1.
1895 in art
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January 1 – Alphonse Muchas lithographed poster for the play Gismonda starring Sarah Bernhardt is posted in Paris. Bernhardt is so satisfied with its success that she gives Mucha a six-year contract, april 13 – The Russian Museum is established in Saint Petersburg by Nicholas II. April 30 – First Venice Biennale opens, july 3 – Paul Gauguin leaves France to settle permanently in Polynesia. October – Edvard Munch exhibits a series of his Love paintings in Christiania. November – Paul Cézanne has his first solo exhibition, at the Paris gallery of Ambroise Vollard, bernard Berenson publishes Lorenzo Lotto, An Essay in Constructive Art Criticism. P. H. Emerson publishes his last photographic book, Marsh Leaves, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum opened in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. W. Godward Mischief And Repose The Muse Erato At Her Lyre Winslow Homer – Cannon Rock George W. L
2.
Gustav Mahler
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Gustav Mahler was an Austrian late-Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century, born in Bohemia as a German-speaking Jew of humble circumstances, Mahler displayed his musical gifts at an early age. During his ten years in Vienna, Mahler—who had converted to Catholicism to secure the regular opposition. Late in his life he was director of New Yorks Metropolitan Opera. Mahlers œuvre is relatively limited, for much of his composing was necessarily a part-time activity while he earned his living as a conductor. Some of Mahlers immediate musical successors included the composers of the Second Viennese School, notably Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, dmitri Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten are among later 20th-century composers who admired and were influenced by Mahler. The International Gustav Mahler Institute was established in 1955 to honour the composers life, the Mahler family came from eastern Bohemia and were of humble circumstances, the composers grandmother had been a street pedlar. Bohemia was then part of the Austrian Empire, the Mahler family belonged to a German-speaking minority among Bohemians, from this background the future composer developed early on a permanent sense of exile, always an intruder, never welcomed. Bernhard Mahler, the son and the composers father, elevated himself to the ranks of the petite bourgeoisie by becoming a coachman. He bought a modest house in the village of Kalischt, halfway between Prague in Bohemia and Brno in Moravia, in the center of todays Czech Republic. Bernhards wife, Marie, gave birth to the first of the couples 14 children, a son Isidor, two years later, on 7 July 1860, their second son, Gustav, was born. In December 1860, Bernhard Mahler moved with his wife and infant son, Gustav, to the town of Iglau,25 km to the south-east, the family grew rapidly, but of the 12 children born to the family in Iglau only six survived infancy. All of these elements would later contribute to his musical vocabulary. When he was four years old, Gustav discovered his grandparents piano and he developed his performing skills sufficiently to be considered a local Wunderkind and gave his first public performance at the town theatre when he was ten years old. Although Gustav loved making music, his reports from the Iglau Gymnasium portrayed him as absent-minded. In 1871, in the hope of improving the results, his father sent him to the New Town Gymnasium in Prague. In 1874 he suffered a personal loss when his younger brother Ernst died after a long illness. Mahler sought to express his feelings in music, with the help of a friend, Josef Steiner, he work on an opera
3.
