American city in Ohio. Settled in 1788 on the Ohio River, Cincinnati became the first capital of the Northwest Territory in 1790 and was incorporated as a town in 1802. It was named after the Society of Cincinnati, an association of former officers of the Revolutionary Army. By 1840 it was the sixth largest city on the North American continent.
3. Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
ELDRED M. THIERSTEIN (with CHARLOTTE L. SHOCKLEY)
While it was part of the American Frontier, Cincinnati gave support to music through its churches, amateur musicians and education. 1800 is the earliest known date for a singing school. The earliest documented theatrical production, a comic opera The Poor Soldier, was performed in 1801 by amateurs of the town (then with a population of 750) and soldiers from Fort Washington. At this same time schools of writing, arithmetic and dance were advertised. By 1811 touring theatre companies and other musical acts began visiting Cincinnati. When a travelling musician, Signor Muscarelli, gave a concert there in 1823 the climax of the evening was an imitation of dogs and cats on the violin. The violinist Joseph Tosso, a former pupil at the Paris Conservatoire who lived in Cincinnati from 1827 to 1887 and played an Amati, made his reputation with The Arkansaw Traveler, a well-known ‘speciality number’ with recitation. He was also the founder of the Eclectic Academy of Music in 1834. Various choral organizations existed briefly during this period, instrumentalists played for dances and minstrel shows and orchestras occasionally performed overtures by Handel or Mozart. The first showboats appeared on the Cincinnati riverfront in 1831.
During the 1840s immigration from Europe, and particularly from Germany, increased sharply, significantly affecting the cultural life of the city. By 1850 half the citizens were European-born and almost 30% of the population was German. In 1849 the German and Swiss singing societies joined with similar ones from Louisville, Kentucky, and Madison, Indiana, to hold a Sängerfest in Cincinnati with a small orchestra and a combined chorus of 118, performing music by C.F. Zoellner, Mozart, Conradin Kreutzer, J.F. Reichardt and F.W. Abt, among others. On this occasion the German Sängerbund of North America was formed. Annual Sängerfests were held thereafter in various cities, with Cincinnati as host again in 1851, 1867 and 1870. By 1870 the chorus had expanded to 2000 members, and the merchants of Cincinnati built for the Sängerfest a wooden exposition hall seating 5000. Brass bands performed for municipal occasions.
Theodore Thomas visited Cincinnati on his first orchestra tour in 1869 and for several years thereafter. On his 1871 visit he was invited to establish a music festival using choruses from throughout the West. Thomas agreed, and in May 1873 the festival was held in Exposition Hall for one week, using an expanded orchestra of 108 members and a chorus of 800. The festival was made a biennial affair, and Thomas continued as its music director. After the second festival in 1875 a group of citizens raised the money to replace the wooden Exposition Hall with a permanent brick structure. The new Music Hall (capacity 3600) opened with the third May Festival, which was postponed until the completion of the building in 1878. After the fourth festival a permanent May Festival chorus of Cincinnatians was established. The festival became annual in 1967. Next to the Worcester Music Festival (inaugurated in 1858), the Cincinnati May Festival is the oldest music festival in the USA. Music directors succeeding Thomas (1873–1904) were Frank van der Stucken (1906–12, 1923–7), Ernst Kunwald (1914–16), Eugène Ysaÿe (1918–20), Frederick Stock (1929), Eugène Goossens (1931–46), Fritz Busch (1948–50), Josef Krips (1954–60), Max Rudolf (1963–70), Julius Rudel (1971–2), James Levine, who was born in Cincinnati (1974–8), and James Conlon (from 1979).
The forerunner of the Cincinnati SO, the fifth oldest symphony orchestra in the USA, was the Philharmonic Society, an orchestra of professional musicians which presented three series of concerts between 1857 and 1860. Enthusiasm ebbed until December 1872, when concerts were again held. Under George Brand the orchestra augmented Thomas’s orchestra for the May Festival of 1873. In 1894 the Cincinnati Orchestra Association was founded, with stockholders and guarantors, to establish a symphony orchestra; Mrs William Howard Taft was its first president. In the first season as the Cincinnati SO nine concerts were conducted at Music Hall by Frank van der Stucken beginning in January 1895. At the close of its 1906–7 season the Orchestra Association, balking at demands made by the musicians’ union, disbanded the orchestra. After a compromise it was reorganized in 1909 with Stokowski as conductor (1909–12). Succeeding conductors were Kunwald (1912–17), Ysaÿe (1918–22), Reiner (1922–31), Goossens (1931–47), Thor Johnson (1947–58), Rudolf (1958–70), Thomas Schippers (1970–77), Walter Susskind (music adviser, 1977–80), Michael Gielen (1980–86) and Jesús López-Cobos (from 1986). The Cincinnati SO was the first American orchestra to undertake a world tour (1967). The Cincinnati Pops Orchestra was established by the CSO board of trustees in 1977 when Erich Kunzel was named its conductor. Kunzel has built the CPO into one of the world’s most active classical pops ensembles performing more than 30 subscription concerts and releasing five record albums a year. The greater Cincinnati area (including Northern Kentucky) have a number of community and chamber orchestras and two youth symphony orchestras.
Opera has been a part of Cincinnati’s music tradition since the early performances of amateurs followed by visits of touring companies during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Cincinnati Opera, the second oldest continuing opera company in the USA, presented its first season (six weeks in the summer of 1920) in the Cincinnati Zoological Gardens band pavilion. Immediate success led to the development of one of the major opera companies in America presenting opera in the summer with internationally known artists. For 51 years the performances were given at the outdoor pavilion of the Zoological Gardens and the company became known as the ‘Cincinnati Zoo Opera’. In 1972 the performances were moved to the refurbished Music Hall, continuing the traditional summer season, and adding some spring and autumn productions and student-orientated performances. At least 117 different operas have been presented since the first season. In 1999 the artistic director was Nicholas Muni.
Cincinnati was one of the first American cities to give regular music instruction in the public schools (from around 1845). Timothy B. Mason, son of Lowell Mason, was the first supervisor. In the 1840s and 1850s there were a few music schools and many private music teachers. In 1867 Clara Baur (1835–1912), a pianist and singer who had emigrated from Germany in 1849, founded the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music on the model of the Stuttgart Hochschule für Musik, where she had studied. The conservatory flourished under her direction, and after her death her niece Bertha Baur (1858–1940) continued the direction until her own retirement in 1930, when the Institute of Fine Arts took charge of the conservatory.
The College of Music of Cincinnati was founded in 1878 in Music Hall. Theodore Thomas moved to Cincinnati to be its first director but resigned in 1880 after a dispute with the board of directors. Like the conservatory, the College of Music appointed European musicians to its staff and offered training in performance for both professionals and amateurs, attracting students from all areas of the USA. The college and the conservatory merged in 1955, and in 1962, as CCM, became part of the University of Cincinnati, occupying its own new building in 1967. In 1997 the school had over 170 instructors, including the Tokyo and Amernet String Quartets. The school has about 695 undergraduate and 658 postgraduate students. The library contains about 91, 000 books and scores and 35, 000 recordings, and includes the Harline collection of cinema and television music manuscripts, the Chujoy collection of dance memorabilia, books and periodicals, and the Alexander Zemlinsky collection. Xavier University, the College of Mount St Joseph and Northern Kentucky University also contribute to Cincinnati’s music education. The School for Creative and Performing Arts (1973) was founded by the public school system to give the children of Cincinnati an opportunity to focus on their artistic skills while following the regular state required curriculum.
Since the early 19th century when the first theatres, the National Theatre (1837) and Pike’s Opera House (1859) were built, Cincinnati has had a number of performance venues for local and touring companies. Music Hall, a brick structure (1878) recognized for its excellent acoustics, today a national historical landmark, remains the primary venue for most major musical performances, and the Taft Theatre continues to be used for a variety of musical events. The J. Ralph Corbett Pavilion, known as the Riverbend Music Center (1984), is an outdoor pavilion with a postmodernist design used by the Cincinnati SO, Cincinnati PO and many touring groups. The Aronoff Centre for the Arts (1995) is a complex of three smaller theatres: the Procter and Gamble, Jarson and Kaplan theatres. The Crown Coliseum (formerly the Riverfront Coliseum), an indoor sports arena, is also used for musical events.
In 1928 the Cincinnati Institute of Fine Arts was established with an endowment of $3·5 million to support the Cincinnati SO and the Art Museum. After World War II the institute launched an annual fund drive, modelled on the community’s united drive for social services, to support the Art Museum, the Taft Museum, the Cincinnati SO and the Cincinnati Opera. In 1978 the Fine Arts Fund expanded to include the Contemporary Arts Center, the Cincinnati Ballet, the Playhouse in the Park and the May Festival. Cincinnati was the first city in the USA to inaugurate a fund drive involving the entire business and private community in support of the arts.
Cincinnati’s public broadcasting stations, WGUC-FM Radio, founded by Joseph Sagmaster (1960), and WCET-TV, founded by Uberto Neely (1954), contribute to music education in the city.
The Cincinnati Ballet was chartered in 1958, gave its first performance in 1964 and continues to perform traditional and new works. Cincinnati was an important centre of organ building in the 19th century. Two prominent makers of musical instruments, the Baldwin Piano & Organ Co. (founded 1865) and the Rudolph Wurlitzer Co. (1890, maker of the ‘Mighty Wurlitzer’ theatre organ and later of the jukebox), had their headquarters in the city for many years.
Music publishing flourished in the 19th century, and in the early 1900s the important firm of music engravers and printers Otto Zimmerman & Son was active in Cincinnati; the Willis Music Co. and World Library Publications still carry on the city’s publishing tradition. Church’s Musical Visitor was an influential national periodical in the late 19th century, and the music review Billboard was printed in Cincinnati from 1894 to 1982. The Cincinnati Musicians’ Protective Union (established 1881) was one of the first trade unions for musicians in the USA and played a leading role in founding the National League of Musicians (1886) and the American Federation of Musicians (1896).
