Handel and Haydn Society
Encyclopedia
The Handel and Haydn Society is an American chorus and period instrument orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1815, it remains one of the oldest performing arts organizations in the United States
.
society in Boston
on April 20, 1815, by a group of Boston merchants and musicians, "to promote the love of good music and a better performance of it". The founders, Gottlieb Graupner
, Thomas Smith Webb, Amasa Winchester, and Matthew S. Parker, hoped to bring Boston audiences the best of the old (Handel
) and new (Haydn
) in concerts of the highest artistic quality. The Society premiered on Christmas Eve in 1815 at King's Chapel
, with a chorus of 90 men and 10 women.
Since its beginning, the Handel and Haydn Society has given a number of notable American premieres, including Handel's Messiah
in 1818, Haydn's The Creation in 1819, and Verdi's Requiem
in 1878, in addition to other musical settings by baroque and classical composers, including Mozart
and Bach
. The Society has continued annual renditions of George Frideric Handel
's Messiah
since 1854. The Society was also an early promoter of composer Lowell Mason
, publishing his first collection of hymns and later electing him as the group's President.
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Handel and Haydn staged music festivals to commemorate significant historical events, such as the end of the American Civil War, and performed for such luminaries as President James Monroe
, Grand Duke Alexis
of Russia, Admiral Dewey
, and Queen Elizabeth II
. In addition, the Society held benefit concerts for the Union Army
, victims of the Chicago fire of 1871
, and Russian Jewish refugees displaced by the 1882 May Laws
.
, an expert in baroque performance practice, became the Society's Artistic Director, transforming its large amateur chorus into a professional musical ensemble. Christopher Hogwood
succeeded Dunn in 1986, and under Hogwood’s baton, the Society's orchestra began using period instruments in their performances. The Society has since remained committed to historically informed performance
practice. With Hogwood, the Society made its first appearance outside of the USA at the 1996 Edinburgh Festival
.
was music director from 2001 through 2006, and subsequently held the title of principal conductor for 3 seasons through 2009. During his tenure, the Society produced several commercial recordings, including Peace and All is Bright, and received its first Grammy Award
for a collaboration with the San Francisco choral ensemble Chanticleer
for the 2003 recording of Sir John Tavener's
Lamentations and Praises.
The Society also entered into a multi-year partnership with Chinese director Chen Shi-Zheng
starting in 2003. This yielded fully staged productions of Monteverdi's Vespers (in 2003) and Orfeo (in 2006) that Chen saw as the beginning of a cycle of Monteverdi's surviving operas and his Vespers. The 2006 Orfeo was co-produced by the English National Opera
. Chen also directed a production of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas
in 2005 for Handel and Haydn. In July 2007, the ensemble made its debut at The Proms
with Sir Roger Norrington
.
Harry Christophers
first conducted the Handel and Haydn Society in September 2006, at the Esterházy Palace
at the Haydn Festival in Eisenstadt
, Austria, the Society's first-ever appearance on the European continent. He returned to the Society for further guest-conducting appearances in December 2007 and January 2008. In September 2008, the Society announced the appointment of Christophers as its artistic director, effective with the 2009-2010 season, with an initial contract of 3 years. In September 2011, the Society extended Christophers' contract for another 4 years, through the 2015-2016 season.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
Early history
The Handel and Haydn Society was founded as an oratorioOratorio
An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
society in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
on April 20, 1815, by a group of Boston merchants and musicians, "to promote the love of good music and a better performance of it". The founders, Gottlieb Graupner
Gottlieb Graupner
Johann Christian Gottlieb Graupner was a musician, composer, educator and publisher. Born in Hanover, Germany, he played oboe in Joseph Haydn's orchestra in London...
, Thomas Smith Webb, Amasa Winchester, and Matthew S. Parker, hoped to bring Boston audiences the best of the old (Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
) and new (Haydn
Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...
) in concerts of the highest artistic quality. The Society premiered on Christmas Eve in 1815 at King's Chapel
King's Chapel
King's Chapel is "an independent Christian unitarian congregation affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist Association" that is "unitarian Christian in theology, Anglican in worship, and congregational in governance." It is housed in what was formerly called "Stone Chapel", an 18th century...
, with a chorus of 90 men and 10 women.
Since its beginning, the Handel and Haydn Society has given a number of notable American premieres, including Handel's Messiah
Messiah (Handel)
Messiah is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel, with a scriptural text compiled by Charles Jennens from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742, and received its London premiere nearly a year later...
in 1818, Haydn's The Creation in 1819, and Verdi's Requiem
Requiem (Verdi)
The Messa da Requiem by Giuseppe Verdi is a musical setting of the Roman Catholic funeral mass for four soloists, double choir and orchestra. It was composed in memory of Alessandro Manzoni, an Italian poet and novelist much admired by Verdi. The first performance in San Marco in Milan on 22 May...
in 1878, in addition to other musical settings by baroque and classical composers, including Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
and Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
. The Society has continued annual renditions of George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
's Messiah
Messiah (Handel)
Messiah is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel, with a scriptural text compiled by Charles Jennens from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742, and received its London premiere nearly a year later...
since 1854. The Society was also an early promoter of composer Lowell Mason
Lowell Mason
Lowell Mason was a leading figure in American church music, the composer of over 1600 hymn tunes, many of which are often sung today. His most well-known tunes include Mary Had A Little Lamb and the arrangement of Joy to the World...