Queen's Hall
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For the hall in Edinburgh see Queens Hall, Edinburgh. The Queens Hall was a hall in Langham Place, London. Designed by the architect Thomas Knightley, it had room for an audience of about 2,500 people and it became Londons principal concert venue. From 1895 until 1941, it was the home of the promenade concerts founded by Robert Newman together with Henry Wood, the hall had drab decor and cramped seating but superb acoustics. In the 1930s, the became the main London base of two new orchestras, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. These two ensembles raised the standards of playing in London to new heights, and the halls resident orchestra, founded in 1893, was eclipsed. The new orchestras attracted another generation of musicians from Europe and the United States, including Serge Koussevitzky, Willem Mengelberg, Arturo Toscanini, Bruno Walter, in 1941, during the Second World War, the building was destroyed by an incendiary bomb in the London Blitz. Despite much lobbying for the hall to be rebuilt, the government decided against doing so, the main musical functions of the Queens Hall were taken over by the Royal Albert Hall for the Proms, and the new Royal Festival Hall for the general concert season. The site on which the hall was built was bounded by the present-day Langham Place, Riding House Street, in 1820 the land was bought by the Crown during the development of John Nashs Regent Street. Between then and the building of the hall, the site was first sublet to a coachmaker and stablekeeper, and in 1851 a bazaar occupied the site. In 1887, the leaseholder, Francis Ravenscroft, negotiated an agreement with the Crown, providing for the clearing of the site. The name of the new building was intended to be either the Victoria Concert Hall or the Queens Concert Hall, the name finally chosen, the Queens Hall, was decided very shortly before the hall opened. The historian Robert Elkin speculates that the alternative Victoria Concert Hall was abandoned as liable to confusion with the Royal Victoria Music Hall, the new hall was to provide a much-needed music venue in the centre of London. St Jamess Hall, just south of Oxford Circus, was too small, had safety problems. Bernard Shaw in his capacity as a critic commented on the old unvaried round of Steinway Hall, Princes Hall and St Jamess Hall. Ravenscroft commissioned the architect Thomas Edward Knightley to design the new hall, using a floor plan previously prepared by C. J. Phipps, Knightley designed a hall with a floor area of 21,000 square feet and an audience capacity of 2,500. Contemporary newspapers commented on the elevation of the building, with the grand tier at street level. The exterior carving was by Sidney W. Elmes and Son, the lighting was a combination of gas and electricity
4.
The Proms
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In 2009 the total number of concerts reached 100. The season is a significant event in British culture, in classical music, Jiří Bělohlávek described the Proms as the worlds largest and most democratic musical festival. Prom is short for promenade concert, a term originally referred to outdoor concerts in Londons pleasure gardens. In fact this tradition has been revived in parks and stately homes around the UK at promenade concerts such as the Battle Proms. In the context of the BBC Proms, promming refers to the use of the areas inside the hall for which ticket prices are much lower than for the reserved seating. Single-concert standing tickets for either the arena or gallery can be only on the day of the concert. Proms concert-goers, particularly those who stand, are referred to as prommers or promenaders. Prommers can buy full-season tickets instead for guaranteed entry to every concert in the season, some prommers are particularly keen in their attendance. The annual series of Proms continuing today had their roots in that movement and they were inaugurated on 10 August 1895 in the Queens Hall in Langham Place by the impresario Robert Newman, who was fully experienced in running similar concerts at His Majestys Theatre. Newman wished to generate an audience for concert hall music by offering low ticket prices and an informal atmosphere. He stated his aim to Henry Wood in 1894 as follows, I am going to run nightly concerts, popular at first, gradually raising the standard until I have created a public for classical and modern music. Dr George Cathcart, an otolaryngologist, gave financial backing to Newman for the series on condition that Henry Wood be employed as the sole conductor, Wood, aged 26, seized this opportunity and built the Queens Hall Orchestra as the ensemble specially devoted to performing the promenade concerts. This coincided with the adoption of lower pitch by other leading orchestras. Although the concerts gained a following and reputation, Newman went bankrupt in 1902. Wood received a knighthood in 1911, in 1914 anti-German feeling led Speyer to surrender his role, and music publishers Chappell & Co. took control of the concerts. Although Newman remained involved in planning, it was Woods name which became most closely associated with the Proms. As conductor from the first concert in 1895, Sir Henry was largely responsible for building the repertoire heard as the series continued from year to year. While including many popular and less demanding works, in the first season there were substantial nights devoted to Beethoven or Schubert, distinguished singers including Sims Reeves and Signor Foli appeared
5.
