Hill, Ureli Corelli

Hill, Ureli Corelli, American violinist and conductor; b. Hartford, Conn.?, c. 1802; d. (suicide) Pater-son, N.J., Sept. 2, 1875. His father, Uri K. Hill, was a teacher of music in Boston and N.Y., and author of a manual, Solfeggio Americano, A System of Singing (N.Y., 1820). An admirer of Corelli, he named his son after him; the first name (Ureli) is a combination of the father’s name, Uri, and a friend’s name, Eli. Ureli played violin in various theaters in N.Y. as a boy. He was a violinist in the orch. of Garcia’s opera company in 1825, then joined the N.Y. Sacred Musical Soc., and conducted it in the first American performance, with orch. accompaniment, of Handel’s Messiah (1831). From 1835 to 1837 he was in Germany, where he studied for a year with Spohr. Returning to N.Y, he became a founder and first president of the N.Y. Phil. (1842-47). He then went West in quest of fortune, which failed to materialize. In N.Y he exhibited a pianoforte of his own invention, in which he used small bell tuning forks in place of strings, so as to secure perfect intonation; the attempt to promote this instrument met with failure. He played the violin in the N.Y. Phil, from 1850 until 1873, when he retired because of age, although he continued to play engagements in various theater orchs. throughout his life. He then moved to Paterson, N.J., where he engaged (unsuccessfully) in real-estate schemes. Depressed on account of constant setbacks in his ventures of promotion in music and in business, he committed suicide by swallowing morphine.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire