A historical survey of certain aspects of music management in America

80 Pages·03.662 MB·English

by  Levine, Daniel

A HISTORICAL SURVEY OP CERTAIN ASPECTS OF
MUSIC MANAGEMENT IN AMERICA
A Thesis
Presented to
the Faculty of the School of Music
The University of Southern California
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts
by
Daniel Levine
June 1950
UMI Number: EP61860
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UMI EP61860
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION ................................ 1
II. INDIVIDUAL MANAGERS IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD . . 5
III. MUSICAL SOCIETIES IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD . . . 16
IV. MANAGERIAL ASPECTS OF THE HISTORY OF THE NEW
YORK PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY.... 30
V. BARNUMISM IN MUSIC MANAGEMENT.......... 49
VI. MANAGEMENT TODAY . ........................ 66
VII. SUMMARY................................ 71
BIBLIOGRAPHY ..............* ................... 73
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
This thesis is an effort to compile and interpret
material drawn together as A Historical Survey of Certain
Aspects of Music Management in America, The work concerns
itself with the forces which organize and present concert
music to the American public. These forces are sometimes
individuals, sometimes organizations, sometimes combinations
of both tied in with other managerial units such as labor
unions or private sponsors. It is the purpose of this thesis
to search out who were the music managers from colonial times
to the present, and to present their activities. The author
has limited himself to private organizations, and has not in­
cluded the relatively new aspect of governmental and civic
sponsored concerts. Such public enterprises are arising
throughout the country, and this phenomena should be observed
as a special study. Music management grew up in this country
as the industry of the country grew— from laissez-faire cap­
italism to large industrialism. Within this scope this the­
sis treats music management.
The available material for this subject is scattered
throughout books and periodicals dealing with concerts and
concert life. There is no listed material in sources on
management as such, either in books or in management
2
periodicals. So the author has gone to sources about con­
certs and artists to find his material there. The compilation
value of this thesis, it is hoped, can be found in the setting
down in one place of this scattered material on music manage­
ment.
The author has also attempted to interpret the material
herein presented. A valid history of music management should
try to take the available material in the field and place
some historical value upon it. It is the object of this
thesis to treat all material in a historical context, and in
this way provide an approach to music management giving it a
treatment with historical perspective.
Such a treatment, therefore, goes beyond a simple
accounting of managers wherever found, and embraces their re­
lationship with their communities* It has been felt that the
concert life resulting from their actions should be shown as
it is connected to their actions, and as.it is connected to
the sociological picture in which these actions take place.
Discrimination as to selection of material was deter­
mined by the following of important ti*ends in this history.
Trends were decided upon to be important if a few valid
sources came to the same conclusion on an issue. Wherever we
have found a similar situation in different places, we have
placed emphasis upon it even though this might appear as an
overemphasis when it is observed without relation to the
3
whole picture. The author felt it most important in dis­
covering such a trend in music management to follow it
through.
For example, it would he an overemphasis to make an
account of the first non-musical manager of the New York
Philharmonic-Symphony Society if it were not for the fact
that the contemporary trend at that time indicated that
other organizations had started engaging non-musical manag­
ers. It is such a recording of the same type of event hap­
pening in various instances that makes for historical sense,J
and the author has tried to place material together whenever
it did make sense historically. Aside from the value of
assembling the material, the author hopes that the value
can be realized wherein the information has been evaluated
and directionalized historically wherever such direction was
indicated.
The author feels justified in setting out to make this
study since there is no available compilation of this sort.
It is important that such a function as music management have
some basis of evaluation by the musical community. The first
step in this evaluation is a historical knowledge of the mat­
ter. We cannot make correct evaluations, without a knowledge
of the past and present situations.
In Chapter II, the author surveys the activities of
individual music managers in Colonial America. Chapter III
treats musical societies starting in the Colonial period,
and makes comparisons to the material in Chapter II. In
Chapter IV, we trace the grov/th of one particular organiza­
tion through to the present in order to make continuous com­
parisons of what was happening in music management in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Chapter V discusses the
foundation of present day concert management practices,
through an analysis of the managerial affairs of P. T. Barnum
whose ideas seemed to affect the managerial picture after him
Chapter VI gives a structural account of the present
day commercial management system which grew out of the for­
mer periods.
The information presented should enlighten the reader
with ah insight into music management in this country, which,
it is hoped, shall provide for an understanding of the nature
of present day practices when they appear in the news of
daily affairs.
CHAPTER II
INDIVIDUAL MANAGERS IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD
Historical background. Secular musical activity in
colonial America to the end of the eighteenth century was
marked by the settlersT Puritanical hostility to public en­
tertainment. The century’ inherited the moral code of the
Puritans which reluctantly permitted sacred music in the
church, but hated and outlawed all forms of gatherings for
entertainment, including music. Boston enacted an anti­
theater law in 1750 with the stated purpose: !tfor prevent­
ing and avoiding the many and great mischiefs which arise
from public stage plays, interludes, and other theatrical
entertainments (which) tend generally to increase immorality,
impiety, and a contempt of religion.lI-*-
Aside from the unencouraging atmosphere provided the
theater, the colonists did not have any impetus to encourage
music either. From sources available to him, Sonneck is led
to exclaim, nwe feel overawed by the motives prompting Provi­
dence to send to our shores out of all the millions who1in­
habited Europe just those few thousand beings who had no
**" Margaret Mayorga, A Short History of the American
Drama (New York, Dodd Mead and Co., 1944)/ P* 25.
6
music in their souls. Sonneck leaves the way open for
further research on this matter, concluding that it was lack
of TTopportunity” which retarded musical development in the
colonies, Percy A. Scholes^; attempts a refutation of the
non-musical reputation of the Puritans, and an appraisal of
their musical activities. It is not within the function of
this thesis to weigh the value of the Scholes argument, hut
it is evident from his hook that Puritan musical activity
was not hroad enough to that extent which would include pub­
lic managed concerts. (It is interesting to note that this
hostile atmosphere was hasic enough to our culture to have
influenced all periods of American musical history. We find
as late as 1927 that the city of Pittsburgh would not permit
Sunday concerts of its symphony orchestra as this constitut­
ed "irreligious” entertainment.)^
In spite of these conditions, secular musical activity
began to flourish in the latter half of the eighteenth cen­
tury, particularly in the southern states, where the customs
and tastes of the colonists reflected the cavalier spirit of
2
0. G. Sonneck, Early Concert-Life in America (1731-
1800) (New York, Musurgia Publishers, 1949), p. 7,
^ Percy A. Scholes, The Puritans and Music (London,
Oxford University Press, Humphrey Milford, 1934.)
^ Howard Kaye, ”The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra,”
The Musical Forecast. 37:3,7, May, 1939.