American city in New York. It was incorporated in 1834. The earliest accounts of music, dating from 1819, describe vocal recitals, hymn-singing and concerts by town bands. German settlers had added to the city’s cultural life by the middle of the 19th century. Touring virtuosos such as Ole Bull and Jenny Lind shared their popularity with troupes of family singers, bell-ringers and minstrels. The Columbia Opera Company flourished briefly during the 1880s. Church choirs performed oratorios as well as popular hymns.
By the beginning of the 20th century four recital halls had been built. Choral societies, bands, orchestras and an opera company were founded. Music was included in the curricula of the public schools in response to community demand. Teachers’ institutes for vocal instruction, annual choral festivals and competitions were well attended. The impresario James E. Furlong, with an excellent artists’ series, added to the city’s importance as a concert centre in western New York.
In 1912 Hermann Dossenbach and Alf Klingenberg organized the Dossenbach-Klingenberg School of Music, which formally opened for instruction in 1913. Oscar Gareissen joined the school in 1914, and its name was changed to the DKG Institute of Musical Art, the initials being those of the three proprietors. In 1918 George Eastman (the owner of the Eastman Kodak Company) purchased the property and corporate rights of the institute and sold it to the University of Rochester in 1919 for a nominal sum. Eastman envisaged that the institute would form the nucleus of a new school which he would provide to the university and which would consist of a professional music school, a theatre for the performing arts and film, and a recital hall, all under one roof. In 1921 he presented the new Eastman School of Music building, with an endowment fund, to the University of Rochester. The adjoining Eastman Theatre (cap. 3100), which opened in 1922, has become the city’s principal auditorium and provides the location for concerts by the Rochester PO. The Eastman School contains four smaller halls: Kilbourn Hall (cap. 470), Howard Hanson Hall, the Schmidt Organ Recital Hall and the Ciminelli Lounge in the Student Living Center. Concerts are also given at the Nazareth Arts Center, built in 1967 (cap. 1153), the Memorial Art Gallery Auditorium, built in 1968 (cap. 300), and the Andrews B. Hale Auditorium, built in 1996 (cap. 985).
In 1922 the Rochester American Opera Company developed out of the opera department of the Eastman School. Underwritten by George Eastman, with Vladimir Rosing as director and Eugene Goossens as conductor, the company presented operas in English and developed rapidly toward professional status, making its first appearance as a professional company at the Eastman Theatre in 1924. It appeared at the Chautauqua Opera Festival, toured to neighbouring cities and in 1927 made a highly successful début in New York. Renamed the American Opera Company and independent of Eastman’s support, the company flourished both in Rochester and on tour until 1929. The Opera Theatre of Rochester, founded in 1962 by Ruth Rosenberg, presents guest artists and local singers. Eastman Opera Theatre (EOT) was founded in 1947 by Leonard Treash to give performing opportunities to singing students at the Eastman School in a professional setting. Richard Pearlman was director from 1977 to 1995, and in 1996 the team of music director John Greer and dramatic director Steven Daigle took over the supervision of EOT’s annual season of full productions, studio performances and technique classes. A wide variety of works and styles are featured, from the standard operatic repertory to the newest works for the lyric stage. From 1952 to 1974 the school sponsored (with the County of Monroe and the New York State Council on the Arts) an annual summer festival, Opera under the Stars, at the Highland Park Bowl.
The Rochester PO had its origins as the Eastman Theatre Orchestra, which was used from 1922 until 1929 to accompany silent films. In 1923, however, augmented by additional personnel, it began giving an annual concert season as the Rochester PO under the direction of Eugene Goossens, who remained the orchestra’s conductor until 1931. Other music directors have included Albert Coates (1923–5), José Iturbi (1936–44), Erich Leinsdorf (1947–56), Theodore Bloomfield (1958–63), Lászlo Somogyi (1964–9), David Zinman (1974–85), Mark Elder (1989–94), Robert Bernhardt (1995–8) and Christopher Seaman (from 1999). Since 1983 the orchestra has performed at the Finger Lakes Music Festival in Canandaigua each summer, and since 1990 it has also been engaged to perform summer concerts in Vale, Colorado. The Rochester Chamber Orchestra, founded in 1964 by its conductor David Fetler, presents four subscription concerts annually in various local halls.
The Rochester Oratorio Society, founded in 1945 by Theodore Hollenbach, is a community chorus of 200 members. Conducted by Roger Wilhelm since 1986, the chorus gives four concerts each season, including its annual performance of Messiah. Madrigalia, a chamber choir founded in 1975, is also conducted by Roger Wilhelm. The 18-member ensemble appears on many community and college concert series.
The Eastman School has a full-time faculty of over 100 and a student body of 825. It offers a complete range of degrees in performance, conducting, composition, musicology, theory, jazz studies and music education. The school supports two symphony orchestras, a symphonic wind ensemble, chamber groups, choruses, an opera theatre, a collegium musicum and jazz ensembles, and it sponsors several series of professional concerts by visiting artists and by the faculty. The school’s Community Education Division trains 1350 pupils. Howard Hanson, director from 1924 to 1964, continued to conduct the Eastman’s annual Festival of American Music until 1971. More than 250 works chosen from the programmes of these festivals have been recorded. The Sibley Music Library, founded by Hiram W. Sibley in 1904, was incorporated into the school in 1921. It contains the country’s largest collegiate music collection, including medieval and Renaissance theoretical treatises, incunabula, many autograph scores and letters, early opera scores and works by 19th- and 20th-century American composers.
The Hochstein School (founded in 1918) is a member school of the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts and provides a comprehensive programme of music and dance instruction. The Arts and Cultural Council of Greater Rochester (founded in 1958) coordinates activities, publishes a bulletin and issues a monthly calendar of cultural events.
R.H. Lansing: ‘Music in Rochester from 1817 to 1909’, Publications of the Rochester Historical Society, Publication Fund Series, ii (1923), 135–85
S.B. Sabin: ‘A Retrospect of Music in Rochester’, Centennial History of Rochester, New York, ii (1932), 45–90
B. McKelvey: Rochester, the Water Power City, 1812–1854 (Cambridge, MA, 1945)
C.C. Riker: The Eastman School of Music: its First Quarter Century, 1921–1946 (Rochester, NY, 1948, suppl. 1963)
B. McKelvey: Rochester: the Quest for Quality, 1890–1925 (Cambridge, MA, 1956)
B. McKelvey: Rochester: An Emerging Metropolis, 1925–1961 (Cambridge, MA, 1961)
E. Klingzing: Music in Rochester: a Century of Musical Progress 1825–1925 (Rochester, NY, 1967)
‘Eastman School of Music: 50 Years Young’, Music Journal, xxix/9 (1971), E1–E16 [=25–40]
R.T. Watanabe: ‘The Sibley Music Library of the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester’, Notes, xxxiii (1976–7), 783–802
‘American Conservatories’, Virtuoso, i/3 (1980), 22
V.A. Lenti: A History of the Eastman Theatre (Rochester, NY, 1987)
V.A. Lenti: The Eastman School of Music (Rochester, NY, 1996)
RUTH T. WATANABE, N. DAVIS-MILLIS/VINCENT A. LENTI