Herbert, Victor (August)
Herbert, Victor (August)
Herbert, Victor (August), famous Irish-born American composer, cellist, and conductor; b. Dublin, Feb. 1, 1859; d. N.Y., May 26, 1924. He was a grandson of Samuel Lover, the Irish novelist; his father died when he was an infant; his mother married a German physician and the family moved to Stuttgart in 1867. He entered the Stuttgart high school, but did not graduate; his musical ability was definitely pronounced by then, and he selected the cello as his instrument, taking lessons from Bernhard Cossmann in Baden- Baden (1874–76). He soon acquired a degree of technical proficiency that enabled him to take a position as cellist in various orchs. in Germany, France, Italy, and Switzerland; in 1880 he became a cellist of the Eduard Strauss waltz band in Vienna; in 1881, he returned to Stuttgart, where he joined the Court Orch., and studied composition with Max Seif ritz at the Cons. His earliest works were for cello with orch.; he performed his Suite with the Stuttgart orch. on Oct. 23, 1883, and his 1st Cello Concerto on Dec. 8, 1885. On Aug. 14, 1886, he married the Viennese opera singer Thérèse Förster (1861–1927); in the same year, she received an offer to join the Metropolitan Opera in N.Y., and Herbert was engaged as an orch. cellist there, appearing in N.Y. also as a soloist (played his own Cello Concerto with the N.Y. Phil., Dec. 10, 1887). In his early years in N.Y, Herbert was overshadowed by the celebrity of his wife, but soon he developed energetic activities on his own, forming an entertainment orch. which he conducted in a repertoire of light music; he also participated in chamber music concerts; was a soloist with the Theodore Thomas and Seidl orchs. He was the conductor of the Boston Festival Orch. in 1891; Tchaikovsky conducted this orch. in Philadelphia in a miscellaneous program, and Herbert played a solo. He was assoc. conductor of the Worcester Festival (1889–91), for which he wrote a dramatic cantata, The Captive (Sept. 24, 1891). In 1893 he became bandmaster of the 22nd Regiment Band, succeeding P. S. Gilmore. On March 10, 1894, he was soloist with the N.Y Phil, in his 2nd Cello Concerto. In the same year, at the suggestion of William MacDonald, the manager of the Boston Ideal Opera Co., Herbert wrote his first operetta, Prince Ananias, which was premiered with encouraging success in N.Y. (Nov. 20, 1894). He quickly established himself as a leading composer in the genre, winning enduring success with such scores as The Serenade (1897), Babes in Toyland (1903), Mile. Modiste (1905), Naughty Marietta (1910), Sweethearts (1913), and The Only Girl (1914). In 1900 he directed at Madison Square Garden, N.Y, an orch. of 420 performers for the benefit of the sufferers in the Galveston flood. On April 29, 1906, he led a similar monster concert at the Hippodrome for the victims of the San Francisco earthquake. In 1904 he organized the Victor Herbert Orch. in N.Y. In 1908 he was elected to the National Inst. of Arts and Letters.
In his finest operettas, Herbert united spontaneous melody, sparkling rhythm, and simple but tasteful harmony; his experience as a symphonic composer and conductor imparted a solidity of texture to his writing that placed him far above the many gifted amateurs in this field. Furthermore, he possessed a natural communicative power in his music, which made his operettas spectacularly successful with the public. In the domain of grand opera, he was not so fortunate. When the premiere of his first grand opera, Natoma, took place in Philadelphia on Feb. 25, 1911, it aroused great expectations; but the opera failed to sustain lasting interest. Still less effective was his second opera, Madeleine, staged by the Metropolitan Opera in N.Y. on Jan. 24, 1914. Herbert was one of the founders of ASCAP in 1914, and was vice-president from that date until his death. In 1916 he wrote a special score for the film The Fall of a Nation, in synchronization with the screenplay. He also wrote a film score for Indian Summer (1919).
