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2009 Flute Performance Practice in the United States (1870-1900): An Exploration of the Repertoire and Writings of American Flutists Sidney Lanier and Henry Clay Wysham Ellen C. Johnson

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COLLEGE OF MUSIC

FLUTE PERFORMANCE PRACTICE IN THE UNITED STATES

(1870-1900): AN EXPLORATION OF THE REPERTOIRE AND

WRITINGS OF AMERICAN FLUTISTS SIDNEY LANIER AND

HENRY CLAY WYSHAM

By

ELLEN C. JOHNSON

A Treatise submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts

Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2009

The members of the Committee approve the Treatise of Ellen C. Johnson defended on May 1, 2009.

______Patrick Meighan Professor Co-Directing Treatise

______Eva Amsler Professor Co-Directing Treatise

______Richard Clary Outside Committee Member

______Deborah Bish Committee Member

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above named committee members.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I gratefully acknowledge Professor Patrick Meighan and Professor Eva Amsler for their generous and tireless assistance in helping me edit and complete this project. I also thank Dr. Deborah Bish and Professor Richard Clary for serving on my committee. Many thanks to all of you for your support throughout this process. I deeply appreciate the indispensable advice and guidance from my flute professor, Eva Amsler. From the beginning to the end of this project she has encouraged and supported my efforts to bring this treatise to fruition. I am also indebted to the advice of Nancy Toff, Patricia Harper, Marianne Gedigian, Steven Finley, and Carol Lynn Ward-Bamford. Uncovering the historical archives housed throughout the United States would not have been possible without their advice and knowledge of the field of American flute history. Finally, I wish to acknowledge and thank my family and friends who supported and encouraged me throughout my journey to the completion of this project. Your support means the world to me.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... vi

1. OVERVIEW OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY FLUTE HISTORY IN THE UNITED STATES ...... 1

2. BIOGRAPHIES OF SIDNEY LANIER AND HENRY CLAY WYSHAM . 14

Sidney Lanier Biographical Overview...... 14 Sidney Lanier‟s Early Flute-Playing ...... 15 The Civil War ...... 16 Mary Day Lanier ...... 17 Sidney Lanier‟s Early Travels ...... 18 Sidney Lanier and the Peabody Symphony ...... 19 Sidney Lanier: Writer, Lecturer, Professor ...... 21 The Legacy of Sidney Lanier ...... 24 Henry Clay Wysham Biographical Overview ...... 24 Publications and Correspondence of Henry Clay Wysham ...... 29 Controversy with London Critics...... 30 Reviews of The Evolution of the Boehm Flute (1898) ...... 31

3. FLUTE REPERTOIRE AND REVIEWS OF SIDNEY LANIER AND HENRY CLAY WYSHAM AND SELECTED COLLEAGUES ...... 33

Flute Improvisation ...... 33 Flute Repertoire ...... 37 Selected Reviews ...... 40

4. BOEHM-SYSTEM FLUTE PERFORMANCE PRACTICE IN THE UNITED STATES IN THE WRITINGS OF SIDNEY LANIER AND HENRY CLAY WYSHAM ...... 44

Boehm-system Flute Popularity in the United States ...... 44 Flute Materials ...... 47 Influential Flute Pedagogues...... 51 Breathing ...... 52 Articulation ...... 53 Tone Production ...... 54 Harmonics ...... 55 Tone Color ...... 56 Symbolism in the Flute Sound ...... 58

5. FLUTES OWNED BY LANIER AND WYSHAM ...... 64

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The Lanier-Badger Alto Flute ...... 66 Sidney Lanier and a Glass Flute ...... 70

6. THE INFLUENCE OF THE WRITINGS OF SIDNEY LANIER AND HENRY CLAY WYSHAM ON AMERICAN WOMEN FLUTISTS ...... 72

7. CONCLUSIONS...... 79

APPENDIX: REPERTOIRE ...... 81

REFERENCES ...... 87

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 92

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ABSTRACT

Boehm-system flutes were adopted by most professional flutists in the United States between 1870 and 1900, and American audiences proved to be receptive to the new timbral and technical possibilities of this instrument. The repertoire and writings of Sidney Lanier (1842-1881) and Henry Clay Wysham (1828-1900) detail the performance practice and musical culture that emerged in the United States when flutists, from the parlor to the orchestra, started adopting this instrument en masse. This culture was supplanted by the emergence of “The French Flute School” and the pedagogical philosophies of French flutists such as Georges Barrère, Georges Laurent, and Marcel Moyse in the early twentieth century, and interest in American flute performance practices that predate their arrival dwindled. In exploring the body of information left by Lanier and Wysham regarding flute repertoire, performances, and performance practice in the United States, a clearer picture of the history of Boehm-system flutes and influential flutists is formed for scholars and performers. Sidney Lanier received many accolades as a poet during his lifetime, and this platform of fame brought his literary works before many readers throughout the United States. Lanier was also a self-taught flutist from Macon, GA who became the Principal Flutist of the Peabody Symphony Orchestra in Baltimore, MD in 1873. He was equally devoted to music and poetry, established a flute reputation by improvising solos, raised the standards of flute repertoire in the United States, and championed the ideal that women could be professional musicians on any instrument. Henry Clay Wysham was a lawyer and flutist from Baltimore, MD and worked primarily as a professional flutist from 1850 to 1900. Wysham became acquainted with most of the important flutists of the nineteenth century, including Theobald Boehm, Alfred G. Badger, Sidney Lanier, C. Paul Taffanel, and Dayton C. Miller. A staunch advocate of Boehm-system flutes, Wysham studied music at the Royal College of Music in London, performed in the Peabody Symphony Orchestra, and taught flute at the University of California at Berkeley. Wysham was also one of the first flutists to explore and write about world flute traditions from Japan, China, and Egypt. His greatest contribution to the field of flute research was his book, The Evolution of the Boehm Flute,

vi which stands alone as one of the most extensive resources on American flute performance practice during the nineteenth century. The combined perspectives of Sidney Lanier and Henry Clay Wysham represent a comprehensive look at flute repertoire and performance practice in the United States between 1870 and 1900. Their flute performances and publications inspired audiences and flutists alike, creating fertile soil for the traditions of the “French Flute School” to thrive in during the twentieth century. Lanier and Wysham were influential in elevating the quality of flute repertoire, popularizing silver Boehm-system flutes, and advocating that women should become orchestral performers. Both men wrote eloquently and extensively in national and international publications during a time where each of these concepts broke important ground for the following generation of American flutists.

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CHAPTER I

OVERVIEW OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY

FLUTE HISTORY IN THE UNITED STATES

In the United States, flute performance practice underwent a radical shift between 1870 and 1900. The legacy of flutists in America during this time formed the bedrock of a modern flute tradition that fully embraced the performance practice of French flutists after the turn of the twentieth century. The commitment to raising musical standards in the United States shown by flutists such as Sidney Lanier and Henry Clay Wysham during the latter half of the nineteenth century was essential for ushering in a new era for American flutists in the early twentieth century. The priority these men gave to reaching audiences not only with high-quality repertoire but also with musically sophisticated flute performances is a legacy that remains for flutists today. The writings and repertoire of colleagues Sidney Lanier and Henry Clay Wysham provide detailed accounts of the performance practice of nineteenth-century American flutists between 1870 and 1900, and their beliefs opened door for the flute to become a socially acceptable instrument for women in the twentieth century. Flute performance practice in American society during the first half of the nineteenth century consisted largely of self-taught, amateur flutists playing wooden flutes with four to eight keys. Common repertoire was comprised of popular tunes, dances, and opera themes with variations.1 This reflected an eighteenth-century, English tradition where nearly every jig, air, and popular ballad was transcribed for the flute.2 Singing melodies and variations or improvisations incorporating bird-like acrobatics defined flute tradition in the United States. Both newspaper articles from Boston and the Ethan Allen Hitchcock music collection from Sparta, GA confirm that that early nineteenth century flute performance practice was not limited to the Northern states but also impacted Southern states. According to an 1839 article in the Boston Musical Gazette, flutists and

1 Treat, William Phelps. “A Survey of Flutists and Flute Activities in Eighteenth-Century America.” (D.M.A. treatise, The University of Washington, 1991), 140-141.

2 Schneeloch, Nancy A. “A Catalog of the Ethan Allen Hitchcock Collection of Nineteenth- Century Flute Music.” (D.M.A. Treatise, The Florida State University, 2000), 1. 1 the general public in Boston were unaware of the technical or musical possibilities of the flute:

But why is it not more extensively cultivated, and more thoroughly understood? One of the principal reasons I conceive to be this; [sic] its beauties and various capabilities are generally but very imperfectly known, even by many of those who profess to play a little upon the instrument…..3

The author, whose initials are G.P., believes flutists of his day were satisfied to play “popular tunes, in a plain manner.” He lists Berbiguier, Gabrielsky, Tulou, Furstenau, and Vern as examples of composers of the “modern school” and laments that flutists are not taking flute lessons in order to play music of a higher caliber. He believes this apathy is due to ignorance:

Consequently they are totally unacquainted with this class of modern music, and very few, among the many who play a little upon the flute, have ever seen or heard of them.….4

The Ethan Allen Hitchcock Collection housed at Florida State University provides substantial holdings of what the early to mid-nineteenth century flute repertoire consisted of in the United States. This pre-civil war collection “contains a large body of nineteenth-century flute music, both solo and chamber. The majority of the pieces are theme and variations, arrangements of opera themes, and popular tunes.”5 Hitchcock himself was an amateur flutist, and his career in the military and devotion to music coincided throughout his life, which is indicative the cultural norm during this time. The construction of the flute was in a state of transition as early as the mid 1830s. G.P.‟s article in the Boston Musical Gazette indicates that flutes with more keys were offering more timbral and technical possibilities to flutists:

3 G.P. “The Flute.” Boston Musical Gazette; a Semimonthly Journal, Devoted to the Science of Music. 15 May 1839: 13. (This author‟s article appears in an opinion section and only lists his initials.)

4 G.P.: 13.

5 Schneeloch: 2. 2

The flutes made at the present day are well constructed, and finished in the most beautiful manner, with from four to eight keys, so nicely fitted with elastic springs, as to be easily managed and stop perfectly tight, even in executing the most rapid passages. Very great improvements have been lately made in regard to freedom of tone, and correctness of intonation, so that its compass is now three octaves, although formerly it did not aspire at a much greater extent than the compass of the female voice…. It is an instrument which has deservedly increased in popular favor within a few years, and when its capabilities are better developed, the resemblance between its tones and the human voice, will, doubtless, continue to render it one of the most popular instruments, both in the orchestra, and in the parlor.6

In another edition of The Boston Musical Gazette an anonymous author indicates that master performers on the flute were using embellishments and variations in public performances and said that these performers with “impressive, tasteful, and superior execution have obtained the greatest share of public approbation.”7 In the early nineteenth century newly-formed symphony orchestras, colleges, and conservatories in the United States gave flutists more professional opportunities and audiences more exposure to their performances. Three men whose careers had the most influence on American flutists during the early and mid-nineteenth century were flutists Philip Ernst (1792-1868) and John A. Kyle (c.1810-1870), and flute manufacturer and marketer, Alfred Badger (1815-1892). Philip Ernst was one of the first professional European flutists to settle in the United States. He had a rather cosmopolitan career as a Court Flutist for King Charles X of Paris and as a flute virtuoso in London, succeeding Nicholson8 in the Royal Italian Opera prior to coming to America. Ernst performed with Kyle for the first two concert seasons of the New York Philharmonic (1842-1844) and, once the Boehm-system flute9

6 G.P.: 13.

7 “Remarks on Flute Playing.” The Boston Musical Gazette; a Semimonthly Journal, Devoted to the Science of Music. 6 Feb. 1839: 164.

8 Charles Nicholson (1795-1837), an English flute virtuoso, held prominent positions in top English orchestras and became the first professor of flute at the Royal Academy of Music in London. His powerful tone inspired Theobald Boehm‟s redesign of the flute.

9 The Boehm-system flute refers to all flutes manufactured using the key system developed by Theobald Boehm (1794-1881). 3 arrived on American soil, Ernst became the first noted teacher of this flute in the United States.10 When Dutch flutist and composer Louis Drouet gave an American tour, Ernst let him borrow a new Boehm-system flute. Drouet later dedicated an etude book to Ernst titled 72 Studies on Taste and Style Composed Expressly for the Boehm Flute and Dedicated to Philip Ernst.11 Furthermore, the first authentic Boehm-system flutes made by Theobald Boehm himself were shipped in November of 1854 to “America‟s premier flutist, Philip Ernst,”12 and four years later the first fingering chart for the Boehm-system flute to be circulated in the United States was written by Ernst and published by Alfred G. Badger.13 John A. Kyle (c. 1810-1870) was one of the first American-born flute players to perform in a professional orchestra in the United States. Unlike most of the professional flutists in the United States during the nineteenth century, Kyle performed on an eight- keyed flute for most of his career. Kyle was a prominent flutist in New York, performing with the New York Opera and Philharmonic Society. He also performed obbligato vocal accompaniments with Jenny Lind and Catherine Hayes in their tours throughout America, and subsequently at the Henriette Sontag Concerts.14 It is likely that these tours brought a new interest in the flute and further established its role of playing opera melodies and popular song in American society. Kyle documented what appears to be the first arrival of a Boehm-system flute in the United States in 1844:

About six years since I attended a musical party, where I met a gentleman from South America, who had purchased, while in Europe, a flute invented by Boehm, the celebrated composer and performer, which was being generally introduced there. Upon attempting to play it, I found I

10 Simpson, Mary Jean. “Alfred G. Badger (1815-1892), Nineteenth-Century Flutemaker: His Art, Innovations, and Influence on Flute Construction.” (D.M.A. treatise, The University of Maryland, 1982), Appendix B.

11 This book documents that 54 of the 58 flutists known to be playing Boehm-system flutes in the United States studied with Ernst.

12 Giannini, Tula. “An Old Key for a New Flute.” The Flutist Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Fall 1984): 18.

13 Simpson: 279-80.

14 Badger, Alfred. An Illustrated History of the Flute. New York: Firth, Pond & Co., 1853: 36. 4

could not execute the scale, owing to its peculiar construction. The next day, being desirous to see it again, I called on Mr. Brix, accompanied by a brother Flutist. After hearing him play on it again, I took the liberty of asking the loan of it to take the pattern, which he kindly granted. I then proceeded to Mr. Larribee‟s [sic], the Flute manufacturer, and having examined it, he was so much pleased that he made from it the first Boehm flute made in the United States.15

Alfred G. Badger (1815-1892), the first successful manufacturer of Boehm- system flutes in the United States, marketed not only the new key system but also new flute method books and music. Susan Marie Beagle Berdahl describes Badger‟s impact in a dissertation titled The First Hundred Years of the Boehm Flute in the United States, 1845-1945: A Biographical Dictionary of American Boehm Flutemakers:

Alfred Badger was the first to successfully manufacture them, beginning around 1845. By 1846 he had exhibited two Boehm system flutes in both the City of New York American Institute Fair and the Massachusetts State Fair winning a silver medal and diploma at both. And it was his influence more than that of any other flutemaker or player which insured the establishment of the Boehm system in its earliest stages in this country. He not only made quality instruments but spent an enormous amount of energy advocating the new system. His An Illustrated History of the Flute, 1853, the first history of the flute by an American, was expressly written to acquaint flutists with the advantages of the Boehm system. He sponsored music and methods especially for the Boehm flute, published fingering charts for it, and launched widespread advertising campaigns in effort to popularize the system.16

Badger‟s successful marketing strategy for the newly-developed Boehm key system was to focus on sales to amateurs and receive endorsements from famous flutists in the United States.17 Furthermore, Badger produced a high enough volume of instruments to keep up with demand. In a dissertation titled Alfred G. Badger (1815-1892), Nineteenth-Century Flutemaker: His Art, Innovations, and Influence on Flute Construction, Performance and Composition, 1845-1895, Simpson examines Badger‟s success, stating:

15 Badger: 30.

16 Berdahl, Susan Marie Beagle. “The First Hundred Years of the Boehm Flute in the United States, 1845-1945: A Biographical Dictionary of American Boehm Flutemakers.” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1986), 48-49.

17 Simpson: 296. 5

The availability of high-quality instruments – which were apparently delivered within a few months after an order was received – was undoubtedly a crucial factor in the rapid acceptance of the Boehm flute.18

The following letter is an example of how Badger solicited endorsements from prominent flutists, including Philip Ernst and John A. Kyle, in 1853. Badger writes:

Gentlemen – I am now collecting matter, and am about publishing a work, the subject to be “The History of the Flute, and an account of the successive improvements upon the instrument, with a description of the new Boehm flute.” My experience in such matter is, of course, worth something, but my book would by no means be complete without the asseverations and experiences of practical man. You, sir, have been long and favorably known to the American musical public in the character of Professor of the instrument on which my little work will treat, and your opinions will carry with them great weight. By favoring me with a communication on the subject you will confer a lasting favor on Your most obedient servant, A.G. Badger19

Badger also documented the acceptance of the Boehm flute as early as the 1860s by publishing a list of customers who were already playing these flutes. According to Berdahl, “fourteen professionals and thirty-two amateurs are listed.”20 Flute repertoire endorsed and sold by Badger reflected popular trends in American society. Arrangements for flute and piano included operatic airs and waltzes, and arrangements for flute duet included overtures by Rossini and airs by Berbiguier. Badger also marketed a selection of flute solos by Boehm and extensive collections of dances, airs, and “choice” melodies such as Dancer’s Companion, The Cabinet, and The Flutist’s Repertoire for flute or violin.21 Badger also showed no hesitation in praising German musicians:

18 Simpson: 296.

19 Badger: 29.

20 Berdahl: 54.

21 Badger: 43-48.

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The greatest composers and performers originated among the Germans; and who does not know, that although the Germans have a very rigorous and changeable climate, pulmonary difficulties are seldom known among them.22

Henry Clay Wysham (1828-1900) was one of the first American-born flutists to travel to Europe to study the flute. He played a considerable role in American flute history by leaving behind correspondence with notable flute figures, including Alfred G. Badger, Sidney Lanier, Dayton C. Miller, and Paul Taffanel. Without Wysham‟s book, articles, and correspondence, little information about nineteenth-century flutists in America would have been preserved. A more detailed biography of Henry Clay Wysham is presented in Chapter II. Several flutists rose to stardom in the United States after 1870. John Summers Cox (1834-1902), Edward Heindl (1837-1896), Sidney Lanier (1842-1881), and Carl Wehner (1838-1912) established themselves as principal players or soloists with major bands or orchestras and defined American flute performance practice between 1870 and 1900. Of these men, Lanier was the only American and the first native-born American to play the position of principal flute in a U.S. orchestra. Cox, Heindl and Wehner were emblematic of American flute performance practice during the latter part of the nineteenth century and Lanier was the only American-born flutist to rise to their professional level during this time. John Summers Cox (1834-1902) was an Irish flutist and composer and became famous as a flutist and as a piccoloist in the United States. Cox performed in the Sousa and Gilmore bands, and it is likely that his performances defined the piccolo style of American marches. Cox was also an acquaintance of Henry Clay Wysham; they played duets and trios together.23 Cox is the first flutist of note to play the flute and the piccolo professionally in the United States.24

22 Badger: 35.

23 Lanier and Wysham‟s writings document a trend in the U.S. where flutists, upon making a new flute-playing acquaintance, would often play Kuhlau duets, trios, and quartets together. Cox and Wysham frequently played together and were sometimes joined by flutists in the area.