, publishing his first collection of hymns and later electing him as the group's President.
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Handel and Haydn staged music festivals to commemorate significant historical events, such as the end of the American Civil War, and performed for such luminaries as President James Monroe
James Monroe
James Monroe was the fifth President of the United States . Monroe was the last president who was a Founding Father of the United States, and the last president from the Virginia dynasty and the Republican Generation...
, Grand Duke Alexis
Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich of Russia
Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich of Russia was the sixth child and the fourth son of Alexander II of Russia and his first wife Maria Alexandrovna . Destined to a naval career, Alexei Alexandrovich started his military training at the age of 7...
of Russia, Admiral Dewey
George Dewey
George Dewey was an admiral of the United States Navy. He is best known for his victory at the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War...
, and Queen Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...
. In addition, the Society held benefit concerts for the Union Army
Union Army
The Union Army was the land force that fought for the Union during the American Civil War. It was also known as the Federal Army, the U.S. Army, the Northern Army and the National Army...
, victims of the Chicago fire of 1871
Great Chicago Fire
The Great Chicago Fire was a conflagration that burned from Sunday, October 8, to early Tuesday, October 10, 1871, killing hundreds and destroying about in Chicago, Illinois. Though the fire was one of the largest U.S...
, and Russian Jewish refugees displaced by the 1882 May Laws
May Laws
Temporary regulations regarding the Jews were proposed by minister of internal affairs Nikolai Ignatyev and enacted on May 15 , 1882, by Tsar Alexander III of Russia...
.
Historically informed performance
By the mid 20th century, the Handel and Haydn Society began moving towards vocal and instrumental authenticity. In 1967, Thomas DunnThomas Dunn
Thomas Dunn was Lieutenant-Governor of Lower Canada from 1805 to 1807.He was born in Durham, England and came to the town of Quebec shortly after its surrender in 1760. With his partner John Gray, he obtained the trading lease to the king's posts, which gave them a monopoly in the fur trade and...
, an expert in baroque performance practice, became the Society's Artistic Director, transforming its large amateur chorus into a professional musical ensemble. Christopher Hogwood
Christopher Hogwood
Christopher Jarvis Haley Hogwood CBE, MA , HonMusD , born 10 September 1941, Nottingham, is an English conductor, harpsichordist, writer and musicologist, well known as the founder of the Academy of Ancient Music.-Biography:...
succeeded Dunn in 1986, and under Hogwood’s baton, the Society's orchestra began using period instruments in their performances. The Society has since remained committed to historically informed performance
Historically informed performance
Historically informed performance is an approach in the performance of music and theater. Within this approach, the performance adheres to state-of-the-art knowledge of the aesthetic criteria of the period in which the music or theatre work was conceived...
practice. With Hogwood, the Society made its first appearance outside of the USA at the 1996 Edinburgh Festival
Edinburgh Festival
The Edinburgh Festival is a collective term for many arts and cultural festivals that take place in Edinburgh, Scotland each summer, mostly in August...
.
Recent history
Grant LlewellynGrant Llewellyn
Grant Llewellyn is a Welsh conductor.- Biography :Grant Llewellyn began developing his conducting reputation in 1985, when he was awarded a conducting fellow position at the Tanglewood Music Center in Massachusetts. There his mentors included Leonard Bernstein, Seiji Ozawa, Kurt Masur and André...
was music director from 2001 through 2006, and subsequently held the title of principal conductor for 3 seasons through 2009. During his tenure, the Society produced several commercial recordings, including Peace and All is Bright, and received its first Grammy Award
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...
for a collaboration with the San Francisco choral ensemble Chanticleer
Chanticleer (ensemble)
Based in San Francisco, California, Chanticleer is a full-time classical vocal ensemble in the United States. Over the last three decades, it has developed a major reputation for its interpretations of Renaissance music, but it also performs a wide repertoire of jazz, gospel, and other venturesome...
for the 2003 recording of Sir John Tavener's
John Tavener
Sir John Tavener is a British composer, best known for such religious, minimal works as "The Whale", and "Funeral Ikos"...
Lamentations and Praises.
The Society also entered into a multi-year partnership with Chinese director Chen Shi-Zheng
Chen Shi-zheng
Chen Shi-Zheng 陳士爭 born in 1963 in Changsha, Hunan, China) is a New York-based theater director.Having earned a BA from the Hunan Art School in Traditional Opera, he received his MA from the Tisch School of Art at New York University...
starting in 2003. This yielded fully staged productions of Monteverdi's Vespers (in 2003) and Orfeo (in 2006) that Chen saw as the beginning of a cycle of Monteverdi's surviving operas and his Vespers. The 2006 Orfeo was co-produced by the English National Opera
English National Opera
English National Opera is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St. Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with the Royal Opera, Covent Garden...