Works
dramatic: Operettas: Prince Ananias (N.Y., Nov. 20, 1894); The Wizard of the Nile (Wilkes Barre, Pa., Sept. 26, 1895); The Gold Bug (N.Y, Sept. 21, 1896); The Serenade (Cleveland, Feb. 17, 1897); The Idol’s Eye (Troy, N.Y, Sept. 20, 1897); The Fortune Teller (Toronto, Sept. 14, 1898); Cyrano de Bergerac (Montreal, Sept. 11, 1899); The Singing Girl (Montreal, Oct. 2, 1899); The Ameer (Scranton, Pa., Oct. 9, 1899); The Viceroy (San Francisco, Feb. 12, 1900); Babes in Toyland (Chicago, June 17, 1903); Babette (Washington, D.C., Nov. 9, 1903); If Happened in Nordland (Harrisburg, Pa., Nov. 21, 1904); Miss Dolly Dollars (Rochester, N.Y., Aug. 30, 1905); Wonderland (Buffalo, Sept. 14, 1905); Mile. Modiste (Trenton, Oct. 7, 1905); The Red Mill (Buffalo, Sept. 3, 1906); Dream City (N.Y., Dec. 25, 1906); The Magic Knight (N.Y., Dec. 25, 1906); The Tattooed Man (Baltimore, Feb. 11, 1907); Algeria (Atlantic City, Aug. 24, 1908; rev. as The Rose of Algeria, Wilkes Barre, Pa., Sept. 11, 1909); Little Nemo (Philadelphia, Sept. 28, 1908); The Prima Donna (Chicago, Oct. 5, 1908); Old Dutch (Wilkes Barre, Pa., Nov. 6, 1909); Naughty Marietta (Syracuse, Oct. 24, 1910); When Sweet 16 (Springfield, Mass., Dec. 5, 1910); Mile. Rosita (later called The Duchess; Boston, March 27, 1911); The Enchantress (Washington, D.C., Oct. 9, 1911); The Lady of the Slipper (Philadelphia, Oct. 8, 1912); Sweethearts (Baltimore, March 24, 1913); The Madcap Duchess (Rochester, N.Y., Oct. 13, 1913); The Débutante (Atlantic City, Sept. 21, 1914); The Only Girl (Atlantic City, Oct. 1, 1914); The Princess Pat (Atlantic City, Aug. 23, 1915); Eileen (Cleveland, Jan. 1, 1917, as Hearts of Erin); Her Regiment (Springfield, Mass., Oct. 22, 1917); The Velvet Lady (Philadelphia, Dec. 23, 1918); Angel Face (Chicago, June 8, 1919); My Golden Girl (Stamford, Conn., Dec. 19, 1919); Oui Madame (Philadelphia, March 22, 1920); The Girl in the Spotlight (Stamford, Conn., July 7, 1920); Orange Blossoms (Philadelphia, Sept. 4, 1922); The Dream Girl (New Haven, April 22, 1924). Opera: Natoma (Philadelphia, Feb. 25, 1911); Madeleine (1913; N.Y., Jan. 24, 1914). OTHER: Miss Camille, burlesque (1907); The Song Birds, musical skit (1907); The Century Girl, revue (N.Y., Nov. 6, 1916; in collaboration with I. Berlin); music for the films The Fall of a Nation (1916) and Indian Summer (1919), and for Ziegfeld’s Follies. orch.: Suite for Cello and Orch. (Stuttgart, Oct. 23, 1883); 2 cello concertos: No. 1 (1884; Stuttgart, Dec. 8, 1885) and No. 2 (N.Y. March 10, 1894); Serenade for Strings (1888); Irish Rhapsody (1892); American Fantasia (1898); Hero and Leander, symphonic poem (1900; Pittsburgh, Jan. 18, 1901); Suite romantique (1901); Soixante-neuf for Strings (1902); Columbus, suite (1902; Pittsburgh, Jan. 2, 1903); L’encore for Flute, Clarinet, and Orch. (1910); Whispering Willows (1915); Little Old NX, overture (1923); Under the Red Robe, overture (1923). B a n d: The Gold Bug, march (1896); The Serenade, march (1897); McKinley Inauguration March (1897); March of the 22nd Regiment (1898). OTHER: Over 20 chamber pieces; about 25 piano works; several choral works, including the dramatic cantata The Captive (Worcester Festival, Sept. 24, 1891); about 80 songs; around 70 arrangements of scores by other composers.
Bibliography
J. Kaye, V H. (N.Y, 1931); C. Purdy, V. H—American Music Master (N.Y, 1944); E. Waters, V. H: A Life in Music (N.Y, 1955).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire