City in California, USA. The area was settled by Franciscan missionaries who named it Yerba Buena; they so effectively taught European musical instruments and practices to the coastal Amerindian peoples that the indigenous musical culture was completely replaced and lost. The town was renamed San Francisco in 1847. After gold was discovered in the Sierra Nevada in 1848 it became the main supply city for the Gold Rush; boom town conditions stimulated an active musical life, supported by immigrants from all over the world. As the Central and Union Pacific railroads joined the East and West coasts (1869) and wealth began flowing in from the Nevada silver mines, San Francisco took on the socioeconomic character and the musical tastes of the eastern cities. Much of the city was destroyed by the great earthquake and fire of 1906, but its symphony orchestra (established 1911) and opera company (1923) have gone on to take their places among the most important in the country. By the end of the 20th century San Francisco's metropolitan area was the fifth most populous in the USA. The present article includes details of musical life in Berkeley, Oakland, Palo Alto, San Jose and other communities of the surrounding Bay Area.
5. Educational institutions and libraries.
ROBERT COMMANDAY (5 with GRAYDON BEEKS), THOMAS ALBRIGHT/R (4)
The first opera heard in San Francisco was Bellini's La sonnambula, performed in 1851 by the touring Pellegrini opera troupe. Between then and the earthquake of 1906, nearly 5000 operatic performances were given by more than 20 troupes in 26 different theatres. A succession of five of these were managed with conspicuous success by Tom Maguire, a former New York hack driver and bartender, who presented Shakespeare and opera on a grand scale. From the 1870s the term ‘grand’ began to be applied to opera companies and the form itself, distinguishing it from the new and popular operetta. The most famous theatre was the Tivoli which between 1879 and 1906 moved three times and was closed for only 40 nights, giving 4085 performances of operas, operettas and musical comedies. The largest theatre, Wade's Opera House (1876), was renamed the Grand Opera House; when its seating was expanded from 2500 to 4000 it became the second largest auditorium in the USA (see fig.1).
The musical influence of the city's Mexican and South American populations was most clearly felt in dance. From the early years of the Gold Rush, many dance troupes arrived from Spain, usually by way of Central and South America. Spanish opera companies appeared after 1870, and the Spanish ballet companies of the 1880s had a strong influence on local music theatre, even into the vaudeville era of the 1920s and 30s. Chinese opera was introduced in 1852 when Hong Took Tong brought a troupe from Canton to entertain the 3000 Chinese residents of San Francisco with performances that included music, dance, acrobatics and costumed drama. Later troupes travelled to the mining towns to play for the 10,000 Chinese workers in the gold country. Performed by resident companies, Chinese opera flourished in the city for 100 years, becoming modernized and Westernized in the 1920s. Interest was renewed in the 1980s following a revival of the genre in New York.
The city was two decades old before black American performers began to take a role in theatrical and musical life. The minstrel shows popular during the Gold Rush had been performed exclusively by white performers in blackface, but in the 1860s black performers began forming their own minstrel troupes; by the 1870s they were performing in the city's main theatres, including the Tivoli and Wade's. From the last decade of the 19th century black American dancers, singers and instrumentalists developed into variety entertainers and eventually entered vaudeville.
The renewal of opera performances after the earthquake of 1906 depended initially on the visits of touring companies. Gaetano Merola produced opera at the Stanford University football stadium in nearby Palo Alto in 1922, which led to the formation of the San Francisco Opera in 1923. The War Memorial Opera House (cap. 3252), built to accommodate both the opera and the symphony orchestra, was inaugurated in 1932 with Puccini's Tosca, with Merola conducting. Each of Merola's 30 seasons as general manager consisted of up to 30 performances of as many as 14 operas, concentrated in September and October. Merola died in 1953 while conducting at the Stern Grove Midsummer Music Festival (founded 1938); he was succeeded by Kurt Herbert Adler, who expanded the season to 12 weeks each autumn and included unusual works in the repertory. Before he retired in 1981 he had produced 11 major American premières and two world premières: Dello Joio's Blood Moon (1961) and Imbrie's Angle of Repose (1976). Adler introduced many innovatory programmes, particularly to encourage young American performers: the San Francisco Opera Auditions (from 1964), the Merola opera training programme, the Spring Opera (1961–82), the Western Opera Theater (a touring branch; 1966–96), the Brown Bag Opera (held at lunchtime; 1974), the San Francisco/Affiliate Artists Opera Program (1977), the American Opera Project (1979) and the Summer Opera Festival (1981–5).
Adler's successor in 1982, Terence A. McEwen, reorganized the company's subsidiary programmes under a new entity, the San Francisco Opera Center. He initiated a new production of Wagner's Ring (1983–4) and gave the American première of Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage (1983). Lotfi Mansouri succeeded McEwen in 1988. His widespread selection of repertory has included operas by Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Glinka, Dvořák, Borodin, Prokofiev, Henze and John Adams, and the première of Conrad Susa's Dangerous Liaisons (1994).
