Gilmore, Patrick S(arsfield)

(b Ireland, 25 Dec 1829; d St Louis, 24 Sept 1892). Irish-American bandmaster, impresario and composer. His birthplace cannot be confirmed (Ballygar, Co. Galway or Mullingar, Co. Westmeath), but his early years were spent in Ballygar. He began his musical career as a cornet player in the Athlone Amateur Band (Co. Westmeath) before emigrating to the USA in October 1849. He settled in Boston, where he secured a position with the music dealer and publisher John P. Ordway. He was also agent for and played the tambourine and cornet with the minstrel group, Ordway’s Aeolian Vocalists. His first position as a bandleader was with the Charlestown Band, from which he went on to lead other Massachusetts Bands – the Suffolk Band (1852), the Boston Brigade Band (1853), and (in 1855) the Salem Brass Band. The Salem band acquired an enviable reputation under his direction, performing on many important occasions including the inaugural parade for President James Buchanan in Washington in 1857. Gilmore resigned the Salem post in 1858 to establish his own ensemble, known as Gilmore’s Band. Its first appearance, at the Boston Music Hall on 9 April 1859, was followed by a series of concerts that were very favourably received. During the Civil War the band became attached to the 24th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment as part of the Union Army.

In 1864 Gilmore organized the first of the gigantic concerts that established his national reputation. For the inauguration of Michael Hahn as Governor of Louisiana he assembled a band of 500 members, a chorus of 6000, 50 cannons, and 40 soldiers to strike anvils, and even arranged for the simultaneous ringing of all the church bells in the city. These forces were doubled and tripled for the National Peace Jubilee and Musical Festival (1869) and the World Peace Jubilee and International Music Festival (1872), both held in Boston. The first of these attracted enormous crowds to the specially constructed 50,000-seat auditorium, where an orchestra of 1000 (led by Ole Bull), a chorus of 10,000 and six bands (including a bass drum measuring 8-feet in diameter with a shell of 25-feet in circumference) performed. Euphrosyne Parepa-Rosa sang the Bach–Gounod Ave Maria accompanied by 200 violinists. For the 1872 festival Gilmore obtained the services of Johann Strauss and his orchestra from Austria, the Band of the Grenadier Guards from England, the French Garde Républicaine band, the Prussian band of the Kaiser Franz Grenadiers, the US Marine Band and a host of instrumental and vocal performers totalling over 20,000 people.

Gilmore left Boston in 1873 to associate himself with the 22nd Regiment of New York. For his new band he recruited the very finest instrumentalists, and it became the foremost professional band in the USA for the next 19 years. In 1875 he leased P.T. Barnum’s Hippodrome, which he converted into a picturesque indoor park, renaming it Gilmore’s Garden; the band presented a highly successful series of 150 concerts there. Tours to the West Coast and Europe followed in 1876 and 1878, with Emma Thursby and Lillian Nordica as vocal soloists. Gilmore’s band opened the first season at Manhattan Beach in summer 1879 and returned annually thereafter. Its winter season usually included promenade concerts at the 22nd Regiment Armory and other venues in New York. During the 1880s the Gilmore Band made extensive autumn and spring tours of the USA, performing one or two concerts each day. The summer season at Manhattan Beach was always extremely successful, as was an annual residency at the St Louis Exposition. Gilmore died while fulfilling that engagement in 1892 and was buried in New York with all the pomp accorded to a dignitary and leader of the highest order.

Gilmore composed a number of Civil War songs, including Freedom on the Old Plantation, The Spirit of the North and God save the Union (1861); his most popular song was When Johnny comes marching home (1863), which first appeared as part of The Soldier’s Return March and was later published separately under the pen name Louis Lambert. He also composed numerous marches (including The Twenty-Second Regiment March) and other short instrumental pieces, some of which were published under the imprint of Gilmore & Russell. In addition he was engaged in the manufacture of brass instruments as a partner in the firm of Gilmore, Graves & Co. (later Gilmore & Co., and Wright, Gilmore & Co.). Gilmore's reputation, however, rested on his activities as a bandmaster and impresario.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

DAB (F.H. Martens)

Illustrated History of the Great Peace Jubilee (New York, 1869)

P.S. Gilmore: History of the National Peace Jubilee (Boston, 1871)

Obituaries: St. Louis Post-Dispatch (25 Sept 1892); New York Times (25 Sept 1892)

T. Carroll: Bands and Band Music in Salem’, Historical Collections of the Essex Institute, xxxvi (1900), 265–85

G.R. Leighton: Bandmaster Gilmore’, American Mercury, xxx (1933), 172–83

F.C. Damon: P.S. Gilmore, Bandmaster’, Salem Evening News (5 April 1936–2 July 1937) [series of 23 articles]

M. Darlington: Irish Orpheus: the Life of Patrick Gilmore (Philadelphia,1950)

F.J. Cipolla: The Music of Patrick Gilmore’, The Instrumentalist, xxxii/9 (1978), 64–5

FRANK J. CIPOLLA