Messiah Annual Performance: 14th

Event Information

Venue(s):
Cooper Institute

Conductor(s):
Theodore Thomas [see also Thomas Orchestra]
Frédéric Louis Ritter

Price: $3 reseved box seats; $2.50 reseved parquette & balcony; $2; $1 family circle

Event Type:
Choral, Orchestral

Performance Forces:
Instrumental, Vocal

Record Information

Status:
Published

Last Updated:
25 October 2017

Performance Date(s) and Time(s)

25 Dec 1865, Evening

Program Details



Performers and/or Works Performed

Citations

1)
Advertisement: New York Herald, 11 December 1865, 7.
2)
Advertisement: New-York Times, 11 December 1865, 7.
3)
Announcement: New York Post, 13 December 1865.

     Announces principle performers.

4)
Announcement: New York Post, 22 December 1865.

     “The choruses – if we may judge from the rehearsals – will be given on Christmas night with unusual precision and effect.”

5)
Announcement: New-York Times, 25 December 1865, 5.
6)
Announcement: New-York Daily Tribune, 25 December 1865, 1.

     “The numerical strength of the Society is said to be largely increased, numbering now between 150 and 200 performing members.”

7)
Review: New York Post, 26 December 1865.

     “One of the largest audiences ever assembled in this city at an oratorio performance met last evening in the large hall of Cooper Institute. The room is peculiarly unfavorable to musical sound, and much of the effect of the choruses was thereby lost.  An indifferent orchestra added but little to the excellence of the performance.  In the vocal department, the tenors were not up to the mark.

     Having thus alluded to all the drawbacks of the performance, there remains only the agreeable task of praise. The choruses were given with great precision, and the solos, as a general thing, rendered with taste.  Miss Brainerd’s ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth,’ Miss Hutchings’s ‘He was despised,’ and Mr. Campbell’s ‘Why do the Nations,’ were admirable specimens of oratorio singing.  Mr. Geary sustained the tenor part.

     The Harmonic Society deserves the greatest credit for persevering in the production of oratorio music under obvious disadvantages, chief of which is the lack of a suitable music hall. This will, however, come in time, and with it there will be a great organ. Then the Harmonic Society will be of marked service in this neglected class of music, in which Boston and London are so far in advance of this city.

     The Harmonic Society is engaged in rehearsing ‘Samson,’ which they will produce in February. Under the baton of Mr. Ritter, the presidency of Mr. Berry and with the skillful piano-forte assistance of Mr. Connolly, the Monday evening rehearsals at the chapel, corner of Fourth avenue and Twenty-second street, are among the most agreeable of musical reunions. We are glad to learn that the society is more prosperous than it has been for years back; and the liberal patronage of the public last night, after full allowance for the profuse liberality usually displayed on such occasions in the matter of complimentary tickets, must have materially added to its pecuniary resources.”

8)
Review: Dwight's Journal of Music, 01 January 1866, 168.

     “The Harmonic Society gave its fourteenth annual performance of Handel’s ‘Messiah’ in the hall of the Cooper Institute and the band of the Seventh Regiment, assisted by some resident artist, gave a concert at the Academy of Music in the evening.  The latter was unsuccessful in point of attendance, and does not call for any special remark.  The performance of the ‘Messiah’ was attended by nearly three thousand persons; two thousand tickets were sold, and taking into consideration, besides the known generosity of the society in the presentation of tickets to its friends, it will be seen that the capacities of the Cooper auditorium were fairly tested.  The singing of the soloists, Misses Brainard and Hutchings, Messrs. Geary and Campbell, was satisfactory on the whole; and the choral performance showed an advance in precision and expression, upon those of last year.  To make any comparison between the performance of this and the oraorio societies of England and Germany, would be simply absurd; for where they number their members by thousands sometimes, the Harmonic, our largest society, counts at present only between two and three hundred singing members!  With such small means, and only one, and that a partial orchestral rehearsal, Mr. F. L. Ritter, the conductor of the society, deserves the highest credit for having obtained even so satisfoactory a performance.  When Mr. Ritter undertook the conductorship of this society, two years ago, it claimed only forty singers! And was encumbered by debt.  These encumbrances are now happily cleared away, while, attracted by Mr. Ritter’s disinterested enthusiasm and energy in the cause of the highest in art, new members are constantly joining the society, from among our best amateurs and church singers, and there is now really hope of a future for Oratorio here.”

9)
Review: New-Yorker Musik-Zeitung, 01 January 1866, 9.

     The performance was noteworthy.