Victor Herbert died 100 years ago today. Although perhaps we don’t hear very much of his music now, unless you’re a nostalgia buff with a sweet-tooth like mine, audiences of our grandmothers’ and great-grandmother’s generations were crazy for him. My grandmother was always singing his stuff. He was simply part of the cultural consciousness, as were the operettas of Gilbert & Sullivan. You didn’t have to love them (in the case of G&S, I did and I do), but everyone knew them.
And of course there were film adaptations of Herbert’s musicals, which, as they slipped further out of fashion, were ripe for parody. Haha, look at Nelson Eddy, singing this fruity song…!
But guess what? There’s a reason this stuff resonated the way it did. Herbert was a master of his craft and finely attuned to the tastes of his public. Even on those occasions when he displayed more ambition, he never did come across as “putting on airs.”
Born on the island of Guernsey in 1859, Herbert was told by his mother that he was born in Dublin – no doubt because of complications surrounding his parentage (apparently he was conceived out of wedlock) – and Herbert believed it for the rest of his life. He spent his early years in the home of his grandfather, Irish novelist and poet Samuel Lover. This ensured his continued affinity for Irish lore and culture.
When his mother remarried, Herbert followed her to Germany. His stepfather was a physician, and Herbert himself seemed destined for a medical career. But medical studies were expensive, so, possibly recollecting the colorful visitors of his grandfather’s circle, he decided to take up music instead.
The cello was his instrument. He performed in a number of orchestras, including that of Eduard Strauss, and he was selected by Johannes Brahms to play in a chamber orchestra for a concert celebrating the life and career of Franz Liszt. In meantime, he had begun to compose.
He married the soprano Therese Förster, and when she was invited to join the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, Herbert followed her to the United States. Förster, singing in German, became the Met’s first “Aida.” Anton Seidl conducted. Seidl would become an important mentor, fostering Herbert’s interest in conducting. In 1888, Herbert was installed as Seidl’s assistant conductor with the New York Philharmonic for its summer season at Brighton Beach. In 1898, he became principal conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
In the meantime, he continued to compose concertos, works for chorus and orchestra, symphonic poems, and lighter music. He was acutely aware of the importance of being properly compensated for his work. He became an activist for composers’ rights, testifying before Congress and influencing the development of the Copyright Act of 1909. This allowed composers to collect royalties for sound recordings. As a founding member of ASCAP (in 1914), and its director until his death in 1924, he also brought a landmark lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court, securing the right for composers to charge fees for public performance of their music.
Herbert composed two grand operas. One of them, “Natoma” (set in Santa Barbara, California, in 1820), allowed him to fabricate both Native American and Spanish motifs. The work was given its first performance in Philadelphia (by the Chicago Grand Opera Company) in 1911, with Mary Garden (Debussy’s Melisande) and John McCormack as the leads.
Here, the great Risë Stevens sings some of it.
The other opera, a one-acter called “Madeleine,” received its premiere at the Met in 1914.
But it was with his operettas that he struck gold. He would write 43 in all, beginning in the 1890s. By World War I, detecting Americans’ shifting tastes, he shrewdly transitioned to musical comedies. Composers like Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern would ask him to write ballet music for their shows, and he was a regular contributor to the Ziegfeld Follies.
After his death, the tiniest selection of his concert works may have lingered in a dusty corner of the repertoire, but beginning with the compact disc era, a few of these began to experience a resurgence. While Herbert was enormously successful as a musical theater composer, his most enduring contribution to the concert hall has proved to be his Cello Concerto No. 2.
Herbert was serving on the faculty of the National Conservatory of Music in New York at the time that Antonin Dvořák was its director. It’s said that Dvořák was not overly-fond of the cello as an instrument. It was a performance of Herbert’s dramatic piece that caused the scales to drop from his eyes, and Dvořák was spurred to compose his own masterful Cello Concerto in B minor, which remains the benchmark for all performers on the instrument and for any composer with the hubris to attempt their own.
Dvořák, of course, was the spiritual godfather of American music, advising our native artists to look no further than their own soil for inspiration, specifically to the music of Black and Native Americans. He led by example in writing works like his own “New World” Symphony. Victor Herbert was principal cello in the New York Philharmonic for the work’s world premiere at Carnegie Hall in 1893.
Rest well, Victor Herbert. Your music may have inspired snickers of derision from those of us who found fun in the treasures of our forebears, but in the end, you have the last laugh on us all.
Victor Herbert, Cello Concerto No. 2
For this holiday weekend, here’s Herbert wrapping himself in the flag as proudly as any American native-born. Be sure to read the comments under the video, as they offer some interesting insights into the recording.
Undeniably, Herbert had his vulgar streak, but I must too, because I can’t help but love his “Irish Rhapsody.”
Jeanette MacDonald sings “Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life” from “Naughty Marietta” (ruined forever by “Young Frankenstein”)
Madeline Kahn sings it, without the assistance of “the Monster”
Given the Ernie Kovacs treatment
Beverly Sills and Sherill Milnes sing “Thine Alone” from “Eileen”
Mario!
“March of the Toys” from “Babes in Toyland,” given the Laurel and Hardy treatment
