The World's Peace Jubilee and International Musical Festival of 1872 took place in the Back Bay area of Boston, Massachusetts. Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore directed the festival, which lasted some 18 days. The jubilee honored the ending of the Franco-Prussian War.
For this well-publicized, high-profile, widely anticipated event, architect William G. Preston designed the "colosseum, with a seating capacity of 100,000, ...erected at a cost of half a million dollars." [1] J.H. Wilcox & Co. designed the 43-foot high pipe organ. [2] At opening ceremonies on June 17, 1872, before some 15,000 spectators, Phillips Brooks presented a prayer and Boston mayor William Gaston and Nathaniel Prentice Banks gave speeches. "Unfortunately the size of the building and the din of the workmen caused passages of the prayer and speeches to be inaudible." [3]
Many musicians performed at the jubilee. During the festival "the bands of the Grenadier guards, from London, of the Garde republicaine, from Paris, of the Kaiser Franz regiment, from Berlin, and a band from Dublin, Ireland: with Johann Strauss, the waltz-king, Franz Abt, the German song-writer, and many famous soloists, vocal and instrumental, were among the foreign attractions." [1] One concert featured a "performance of Verdi's Il Trovatore by a 2,000-member orchestra, conducted by Johann Strauss, Jr., and 100 assistants, accompanied by a 20,000-voice chorus." [4] The members of the chorus came "from all parts of the Union," [2] and were directed by Carl Zerrahn. [5] A new piece, titled Festival Hymn: Peace and Music, was composed for this Jubilee by American composer, Dudley Buck. [6]
The Fisk University Jubilee Singers also gave a concert, the first time African American "singers [were] included in a big musical production" in the country. [7] An original performance by black female players, the Hyers Sisters, was also well-received. Johann Strauss performed on violin: "All eyes were riveted upon the expressive face and the almost eloquent arm of Herr Strauss. Every ear was strained to catch a sound from the violin on which he ever and anon laid the bow with a passion and surety unexcelled. A storm of applause marked the conclusion of the waltz, which was at once re-demanded and heard anew." [3] Other performers included pianist Franz Bendel; vocalist Madame Rudersdorff; the United States Marine Band; Arabella Goddard; [3] and Madame Peschka-Leutner. [8]
The jubilee provided au courant "Press and Telegraph Rooms ...furnished with all desirable accommodations for the members of the press, while the telegraphic facilities are ample for communicating with all parts of the world." [2]
Despite enthusiastic audiences, the festival suffered financially, partly from lower-than-expected attendance, and partly from setbacks during construction of the building. Some attendees responded negatively to the experience overall. John Dwight wrote in his influential periodical Dwight's Journal of Music: "The great, usurping, tyrannizing, noisy and pretentious thing is over, and there is a general feeling of relief, as if a heavy, brooding nightmare had been lifted from us all." [9] However, the enormousness of the 1872 international jubilee in terms of audience, publicity, and programming created a precedent which served to inspire similar festivals in later years.
Johann Baptist Strauss II, also known as Johann Strauss Jr., the Younger or the Son, was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas as well as a violinist. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas and a ballet. In his lifetime, he was known as "The Waltz King", and was largely responsible for the popularity of the waltz in Vienna during the 19th century. Some of Johann Strauss's most famous works include "The Blue Danube", "Kaiser-Walzer", "Tales from the Vienna Woods", "Frühlingsstimmen", and the "Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka". Among his operettas, Die Fledermaus and Der Zigeunerbaron are the best known.
Johann Baptist Strauss I, also known as Johann Strauss Sr., the Elder or the Father, was an Austrian composer of the Romantic Period. He was famous for his light music, namely waltzes, polkas, and galops, which he popularized alongside Joseph Lanner, thereby setting the foundations for his sons—Johann, Josef and Eduard—to carry on his musical dynasty. He is best known for his composition of the Radetzky March.
The New England Conservatory of Music (NEC) is a private music school in Boston, Massachusetts. The conservatory is located on Huntington Avenue along the Avenue of the Arts near Boston Symphony Hall, and is home to approximately 750 students pursuing undergraduate and graduate studies, and 1,500 more in its Preparatory School and School of Continuing Education. NEC offers bachelor's degrees in instrumental and vocal classical music performance, contemporary musical arts, composition, jazz studies, music history, and music theory, as well as graduate degrees in collaborative piano, conducting, and musicology. The conservatory has also partnered with Harvard University and Tufts University to create joint double-degree, five-year programs.
'S gibt nur a Kaiserstadt, 's gibt nur a Wien! is a polka written by Johann Strauss II in 1864. The title of this polka was inspired from the waltz duet in the Singspiel Aline by Adolf Bäuerle with music by Wenzel Müller first performed at the Theater in der Leopoldstadt on 9 October 1822. The song titled 'Was macht denn der Prater' was a hit during its day whereas its refrain 'Ja nur ein' Kaiserstadt, ja nur a Wien' became a popular household phrase.
"Frühlingsstimmen", Op. 410 is an orchestral waltz, with optional solo soprano voice, written in 1882 by Johann Strauss II.