. Chen also directed a production of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas
Dido and Aeneas
Dido and Aeneas is an opera in a prologue and three acts by the English Baroque composer Henry Purcell to a libretto by Nahum Tate. The first known performance was at Josias Priest's girls' school in London no later than the summer of 1688. The story is based on Book IV of Virgil's Aeneid...
in 2005 for Handel and Haydn. In July 2007, the ensemble made its debut at The Proms
The Proms
The Proms, more formally known as The BBC Proms, or The Henry Wood Promenade Concerts presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hall in London...
with Sir Roger Norrington
Roger Norrington
Sir Roger Arthur Carver Norrington, CBE is a British conductor. He is the son of Sir Arthur Norrington and his brother is Humphrey Thomas Norrington....
.
Harry Christophers
Harry Christophers
Harry Christophers is an English conductor. He attended the King's School, Canterbury and was a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral under choirmaster Allan Wicks and played clarinet in the school orchestra alongside Andrew Marriner...
first conducted the Handel and Haydn Society in September 2006, at the Esterházy Palace
Schloss Esterházy
----The Schloss Esterházy is a palace in Eisenstadt, Austria, the capital of the Burgenland state. It was constructed in the late 13th century, and came under ownership of the Hungarian Esterházy family in 1622...
at the Haydn Festival in Eisenstadt
Eisenstadt
- Politics :The current mayor of Eisenstadt is Andrea Fraunschiel ÖVP.The district council is composed as follows :* ÖVP: 17 seats* SPÖ: 8 seats* Austrian Green Party: 2 seats* FPÖ: 2 seats- Castles and palaces :...
, Austria, the Society's first-ever appearance on the European continent. He returned to the Society for further guest-conducting appearances in December 2007 and January 2008. In September 2008, the Society announced the appointment of Christophers as its artistic director, effective with the 2009-2010 season, with an initial contract of 3 years. In September 2011, the Society extended Christophers' contract for another 4 years, through the 2015-2016 season.
Artistic leadership
Prior to 1847, conducting duties fell nominally to the President of the Society. However, the keyboardist or first violin in the orchestra did most of the actual conducting. As the Society's ambitions grew, it became increasingly clear that it needed more established musical leadership. Over the years, the name of the title has changed several times, from "Conductor" to later titles of "Artistic Director and Music Director".- Charles E. HornCharles Edward HornCharles Edward Horn was an English composer and singer. He was born in St Martin-in-the-Fields, London to Charles Frederick Horn and his wife, Diana Dupont. He was the eldest of their seven children. His father taught him music; he also took music lessons briefly in 1808 from singer Venanzio...
, 1847–1849 - J.E. Goodson, 1851–1852
- Carl BergmannCarl BergmannCarl Bergmann was a German-American cellist and conductor.-Biography:...
, 1852–1854 - Carl ZerrahnCarl ZerrahnCarl Zerrahn was a German-born American flautist and conductor. His widespread activity in the region made him an influential figure in New England and Boston classical music, especially choral music, in the latter half of the 19th century...
, 1854–1895 and 1897–1898 - B.J. Lang, 1895–1897
- Reinhold L. Herman, 1898–1899
- Emil Mollenhauer, 1900–1927
- Thompson Stone, 1927–1959
- Dr. Edward F. Gilday, 1959–1967
- Thomas DunnThomas Dunn (musician)Thomas Dunn was an American musician and music editor known for his performances of Baroque music. He is considered an important figure in the development of the modern Early Music Revival and Historically informed performance in the United States.-Early years:He was born in Aberdeen, South...
, 1967–1986 - Christopher HogwoodChristopher HogwoodChristopher Jarvis Haley Hogwood CBE, MA , HonMusD , born 10 September 1941, Nottingham, is an English conductor, harpsichordist, writer and musicologist, well known as the founder of the Academy of Ancient Music.-Biography:...
, 1986–2001 - Grant LlewellynGrant LlewellynGrant Llewellyn is a Welsh conductor.- Biography :Grant Llewellyn began developing his conducting reputation in 1985, when he was awarded a conducting fellow position at the Tanglewood Music Center in Massachusetts. There his mentors included Leonard Bernstein, Seiji Ozawa, Kurt Masur and André...
, 2001–2006 - Harry ChristophersHarry ChristophersHarry Christophers is an English conductor. He attended the King's School, Canterbury and was a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral under choirmaster Allan Wicks and played clarinet in the school orchestra alongside Andrew Marriner...
, 2009–present
External links
- Handel and Haydn Society web site. The Handel and Haydn Society has a publicly accessible On-Line Searchable Archive of performances and artist history. The Searchable Archive is a link off of the main page. All performances and artists from 1815 to the present day can be accessed.
- Boston Public Library, Special Collections, Music Department. Handel & Haydn Society Archives.