24 Simpson: Appendix B.

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Flutists in the United States were directly influenced by Theobald Boehm‟s25 teachings through the careers of two of his pupils, Edward Heindl and Carl Wehner. Both men played extensively on the East Coast and introduced audiences to flute repertoire that is a part of the modern standard. The notoriety that Alfred G. Badger gave to Boehm by marketing his flute key system and music may have helped to establish the reputation of these men within the flute community as well. Edward Heindl (1837-1896) was from Germany and came to America in 1864. Heindl played a silver flute made by Boehm in 1842 (no. 19) and lived and studied flute performance with Theobald Boehm for four years before migrating to the United States. Heindl was a prominent performer with the Mendelssohn Quintette Club, the National Peace Jubilee Association, and worked with Patrick Sims Gilmore in 1871.26 Edward Heindl became the principal flutist of the Boston Symphony from its inception in 1881 until 1887 and flutists in the United States sought to emulate his playing by purchasing instruments from Theobald Boehm himself.27 Heindl‟s arrival in Boston started a landslide of orders from America. In a letter from May of 1870, Theobald Boehm writes the following to Walter S. Broadwood:

Since my former pupil Heindl traveled through the United States, I have had more orders than I can execute from America; and though I offered to procure flutes from my friend Lot, at Paris, people prefer to wait for those made by myself.28

Carl Wehner (1838-1912), another prominent German student of Boehm, came to America at the invitation of New York Philharmonic conductor Theodore Thomas. Wehner established his reputation by playing professionally in Russia for seventeen years. In the United States, Wehner played first flute in the New York Philharmonic

25 Theobald Boehm developed the “Boehm-system” flute referred to throughout this document.

26 Wysham, Henry Clay. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: An Essay on the Development of the “Reed Primeval” to the Perfect System of Theobald Boehm. Elkhart, IN: C.G. Conn, 1898: 33.

27 Berdahl: 55.

28 Boehm, Theobald. An Essay on the Construction of Flutes. ed. W. S. Broadwood. London: Rudall, Carte, and Co, 1889: 58. 8

(1886-1891) and Metropolitan Opera (1885-1887).29 Most notably, Wehner was the first flutist to premier a flute concerto by Mozart to an American audience. In 1875 Wehner played the Mozart Concerto for Flute and Harp (K299) as well as the „Scherzo‟ from Mendelssohn‟s Midsummer Night’s Dream. During the 1870s, Wehner also met Sidney Lanier when Lanier traveled to New York to meet Theodore Thomas, and they played Kuhlau duets together.30 Wehner had more pedagogical influence on American flute players than any other famous performer in the nineteenth century. According to Leonardo De Lorenzo in his book titled My Complete Story of the Flute (1951), Wehner‟s reputation was established by his orchestral playing and teaching:

Wehner had earned his great reputation, not as a performer of brilliant solos, but as a master player in symphony and opera orchestras and as a teacher, a field in which he reigned supreme for many years. His greatest asset was his beautiful and matchless tone and, because he had been one of Boehm‟s finest pupils, no one dared contradict him in any discussion concerning the flute and flute playing.31

Furthermore, Wehner championed the use of wooden Boehm-system flutes, leaving the impression that a majority of flute professionals in the U.S. played on wooden flutes in the nineteenth century. Evidence suggests that many professional flutists actually played silver Boehm-system flutes before Wehner‟s influence took hold, and the preference for silver flutes in America was reawakened by the French in the early twentieth century. Sidney Lanier (1842-1881) was born in Macon, GA, fought in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, and later settled in Baltimore, MD during the 1870s. A completely self-taught flutist, Lanier became principal flute in the Peabody Symphony Orchestra in Baltimore, MD in 1873 and performed throughout the United States in Georgia, Texas, Maryland, New York, and Florida. Berdahl writes:

29 Berdahl: 55.

30 Giroux, Paul. “The History of the Flute and its Music in the United States.” (M.M. thesis, The University of Washington, 1952), 72.

31 De Lorenzo, Leonardo. My Complete Story of the Flute. Preface by Nancy Toff. New York: The Citadel Press, Incorporated, 1951: 461. 9

Lanier was one of the first native born American flutists to achieve prominence as a virtuoso on the Boehm system….32

Lanier began establishing a new American flute tradition, being one of the first flutists who influentially “raised his voice against triviality in flute music.” 33 He received an invitation to play in the orchestra for Theodore Thomas in New York City with Carl Wehner. However, this opportunity was never realized due to a downturn in his health caused by tuberculosis. A more detailed biography of Sidney Lanier is presented in Chapter II. To the modern performer, flute performance practice in the United States is based largely upon the traditions of the “French Flute School,” the influence of individual flute instructors, and the ever-present knowledge base of recorded media. Ardal Powell defines the “French Flute School” and its influence in Europe and America:

The notion of the „French Flute School‟ usually refers to a style of teaching and playing the instrument that originated with Claude Paul Taffanel (1844-1908) and his pupils at the Paris Conservatoire around the turn of the twentieth-century. In a second, less strict sense, the term also refers to a French-influenced style of flute-playing that became dominant in Europe and America as Conservatoire-trained players filled orchestral and teaching posts and as the recording industry carried their sound and style to all the corners of the developed world. In that looser sense, we can easily list the style‟s main attributes: the use of the French-style silver flute, a preoccupation with tone, a standard repertoire, and a set of teaching materials in which the Taffanel-Gaubert method and the tone development exercises of Marcel Moyse (1889-1984; Conservatoire 1906) hold a central place.34

Historically, the most influential flute performers and teachers in the United States were educated in the “French Flute School” during the late nineteenth century and immigrated to America during the first part of the twentieth century, filling flute positions in major U.S. orchestras and conservatories. Their style of performance practice and standard repertoire quickly formed the foundation of twentieth-century American flute

32 Berdahl: 54-55.

33 Giroux: 72.

34 Ardal Powell. The Flute. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002: 208. 10 education. In her treatise titled, Flutists' Family Tree: In Search of the American Flute School, Demetra Baferos Fair conducted an exhaustive survey of living American flutists between 1999 and 2003 and found that “nearly without exception” today‟s American flutists can trace their pedagogical history back to Paul Taffanel and the “French Flute School.” Taffanel‟s influential students in America were Georges Barrère, Georges Laurent, and Marcel Moyse, all of whom migrated to the United States during the early twentieth century.35 Fair notes specific statistics, stating:

Of the 4360 flutists for whom an American-school ancestry is known, 3954 of these (approximately 91%) are Barrère descendant; 2576 (approximately 59%) are Laurent descendant; and 2387 (approximately 55%) are Moyse descendant. Of the 91% population who are Barrère descendant, an amazing 87% trace their ancestry through William Kincaid.36

Leonardo De Lorenzo, who published part of Georges Barrère‟s autobiography, describes the migration of Wehner‟s students to Barrère upon his arrival in 1905:

When Barrère reached New York the grand old man still enjoyed considerable prosperity because of his large class of pupils. That, however, did not last long because Barrère‟s immediate success was so great that, as far as flute and flute playing was concerned, there was one, and only one – Barrère! With very few exceptions, all the pupils of Carl Wehner left him, changed their flutes from wood to silver, and a number of them, knowing nothing of the fact that the origin of the Boehm flute was logically an open G-sharp key instrument, even changed from open to closed G-sharp key flute!37

According to Paul Giroux, Sidney Lanier‟s foundational work in flute performance and writing laid influential groundwork for Barrère to build upon once he arrived in the United States:

35 Fair, Demetra Baferos. “Flutists' Family Tree: In Search of the American Flute School.” (D.M.A. diss., The Ohio State University, 2003), 7.

36 Fair: 8.

37 De Lorenzo: 461. 11

It remained for Georges Barrère in the present century to carry on Lanier‟s work as protagonist of the flute. Barrère, in three professional fields – those of performance, teaching and writing – wielded a wider influence than any contemporary American in acquainting music-loving America with the flute as a concert instrument…38

Perhaps one reason why little is known about the performance practice and repertoire of flutists in the United States between 1870 and 1900 is the philosophy exhibited by Georges Barrère regarding flute repertoire. Barrère shows strong disapproval for sentimental flute works in an article titled “Violin of the Woodwind Instruments” that was published in Musical America in 1909. He states:

These monstrosities, as we regard them today, are dead beyond revival. Written as a rule by flautists, and remarkably well adapted to the instrument, their intrinsic poverty excludes all but a legacy of superannuated interest. To play persistently a repertoire of this character, to call up the lifeless skeletons of a past alike, sterile and baroque [i.e. contrived], is effectually to coerce public sentiment to the conviction that the flute is scarcely to be regarded as a musical instrument.39

Today, most American flutists study with private flute lesson instructors before, during, and after receiving an education in college or at a conservatory and study and perform repertoire that became standardized in the United States during the early twentieth century. Furthermore, flutists now strive for technical perfection as the result of the recorded media creating a culture where audiences expect flawless technical mastery.40 As modern flutists have a wider variety of musical influences on their performance practice, examining American flute performance practice that predates the establishment of “French Flute School” traditions in the United States may become more common in the twenty-first century. The writings of Sidney Lanier and Henry Clay Wysham demonstrate a uniquely American frame of reference before the French tradition became widely accepted as the definitive style for flute performance practice and pedagogy in the United States. The

38 Giroux: 72.

39 Barrère, Georges. “Violin of the Woodwind Instruments.” Musical America. 6 Nov. 1909: 39.

40 Fair: 10. 12 information they left behind shows how flute performance practice transitioned between the years 1870 and 1900. Their flute performances and publications inspired audiences and flutists, creating fertile soil for the traditions of the “French Flute School” to thrive in during the twentieth century in the United States.

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CHAPTER II

BIOGRAPHIES OF SIDNEY LANIER AND HENRY CLAY WYSHAM

Sidney Lanier and Henry Clay Wysham were professional flutists during a formative time in the acceptance and development of Boehm-system flutes in the United States. Both men excitedly adopted silver Boehm-system flutes in their orchestral and solo performances; their letters and performance reviews document the acceptance of these flutes by the American public and repertoire for the instrument between 1870 and 1900. Lanier and Wysham greatly influenced one another both personally and professionally and their combined legacy of writings provides extensive material on the performance practice of flutists during this time. This chapter will provide the biographical context of their lives41 and professional careers as flutists, composers, and writers.

Sidney Lanier Biographical Overview

The professional life of Sidney Lanier combined successes in music, literature, and education. As a flutist, writer, and professor, Lanier‟s life and legacy has largely been celebrated for his contribution to American poetry from 1874 until his death in 1881. Many places bear his namesake as well, including two Lake Laniers (one near Atlanta, GA and another near Tryon, North Carolina), Sidney Lanier Bridge (Brunswick, GA), and public schools in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Texas, and Virginia. During his short career, Lanier became the first American-born principal flutist to play a Boehm-system flute in a professional symphony orchestra in the United States when he took the position with the Peabody Symphony in Baltimore, MD in 1873. While performing with one of the nation‟s top orchestras, his poetry rose to national prominence and, after tuberculosis interfered significantly with his ability to perform as a flutist, Lanier became an esteemed lecturer in Baltimore. The quality of his lectures, poems, and

41 Sidney Lanier‟s information is discussed on pages 14-24, and Henry Clay Wysham‟s information is discussed on pages 24-32. 14 essays on music led to a professorship at Johns Hopkins University where he taught on the subject of Shakespeare until he succumbed to his fatal illness in 1881.42 Sidney Lanier was born in Macon, GA on 3 February 1842 and lived to be 39 years of age; his life was cut short by tuberculosis which he contracted during the Civil War. His career as a flutist is unprecedented. Having received no formal flute instruction, Lanier rose to become, in the words of noted flute historian Emil Medicus, “America‟s first noted flute virtuoso.”43

Sidney Lanier’s Early Flute-playing

As a young man, Lanier learned to play several instruments, including the organ, banjo, and flute. Lanier graduated from Oglethorpe College, a school that did not survive after the Civil War, in 1860 were he was mentored by Professor James Woodrow. Woodrow‟s influence encouraged the young Lanier to pursue his talent for music and literature, and Lanier took a tutoring position at the College until the Civil war began.44 George Herbert Clarke describes Lanier‟s flute and flute-playing during this time:

His flute practice, too, begun in Academy days, continued to express the music within him. “He played directly and naturally from the first,” says Mr. Campbell, “as one hardly conscious of effort or obstacle.” His early interest in the flute seems to have been actively fostered by his friend Campbell and by C.K. Emmell, another friend who played admirably, and who gave their initial musical impulse to a number of Macon young men. Mr. Campbell was with Lanier when he bought his first “real” flute, a humble but reasonably effective instrument costing $1.25. In Macon, indeed, nearly all of Lanier‟s closest friends were musical, and many are the memories of boyish concert meetings and moonlight serenades. Lanier soon developed astonishing mastery over the flute….45

42 Gabin, Jane S. “Sidney Lanier (1842-1881).” Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century. ed. Eric L. Haralson, and John Hollander advisory ed.. Chicago; London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1998. xiii: 242.

43 Medicus, Emil. The Flutist: Sidney Lanier.” Jacobs’ Orchestra Monthly: 68.

44 Lanier, Sidney. Poems of Sidney Lanier: With a Memorial by William Hayes Ward. ed. Mary Day Lanier. New York: Charles Scribner‟s Sons. 1918. (previously in 1884, 1891, 1912, 1916)

45 Clarke, George Herbert. Some Reminiscences and Early Letters of Sidney Lanier, Introduction by Harry Stilwell Edwards. Published under the auspices of the Sidney Lanier Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Macon, GA: The J.W. Burke Company, 1907: 14. 15

The Civil War

The onset of the Civil War delayed Sidney Lanier‟s hopes to pursue music professionally, as well as his father‟s desire for him to join the legal profession. In April 1861, Lanier joined the Confederate Army as a member of the Macon Volunteers of the Second Georgia Battalion, which deployed to Virginia. He served in the battles of Seven Pines, Drewry‟s Bluffs, and the seven days‟ fighting about Richmond, culminating in the terrible struggle of Malvern Hill.46 Nevertheless, Lanier brought his flute with him to the army and was able to make flute-playing part of his daily life during the war. Furthermore, his flute-playing is rumored to have put him in good standing for a transfer to the signal service. According to William Hayes Ward‟s Memorial that was published in Poems of Sidney Lanier, it was during this time that Lanier first began to experience symptoms of tuberculosis.47 Ward writes:

After this campaign he was transferred, with his brother, to the signal service, the joke among his less fortunate companions being that he was selected because he could play the flute. His headquarters were now for a short period at Petersburg, where he had the advantage of a small local library, but where he began to feel the premonitions of that fatal disease, consumption, against which he battled for fifteen years. The regular full inspirations required by the flute probably prolonged his life.48

The year of 1863 was a turning point in Sidney Lanier‟s military career. His detachment served in Virginia and North Carolina, and in 1864 Lanier was captured by Union soldiers while taking charge of a vessel that was running a blockade. Lanier spent five months in prison at Point Lookout prison and was

46 Gabin: 242-243.

47 Some disagreement exists among scholars as to when and where Lanier contracted tuberculosis (often referred to as consumption). Some say it was during prison camp while others imply that he caught it from his mother who died from the disease shortly after Lanier‟s return from the army. This Memorial by Ward is authenticated by Mary Day Lanier, Sidney‟s wife, and is the most reliable primary source account.

48 Lanier. Poems of Sidney Lanier…: Memorial. 16 released in February of 1865, flute in hand. He had literally smuggled the instrument in to prison camp up his sleeve and never lost it during his years of service in the Confederate Army. Lanier returned on foot to Georgia on March 15th, 1865 and was deathly ill for six weeks. After he began to recover, he was officially diagnosed with “pronounced congestion of one lung.” Lanier found work as a clerk in Montgomery, AL from December 1865 to April 1867 and made his first trip to New York City in 1867 to publish his book “Tiger Lilies.” Throughout the remaining years of his life, Lanier would travel to different climates in search of bettering his physical condition. His mother died of tuberculosis shortly after Lanier‟s recovery. He was fully aware of the deadliness of the disease and believed that flute-playing had medical benefits for patients struggling with tuberculosis.49 According to an address given by Charles West in 1887, Lanier‟s race against time began in 1868:

The month after his marriage his first hemorrhage from the lungs occurred, and from that time to his death his life was a contest – a race between creative power and his mortal foe.50

Mary Day Lanier

Sidney Lanier met Mary Day in 1863 and the two were married on 19 December 1867.51 Throughout their marriage, Mary Day Lanier received numerous letters detailing the Sidney‟s travels and musical experiences. The letters reveal a deeply-felt love and respect that Sidney felt for her. Mary was a pianist and they met while playing music together. Her influence may have inspired Sidney Lanier‟s advocacy for women as musicians in years to come. Her efforts to save his correspondence and get his writings published posthumously helped establish Lanier‟s historical significance both as a writer and as a musician. She supported his career goals, often as he would leave her alone to

49 Lanier. Poems of Sidney Lanier…: Memorial.

50 West, Charles: Brief Sketch on Sidney Lanier. An address delivered to the Georgia Historical Society at Savannah on the 5th of December, 1887. Housed at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin: 6.

51 Clarke: 25-26. 17 raise several children when he was traveling and later working in Baltimore. The couple reunited in 1876 in Baltimore, Maryland, well after Lanier‟s orchestral career began in 1873 in the Peabody Symphony.52

Sidney Lanier’s Early Travels

Sidney Lanier traveled frequently to improve his medical condition and transact business. It was on one of these trips that Sidney Lanier began to seriously consider a professional flute career. When Lanier visited San Antonio, TX for his health in 1873, he performed improvised and self-composed flute solos at dinner parties. In the following excerpt from one of his letters, Lanier describes how he began to view his flute-playing in a professional light:

After the second song I was called on to play, and lifted my poor old flute in air with tumultuous, beating heart; for I had no confidence in that or in myself. But, du Himmel! Thou shouldst have heard mine old love warble herself forth. To my utter astonishment, I was perfect master of the instrument. Is not this most strange? Thou knowest I had never learned it; and thou rememberest what a poor muddle I made at Marietta in playing difficult passages; and I certainly have not practiced; and yet there I commanded and the blessed notes obeyed me, and when I had finished, amid a storm of applause, Herr Thielepape arose and ran to me and grasped my hand, and declared that he hat never heert de flude accompany itself pefore![sic] I played once more during the evening, and ended with even more rapturous bravos than before…. My heart hurt greatly when I went into the music-room, came forth from the holy bath of concords greatly refreshed, strengthened and quieted, and so remaineth to-day. I also feel better than in a long time before. Moreover, I am still master of the flute, and she hath given forth to me to-day such tones as I have never heard from a flute before. For these I humbly thank God.53

52 Gabin: 243-244.

53 Lanier. Letters of Sidney Lanier: 72-73.

18

In 1873 Lanier also traveled to New York City in pursuit of a professional career, performing as a flute soloist and receiving rave reviews. His biographer, Jane S. Gabin writes:

Lanier appeared at a benefit concert in Brooklyn for the Church of the Reformation in November 1873…. This recital was considered important enough to be covered by the Brooklyn Eagle and the New York Times…54

Sidney Lanier and the Peabody Symphony

Sidney Lanier‟s career as a musician, poet, lecturer and professor blossomed in Baltimore, MD, a growing cultural center during this time. Henry Clay Wysham was the flutist and friend who opened the door for Lanier‟s orchestral career to begin. He arranged for Lanier to play for the orchestra conductor of the Peabody Conservatory of Music, Asger Hamerik.55 Lanier details the event in a letter from 24 September 1873:

… On Monday [in Baltimore] my good friend Wysham had the great Mr. Hamerik, director of the Peabody Conservatory of Music, at his house to meet me… So soon as he came, Wysham made me play „Blackbirds.‟56 When I finished, Mr. Hamerik expressed himself in such approval as would have delighted thee beyond measure…. and concluded his applause by telling me that he was endeavoring to persuade the trustees of the Peabody Music Fund to authorize him to organize a full orchestra, in which he begged I would accept the position of first flute….57

Gabin describes the musical opportunities Lanier enjoyed during his first few years in Baltimore, MD:

54 Gabin: 244.

55 Gabin: 244.

56 In a letter from 28 Feb. 1873, Lanier writes: “I have writ the most beautiful piece, „Field-larks and Blackbirds,‟ wherein I have mirrored Mr. Field-lark‟s pretty eloquence so that I doubt he would know the difference betwixt the flute and his own voice.”

57 Lanier, Sidney. The Letters of Sidney Lanier: Selections from His Correspondence, 1866-1881. ed. Henry Wysham Lanier. New York: C. Scribner‟s Sons, 1899: 74.

