Music

Almost the first music in the Atlanta vicinity came from the lusty throats of the railroad construction men in such simple airs as, "Joe, Crack Corn." Their only accompaniments were bird cries and the thud of axes, but when they went home in the evenings they sometimes twanged mouth organs or scraped fiddles. A little later, when wives and daughters came, these same riddles were used for square dances. On Sundays the woods rang with old favorite hymns of Charles Wesley and others and with the Negro slaves' spirituals that presented a mixture of biblical and African imagery. Soon the musical and dramatic ingenuity of the people was aroused by local incidents—a log-rolling, a feud, or a romance—to the making of ballads, new verses being constantly added by different groups. Ballad making was popular until the War between the States brought a new collection of martial and sentimental songs, and even at present ballad singing is a regular feature of the annual fiddlers convention at the city auditorium.

The settlers, though busy from daybreak to dark with their railroads, stores, and sawmills, were ambitious that their children should have better cultural opportunities. In 1857, ten years after the incorporation of the city, Mrs. J.A. Wright opened a school for young ladies where music was taught, and in the same year Carl F. Barth held music classes, and the firm of Barth and Nicolai sold pianos and stringed instruments. Instruction was principally for the girls of a family; a boy who played the piano had to be adept with fists as well as fingers if he escaped the charge of effeminacy. Vocalizing was more permissible, and many a manly baritone joined the sopranos in the evenings to render the sad love songs of the fifties.

By 1860 the Atlanta Amateurs, a mixed choral organization, was appearing before large audiences. Soon after the war broke out, this group was not only performing in its own city but, with the aid of free transportation offered by the Atlanta & West Point Railroad, was making trips to other Southern towns in order to raise funds for the Confederacy. Atlanta ladies, proud in Georgia homespun, were escorted by ragged soldiers home on leave to the old Athenaeum to hear these singers begin with the "Southern Marseillaise," continue with "Banks of the Blue Mozelle," "Cottage by the Sea," and other sweet songs, and wind up with the broadly satirical ditty on Abraham Lincoln, "Root, Hog, or Die." Sometimes benefits were given for a specific fighting force such as Captain (later General) John B. Gordon's "Raccoon Roughs." When General John M. Morgan escaped from his Union captors and came to the city, the Atlanta Amateurs gave him two benefits that netted him $250.

One of the most popular musical performers of the sixties was the pianist Blind Tom from Columbus, Georgia. Described as the "most amazing wonder of the age" and "a second Beethoven," Tom gave several concerts annually at the Athenaeum. Although virtually an idiot and knowing nothing of notes, he had amazing imitative powers and was able to reproduce perfectly any composition, however complex, which was played within his hearing. The most brilliant of his feats was the rendition of three compositions simultaneously.

After the war vocal music continued to be popular, but the new martial airs created a demand for brass bands. Stringed music also began to find a larger place—mandolin and guitar clubs and lady harpists delighted their audiences. When the impoverished citizens began to make enough money to refurnish their parlors, more of them began to include the piano as a necessary fixture. Atlanta music was not silenced even during the most humiliating days of Reconstruction and Northern military rule. Choral concerts were given at the Bell-Johnson Hall on Mitchell Street, and the Fulton Brass and String Band made the street crowds tap their feet in rhythm. In 1869 "Will F. Clark is advertised as giving instructions on the violin, guitar, harp, piano, and various other instruments. Clark, leader of the Gate City Silver Band, provided music for parades, balls, private parties, serenades, etc., at reasonable rates."

Some of Atlanta's finest religious music during the 1870's was presented by the choir of old St. Philip's Episcopal Church, directed by Ludwig Harmsen, an accomplished Scandinavian pianist who had been in the city during the war. Old directories reveal that this decade brought many music teachers. In 1872 the city's first white orchestra was brought by Ferdinand Wurm, a man of remarkable linguistic and musical attainments, who had formerly taught at the university in Munich. Professor Wurm, who had taught Sidney Lanier to play the flute, performed on almost all instruments. His orchestra, the original members of which were the professor and his four sons, consisted of a first violin, second violin, bass violin, clarinet, and cornet. It was later enlarged, but for some years, in accordance with general musical custom, there was no piano. For more than 40 years Wurms Orchestra played at weddings and receptions and on all kinds of public occasions. Sunday concerts were given in the dining room of the fashionable Kimball House, but only sacred music was played.

During this decade musical organizations were formed under the names of famous composers. The first of these, the Beethoven Society, met on the third floor of the old Georgia Railroad Depot at the foot of Alabama Street. Here this mixed group rehearsed choral selections with instrumental accompaniment, but public performances were presented in DeGive's Opera House on Marietta Street. Gaslight from chandeliers danced over brilliant audiences of men in tails and women in satins and velvets with long white gloves; the gas footlights flared on the tiers of singers, who were seated pyramid fashion with the various leads strategically distributed. The general taste of the time ran to songs about gravestones and severed hearts, but these choral societies insisted upon rendering good music. Although social prestige counted for something in these societies, they caused the breakdown of many old barriers. A strict father might protest when his delicately nurtured daughter was called upon to sing soprano to a bartender's tenor—but in the name of music it was usually allowed.

The Beethoven Society contented itself with solos, choruses, and occasional single scenes from grand opera; but the Rossini Club, organized in 1876, presented two or three entire operas, beginning with Balfe's Bohemian Girl in November of its first year. A few years later the Mendelssohn Society was established by a young Italian pianist, Alfredo Barili, who came to the city in 1880. A nephew of the famous singer Adelina Patti, he was for many years among Atlanta's leading music teachers and most distinguished musicians. As a composer he became known for the songs "There Little Girl, Don't Cry" and "Cradle Song" and for the piano compositions "Modern Minuet," "Miniature Gavotte," and "Butterfly Waltz."

The number of Atlanta's local musicians increased during the last years of the century. Brass bands and mandolin clubs continued to flourish, and a fiddlers' convention was inaugurated in 1885. More cultivated tastes were pleased by the concerts given by the Prather Home School for Girls and the Women's Exchange. But a perpetually increasing number of citizens demanded to hear the best internationally known musicians available. In 1883 alone, Atlanta audiences heard Minnie Hauk and Company, the Duff Grand Opera Company, Grau's English Opera Company, and the Theodore Thomas Orchestra. In 1895 Atlanta singers and pianists performed at the Cotton States and International Exposition, which drew great crowds to the hilly acres that later became Piedmont Park. Sometimes scores of gray-uniformed veterans burst into the rebel yell after "Dixie" or "Tenting Tonight" had been sung. The Damrosch Opera Company made Atlanta better acquainted with the heavy, dramatic Wagnerian pieces by the presentation of Lohengrin and Siegfried, and the New Orleans Opera Company gave the French musical dramas Les Huguenots and Romeo and Juliet. In 1898 the Atlanta Concert Association brought such famous artists as De Pachman, Rosenthal, Bloomfield-Ziegler, Mark Hambourg, Lillian Nordica, and Nellie Melba. Eleven years later, when the municipal auditorium-armory was opened, this body became the Atlanta IVIusic Festival Association.

In the first year of the new century the Klindworth Conservatory was opened by Professor and Mrs. Kurt Mueller in the then fashionable residential section of Courtland Street near Cain. The Muellers soon became salient figures in the musical receptions that were given in the homes of Mr. and Mrs. John Pappenheimer and Colonel and Mrs. William Lawson Peel—lavish, brilliant affairs at which Atlanta's aristocracy mingled with the aristocracy of the music world. In 1905 the Muellers achieved an outstanding success when the conservatory presented a program of Brahms selections, then considered odd and difficult by most Atlanta audiences. Offering a 36-week scholastic year, the Klindworth Conservatory served Atlanta for years by capably teaching not only vocal and instrumental music but regular academic courses. In 1909 it was combined with the Atlanta Conservatory of Music, which had been formed two years previously, and under the latter name the combined organizations continued to function until 1938. Another group that was active in the formation of sound musical taste in the city was the Atlanta Musical Association, organized in 1908 with 15 or 20 charter members under the leadership of Bertha Har-wood. In the following year the Schleiwen String Quartette, formed from the symphony orchestra of this association, made Atlanta still more widely known as a musical center when it toured under the Atlanta Lyceum Bureau.

That good music was becoming important to increasing numbers here is shown by the construction of the new $200,000 auditorium-armory, with a seating capacity of more than 5,000. In May 1909, shortly after its completion, the auditorium was opened by the most dazzling musical event up to that time—the Atlanta Music Festival, featuring Olive Fremstad, Geraldine Farrar, Giovanni Zenatello, Antonio Scotti, Ricardo Martin, and the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra with its young stars Mary Lansing, contralto, and Albert Spalding, violinist. Five hundred local singers formed the chorus, and the four concerts were attended by more than 25,000. The Atlanta Music Festival Association installed a large pipe organ in the following year and presented Edwin H. Lemare in the opening concert. Percy Starnes, later selected as municipal organist, inaugurated regular Sunday afternoon concerts which were continued by his successors, Edwin Arthur Craft and Charles Sheldon, Jr. Other well-known organists who gave recitals were Joseph Bonnet and Clarence Eddy.