Cincinnati was an important centre of ragtime composing and publishing. More than 110 ragtime works were issued there by publishers who included John Arnold, Great Eastern Publishing Co., the Groene Music Publishing Co., Joseph Krolage Music Publishing Co. and Mentel Bros. Publishing Co. Leading local composers of ragtime included Homer Denny, Henry Fillmore, Albert Gumble, Clarence M. Jones, Louis H. Mentel and Floyd H. Willis. During the 1920s the Vocal-style Company issued player piano rolls. It was one of the first to print the words to popular songs on its rolls, and it also issued rolls by such musicians as Jelly Roll Morton. It was acquired in 1927 by the QRS Company of Chicago.
The city played its part in the development of rock-and-roll with the establishment of King Records in 1945, one of the first companies to record rhythm-and-blues. King was responsible for discovering and promoting the music of James Brown, Clyde McPhatter, Hank Ballard, Bullmoose Jackson, Otis Redding, Bill Doggett and Nina Simon, among others, and continued to be an important factor in popular music until the mid-1960s.
Among the varied personalities associated with the musical life of Cincinnati are Stephen Collins Foster, who wrote many of his early songs while a clerk there between 1846 and 1850; James Monroe Trotter, author of the first account of black American musicians in America (Music and some Highly Musical People, 1878), who received his early musical training in the city; Henry Krehbiel, music critic of the Cincinnati Gazette from 1874 to 1880 before going on to the New York Tribune; the composers and bandmasters Henry Fillmore (who became known as the ‘March King’ when Sousa’s career was in decline), Frank Simon and Herman Bellstedt, jr; and, more recently, Rembert Wurlitzer, the violin authority; Frank Foster, arranger for Count Basie and others; James Levine, conductor; and the philanthropists Patricia and J. Ralph Corbett and Louise Dieterle Nippert.
C.F. Goss: Cincinnati, the Queen City 1788–1912 (Cincinatti, 1912)
F.R. Ellis: ‘Music in Cincinnati’, Music Teachers National Association: Proceedings, viii (1913), 7–15
Golden Jubilee (Cincinnati, 1928) [pubn of the Cincinnati Music Hall Association]
L.C. Frank: Musical Life in Early Cincinnati, and the Origin of the May Festival (Cincinnati, 1932)
C.L. de Chambrun: Cincinnati: Story of the Queen City (New York, 1939)
J. Lewis: An Historical Study of the Origin and Development of the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music (diss., U. of Cincinnati, 1943)
H.R. Stevens: ‘The Haydn Society of Cincinnati, 1819–1824’, Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, lii (1943), 95–119
V.A. Orlando: An Historical Study of the Origin and Development of the College of Music of Cincinnati (diss., U. of Cincinnati, 1946)
H.R. Stevens: ‘Adventure in Refinement: Early Concert Life in Cincinnati 1810–1826’, Bulletin of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, v (1947), no.3, p.8–22, no.4, p.22–32
H. Langworthy: The Theatre in the Frontier Cities of Lexington, Kentucky and Cincinnati, Ohio, 1797–1835 (diss., State U. of Iowa, 1952)
H.R. Stevens: ‘New Foundations: Cincinnati Concert Life 1826–1830’, Bulletin of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, x (1952), 26–38
H.R. Stevens: ‘The First Cincinnati Music Festival’, Bulletin of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, xx (1962), 186–96
R.J. Grandstaff: A History of the Professional Theatre in Cincinnati, Ohio, 1861–1886 (diss., U. of Michigan, 1963)
J.E. Holliday: ‘Cincinnati Opera Festivals during the Gilded Age’, Cincinnati Historical Society Bulletin, xxiv (1966), 131–49
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra: a Tribute to Max Rudolf and Highlights of its History (Cincinnati, 1967)
J.E. Holliday: ‘Notes on Samuel N. Pike and His Opera Houses’, Cincinnati Historical Society Bulletin, vii (1967), 165–83
J.E. Holliday: ‘The Cincinnati Philharmonic and Hopkins Hall Orchestras, 1856–1868’, Cincinnati Historical Society Bulletin, xxvi (1968), 158–73
K.W. Hart: 19th Century Organ Builders of Cincinnati (diss., U. of Cincinnati, 1972)
P. Hart: ‘Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’, Orpheus in the New World: the Symphony Orchestra as an American Cultural Institution (New York, 1973), 264–90
Z.L. Miller and G.F. Roth: Cincinnati’s Music Hall (Virginia Beach, VA, 1978)
R.C. Vitz: ‘Starting a Tradition: the First Cincinnati May Musical Festival’, Cincinnati Historical Society Bulletin, xxxviii (1980), 33–50
J. Chute: ‘Progressive Programming in the Queen City’, Symphony Magazine, xxxiii/3 (1982), 21–7
L.R. Wolz: Opera in Cincinnati: the Years before the Zoo, 1801–1920 (diss., U. of Cincinnati, 1983)
J.E. Hasse: Cincinnati Ragtime (Cincinnati, 1983)
E.A. Thierstein: Cincinnati Opera: from the Zoo to Music Hall (Hillsdale, MI, 1995)
Cincinnati Ballet’s Historical Highlights (Cincinnati, 1997)
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Historical Perspective (Cincinnati, 1997)