On May 27, 2007, at 3:00 PM, Mariposa Symphony Orchestra wrote:
I was responding to Andrew's statement that there was <There *were* no American symphony orchestras in the mid-late 19th c.except for the NY Phil and Theodore Thomas's touring outfit.> Period! No exceptions were made for permanency or length of existence!!
This is just plain disingenuous. The idea of permanence is to at least some extent inherent in the concept "orchestra;" Spitzer and Zaslaw include it--with no exceptions whatsoever allowed--in their own definition provided and discussed in their _The Birth of the Orchestra_. I cannot believe for even a second that you did not understand what I was talking about.
When we think of an orchestra, our first thought is of an ensemble of at least thirty or so who reliably offer a full season one year after another; anything less is a stopgap or prototype, as the actual history of various cities demonstrates.
In Buffalo for example (I pick this city because I know its orchestral history in great detail), Th. Thomas came through a few times--but Buffalo did not "have" this orchestra because it was on tour--no more than Philadelphia nowadays can be said to "have" the Gewandhaus or San Francisco orchestras simply because they come through on tour.
Similarly, there were orchestras occasionaly put together for festivals, that disbanded immediately thereafter, but these too can hardly be taken to mean that the city "had" an orchestra, any more than it can be said that a radioactive element that decays in nanoseconds has a chemistry.
In the 1890s an actual orchestra was finally founded in Buffalo--but it gave four concerts a year and disbanded in less than a decade. Then nothing till the 1920s, when a summer pops orchestra was instituted for just two seasons.
Finally, in 1929, all the local musicians who had been thrown out of work by the advent of sound film began getting together just to keep their chops up and have fun. Under the WPA, this became an actual paid orchestra that gave concerts to the public. Aware that federal support would not continue indefinitely, a Buffalo Philharmonic Society was formed in 1932 to find financial support for the orchestra on a continuing basis. This, and only this, was Buffalo's first, and to this date only, symphony orchestra.
The distinction is important. Andrew Stiller Kallisti Music Press http://www.kallistimusic.com/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