Henry Wood
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Sir Henry Joseph Wood CH was an English conductor best known for his association with Londons annual series of promenade concerts, known as the Proms. He conducted them for half a century, introducing hundreds of new works to British audiences. After his death, the concerts were renamed in his honour as the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts. Born in modest circumstances to parents who encouraged his musical talent, during his studies at the Royal Academy of Music, he came under the influence of the voice teacher Manuel Garcia and became his accompanist. After similar work for Richard DOyly Cartes opera companies on the works of Arthur Sullivan and others and he was soon engaged by the larger Carl Rosa Opera Company. One notable event in his career was conducting the British premiere of Tchaikovskys Eugene Onegin in 1892. From the mid-1890s until his death, Wood focused on concert conducting and he was engaged by the impresario Robert Newman to conduct a series of promenade concerts at the Queens Hall, offering a mixture of classical and popular music at low prices. The series was successful, and Wood conducted annual promenade series until his death in 1944, by the 1920s, Wood had steered the repertoire entirely to classical music. When the Queens Hall was destroyed by bombing in 1941, the Proms moved to the Royal Albert Hall, Wood declined the chief conductorships of the New York Philharmonic and Boston Symphony Orchestras, believing it his duty to serve music in the United Kingdom. In addition to the Proms, he conducted concerts and festivals throughout the country, Wood was born in Oxford Street, London, the only child of Henry Joseph Wood and his wife Martha, née Morris. It was a household, Wood senior was an amateur cellist and sang as principal tenor in the choir of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate. His wife played the piano and sang songs from her native Wales and they encouraged their sons interest in music, buying him a Broadwood piano, on which his mother gave him lessons. The young Wood also learned to play the violin and viola, cooper died when Wood was seven, and the boy took further lessons from Coopers successor, Edwin M. Lott, for whom Wood had much less regard. At the age of ten, through the influence of one of his uncles, Wood made his first paid appearance as an organist at St Mary Aldermanbury, being paid half a crown. At this time in his life, painting was nearly as strong an interest as music and he remained a life-long amateur painter. It is not clear whether he was a member of Manuel Garcias singing class, Wood also accompanied the opera class, taught by Garcias son Gustave. Woods ambition at the time was to become a teacher of singing and he attended the classes of as many singing teachers as he could, although by his own account, I possess a terrible voice. Garcia said it would go through a brick wall, in fact, a real conductors voice
6.
Rienzi
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Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen is an early opera by Richard Wagner in five acts, with the libretto written by the composer after Edward Bulwer-Lyttons novel of the same name. The title is shortened to Rienzi. Written between July 1838 and November 1840, it was first performed at the Hofoper, Dresden, on 20 October 1842, in the end the populace burns the Capitol, in which Rienzi and a few adherents have made a last stand. Each act ends with an extended finale ensemble and is replete with solos, duets, trios, there is also an extended ballet in act 2 according to the accepted Grand Opera format. Hans von Bülow was later to joke that Rienzi is Meyerbeers best opera, Wagner began to draft the opera in Riga in 1837, after reading Lyttons novel. In 1839, meeting Meyerbeer by chance in Boulogne, he was able to read the latter the first three acts of the libretto, and to gain his interest. Meyerbeer also introduced Wagner to Ignaz Moscheles, who was staying at Boulogne, as Ernest Newman comments. When the opera was completed in 1840, Wagner had hoped for it to be premiered at the Paris Opéra, several circumstances, including his lack of influence, prevented this. The full score of Rienzi was completed on 19 November 1840 and this, with the proposed staging of The Flying Dutchman in Berlin, also supported by Meyerbeer, persuaded Wagner to return to Germany in April 1842. No one suspected that what was a joke for them was the means of buying an extra morsel of sorely-needed food. The premiere of Rienzi took place on 20 October in the new Dresden Opera House, designed by the architect Gottfried Semper and opened on 14 April 1841. Semper and Wagner were later to friends in Dresden, a connection which eventually led to Semper providing designs which became a basis of Wagners Festspielhaus in Bayreuth. The first performance of Rienzi was well received in Dresden despite running over six hours, one legend is that, fearful of the audience departing, Wagner stopped the clock above the stage. In his later memoirs, Mein Leben, Wagner recalled, No subsequent experience has given me feelings even remotely similar to those I had on this day of the first performance of Rienzi, the initial success of Rienzi was no doubt assured beforehand. But the uproarious way in which the public declared its partiality for me was extraordinary, the public had been forcibly predisposed to accept it, because everyone connected with the theatre had been spreading such favourable reports. That the entire population was looking forward to what was heralded as a miracle, in trying to recall my condition that evening, I can remember it only as possessing all the features of a dream. Subsequently, Wagner experimented with giving the opera over two evenings, and making cuts to enable a more reasonable performance in a single evening, despite Wagners reservations, Rienzi remained one of his most successful operas until the early 20th century. The Paris premiere of Rienzi finally took place on 6 April 1869 at the Théâtre Lyrique under the baton of Jules Pasdeloup
7.