Opera companies in the surrounding communities include the West Bay Opera of Palo Alto (founded 1955), Marin Opera of San Rafael, Sonoma City Opera, Festival Opera (Walnut Creek), Berkeley Opera and San Jose Opera Theater. Pocket Opera (1968) offers concert performances of unusual works in English translation. The Lamplighters (1952), a Gilbert and Sullivan group, has sustained a large following.
Among the musicians lured to San Francisco by high wages during the Gold Rush were the pianist Henri Herz, who arrived in 1850; Rudolph Herold, conductor of the Germania Musical Society (1850–60); Miska Hauser, a Hungarian violinist who settled in the city in 1853 and organized recitals, chamber concerts and small orchestras; and the singers Eliza Biscaccianti and Catherine Hayes. The San Francisco Philharmonic Society first performed in 1852, giving Rossini's Stabat mater, the first oratorio heard in the city. German immigrants founded bands, orchestras and, by 1866, 17 choral societies.
After the 1906 earthquake, musical life recovered slowly. A milestone in the city's reconstruction was the International Exposition of 1915, with a year of musical events in Festival Hall including 121 recitals by Edwin Lemare (municipal organist 1917–21) on the hall's new Austin organ, which had 7500 pipes and 114 stops. A permanent Exposition Auditorium (cap. 12,000) was completed in 1915 and later renamed the Civic Auditorium. In its first years it was used for organ recitals, summer pops concerts, popular music concerts and early performances by the San Francisco Opera. In 1992 it was renamed the Bill Graham Auditorium; it was then renovated and seismically retrofitted, reopening in 1996. Other important concert venues are the Herbst Theater (cap. 928; originally the Veterans' Auditorium, 1932, renovated 1978), and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater (cap. 755) and Forum (cap. 500), both opened in 1993. In 1984 the largest concert hall organ in the USA, an electro-pneumatic instrument by Ruffati with 7373 pipes and 132 ranks, was inaugurated in Davies Symphony Hall (opened 1980; see §3 below).
Resident chamber ensembles have included the San Francisco String Quartet (1935–55); the California String Quartet (1948–62); the Griller String Quartet (1948–61) at the University of California, Berkeley; the Alma Trio and Stanford String Quartet (from 1984) at Stanford University; the Alexander String Quartet at California State University, San Francisco; the Francesco Trio; and the Aurora String Quartet. The Kronos Quartet, based in San Francisco from 1977, concentrates on contemporary music.
The music of other cultures, particularly Indian and Indonesian, became increasingly popular in the mid-1960s, fostered by such organizations as the American Society for Eastern Arts. Municipal support for the Neighborhood Arts Program and its cultural centres, and for individual centres such as the Casa Hispana de Bellas Artes, has encouraged the development of ethnic cultural activities, particularly in the Hispanic, African American and Chinese American communities.
Early music was first performed regularly in and around San Francisco during the 1950s by university and college ensembles; since then, many independent groups have been formed. The San Francisco Early Music Society (1976) includes most of these and itself presents concerts and workshops. The University of California and Stanford University support important teaching and performance programmes in early music. The Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, founded in 1982, was conducted by Nicholas McGegan from 1985. It performs on period instruments and, sometimes with its own chorus, gives a 30-week season in San Francisco and four other communities, and records extensively. The American Bach Soloists (of Belvedere, 1989) perform primarily cantatas but occasionally other Baroque and Classical repertory, using period instruments. Other ensembles are Magnificat and The Whole Noyse (early wind music).
The leading choral groups of the area are the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, Oakland Symphony Chorus, San Francisco Choral Society (1989), San Francisco Chamber Singers, San Francisco Choral Artists, Pacific Mozart Ensemble, Baroque Choral Guild, Lesbian/Gay Chorus, San Francisco Boys Chorus, San Francisco Girls Chorus, Ragazzi (boys' chorus) and Chanticleer (1978), an ensemble of 12 male singers which has made an international reputation, particularly with Renaissance and contemporary music.
One of the first resident composers of significant influence was Ernst Bloch, director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (1925–30) and later professor at the University of California, Berkeley (1940–52). Henry Cowell and Harry Partch wrote and performed many of their highly original works in the Bay Area. Associations of composers and performers such as the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players (1974), Composers Inc. (1984) and Earplay (1985) have made important contributions. Influential early experimentation and performance using tape recorders and electronic instruments took place at the Morrison Planetarium in 1957, and then from 1961 at the San Francisco Tape Music Center, which evolved into the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College, Oakland, in 1968. Activity in research and composition continues at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University and the Center for New Music and Technology at the University of California.