The success of the festival of 1909 led the Atlanta Music Festival Association to the audacious plan of having an entire week of opera by the Metropolitan Opera Company of New York City as the festival of the following year. Despite the guarantee of more than $40,000 demanded by the company, this plan was carried out with overwhelming success. The greatest star of this week was Caruso, who sang in Aida and Pagliacci, but enthusiastic homage also was rendered to Farrar, who had won great popularity at her Atlanta debut the year before. Homer, Gadski, Amato, and other famous singers added to the luster of the occasion. At the end of the week the manager stated that "never before had the Metropolitan Opera Company sung to so many people or such an amount of money in one week." Until 1931 Atlanta was the only Southern city to feature the Metropolitan in a week of grand opera annually. After the success of the performances in Atlanta's Metropolitan Opera revivals of 1940 and 1941, it is believed that opera week will again become a regular date on the Atlanta calendar.

During the World War years, while the city auditorium was packed with young men in khaki shouting "Over There" at Sunday afternoon rallies, the serious music groups were working to bring the best vocal and instrumental performers to the city. In 1916 the Atlanta Music Club, organized the year before as the Woman's Choral Club, began its concert series, and two years later a succession of concerts that subsequently became the All-Star Concert Series was initiated. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Association was formed in 1922. A series of civic concerts with solo and orchestral selections was opened by the music club in 19271 and this organization has now joined with the Atlanta Philharmonic Society, formed in 1930, in sponsoring an annual series of these presentations.

In the first year of the new decade, Evelyn Jackson, then president of the Georgia Federation of Music Clubs, established the MacDowell Festival to honor the famous American composer Edward MacDowell. This festival was adopted by the entire Nation, the proceeds of the performance being used to provide funds for the Peterborough artists' colony founded by MacDowell. These years were notable also for the improvement of church music throughout the city. Charles A. Sheldon, Jr., organist at the Temple, became known for his traditional Jewish sacred music; Mrs. Victor B. Clark, at the Peachtree Christian Church, was the organist and director of the only Protestant antiphonal and chancel choir in the city; Joseph Ragan, organist and choir director at All Saints Episcopal Church, attracted large crowds by his Easter choral celebrations; the choir of St. Luke's Episcopal Church became known especially for the coloratura solos of Minna Hecker; and the Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church became still more widely celebrated for its midnight mass music on Christmas Eve. These are only a few of the churches that still provide sacred music of good quality.

Both talent and appreciation for fine music are now abundant in Atlanta, although the city badly needs a greater number of capable instructors and strong leadership for fusion of the divergent factors. The Ail-Star and Atlanta Music Club concerts provide the two best regular annual musical series. Atlanta is known for at least two fine voices —Minna Hecker, coloratura, and Edward Kane, tenor. The Emory University Glee Club, less than 20 years old, has become celebrated under the direction of Malcolm H. Dewey for its excellent choral programs. Especially notable are its Christmas carol singing and its presentations of Negro spirituals, which are sung by the chorus without effort to emulate Negro mannerisms but simply as good music. Among the first college organizations to dispense with mandolin clubs and jazz bands, this group has made numerous successful tours including two in England. In 1940 this glee club, assisted by the Emory Little Symphony Orchestra, combined with the Agnes Scott Glee Club to present two successful performances of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera Iolanthe.

Atlanta offers numerous facilities for a sound musical education. The Griffith School of Music, organized in 1890 by Mrs. Mary Butt Griffith, has been continued by the same family for half a century. Providing instruction in virtually all branches of instrumental music, this school makes a specialty of classes in the Italian harp. The Atlanta Conservatory closed in 1938, but many of its former instructors are now teaching independently. The Georgia Conservatory of Music, which was opened in Atlanta in 1940, was short-lived, closing after only one year of operation. "Well known among Atlanta's music teachers are Hugh Hodgson and Earle Chester Smith in piano, Elinor Whittemore King in violin, and Margaret Hecht in voice. Ruby Chalmers has served as an accompanist for several visiting artists. Annie Grace O'Callaghan, director of music in Atlanta high schools, has rendered excellent service to the city by her courses in general music and by periodic student performances of special choral, instrumental, and orchestral groups, and Ruth Weegand directs the grammar schools in a similar program of work. The WPA Music Project assists by giving frequent concerts in the schools.

Among numerous composers, Jane Mattingly, Elizabeth Hopson, and William O. Munn have received recognition for their children's music; Nan Bagby Stephens for songs for DuBose Heyward's play Porgy and her own Negro drama Roseanne; and Bonita Crowe for her songs and piano pieces.

Atlanta in recent years has become known for Negro music, especially for Heaven Bound, written and performed by members of the Big Bethel Methodist Church. Utilizing many of the old spirituals in the form of the miracle play, this piece has attracted large crowds in many performances. Kemper Harreld, director of music at Morehouse College, has done notable work with orchestras and glee clubs in various Negro schools and in the field of Negro folk music.

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