Louise Homer
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Louise Homer was an American operatic contralto who had an active international career in concert halls and opera houses from 1895 until her retirement in 1932. After a brief stint as an entertainer in New England. She then became a member of the Metropolitan Opera from 1900 to 1919 and she was also active as an opera singer in Boston, Chicago, and California. She recorded extensively for Victor Records and Columbia Records in the decades of the 20th century. She was married to composer Sidney Homer for 52 years, Homer sang a broad repertoire which encompassed works from the French, German, and Italian repertoires. She enjoyed particular success in the operas of Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner and she often stated in interviews that her favorite role to perform was Amneris in Verdis Aida. At the Met she sang in several United States premieres and created roles in two world premieres, the witch in Engelbert Humperdincks Königskinder and the role in Horatio Parkers Mona. Soprano Nellie Melba once hailed her as the worlds most beautiful voice, in 1923 and 1924 she was listed as one of the 12 greatest living women by the National League of Women Voters. Homer was born Louise Dilworth Beatty in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on April 30,1871 and her father, Reverend William Trimble Beatty, was a Presbyterian minister who founded Pennsylvania Female College. Her father initially expressed concerns over his daughters desired singing career for religious reasons and she began her vocal training in Philadelphia, but ultimately ended up in Boston. In Boston Homer met composer Sidney Homer whom she married in 1895 and they remained married until her death more than five decades later and had six children together, including authors Joy Homer and Anne Homer, as well as Louise Homer, a soprano. Just months before her marriage, Homer made her debut in January 1895 in a vaudeville production at Keiths Opera House in Providence. While further honing her craft, she spent the few years performing periodically at functions organized by members of the elite society of Boston. In 1898 Homer went to France to pursue studies in Paris with Fidèle König and she made her professional operatic debut as Léonore in Donizettis La favorite at Vichy in 1898. The following year she performed at the Royal Opera House in London before going to Brussels where she was engaged at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie for eight months. Homer made her American opera debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in 1900 singing Amneris in Verdis Aida and she sang at the Met for 19 consecutive seasons, often singing opposite such acclaimed singers as Enrico Caruso, Geraldine Farrar, and Ernestine Schumann-Heink. At the Met, she created roles in two world premieres, the witch in Engelbert Humperdincks Königskinder and the role in Horatio Parkers Mona. She also sang in the American premieres of Ignacy Jan Paderewskis Manru, Richard Wagners Parsifal, Christoph Willibald Glucks Armide and she also sang Suzuki in the Met premiere of Puccinis Madama Butterfly in the presence of the composer on February 11,1907
8.