Two orchestras were established in the 1880s, a 40-member ensemble conducted by Louis Homeier and the Philharmonic Society Orchestra conducted by Gustav Hinrichs. A San Francisco Symphony Society was formed in 1895 and conducted for its first four seasons by Fritz Scheel.
The visit of Walter Damrosch with the New York Symphony Society in 1908 led to the organization of the Musical Association of San Francisco (1909), which soon established the San Francisco SO. On 8 Dec 1911 Henry Hadley conducted the orchestra in its first concert. His successor in 1915 was Alfred Hertz, who over the next 15 years instituted youth concerts, recordings and regular broadcasts, the ‘Standard Hour’, beginning in 1926. In 1924 Yehudi Menuhin, who received his early musical training in San Francisco, made his début at the age of seven, playing Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole. Isaac Stern, who studied with the concertmaster Naoum Blinder and with Louis Persinger, also made his orchestral début with the San Francisco SO, in 1936, when he was 15. Basil Cameron and Issay Dobroven shared the podium during the early 1930s. The year after the cancellation of the 1934–5 season because of the Depression, Pierre Monteux was engaged as music director. He presided over the orchestra's first illustrious period, including 40 recordings and a national tour (1947), before resigning in 1952. There were guest conductors for two seasons, and then Enrique Jorda became music director; his tenure ended in 1963 amid criticisms about performance standards and an adventurous repertory. Josef Krips (music director 1963–70) centred the repertory in the Classical and Romantic tradition, rebuilt playing proficiency and led the orchestra's first overseas tour, to Japan in 1968. Under Seiji Osawa (music director 1970–76) the orchestra increased in performing skills and audience, resumed recording after a 12-year hiatus, and toured Europe and the USSR in 1973 and Japan in 1975. The Symphony Chorus was established during this period.
Under Edo de Waart (music director 1977–85) the orchestra established a commissioning programme and annual festivals (of Beethoven, Mozart and contemporary music). The Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall (cap. 3063; see fig.2) was opened in September 1980, and the symphony and opera orchestras became independent of one another. The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra was established in 1981. Herbert Blomstedt was appointed music director of the San Francisco SO in 1985; his tenure saw acclaimed recordings and annual tours. In 1995 Michael Tilson Thomas became the orchestra's first American-born music director since Hadley; the change of style and his inventive programming took effect immediately.
The San Francisco SO has performed the annual summer pops series for the city's Art Commission since 1950, under Arthur Fiedler's direction from 1951 to 1978 and later under Erich Kunzel. Chamber orchestras active at the end of the 20th century were the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra (founded 1952) and the New Century Chamber Orchestra (1994). A number of communities in the Bay Area support their own orchestras. The San Jose SO, the oldest orchestra in California, was founded as the San Jose Symphonic Society in 1867 and incorporated in 1951. Other local orchestras are the Oakland SO (1933, renamed the Oakland East Bay SO in 1988), the Women's Philharmonic (1982), the Santa Rosa SO (1928), the Marin SO (1952), the Berkeley SO (1970), the California SO, Walnut Creek (1988), and community orchestras in Vallejo (1931), Napa (1933), Peninsula (1949), Redwood City/Woodside (1985), Palo Alto (1988), Sunnyvale, San Mateo, Fremont-Newark, Livermore-Amador, Los Altos and Saratoga.
The creative jazz period in San Francisco's history began with a revival of New Orleans jazz in the early 1940s, featuring such veteran New Orleans musicians as the trumpeter Bunk Johnson and the trombonist Kid Ory, who inspired younger musicians including Lu Watters and Turk Murphy. Although Murphy and others continued to perform in that style, their music was less popular in the 1950s than that of the bop musicians influenced by Charlie Parker and Miles Davis (among others), who frequently performed as guest artists in local clubs. A strong local strain of cool jazz was exemplified by the music of Dave Brubeck and his quartet. Since the brief flowering of jazz influenced by John Coltrane in the 1960s, various currents have continued in an eclectic manner.
In the mid-1960s San Francisco became the centre of emergent trends in rock music, especially those of Folk-rock and Psychedelic rock. Among the best-known of the groups were Jefferson Airplane (later Jefferson Starship), the Grateful Dead, and Big Brother and the Holding Company, featuring Janis Joplin, all of which performed at one of the largest auditoriums, the Avalon. The number and variety of venues for rock and other popular music was extraordinary. There were free concerts in the Golden Gate Park and eclectic all-night sessions at the Fillmore Auditorium in the heart of the black American district from 1965 to 1971. An old high school auditorium renamed Family Dog presented concerts of Indian music and hard rock. Social protest music also thrived during this period. The songs of Joan Baez, who lived in nearby Carmel, and the Berkeley-based singer Malvina Reynolds were among the most popular. ‘I-feel-like-I'm-fixin'-to-die’ by Country Joe and the Fish, also from Berkeley, became an anthem of the anti-Vietnam War protest movement. By the mid-1970s, however, the energy and sense of community that had fuelled this sudden surge of activity had dissipated, and the Bay Area lost its importance as a trend-setting source of music in this style.
