City in California, USA. It was founded in 1781 by settlers who were chiefly of Spanish, African and Mexican Indian descent, and incorporated in 1850.
2. Opera and concert life, 1850–1900.
3. Development of a local musical culture.
ROBERT STEVENSON
The early history of religious music in Los Angeles is the history of the San Gabriel Mission, which was founded in 1771. The Beñeme and Jeniguechi Indians gathered there each day, and sang an alabado (praise song) at dusk and dawn and a bendito (grace) before each meal. In 1776 Pedro Font, a Franciscan from Mexico, visited the mission and led a mass that he accompanied on his psaltery. In 1844 Ignacio Coronel opened a school north of Arcadia Street where he was assisted by his daughter Soledad, a harpist. As late as the mid-1850s the harp remained the favourite instrument of the local aristocracy. In 1855 Blas Raho (1806–62), a Lazarite from southern Italy, arrived in Los Angeles to become parish priest of Our Lady of the Angels Church; a skilled musician, he paid for a new organ and sought to organize a choir for services. In 1856 six Sisters of Charity, including three from Spain, arrived in the city and in 1857–8 trained a choir at their girls' school.
The California Minstrels visited Los Angeles in 1856; they returned to play for three nights at Jesús Domínguez's ranch and at the Nichols salon (1858), Stearns Hall (1859) and the Temple Theater (1865). Frank Hussey's Minstrels and the Metropolitan Minstrels played at the Temple in 1861. In 1865 the Gerardo López del Castillo Spanish Company from Mexico City performed one act of Verdi's Attila at the Temple Theater between acts of La trenza de sus cabellos by Tomás Rodríguez Rubí.
In the 1870s a number of sizable concert halls were constructed that could accommodate larger opera and concert performances. Merced Theater (cap. 400) opened in 1870 with a ‘grand vocal and instrumental concert’ at which the 21st Wilmington Army Band performed. Turnverein Hall, a large hall in a two-storey building on Spring Street, opened in 1872 and was the site of theatrical performances from 1874 and concerts from the following year. In 1875 the English pianist Arabella Goddard (1836–1922) gave two concerts there.
Tresa Carreño and her husband, the violinist Emile Sauret, gave four Turnverein concerts in 1875; Sauret also played duos with the guitarist Miguel S. Arévalo (1843–1900). Arévalo had studied at Guadajara, taught for two years in San Francisco, and moved to Los Angeles in 1871, where he became music director of the newly formed Los Angeles Musical Association. For three decades he was a leading concert performer, composer and teacher, as well as a frequent contributor to La crónica. He helped the area's Mexican culture withstand the pressure of German and Anglo-American musical influences that resulted from waves of immigration in the 1880s.
The completion in 1876 of the Southern Pacific railway link with San Francisco and in 1881 of a link eastward made Los Angeles virtually an obligatory stop for all concert artists touring the West. Ozro W. Childs's Grand Opera House, an elegant auditorium built in a horseshoe configuration with wide aisles, unobstructed views, and 500 seats, opened in 1884 with a house orchestra led by Peter Engels. In 1885 Emma Abbott brought her English Opera Company to the Grand Opera House. In 1887 large crowds heard Theodore Thomas and Gustav Heinrichs conduct the National Opera Company in several works at the newly opened Hazard's Pavilion. This building, also known as the Academy of Music when first opened, seated 4000 (razed after Alfred Hertz conducted Parsifal there in 1905); it would not have been large enough to accommodate the crowd that heard Patti sing the role of Semiramide (Rossini) at Mott Hall in 1887, which was ‘the largest audience in both numbers and money receipts’ that had ever gathered in Los Angeles. In 1892 the Alessandro Salvini Co. performed Mascagni's L'amico Fritz (18 November) before it was heard in New York. The first American performance of Puccini's La bohème was given by the Del Conte Italian Opera Company on 14 October 1897 at the Los Angeles Theater.