Eugen d'Albert
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Eugen Francois Charles dAlbert was a Scottish-born German pianist and composer. Educated in Britain, dAlbert showed early talent and, at the age of seventeen. Feeling a kinship with German culture and music, he emigrated to Germany. DAlbert repudiated his early training and upbringing in Scotland and considered himself German, while pursuing his career as a pianist, dAlbert focused increasingly on composing, producing 21 operas and a considerable output of piano, vocal, chamber and orchestral works. His most successful opera was Tiefland, which premiered in Prague in 1903 and his successful orchestral works included his cello concerto, a symphony, two string quartets and two piano concertos. In 1907, dAlbert became the director of the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin and he also held the post of Kapellmeister to the Court of Weimar. DAlbert was married six times, including to the pianist-singer Teresa Carreño, DAlberts father was a pianist, arranger and a prolific composer of salon music who had been ballet-master at the Kings Theatre and at Covent Garden. DAlbert was born when his father was 55 years old, the Musical Times wrote in 1904 that This, and other circumstances, accounted for a certain loneliness in the boys home-life and the years of his childhood. He was misunderstood, and cribbed, cabined, and confined to such an extent as to largely prejudice him against the country gave him birth. DAlbert was brought up in Glasgow and taught music by his father until he won a scholarship to the new National Training School for Music in London, dAlbert studied at the National Training School with Ernst Pauer, Ebenezer Prout, John Stainer and Arthur Sullivan. By the age of 14, he was winning praise from The Times as a bravura player of no mean order in a concert in October 1878. He played Schumanns Piano Concerto at the Crystal Palace in 1880, receiving encouragement from The Times. Also in 1880, dAlbert arranged the piano reduction for the score of Sullivans sacred music drama The Martyr of Antioch. He is also credited with writing the overture to Gilbert and Sullivans 1881 opera, for many years, dAlbert dismissed his training and work during this period as worthless. In later years, however, he modified his views, The former prejudice which I had against England, in 1881, Hans Richter invited dAlbert to play his first piano concerto, which was received with enthusiasm. This seems to have been dAlberts lost concerto in A major, in the same year dAlbert won the Mendelssohn Scholarship, enabling him to study in Vienna, where he met Johannes Brahms, Franz Liszt and other important musicians who influenced his style. DAlbert, retaining his early enthusiasm for German culture and music changed his first name from Eugène to Eugen and emigrated to Germany, in Germany and Austria, dAlbert built a career as a pianist. Liszt called him the second Tausig, and dAlbert can be heard in a recording of Liszt works
9.
Katharine Lee Bates
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Katharine Lee Bates was an American songwriter. She is remembered as the author of the words to the anthem America the Beautiful and she graduated from Needham High School in 1872, from Newton High School in 1875, and from Wellesley College with a B. A. in 1880. She taught at Natick High School during 1880–81 and at Dana Hall School from 1885 until 1889 and she returned to Wellesley as an instructor, then an associate professor 1891–93 when she was awarded an M. A. and became full professor of English literature. She studied at Oxford University during 1890–91, while teaching at Wellesley, she was elected a member of the newly formed Pi Gamma Mu honor society for the social sciences because of her interest in history and politics. Bates was an author of many volumes of poetry, travel books. She popularized Mrs. Claus in her poem Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride from the collection Sunshine and other Verses for Children. She said, Though born and bred in the Republican camp, I cannot bear their betrayal of Mr. Wilson and their rejection of the League of Nations, our one hope of peace on earth. In 1910, when a colleague described free-flying spinsters as fringe on the garment of life, Bates answered, I dont think I mind not being woven in. Bates died in Wellesley, Massachusetts, on September 28,1929, the historic home and birthplace of Bates in Falmouth, was sold to Ruth P. Clark in November 2013 for $1,200,000. Bates lived in Wellesley with Katharine Coman, who was a history, the pair lived together for twenty-five years until Comans death in 1915. Others contest the use of the term lesbian to describe such a Boston marriage, writes one, We cannot say with certainty what sexual connotations these relationships conveyed. We do know that these relationships were deeply intellectual, they fostered verbal and physical expressions of love. The first draft of America the Beautiful was hastily jotted down in a notebook during the summer of 1893, later she remembered, One day some of the other teachers and I decided to go on a trip to 14, 000-foot Pikes Peak. Near the top we had to leave the wagon and go the rest of the way on mules, but when I saw the view, I felt great joy. All the wonder of America seemed displayed there, with the sea-like expanse, the words to her only famous poem first appeared in print in The Congregationalist, a weekly journal, for Independence Day,1895. The poem reached an audience when her revised version was printed in the Boston Evening Transcript on November 19,1904. Her final expanded version was written in 1913, the hymn has been sung to several tunes, but the familiar one is by Samuel A. Ward, written for his hymn Materna. The Bates family home on Falmouths Main Street is preserved by the Falmouth Historical Society, there is also a street named in her honor, Katharine Lee Bates Road in Falmouth
10.
Paul Dresser
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Paul Dresser was an American singer, songwriter, and comedic actor of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In addition to songwriting Dresser performed in traveling minstrel and medicine-wagon shows, Dresser sold his songs through sheet music publishers, especially the firms in New York Citys Tin Pan Alley, and became a partner in the music publishing business. Dresser grew up in a family and lived in Sullivan and Terre Haute. He had a childhood and spent several weeks in jail. Dresser left home at age sixteen to join a minstrel act. Dresser composed his first songs while working for Hamlin, Dresser settled in Evansville, Indiana, for several years, while as he continued to work as a traveling performer and musician. Eventually, he became a talent and traveled with a number of different acts, including The Two Johns, A Tin Soldier. Dresser wrote songs featured in shows, sold his songs to others acts. In 1893 Dresser joined Howley, Haviland and Company, a New York City sheet music publisher and he later became an active partner in other music publishing companies. At the height of his success, Dresser lived in New York City as an entertainer, successful songwriter. He was also known for his generosity, especially to family and friends, at the turn of the century Dresser fell into financial distress when his music fell out of style. In 1905 his music publishing business declared bankruptcy and Dressers health declined and he died penniless in New York City a year later. Although Dresser had no training in music composition, he wrote ballads that had wide popular appeal. During a career spanned nearly two decades, from 1886 to 1906, Dresser composed and published more than 150 songs. His biggest hit, On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away, became the second best-selling song, in terms of sheet music, following the success of Wabash, many newspapers compared Dresser to popular music composer Stephen Foster. On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away became the state song of Indiana in 1913. The Paul Dresser Birthplace in Terre Haute is designated as a state shrine, Dresser was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. He was born Johann Paul Dreiser, Jr. on April 22,1858, in Terre Haute, Indiana, by the age of twenty he had changed his surname to Dresser
11.
John Philip Sousa
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John Philip Sousa was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era, known primarily for American military and patriotic marches. Because of his mastery of composition, he is known as The March King. Among his best-known marches are The Stars and Stripes Forever, Semper Fidelis, The Liberty Bell, The Thunderer, Sousa began his career playing violin and studying music theory and composition under John Esputa and George Felix Benkert. His father enlisted him in the United States Marine Band as an apprentice in 1868, after departing the band in 1875, Sousa learned to conduct. From 1880 until his death, he focused exclusively on conducting and he eventually rejoined the Marine Band and served there for 12 years as director. On leaving the Marine Band, Sousa organized his own band and he toured Europe and Australia and developed the sousaphone, a large brass instrument similar to the helicon and tuba. At the outbreak of World War I, Sousa was commissioned as a lieutenant commander, following his tenure, he returned to conduct the Sousa Band until his death in 1932. In the 1920s he was promoted to lieutenant commander in the naval reserve, Sousa started his music education by playing the violin as a pupil of John Esputa and George Felix Benkert for harmony and musical composition at the age of six. He was found to have absolute pitch, during his childhood, Sousa studied voice, violin, piano, flute, cornet, baritone horn, trombone, and alto horn. When Sousa was 13, his father, a trombonist in the Marine Band, several years long after serving his apprenticeship, Sousa joined a theatrical orchestra where he learned to conduct. He returned to the U. S. Marine Band as its head in 1880, Sousa led The Presidents Own band under five presidents from Rutherford B. Hayes to Benjamin Harrison. Sousas band played at two Inaugural Balls, those