The Community Music Center (founded 1919) in the heart of the Mission District, an area largely populated by ethnic minorities, is the oldest music school in continuous existence in San Francisco, offering a broad curriculum to children and more recently to adults as well. The San Francisco Conservatory of Music was founded in 1917 as the Ada Clement Music School and took its present name in 1923. Ernest Bloch was its director from 1925 to 1930; Yehudi Menuhin, Ruggiero Ricci and Isaac Stern attended classes there. Under Milton Salkind (director from 1967), the school became an important conservatory. Its New Music Ensemble played a major role in stimulating composition and performance in advanced styles. Its annual festival, Chamber Music West, was initiated in 1977. Salkind was succeeded as director by Colin Murdoch in 1992.
In addition to the Berkeley and Davis campuses of the University of California, there are important centres of musical activity at the University of the Pacific in Stockton; the Dominican College in San Rafael; the California State University campuses in San Francisco, Hayward and San Jose; Stanford University; and Mills College. The San Francisco campus (established 1899, formerly San Francisco State University) of California State University offers among other degrees the BA in music and the MM in performance, and houses the Frank V. de Bellis collection of Italian music. The Stanford University music department at Palo Alto was established in 1947 with William Loren Crosten as chairman; it is strong in musicology and early music. It offers among other degrees the DMA in composition, the MA in music history and performance practice, and the PhD in historical musicology and computer-based music theory and acoustics. Under Albert Cohen, chairman from 1973, the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, directed by Chris Chafe, was founded in 1975. The music library contains important manuscripts of the late 18th century and the 19th; the scope of its Archives of Recorded Sound is second only to that of the Library of Congress within the United States. The music department, which houses the Harry R. Lange Collection of String instruments and the Asian Institute Collection of Instruments, moved into the Braun Music Center in 1984 and established a resident ensemble, initially the Stanford String Quartet and from 1999 the St Lawrence String Quartet. A Charles Fisk Baroque organ (mechanical action) of 4422 pipes and 73 ranks was inaugurated in the Stanford Memorial Church in 1984. In 1996 the Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities, founded in 1984, became affiliated with the university.
Mills College in Oakland, which began as a seminary for girls in Benecia, offered music instruction from 1894 under Louis Lisser. By the 1930s it was an important centre for new music. American premières given by the department have included Berg's Lyrische Suite and a number of works by Milhaud, who taught at the college from 1940 to 1971. Other musicians and composers associated with the college have included Egon Petri, Luciano Berio and Leon Kirchner, as well as members of the Pro Arte quartet of Brussels. Among Milhaud's pupils at Mills were William Bolcom, Dave Brubeck, Steve Reich, Leland Smith, William O. Smith, Morton Subotnick and Richard Wernick. The Mills College Performing Group (active 1963–70) presented a considerable amount of new and unusual music, and the San Francisco Tape Music Center was moved to Mills in 1966. David Berstein succeeded Michelle Fillion as the head of the music department in 2000
The sarod master Ali Akbar Khan established the Ali Akbar College of Music in Marin County in 1967. The composer Lou Harrison taught and supervised the construction of gamelans at several colleges in the region, notably the San Jose campus of California State University.
The most important music collections in the Bay Area are at the University of California in Berkeley, the Oakland Public Library, Stanford University in Palo Alto, the San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco State University and the American Music Research Center at Dominican College in San Rafael. Music holdings can also be found at the San Francisco Conservatory, the California Historical Society and the Society of California Pioneers in San Francisco, at the Oakland Museum and at Mills College. The Archives for the Performing Arts (founded 1975, held at the opera house) is an important research collection of local materials and artefacts, and the Bay Area Music Archives contain recordings and materials relating to rock, jazz and popular music.
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J.H. Mapleson: The Mapleson Memoirs (London, 1888); ed. H. Rosenthal (London, 1966)
M.F. Francis: ‘Musical Statistics of San Francisco, from 1849 to 1898’, Musical Courier (4 July 1898), 27
San Francisco Theatre Research (San Francisco, 1938–42)
C. Lengyel, ed.: History of Music in San Francisco (San Francisco, 1939–42)
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R. Jacobson: ‘Dream Come True’, ON, xlvii/4 (1982–3), 9 [interview with McEwen]
R. Riddle: Flying Dragons, Flowing Streams: Music in the Life of San Francisco's Chinese (Westport, CT, 1983)
D. Schneider: The San Francisco Symphony: Music, Maestros, and Musicians (Novato, CA, 1983)
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G.W. Martin: Verdi at the Golden Gate (Berkeley, 1993)