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68 3 The Concert Societies and Series D uring the nineteenth century, several musical societies were organized to promote concerts of classical music. Some were vehicles for amateurs to perform in while others presented musicians at the highest professional level. Some were primarily choral societies and on occasion included instrumental music as well; others were orchestral societies; still others were band ensembles. THE PHILHARMONIC SOCIETIES Perhaps the best-known name for a society—Philharmonic Society—was actually a name adopted in New Orleans by at least eleven different societies during the nineteenth century.1 Inevitably there has been some confusion as to the nature of these societies, their personnel, and the types of concerts that they were involved in. The earliest reference to a Philharmonic Society in New Orleans is for a concert at the Théâtre d’Orléans on February 5, 1825, performed as a benefit for Mr. P. Lewis.2 The program was the usual mixture of piano, vocal , and violin works, but the unusual feature was the presence of Mr. Lewis’s three children playing piano: June (age eight), Miss S. Lewis (age four), and James (age thirteen). The local violinist, Mr. C. Herz, performed a Viotti violin concerto as well. An orchestra opened each half of the program with an overture (Etienne-Nicolas Méhul’s [1763–1817] Overture to Joseph and C. Bochsa’s “Ouverture Militaire”). After the concert there was a dressy ball in the ballrooms of Mr. Davis on Orleans Street. The Philharmonic Society at this juncture was an informal union of local artists who joined to present their collective talents at a single concert. Both amateurs and professionals performed on the same program, which took place on the most important and largest stage in the city, and the ostensible purpose of the concert was to raise money for the Lewis family. The designation “Philharmonic Society” might have been an advertising The Concert Societies and Series | 69 ploy to lend prestige to an event that, with the appearance of children, might have been construed as somewhat less than a high artistic performance. In any case, it seems to have been an isolated event, not part of a series sponsored by an ongoing organization. Two years later another Philharmonic Society took on a more specific character , though again it was not a formally organized group. It was clearly a performing organization, both of instrumental and vocal music, and it featured local musicians. Although it seems not to have lasted more than a year, this society differed from that of two years earlier by performing in more than one concert. On Thursday, May 24, 1827, this Philharmonic Society took part in a benefit for the Male Orphan Asylum.3 The varied program at the Théâtre d’Orléans consisted of Nicolo’s opera Cinderella (a fairy opera in three acts), a recitation by an amateur on the death of Lord Byron, Barré and Desfontaines’s vaudeville Two Edmonds (in two acts), Mr. Segura’s performance of two violin pieces, and “choice pieces of music” played by the Philharmonic Society. At this point it was an instrumental group that participated in a concert but did not run its own program. A month later, on Wednesday, June 20, there was a soiree and concert to benefit the girls’ orphanage, at Mr. Rash’s gardens on Chartres Street. As the Courier de la Louisiane reported, “The Philharmonic Society will perform, during the evenings, many choice pieces, and M Johns will play the piano.”4 Here the society ran its own program, though it was assisted by the most important pianist in the city at the time. More ambitious was the concert of vocal and instrumental music by the society on December 14, 1827, at the home of Madame Herries, Chartres Street.5 Aside from six songs sung by Mme Depass, the Philharmonic Society performed an overture (Rossini’s L’Italien à Alger), a dance, a march, a chorus and duet (from François-Adrien Boieldieu’s [1775–1834] La Dame Blanche), and two harmony pieces.6 This second Philharmonic Society, then, was apparently on its way to becoming a major organization for the performance of concerts in the city, but then nothing further is known of a Philharmonic Society for the next eight years. The growth of the city’s population by the mid-1830s and the establishment of a much larger coterie of professional and gifted amateur musicians resulted in an expanded...

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