American city, the largest city in Maryland. Its musical history can be traced to the American Revolutionary period. First settled in 1662, Baltimore became a town in 1730. By 1800 its population of more than 26,000 was larger than that of the state’s capital, Annapolis. As early as 1784 concerts in the city were advertised in the press. These early programmes were of great diversity, including works by Bach, Dittersdorf, Haydn, Kocžwara, Pleyel, Viotti and Vanhal, as well as by immigrant musicians Alexander Reinagle and Raynor Taylor who were resident in Baltimore.
In 1794, a year after establishing a music shop in Philadelphia, Joseph Carr and his sons Thomas and Benjamin inaugurated a similar enterprise in Baltimore. The first publication of the Star Spangled Banner in sheet music form was by Thomas Carr in November 1814. Following the demise of Thomas Carr’s business in 1821, other publications, notably by the firms of Arthur Clifton (fl ?1823), George Willig (1823–1910), John Cole (1821–38), Frederick Benteen (1839–55), Miller and Beecham (1853–73), James Boswell (1835–59), Samuel Carusi (1839–44), W.C. Peters (1844–52) and G. Fred Kranz (1910–c1960), made Baltimore a major centre of music publishing. A significant factor in the success of a number of these firms was the presence in Baltimore of the early American lithography firm of A. Hoen & Co., who supplied illustrated covers for numerous Baltimore imprints. Several of the Baltimore music publishing firms were taken over by the Boston firm of Oliver Ditson in the late 19th century.
The first orchestra of professional musicians in Baltimore was the Peabody Orchestra in 1866. Under the direction of James Monroe Deems, Lucian Southard and Asger Hamerik the orchestra gave the premières of works by American composers and the American premières of numerous European works, especially those from Hamerik’s native Denmark. The Peabody Orchestra ceased in 1896. Ross Jungnickel organized the first Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, which gave its first season in 1890.
Following the demise of Jungnickel’s orchestra in 1899, the Florestan Club, an élite group of local musicians and music lovers (including H.L. Mencken), made plans to found the city’s first resident orchestra. In 1916 Baltimore became the first city in the USA to found an orchestra on a municipal appropriation. The first conductor of the new Baltimore SO, Gustav Strube, remained in the post until 1930. Subsequent directors of the orchestra were George Siemonn (1930–35), Ernest Schelling (1935–7), Werner Janssen (1937–9) and Howard Barlow (1939–42). This orchestra played its last concert in 1942. The same year Reginald Stewart, also director of the Peabody Conservatory, devised a plan for the reorganization of the Baltimore SO. Stewart attracted superior musicians by offering them faculty appointments at the Peabody Conservatory, an arrangement based on Mendelssohn’s direction of the Leipzig Conservatory and the Gewandhaus Orchestra. Although Stewart was the only one to have held both positions, the relationship between the Baltimore SO and the Peabody Conservatory faculty remains strong. Subsequent conductors have included Massimo Freccia (1952–9), Peter Herman Adler (1959–68), Brian Priestman (1968–9), Sergiu Comissiona (1968–84), D.J. Zinman (1985–98) and Yury Temirkanov (since 1999).
Under the inspiration of A. Jack Thomas, the conductors Charles L. Harris and later W. Llewellyn Wilson led the Baltimore Colored SO and Chorus in concerts from 1929 until a bitter musicians’ strike in 1939 closed the orchestra. The Baltimore Women’s String SO played from 1936 to 1940 under the direction of Stephen Deak and Wolfgang Martin.
The Peabody Conservatory, founded on 12 February 1857, is technically the oldest conservatory in the USA, although it did not actually offer instruction until 1868. As part of the Peabody Institute of the City of Baltimore, the conservatory was endowed by George Peabody, one of America’s earliest philanthropists. The Institute included provision for an extensive library, well furnished in every department of knowledge, a gallery of art and an Academy of Music (which became the Peabody Conservatory of Music in 1872).
The conservatory’s first director was the New England educator Lucian Southard (1868–70) followed by the Danish-born composer and conductor and student of Berlioz, Asger Hamerik (1871–98), Harold Randolph (1898–1927), Otto Ortmann (1928–41), Reginald Stewart (1941–58), Peter Mennin (1958–62), Charles Kent (1963–7), Richard Franko Goldman (1968–77), Elliot Galkin (1977–82), Robert O. Pierce (1982–95) and Robert Sirota (since 1995). In 1977 the Peabody Conservatory was affiliated with the Johns Hopkins University and in 1983 became a school of the university. It is now known as the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University.