Edwin Arthur Jones, was an American composer. His works include a cantata and a large oratorio in three parts, modeled after Handel's Messiah.
Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore was an Irish-born American composer and military bandmaster who lived and worked in the United States after 1848. While serving in the Union Army during the U.S. Civil War, Gilmore wrote the lyrics to the song "When Johnny Comes Marching Home". This was published under the pseudonym Louis Lambert in September 1863.
The Handel and Haydn Society is an American chorus and period instrument orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. Known colloquially as 'H+H', the organization has been in continual performance since its founding in 1815, the longest serving such performing arts organization in the United States.
The Johann Strauss Orchestra is a pops orchestra founded in the Netherlands by André Rieu in 1987. The orchestra is well known for performing classical works with a distinctly unorthodox frivolity, joking with the audience and performing all sorts of antics.
The National Peace Jubilee was a celebration that commemorated the end of the American Civil War, organized by Patrick Gilmore in Boston from June 15-19, 1869. It featured an orchestra and a chorus, as well as numerous soloists. More than 11,000 performers participated, including the famous violinist Ole Bull as the orchestra's concertmaster, and Carl Zerrahn as director of the choral forces. The Jubilee became the "high-water mark in the influence of the band in American life". Along with the World's Peace Jubilee and International Musical Festival in 1872, it made Gilmore a famous composer and bandmaster. For the Jubilee, a newly commissioned "Hymn of Peace" was written by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, set to the music from "American Hymn" by Matthias Keller (1813-1875) and performed on the opening day.
Oliver Ditson was an American businessman and founder of Oliver Ditson and Company, one of the major music publishing houses of the late 19th century.
Lava-Ströme, opus 74, is the name of a waltz composed by Johann Strauss II. It was written to commemorate the volcanic activity within Vesuvius in 1850. The waltz was first performed at a benefit ball going under the title of a "Ball in Vesuvius" at the Sofienbad-Saal in Vienna on January 29, 1850.
Farewell to America is the name of a waltz composed by Johann Strauss II. In the immediate wake of the composer's visit to the United States in the summer of 1872, when he conducted several times in Boston and New York, no less than seven publishers issued waltzes supposedly composed by Strauss. Only two from the total of nine compositions that were published are known to have been performed by Strauss during his tour of the United States: the Jubilee Waltz and the Manhattan Waltzes. It is unknown whether or not the other compositions that were published were written by Strauss while he was in America, completed by him after his return to Vienna and sent through the mail, or that some of the publications had nothing to do with Strauss himself, but were compiled by publishers anxious to benefit from Strauss' American tour and the clamour for new Strauss music.
The Great Waltz is a 1972 American biographical musical film directed by Andrew L. Stone, and starring Horst Buchholz, Mary Costa, and Nigel Patrick, that follows 40 years in the life of composer Johann Strauss and his family. It is based on the musical The Great Waltz, and was Stone's final film. M-G-M released a previous film adaptation in 1938, which is about a different phase of the younger Strauss's life.
Henry F. Williams was a musician and composer in Boston, Massachusetts, in the late 19th century. He was one of two black musicians to play in the orchestra at the 1872 National Peace Jubilee. His arrangements received widespread popularity. Later in his life he was primarily a music teacher. Williams has been called the second best known black composer of his time after Frank Johnson, with whom he worked.
Florence Atherton Spalding was an American music teacher and a composer from Boston, Massachusetts.
William A. Penno (1843–1929), known by his stage name William A. Huntley, was a composer, music teacher, and vocal and instrumental performer in minstrel and vaudeville traditions. Playing his 5-string banjo before crowds that came to number in the low thousands, he sang in a high tenor and played his banjo bare fingered, picking the strings in a style today named "classic banjo." His published compositions include banjo instrumentals and parlor music. Huntley spent his working life performing and teaching in the off season. He performed throughout the United States and toured Europe as a part of several different minstrel groups. A highlight of his performing career was to play before the Prince and Princess of Wales, about 1880 at Her Majesty's Theatre in London. He moved away from minstrel shows by the 1880s, and "took pride" that he could perform without blackface stage makeup. He focused on building respectability for the banjo, through teaching, composition, and performance recitals. He was featured in the S. S. Stewart Company's catalog and began to play the company's banjeaurine. In 1888 he performed before a crowd of 2,000 people in his hometown, Providence, Rhode Island.
The Strauss Dynasty is an Austrian biographical film in six parts from 1991. It depicts the careers of Johann Strauss (father), the composer of the Radetzky March, and his son Johann Strauss (son) ("Schani"), the composer of the waltz The Blue Danube, who, despite his father's resistance, also became a musician and competed with his father as a waltz composer.
Rudolph Aronson was an American impresario and composer who was most notable for founding the Casino Theatre in New York City.
Theodore Bendix or Theo. Bendix was an American composer, classical violinist, musical director, and opera conductor. He became a professional musician at the age of thirteen and was hired as a conductor for an opera company when he was sixteen. Before he was eighteen, he had written the music for the show, resulting in the hit song "My Sweetheart".
