Germania Hall | |
Location | 40430 County Highway 11, Germania Township, Minnesota |
---|---|
Coordinates | 46°12′58.5″N94°58′5″W / 46.216250°N 94.96806°W Coordinates: 46°12′58.5″N94°58′5″W / 46.216250°N 94.96806°W |
Area | 1 acre (0.40 ha) |
Built | 1917 |
Built by | John Johnson |
NRHP reference No. | 95001377 [1] |
Designated | November 29, 1995 |
Germania Hall is a historic community hall in Germania Township, Minnesota, United States. It was built in 1917 as a practice and performing space for a community band. Later it served as a general event venue for its rural township. [2] The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995 for having local significance in the themes of performing arts and social history. [3] It was nominated for being a rare surviving example of a community band hall, and for its long service as the township's social and political center. [2]
Germania Hall is a simple one-story, wood-frame building with a gable roof. Its footprint measures 28 by 50 feet (8.5 by 15 m). It stands on a poured concrete foundation and has shiplap siding. [2]
The main entry is a single door centered on the western façade. The interior is a single room with a stage at the eastern end raised about three feet (0.9 m) above the hardwood floor. [2]
Around 1915, 20 area residents formed a brass band. This was a common hobby in the United States from the mid-19th century through about 1920. The instruments were easy to learn and demand for performances was high, as virtually any public gathering from fairs to grand opening ceremonies to funerals was considered incomplete without a brass band. The majority of the members of the newly formed Germania Cornet Band lived and worked on farms within three miles of each other. They were mostly young, American-born sons of Swedish and Norwegian immigrants who had come to the United States in the 1880s. However the oldest band member, 43-year-old Gustaf Peterson, had himself left Sweden in 1892 and settled in Germania Township in 1903. Several band members were siblings, and at least two were just 13 years old. [2]
As founding member Carl Peterson later recalled, "none of us had ever played an instrument—we didn't even know how to read notes, but we thought it would be fun to have a band." The group hired "Professor" George Mundy of nearby Eagle Bend, Minnesota, to be their band director, paying him $5 (equivalent to $125in 2021) per practice session. Mundy helped them order their instruments—brass bands were so common that package deals of all necessary instruments plus sheet music were available by mail-order from several companies. Peterson went on: "It was a great day when our instruments arrived—everyone tried to blow the horns, beat the drums, etc." An early photograph of the Germania Cornet Band shows members wielding five types of horn, three types of trumpet, three clarinets, one trombone, a snare drum, and a bass drum. Almost as important as instruments were a band's uniforms—the Germania Band's outfits were black with gold braid and the initials "G.B." stitched on the collar. [2]
The band performed at concerts and barn dances in the area. Their repertoire consisted of locally popular music: a mix of polkas, waltzes, two-steps, and some Nordic folk music. The bandmembers took no money individually, pooling their earnings to pay their instructor Mundy. In the summer of 1916 they performed twice in the barn of member Sigvard Bjerken's family. That December they gave a concert at the opera house in nearby Clarissa, Minnesota. Initially the band had been practicing in a vacant building, but by March 1917 they had earned enough to commission their own band hall. Bjerken's parents gave them a free 20-year lease on an acre at the edge of their farm. The band paid Clarissa resident John Johnson $150 (equivalent to $3,173in 2021) to design and build a suitable space, and they assisted him in the labor. [2]
The band hall was dedicated on September 23, 1917, in a ceremony that included orators, a picnic dinner, performances by the Germania Cornet Band and a few other bands, and a "loyalty demonstration" intended to counteract growing discrimination against immigrant communities as the United States entered World War I. The following month, band director George Mundy—who had also helped found the Clarissa High School Band—moved away to Pelican Rapids, Minnesota, to start a new musical group there. The Germania Cornet Band was able to continue without him, holding practices, concerts, and dances at their new hall and performing at numerous community events. They also opened up the hall to others. In September 1918 it was the site of a dance benefitting the Red Cross and a locally produced play. Other area bands performed there and dances were scheduled regularly. The township board began using the hall for meetings and elections. During Prohibition, the organizer of the regular Saturday night dances alerted the county sheriff to troublemakers getting drunk on moonshine, resulting in a January 1925 raid that landed seven young men in jail. The Clarissa Independent proudly reported that all but two of them were "outsiders" from Bartlett Township and Aldrich, Minnesota. [2]
The Germania Cornet Band folded in the early 1920s. Around the nation, the heyday of the community brass band was drawing to a close as phonographs, movies, and radio provided new ways to hear music, and the advent of cars, telephones, and better roads reduced the isolation of rural communities. However these same factors eased the creation of rural community clubs, and the newly formed Germania Community Club took on a key role in local social life. Throughout the 1930s the club sponsored educational lectures, talent shows, and spelling bees at the hall. They also organized a popular annual picnic that typically included music, dancing, speeches, food concessions, and sporting contests such as races, horseshoes, wrestling, boxing, tug-of-war, and baseball. [2]
In 1950 the hall was donated to the Germania Community Club and they purchased its one-acre (0.4 ha) lot for $50 (equivalent to $563in 2021). A 1968 newspaper article noted that the hall was still regularly used by 4-H and other groups for athletic practices and events, school programs, talent shows, township meetings, and elections. At the time of the hall's National Register nomination in the mid-1990s, the Germania Community Club continued to hold monthly meetings and dances there. [2] The township government has since relocated to a building that originated as a 1941 school, but the old hall is "still used for occasional dances, parties, and even as a large family’s hunting headquarters". [4]
A brass instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by sympathetic vibration of air in a tubular resonator in sympathy with the vibration of the player's lips. Brass instruments are also called labrosones or labrophones, from Latin and Greek elements meaning 'lip' and 'sound'.
