended by the New York Philharmonic Society (then
a small and decidedly amateur organization) as well as by many music educators, aroused
“indescribable enthusiasm” in the audience. 211 The most well received piece on the
program was a “delicate and extremely tender” rendering of Mendelssohn’s overture to
The Midsummer Night’s Dream, a piece rarely performed in the United States due to its
high technical difficulty, well past the skill-levels of the country’s contemporary amateur
orchestras. 212
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211 Albrecht, Skizzen, 12, trans. by Newman, Good Music for a Free People, 37.
212 Thomas Ryan, one of the few professional musicians in the early nineteenth century, gives a humorous
anecdote in his autobiography regarding the overture. Root had come to America from Ireland, where he
had played in the Dublin Philharmonic Orchestra. Remembering Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s
Dream as one of his favorite pieces, when he joined an American orchestra he recommended the piece to
the conductor. When the scores came in, the group tried it. As Ryan relates: “Our conductor was Mr. Geo.
J. Webb, an excellent general musician, but who had never heard the overture. He began by telling us he
had no score; so he stood up alongside of the first-violin desk and prepared to conduct. Rapping on the
desk, he gave the signal to begin; out piped two flutes—nothing else. Re rapped again, implying that the
players had not been ready to begin; then he said, ‘We will try again.’ He gave the signal—and out piped
the two flutes. That caused a little titter of surprise, and we all looked quizzically at each other. Mr. Webb,
however, dutifully gave the signal for the next ‘hold’ or chord, when two clarinets joined the two flutes!
More surprise. At the third hold the fagotti and horns were added, and at the fourth hold the entire wood
and wind instruments, ass sounding most distressingly out of tune. This dissonant and unlooked-for result
was followed by a dead pause; then every one of the players broke out with a hearty laugh of derision. […]
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