of James A. Garfield in 1881, and Benjamin Harrison in 1889 and he wanted a tuba that could sound upward and over the band whether its player was seated or marching. The sousaphone was re-created in 1898 by C. G. Conn and he organized The Sousa Band the year he left the Marine Band. The Sousa Band toured from 1892 to 1931, performing at 15,623 concerts both in America and around the world, including at the World Exposition in Paris, France and at the Royal Albert Hall in London. In Paris, the Sousa Band marched through the streets to the Arc de Triomphe – one of only eight parades the band marched in over its forty years, on December 30,1879, Sousa married Jane van Middlesworth Bellis. They had three children, John Philip, Jr. Jane Priscilla, and Helen, All were buried in the John Philip Sousa plot in the Congressional Cemetery. Wife Jane, daughters Jane Priscilla and Helen Abert joined the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1907 and their ancestor was Adam Bellis, who served under several different commands for the New Jersey troops in the American Revolutionary War. Late in his life, Sousa lived in Sands Point, New York, Sousa died of heart failure at the age of 77 on March 6,1932, in his room at the Abraham Lincoln Hotel in Reading, Pennsylvania
12.
Victor Herbert
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Victor August Herbert was an Irish-born, German-raised American composer, cellist and conductor. Although Herbert enjoyed important careers as a cello soloist and conductor and he was also prominent among the tin pan alley composers and was later a founder of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. In the early 1880s, Herbert began a career as a cellist in Vienna, Austria, Herbert and his opera singer wife, Therese Förster, moved to the U. S. in 1886 when both were engaged by the Metropolitan Opera. In the U. S. Herbert continued his career, while also teaching at the National Conservatory of Music. His most notable compositions were his Cello Concerto No.2 in E minor, Op.30, which entered the standard repertoire. He led the Pittsburgh Symphony from 1898 to 1904 and then founded the Victor Herbert Orchestra, Herbert began to compose operettas in 1894, producing several successes, including The Serenade and The Fortune Teller. Some of the operettas that he wrote after the turn of the 20th century were more successful, Babes in Toyland. Modiste, The Red Mill, Naughty Marietta, Sweethearts and Eileen, after World War I, with the change of popular musical tastes, Herbert began to compose musicals and contributed music to other composers shows. While some of these were well-received, he never achieved the level of success that he had enjoyed with his most popular operettas. Herbert was born in Dublin, Ireland to Protestants Edward Herbert and his grandfather was the Irish novelist, playwright, poet and composer Samuel Lover. The Lovers welcomed a steady flow of musicians, writers and artists to their home, Herbert joined his mother in Stuttgart, Germany in 1867, a year after she had married a German physician, Carl Schmidt of Langenargen. In Stuttgart he received a liberal education at the Eberhard-Ludwigs-Gymnasium. Herbert initially planned to pursue a career as a medical doctor, although his stepfather was related by blood to the German royal family, his financial situation was not good by the time Herbert was a teenager. Medical education in Germany was expensive, and so Herbert focused instead on music and he initially studied the piano, flute and piccolo but ultimately settled on the cello, beginning studies on that instrument with Bernhard Cossmann from age 15 to age 18. He then attended the Stuttgart Conservatory, after studying cello, music theory and composition under Max Seifritz, Herbert graduated with a diploma in 1879. Even before studying with Cossmann, Herbert was engaged professionally as a player in concerts in Stuttgart and his first orchestra position was as a flute and piccolo player, but he soon turned solely to the cello. By the time he was 19, Herbert had received engagements as a soloist with several major German orchestras. He played in the orchestra of the wealthy Russian Baron Paul von Derwies for a few years and, Herbert joined the court orchestra in Stuttgart in 1881, where he remained for the next five years
