Mendelssohn Club's History
William Wallace Gilchrist, Founder, 1874-1914
Mendelssohn Club was founded in 1874 by William Wallace Gilchrist (1846-1916), one of the leading musical figures in nineteenth century Philadelphia. Gilchrist studied privately with Hugh Clarke (who was later Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania) from 1865-68. During this time Gilchrist was active as a baritone soloist at Holy Trinity and St. Mark’s Churches, soloist with the Handel and Haydn Society in productions of Messiah, Moses in Egypt and Judas Maccabaeus, and participant in a series of light operettas presented by the Amateur Drawing Room. In 1874 he was appointed organist and choirmaster at St. Clement’s, and he drew the original Mendelssohn Club members from the choir there.
Mendelssohn Club began as an eight-voice male chorus, but soon increased in size and added women’s voices. The first subscription concert was held in December, 1879, and included piano and cello solos as well as choral works. Gilchrist was becoming increasing well-known as a composer and concerts began to feature his works as well. In 1882 his setting of Psalm 46 won first prize at the Cincinnati May Festival, where the judges included Camille Saint-Saens and Carl Reinecke.
The range of Gilchrist’s musical activities is quite impressive. In addition to Mendelssohn Club, he also conducted the Germantown Choral Society, the West Philadelphia Choral Society, the Harmonia, the Harrisburg Choral Society and the Tuesday Club of Wilmington. He was organist and choirmaster at St. Clement’s, Christ Church in Germantown and for many years at the Swedenborgian Church of the New Jerusalem. He was a founding member of the American Guild of Organists and of the Music Manuscript Society, which promoted new music in Philadelphia. He served as head of voice instruction at the Philadelphia Musical Academy. He founded and conducted the Symphony Society of Philadelphia from 1893-1899. In the latter year he resigned the podium, probably so that it could be offered to the distinguished German conductor Fritz Scheel, who happened to be in Philadelphia at the time. The Symphonic Society was one of several orchestras which were reorganized as The Philadelphia Orchestra in 1900, with Scheel as conductor.
Mendelssohn Club’s long association with the Philadelphia Orchestra began under Gilchrist’s tenure with a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony under Scheel’s baton in 1903. For the next thirty years the Orchestra and the chorus appeared on each other’s subscription concert series. In 1908 Mendelssohn Club gave the Philadelphia premiere of the Brahms Requiem and in 1916 provided more than 300 singers for the American premiere of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 under the baton of Leopold Stokowski.
Herbert J. Tily (1914-1916)
Despite Gilchrist’s many accomplishments, he suffered from depression and in 1913 took a leave of absence from Mendelssohn Club. He was never to return, dying of a heart attack in 1916. During the interim, Mendelssohn Club was conducted by Dr. Herbert Tily. Tily was also president of Strawbridge’s and conductor of the Strawbridge Company Chorus, a highly-regarded ensemble which continued to exist well into the 1930’s and served as a sort of cultural counterpoint to the Wanamaker organ.
N. Lindsay Norden, 1916-1926
N. Lindsay Norden was named conductor in 1916 and served ten years. Norden was an accomplished organist, choral conductor, and composer. He was particularly interested in Russian choral and liturgical music, which he introduced to American audiences through his arrangements and translations. A highlight of his tenure was Mendelssohn Club’s 50th Anniversary concert with The Philadelphia Orchestra at the Academy of Music, featuring Mendelssohn’s Hymn of Praise, Brahms’ Song of Destiny and Gilchrist’s cantata The Uplifted Gates.
Bruce A. Carey (1926-1934)
Norden was succeeded by Bruce A. Carey, director of choral music at Girard College. During his eight years as music director, Mendelssohn Club was involved in a number of notable concerts. It performed Russian folk song settings under the direction of Sergei Rachmaninoff in 1928. In 1929 Mendelssohn Club and The Philadelphia Orchestra presented the American premiere of Boris Godunov in concert version, featuring baritone Nelson Eddy (who at that time was still primarily an opera singer and a principal with the Philadelphia Civic Opera Company.) The two organizations collaborated again in a 1932 performance of Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder which was broadcast coast-to-coast, and in the American premiere of Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast, which was also broadcast coast-to-coast.
M. Sherwood Johnson (1934-1936)
Harl McDonald (1936-1939)
One of Mendelssohn Club’s most colorful music directors was certainly Dr. Harl McDonald, who served from 1936-1939. McDonald grew up on a cattle ranch in Colorado, was a violinist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and then took up a career as a concert pianist before coming to Philadelphia, where he became head of choral music at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1939 he launched yet another career, becoming manager of The Philadelphia Orchestra, a post he held for a number of years. McDonald was a prolific composer as well, and his orchestral works were frequently performed by Stokowski and the Orchestra. A choral work, Lament for the Stolen (suggested by the kidnapping of the Lindberg baby) was premiered by Mendelssohn Club. During his brief tenure there were a number of significant concerts with The Philadelphia Orchestra, including a 1937 performance of Honegger’s King David under Fritz Reiner which featured a relatively unknown Rise Stevens, who was to become one of the great sopranos at the Met.
Harold W. Gilbert, 1939-1959
Harold W. Gilbert, headmaster at St. Peter’s Choir School, became music director in 1939. He expanded Mendelssohn Club’s repertoire heavily into oratorios, instituting annual performance of Messiah and a series of Elgar’s oratorios The Dream of Gerontius, The Apostles and The Kingdom. He continued the remarkable tradition of featuring young singers who would later enjoy substantial reputations, including Anna Moffo, Beverly Wolff, and Benita Valente.
William Smith (1959-1960)
Henry C. Smith III (1960-1965)
Robert Page (1965-1978)
Mendelssohn Club enjoyed a particularly close relationship with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Robert Page, director of choral activities at Temple University, who assumed the music directorship in 1964. The chorus participated in the free world premiere of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13 under the direction of Eugene Ormandy. The RCA recording of that performance won the Prix Mondiale de Montreux. Mendelssohn Club appeared with the Orchestra in Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, the Verdi Requiem, Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky, Schoenberg’s Survivor from Warsaw and Mahler’s Second and Third Symphonies with such conductors as Ormandy, Abbado, Mehta, Rostropovich and Rozhdestvenksy on the podium. Recordings with Ormandy and The Philadelphia Orchestra included Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe, Holst’s The Planets, Mendelssohn’s Walpurgisnacht and Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances. The chorus celebrated its centennial season with the commission and premiere of Alberto Ginastera’s Turbae ad Passionem Gregorianam with Page conducting The Philadelphia Orchestra.
Tamara Brooks, 1978-1988
Tamara Brooks, then director of the New School of Music, was appointed music director in 1978. During her tenure Mendelssohn Club appeared in a nationally broadcast performance of the Verdi Requiem with Ricardo Muti and The Philadelphia Orchestra as part of PBS’ Great Performances series. The chorus also presented the Philadelphia premiere of the full orchestral version of Britten’s War Requiem in 1985. Brooks and Mendelssohn Club enjoyed a close relationship with Philadelphia composer Vincent Persichetti, performing a number of his works including the Stabat Mater and the premieres of several of his unpublished Hymns and Responses. The chorus’s 1985 recording of his Winter Cantata was nominated for a Grammy award.
Alan Harler, 1988 - Present
Brooks was succeeded in 1988 by current music director Alan Harler, who also serves as Laura H. Carnell Professor and Chairman of Choral Music at Temple University’s Esther Boyer School of Music. Under Harler’s dynamic leadership, Mendelssohn Club has secured its place as one of Philadelphia’s finest and most innovative choruses. He initiated a highly regarded multicultural concert series focusing on the ethnic diversity which enriches Philadelphia’s culture. Guest artists have included the Clayton White Singers, Coral Cantigas of Washington, D.C., the Philadelphia Korean-American Choir, the Chinese Musical Voices, and the Bright Hope Baptist Church Celestial Choir, among many others. Mendelssohn Club was the only non-ethnic chorus invited to participate in a concert celebrating the 125th Anniversary of Philadelphia’s Chinatown in 1996 and in the gala Hear O Israel celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Israel in 1998 with the combined Philadelphia Orchestra under Wolfgang Sawallisch and Israel Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta. Mendelssohn Club was honored with a 1996 Human Rights Award from the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations for “bringing the community together in song through its multicultural concerts.”
Harler has also made a significant commitment to new music, having commissioned or premiered more than 37 pieces since 1990. These have included works by Philadelphia composers including James Primosch (Fire Memory/River Memory, 1998), Cynthia Folio (Touch the Angel’s Hand, 1994), Jan Kryzwicki (Lute Music, 1995), Jonathan Holland (Symphony of Light, 1995), Robert Moran (Requiem: Chant du Cygne, 1990), Andrea Clearfield (The Golem Psalms, 2006) and Maurice Wright (Vox Humana, 2008). Several Mendelssohn Club commissions have entered the choral repertoire and received subsequent performances, including Clearfield’s The Golem Psalms, Moran’s Requiem: Chant du Cygne, and two major works by Charles Fussell: Specimen Days, based on the life and writings of Walt Whitman, and High Bridge, taken from the poetry of Hart Crane. Mendelssohn Club and Concerto Soloists Chamber Orchestra have recorded the Moran Requiem for the Argo Label. Fussell’s Specimen Days has been recorded on the Koch label and High Bridge is scheduled for release on CD by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project.
Under Harler’s direction, Mendelssohn Club has also explored interdisciplinary concert presentations. In May 2005, the chorus presented the Philadelphia premiere of Richard Einhorn’s 1994 cantata, Voices of Light with the 1928 silent film masterpiece by Carl Dreyer, The Passion of Joan of Arc. The November 2006 co-production of Carmina Burana with the Leah Stein Dance Company was the first dance collaboration in Mendelssohn Club’s recent history. Harler’s unique programming style, featuring a mix of popular and neglected masterworks, new commissions, multi-ethnic music and interdisciplinary concerts, won the 1992 ASCAP/Chorus America Award for Adventuresome Programming.
More information about Alan Harler
The American premiere of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8 (Symphony of a Thousand) was held on March 2, 1916, at the Academy of Music with the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Leopold Stokowski, and Mendelssohn Club was one of three choruses which took part. Mendelssohn Club supplied 300 of the 800 adult singers (there was also a children's choir of 150 singers). With 8 soloists and 110 orchestra musicians, there were 1068 performers in this musical extravaganza!