After 1875 black Americans played an important part in the history of Los Angeles. In 1876 the Jubilee Singers from Fisk University sang spirituals at Turnverein Hall, which was filled to capacity. All-black minstrel groups that performed in the city included the Original Georgia Minstrels, the New Orleans Minstrels and Brass Band, Callender's Minstrels, Richard and Pringle's Georgia Minstrels, Lew Johnson's Refined Minstrels and Cleveland's Colored Minstrels. Such well-known performers as William Kersands and Sam Lucas toured frequently with these troupes.
In 1892 Paul Colberg, the founder of a local conservatory, sponsored a concert of his own compositions at Turner Hall; this was the first performance devoted entirely to the works of a Los Angeles resident. Colberg soon left the city, however, convinced that no national reputation could accrue to one of its inhabitants. Preston Ware Orem (1865–1938), a composer, pianist and organist who lived in the city from 1889 to 1897, left for the same reason. In 1895 Carlyle Petersilea (1844–1903), a pianist and teacher from Boston, gave a recital at the Young Men's Christian Association auditorium. The following year he played all of Beethoven's piano sonatas in a series of 11 recitals, the first time such a cycle had been given west of the Rocky Mountains.
The first amateur musical association in Los Angeles, the Ellis Club, was formed in 1888; the following year a women's club, the Treble Clef (later the Lyric Club) was organized. The number of such organizations had grown to 17 by 1922. In 1883 Emily J. Valentine founded the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music (from 1892 the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music and Art) and with the aid of her daughter directed it until her death in 1910; she bequeathed it to Adeltha Valentine Carter and Earl B. Valentine. The conservatory moved many times during the next half-century before merging in 1961 with the Chouinard Art Institute to form the California Institute of the Arts, at Valencia, north of Los Angeles.
In the 1880s and 90s a number of institutions of higher learning offered specialized musical instruction, including St Vincent's College (later Los Angeles College) and Ellis College; both retained Emilie Lassaugue as a teacher until 1884, when she left amid some controversy to establish her own musical college in Nadeau Block. In 1888 Occidental College engaged Asbury Kent, who also taught at McPherrin Academy, as a piano and singing teacher. The teaching of music in Los Angeles public schools began in 1885. In 1910 Jennie Jones became supervisor of an elementary-school orchestra programme; by 1924 there were 122 elementary and 27 high-school ensembles with a total of 2800 players.
The first church with a vested boys' choir was St Paul's Episcopal, where Alfred J.F. McKiernan was precentor from 1886 to 1889. He was assisted at St Paul's School by M.L. Laxton, a school teacher from London. Mamie Perry (1862–1949), a native of the city who had studied opera in Milan, was particularly sought after to sing in various churches in Los Angeles after giving her début at Turnverein Hall in 1882. The most widely performed and published composer of church music was Frederick Stevenson (1845–1925); he moved to the city from Denver in 1894 to conduct at St John's Episcopal Church and Temple B'nai B'rith.
B'nai B'rith (from 1933 the Wilshire Boulevard Temple) was a centre of musical activity as early as 1869, when the temple's building fund sponsored three concerts. From 1862 to 1886 services were led by Abraham Wolf Edelman, an Orthodox rabbi from Warsaw. Later another ritual was instituted; during the tenure (1899–1919) of Rabbi Sigmund Hecht, from Hungary, the congregation not only employed a gentile mixed choir and organist but more than once welcomed ‘Christian worship’. Congregation Sinai, an organization founded in B'nai B'rith hall in 1906, began with a cantor named Katz; from its inception Sinai allowed organ playing, although at first it had no choir.
(viii) Jazz and popular music.