19

In addition to formal concerts at the Peabody Institute, Concordia Hall, Lehmann's Hall, the Academy of Music, and Ford's Grand Opera House, there were recitals and "Sängerfeste" throughout the year. Musical organizations included the Rossini Musical Association, the Haydn Musical Association, the Baltimore Glee Club, and four large German choral groups…. reviews of the time consistently lauded his musical skill, and the conservatory faculty treated him as an equal and invited him to play in chamber ensembles and to join them for concert tours. Lanier joined several clubs and musical organizations; and in 1876, when he was elected a member of the prestigious Wednesday Club, he chose to be associated with its musical rather than its literary section.58

Lanier‟s importance as a flutist is described by Henry Clay Wysham in The Evolution of the Boehm Flute (1898). Wysham was well-qualified to rank Sidney Lanier since he was also acquainted with the preeminent flute professionals in the United States and England in the late nineteenth century and actually met Theobald Boehm, the inventor of the Boehm key system, in 1851. Wysham describes Lanier as:

Ranking next to Boehm as an executant of the flute, comes Sidney Lanier, who was designated as the „Poet of the Flute.‟ For some years the writer sat beside him in the Conservatory of Music in Baltimore and was enabled fairly and fully to estimate his qualifications…. The artist felt in his performance the superiority of the living inspiration to all the rules and shifts of mere technical scholarship. His art was not only the art of art, but an art above art.59

Sidney Lanier‟s career flourished in Baltimore, where he held the position of first flute in the Peabody Symphony, composed music for flute, voice, piano, and orchestrated his work Danse de Moucherons. He published poetry and short stories that received national circulation, a widely-acclaimed book titled The Science of the English Verse, and wrote many esteemed essays on literature and music. Lanier continued to devote himself to musical and literary pursuits throughout his lifetime, but the health complications from tuberculosis brought his flute career to an early close. According to Emil Medicus, Theodore Thomas

58 Gabin: 244.

59 Wysham: The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 29-30.

20 was about to offer Lanier a position in his prestigious orchestra60 when Lanier‟s health failed him. He was unable to continue his career as an orchestral flutist.61 News of Lanier‟s disease and its effect on the Peabody Orchestra was heard throughout the United States. An article in the Cincinnati Gazette covered the story:

Mr. Sidney Lanier, who has been first flute in Asgar Hamerik‟s orchestra in Baltimore for the past three years, has been ordered by his physician to leave his post and go South for his health.62

Sidney Lanier: Writer, Lecturer, Professor

Literary and intellectual pursuits received higher priority from 1877 until Lanier‟s death in 1881. He began giving a series of private lectures that lead to a lecture series at Johns Hopkins University on Shakespeare in 1878. And, in 1879 Lanier joined the faculty at this newly-formed institution. Some of his most well-known poems were heavily influenced by music. Gabin writes:

His mature poems --- most notably "The Symphony," "The Marshes of Glynn," and "Sunrise" --- are designed for their sound as much as for their literal meaning.63

Music also played a critical role in Sidney Lanier‟s lectures, essays, and books. Lanier would often use musical metaphors to convey meaning and the following texts mention the flute specifically:

60 Theodore Thomas (1835-1905) toured with a group called the Theodore Thomas Orchestra during this time. He, with this ensemble, was invited to form an orchestra in Chicago and was the founder of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Thomas also conducted the New York Philharmonic (1877-87 and 1879-1891).

61 Medicus: 68.

62 “A New American Poet.” Cincinnati Gazette. Newspaper clipping (Dec. 1876). Lanier (Sidney) Papers. Ms. 7. Series 3 Personal. Box 3.1. Folder 14. Eisenhower Library. Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.

63 Gabin: 245-246.

21

Florida: Its Scenery, Climate and History64 Shakspere and His Forerunners Studies in Elizabethan Poetry and its Development from Early English65 Music and Poetry: Essays Upon Some Aspects and Interrelations of Two Arts66 The Science of the English Verse67 The English Novel68 The Symphony69 Sidney Lanier‟s Letters70-71

Some of these writings relate performance experiences and personal musical development, while others offer a scientific approach to describing flute characteristics and performance practice. In 1880 his lecture series titled The Science of English Verse, received publication and demonstrates how Lanier bases the entire premise of his poetic philosophy on the stance that “verse is essentially but a form of music.”72

64 Lanier, Sidney. Florida: Its Scenery, Climate and History. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1876. For flute information, see pages: 214, 217.

65 Lanier, Sidney. Shakspere and his Forerunners; studies in Elizabethan poetry and its development from early English. (Lippincott publishes full collection ed. By Henry W. Lanier in 1901.) New York, Doubleday, Page & co., 1908. "This work contains two sets of Shakspere lectures delivered by Mr. Lanier in Baltimore during the winter of 1879-80, one at Johns Hopkins University, the other to a class of ladies at Peabody institute."--Pref. signed: Henry Wysham Lanier. For flute information, see pages: 16, 18, 19, 20.

66 Lanier, Sidney. Music and Poetry: Essays Upon Some Aspects and Interrelations of the Two Arts. New York: C. Scribner‟s and Sons, 1898. Original publication of essay “The Orchestra To-Day” appears in Scribner‟s Monthly: 1 April 1880: 897. Original publication of essay “From Bacon to Beethoven” appears in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. 1 May 1888: 643. For flute information, see pages: 5, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 31, 32, 36, 37, 38, 39, 42, 43, 45, 72.

67 Lanier, Sidney. The Science of English Verse. Copyright 1880 by Sidney Lanier and by Mary Day Lanier in 1908 and 1922. New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1922. For flute information, see pages: 30, 31, 32, 34, 38, 39, 40, 50, 51, 53, 80, 188.

68 Lanier, Sidney. The English Novel and the Principle of Its Development. New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1883. For flute information, see pages: 71, 140, 142.

69 Lanier: Poems of Sidney Lanier. For flute information, see pages: 62, 63, 66.

70 Lanier, Sidney. “Letters.” Scribner’s Magazine. ed. Edward Livermore Burlingame, Robert Bridges, Alfred Dashiell, Harlan Logan. New York: C. Scribner's sons, 1899. For Lanier letters containing flute information, see pages: 622-633, 744-752.

71 Lanier, Sidney. The Letters of Sidney Lanier: Selections from His Correspondence, 1866-1881. ed. Henry Wysham Lanier. New York: C. Scribner‟s Sons, 1916. For flute information, see pages: 22, 27, 67-102, 108-115, 134.

72 West: 13. 22

Sidney Lanier‟s writings received national circulation in Lippincott’s Magazine of Literature, Science and Education. This magazine published several famous English and American writers, including Oscar Wilde, Conan Doyle and Rudyard Kipling. His writings were also published in the prestigious Scribner’s Monthly during and after his lifetime. This magazine eventually bought out Lippincott’s after its initial sale to McBride, Nast and Company, thus merging the two publications in the early twentieth century. Furthermore, Lanier wrote several music compositions, all of which, though he often performed them during his lifetime, were published posthumously. Flutemaker and publisher Alfred G. Badger published Il Balen in 1888, and a collection of Lanier‟s flute works were published in 1997 by Universal Edition as The Sidney Lanier Collection: Music for Solo Flute and Flute with Piano Accompaniment Composed by the American Flutist and Poet Sidney Lanier. His music compositions and fragments are housed in Special Collections at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. Despite the fact that Lanier‟s national reputation was made as a poet and literary scholar, his closest friends remember flute-playing as one of the defining features of his life. Mary Day Lanier writes:

In that great and friendly city which was the place of his struggles and successes, whose scholars and students came daily to hear his thoughts poured forth at its chief seat of learning, and whose musicians hung at night upon the soft and melting notes of the poor artist‟s divine flute, his bust and portrait adorn hall and library, and his name is now a household word.73

Sidney Lanier spent his final months in North Carolina in an attempt to find respiratory relief in the mountain air. He passed away on 7 September 1881 and was buried in Baltimore, MD. He was acquainted with many famous people of his day, including literary figures such as Bayard Taylor, Gibson Peacock, Paul Hamilton Hayne and Charlotte Cushman, as well as musical figures such as Carl Wehner, Asgar Hamerik, Henry Clay Wysham, and Alfred Badger.

The Legacy of Sidney Lanier

73 West: 25. 23

Sidney Lanier‟s legacy is best described in an excerpt from Charles West‟s address delivered to the Georgia Historical Society in December of 1887. West states:

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Society:

When the Centennial Commission of the United States in 1876 sought for a poet who could best express the national feeling in its opening cantata, their choice fell upon Sidney Lanier. When Asger Hamerick, the conductor of the Peabody Orchestra, the aim of which is to teach music in its highest forms, desired to employ the best artist on the flute attainable, he turned to Sidney Lanier. When the Johns Hopkins University, which, from enormous resources, had obtained its chief mathematician in Sylvester, its chief Greek scholar in Gildersleeve, its electrician in Roland, its chief chemist in Remsen, its Romance lecturer in Eliot, and the other members of its Faculty from the best scholars known to the world, wished an equally gifted and capable lecturer upon English prose and poetry, it was to Lanier that it looked as the man for the task. Such was the verdict on him, while living, by competent judges of his powers as a poet, musician, and critic.74

Henry Clay Wysham Biographical Overview

Henry Clay Wysham was born in Baltimore, MD in 1828 and died in San Francisco, CA in 1900. The facts of his life are less well-preserved than those of Sidney Lanier. Wysham‟s book, The Evolution of the Boehm Flute, and flute-related articles did receive national and international circulation amongst musicians and are important for understanding the Boehm flute performance practices of flutists in the United States. His colleagues, correspondence, and international travel gave Wysham an unparalleled knowledge of the flute in the United States and abroad. Henry Clay Wysham‟s efforts to establish Boehm-system flutes in the United States were sizable, and he is the first American flutist to publish articles on world flutes from Egypt, China, and Japan. A native of Baltimore, MD, Henry Clay Wysham received an education at St. Mary‟s College, Harvard Law School, the Baltimore Conservatory, and the Royal College of Music in London. The timeline of his travels to different parts of the United States and Europe is somewhat unclear but indicates that he took several extended trips to

74 West: 6. 24

Europe and lived on both coasts of the United States. Wysham is listed as a lawyer in the 1850 Baltimore census, but according to his biography that appeared in the Bay of San Francisco in 1892 (while he was still living), he did not graduate from Harvard Law School until 1851.75 The most conclusive evidence of Wysham‟s whereabouts during 1851 indicates that he was living in Paris, France. According to a letter he sent to Paul Taffanel, one of the founders of “The French Flute School”76 and flute professor at the Paris Conservatoire, Wysham himself describes two trips to Paris:

My residence in Paris in 1851 was (il va sans dire) most charming. My pension was the Hotel de L‟Isle et D‟Albion in the Rue St Honore. At that time I saw Louis Napoleon (then President) and the lovely Empress Eugenie. Ah! „Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamus cum illis [The times are changed, and we with them].‟ I visited Paris in 1865 – just after our Civil War. The „Gay City‟ seemed very little changed.77

Between 1851 and 1870, Wysham entered the Royal College of Music in London, England where he completed his musical education on the flute. During his time in London he met the singing superstar Jennie Lind and the inventor of the Boehm-system flute, Theobald Boehm. From his first acquaintance with the Boehm-system flute Wysham became a strong advocate of the new flute key system. He returned to the United States, traveling to Boston and serving as the musical editor of the Boston Journal. By 1873 Wysham had settled in his hometown of Baltimore and introduced Sidney Lanier to conductor Asgar Hamerik. It was this introduction that led to Lanier‟s appointment as principal flutist in the newly-formed Peabody Symphony in Baltimore, MD. In regards to Wysham and Lanier, Dayton C. Miller wrote that he was “personally well acquainted with W. Clay Wysham” and that Wysham helped get Lanier to come to Baltimore. Miller also states that it was through Wysham‟s “local influence” that a

75 Henry Clay Wysham is listed as a lawyer at the age of 21 in August of 1850 in Baltimore, MD in the Census of 5 August 1850 for Baltimore County.

76 For a detailed description of “The French Flute School” and its importance, see page 10.

77 Blakeman, Edward. Taffanel: Genius of the Flute. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. (PPT6, letter from Henry Clay Wysham, 17 Oct. 1898.)

25 position in the Peabody Orchestra was made available for Sidney Lanier.78 Lanier‟s letters confirm that he and Wysham had become friends before his audition for the Peabody Orchestra took place, but the year of their acquaintance is undocumented. In a letter to Mary Day Lanier on 24 September 1873 Sidney Lanier recounts the audition:

….On Monday [in Baltimore] my good friend Wysham had the great Mr. Hamerick, director of the Peabody Conservatory of Music, at his house to meet me…. Hamerik is one of the first composers in the world…. and one of the most accomplished maestros also. So soon as he came, Wysham made me play “Blackbirds.” When I finished, Mr. Hamerik expressed himself in such approval as would have delighted thee beyond measure. He declared the composition to be that of an artist, and the playing to be almost perfect, - with a grave and manifestly hearty manner which could not be mistaken – and concluded his applause by telling me that he was endeavoring to persuade the trustees of the Peabody Music Fund to authorize him to organize a full orchestra, in which he begged I would accept the position of first flute…..79

As orchestral colleagues, Wysham played second flute with Lanier and performed duets with him at orchestra concerts. Furthermore, Wysham and Lanier‟s close friendship is indicated by Sidney Lanier‟s dedication of his flute composition Danse de Moucherons to Wysham on 25 December 1873 and Lanier named his son, Henry Wysham Lanier after Henry Clay Wysham, his godfather. During the 1870s, and perhaps even earlier, Wysham became acquainted with Carl Wehner, who became Principal Flute in the New York Philharmonic. Frederick Gottlieb describes playing in flute ensembles with these men in an article from 1929:

He would often invite me to play duets with him and upon several occasions we played trios with the assistance of Henry Wysham, a Baltimore attorney and flute devotee and friend of Lanier; also Carl Wehner, the eminent flute virtuoso who was playing a season‟s engagement in Baltimore. It thrills my very soul now to recall the joy of those meetings, sweet memories after years of change in life‟s panorama.80

78 Miller, Dayton C. Letter to J.A. LeConte 29 June 1921. Gift of the Dayton C. Miller Estate. Miller: Lanier‟s Family. Box KO- . June 29th, 1921. Library of Congress. Washington, D.C.: 2.

79 Lanier. Letters of Sidney Lanier: 74.

80 Gottlieb, Frederick H. “Fellow Flutist of Lanier Tells of Concert Period: Frederick H. Gottlieb Pays Tribute to Famous Poet and Musician.” The Macon Telegraph, Macon, GA. 3 Feb. 1929. Newspaper 26

Sidney Lanier had a large influence on the musical interpretation of Henry Clay Wysham, as well as many other flutists who heard him perform. In a candid letter to Mary Day Lanier from 23 January 1874, Lanier describes Wysham‟s playing at the time in a less-than-praiseworthy tone. It appears that Wysham‟s performance model during this period was one that he later discarded and this review represents a standard approach to flute performance practice in the United States during this 1870s. The following paragraph is taken from a letter Lanier wrote to Mary Day Lanier regarding Henry Clay Wysham‟s flute-playing:

….I fear there is a little reactionary period always in these matters: and I try very hard to allow for that. But he is not large enough. For instance, in Music; he doth not love music much, he loveth playing it infinitely. The great deeps, the wild heights, the passionate cries, the happy vales, the dear, secret springs, the broad generous-bosomed rivers, the manifold exquisite flowers, the changeful seasons, the starry skies, the present, the past, the future - - - of the world of music; - into these he hath not been, into these he will never enter. A twittering solo of Briccialdi, a languishing waltz-flirtation of Terschak, an old-time Rondo of Kuhlau: if he could have these every day, he would not ask further boon of Music. Yet, he is prodigiously vain of his musical acquirement: and there is no musical virtue which he doth not stoutly claim. Moreover, there is a certain finicalness, a lack of innate dignity, an absence of anything like a great aim or high ideal, a tendency to be content with cheap triumphs and showings-off, - which fit not to my liking…… Dream though not, though, that we are less friends than at first. I dine there every day, he coming always to my room for me: and I try to make some diversions from the numerous troubles whereof the wife hath always a store to regale him with. After dinner he cometh back to my room with me: and we have Kuhlau, en duo, some of which I greatly enjoy…..”81

William Neyle Habersham of Savannah, GA, whom Wysham refers to as a “cultivated amateur” describes how Sidney Lanier greatly influenced both Wysham and himself to change their approach towards musical interpretation. In his book, Henry Clay Wysham includes this quote from a letter Habersham sent in 1890. Habersham writes:

clipping in the Lanier Series: Reviews Box 6.1. Folder: 1873-81 Reviews of Lanier as a Musician. The Eisenhower Library at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.

81 Lanier. Letters of Sidney Lanier. 23 Jan. 1874. 27

Since Lanier electrified us on his second appearance here…. Who but a genius could have done what he did? Upset his whole stock in trade in trash and substituted gold and imperishable food. You were indeed a friend to him. Many is the time I heard him talk of you at his home in Baltimore when I played duos with him…. Then we thought only of overcoming the difficulties of music, now we think of eliciting the beauties of expression.82

In 1878 Wysham returned to London for several years and met many European flutists at the house of Walter S. Broadwood, who edited the 1882 edition of Theobald Boehm‟s Essay on the Construction of Flutes that was originally published in 1847. Wysham left London for good in 1881 and, by 1885, moved to San Francisco, CA. Henry Clay Wysham became the flute professor at the University of California at Berkeley where he worked until his death in 1900.83 During these last fifteen years of his life Wysham taught flute lessons and harmony, wrote flute compositions, and completed several articles and one book about the flute. 84 His obituary in Music: A Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Art, Science, Technic and Literature of Music states:

Mr. Henry Clay Wysham, a distinguished flutist, died in Oakland, Cal., Feb. 10. He was from Maryland, of revolutionary stock, and had been intended for the law, but his love for music and his peculiar talent for the flute absorbed his attention. He made the acquaintance of Boehm, the improver of the flute, in London, in 1851, and immediately adopted that instrument and did much to introduce it in this country. Mr. Wysham was about 70 years of age. He leaves a widow.85

Publications and Correspondence of Henry Clay Wysham

82 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 36-37.

83 Article 3 – No Title. The Independent… Devoted to the Consideration of Politics, Social and Econ… 51, 2661 (30 Nov. 1899). American Periodicals Online. [database online, Google Scholar], Accessed 20 Feb. 2009: 3243.

84 The Bay of San Francisco: The Metropolis of the Pacific Coast and Its Suburban Cities: a History. San Francisco: Lewis Pub. Co., 1892.

85 Mathews, W.S.D. ed. And Blanche Dingley, mgr. Music: A Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Art, Science, Technic and Literature of Music. Vol. XVII. November 1899 to April 1900. Chicago: Music Magazine Publishing Company, 1900: 548.

28

Henry Clay Wysham published articles in a variety of national and international music periodicals, corresponded with well-known flutists, and wrote a definitive book on flute performance practice in the United States on Boehm-system flutes, The Evolution of the Boehm Flute. Sidney Lanier, Dayton C. Miller86 and Paul Taffanel are notable flute correspondents with Wysham. He also wrote several pieces for flute and piano including Trois morceaux poe tiques, Rosemary, an idyl, and The Olden Days. These works are part of the Dayton C. Miller Collection at the Library of Congress and have not been republished since the 1890s. Important articles, books and letters include:

Letter to Alfred G. Badger87 Egyptian Flutes88 Letter to Musical Times and Singing Class Circular89 Letter to Musical Times and Singing Class Circular90 Letter to Musical Opinion & Music Trade Review91 Letter to Musical Opinion & Music Trade Review92 The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: An Essay on the Development of the “Reed Primeval” to the Perfect System of Theobald Boehm93 Letter to Paul Taffanel94

86 Dayton C. Miller (1866-1941), a noted astronomer and physicist, willed one of the most extensive collections of historical flutes, flute literature, and correspondence to the Library of Congress. This collection has been featured at the Smithsonian and is one of the most complete collections in the world.

87 Simpson: 245.

88 Wysham, H. Clay. “Egyptian Flutes.” The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular, Vol. 31, No. 574 (1 Dec. 1890): 746.

89 “Facts, Rumours, and Remarks.” The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular. Vol. 33, No. 597 (1 Nov. 1892): 659- 662.

90 “Facts, Rumours, and Remarks.” The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular. Vol. 34, No. 599 (1 Jan. 1893): 18-20.

91 Letters to Musical Opinion & Music Trade Review. May 1890. [Online], Accessed 18 Feb. 2009. http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/Musical%20Opinion%201889%20-%201890.htm

92 Letters to Musical Opinion & Music Trade Review. August 1890. [Online], Accessed 18 Feb. 2009. http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/Musical%20Opinion%201889%20-%201890.htm

93 Wysham: Evolution of the Boehm Flute.

94 Blakeman: 27. 29

Correspondence with Dayton C. Miller95 Chinese Songs and Musical Instruments96 Music of Japan97

Controversy with London Music Critics

An air of controversy, or perhaps a lawyer‟s bend towards argument, runs as a common thread in the letters Henry Clay Wysham sent to London for the Musical Times and Singing Class Circular as well as the Musical Opinion and Music Trade Review. In his first letter to the Musical Times, Wysham, described as “the well-known American flautist and teacher,” takes issue with Sir George Grove, the editor of Grove’s Dictionary on the article regarding flutes,”98 and in his correspondence with Musical Opinion, a heated argument ensues over the editors‟ treatment of Wysham‟s lecture on world flutes. In a letter from 15 October 1890, Wysham gives an overview of flutes from China:

These flutes are unquestionably precise patterns of antiques, older, possibly, than the Pharaohs! The most astounding feature of all this is that the Chinese, possessing as they do an instrument with, at least, one accurate scales of two octaves and a half, quite as true as the modern German flute, have no idea at all of its use, and „play‟ with no approach to melody or rhythm! With a strange appropriateness of adornment, the makers of these flutes in China invariably inscribe on them, in their ancient hieroglyphics, some legend about music (!) – those I send were translated by an interpreter to mean the glorification of the art divine, when heard in the open air by moonlight. A sprig of bamboo near the middle, although stopped at the blow-hole in precisely the right place for correct intonation.99

95 Unpublished correspondence between Henry Clay Wysham and Dayton C. Miller. (1898-1899). Gift of the Dayton C. Miller Estate. The Dayton C. Miller Collection: Correspondence: W. The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

96 Wysham, H. Clay. “Chinese Songs and Musical Instruments.” Metronome Vol. 32, No. 9 (Sept. 1916): 42-43.

97 Wysham, H. Clay. “Music of Japan.” Metronome Vol. 32, No. 10 (Oct. 1916): 56-58.

98 Letters to Musical Opinion & Music Trade Review. May 1890. [Online], Accessed 18 Feb. 2009. http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/Musical%20Opinion%201889%20-%201890.htm

99 Wysham: Egyptian Flutes: 746.

30

In November of 1892, the Musical Times published a short review of Professor Wysham‟s lecture on world flutes and exclaims “Shade of Cherubini!” a derogatory reference that implies Cherubini‟s100 joke of “What is worse than one flute? Two.”101

Professor H. Clay Wysham recently lectured at Berkeley (Cal.) on „Musical Echoes of Home Songs,‟ and „illustrated the popular tunes of the nations upon seven different varieties of flutes.‟ Shade of Cherubini!102

Wysham sounded off to the editors in a letter that was not republished in full, chastising their characterization of flutes in this manner. The editors of The Musical Times were offended enough by his response as to reply with this scathing paragraph in their January, 1893 publication:

In a recent number of The Musical Times, after stating that Professor H. Clay Wysham, of Berkeley, California, had given a Lecture illustrated by seven different varieties of flutes, we exclaimed, „Shade of Cherubini!‟ ….This very mild and innocent pleasantry on our part has, we regret to say, evoked the Titanic wrath of Professor H. Clay Wysham…. According to Mr. Wysham, we ought to be ashamed of our „meanness and ignorance.‟ He takes it for granted that our „ignorance is as dense as a Hottentot‟s,‟ and that we are „simply mean and malicious‟…. Our editorship, according to him, is of „third-rate caliber,‟ and he threatens that, unless we acknowledge our error and injustice, „I shall show by the publication of an „open letter‟ in a prominent London journal, and prove, too, that the exposing and deposing of men of your ilk in editorial work is the only hope for England to become a musical nation.‟ Hoity-toity! There‟s for you – or, rather for us!103

Reviews of The Evolution of the Boehm Flute (1898)

100 Luigi Cherubini (1760-1842) was an Italian composer whose most famous works were written for opera.

101 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 42-43.

102 “Facts, Rumours, and Remarks”: Vol. 33, No. 597 (1 Nov. 1892).

103 “Facts, Rumours, and Remarks” Vol. 34, No. 599 (1 Jan. 1893): 19.

31

In 1898, Wysham published The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: An Essay on the Development of the “Reed Primeval” to the Perfect System of Theobald Boehm. This book, or pamphlet, covered the popularity of flutes, flute-players, and composers in the United States and is a significant resource for understanding late nineteenth-century American flute performance practice. The Independent published a review in February of 1898:

….Lovers of the flute will be interested in a new work written by Mr. Henry Clay Wysham, of Berkeley, Cal., which is to be brought out by an Eastern publisher. The book, which is entitled „The Evolution of the Boehm Flute from the Pipe Primeval to the Perfect System of Theobald Boehm,‟ will be illustrated with portraits of important personages well known to the flute world. The Rev. C.P.H. Nason contributes one biography, that of C. Molè. Mr. Wysham has been collecting material on the subject for many years.104

According to Nancy Toff, Wysham‟s book is the first to cover American flute performance practice and performers. Toff writes:

Wysham was the first writer to cover the American flute-playing scene, including biographies of Sidney Lanier of Baltimore, John Summers Cox of the Sousa band (with useful information on his Badger and Rudall Carte instruments), Edward Heindl of Boston and Charles Molè of the Boston Symphony; and Otto Oesterle of the New York Philharmonic and Theodore Thomas Orchestra. Wysham quotes valuable critical excerpts and provides detailed information about the instruments used by these players. This small but informative volume, which is the closest we have to an immediate progenitor to De Lorenzo, has not yet been reprinted in a modern edition.105

104 Literary Notes. The Independent. 50, 2567 (10 Feb. 1898). American Periodicals Online [database online, Google Scholar], Accessed 20 Feb. 2009: 20.

105 De Lorenzo: Preface by Nancy Toff: IX-X. 32

CHAPTER III

FLUTE REPERTOIRE AND REVIEWS OF SIDNEY LANIER, HENRY CLAY

WYSHAM AND SELECTED COLLEAGUES

The flute repertoire of Sidney Lanier and Henry Clay Wysham represents a time when no definitive canon of standard flute works had become established in the United States. While exploring their personal letters, published writings, musical compositions, concert reviews, and concert programs, it is clear that much of the music performed by these men is rarely performed today. Understanding what repertoire was available to flutists in the United States between 1870 and 1900 is important when studying the musical expectations of flutists and audiences during this time period. This chapter will describe the role of improvisation in Sidney Lanier‟s flute performances, selected composers through the words of Lanier and Wysham, and will conclude with a selection of notable concert reviews.

Flute Improvisation

Sidney Lanier‟s approach to learning the flute and composing music was self- taught and his playing style and musicality were the sources of inspiration for colleagues and audiences alike. Improvisation was an important method he used to compose works he later wrote out and to entertain audiences during recitals and concerts. As a child Lanier is reported to have begun learning the flute through improvisation. Henry Clay Wysham recounts Lanier‟s memory of this:

His first efforts were made at seven years of age, upon an improvised reed, cut from the neighboring river-bank, a cork stopping the end and a mouth- hole and six finger-holes extemporized at the side. With this he sought the woods to emulate the trills and cadences of the song-birds.106

106 Wysham, H. Clay. “Sidney Lanier” The Independent … Devoted to the Consideration of Politics, Social and Econ… 49, 2555 (18 Nov. 1897); American Periodicals Series [database online, Google Scholar], Accessed 20 Feb. 2009: 5. 33

Sidney Lanier improvised on specific self-composed melodies throughout his life. According to Patricia Harper, possible examples of Lanier‟s “skeleton” melodies have been preserved and published as Cradle Song: The Widow Sang the Child to Sleep, Wald- Einsamkeit I and II, and A Melody from Lanier’s Flute,107 as well as melodies recorded in his sketch book.108 An interest in portraying the music of birds pervaded Lanier‟s poetry, flute compositions, and improvisations. Lanier‟s poems featuring birds include The Mocking- Bird, Tampa Robins, Owl Against Robin, The Dove, and The Raven Days. These poems show Lanier‟s artistic word-treatment of birds and reflect popular American sentiments on the subject during his lifetime. Sidney Lanier‟s flute compositions drawing inspiration from birds are Wind-Song109 and Blackbirds. Wysham describes Lanier‟s flute solo titled Blackbirds as a work “of classic purity and decided originality” that “interpreted without imitating the black-bird‟s notes and suggested the wild surroundings of the woods and fields.”110 In multiple sources Sidney Lanier‟s improvisational solos are described as bird-like and were filled with trills and ornamentation of a specific melody. The descriptions of these performances point to a personal style of improvisation. It seems that Lanier‟s improvising was unique to him and helped him earn his reputation as a performer, but they do not appear to represent a stylistic movement in American flute performance practice. Improvisation formed the foundation of Sidney Lanier‟s compositional technique. Most of his music compositions were likely the result of the development of his preferred musical ideas through improvisation. LeConte describes Sidney Lanier‟s creative process:

Lanier himself states that when his mind was at rest he thought in terms of music, and everyone who knew him in the formative period speak of his

107 A score with piano accompaniment was arranged by Edward Litchfield Turnbull and published by Breitkpf and Härtel 1905; “A Christmas Greeting” of 1913 from E. L. Turnbull.

108 Lanier, Sidney. The Sidney Lanier Collection: Music for Solo Flute and Flute with Piano Accompaniment Composed by the American Flutist and Poet. Introduced by Paula Robison. Edited by Patricia Harper and Paula Robison. Universal Edition EU70004.

109 This work is likely the final title of the piece Lanier often refers to as Swamp Robin.

110 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 16. 34

habit of closing his eyes and drifting off into improvisations containing a wealth of arpeggios, trills and cadenzas, but with a clear thread of thought running through it all.111

Audiences appreciated Sidney Lanier‟s improvisations in recitals as well. One newspaper article indicates that Lanier‟s unique style of improvising gained him notoriety in 1867:

He makes his flute rival the most effective and emotional of instruments – the violin – and that bespeaks for him a gift and a power in execution that is certainly remarkable. He will perform a concerted piece, with one of the Professors, but we trust he will not withhold one of his own weird improvisations.112

Sidney Lanier describes his improvisational playing style in a letter he wrote after a well- received performance in San Antonio. In it he states that he “flew off into all manner of trills, and laments, and cadenza-monstrosities for a long time...” and received shouts of praise from the audience at the conclusion of the solo.113 Sidney Lanier improvised not only themes of his own creation but also tunes from Native Americans and African Americans. Oliver Orr taught Sidney Lanier an Indian melody that Lanier used as an encore piece,114 in addition to traditional Southern songs such as Home, Sweet, Home, Auld Lang Syne, and Dixie. Orr‟s daughter published text from one of his letters describing how Lanier learned the melody:

….somewhere on the Alabama bank amongst the trees playing a plaintive melody on reeds…. The judge got out his flute and standing on deck he imitated the melody played by the Indian. This resulted pretty soon in the Indian coming down to the river bank and being invited to board where he examined with great interest Judge Longstreet‟s glass flute and then the

111 Miller: Letter to LeConte. 7 April 1915: 1.

112 The Daily Telegraph. The Concert To-Night. 19 June 1867.

113 Lanier. Letters of Sidney Lanier: 74

114 This melody was republished in The Sidney Lanier Collection: Music for Solo Flute and Flute with Piano Accompaniment Composed by the American Flutist and Poet by Universal Edition in 1998. This edition contains the score with piano accompaniment that was arranged by Edward Litchfield Turnbull. 35

two played the melody together, one using his reeds and the other his flute. The judge taught the Indian melody to my father, and my father taught it to Sidney Lanier, who played it often as an encore.115

Additionally, Father Jerome of St. Leo Abbey described a “night of glory” that occurred when the “accomplished flutist,” Sidney Lanier, took a boat trip on the Oklawaha river. Lanier “observed the syncopations” of a Negro‟s whistling and the style of the whistle, which was “so characteristic of primitive Negro music….”116 and found inspiration in that musical culture. Lanier‟s improvisations also became the source for one author to criticize the celebration of African American music. The following review of the publication of A Melody from Lanier’s Flute117 indicates the racial tensions that pervaded the South during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries:

Is it not to the discredit of the South that its people have permitted their music to pass into oblivion, while the music of the negro has been preserved? Of negro spirituals there are at least six collections, some of them admirable; of Southern melodies, by Southern men, is there a single volume accessible in print? How many readers of this newspaper know the connection of that beloved old song, “Kathleen Mavourneen,” with Richmond and the South? Or take a case in which the dramatic element still is stronger – that of Sidney Lanier‟s famous melody. When that true poet was captured and confined at Point Lookout, he contrived to carry with him to prison his most precious possession, his flute. Daily, through long months of privation, he played on it – over and over a melody of his own composition. Apparently he never put that melody to paper, beautiful though it was. It would have perished altogether, and with it a sure insight into the character of Lanier, if John B. Tabb had not been a musician and in prison with Lanier. Tabb remembered the melody and, in his old age, sang it to Edwin Litchfield Turnbull, of Baltimore, who gave it a setting and published it under the title, “A Melody from Lanier‟s Flute.” It is quite a remarkable little composition, written in A flat [sic], and it

115 Smith, Bridges. “Just Twixt Us.” The Macon Telegraph, Macon, GA.: 2 Nov. 1927. She quotes a reply letter of Mr. Iverson R. Branham to Mr. Oliver Orr. c. 1864.

116 Pioneer Florida by D.B. McKay. “Sidney Lanier Took a Boat Trip on the Beautiful Oklawaha River” Tampa Sunday Tribune, Sunday, March 6, 1955 p. 16-C. From Folder: Newspaper Clippings Lanier in Florida.

117 This piece was republished in 1998 by Universal Edition and edited by Paula Robison and Patricia Harper. 36

deserves to be kept as a sacred memorial of Lanier. But how many know the piece?118

Flute Repertoire

Sidney Lanier and Henry Clay Wysham played a variety of flute works written by European and American composers during the nineteenth century. The Appendix lists the works found in this exploration of their repertoire and indicates that these men had little or no exposure to flute works predating 1800. Additionally, both men composed pieces that they performed at chamber recitals.119 While more works could be discovered in an exhaustive study, this information provides a solid foundation for studying the repertoire of American flutists between 1870 and 1900. Sidney Lanier and Henry Clay Wysham spoke candidly about their tastes in flute solo repertoire throughout their writings. Both men advocated music that could stand on its own merit and that didn‟t simply show off the technical skills of the flutist performing the work. The subtext found in their writings (and sometimes in concert reviews) was that the flute was capable of bearing an equal musical role as that of the violin as a choice instrument for portraying emotion. In a letter to Mary Day Lanier in 1874 Sidney Lanier speaks of his high regard for the songs of Franz Schubert. His letter also reveals that he would play the vocal lines of these songs on the flute with Asgar Hamerik performing the piano accompaniment. Hamerik was a Danish conductor who led the Peabody Symphony Orchestra at its inception and launched Lanier‟s professional flute career by hiring him as its Principal Flutist. Lanier describes a collaboration with Hamerik in a letter to Mary Day Lanier from 1874:

Last night, according to appointment, I fared forth to thy Letty Yonge Wrenshall…..There came also Conductor Hamerik, and, after some talk, my flute was haled forth. I vowed I would not put finger to key for

118 Sidney Lanier: Improvisations -Lanier Series 6 Reviews Box 6.1 Folder: 1873-41 Reviews of Lanier as Musician. Lanier Poems Set to Music. Richmond News Leader “Lanier‟s Melody – And Others” Dates unknown.

119 Lanier‟s flute pieces were published posthumously and Wysham‟s works were published during the 1890s. 37

anybody but Schubert, and so forthwith, into my beloved Schubert‟s Album we plunged, Hamerik playing the accompaniments with such intense and loving fervor and such artistic perfection as would have delighted the inmost craving of thy heart. Song after song, we played: sweet, brief, passionate outgleamings of melody, writ as (thou mayst remember) I have so often contended that all lyric poetry must be, i.e., each poem expressing but a single idea, and expressing that in the shortest manner possible, and in the simplest, noblest, most beautiful, and most musical words….. Hamerik was so enthused that he invited me to play a couple of them at the next concert, - just to show the singers, he said, how to render Schubert‟s music.120

Another favorite composer of Lanier and Wysham was Frederich Kuhlau. They both played sonatas, duets, and trios by this composer, sometimes on a weekly basis. It seems that performing Kuhlau‟s flute ensemble works was a common practice when flutists were introduced to a new acquaintance. It is unclear exactly which works were being performed but the reverential tone with which both men use when describing Kuhlau‟s contribution to the flute repertoire is very similar to the praiseworthy tones they reserved for Theobald Boehm. An example is found in Wysham‟s book, The Evolution of the Boehm Flute, which was published when he was nearing the end of his flute career that had spanned nearly half of the century:

There is one supreme virtue in the music of Kuhlau – it never palls. The writer has been playing it year after year, entertaining visiting flutists with a „duo by Kuhlau‟ or some of his splendid Chamber-music and it has never lost its freshness – indeed the more intimately one becomes acquainted with it the more strongly he is impressed with the genius of its illustrious composer to whom might have been applied the lines – „Semper honor, nomengue tuum, landesque manebunt’121

Henry Clay Wysham details the trends he sees occurring in popular concert flute repertoire at the close of the nineteenth century. His analysis that works by modern writers of his day, many of which are now part of the modern flute repertoire canon, were supplanting those of the earlier nineteenth-century flute style has proven to be accurate. He ends a long and detailed discussion on his musical and personal opinion of composer

120 Lanier. Letters of Sidney Lanier: 5 March 1874.

121 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 41. 38

Adolf Terschak with an informative listing of flute composers whose works were played in the United States:

….. his works, however, like those of so many other writers of his day, such as Tulou, Drouet, Dorus, Walkiers, Berbiguier, Gettermann, Dressler, Nicholson, Richardson, Clinton, etc., are losing their popularity and are being gradually supplanted by the rapidly increasing appreciation of Kuhlau and Boehm, and of the better class of modern writers, such as Joachim Anderson, Franz Doppler, Edward De Jong, Taffanel, Saint Saens, and last, though not least, Edward German.122

Reviewing the quality of flute compositions on their musical merit was a theme in the writings of Sidney Lanier and Henry Clay Wysham. Adolf Terschak received a long and unflattering review in The Evolution of the Boehm Flute where Wysham refers to him as “a comet with a most eccentric orbit” and discusses in detail Terschak‟s financial straits that prevented him from touring in the United States as he had hoped to do. Terschak had written several letters to Wysham detailing his plans and even dedicated a piece to him.123 Wysham does not hold Terschak‟s flute pieces in much esteem, as evidenced by this blistering review:

It goes without saying that Terschak‟s concert selections are invariably those of his own compositions. His voluminous works have well-nigh reached the Opus 200. Of this vast number, the average flutist knows about eight or ten works of great merit – „La Sirene’ (Op. 12), „Le Babillard’ (Op. 23), Grand Allegro de Concert (Op. 18), Favorite de Vienne (Op. 25), „Concertstuck‟ (Op. 51), La Sonnambula (Op. 43), „Feldblumen‟ (Op. 94), and „Caleidoscop‟ (Op. 118) dedicated to „Henry C. Wysham Esq., Counsellor at Law, Baltimore.‟ These sum up all the works of positive merit written by Terschak. Out of this staple all his later works have been spun – indeed many of them were only „pot-boilers‟ and in his own language, „the sums I received for them did not cover the most modest necessities of life.‟ And he doubtless received all they were worth.124

122 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 35-41.

123 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 35.

