American city, in western New York state. In 1808 the frontier village of Buffalo recorded its first musician and its first music critic. A contemporary writer noted ‘how hearts leaped’ when the fiddler Russell Noble came over the hill ‘to set the tune for the country dance’, and added: ‘He had no more regard for time than eternity’. In 1827 the city’s first three pianos were towed to Buffalo on the Erie canal’s mule-drawn barges. They were ordered by James Sheppard for his pioneer music shop, headquarters from 1838 of the Handel and Haydn Society, and the ancestor of one of the city’s most important musical institutions for over 100 years, the firm of Denton, Cottier & Daniels. The city’s first organ was placed in St Paul’s Church in 1829. Early musical life was dominated by German settlers; the Buffalo Liedertafel was established in 1848 and lasted well into the 20th century. In 1883 a music hall was built. Victor Herbert and his orchestra were a major attraction of the 1901 Pan-American Exposition. From 1908 to 1917 the Philharmonic Society of Buffalo organized an annual May Festival featuring the Chicago SO under Frederick Stock, but the city had no official resident professional orchestra until the Buffalo PO was founded in 1935. Franco Autori was its first conductor and William Steinberg took over the post in 1945. He was followed by Josef Krips (1953–63) and Lukas Foss (1963–70). Under Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor from 1971 to 1978, the orchestra presented 32 concerts in series subscription form and many other popular and school concerts outside Buffalo.
The succession of Buffalo PO music directors continued with Julius Rudel (1978–85), Semyon Bychkov (1985–9) and Maximiano Valdes (1989–98). This was generally a period of strained finances and diminishing personnel which saw the orchestra’s very existence in peril. But the ensemble was able to maintain high artistic standards, and the tenure of Bychkov was a period of great optimism and vitality which reached its peak with the orchestra’s first European tour in 1988. When JoAnn Falletta was named music director in 1998, it was considered the most prestigious American orchestral appointment held by a woman, and optimism again rose.
Kleinhans Music Hall, designed by the architect Eliel Saarinen and built in 1940, is the orchestra’s home and provided the model for the Israel PO’s auditorium in Tel-Aviv. The adjoining Mary Seaton Room is one of the city’s principal recital rooms. In 1958 the orchestra purchased the NBC Symphony-Toscanini Library of scores containing 2000 titles, including the first editions and many others with notations by Toscanini on technical and stylistic matters.
The Buffalo Chamber Music Society is one of the oldest and most successful organizations of its type in the country, presenting an annual series of eminent chamber ensembles. Founded in 1924, the series hosted no fewer than 66 performances by the legendary Budapest String Quartet from 1931 to 1965. The city has not, however, enjoyed the same history of success in supporting locally produced opera. In 1988 several smaller companies merged into the regional Greater Buffalo Opera Company, but in 1998, during its tenth season, finances faltered and the company ceased operation.
Buffalo has a long tradition of fine music instruction, and has produced such national and international musicians as the soprano Rose Bampton, the pianist and pedagogue Guy Maier and the pianist Leonard Pennario. The First Settlement Music School was established in 1924. Paul Hindemith was brought to the city as a resident teacher in 1939 under the auspices of Cameron Baird, the music patron and founder of the University of Buffalo (since 1962, State University of New York at Buffalo) music department. The Budapest Quartet became the university’s resident chamber group in 1965, but the illness and death of the violist Boris Kroyt suspended the quartet’s activities a few seasons later. The Cleveland Quartet became the resident ensemble in 1971.
The Slee Beethoven Cycle is an unusual tradition which started in 1956. Frederick and Alice Slee left a bequest yielding some $40,000 annually, in part for a yearly presentation ‘in perpetuity’ of all 17 Beethoven works in quartet form, in a series of six concerts, in which the Budapest, Juilliard, Guarneri, La Salle and other leading quartets have taken part over the years. The university’s Slee Professorship, an endowed chair which is part of the bequest, provides for a leading composer to establish residence for an academic year, give lectures and supervise performances. Among Slee Professors since 1956 have been Carlos Chávez, Aaron Copland, Leon Kirchner, Ned Rorem, Mauricio Kagel, David Diamond, Henri Pousseur, Alexei Haieff, George Rochberg, Leo Smit, Virgil Thomson, Nicolas Nabokov and Lejaren Hiller. Hiller was also co-director with Lukas Foss of the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts, which has its headquarters in the university. Founded in 1964 by Foss and Allen Sapp, then chairman of the university music department, the centre has brought young composers and instrumentalists to Buffalo from many countries, usually for one-year residencies. Their functions are to compose and perform; they have no teaching duties. Among them have been Sylvano Bussotti, Niccolò Castiglioni, Cornelius Cardew, Vinko Globokar, Yuji Takahashi, Paul Zukofsky, Terry Riley and George Crumb. They have given annual series in Carnegie Hall, New York, and on several campuses in the eastern USA.
The attention generated by these activities made Buffalo one of the world’s leading centres for new music during the 1960s and 70s. When funding for the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts eventually dried up, the momentum it had established allowed the university at Buffalo to continue its prominence with two new annual events, the North American New Music Festival (1983–96) and the June in Buffalo Festival, with emphasis on the work of young, emerging composers, founded in 1975 by Morton Feldman and still thriving in 1999 under the direction of David Felder.
The Buffalo and Erie County Library (incorporating the Grosvenor Library founded in 1836) contains a small but important collection of musical Americana, including sheet music and tunebooks. Among the internationally known musicians who have been Buffalo residents are the baritone Heinz Rehfuss, Morton Feldman, who was appointed Edgard Varèse Professor at the University in 1976, Lejaren Hiller, a pioneer in computer music, and the pianist and composer Leo Smit (ii).
M. Larned and E. Choate: Music in Buffalo: a Centennial Monograph (Buffalo, 1932)
A.P. Stiller: Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra: Golden Anniversary Commemorative Book (Buffalo, 1985)
JOHN DWYER/HERMAN TROTTER