Los Angeles, §4: The modern era
The Los Angeles Philharmonic Society was formed in 1878 and revitalized in 1888. The orchestra gave four concerts during the 1888–9 season under the direction of Adolph Willhartitz (1836–1915). Theatre musicians made up most of the 35-piece orchestra when August J. Stamm opened a four-concert season in 1893 at the Grand Opera House. In 1898 Harley Hamilton (1861–1933), the leader of Stamm's orchestra, formed the Los Angeles SO, which he conducted until 1913. He championed the works of several local composers, including Morton Freeman Mason (1859–1927), who played the bassoon in the Los Angeles SO until 1907, Charles Edward Pemberton, the orchestra's oboist in 1904–5, then a member of its violin section, Henry Schoenefeld and Stevenson. He also performed works by other Americans, including Chadwick, MacDowell, Shapleigh, Arthur Foote and Frederick Zech. In addition to leading the Los Angeles SO he conducted the Women's Orchestra of Los Angeles for 20 seasons beginning in 1893.
From 1913 to 1920 the Los Angeles SO played under Adolph Tandler (1875–1953), who conducted the Los Angeles premières of 52 compositions. A graduate of the Vienna Conservatory and founder of the Tandler Quartet (brought to Los Angeles in 1909), he was the first conductor in the western USA to perform Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and also introduced Berlioz's Harold en Italie, Skryabin's Le poème de l'extase, Sibelius's First Symphony and other works to local audiences. He also performed works by many local composers and conducted several of his own compositions.
After performing in Trinity Auditorium during the 1916–17 season the Los Angeles SO moved for its last three seasons to the Auditorium (known as Clune's between 1915 and 1919). This auditorium, seating 2600, was inaugurated in 1906 and was then the largest reinforced concrete building in California. It became known as Philharmonic Auditorium in 1920 when the Los Angeles PO began performing there and was demolished in 1975.
Founded in 1919 and financed until 1934 by William Andrews Clark, jr (1877–1934), the Los Angeles PO was intended to be ‘as fine an orchestral institution as has existed in America’. Clark was unable to engage Rachmaninoff as its first conductor, and instead chose, on Alfred Hertz's recommendation, Walter Henry Rothwell (1872–1927), formerly the conductor of the St Paul SO. He was followed by Georg Schnéevoigt (1927–9), Artur Rodzinski (1929–33), and Otto Klemperer (1933–9). Clark subsidized the orchestra generously but left it no bequest; on his death the Southern California Symphony Association intervened and continued Klemperer's contract.
Between 1943 and 1956 the orchestra was led by Alfred Wallenstein, one of the first American-born music directors of a major orchestra. His successor, Eduard van Beinum, accepted the music directorship on condition that he be allowed to continue as director of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. Stricken by a heart attack in 1959, he was succeeded, after Solti refused the appointment, by Zubin Mehta, who was music director and conductor from 1962 to 1978. Carlo Maria Giulini led the orchestra from 1978 to 1983, and Michael Tilson Thomas and Simon Rattle served as principal guest conductors until 1985, when André Previn's appointment as music director became effective. In 1992 Previn was succeeded by Esa-Pekka Salonen. Ernest Fleischmann, executive director from 1969 to 1997, was succeeded by Willem Wijnbergen, and in 1999 by Deborah Borda.
On 11 July 1922 members of the Los Angeles PO, conducted by Alfred Hertz, gave the opening concert in the first ten-week summer season of ‘Symphonies under the Stars’ at Hollywood Bowl. The Bowl – a 60-acre canyon possessing great natural acoustical advantages – had been sold to the Theater Arts Alliance in 1919, and was assigned by deed by the Community Park and Art Association to Los Angeles County in 1924. The Beatles drew huge audiences when they appeared at the Bowl in 1964 and 1965. To revive audiences for classical music, Fleischmann inaugurated spectaculars and mini-marathons; a wide range of popular artists and classical concerts have made the Bowl the Los Angeles PO's financial bastion.