There are about two dozen other institutions of higher education in Baltimore and its environs. Goucher College, Morgan State University and Towson State University are among those that offer not only music courses but also distinguished concert series. One local body, the Baltimore Chamber Music Society, sponsored a controversial series of concerts consisting almost entirely of 20th-century music. Founded in 1950 by composer Hugo Weisgall and philanthropist Randolph Rothschild, the society has also commissioned a number of important works. Two important adjuncts to Baltimore’s musical life are the Arthur Friedheim Library and the archives of the Peabody Institute at the Peabody Conservatory of Music and the Maryland Historical Society. Both collections offer extensive primary source materials for the study of Baltimore’s musical life. The Lester S. Levy Collection at Johns Hopkins’s Milton S. Eisenhower Library includes one of the most important collections of American sheet music (approximately 40,000 items).
Music theatre in Baltimore can trace its beginnings from 1772 with a performance of Milton’s Comus in a stable by Lewis Hallam’s travelling American Company. The first resident theatrical company, Thomas Wall and Adam Lindsay’s Maryland Company of Comedians, built Baltimore’s first theatre in 1781 and performed there until 1785. A resurgence of Hallam’s Old American Company and a series of local companies provided sporadic theatrical, musical and circus entertainment during the 1780s and early 1790s. Thomas Wignell and Alexander Reinagle’s Philadelphia Company dominated the last decade of the 18th century, offering substantial seasons of plays, interludes and afterpieces in their newly constructed Holliday Street Theater. From the turn of the century to the Civil War, Baltimore hosted a variety of resident and touring companies in both the Holliday Street Theater and the Front Street Theatre. After the Civil War, a new ‘theatre district’ sprang up in Baltimore and included the Concordia Opera House (1865–91), Ford’s Grand Opera House (1871–1964) and the Academy of Music (1875–1927). All featured a variety of theatrical entertainments, with Ford’s hosting at least 24 opera companies performing over 90 different works. With the rise of the New York Theatrical Syndicate around the turn of the century, Baltimore faded as a major stop for touring opera troupes. Local efforts to establish an opera company resulted in the creation of Eugene Martinet’s Baltimore Civic Opera Company in 1932. As early as the 1940–41 season, Martinet was able to enlist the help of the soprano Rosa Ponselle, who served as artistic director until 1979. In 1970 the company was renamed the Baltimore Opera Company.
With many inhabitants of British and German extraction, Baltimore has enjoyed a rich choral tradition. 19th-century choral organizations included the Liederkranz (1836–1900), the Germania Männerchor (1856–1929) and the Baltimore Oratorio Society (1881–1900). In the 20th century the Bach Choir, the Handel Society, the Choral Arts Society and the Baltimore Symphony Chorus maintained this tradition. The latter three continue to give distinguished readings of the choral classics, and the Choral Arts Society encourages the creation of new choral works with an annual competition.
Baltimore has six outstanding concert halls, all aesthetically pleasing and acoustically effective. The Lyric, constructed in 1894, is modelled on the Neues Gewandhaus in Leipzig. After extensive renovation in 1980–81, the theatre (cap. 2683) was reopened in 1982. In the same year, the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (cap. 2467) was opened as the permanent home of the Baltimore SO. Designed by Pietro Belluschi, the hall is named after one of the city’s most generous philanthropists. A second hall named after Meyerhoff, the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Auditorium (cap. 363), opened in 1982 at the Baltimore Museum of Art and is the home of the Baltimore Chamber Music Society concerts. The Kraushaar Auditorium at Goucher College, again designed by Belluschi, opened in 1962 (cap. 995). The Shriver Hall (cap. 1100) of the Johns Hopkins University is the site of a distinguished chamber music series. Opened in 1866, the Miriam A. Friedberg Concert Hall (cap. 800) at the Peabody Institute is the oldest of the existing halls; it underwent extensive renovation in 1983.
O.G. Sonneck: Early Concert-Life in America (1731–1800) (Leipzig, 1907/R, 3/1959)
S.E. Lafferty: Names of Music Teachers, Musicians, Music Dealers, Engravers, Printers and Publishers of Music, Conservatories of Music, Music Academies, Manufacturers of Pianos, Organs, and other Musical Instruments appearing in the Baltimore City Directories from 1796–1900 (MS, US-BApi, 1937)
L. Keefer: Baltimore’s Music: the Haven of the American Composer (Baltimore, 1962)
R.A. Disharoon: A History of Municipal Music in Baltimore, 1914–1947 (diss., U. of Maryland, 1980)
D. Ritchey, ed.: A Guide to the Baltimore Stage in the Eighteenth Century (Westport, CT, 1982)
H. Weems: The History of the Women’s String Symphony Orchestra of Baltimore Inc (diss., Peabody Conservatory of Music, 1990)
E. Lawrence: Music at Ford’s Grand Opera House, 1871–1894 (diss., Peabody Institute, Johns Hopkins U., 1991)
W. Spencer: The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, 1965–1982: the Meyerhoff Years (Peabody Institute, Johns Hopkins U., 1993)
E. Schaaf and D. Hildebrand: Music in Maryland (forthcoming)
ELLIOTT W. GALKIN/N. QUIST