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Herrman S. Saroni: Paths to Success as a Composer in New York, 1844–52

2022; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 40; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5406/19452349.40.2.01

1945-2349

Lars Helgert,

Theater, Performance, and Music History

A great deal of valuable American music from the middle of the nineteenth century has never been explored by historians. Although a fair amount of scholarship on some of the period's major figures, various aspects of musical life, and nascent American musical nationalism does exist, large gaps remain in our understanding of the musicians and the music.1 Left out of the picture are a number of the era's successful American composers, obscuring important details about the circumstances under which period musicians labored. Many of these now-forgotten composers were characterized by formal training in the European tradition, an orientation toward European concert music, and contemporary publication and performance of their compositions. Despite several indicators of success in their own lifetimes, their works neither attracted the level of widespread acclaim typically necessary for historicization nor benefited from any strong later tradition of performance. Analyzing the careers of composers who have not yet made it into the standard historical narrative is valuable for what it reveals about how these professionals navigated the musical marketplace, earned a living, and responded to high levels of competition in major cities such as New York.German-born Herrman S. Saroni (c. 1823–1900), who immigrated to New York in 1844 and lived there until 1852, is an especially interesting case study of a previously overlooked composer, and his career is of broad historical interest for several reasons.2 First, his residence in New York was contemporaneous with a period in which the city experienced rapid growth as a center of musical activity. Studying his career helps us trace that development. Second, Saroni's status as a German immigrant ostensibly allowed him to fit easily into New York's music scene, which was heavily populated by his countrymen. Analyzing Saroni's works and career can further our understanding of the ways in which immigrants used music to negotiate identity conflicts at both the individual and community levels. Third, Saroni was a versatile musician who pursued composition, performance, teaching, and journalism; he is thus representative of the diverse careers that were common and arguably necessary for professional survival at the time. Finally, his efforts as a musical and non-musical entrepreneur demonstrate that he understood American culture in ways that many of his fellow immigrants did not.This essay focuses on Saroni the composer, whose music typically featured a combination of accessibility to amateurs and various aspects of the European concert tradition. This article will show how he used a number of different compositional strategies to establish and further his reputation, facilitate the publication and performance of his works, compete in the musical marketplace, and earn a portion of his income. The analysis will demonstrate how exploring the career of such a professional musician can contribute to the overall historical picture of music in a place and time. None of the strategies Saroni used were exceptional, and the analysis to follow can (and will) be projected outward to unearth larger trends in American music during the middle decades of the nineteenth century.Most historians know Saroni primarily as the owner and editor of Saroni's Musical Times (SMT), one of America's earliest important music magazines. Rigorous and comprehensive scholarly analysis of SMT is needed but beyond the scope of this essay on Saroni the composer.3 My forthcoming critical edition of Saroni's songs examines the relationship between Saroni's theoretical writings and his compositions and compares his music with works by some of the composers he reviewed in SMT.4 In the present essay, excerpts from Saroni's music criticism are given to illuminate his career as a working composer and to explore the consistency between the ideology of the better-known Saroni the critic and the actual practices of the lesser-known Saroni the composer.Surviving primary sources indicate that Herrman S. Saroni was born in Bernburg in 1823 or 1824. Some posthumously published writings state that Saroni was a student of Mendelssohn (the obituary in the Marietta Daily Register, for example, says that Saroni was Mendelssohn's "most brilliant understudy"), but this notion seems unlikely because neither Saroni himself nor any other contemporary writers ever made this claim. However, Saroni did say that he "studied music" with then-eminent German composer and pedagogue Friedrich Schneider (1786–1853), who directed a music school in Dessau from 1829 to 1846. Schneider was also named as Saroni's teacher in two other period sources.5After arriving in New York on June 3, 1844, Saroni