Los Angeles's other orchestras include the Jewish SO, based in Brentwood, the Los Angeles Baroque and Mozart orchestras, the Japanese PO, formed in 1961, the Los Angeles Chamber Symphony, led by Neville Marriner from 1969, then by Gerard Schwarz (1978–85); and more than 20 community orchestras, including the Glendale SO (formed 1923 and led by Carmen Dragon from 1963 until his death in 1984), and well-known ensembles in Long Beach, conducted from 1989 by JoAnn Falletta, and in Pasadena, conducted from 1984 by Jorge Mester.
Los Angeles, §4: The modern era
The Roger Wagner Chorale was founded by Wagner (1914–92), in 1946. Out of it grew the Los Angeles Master Chorale, founded by Wagner in 1965, which during the next two decades was the only professional resident chorus in the country giving its own series of concerts; its programmes include sacred works and operas performed in concert versions. Paul Salamunovich was appointed conductor in 1991.
Since 1997 chamber concerts have been held at Beckman Auditorium, Pasadena. Japan America Theater is the favoured venue for new music involving small ensembles. Monday evening concerts, mainly of contemporary music, are held in the Leo S. Bing Theater, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Chamber music concerts have also been sponsored by the Music Guild and other organizations.
Los Angeles, §4: The modern era
Shrine Auditorium, a massive structure built in 1927, was only partly satisfactory for opera and ballet performances. In the 1960s, however, a group of citizens led by Dorothy Buffum Chandler oversaw the financing and construction of the Music Center, a complex of three auditoriums in central Los Angeles. The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (cap. 3200) is used chiefly for symphonic and operatic performances, the Mark Taper Forum (753) for chamber music concerts, and the Ahmanson Theater (2100) for drama, light opera and musical comedy. Auditoriums connected with academic institutions include Royce Hall (seating 1892 when built in 1939, slightly fewer after remodelling in 1984) and Schoenberg Hall (528) at UCLA; Edison Performing Arts Center, formerly Ingalls Auditorium (2000) at East Los Angeles College; Bovard Hall (1600) at the University of Southern California; and Thorne Hall (960) at Occidental College. Vying with the Pantages Theater in Hollywood, the Shubert Theater (1824) in Century City has remained the city's principal venue for musical theatre. In 1932, 1934 and each autumn from 1937 to 1965 the San Francisco Opera gave a season of several weeks in the Shrine Auditorium (cap. 6000). Music Center Opera, the city's first fully professional opera company, launched its inaugural season in 1986 with Domingo in Otello at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
Los Angeles, §4: The modern era
Several churches and synagogues in Los Angeles have been important centres of musical activity. First Congregational's annual Bach festival was started in 1924 by John Smallman (1886–1937). Lloyd Holzgraf became the church's organist in 1959 and began an annual recital series in 1969.
In 1928 the Church of the Blessed Sacrament acquired a Casavant organ with four manuals and 58 ranks and engaged Richard Keyes Biggs (1886–1962) as its organist. Biggs played and recorded prolifically, composed many masses and presented a series of organ recitals at which local virtuosos performed. Roger Wagner began two decades as organist and choirmaster at St Joseph's in 1944. Other prominent music directors have included Jonathan Wattenbarger, followed by Frank Brownstead, at St Paul the Apostle, James Vail at St Alban's and Charles Feldman at Wilshire Boulevard Temple. The area's best-known cantors have included J.J. Frailich at the Reform University Synagogue, Jay Harwitt at the Temple Memorah and Samuel Fordis at the Conservative Adat Shalom.