124 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 36. 39

Sidney Lanier also expresses frustration with flute repertoire that he refers to as “the elaborate tootle-ty-tootle-ty” in a letter from 1874. In the following excerpt Lanier describes not only the music he and Wysham played at an encore at a Masonic Temple but also his impressions of the audience itself:

Here we found a large audience assembled to hear a concert for the benefit of the Carmelite Nuns, and being quickly called, forth stepped the little man and I on the stage, and dashed into the elaborate tootle-ty-tootle-ty of Rabboni‟s duo on themes from „Rigoletto.‟ I did laugh inwardly, as I looked about the hall, to see the big Irishmen, servant-maids and all, good Catholics every one, gazing and listening, rapt. They encored us, and we responded with „Adieu, Dear Land.‟ Then home, and here sit I…. famished for…. my highest-of-life…. Bohemianism and compliments fill not my heart.125

Selected Reviews

American audiences warmly received the silver Boehm-system flute in the early 1870s without any apparent hesitation. European nations, particularly Germany, were much slower in their acceptance of the new flute key system. The following review of the Peabody Symphony Orchestra‟s first concert admires the musical selections of the night and the sound of Sidney Lanier‟s silver Boehm- system flute:

…The character of the music was first-class, never descending to what is often miscalled “popular,” and many of the pieces, addressed as they were to cultivated and refined ears, found ready response in hearty applause: …not on the programme, but between the parts, Mr. Hamerik, desiring to introduce to the Baltimore public his new acquisitions, the first oboe, flute, and bassoon….. Mr. Sidney Lanier, first flute, was next called upon. …The tone of Mr. Lanier‟s silver Boehm flute seemed particularly fitted for expressing the very idea he was elaborating. His performance was all that could be desired for excellence and finish, and was warmly received.126

125 Lanier. Letters of Sidney Lanier: 97.

126 Musical. First Symphony Concert of the Peabody Institute. 8 Dec. 1873. 40

Theodore Thomas and Leopold Damrosch, preeminent conductors who actively popularized orchestras and orchestral music in the U.S., were members of elite classical music societies and helped shape American musical thought. Both men readily accepted flutists into their orchestras who played Boehm-system flutes as early as the mid 1870s. Sidney Lanier‟s letters show that he received support to continue his career in New York as a flute professor on the Boehm- system flute:

Last night I won great favor in the eyes of Mr. Cortada, a noble musician, Pianist of the Oratorio Society of New York and of the Handel and Haydn Society of Brooklyn. We played a Sonata of Kücken, one of Kuhlau, Tercschak‟s Babillard, & Furstenau‟s Nocturne, together. He delareth that I can do great things with a little study: and volunteereth to introduce me to Dr. Damrosch, (under whom he saith I must study) who is Conductor of both the above-mentioned Societies. He also volunteereth to endeavor to get me the place of Professor of the Flute at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music.127

Furthermore, Carl Wehner, a pupil of Theobald Boehm, played duets with Lanier and convinced Theodore Thomas to offer Lanier a position in his orchestra. Sidney Lanier expressed his appreciation of the offer in the following letter:

When Theodore Thomas passed through here a few days ago, to my great surprise he told me that his orchestra would probably be increased during the summer, and that he would like me to take the additional flute in it. I played several duos with his first flute, - Wehner, - and it is to his voluntary recommendation that I owe the offer. It would be very charming to me; and is such a compliment to a player wholly untaught as I am, and but recently out of the country, that I‟m indulging myself in considerable gratification over it.128

Concert reviews of Sidney Lanier‟s flute and flute-playing are full of praises for him and his instrument. In a review of the Peabody Symphony the reviewer makes a unique request that the conductor should consider giving a

127 Lanier. Letters of Sidney Lanier. To Mary Day Lanier. Brooklyn, 13 Sep. 1874.

128 Lanier. Letters of Sidney Lanier: 27. 41 chamber concert so the audience could learn to single out players and “feel an interest” in them as individuals as well as members of the orchestral whole:

Mr. Hamerik has, we hear, engaged as first flute Mr. Lanier, who uses the Boehm flute, and plays it in a very masterly way. He has made quite a sensation in New York, and he will, beyond doubt, be a great ornament to the orchestra. We would strongly suggest to Mr. Hamerik to give a light concert before the beginning of his series of symphonies, which shall consist largely of instrumental solos, for the purpose of introducing his new acquisitions to us. We want to know them. We want to be able to single out a player who has an obbligato passage, or a cadenza to execute, and to feel an interest in him. Such a concert would be very easily gotten up, and it would have a peculiar charm. And it would be well to make this concert free, or at least very cheap, as an overflowing house is what is wanted in the beginning.129

Sidney Lanier‟s New York recitals also resulted in praise for the tonal capabilities of Boehm-system flutes. The Baltimore Gazette quotes a review from the New York Times that states:

Mr. Lanier uses one of those elegant modern Boehm flutes, with a tone, the surpassing beauty and brilliancy of which has been so often exhibited here by one of our own eminent amateurs.130

Another review from 1875 echoes these praises and adds that this flute blends well with the female voice. The reviewer writes:

Miss Emma C. Thurshy…. Sang a favorite recitative and aria from Mozart‟s „Magic Flute‟ in a manner which elicited great applause…. In the second part she sang the air and variations by Proch. The chief feature of this was a very lovely cadenza with the flute. Mr. Lanier‟s exquisite tone and finished technique upon this instrument was exhibited in this cadenza in a marked and beautiful way, the voice and flute blending in perfect accord.131

129 Fall 1873, Music. The Peabody Concerts. Lanier Series 6 Reviews Box 6.1. Folder: 1873-41 Reviews of Lanier as Musician. Lanier Poems Set to Music.

130 B. Gazette. Fall 1873. Peabody Concerts. Lanier Series 6 Reviews Box 6.1. Folder: 1873-41 Reviews of Lanier as Musician.

131 B.Gazette 8 February 1875. Lanier Series 6 Reviews Box 6.1. Folder: 1873-41 Reviews of Lanier as Musician. Lanier Poems Set to Music 42

Determining the tastes of American audiences for orchestral music during the period between 1870 and 1900 is muddied by the likeliness that concert reviewers were trying to entertain through exaggeration. Sidney Lanier reports in a letter his reaction to a review written by his friend, saying that the criticism in the Baltimore Gazette was “in the main just, - though of course a little exaggerated, to eke out the spiciness thereof.”132 The review Lanier speaks of is quoted below. While it is clear that some exaggeration occurred, the review does shed light on American audience expectations, revealing a hybridized, cosmopolitan taste. And it is through the education that audiences received at orchestral concerts that the flute repertoire in the United States received the most benefit. The reviewer writes:

It must be conceded that German music is most deep-thoughted and impressive. In the issues of harmony, and in the varieties of rhythm they are the greatest. But the German mind has not the gift of melody like the Italians. The greatest German composers have been most devoid of melody. The divine Beethoven could not write a song. Bach and Handel had even less melody. Mozart and Haydn had more; and for the reason that they lived at Vienna much of their lives, into which the melodies of Italy overflowed. Schubert – the most melodious of all the German tone poets – also lived in Southern Germany, and breathed the Italian atmosphere. And the Germans not having the gift of melody, affect to despise it. They say that the Italian music is flippant and frothy. The Italians say that the German music is unmelodious, dull and prosy. Which is right? Both are a little wrong, and both are partly right. Now, we Americans say: “Let us have the best of both.”133

132 Lanier. Letters of Sidney Lanier: 92-93.

133 Baltimore Gazette. Monday, 9 Feb. 1874. Music. The Italian Symphony Concert. Lanier Series 6 Reviews Box 6.1. Folder: 1873-41 Reviews of Lanier as Musician. Eisenhower Library. Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. 43

CHAPTER IV

BOEHM-SYSTEM FLUTE PERFORMANCE PRACTICE IN THE WRITINGS OF

SIDNEY LANIER AND HENRY CLAY WYSHAM

American flutists between 1870 and 1900 demonstrated a strong interest in the technical and tonal innovations of the Boehm-system flute. Exploring the published writings and personal letters of Sidney Lanier and Henry Clay Wysham uncovers a wealth of information about how these men, as well as many of their colleagues, approached playing the flute during this time. This chapter highlights their writings, with a focus on flute popularity, flute materials, pedagogical influences, breathing, articulation, tone production, harmonics, tone color, and programmatic symbolism. The commentaries of both men combine to create a complex body of information about American flute performance practice. These writings illuminate the development of a multifaceted American flute tradition that was forming between 1870 and 1900.

Boehm-system Flute Popularity in the United States

The popularity of the Boehm-system flute began to rise between 1870 and 1900, well before a “French Flute School” influence was embraced in the United States. This rising popularity was due to a number of factors. Henry Clay Wysham quotes Arthur A. Clappe, an “eminent American musician, writer and editor,” in The Evolution of the Boehm Flute (1898) and highlights this growing pool of flutists. Clappe writes:

…. The usefulness of the instrument, great flexibility, sweet tone, extensive compass, and great popularity no doubt accounts for the liberal manner in which it has been written for by eminent composers. Up to a certain point, a knowledge of flute playing is easily acquired, far much more so than is the case with the violin, a reason that accounts for the numerous flutists in embryo to be found on every hand and every altitude, from the cellar to the attic and midway in the drawing room.134

134 Wysham. Quoting Arthur A. Clappe an “eminent American musician, writer and editor.” The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 3. 44

Clappe‟s analysis shows that the Boehm-system flute was considered an easy instrument to learn, continuing the tradition of amateurism that simpler key-system flutes enjoyed in the United States. Nevertheless, his emphasis on the tonal possibilities and the popularity this flute enjoyed with “eminent composers” indicates that flutists were concerned with timbre and composer-prominence when considering their repertoire decisions. Clappe also draws a clear picture of the Boehm-system flute‟s perceived capabilities and its culturally-appealing performance venues:

In the hand of a good performer the flute is capable of surmounting the greatest musical difficulties, and, since the introduction of the Boehm system, in any key. Apart from its power in this direction it possesses a beauty of tone that, if lacking in breadth and dramatic intensity, is yet capable of refined brilliancy and pathos. It is extremely useful and, it may be said, indispensable in the orchestra, necessary in the concert band, entertaining as a solo instrument, but is particularly adapted to the drawing room. There the surroundings are in keeping with its tonal character, the subdued richness and brilliancy of which harmonizes with gems of art and treasures of bric-a-brac that adorn the room. This is a high mead of praise, and such as of all wind instruments can be applied to the flute only. It is essentially a home instrument, and rightly utilized could be made the means of much social enjoyment. The above remarks apply to the concert flute, so called.135

This advocacy for Boehm-system flutes pervades Wysham‟s book and suggests that the Boehm-system flutes were still being introduced throughout parts of the United States in the late 1890s. Its concert significance was not fully established even in 1898. Stereotypes of the tonal and technical capabilities of the flute were strongly in existence between 1870 and 1900, stemming largely from the technical limitations of earlier flutes. Wysham explains this subject in the light of what he considers to be “two manifest errors” that existed not only in popular thought but also in the musical conception of flutists during this time. The first error he describes is the belief that flute-tone is expressionless, which Wysham credits to composer Hector Berlioz‟s statements that the flute tone was “devoid of expression” with “feeble sounds” that were best suited for use in “executing

135 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 3. 45 groups of rapid notes and in sustaining high sounds.”136 The second error Wysham lists is the ambition to impress audiences exclusively with technical prowess, a performance practice that arose to cover intonation problems. This technical style of playing was assumed by many to be the only style for which the flute was best, despite the emergence of the Boehm key system. He writes that “exhibitions of „tours de force,‟ staccato and arpeggio variations” were a “dangerous heresy.” This style of performance, according to Wysham, turned the flute into a “pyrotechnic projector” and was popularized by flute virtuosos seeking to mask the “frightful intonations” of flutes with antiquated key systems.137 Sidney Lanier also examines this flute stereotype as a major reason why composers were avoiding the instrument. Lanier echoes the belief that flutists were partly responsible for the lack of taste found in many flute works because of their technical ambitions. In describing the Boehm-system flute, Lanier writes that its “true capacities” were “almost unemployed by composers,” especially in regards to the lower register and its new timbral possibilities.138 Wysham describes the low register of the Boehm-system flute as having “the most precious character, at once soft, suggestive, rich, and passionate;”139 Lanier and Wysham also advocated that composers should write more for the low register of the flute. For example, Sidney Lanier wrote the following paragraph in Music and Poetry:

Flute-soloists have rarely been able to resist the fatal facility of the instrument, and have usually addressed themselves to winning the applause of concert audiences by the execution of those brilliant but utterly trifling and inane variations which constitute the great body of existing solos for the flute. These variations are written mainly for the second and third octaves of the instrument, and the consequence has been an utter lack of cultivation of the lower octave by solo-players, and a necessarily resulting ignorance of its capacity to composers. Not only the

136 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 42.

137 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 42-43.

138 Lanier. Music and Poetry: 37.

139 Lanier: Music and Poetry: 37-38.

46

solo-players, indeed, have been thus led away from the lower octave; even the hack orchestral players suffered the same fate….140

The orchestral reputation of flutes that emerged from a combination of these beliefs is illustrated by Lanier as well. He describes the instrument as “the black beast in the orchestra” because of its tendency to be played out of tune and credits Theobald Boehm with correcting the flute‟s poor intonation with his key system.”141 It appears that a flute made to play with accurate intonation was a technological marvel and greatly improved the standing of the instrument in the eyes of performers, composer, and audiences during this period.

Flute Materials

The preferred materials for Boehm-system flutes in the United States between 1870 and 1900 were in a state of flux. In a chapter titled “The Material for Flutes,” Henry Clay Wysham discusses in detail the merits of silver, wood, ebonite,142 and gold in flute response and tone quality. Upon its publication in 1898, Wysham demonstrates his knowledge of the international flute scene by indicating that, while silver flutes were popular in the mid-late nineteenth century in England and the United States, wood and ebonite were increasingly popular in both countries. He also writes that “the plated or solid silver flute is universally used” in France. However, in Germany, “where flutists have never taken kindly to the Boehm flute,” wood was the material of choice. Regarding American tastes, Wysham wrote the following:

Opinions differ as to the relative value of the materials just mentioned, but there are some very obvious distinctive effects which every advanced flute-player will recognize…. Here, in America, the prominent makers have been using metal143 very largely until the late Mr. Badger began

140 Lanier. Music and Poetry: 37-38.

141 Lanier. Music and Poetry: 36-37.

142 Ebonite was a material developed from Goodyear‟s India rubber. It is similar to what is used in automobile tires and achieved some critical acclaim during the late nineteenth century in the United States as a flute material.

143 When Henry Clay Wysham refers to „metal‟ flutes, he explains that he is referring exclusively to silver flutes on p. 15 of his book. 47

making his superior quality of flutes with an ebonite headjoint – which was a most excellent combination for tone, now most successfully constructed by Mr. Conn. The tide of popular taste, however, in this country, is setting largely in favor of an all-ebonite flute, a specialty of a „Wonder Boehm System Metal Flute with ebonized mouthpiece,‟ which unquestionably combines the soft rich quality of tone of the best wood flutes and the quick articulation and brilliancy of the all-metal flute.144

Wysham quoted an unnamed but “eminent young American flute-player and teacher of large experience” who analyzed the differences between metal and wood flutes. This author preferred the “richer, fuller and more sympathetic” tone quality of wooden flutes but stated that the tone of metal flutes was “brilliant… and surer of response.”145 Wysham holds Theobald Boehm‟s beliefs in high esteem and punctuates the discussion about materials with Boehm‟s position that silver is more suited to large performance venues. Wysham then compares the qualities of silver, wood, and gold:

Reverting to qualities, or rather, character, of tone as indicated by such experts as Boehm and other eminent authorities, it may now be considered as settled that the tone of a silver, or metal flute, is louder, more penetrating and carrying further than that of the wooden flute, and, if the player has full command over his embouchure, the tone is more brilliant, clear and strong without harshness…. Gold, on account of its great expense, is scarcely in the ring, although for purposes of tone it is said to have no equal…..146

However, Wysham believed that the performer‟s ability mattered considerably more than the instrument‟s material and said that “if played out of sight of the listener” that an excellent flutist could play on wood, ebonite, or silver and that it would be “difficult to tell” what from which material the instrument was constructed.147 The Evolution of the Boehm Flute also cites evidence that flutists were growing concerned about health risks associated with wood flutes, which may have encouraged some flutists to purchase silver

144 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 14.

145 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 14-15.

146 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 15.

147 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 18. 48 flutes. Wysham mentions that Boston-area flutist, Edward Heindl, contracted a deadly illness from playing a used wooden flute:

Poor Edward Heind‟l, of Boston, (one of Boehm‟s best pupils, who will be hereafter mentioned), was the victim of a loathsome malady inhaled from a wooden flute that a stranger requested him to try. From this a moral may be thus deduced – let those afflicted with the mania for purchasing second- hand instruments be quite sure of the physical condition of his predecessors in their use and let all possessing wood instruments be very careful as to their interior cleanliness. One other suggestion – don’t lend your flute (as you would not your toothbrush) to any thoughtless would-be borrower; there are some laws of cleanliness which it may not be safe to violate.148

Edward Heindl played a silver instrument for most of his career that was made by Theobald Boehm in Munich. It is now housed in the Dayton C. Miller Collection at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.149 According to Wysham, Heindl used an ebonite headjoint in his later years as well.150 Dayton C. Miller and Henry Clay Wysham corresponded briefly during the final years of Wysham‟s life regarding The Evolution of the Boehm Flute and Miller‟s personal copy is housed at the Library of Congress. In this book, Wysham gives significant praise to Conn flutes. In a letter151 drafted by Dayton C. Miller on 26 December 1898, Miller questions Wysham‟s allegiance to Conn flutes. The draft contains Miller‟s original line- through edits:

While I cannot for a moment agree with the main idea what seems to be the main idea of the pamphlet, the lauding of Conn‟s Flutes, I do appreciate the information about flutes and flute players. I shall have others to argue the “Conn” point if they wish, I cannot refrain from saying that to the so far as I have been able to judge, after examining and hearin

148 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 17.

149 Edward Heindl played flute No. 0099 of the Dayton C. Miller Flute Collection. It is a silver flute manufactured by Theobald Boehm, No. 19, in c. 1850. This is the flute Heindl played in the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Mendelssohn Quintette Club in the United States.

150 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 33.

151 The actual letter has not been recovered to date. All line-through markings are on the original draft Dayton C. Miller composed before sending the letter. The draft is preserved at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. in the Dayton C. Miller Correspondence Archives under the letter W. 49

playing and hearing Conn flutes. I have yet to see are that is fit to use. I have heard Mr. Davis play upon them in concert, and it is the unanimous opinion of musicians that he was not so hindered by the flute that he could not make music. And even the argument of cheapness hardly holds. R.C. & Co. flutes can be bought from stock in this country for $110 and _____ for about $100, and would an ebonite, german silver keyed, flute by Bertiling which costing $92.50, which war infinitely superior to the Conn $100 flute. I shall leave to others the arguing of the Conn point if they wish.152

Wysham issues a pointed reply to Miller‟s distaste for Conn flutes in a letter he wrote on 19 April 1899. The underlined sections are also underlined in the original, handwritten letter:

…. A gentleman from Portland, Oregon, called upon me with a new Conn flute – metal with Ebonite head. I found it faultless in every aspect. The tone is rich, true and pure. Being a good musician with a capital ear he thinks he has found a treasure. So much for your Conn – the fraud.153

Furthermore, Miller lists the flutes he is currently trying in 1898. Noticeably, these flutes show that he was experimenting with silver and ebonite.154 Wood seems to be ignored in this discussion. Of particular interest is the statement that flutist and composer Joachim Anderson recommended an ebonite flute to Dayton C. Miller on one of his journeys to Europe:

I have been using for about thirteen years, and still use nearly every day, a Meinell Flute with silver body closed G# key and ebonite headjoint, and I also owned a Bentelling flute for awhile and have played flutes of nearly every make. While traveling in Europe nearly three years ago, I took occasion to examine the various flutes of the better makers. I called upon the following makers, Rudall Carte & Co., Boosey & Co., Besson & Co., Evette & Schaeffer, Mahillan, Lot, Rittershaurer, and Bochan & Mendler. I examined Ritterschaurer‟s elaborate exhibit at the Berlin Exposition. Of

152 Miller, Dayton C. Letter to Henry Clay Wysham (1899). Dayton C. Miller Flute Collection. Correspondence. Box W-. Library of Congress. Washington D.C.

153 Wysham. Letter to Dayton C. Miller (1899). Dayton C. Miller Flute Collection. Correspondence. Box W-. Library of Congress. Washington D.C.

154 Ebonite was a material developed from Goodyear‟s India rubber. It is similar to what is used in automobile tires and achieved some critical acclaim during the late nineteenth century in the United States as a flute material. 50

all the flutes that I saw and tried, are just finished by Rudall Carte & Co., for Joachim Anderson united me by for the best…. It was a Rockstro Model, ebonite flute, with covered finger holes. After this investigation, I gave them an order to make a similar one for me….155

Sidney Lanier and Henry Clay Wysham played silver Boehm-system flutes made by Alfred G. Badger during their careers in the Peabody Symphony.

Influential Flute Pedagogues

Sidney Lanier and Henry Clay Wysham learned to play the flute in a way that is different than what most modern American flutists experience. In their writings no mention is made of either man receiving a private flute lesson. While it is likely that Wysham took flute lessons or attended master classes while studying at the Royal College of Music in London, no individual teacher‟s influence was as powerful as the insights he gained from being a colleague of Sidney Lanier. Lanier and Wysham often mention the flutists they played with and literature by composers and flutists that they found inspirational. Lanier and Wysham‟s writings notably show that they had access to the flute treatises of Johann Joachim Quantz and Theobald Boehm as well, but neither man appears to seek early flute texts as definitive sources for musical interpretation. Rather, it seems that they viewed these texts as steps towards the progress that was achieved by Theobald Boehm. The only significant mention of a flute instructor occurs when Henry Clay Wysham praises Boehm‟s students:

If Boehm had produced no others than these two eminent pupils, Heind‟l and Wehner, his renown as the greatest of teachers could not have been more signally established.156

In a chapter titled “The Career and Qualifications of Boehm,” Wysham declares that Boehm‟s book, The Flute and Flute-Playing in Acoustical, Technical, and Artistic Aspects,157 is essential for every flutist to study:

155 Miller, Dayton C. Letter to Henry Clay Wysham (1899). Dayton C. Miller Flute Collection. Correspondence. Box W-. Library of Congress. Washington D.C.

156 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 33.

51

This work should be in the possession of every Boehm flutist, containing, as it does, the Master‟s special instructions and explanations as to the mode of singing some of the best known compositions of the Classical School.158

Wysham again quotes Arthur A. Clappe who demonstrates a thorough knowledge of flute history when crowning Boehm with the highest flute achievement to date. Clappe writes:

…Yet, until very recently, its higher possibilities were practically unknown. While the genius of the former ages was devoted to beautifying the exterior, the moderns have developed the interior, so to speak. Experiments with the bore and the mechanism of keys, from the one keyed flute of the early part of the eighteenth century, culminating in that marvel of mechanical ingenuity found in the Boehm system, have been in continual progress, until now the flute has reached a state of mechanical and musical perfection undreamed of by the ancients. Among those who have devoted themselves to perfecting the flute may be mentioned John Christopher Denner, Philibert, Thomas Stanesby, Quantz, Tacet, Pratten, Nicholson and Boehm.159

Breathing

Fundamental approaches to breathing for flutists are outlined in the writings of Sidney Lanier and Henry Clay Wysham. Lanier‟s writing about breath control appears in a chapter titled “For Consumptives” in his travel guide, Florida: Its Scenery, Climate, and History (1876). Consumption was a commonly-used term for tuberculosis during Lanier‟s lifetime. He describes not only how he approached breathing when playing the flute but also how he believed it helped alleviate some of the physical breathing difficulties presented to him by his disease. Lanier refers to a perceived health benefit of the “gentle and constant expansion of the vesicles of the lung” produced while playing the flute. Sidney Lanier also mentions that Quantz, the flutist in King Frederick the Great of

157 This book was originally published in German in 1871. Dayton C. Miller published an annotated English translation in 1908 and a second English edition in 1922. It appears that Wysham would have used the English edition edited and published by W. S. Broadwood in London from 1889.

158 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 21.

159 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 3. 52

Prussia‟s Court during the mid-1700s, recognized health benefits from the breathing-style of flutists. In advocating flute-breathing as a way for tuberculosis patients to deal with the effects of the illness, Lanier describes his breathing approach in detail:

The operation of playing the flute – so far as it depends on breath – involves the precise motions of the lungs which is of benefit to the consumptive, to wit, a full inspiration (always take care, not too full, not straining in the least) succeeded by a slow and gentle delivery of the breath….160

Furthermore, both men emphasize an even quality to the breath that in turn creates an even quality in the flute tone. For example, Henry Clay Wysham believed that correct breathing required “little effort.” He states:

The air should be blown, or rather breathed, softly and steadily into the embouchure and with the same degree of power in proportion in either soft or loud passages throughout the entire compass of the instrument – for the even quality of the tone is one of the chief characteristics of the Boehm.161

Articulation

By the 1890s the flute had begun to establish a new role of prominence in the orchestra, approaching that of the violins. One of the reasons that flutists advocated for this position was the ease at which they could achieve feats of articulation. The writings of Lanier and Wysham do not detail the tonguing processes and syllables of advanced flute articulation, but Wysham does include a quote that indicates single and triple tonguing to be a standard practice of the day. Arthur A. Clappe states that only the violin could compare to the flute in executing a variety of technical passages, greatly increasing the respect the flute was receiving within the orchestra:

No orchestral instrument, excepting the violin, can compare with the flute in its capabilities of execution. Legato or staccato, arpeggio or connected

160 Lanier. Florida, its Scenery, Climate, and History: 214.

161 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 27. 53

passages, nearby intervals or extended skips, single, and triple tonguing may be and are performed with the most remarkable degree of precision and rapidity. It is agile in the extreme and for this reason is often employed to supplement or augment the violins.162

Tone Production

Tone production is a topic that has greatly interested flutists for hundreds of years. In examining the writings of Sidney Lanier and Henry Clay Wysham, a clearer picture of what sounds they sought to achieve is gained, as well as an appreciation for the pioneer work they did in revamping the image of the flute in society. Sidney Lanier approaches the subject with a poetic flair, and Henry Clay Wysham tends to write in a more pragmatic style. Both men have similar goals and looking at the different ways they describe flute tone and tone color provides a well-rounded picture of the idealized sound of flutists playing Boehm-system flutes in the United States. Sidney Lanier compares the flute tone to nature and establishes his view of the flute in orchestras:

If the year were an orchestra, to-day would be the calm-passionate, even, intense, quiet, full, ineffable flute therein. In this sunshine one is penetrated with flute-tones. The passion of the struggling births of a thousand spring-germs mingles itself with the peaceful smile of the heavens and with the tender agitations of the air. It is a mellow sound, with a shimmer of light trembling through it.….163

Frederick Gottlieb, a flutist colleague of Lanier and Wysham, described Lanier‟s flute tone as a “beautiful liquid tone” in a recollection from 1929.164 Further descriptions of Lanier‟s flute tone are found in reviews of his performances in Chapter III. Henry Clay Wysham gives a detailed description of how a flutist‟s embouchure affects tone production. He also pays Theobald Boehm great homage throughout his writings and holds up Boehm‟s comments on the embouchure as the definitive.

162 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 3-4.

163 Lanier. Letters of Sidney Lanier: 67-68. (Wysham writes later that this letter was sent to him in his article titled “Sidney Lanier”: 5.)

164 Gottlieb: 3 Feb. 1929. 54

Wysham‟s physical approach to achieving an ideal flute tone is described in the following paragraph:

The instrument, if held properly, loosely, with the head erect and the tube slightly inclined from the lips to the end of the flute, is a pose of gracefulness personified. The chest and diaphragm, unfettered by stays, are expanded, and the physical development thus obtained is unquestionably a great factor in the healthful use of the Boehm. To obviate any facial distortion, which at one time was supposed to be unavoidable in playing the flute, the first lessons are always taken before the mirror, thus the expression of the features and the adaptation of the instrument to the lip, resting, as it does, upon the soft cushion of the chin, become natural.165

Wysham also explains how the embouchure, breath control, instrument selection, and embouchure shape impact tone production. He refers to the use of the lips as a “delicate” process where each interval requires “a different disposition of the complex muscles of the mouth” and coordination of the diaphragm. Experienced performers develop the skill to adjust “the size of the aperture” to fit the mouth hole of his instrument “by covering it more or less with the lower lip.”166 This philosophy of tone production involved embouchure flexibility in combination with steady airstream and an awareness of the diaphragm. Wysham also hints that performers who lack embouchure flexibility often blamed the instrument for their difficulties in producing a clear tone.

Harmonics

Sidney Lanier speaks specifically about how the harmonic series is achieved on the flute in Shakspere and His Forerunners (1901).167 His level of knowledge on this topic is advanced compared to that of most flutists in the United States at the time, since few had access to a formal music education and/or flute treatises. Lanier uses a description of white light to demonstrate his knowledge of harmonics:

165 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 27.

166 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 18.

167 Lanier delivered the lecture series in Baltimore during the winter of 1879-80. It was published posthumously in 1901. 55

Just as a ray of white light is composed of the three coloured rays united, so each tone we ordinarily hear – whether a tone of speech, such as a word, or a tone of a musical instrument – is composed of subordinate tones in combination with a chief tone called the fundamental tone. These subordinate tones are called „upper partial‟ tones, or sometimes „harmonics.‟168

He also describes how the harmonic series is achieved on the flute while using the low C fingering and includes a listing of its upper partial harmonics.169 This process would be considered an extended technique170 and became popularized in the United States during the twentieth century. Henry Clay Wysham shows that the use of harmonics by American flutists was not a common practice during this time. When discussing the harmonic series Arthur A. Clappe states in The Evolution of the Boehm Flute that flutists could benefit from using harmonic fingerings:

This aspect of flute playing is one little understood by generality of our flute players, and yet it is a subject worthy of attention; firstly, because it adds variety to the quality of tone, and secondly, offers opportunities for simplifying the fingering of many difficult passages.171

Tone Color

Tone color was widely discussed between 1870 and 1900 in the United States and impacted the way audiences listened to orchestral music. It was during these years that many symphony orchestras formed in cities throughout the country, and orchestral music was becoming more and more widely accessible to the American public. In January of 1877 the national publication Scribner’s Monthly published an article that defined “color” in orchestral music as synonymous with the word “timbre.” This article‟s approach to

168 Lanier: Shakspere and His Forerunners: 19.

169 Lanier: Shakspere and His Forerunners: 20.

170 Extended Techniques refer to sounds created with the voice or musical instruments that were unconventional in classical music, outside of experimental circles, until well into the twentieth century.

171 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 4. 56 describing the “acoustic spectra” is similar to Lanier‟s description of tone color and implies a similarity between tone color and visual color:

The chief value of orchestral music is in the color or timbre of the different instruments. The strings, the wood and the brass, make the three grand divisions of tone-color, the acoustic spectra, and it is the mingling of these various proportions that makes the charm and art of orchestration.172

Sidney Lanier further defines tone color by comparing it to the scientific complexities of light. He describes harmonics in a tone as the fundamental sources for an overall tone color. The following paragraph appears in an essay describing how in literature and poetry the sound of words creates a compelling “word color” for authors. Nevertheless, it reveals how Lanier defined the musical concept of tone color and was circulated nationally:

Tone colour (sometimes called Quality, sometimes by the French term Timbre, sometimes, as by Mr. Tyndall, Clangtint, a translation of the German word Klang-Farbe) results from the fact that all the tones ordinarily heard are composite. Just as a ray of white light is composed of the three coloured rays united, so each tone we ordinarily hear – whether a tone of speech, such as a word, or a tone of a musical instrument – is composed of subordinate tones in combination with a chief tone called the fundamental tone. These subordinate tones are called „upper partial‟ tones, or sometimes „harmonics.‟ Now you can easily imagine in a general way that if the ingredients of such a composite tone be changed, the tone itself will be changed in some way. It is changed, and the change is one of tone-colour.173

Lanier further explains his philosophical view of sounds in general and how they differ. He breaks sound down into four components: Duration, Pitch, Intensity, and Colour.174 These perceived components impacted the way Lanier wrote and taught poetry, as well as how he approached music. Subtlety in poetic effects and musical effects are treated as a

172 “Recent Researches in Orchestration.” Scribner’s Monthly. Vol. XIII, No. 3. (Jan. 1877) American Periodicals Online [database online, Google Scholar], Accessed 20 Feb. 2009: 427.

173 Lanier: Shakspere and His Forerunners: 19.

174 Lanier: Shakspere and His Forerunners: 16.

57 method for achieving or communicating beauty and these four elements lie “at the root of a large class of the most subtle and beautiful effects of verse….”175 Furthermore, Lanier describes tone color differences between musical instruments as equal to sound, or tonal, differences in vowels in the English language. Lanier argues:

If the same tune be played on an organ, a flute, a violin, a horn, a clarionet, an oboe, a human voice, we recognise it as the same tune, and we at the same time recognise that characteristic quality of each instrument which is known as tone-colour. Now this same tone-colour is the principle of difference between vowel-sounds, and between consonant- sounds. Just as we distinguish a violin-tone from a flute-tone by the characteristic quality of tone belonging to each instrument, so we distinguish the vowel o, for instance, from the vowel a…. The characteristic differences among vowel-sounds, in short, are differences of tone-colour.176

Symbolism in the Flute Sound

The role of music in the philosophy of Sidney Lanier shows a weighty tie to spirituality. He equates the intellectual pursuit of science to the emotional pursuit of music as a culmination of man‟s spiritual pursuits in the following quote:

For, if the scientific spirit be but a passionate longing to put oneself in relation with the substance of things, - with the truth as it actually exists outside of oneself,- then it is easily conceivable that such a longing might influence very powerfully both of those two great classes of man‟s spiritual activities which we are accustomed to call, the one intellectual, the other emotional; and that, driven by such a longing, intellectual activity might result in science, emotional, in music.177

In addition, Lanier shows his belief that every song carries a programmatic statement produced by the tones of the music and resulting in an intellectualization using words. The following quotes illustrate his position:

175 Lanier: Shakspere and His Forerunners: 18.

176 Lanier: Shakspere and His Forerunners: 18-19.

177 Lanier: Music and Poetry: 27.

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The principle of being of every song is that intellectual impressions can be advantageously combined with the musical impressions, in addressing the spirit of man. It is precisely this principle that underlies programme- music.178

“Programme-music,” at first a sarcastic term, has now come to be almost technical, as denoting a musical composition in which the otherwise vague effects of the tones have been sought to be specialized and intellectualized by the employment of conventional words.179

When teaching about his philosophy regarding poetry and music, Sidney Lanier states that language is a form of music:

For example, it is often heard that music is a kind of language, and many sayings are predicated upon that idea. But this is not true; exactly the converse is true: Music is not a species of Language, but Language is a species of Music.180

This belief that language is a type of music is foundational not only for understanding Lanier‟s poetry but also for approaching flute repertoire. Sidney Lanier‟s influence was great on American society, his approach to music directly impacting the flutists he played with and his philosophies on music directly influencing his national readership. The flute in nineteenth-century English and American poetry often represents a voice calling to the listener, much like an illustration of God or Nature speaking through divine means i.e. music. By contrast, the flute also represents Nature as an echo of bird calls or the sounds of the woods. Much like the Baroque concept of affect, flute music carried a weight of intent or specialized meanings for the audience in the United States that was more defined than what modern performers experience. Examining the words Sidney Lanier used in his poem The Symphony to describe, or speak through, the flute helps link the possible intent of flute performers and composers of this period (1870-1900) in the United States. The sound of the flute is portrayed as an invitation to the listener and guides him/her into a revelatory experience.

178 Lanier: Music and Poetry: 9.

179 Lanier: Music and Poetry: 8.

180 Lanier: Music and Poetry: 30. 59

This interest in timbre may explain why audiences and performers accepted a repertoire that dealt largely with popular tunes, pyrotechnics, or outright imitation of bird calls for decades. Sidney Lanier, a staunch supporter of raising the quality of flute music, wrote several flute solos that were built around the concept of the flute representing a bird, such as Swamp Robin and Blackbirds, and performed them regularly. In his poem The Symphony, Sidney Lanier shows, in words, the importance of the sound of the flute in terms of Nature and also the role the flute played symbolically as a symbol of reason and love. The poem uses many different instruments of the orchestra to speak as characters and chooses the flute voice to represent an important ideal. Sidney Lanier writes the following stanza in the The Symphony as the flute tone. It noticeably represents not only the sights, sounds and smells of Nature but also an internal morality or consciousness within Nature. The way Lanier describes flute tones in terms of natural imagery provides a window into the audience expectations of flutists‟ sound and implies that the sound of the flute carried spiritual meaning to the audience at hand. The following is an excerpt from The Symphony in which the flute speaks to the reader:

But presently A velvet flute-note fell down pleasantly Upon the bosom of that harmony, And sailed and sailed incessantly, As if a petal from a wild-rose blown Had fluttered down upon that pool of tone And boatwise dropped o' the convex side And floated down the glassy tide And clarified and glorified The solemn spaces where the shadows bide. From the warm concave of that fluted note Somewhat, half song, half odor, forth did float, As if a rose might somehow be a throat: "When Nature from her far-off glen Flutes her soft messages to men, The flute can say them o'er again; Yea, Nature, singing sweet and lone, Breathes through life's strident polyphone The flute-voice in the world of tone. Sweet friends, Man's love ascends To finer and diviner ends Than man's mere thought e'er comprehends

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For I, e'en I, As here I lie, A petal on a harmony, Demand of Science whence and why Man's tender pain, man's inward cry, When he doth gaze on earth and sky? I am not overbold: I hold Full powers from Nature manifold. I speak for each no-tongued tree That, spring by spring, doth nobler be, And dumbly and most wistfully His mighty prayerful arms outspreads Above men's oft-unheeding heads, And his big blessing downward sheds. I speak for all-shaped blooms and leaves, Lichens on stones and moss on eaves, Grasses and grains in ranks and sheaves; Broad-fronded ferns and keen-leaved canes, And briery mazes bounding lanes, And marsh-plants, thirsty-cupped for rains, And milky stems and sugary veins; For every long-armed woman-vine That round a piteous tree doth twine; For passionate odors, and divine Pistils, and petals crystalline; All purities of shady springs, All shynesses of film-winged things That fly from tree-trunks and bark-rings; All modesties of mountain-fawns That leap to covert from wild lawns, And tremble if the day but dawns; All sparklings of small beady eyes Of birds, and sidelong glances wise Wherewith the jay hints tragedies; All piquancies of prickly burs, And smoothnesses of downs and furs Of eiders and of minevers; All limpid honeys that do lie At stamen-bases, nor deny The humming-birds' fine roguery, Bee-thighs, nor any butterfly; All gracious curves of slender wings, Bark-mottlings, fibre-spiralings, Fern-wavings and leaf-flickerings; Each dial-marked leaf and flower-bell

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Wherewith in every lonesome dell Time to himself his hours doth tell; All tree-sounds, rustlings of pine-cones, Wind-sighings, doves' melodious moans, And night's unearthly under-tones; All placid lakes and waveless deeps, All cool reposing mountain-steeps, Vale-calms and tranquil lotos-sleeps; -- Yea, all fair forms, and sounds, and lights, And warmths, and mysteries, and mights, Of Nature's utmost depths and heights, -- These doth my timid tongue present, Their mouthpiece and leal instrument And servant, all love-eloquent.181

In describing his inspiration for the flute piece Danse de Moucherons (Gnat Dance), Sidney Lanier relates not only music to nature but also nature to the spiritual longings of humanity. Lanier sought to bring to life, in music and poetry, instances of his own spiritual and emotional journey. The following quote is of Lanier recounting his impressions of how a swarm of gnats interacting drew him into a meditation on how the individual activities of men are connected and, perhaps, overseen by their Creator:

Each gnat was, in short a rhythmic atom, and nothing could better illustrate the varieties of form producible in nature by the changing motions of the atoms underlying those forms…. And thus, finally, with each ever-dancing gnat representing, now the round of the atom in all those forms which we call nature, now the function of the sound-vibration as an element in that form which we call verse, now the huge periodicity of the whirling world in space, - and with all these individual elements vibrating each in his own little sphere of life, combining into larger forms which perhaps no individual gnat dreamed of, just as our little spheres of activity in life surely combine into some greater form or purpose which none of us dream of, and which no one can see save some unearthly spectator that stands afar off in space and looks upon the whole of things….182

181Lanier, Sidney. Poems of Sidney Lanier: With a Memorial by William Hayes Ward. ed. Mary Day Lanier. New York: Charles Scribner‟s Sons. 1918. (previously in 1884, 1891, 1912, 1916)

182 Lanier, Sidney. Shakspere and His Forerunners: 325-329. 62

American audiences appear to have had an expectation of programmatic symbolism in not only the sound of the flute but also the personality of the flute and the flutist himself. A review in the editorial section of the Musical Times in 1893 provides an example of the emotional, or programmatic, expectations audiences had when listening to a flutist. The following paragraph suggests that flutists‟ personalities were stereotyped as meek, resigned, and emotional, and the flute sound itself was considered suggestive of exclusive feelings such as disappointed love. The final implication that flutists who do not live up to these expectations are unworthy of the instrument is informative as well. The anonymous author writes:

Mr. Mell is the typical flautist – a man of meekness and resignation, who finds relief to his feelings, not in the projects of revenge, or impotent railings, but in blowing into a tube which gives forth sounds that are the food of woe. Through the flute come the sad complaints of disappointed love, the gentle protests of weakness against the hard lot of having to encounter strength, the vague aspirations of poetic natures towards the music of the spheres. But all flautists are not worthy of the plaintive and tender instrument upon which they play…..183

183 “Facts, Rumours, and Remarks”: 18. 63

CHAPTER V

FLUTES OWNED BY SIDNEY LANIER AND HENRY CLAY WYSHAM

Alfred G. Badger, the first successful manufacturer and marketer of Boehm- system flutes in the United States, manufactured the flutes that Sidney Lanier and Henry Clay Wysham played during their years in the Peabody Symphony. Lanier and Wysham both corresponded with Badger, praising his instruments, and Lanier helped him design and build an alto flute in 1874. A selection of correspondence regarding their relationship with Alfred G. Badger and Sidney Lanier‟s flutes shows not only the role Lanier and Wysham played in advocating Badger‟s flutes but also their sophisticated level of knowledge on the subject of Boehm-system flute construction. Alfred G. Badger published letters, presumably, from both Sidney Lanier and Henry Clay Wysham in his 1875 edition of the History of the Flute. This book, published several times during the mid to late nineteenth century, was the preeminent source of flute knowledge for most American flutists. The letters attributed to Lanier and Wysham appear below.

Baltimore, 10 July 1875 Mr. A. G. Badger, Esq.

Dear Sir:

I am indeed glad to hear you are revising your “History of the Flute,” for another addition [sic]. The strides of improvement in the structure of the Boehm, have been so marked and valuable, since its present publication…. This I know you have done; as my own experience justifies me in saying: I never knew an indifferent Flute to come out of your hands. My own, now nearly ten years old, is as good, and as strong, and as rich-toned to-day, as when it „became my first best treasure.‟ You are at liberty to make any use of this you choose, with the name of

Your best obliged friend, Hy. C. Wysham184

184 Badger, 1875: 46. 64

The next letter was published by Badger and scholars attribute it to Sidney Lanier. This letter was originally written to Wysham who then passed it along to Badger. The writing style, location of the letter, and the reference to May (Mary Day Lanier‟s nickname) all indicate that this letter was written by Sidney Lanier himself. Upon its publication, Badger listed the letter as unsigned and wrote:

We are not at liberty to give the name of the writer of the above, but he has since become one of the finest performers in the country.185

Marietta, GA., 26 July 1875

Can any mortal mixture of earth‟s mould, breathe such divine enchanting ravishment,” is a question, my dear Mr. Wysham, which I am forced to ask in spite of the fact that I do not like to be indebted to so “parlous” a rascal as Comus for any utterance. But indeed, „tis so elegant, so stately, so powerful, so gracious; that I can think of nothing to liken to, except a tall, slender, gray-eyed, manifold cultured, young Queen, with all the reverend characteristics of maidenhood, and at the same time eloquent, with that instructive understanding of the whole of humanity of Life, by which Genius gives expression to emotions it does not need to experience. All of which seems if carefully inflated – and you are at liberty to laugh as much as you please; -- and yet, in sober earnest, the exquisite flute is at once so dainty, and so many-toned, so delicate, and yet so capable of expressing a thousand different moods and passions that I am fairly like a lover in his ecstacy, and nothing seems extravagant to my sweet ardor. The arrangement of the keys was so different from that of my old flute, that I was awkward enough with it at first; but after a half-hour I managed to bring out the melting tones in a very satisfactory fashion, and to-day it is an easy power to “govern the ventages,” in the near future. I am not going to try to thank you for your aid in procuring this most beautiful instrument. May and I look at it by the hour. The shape is perfect; and the simple antique turn of the head piece is just what I would have designed. In fine, my delight is far greater than I will dare to express to you, and is all the deeper for the pathos of parting with my old wooden blessing, -- pathos that sounds underneath the sparkling tones with which I am continually sounding forth my joy; like that solemn ocean under-tone one hears beneath the crisp noises of the foam when one hears the surf.

185 Badger, 1875: 47.

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When I get able to write to you about it, without falling into the high tragic, I‟ll do it. Meanwhile, give me some practical instruction.186

Several flute melodies written by Sidney Lanier highlight an extended low range for the concert flute. In the Sidney Lanier Collection at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, a photo, in which Henry Clay Wysham holds Sidney Lanier‟s silver Badger flute, reveals that Lanier played a flute with a B-flat footjoint. The use of a B-flat footjoint on the Boehm-system flute extends the low range below the standard range of modern Boehm-system flutes and is not a common flute-manufacturing practice today. In The Evolution of the Boehm Flute Henry Clay Wysham describes the economic conditions faced by Badger and other flute manufacturers in the United States and England. He begins by discussing Alfred G. Badger, of New York, to whom he credits for doing “splendid pioneer work in this country in the construction of his justly celebrated Boehm Flutes....” Wysham elaborates on the conditions facing flute manufacturers:

….Naturally, taking his cue from the foreign manufacturers, whose fabulous prices stifled the sales and confined the use of the instruments to the „favored few of fortune‟s favorites,‟ (as they still do) he leisurely toiled and reaped in his profits, and if customers were not very numerous, they were at least able to bear the strain of the enormous figures set upon their precious Boehms. It remained, however, for the European (especially English) Boehm Flute manufacturers to „out-Herod-Herod‟ in the extortions practiced upon purchasers. To get an instrument either of silver, wood or ebonite to America from the leading manufacturers in London, or from the continent, cost from L30 to L35 (from $150 to $175) cash down – say L8 ($40) more for duties, increased to 45 per cent. By the Dingley tariff (1897) – and a long column of additional figures for brokerage, freight, insurance, etc., which brings your precious Boehm to the magnificent sum of about L50 sterling – about $250.00!! And this is exactly Badger‟s figure in 1868, when the writer obtained his instrument – a figure very slightly modified today by our contemporary flute makers – with one notable and noble exception to be hereinafter mentioned.187

The Lanier-Badger Alto Flute

186 Badger, 1875: 46-47.

187 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 5. 66

In the mid 1870s Sidney Lanier worked with Alfred G. Badger to develop an alto flute, which Lanier wrote about extensively in his letters to Mary Day Lanier. The instrument is referred to most often as either a “long flute” or a “bass flute” when, in fact, Lanier states the instrument he is “sometimes” called an alto flute.188 Research suggests that it would be called an alto flute by modern performers since it does not have the curved headjoint that is present on modern-day bass flutes and its range extends to G, not C below treble clef. However, it is also important to note that Badger had already developed an alto flute that Lanier played in 1873. Both Lanier and Badger write about the time when Lanier first played this instrument. Lanier‟s letter from Brooklyn on 10 October 1873 states:

Three days ago I went to Badger‟s on business, and found there a magnificent great silver Bass-Flute, running down to F below the staff, and on putting it to my lips, drew forth the most ravishing notes I ever heard from any instrument; broad, noble tones, like my fine boy‟s eyes…189

Badger, too, describes Sidney Lanier‟s tone on the instrument:

Lanier is astonishing…. But you ought to hear him play the bass-flute. You would then say, „Let me pass from the earth with the tones sounding in my ears!‟190

The following letter excerpts detail Lanier‟s work with Badger on a new version of the alto flute in 1874. Lanier writes:

New York, 3 September 1874

I think I have invented a flute which will go down to G below the staff, and which will entirely remedy the imperfections that now exist in that part of the flute that extendeth below D. I have stirred up Badger about it – with infinite labor, for the old Satyr is far more concerned about silver dollars than about silver flutes, and is almost inexpugnably conservative.

188 Lanier. Music and Poetry: 42.

189 Lanier. Letters of Sidney Lanier: 76.

190 Medicus: 66-68.

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He is always wonderfully kind to me, however, and gazes on me with a half-amused smile when I am talking, as if I were a precocious child whom he was showing off.191

Brooklyn, 7 September 1874

… Badger worked for me like a Trojan all Saturday afternoon, experimenting on my new long flute. We were much put to it for some time to get a certain motion that was essential; but I kept him at it, in spite of the most dismal croaking on his side, until our efforts were crowned with brilliant success. I am going over now to recommence work on it….192

21 September 1874

… The long flute will succeed in time…… I have had infinite trouble. E.g., old Badger has been making flutes for forty years, and when any luckless wight maketh suggestion to him thereanent, he smileth a battered and annihilating smile, which saith plainly enough, Pooh, I exhausted all that a half-century ago. Now this Satyr fought me at every stage and up every step of my long flute. He declared in the very beginning that it was impossible: that a tube so long could not be filled by the human breath, that a column of air so long could not be made to vibrate, etc., and that he had long ago tried it thoroughly, and satisfied himself that it was physically non-achievable. This last, of course, staggered me; yet with foolhardiness (as it is called) I worked at him until I got him to draw out a long tube, upon which in a few minutes I demonstrated to him that the G was not only a possible but a beautiful note. He then retreated to his second line, and entrenched himself behind the C-key, averring that a key could not be constructed which would make C and at the same time hold down the four keys of the right hand. Then I proved to him that it could be done, by good logic, and he finally made the key I wanted and it was done.193

The Dayton C. Miller Flute Collection contains an informative letter from 1915 by J.A. LeConte, a distant relative of Sidney Lanier, regarding an alto flute made in the mid 1870s. LeConte bought the flute from Henry Clay Wysham in the late 1890s and was looking for Miller‟s input on what repertoire was good for alto flutes, having been

191 Lanier. Letters of Sidney Lanier: 99.

192 Lanier. Letters of Sidney Lanier: 100.

193 Lanier. Letters of Sidney Lanier: 101.

68 frustrated in his own search for music.194 Whether the instrument was ever owned by Sidney Lanier is unclear. It may have been the alto flute presented to Henry Clay Wysham by Moses Hopkins, a “prominent citizen” of San Francisco.195 Nevertheless, LeConte‟s detailed description of the instrument indicates that the flute he purchased from Wysham was made by Alfred G. Badger and it is very likely that Sidney Lanier either played it in Badger‟s shop or helped design the flute. Furthermore, LeConte sent photos of the instrument with this letter in order to assist Miller in establishing its identity and Dayton C. Miller believed it was the flute Lanier designed. LeConte writes:

… the Badger alto is a very old instrument, having been made about 1875. I send two photos of it from slightly different angles to bring out the key mechanism etc. Two years ago I had the instrument overhauled and as I found it very tiring to the left hand I had a crutch and finger rest put on it, otherwise it is as originally constructed. It runs down to the F# (actual), has the modern style D and D# trill keys, but the closed G# key is mounted on and moves with the A key in the manner condemned by Boehm. The keys of the left thumb are not superimposed, but lie side by side and a pin soldered to the bottom of the upper one, extends below the lower, so that closing the lower key also closes the upper. The head joint appears from the inside to have been cut from a flat sheet of brass, and then closed into a parabolic tube and brazed. The cork is not adjustable – that is in actual use. The end of the tube is stopped by a pan-shaped piece of metal set tightly in the proper place. The external stopper is backed by a short wooden plug and fits in the end of the tube without touching the actual stopper. A small gold, oval plate bearing Badger‟s name is soldered to the front of the head joint and can be seen in the photos. Below this is an elongated shield, also soldered to the head joint, and acting as a pointer to line up the head joint.196

In a letter from 20 June 1921, Dayton C. Miller showed a strong interest in purchasing this alto flute, believing it to be the one made for Sidney Lanier. He replies:

194 LeConte letter to Dayton C. Miller. Dayton C. Miller Flute Collection. Correspondence. Box KO-. Library of Congress. Washington D.C.: Atlanta, Ga. 13 Mar. 1915.

195 The Bay of San Francisco: Op. Cit.

196 LeConte Letter. Correspondence between LeConte and Dayton C. Miller. Box KO-. Dayton C. Miller Flute Collection. Library of Congress. Washington D.C.: 7 April 1915.

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I remember the Badger alto flute very well indeed. I am wondering whether you would consider selling this instrument so that it might be put in my collection. This particular instrument is of considerable value historically because it is the one probably made for Mr. Lanier and it ought to be preserved. I have five other flutes in G and on in F.197

In any case, the Lanier family held Alfred G. Badger in distaste after Sidney Lanier worked with him on the production of an alto flute. According to a letter from 1906, Sidney Lanier‟s son Henry Wysham Lanier told Dayton C. Miller that Badger never returned Lanier‟s sketches or design ideas to the family despite their requests for both. Henry refers to Badger as the “New York instrument-maker,” writing:

He worked the thing out very completely and got a New York instrument- maker sufficiently interested to agree to go ahead and see if he could make it practicable. The man, however, was dishonest and thought he had something valuable, and we could never get back the sketches or the idea….198

Sidney Lanier and a Glass Flute

Rumors that Sidney Lanier played a glass flute surfaced during the investigation of which instruments Sidney Lanier and Henry Clay Wysham played. In his letters that seem to thoroughly detail his flute-playing career, Sidney Lanier never mentions playing on a glass flute in a concert or recital. An example of this rumor appears in LeConte‟s letter to Dayton C. Miller in 1915:

….mother also heard Lanier play several times in the early seventies while on concert tours in his native state, and I have often heard her tell of it. On one of these occasions he played on a glass flute.199

The glass flute rumor is refuted by Bridges Smith in an article from 1927. She indicates that “Lanier never had a glass flute as far as I know…” and that Judge Longstreet, the President of Emory College in Oxford, GA had been given a glass flute from France.

197 Dayton C. Miller Correspondence. LeConte. Box KO-.: 20 June 1921.

198 Dayton C. Miller Collection Correspondence. Lanier‟s Family. Box KO-.: 27 March 1906.

199 Dayton C. Miller Collection Correspondence. LeConte. Box KO-.:7 April 1915.

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Judge Longstreet later taught the Indian melody to Lanier and he would often use it as an encore piece. It is likely, then, that audiences grew to associate Sidney Lanier with the idea of the glass flute when it appears that he never owned or performed with a glass flute. Smith states that Judge Longstreet‟s glass flute was eventually given to the National Museum in Washington by Dr. Henry Bransham. 200

200 Smith: Macon Telegraph: 2 Nov. 1927. 71

CHAPTER VI

THE INFLUENCE OF THE WRITINGS OF SIDNEY LANIER AND HENRY CLAY

WYSHAM ON AMERICAN WOMEN FLUTISTS

In the twentieth century women rose to positions of prominence in major orchestras in the United States and the rate of women learning the flute compared to men underwent a radical shift. During the latter twentieth century, the flute became so popular amongst young women that a study from the 1970s reveals that the majority of American adults would hypothetically encourage their fifth grade daughter to select the flute, violin, or clarinet as a primary instrument over any other wind instrument.201 The flute, more than any other instrument, became so feminized that seeing a male flutist in a middle or high school band became an exception to social norms. In the nineteenth century, however, the flute was actually seen by American society as inappropriate for women given their graceful demeanor and delicate constitution. In fact, the only instruments considered suitable for women of that time were the piano or possibly the harp. According to an article titled “Women as Professional Musicians in the United States, 1870-1900,” wind instruments of any sort were not feminized in American thought. Judith Tick writes:

In the 1870s and early 1880s women who played anything other than the piano were defying social convention. The only feminine instrument was the piano: it was played at home and its social status was impeccable; furthermore, it required no facial expressions or body exertions that interfered with the portrait of grace and attractiveness that the female performer was supposed to emanate.202

201 Zervoudakes, Jason and Judith M. Tanur. “Gender and Musical Instruments: Winds of Change?” Journal of Research in Music Education, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Spring 1994): 58-59.

202 Tick, Judith. “Women as Professional Musicians in the United States, 1870-1900.” Yearbook for Inter-American Musical Research, Vol. 9. 1973: 98-99. 72

Furthermore, the practice of performing on any instrument by a woman in most of the nineteenth century was largely an amateur undertaking. According to a report in Notes, Carol Neuls-Bates writes:

…. for the major share of the nineteenth century music was regarded as a social accomplishment for women rather than as an area of serious achievement. Women were expected to be amateurs and to entertain at home or within the family circle.203

While social and economic conventions during the period of 1870-1900 still encouraged women to remain active as amateur musicians within the home and local community, the 1870s and 1880s were the first period of time to see a substantial increase in the number of women playing the flute.204 Sidney Lanier and Henry Clay Wysham published some of the earliest writings to circulate in the United States that encouraged Americans to consider the flute as a suitable, if not ideal, instrument for young women. Both men were both avid supporters of female flutists, and their writings challenged contemporary thought at the time that relegated wind instrument performance to men only. Sidney Lanier, being famous as a poet and honored as a noteworthy flutist, wrote an essay titled The Orchestra To-Day in 1876 that was published in Scribner’s in April of 1880, receiving wide circulation. Lanier was later praised in an article from 1937 as one of the most significant influences on American culture, opening the doors for women to learn orchestral instruments in his groundbreaking essay:

American women instrumentalists owe a debt of gratitude to the memory of Sidney Lanier, „Poet Laureate of the South,‟ musician, critic and lecturer on English literature at Johns Hopkins University, who also played the first flute in Baltimore‟s Peabody Symphony Orchestra in the seventies.

203 Neuls-Bates, Carol. “Sources and Resources for Women‟s Studies in American Music: A Report.” Notes, Second Series, Vol. 35, No. 2 December 1978: 270-271.

204 “Girl Violinists: An Innovation That Has Been Followed By Good Results,” Boston Herald, 20 January 1886; and May Lyle Smith, “The New Instrument for Women, Giving Health Combined with Pleasure,” Etude 9 (June 1891): 108.

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Undoubtedly the first noted American in the last century to discern the merits of women as potential orchestral players, Lanier advocated with enthusiasm the studying by them of all orchestral instruments.205

In this essay, Lanier advocates that American society would benefit from a larger number of female instrumentalists on not only the flute but also on nearly every other orchestral instrument:

I may…. make a suggestion to my countrywomen in which I feel a fervent interest. With the exception of the double-bass (violin) and the heavier brass, - indeed I am not sure that these exceptions are necessary, - there is no instrument in the orchestra which a woman cannot play successfully. The extent, depth, and variety of musical capability among the women of the United States are continual new sources of astonishment and pleasure to this writer, although his pursuits are not specially of a nature to bring them before his attention. It may be asserted without extravagance that there is no limit to the possible achievements of our countrywomen in this behalf, if their efforts be once turned in the right direction. This direction is, unquestionably, the orchestra.206

Either to avoid possible confusion or to employ the use of repetition as a source of rhetoric, Lanier continues, saying:

All the world has learned to play the piano. Let our young ladies – always saving, of course, those who have a gift for the special instrument – leave that and address themselves to the violin, the flute, the oboe, the harp, the clarionet, the bassoon, the kettledrum. It is more than possible that upon some of these instruments the superior daintiness of the female tissue might finally make the woman a more successful player than the man.207

Lanier panders to the contemporary thought of his day that believed that women were too delicate to play orchestral instruments and uses this argument as a positive, rather than negative, position for the case that these instruments were

205 Petrides, Frederique, ed. “Will Pay Tribute to Lanier‟s Views” Women in Music. Vol. III, No. 4. (December, 1937): Unknown Page No.

206 Lanier. “The Orchestra of To-Day” in Music and Poetry: 38-39.

207 Lanier. “The Orchestra of To-Day” in Music and Poetry: 39. 74 suitable choices for women to learn. He writes specifically about the flute, saying:

On the flute, for instance, a certain combination of delicacy with flexibility in the lips is absolutely necessary to bring fully out that passionate yet velvety tone hereinbefore alluded to; and many male players, of all requisite qualifications so far as manual execution is concerned, will be forever debarred from attaining it by reason of their intractable, rough lips, which will give nothing but a correspondingly intractable, rough tone. The same, in less degree, may be said of the oboe and bassoon. Besides, the qualities required to make a perfect orchestral player are far more often found in women than in men; for these qualities are patience, fervor, and fidelity, combine with the deftness of hand and quick intuitiveness of soul.208

Sidney Lanier also appeals to the issue of women‟s health when advocating the use of wind instruments as primary instruments for American women. He suggests that playing wind instruments will benefit posture, lung, and cardiovascular health:

To put the matter in another view: no one at all acquainted with this subject will undervalue the benefits to female health to be brought about by the systematic use of wind-instruments. Out of personal knowledge the writer pleases himself often with picturing how many consumptive chests, dismal shoulders, and melancholy spines would disappear, how many rosy cheeks would blossom, how many erect forms delight the eyes which mourn over their drooping, - under the stimulus of those long, equable, and generous inspirations and expirations which the execution of every moderately difficult piece on a wind-instrument requires.209

For Henry Clay Wysham, praising women was a theme in his writings as well. In the book, The Evolution of the Boehm Flute - An Essay on the Development of the “Reed Primeval” to the Perfect System of Theobald Boehm, Wysham publishes two essays on the superiority of the Boehm-system flute. Notably, the first is by a woman, May Lyle Smith, who he names “The Queen of America‟s Flutists”. He introduces her words saying:

208 Lanier. “The Orchestra of To-Day” in Music and Poetry: 39.

209 Lanier. “The Orchestra of To-Day” in Music and Poetry: 39-40.

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With much feminine grace and, withal, such poetic fervor and enthusiasm, has she recited the „Brief Story,‟ that no better tribute could be paid to the author and the theme than by partially quoting her words.210

This book was published in 1898, well before the flute had become a widely accepted instrument for women to learn. And having a woman give an overview of flute history in an authoritative voice is extraordinary. Smith writes:

…. To trace the Flute through the long avenues of the ages, back to its birth, connecting it by unbroken links with the evolution of the past, is a task beyond my power, or perhaps the knowledge of man. Its growth has been a gradual one, contemporary with the advancement of human life and civilization, receiving from each period some new addition, some greater improvement, until it stands as we now have it, the most perfect of keyed wind instruments and the only rival of the violin. That it may lay claim to being the oldest of all, none, I think, will gainsay, if for the moment we turn our thoughts to the principles upon which it exists, and to the conditions out of which it has probably, if not necessarily, grown….211

She continues, elaborating on how the flute is an instrument capable of responding to musicians with “the spirit of genius.” Furthermore, she hearkens back to the words of Berlioz and Shakespeare, revealing not only her level of musical taste but also her educational sophistication. Smith states:

…. Breathed into by the spirit of genius, the flute is as capable as any other instrument to express the feelings of the heart, to charm the listener and to fire the soul. It can be as readily tempered as any other instrument; by it the emotions can be as easily swayed. What does this elsewhere? Is it not the hand of the master upon the strings of the violin, the touch of the fingers of genius upon the keys of the piano? Alas! That we too often reverse the facts, forgetful that our instruments are only the means of expressing our feelings and capabilities. Why then may not the breath, tempered by the love of music and of inspiration, do as much to awaken life in the inanimate body of the flute as do the muscles of the arm in the others? Berlioz, the great French composer, calls it „the most agile of wind instruments.‟ If this be true, surely the response should be, as it can be, one of grace and sweetness. Blending with the human voice, to which

210 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 1.

211 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 1.

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it approaches more closely than any other instrument, its beauties take on new colors, the lily is painted and the rose adorned.212

Wysham‟s decision to introduce the flute‟s musical capabilities through a feminine voice is an unprecedented decision in 1898. During that time period, no female flutist had achieved a professional position in an American orchestra or even on an American musical tour or solo circuit. By choosing to publish Smith‟s words at the beginning of his book, Wysham implies that he greatly values the contributions women can make to the field of music performance. In correspondence with Dayton C. Miller, a noted physicist and flute collector whose extensive flute collection is housed at the Library of Congress, Wysham mentions some of his students in passing, including one particular female student. This letter is evidence not only of the fact that Wysham taught female students while living in San Francisco, CA, but also that they were playing the best repertoire known at that time:

….She seems most fond of the Beethoven (Violin) Sonatas and we play them with a delight difficult to describe. I suppose you have Schubert‟s Introduction and Var. on his own “Trockne Blumen” Op. 60. I do not know a more difficult piece for both flute and piano. Kücken‟s Sonatas we also play a great deal – they are exceedingly fine…..213

Furthermore, Henry Clay Wysham devotes an entire chapter of his book to “Lady Flute-Players” in which he details how flute technique is physically graceful and that facial distortions can be avoided if a student learns in front of a mirror. His final statement that the Boehm flute is adaptable as a women‟s instrument appears to be the aim of the entire chapter:

The instrument, if held properly, loosely, with the head erect and the tube slightly inclined from the lips to the end of the flute, is a pose of gracefulness personified…. With all these advantages, the adaptability of the Boehm flute as a lady‟s instrument cannot be questioned.214

212 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 2-3.

213 Wysham, H.C. Letter to Dayton C. Miller (19 April 1899). Archived in the Dayton C. Miller Collection: Correspondence: W. Library of Congress.

214 Wysham. The Evolution of the Boehm Flute: 27. 77

Henry Clay Wysham corresponded with Paul Taffanel of the Paris Conservatoire and sent him a copy of his book. Taffanel is most notable as the flute teacher who established the “French Flute School” and his students raised the level of flute performance practice both in France and the entire Western culture. It is unclear from known correspondence whether or not Wysham‟s beliefs influenced Taffanel, but it is worth observing that American performance practice and ideals for women as flutists were not contained on American shores or within a small group of believers during the latter part of the nineteenth century. Sidney Lanier‟s finely articulated belief that women were the future of an orchestral movement in the United States is best reflected in the following quote:

As the American is, with all his shortcomings of other sorts, at any rate most completely the man of to-day, so it is directly in the line of this argument to say that one finds more „talent for music‟ among the Americans, especially among American women, than among any other people….. When Americans…. shall have advanced beyond the piano, which is, as matters now exist, a quite necessary stage in musical growth, - when our musical young women shall have found that, if their hands are too small for the piano, or if they have no voices, they can study the flute, the violin, the oboe, the bassoon, the viola, the violoncello, the horn, the corno Inglese, - in short, every orchestral instrument, - and that they are quite as capable as men – in some cases much better fitted by nature than any man – to play all these, then I look to see America the home of the orchestra, and to hear everywhere the profound messages of Beethoven and Bach to men.215

215 Lanier: Music and Poetry: 22-23. 78

CHAPTER VII

CONCLUSIONS

Boehm-system flutes were adopted by most professional flutists in the United States between 1870 and 1900, and American audiences proved to be receptive to the new timbral and technical possibilities of this instrument. The repertoire and writings of Sidney Lanier and Henry Clay Wysham detail the performance practice and musical culture that emerged in the United States when flutists, from the parlor to the orchestra, started adopting this instrument en masse. This culture was supplanted by the emergence of “The French Flute School” and the pedagogical philosophies of French flutists such as Georges Barrère, Georges Laurent, and Marcel Moyse in the early twentieth century, and interest in American flute performance practices that predate their arrival dwindled. In exploring the body of information left by Lanier and Wysham regarding flute repertoire, performances, and performance practice in the United States, a clearer picture of the history of Boehm-system flutes and influential flutists is formed for scholars and performers. In my study of this topic, the most striking characteristics of the lives of Lanier and Wysham were the breadth of their knowledge of music, literature, science, and philosophy. Sidney Lanier, in particular, proved to be a “Renaissance Man” in nearly every aspect of the term, applying himself to writing poetry, playing the flute, composing music, teaching Shakespeare, and lecturing about his philosophies that connect music and language. While it may not be possible to fully document how his philosophies impacted American culture, it is clear that he sought to illuminate the hearts and minds of those who would read his words and/or hear musicians perform. Henry Clay Wysham, though a much older man than Lanier, speaks of him as one of the most important flutists in the world during his lifetime. Wysham‟s acquaintance with Theobald Boehm, Alfred G. Badger, Dayton C. Miller, and C. Paul Taffanel reveal that his opinion, though possibly biased towards honoring a dear friend, was made with a personal knowledge of some of the greatest and most influential flutists of his day. Furthermore, Wysham wrote some of the earliest articles about world flutes – well before

79 ethnomusicology was an established field of research, and his book, The Evolution of the Boehm Flute (1898), stands alone as the best known source documenting flute performance practice in the United States during the late nineteenth century. The foundations of American Boehm-system flute performance practice were primarily established between 1870 and 1900, and continued study of this topic is warranted to fully document trends occurring within the American flute community during and after this time. Research that can establish the timeline of how flute repertoire became standardized in the United States and flute recitals developed throughout the country would be of particular interest in advancing the knowledge of flute performance practice in the United States as it transitioned into the early twentieth century and was absorbed into the traditions of the “French Flute School.” The role Sidney Lanier held in advocating the timbral value of the lowest octave of the flute and the alto flute, the artistic possibilities of flute ensembles, and flute choirs would be of interest as well. It is difficult to trace the cultural and musical influence his writings had on Americans, but it is clear that Lanier‟s work on designing an alto flute, cultivating the low flute sound, and advocating the use of many flutes in chamber and orchestral settings influenced men such as Dayton C. Miller and Emil Medicus, paving the way for further pursuit of these ideals in the twentieth century. Sidney Lanier and Henry Clay Wysham were some of the first authors to advocate that women should learn to play the flute, as well as any other instrument in the orchestra. Their words deeply affected perceived social norms regarding the prospect of women as instrumentalists in the United States and perhaps in the entire world. While their writings often reflect blatantly sexist tones regarding the “delicate constitutions” of women, the overall purpose of their message was to suggest that women were equally capable of being professional musicians as men, not only on the piano but also on any instrument in the orchestra. Without Lanier and Wysham‟s influence, the course charted by women in twentieth-century American classical music may have been vastly different.

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APPENDIX

REPERTOIRE

Anonymous Composer/Traditional Adieu, Dear Land – flute duo. A performance of this piece is described in a letter by Sidney Lanier on 8 Feb. 1874.

Fife and Bugle – flute solo. This work appears on a concert program216 from 28 June 1867.

Sounds from Home - duo for flute and zither. This work appears on a concert program from 23 Dec. 1874 and is mentioned in a review in the Macon Telegraph and Messenger.

The Blue Bells of Scotland – arranged flute solo. This work appears in a review of Lanier in the New York Commercial Advertiser from 13 November 1873.

Songs with Flute Obbligato – Unnamed Composer Song from “L‟Africaine” This work appears on a concert program from 23 Dec. 1874.

“Canto D‟amore” This work appears on a concert program from 23 Dec. 1874.

“Happy Birdling” This work appears on a concert program from 23 Dec. 1874.

“The Singer and the Nightingale” This work appears on a concert program from 23 Dec. 1874.

Flute Solos and Chamber Works – Alphabetical by Composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) Flute (Violin) Sonatas Wysham: Letter to Dayton C. Miller (1899).

Guilio Briccialdi (1818-1881) “A nocturne” – See the concert review from Nov. 1873 of Lanier‟s performance in New York.

216 All concert programs referred to in the Appendix are found in the Sidney Lanier Collection housed in Special Collections at the Eisenhower Library at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD unless otherwise indicated. 81

Andante from Op. 104 – Performed on 9 April 1874.

Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) Allegro from Fille du Regiment – trio for flute, cello, and piano. Performed on 9 April 1874. Work was likely arranged by another unlisted composer.

Anton Bernhard Fürstenau (1792-1852) Nocturne for flute and piano. 13 Sept. 1874. Letter from Lanier reporting on his New York recital.

Guiseppe Gariboldi (1833-1905) Fantasie on Airs from Faust for flute and piano The Macon Telegraph and Messenger. Concert Program: Flute- Fund Concert. Harmonie Hall. 23 Dec. 1874. Likely published in: Petite e cole de la musique d'ensemble et d'accompagnment; bouquets me lodiques et progressiss, pour le piano avec accompagnement de violon (ou flû te ad lib.). Op. 41. Mayence, Fils de B. Schott [187-]. This edition is housed at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Emil Hartman (1836-1898) Concerto in G minor for flute and orchestra. Lanier‟s performance was covered in the April 1878 review by the Baltimore Gazette.

Friedrich Wilhelm Kücken (1810-1882) Sonata for flute and piano. 13 Sept. 1874. Letter from Lanier reporting on his New York recital. Also mentioned by Wysham in a letter to Dayton C. Miller April 19, 1899. Published in Six duos for the piano & flute : concertante : no. 2 in E flat composed by F. Kücken; revised by W.S.B. Woolhouse. London : Augener ; New York : G. Schirmer, [188-?]. Other works published: Macon, Ga. : Published by J.W. Burke, [between 1861 and 1865] (Columbia, S.C. : B. Duncan & Co.) & Boston : Jean White, c1877.

Friedrich Kuhlau (1786-1832) “A sonata of Kuhlau.” - 13 Sept. 1874. Letter from Lanier reporting on his New York recital. And Baltimore, April 9, 1874 letter from Lanier.

Flute Duets, Trios, Quartets. 28 May 1876 Letter mentions that Sidney Lanier & Carl Wehner played several unnamed Kuhlau duets together. Furthermore, it

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appears from the writings of Lanier and Wysham that Kuhlau‟s trios and quartets were compositions of choice when playing with other flutists.

Franz Lachner (1803-1890) Allegro from L. Etoile du Nord – trio for flute, cello, and piano. 18 April 1874 Concert Program. The composer name is listed as “Lachner” and is assumed to be Franz Lachner.

Sidney Lanier (1842-1881) The Blackbirds – flute solo. 25 June 1874. Concert Program. Published in 1998 by Universal Edition. Mentioned by Lanier Letter Brooklyn, November 16, 1873

Il Balen – for flute and piano. Published by Badger 1888 and by Universal Edition in 1998.

Swamp Robin – flute solo. 28 June 1867. Concert Program. Mentioned by Lanier Letter Brooklyn, November 16, 1873

Sea Spray – flute solo. This work was likely composed by Lanier. No composer was listed on the program, only his name as a performer. 12 June 1868

Sounds of the Army – flute solo. This work was likely composed by Lanier. No composer was listed on the program, only his name as a performer. 12 June 1868

Liede (dates uncertain) Fantasie on Themes from Lucia – flute solo. 18 April 1874.

Meyerbeer (1791-1864) La Sirene – flute solo. The accredited composer on program was Meyerbeer but it the title matches that of a work by Terschak listed under his name below. 20 Aug 1873

Wilhelm Popp (1828-1903) Fantasie on Gute Nacht du. – flute solo. 18 April 1874. Concert Program. Likely originally published as Gut' Nacht du mein herziges Kind., Konzertstück über das Lied "Gute Nacht du mein herziges Kind". Recently published as: Popp, Wilhelm, and Ervin Monroe.

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Guiseppe Rabboni (1800-1856) Duo on Themes from Riggoletto- flute duo. Baltimore, February 8, 1874 letter from Lanier

Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894) Andante and Allegro from Deux Trios pour Piano Violon et Violoncelle par Ant. Rubenstein Op. 15 – performed on flute, cello, and piano. 18 April 1874. Leipzig Frederic Hoffmester. Stamped Jordens & Martens New York 1164 Broadway.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828) Songs “from Schubert‟s Album” – performed on flute and piano. 5 Mar. 1874 letter from Lanier. He writes that he performed some songs from this album with conductor Asgar Hamerik. Schubert, Franz. Schubert-Album. Original-Ausgabe. Leipzig: Peters, 1868.

Introduction and Variations on Trockne Blumen – for flute and piano. Letter from Wysham to Dayton C. Miller. April 19, 1899. Library of Congress.

H. Soussman (dates uncertain) Romanze – Flauto. “The first piece that Sidney Lanier ever played in public – when he was 13 years old. Was encored upon it.” – Mary Day Lanier. Transcriptions pour Flute avec Piano: No. 1 Les Soupirs 2 Nocturnes de Kalkbrenner. No. 2 Ernst Elegie avec Introd. de Spohr Par H. Soussman. Schuberth & Co. Hambourg & New- York.

Maurice Strakosch (1825-1887) The Magic Bell Fantasie – solo flute. 12 June 1868 Concert for Orphans – Lanier solo flutist *It appears the composer did not arrange this for flute. Likely published as The magic bell; reverie. [New York] Andr̀, c1848.

Adolf Terschak (1832-1901) La sire ne, caprice de concert pour flû te avec accompagnement de piano, Op. 12. Wysham: 36. La sirène, caprice de concert pour flû te avec accompagnement de piano, Op. 12. Mayence, B. Schott‟s Sö hne [1863].

Le babillard; ́tude-caprice pour flû te avec piano, Op. 23. Wysham: 36 and 13 Sept. 1874. Letter from Lanier reporting on his New York recital.

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Grand Allegro de Concert, Op. 18. This work was listed on page 36 of Wysham‟s book.

Concertsẗck, f̈r die Fl̈te mit Begleitung von Orchester oder Pianoforte, Op. 51. Leipzig, J. Reiter-Diedermann [188-?] Concertsẗck, f̈r die Fl̈te mit Begleitung von Orchester oder Pianoforte – DC opus #.... This work is mentioned by Wysham in his book on page 36.

La Favorite de Vienne. 19 June 1867 Program. Possibly published as Almrausch u. Edelweiss; Lieder aus den Alpen, f̈r Fl̈te und Piano by Danizg, A. Habermann; New York, J. Schuberth [ca. 1860] or in Flowers of the Alps; 12 favorite melodies transcribed for flute and piano. Op. 86. Fleurs des Alpes. Boston, J. White [c1884].

La Sonnambula fantaisie, sur des thê mes de Bellini, pour la flû te avec accompagnement d’orchestre ou de piano, Op. 43. This work was listed on page 36 of Wysham‟s book. It was published as La Sonnambula fantaisie, sur des thê mes de Bellini, pour la flû te avec accompagnement d’orchestre ou de piano. Op. 43 by Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel in 1862.

Feldblumen, Op. 94. This work was listed on page 36 of Wysham‟s book.

Caleidoscop; duo fü r Flö te und Piano, op. 118. A dedication to Henry C. Wysham Esq., “Counsellor at Law, Baltimore” is mentioned by Wysham on page 36 of his book. The work‟s publisher is listed as Leipzig, O. Junne 189-? in the Library of Congress catalog online the piece was likely published by Breitkopf & Härtel.

J. Titt‟l (dates uncertain) Serenade – performed as a flute and cello duo. Performance listed on a concert program from 9 April 1874. The name Titt‟l and Till are interchangeable for this work on two programs. Possibly published in a collection titled The Invincible folio for flute and piano published by Cincinnati : J. Church Co., c1909. It contains an arrangement of this serenade by Titt‟l for flute and piano. In a letter from Baltimore, April 9, 1874 Lanier indicates the music was originally written for flute and French horn and he played it with a cellist instead.

Henry Clay Wysham (1828-1900) Rosemary-An Idyl – for flute and piano.

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This piece was published by Boston, J. White, c1891. A performance of this work is mentioned in The San Francisco Call from 29 April 1896 on Page 5. http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/lccn/sn85066387/1896-04- 29/ed-1/seq-5.

Trois morceaux poe tiques – for flute and piano. This piece was published by Mayence, B. Schott‟s Sö hne [ca. 1894].

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Zervoudakes, Jason and Judith M. Tanur. “Gender and Musical Instruments: Winds of Change?” Journal of Research in Music Education Vol. 42, No. 1 (Spring 1994): 58-59.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Ellen C. Johnson, born 1 August 1980, holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Wichita State University (2003), a Master of Music degree from the University of Texas at Austin (2005), and a Doctor of Music degree from Florida State University (2009). Her primary flute teachers are Eva Amsler, Marianne Gedigian, Jacqueline Hofto, Karl Kraber, and Frances Shelly.

Dr. Johnson is an Adjunct Professor of Music at Concordia University in Austin, TX, teaching applied flute, chamber music and music history courses. She is also a founding member of the Concordia Faculty Trio and the Florida Baroque Flute Ensemble. Ellen C. Johnson is the Vice-President of the Austin Flute Club (2009) and served the Flute Association at Florida State University as its President (2006–2008) and its Vice-President (2005). Dr. Johnson has also served as a performer and panelist at the National Flute Convention (2008) and a performer and conductor at the Florida Flute Fair (2006–2009). She joined the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra‟s Overtures Quintet for two seasons (2007-2008) and remains an active chamber musician and flute instructor in the Austin, TX area.

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