The cornet is a brass instrument similar to the trumpet but distinguished from it by its conical bore, more compact shape, and mellower tone quality. The most common cornet is a transposing instrument in B♭, though there is also a soprano cornet in E♭ and cornets in A and C. All are unrelated to the Renaissance and early Baroque cornett.
The flugelhorn, also spelled fluegelhorn, flugel horn, or flügelhorn, is a brass instrument that resembles the trumpet and cornet but has a wider, more conical bore. Like trumpets and cornets, most flugelhorns are pitched in B♭. It is a type of valved bugle, developed in Germany in the early 19th century from a traditional English valveless bugle. The first version of a valved bugle was sold by Heinrich Stölzel in Berlin in 1828. The valved bugle provided Adolphe Sax with the inspiration for his B♭ soprano (contralto) saxhorns, on which the modern-day flugelhorn is modeled.
An orchestra is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families, including
John Philip Sousa was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era known primarily for American military marches. He is known as "The March King" or the "American March King", to distinguish him from his British counterpart Kenneth J. Alford. Among his best-known marches are "The Stars and Stripes Forever", "Semper Fidelis", "The Liberty Bell", "The Thunderer", and "The Washington Post".
Walter Maynard Ferguson CM was a Canadian jazz trumpeter and bandleader. He came to prominence in Stan Kenton's orchestra before forming his own big band in 1957. He was noted for his bands, which often served as stepping stones for up-and-coming talent, his versatility on several instruments, and his ability to play in a high register.
A concert band, also called a wind band, wind ensemble, wind symphony, wind orchestra, symphonic band, the symphonic winds, or symphonic wind ensemble, is a performing ensemble consisting of members of the woodwind, brass, and percussion families of instruments, and occasionally including the harp, double bass, or bass guitar. On rare occasions, additional, non-traditional instruments may be added to such ensembles such as piano, synthesizer, or electric guitar.
Music of Tonga refers to music derived from the island Tonga in the islands of Polynesia. Music of Tonga today generally falls under the category of traditional music that has withstood the test of time, or into one of the two opposing genres of religious and secular music. Tongan music can be either very emotional and somewhat modern with instrumental makeup including modern brass instruments, or conversely can be more traditional and consist of only drums and voices. In this way, Tongan music is very diverse despite the fact that it is contained to a fairly small island, which means that the different cultures and styles co-exist on the small land mass together without blending.
In Britain, a brass band is a musical ensemble comprising a standardized range of brass and percussion instruments. The modern form of the brass band in the United Kingdom dates back to the 19th century, with a vibrant tradition of competition based around communities and local industry, with colliery bands being particularly notable. The Stalybridge Old Band was formed in 1809 and was perhaps the first civilian brass band in the world.
Edwin Eugene Bagley was an American composer, most famous for composing the march National Emblem.
The Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band was formed in 1881. It is based in Brighouse, in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, England.
A brass band is a musical ensemble generally consisting entirely of brass instruments, most often with a percussion section. Ensembles that include brass and woodwind instruments can in certain traditions also be termed brass bands, but may more correctly termed military bands, concert bands, or "brass and reed" bands.
The Marching Illini (MI) is the marching band of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The Marching Illini is an organization which annually includes approximately 400 students enrolled in the University of Illinois. Part of the College of Fine and Applied Arts and Illini Athletics, the Marching Illini represent virtually every college, discipline, and major on the University's diverse Urbana-Champaign campus.
Backworth Colliery Band are a traditional British Brass Band based in Backworth, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. The band consist of 27 senior members and 15 junior members, all of whom play brass or percussion instruments fitting the traditional brass band instrumentation.
William Paris Chambers was an American composer, cornet soloist, and bandmaster of the late 19th century.
The Col Ballroom is a historic building located in the West End of Davenport, Iowa, United States. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and on the Davenport Register of Historic Properties as the Saengerfest Halle.
Callender's Cableworks Band was an amateur brass band made up of members employed by and under the patronage of Erith Works at the Callender Cable & Construction Co. Ltd, later British Insulated Callender's Cables, in Belvedere, Kent, and performing in London and south-east England. They were prolific broadcasters in the early years of BBC Radio, and won 25 brass band competitions.
The Stonewall Brigade Band is a community concert band based in Staunton, Virginia. It is the United States's oldest continuous community band sponsored by local government and funded, in part, by tax monies. Originally a brass band, the band was formed in 1855 as the Mountain Sax Horn Band. It was also called Turner's Silver Cornet Band by 1859, for its first director, A. J. Turner. At the onset of the American Civil War, the band was mustered into the 5th Virginia Infantry Regiment, part of the Stonewall Brigade under Stonewall Jackson.
Thomas P. Coates was a 19th-century American musician who achieved initial prominence in Pennsylvania for his performances on the cornet and French horn. The director of Pomp's Cornet Band in Easton, Pennsylvania, he was commissioned as the first conductor of the regimental band of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the early months of the American Civil War. Post-war, he became a prolific and popular composer of band music, and was subsequently nicknamed "the Father of Band Music in America."
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires |journal=
(help)