Los Angeles, §4: The modern era
In 1882 a branch of the San Jose Normal School was formally opened in Los Angeles; this became independent (renamed the Los Angeles Normal School) in 1887. It moved in 1914, and in 1919 it became the southern branch of the state university system, being empowered to grant its own degrees in 1924 and assuming its present name, the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), in 1927; it moved to its present campus in 1929. Vocal instruction was introduced at the school in 1883. In 1911 a music department was formally established, becoming a school of music with five faculty members in 1915. The school became the department of music of the new southern branch of the University of California in 1919. The MA degree was authorized in 1940, and the PhD was first conferred in 1949. Ki Mantle Hood, who began teaching at the university in 1954, founded the Institute of Ethnomusicology in 1961; this was absorbed by UCLA's music department on his retirement in 1973. The UCLA music department in the School of the Arts and Architecture offers courses for performers leading to the DMA and the MA and PhD degrees for composers. The University of Southern California (USC), a private institution, was founded in 1880 and began to offer musical instruction in 1883–4. In the mid-1990s the music faculty offered degrees in performance, music education, choral music, theory, composition, music history, conducting and musicology. In 1999 the USC’s music school was renamed the Flora L. Thornton School of Music. The USC building that had previously been occupied by the Arnold Schoenberg Institute became the headquarters of the Thelonius Monk Institute of Jazz Studies. In addition to UCLA and USC there are strong composition programmes at the California Institute of the Arts (which absorbed the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music established in 1883) and at California State University, Northridge.
Libraries in the area with important local music history material include the Henry E. Huntington Library in San Marino (which holds the scrapbooks of Lynden Ellsworth Behymer, documenting the history of symphonic and operatic performances in Los Angeles from 1898 to 1947); the William A. Clark Memorial Library; the Walt Disney Archives in Burbank; the Los Angeles Music Center Archives; the Pasadena Public Library; the library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills; and the libraries of the California State University branches in Los Angeles, Long Beach and Northridge.
Los Angeles, §4: The modern era
Between 1885 and 1945 there were 29 music publishers in Los Angeles. Of these W.A. Quincke & Co. was active for the longest period; the firm was established in 1906 and was in operation until at least 1929. West Coast Publishing Co., which specialized in shape-note gospel music, was active until at least 1924. Other local music publishers and printers during this period were Southern California Music Publishing Co., Falconer & Loveland Music Printers, Frank E. Garbett, Freed & Powers, Saunders Publications, Boris Morris Music Co., Wright Music Co. and Harry G. Neville.
Musical activities in Los Angeles between 1911 and 1948 were described in the Pacific Coast Musician, a periodical founded and edited by Frank Colby (1867–1940), an organist, conductor and composer. Music of the West, a monthly issued in Pasadena from 1945 to 1969, also focussed on local musical events. The only musicological journals published in Los Angeles in more recent years are the Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute (1976–94), edited until 1991 by Leonard Stein, and the Inter-American Music Review (1978–), edited by Robert Stevenson.
Los Angeles, §4: The modern era
The southern California climate attracted the first film companies to Los Angeles in 1913. The advent of sound films in 1927 created a far greater demand for composers and performers; Malotte settled in the city that year, founded a school for theatre organists and wrote and conducted film scores for Walt Disney. Each motion-picture studio employed an orchestra of symphonic proportions, providing a vast pool of musical talent that helped make Los Angeles a centre for radio, television and the recording industry.
Los Angeles, §4: The modern era
Among the most influential jazz musicians in Los Angeles was Stan Kenton, who initiated several progressive-jazz ensembles that performed throughout the USA. Other jazz musicians who achieved prominence in Los Angeles include Shelly Manne, Les McCann and Shorty Rogers. Howard Rumsey's series of Concerts by the Sea made the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach one of the most popular jazz clubs in southern California. In 1998 both UCLA and USC founded institutes of jazz studies. The following year a statue of Duke Ellington was placed in front of UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall.
The leading exponent of modern black gospel music, James L. Cleveland, settled in Los Angeles in 1962 and died there in 1991. He formed the Southern California Community Choir in 1968, and in 1971 became pastor of the Cornerstone Institutional Baptist Church.
Los Angeles has long been an important centre for rock music. Two of the best-known groups of the 1960s, the Doors and Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention, began their careers in the area. More recently, Los Angeles has been home to several best-selling rap groups, notably NWA, Above the Law and Compton's Most Wanted.
Los Angeles, §4: The modern era
GroveA (R. Stevenson)
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