would spend the next eight years making contributions to several aspects of the city's musical life. As a performer, he first obtained associate (non-performing) membership on piano with the Philharmonic Society of New York during the 1844–45 season before being promoted to actual (performing) membership as a cellist and serving for three seasons from 1846–49. He was also a named assisting artist for local concerts by several prominent musicians (such as Norwegian violinist Ole Bull (1810–80) and Moravian pianist, composer, and impresario Maurice Strakosch (1825–87)), and he likely participated in several other high-profile performances via his Philharmonic membership. Saroni publicly advertised himself as a teacher of piano, vocal music, and harmony in the fall of 1845, and he is listed as "Professor of Music" in city directories from 1845–49. His 1849 appointment as an external reviewer for the Committee on Music at the Rutgers Female Institute (a school with a well-regarded music program) attests to his reputation as an educator.6Later in his life, Saroni would become known as an inventor of steam engines, gas lighting systems, and various other devices; an early example of this ingenuity is his c. 1845 creation of a music notation system for the blind. Saroni's most notorious contribution, however, was his editorship of SMT from September 1849 until November 1851. SMT provided detailed accounts of New York's contemporary musical life as well as some coverage of musical events in other parts of the country and in Europe. Saroni was known for an acerbic and confrontational style of criticism, but SMT tirelessly advocated for improvements to New York's musical infrastructure and the working conditions of professional musicians. Saroni often vigorously asserted his integrity and impartiality as a critic, and evidence supporting this notion is plentiful. Yet he was not above using his journal to advance his interests as a composer (as we shall see). Additional Saroni literary accomplishments between 1844 and 1852 included fictional short stories and essays written for various magazines, a published translation of A.B. Marx's compositional treatise, and a published theoretical treatise of his own.7Saroni's New York period was the most productive of his long career in terms of compositional output, featuring approximately seventy pieces (about half of his full works list; see appendix). Almost all of these New York compositions were either songs or short works for solo piano, and almost all were published. In order to succeed in the competitive New York City marketplace, Saroni had to adopt a number of different compositional approaches and strategies. Among the strategies he used were writing works for diverse types of consumers (the casual amateur, the professional performer, and everything in between), composing pieces that took advantage of popular contemporary musical and cultural trends, creating music that expressed political ideology and/or national identity, setting texts written by prominent local individuals, contributing works to published anthologies and series, and self-publication. Equally important to understanding the arc of Saroni's New York compositional career are the creative activities in which he did not succeed, most notably larger instrumental works (which many considered to be the most important measure of artistic accomplishment for a composer).Saroni clearly hoped to establish himself as a composer in New York by writing music aimed at a number of different levels of skill and performance contexts. By the end of 1845, he had published at least twenty-five works, but he reportedly had trouble attracting publisher interest during his first few months in the city. The earliest of Saroni's published New York compositions were the songs "The Child's First Grief" and "'Tis Best to be Free," which appeared, respectively, in the August and September 1844 issues of the Ladies' Companion and Literary Expositor (full publication information or evidence of existence for all Saroni works is listed in the appendix and/or associated endnotes). The accompanying discussion of "The Child's First Grief" says that Saroni is "recently arrived," that the work is his "first production," and that he intends to "establish himself as a teacher." Saroni's initial difficulties in getting his work accepted by music publishing firms were also referenced: "We must admit, that we are sorry that a composition possessing the genius and talent, which the present one does, should not have commanded a more advantageous introduction to the 'musical world' than through the pages of a magazine."8"'Tis Best to be Free," presumably intended for amateurs, is a song in the key of A major that features a largely scalar and triadic melody, mostly syllabic text setting, compound duple meter, andante tempo, fairly straightforward harmony, and simple piano accompaniment (example 1). The song's strophic form begins with a two-measure chordal introduction, followed by a main song body in two eight-measure phrases and a concluding four-measure piano interlude. The piano accompaniment mostly proceeds in chordal fashion, but at the beginning of the second phrase (mm. 11–14), the primary melodic material is given to the piano while the voice performs a repeated-note motive. The phrase also begins with an unexpected harmonic shift to F-sharp minor from the temporarily tonicized dominant (E in mm. 9–10) of the primary key (A major). This clever use of texture and harmony was undoubtedly noticeable to musical connoisseurs, but the song's overall aesthetic is simplicity with minimal technical demands in both parts. The text is credited to Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838), an English poet whose verse was highly popular in America at the time.Both works, "composed expressly for the Ladies' Companion," served several important functions in Saroni's budding musical career. First, they allowed him to get his work before the public without the assistance of a music publishing firm, which was a savvy approach for an unknown composer with no publication history. During his New York career, Saroni published at least nine songs in magazines, including five in his first year in the city (1844–45). Second, by publishing in this particular magazine, Saroni could appeal directly to the era's large contingent of female amateur musicians. Third, these publications were likely helpful for recruiting music students, another potential source of income and one explicitly mentioned in conjunction with the first song. Fourth and perhaps most important, these two works surely helped him sell other compositions to actual music publishers, which happened shortly afterward (the first of Saroni's works to be released by a music publisher was probably "The Ivy Green Waltz," published by Firth and Hall and deposited for copyright on October 12, 1844).9In fact, the practice of publishing works in magazines was commonplace for both young and veteran composers in the mid-nineteenth century, assuring ready audiences and buyers for their works among subscribers. Other prominent composers whose pieces appeared in the Ladies' Companion around the same time included British/New York musician Charles E. Horn (1786–1849) and Philadelphia/Boston composer Charles Zeuner (1795–1857). Saroni also published compositions in the Columbian Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine, the Union Magazine of Literature and Art, Christian Parlor Book, and American Metropolitan Magazine. Henry C. Watson (c. 1815–75), Augusta Browne (1820–82), William B. Bradbury (1816–68), and William Vincent Wallace (1812–65) were among the era's noteworthy composers whose works were also featured in these magazines.10 Magazine publication and its distribution potential clearly appealed to both rising and established composers.Music published in magazines was typically intended for amateur performance in private contexts. In contrast, Saroni's song "The Gipsy of the North" (1846) was written specifically for a professional performer: local singer Julia Northall (c. 1823–96), who had previously appeared as a soloist with both the Philharmonic and the Sacred Music Society.11 The cover for the published song shows a portrait of the singer and the inscription "composed and respectfully dedicated to Miss Julia L. Northall." The text, by Eugene Liés (c. 1818–81), combines narrative and lyric poetry and features stanzas and lines of differing length. The song's subject matter was likely inspired by Michael William Balfe's (1808–70) The Bohemian Girl, which features a "gipsy" lead character and was New York's most popular opera in 1845.12"The Gipsy of the North" is clearly intended for a different type of singer and accompanist than "'Tis Best to be Free." The former song is more complex in its text, form, and harmony, and it also features displays of vocal virtuosity and greater interaction between the voice and piano. The song's binary overall formal structure juxtaposes an allegro agitato section in D minor with an andante quasi allegretto section that begins in F major and ends in D major; these differing musical settings parallel the use of third-person and first-person texts in those respective sections. The andante section also includes the use of recitative and restatement of musical ideas from the allegro section. Example 2 shows some of the song's vocal passagework and harmonic complexity.Northall first performed the song ("composed expressly for the occasion") several months prior to its publication; it was one of the numbers included in her concert at the Apollo Rooms on December 3, 1845, where she was assisted by Giuseppe De Begnis (1793–1849), John Kyle (c. 1810–70), Henry C. Timm (1811–92), and other prominent local musicians. This appears to have been the first significant New York performance of a Saroni composition, although there were earlier published reviews of his music. Northall sang "The Gipsy of the North" again at the Brooklyn Institute on December 15, 1845 with a similar roster of assisting artists.13 One critic was impressed enough to describe the song as a "powerful and picturesque musical Romance" that "reminds one forcibly of Schubert," and another noted the audience's "delight" with the song as well as its technical difficulty.14"The Gipsy of the North" and its association with Northall, then a rising star and soon one of New York's top singers, were helpful to Saroni's reputation as a composer. The Northall/Saroni partnership continued for the next two years with three more published Saroni songs "as sung by Julia Northall": "Bingen on the Rhine," "Our Childhood's Home," and "Nay Weep No More My Lov'd One." Like "The Gipsy of the North," "Our Childhood's Home" had elaborate (and undoubtedly expensive) artwork on its sheet music cover, suggesting its importance to the publisher.15 Another example of a New York musician linked with Saroni in a sheet music publication is Laura A. Jones (fl. 1840s-50s), a soloist with the Sacred Music Society and later the "foremost oratorio singer in New York." Jones attached her name to a vocal/piano arrangement of Saroni's "Juliette Waltz" for solo piano, published as "Memory of the Past" in 1847 (the inscriptions "music arranged from Saroni's Juliette Waltz" and "sung by Mrs. L.A. Jones" appear on the sheet music cover).16Performances of Saroni songs in New York by other well-known local and visiting musicians were another measure of the composer's accomplishment as a songwriter. Between 1846 and 1849, Saroni songs appeared on the programs of several more Northall concerts (including "Speed Away," "Our Childhood's Home," and "Nay Weep No More My Lov'd One").17 Over the same period, Saroni songs were also publicly performed by The Apolloneans, a popular American ensemble of child musicians ("Slumber, Infant! Slumber"); British tenor A. Arthurson (fl. 1840s-50s) (probably "The Awakening of Italy," discussed below); British bass Stephen Leach (fl. 1840s-50s) ("I Wandered in the Woodland"); and American tenor Robert George Paige (fl. 1830s-50s) (also "I Wandered in the Woodland"). Aside from Northall, these musicians were not mentioned on Saroni's published sheet music (although one source claims that the songs were composed expressly for Leach and Arthurson).18 Two additional Saroni works, however, both published in 1844, mentioned professional musicians: "The Merry Sleigh" ("sung with the greatest applause by Miss Orville") and "Mount's Quick Step" (for piano, "as performed by the New York Brass Band"). Orville was a local opera singer, and Lothian's New York Brass Band was then the city's leading such ensemble. These sorts of dedications were a powerful marketing tool that many contemporary composers used. For example, Francis H. Brown's (1818–91) "The Lament of the Alpine Shepherd Boy" advertised that work "as sung by Miss Mary Taylor," who was a prima donna at Niblo's Garden in 1844.19Saroni's reasons for taking time away from his other musical activities to establish a journal are best deduced from a "manifesto" he published in the first issue of SMT. The stated goals of SMT were to "diffuse a knowledge of the highest principles of the art Musical," to "promote a love for the art," and to facilitate "the exercise of a correct taste." An editorial in the same issue cited a dire need for better music journalism: "music in New-York especially, and throughout the country, languishes even unto death, for want of judicious censorship and friendly but just criticism."20 It is plausible to assume that Saroni's SMT duties initially affected his compositional productivity. He published just three compositions in 1849 and five in 1850, compared to nine published works in 1848 (the latter was the approximate yearly average for his New York period). In 1851, Saroni published nine pieces, which suggests that he had learned to manage these dual roles.SMT coverage of the singers and poets involved with the performance and composition of Saroni's songs showcases the competing interests of critic and composer. Saroni's mixed treatment of these singers vouches for his critical impartiality. A review of an 1849 Northall concert, for example, praised one number for being "excellently sung" yet panned another for the "careless manner of her performance." Leach's voice at an 1850 event was described as "rich" and "full," but he was also criticized for singing "his first recitative out of tune." According to Saroni, Arthurson "sometimes [sang] exceedingly well and sometimes exceedingly bad."21 Saroni was clearly unwilling to give these singers a free pass just because they had performed his music.SMT's frequent practice of publishing poems written by Saroni's own lyricists, however, suggests that the editor used the journal to further his interests as a composer. Prior Saroni lyricists whose poems were featured in SMT, often on the front page, included Frances Sargent Osgood (1811–50), Pamela Colman (1824–1900), Owen G. Warren (1807–77), Mario Angelo Vaselli, Eugene Liés, and O.H. Milderberger. Vaselli's poetry, for instance, was published in SMT less than one year after Saroni's "The Remembered Song" (with Vaselli lyrics) first appeared in print. Osgood received a fairly extensive obituary in SMT after her death in 1850, and Liés would briefly serve as SMT's co-editor.22 By promoting his lyricists' literary reputations, Saroni was by extension promoting his/their songs.Another strategy Saroni used to advance his compositional career was to write works that exploited the era's popular musical trends, including certain dances (waltz and polka), opera, and Native American themes. By this time, the waltz was established as a genre of piano music and (along with other dance genres) highly favored by American music publishers. A New York craze for the polka began in the mid-1840s.23 Two of Saroni's first three published works for solo piano were waltzes ("The Ivy Green Waltz" and "Juliette Waltz"). Composing dances was a wise choice for a young composer seeking to establish his reputation and almost certainly helped Saroni attract publisher interest. An excerpt from "The Ivy Green Waltz" (example 3) indicates that it is a work within the capabilities of amateurs, with an easy key (G major), moderato tempo, simple melody, and simple accompaniment. It also utilizes binary form with repeats (as is typical of dances), and a few features suggest the genre of the concert waltz (such as an introductory section and the use of tremolo, neither shown in the example). This approach of writing music playable by amateurs, but with special touches that appealed to connoisseurs, is emblematic of many Saroni works, which allowed the composer to accommodate the American marketplace while making references to the European concert tradition. During his New York period, Saroni published at least twelve waltzes for piano.Saroni also published four polkas for solo piano in 1850–51. "The Keepsake Polka" (1851) was apparently somewhat popular, as the cover of Saroni's "Oleona Polka" (1853) boasted that the latter work was "by the same author" as the former. The key (D major), textural variety, and thirty-second note bursts of "The Keepsake Polka" indicate a moderate level of difficulty (example 4). "Oleona Polka" (published shortly after he left New York) is among his most elaborate and technically challenging piano compositions; it was even described on the cover "as played by Strakosch" (then one of New York's leading musical figures). The title is presumably a reference to the Potter County, Pennsylvania "Oleana" Scandinavian colony established by Ole Bull in 1852.24 Instances of this work's technical difficulty, such as the sixteenth-note right-hand octaves at a brisk allegro tempo, can be seen in example 5. Saroni's piano works, like his songs, were clearly intended for different levels of ability, types of consumers, and performance contexts.Among the most prolific American composers of waltzes and polkas during this period were Wilmington, Delaware musician Charles Grobe (1817–79) and New Yorker John C. Scherpf (fl. 1843–61). Grobe published about seventy waltzes and polkas combined from 1844–52, while Scherpf published approximately twenty-five works in those genres over the same period. Yet Grobe also published a substantial number of variation sets and opera-based works plus a handful of rondos, and although Scherpf's piano music was dominated by dances, he also wrote numerous pieces in other genres, especially opera-based works. Other important American composers of piano music from this period wrote several works in one or more non-dance genres, such as the opera-based works of Strakosch and the caprices of Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829–69).25Of Saroni's twenty-five published piano compositions during his New York period, twenty-three were dance-based pieces (waltzes, polkas, marches, or quick steps). The two outliers, discussed below, were an operatic potpourri and a setting of two national melodies (according to one review, Saroni also wrote "piano trios and sonatas," but I have found no other evidence of these works' composition and no evidence whatsoever of their publication).26 While in New York, Saroni did not publish any variation sets, fantasias, rondos, or character pieces. That Saroni wrote dance-based piano music was clearly not unique, and such pieces also comprised a large percentage of the works produced by many of his mid-century contemporaries.27 Saroni's almost complete avoidance of all of the period's other important genres of piano music in his published output, however, does seem atypical for the era's American composers. The fact that Saroni did not have a reputation as a top concert pianist is one possible explanation for the dearth of published abstract works; publishers during this era preferred to release such works by pianists who had high public profiles as concert performers.Operagoing was among New Yorkers' favorite entertainments, and Saroni was one of many contemporary composers to write works based on opera themes. Such works were of value because they facilitated wider distribution of opera music and performances of opera excerpts in other contexts, such as concerts and drawing rooms. One of these was Saroni's "Pot-pourri, sur les motifs favorises de l'opera Les Huguenots," a work that apparently did not survive; it was, however, advertised for sale in late 1845.28 Meyerbeer's opera Les Huguenots (1836) had been performed to large audiences and glowing reviews in New York earlier that year.29 Saroni's eight-piano, sixteen-hand arrangement of Rossini's William Tell Overture, which the arranger performed with visiting virtuoso Henri Herz (1803–88) and fourteen other local "professors of the pianoforte" on January 7, 1847, is another example of the composer trying to capitalize on opera's popularity. Although there is no evidence that this arrangement was ever published, the opera from which it was taken had recently been performed in New York and performances of this arrangement were reviewed in the local newspapers, raising Saroni's profile. Those reviews were mixed; the arrangement was either "a novel and pleasing feature" or an instance of "bad taste."30At the time, piano works based on operas (such as potpourris, fantasias, "gems from the opera," variation sets, or arrangements of individual numbers) were standard fare; hundreds of piano compositions drawn from operas were published during this era, and many of them were composed by "superstar" pianists. Opera-based piano works were also staples of concert programs. That Saroni published only a small number of piano pieces with clear connections to opera may also be explained by his comparatively modest reputation as a piano performer and the consequent lack of publisher interest, although another 1845 piano work by Saroni, "Bohemian Grand March," could have been an attempt to cash in on the popularity of The Bohemian Girl. This Saroni work bears no obvious musical resemblance to either of The Bohemian Girl numbers with the word "march" in the title and the sheet music publication contains no explicit references to the opera, but the year of publication and the title of the Saroni piece suggest a connection to the opera.A third musical trend that Saroni pursued was composing works on Native American themes. Michael Pisani catalogued nearly forty "Indian parlor songs and parlor instrumental works" published in the United States between 1830 and 1850; Saroni's two songs on Native American topics, "The Pequot Brave" (1844) and "Speed Away!" (1847), were therefore part of a larger phenomenon. "The Pequot Brave" is a strophic song in the key of C minor, dedicated to Ole Bull, an extremely popular musical figure in contemporary New York. The most immediately apparent way in which the Native American subject matter is transmitted in this song is through the lyrics, by Owen G. Warren. As Pisani has noted, the emotional content of this text (a tragic tale of unsuccessful Native American revenge against whites) is supported in purely musical terms with devices such as the minor key and use of diminished 7th chords (example 6). To this I add two further devices of text expression: the pounding figure in the piano's left hand in measures 1–6 (presumably an allusion to a stereotype of Native American drumming) and the wide melodic right-hand figure with the trill on the second beat in measures 2 and 4 (presumably an imitation of stereotypical Native American "war whoops").With the work's relatively modest technical challenges combined with elements of text expression, "The Pequot Brave" resembles many of the era's published songs in its occupation of a middle ground between Romantic lieder and parlor songs. Furthermore, the song's overt Native American content took advantage of an established trend. Other composers who wrote similar "Native" songs between 1835 and 1847 included Charles E. Horn, Henry Russell (1812–1900), Anthony Philip Heinrich (1781–1861), and Marion Dix Sullivan (1802–60). In fact, Sullivan's "The Blue Juniata" (1844) was one of the most popular American songs of the period. Saroni's music may have spawned its own imitators with the 1848 publication of "Speed Away! Speed Away!" by song composer and music teacher Isaac Baker Woodbury (1819–58), which used the same lyrics previously set by Saroni in "Speed Away."31As a critic, Saroni sometimes expressed annoyance with some of the very musical trends he exploited as a composer. For example, he targeted the popularity of the polka: "We lament the increasing predominance of Polka-music [sic]." Saroni criticized the volume of published polkas without any sense of irony, complaining about the "thousands and thousands of Polkas [that] flood the market" (his "Oakland Polka" had been released the previous year, and within months he would publish three more polkas). On another occasion, Saroni the critic used a satirical and possibly autobiographical dialogue between a publisher and a composer to ridicule the preferences of music publishers. In this hypothetical exchange, the composer character is attempting to sell "ballads, a