by Paul R. Spitzzeri
As his been noted on this blog previously, the tremendous transformation of greater Los Angeles in the late 19th and early 20th century involved many factors and led to myriad consequences in economic, society, politics and more, including cultural activities of a wide variety.
In the world of music, there was manifest in the rise of amateur clubs, ensembles and societies that especially flourished during the Boom of the 1880s and through the end of the century and into the next one, while a greater presence of professional organizations took root in the 1890s and fully flowered by the Roaring Twenties with the development of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Choral music got an early start in the Angel City with the formation in spring 1875 of the Los Angeles Choral Society. The ensemble gave its inaugural performance on 12 May at Turnverein Hall, the headquarters of a German-American association located on Spring Street, to benefit the building fund of the Presbyterian Church.
That may, however, have been its only concert as a letter to the editor of the Los Angeles Herald of 20 May by someone identified only as “W” remarked “I very much regret that so few of our citizens were present . . . and also that such brief and unsatisfactory reports were published in the daily papers.” The boom that led to a more than doubling of the population and which began in the late Sixties went bust months later—a major casualty was the Temple and Workman bank—and the Society looks to have quickly folded.
With the next boom, a Los Angeles Unity Choral Society was organized in September 1887 after a meeting in the Hollenbeck Block downtown, with some 30 members to have enrolled. This was followed in March 1888 by a second Los Angeles Choral Society, with between 20 and 30 people signing the membership list at the organizational meeting at a Spring Street store. Neither group, however, seems to have lasted long, either.
Early in 1902, during the third major boom period in the city’s history, Julius Albert Jahn (1863-1929), a native of Germany and a pianist and composer who was in Chicago and then Milwaukee, where he was an officer of the Wisconsin College of Music, arrived in Los Angeles. He became part of the Los Angeles Trio Club, which included Ludwig Opid on cello and J. Bond Francisco on violin, the latter was a co-founder several years prior of the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra as well as a professional painter who had a major influence in both the music and fine arts worlds in the Angel City.
The Los Angeles Express of 1 March reported that,
Mr. Jahn was eminent as a concert player in Milwaukee, where he was prominent in musical affairs for eleven years, and coming here to escape the rigors of the eastern climate, has joined himself with Messrs. Francisco and Opid for the giving of high-class chamber music.
There may have been another reason for the relocation. In 1891, Jahn married Helma Heynsen, also born in Germany, and who was a painter who specialized in portraits. After studying in her native land, she went to Paris and was a student of Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant. For four years, the couple was in Milwaukee where she exhibited, but their only child, a son, died in 1901 and this might well have contributed to their exodus to Los Angeles, where Helma taught at the College of Fine Arts in the Garvanza district near Pasadena and also exhibited her work.
The Express of 26 July remarked that Jahn attended a rehearsal of the Chautauqua chorus and, when introduced, told the ensemble that “though Los Angeles had certainly seen many most excellent choral performances, it was without a permanent chorus association.” Moreover, he observed that “Los Angeles in this regard stands below most of the other cities of similar size and the paper added that his comments included the fact that,
The singers here . . . are not less progressive, not less highly educated and music loving than in other cities, wherefore the organization of a permanent chorus should be as great a success as it has been in other communities . . . the influential and prominent people seemed to be enthusiastic about the idea of organizing a choral society.
Unless there was a year-round commitment of singers to properly rehearse it would not be possible “to reach the highest goal of artistic perfection” and it was insisted that “a permanent choral society is a necessity for the musical life of the city. The Express added that “it is Mr. Jahn’s intention to organize a society with an association of passive members and to perform the master works of ‘a capella’ songs, cantatas and oratorios.” Those interested were directed to Jahn’s office in the Blanchard Building, opened in 1899 and which was dedicated to music instruction in offices and performances in a hall.
The 23 August issue of the paper reported that “Julius A. Jahn announces that he will organize a chorus this fall,” while it added that the Ellis Club “of years ago” was “giving signs of life” after a downturn and the Treble Clef Club (formed by women in 1889) was at work, as well. These encouraging signs led the Express to remark that “whether this diversity of effort will result in valuable choral results remains to be seen” although it also felt that “an amalgamation of effort might give more probability” of success.”
The third iteration of a Los Angeles Choral Society emerged from these efforts by Jahn and the Simpson Auditorium, opened at the end of 1889 (after the recent boom went bust) on Hope Street between 7th and 8th streets, became the venue for performance. While Jahn was the musical director, the manager was the ubiquitous Lynden E. Behymer, whose imprint on Los Angeles musical and theater arts was such that his influence cannot be overstated.
The venue began as a church called Simpson’s Tabernacle, but its auditorium hosted concerts from its beginnings. The distinctive edifice with its rounded walls and projecting entrance and adjacent tower was designed by Charles Edward Apponyi, whose career included stints in San Francisco and San Diego, but whose volatility apparently led to his having to frequently relocate to keep his work, including a period in México as a mining engineer, going.
In any case, the Los Angeles Times of 16 November 1902 reported that “the first meeting of the Los Angeles permanent choral society was held in the parlors of the First Congregational Church” a few days prior with the plan to hold three concerts each season, though it appears the inaugural performance was in April 1903 with a single offering at the Simpson.
For the third season of 1904-1905, the Los Angeles Record of 3 September 1904 briefly observed that “a series of oratorios will given” and that “members are now being secured for the two performances of Handel’s ‘Messiah'” to be presented at the end of the year. Moreover, the great German composer’s “Elijah” was to be offered “as well as two additional concerts.” The aforementioned Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra was also enlisted to provide accompaniment, while there was a return to the Simpson, after the second season at Mason’s Opera House, where, however, the lack of an organ was a decided problem.
This program is for the third and last concert offered that season and the 10 June issue of the Record noted that “the program will consist of arias from the great oratorios, choral selections from the same works and a series of selections from the modern composers.” The next day’s Los Angeles Herald added that “rehearsals are being held twice a week and a most finished concert is promised.”
In advertisements, Mrs. Mary Linck-Evans was highlighted as a soprano soloist, while baritone Harry Clifford Lott was also afforded a feature role. The ensembles, the Mendelssohn Chamber Concert Club, including Jahn as pianist, and a “ladies’ sextette” from the choir from The Church of the Angels, located in Pasadena and perhaps associated because of Helma Jahn’s teaching at the fine arts college in that vicinity, were also given billing.
In the program, a page about the Society observed that “during the year, the Association has met weekly and notable improvement made between the concerts given,” with the Handel works said to have been “given in a most creditable way” and with “clever soloists.” These concerts and the selection of the ensemble to perform at a “May Musical Festival” was evidence that “proves conclusively that the Los Angeles Choral Society is considered by critics to be the representative Choral organization of Southern California.”
Moreover, it was declared that with the ending of the season “of education and entertainment,” the work of the Society’s members was such that “during the Summer months sufficient encouragement will be given . . . to enable them to organize early in the Fall for the fourth consecutive season . . . and make it a permanent musical institution of Southern California.”
The first part of the program included works by Edgar Elgar, Richard Wagner, Jules Massenet and local Monimia Laux Botsford, who has been highlighted in a prior post here. Lyrics to the performed pieces are also included, as well as for the second part by Massenet concerning Adam and Eve and their fateful decision in the Garden of Eden.
The publication also lists the officers of the Society, which included Dr. W. Jarvis Barlow, of the well-known sanitarium, as president, and a directorate that included Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas J. Conaty, Progressive reformer Dr. John Randolph Haynes, developer John S. Cravens, physician and oil developer Dr. Norman Bridge, and Monimia Laux Botsford, whose capitalist husband, William, was one of a trio of honorary members.
Among the names of associate members are such prominent surnames as Hamburger, Van Nuys, Macneil, Newhall, Sartori, Kerckhoff, Childs, Braly, Jevne, Slauson, Garland and Hellman. The active members were divided into altos, basses, soprano and tenors, with about 180 names in all. Advertisements were from the Conservatory of Music, the Salt Lake, Santa Fe and Southern Pacific railroads, and George J. Birkel Company, purveyors of instruments and other items pertaining to music.
As for reviews of the performance, the Times of the following day noted “a rather small, but nevertheless enthusiastic audience” and that “the programme was quite extended, and embraced a variety of good music.” It was added that “in justice to the Choral Society and its director,” the concert was at its best in “part-songs” as the chorus did well in the contraltors and sopranos but was “weak in the bass.”
It was advised that, to properly present oratorios, there had to be an “all-professional chorus, or at least three seasons of study on the part of amateurs.” Even if “the heavier music . . . was sung well,” the paper felt that “the songs won the greatest applause” because of their “spontaneity and ease, and withal a sympathetic fascination.” Linck-Evans was praised, while “Mr. Lott’s singing was especially pleasing” and the Church of the Angels choir ensemble was “a pretty feature” and the Mendelssohn trio’s work “was a most artistic interpretation.”
The review concluded,
Now this Choral Society—which has done honest and faithful work all through the winter, and to whom all honor is due for faithfulness in the extended May Festival—is not yet as well fitted for oratorio as for concerted ballads, and if they had stuck to simpler music in the winter months, criticism would have been less severe.
More positive was the assessment of the Herald, also of the 24th, and which remarked that the performance was “artistically successful,” although “it is to be regretted that it was a small audience . . . to hear what proved to be a fine program admirably sung.” The paper, moreover, asserted that “the big chorus was never heard to better advantage than in the numbers selected for this last and best concert of 1904-5.”
The Herald felt that “Professor Julius Albert Jahn had his singers under perfect control, and there was a more even balance of tone than on previous occasions when the society presented oratorios.” With respect to Linck-Evans and her “Elsa’s Dream” from the grand opera Lohengrin, it was felt that “her voice is not adapted to Wagner music, but she was enthusiastically received.” Lott “gave preference to local composers, who doubtless appreciate the privilege of hearing their songs by this artist of wonderful voice and fine intelligence.”
Jahn continued to lead the Society until mid-1908 when he left for Dallas and remained there for the last two decades of his life as a composer, performer and teacher. He and Helma divorced and she spent a dozen years in Germany, returning early in 1925 to improve her health by settling the San Gabriel Valley foothill town of Monrovia, well-known for its sanitariums, but she died later that year.
In 1909, the Simpson Auditorium became part of the Third Church of Christ, Scientist, though it continued to host concerts and other events of note. After the Sylmar earthquake of 1971, however, the edifice was badly damaged and it was soon leveled, the only part remaining intact being what was long a Christian Science reading room, while there is a parking lot where the Auditorium stood for over 80 years.
Lastly, today there is the Los Angeles Master Chorale, which is part of the Angel City’s world-class professional musical scene and representative of just how far the choral history of the city has come in the last 150 years.
While glancing at the Choral Society’s performance flyer featured in this post, I was struck by the presence of a swastika symbol – an image now so strongly associated with Hitler and the Nazi regime that it is difficult not to make that connection. However, since the performance took place in 1905, I believe the symbol may have been used as a traditional emblem, possibly reflecting German heritage, before it was chosen by the Nazis in 1920 as a symbol of hatred.
Hi Larry, thanks for pointing this out. The swastika comes from the Sanskrit word “svastika” meaning “good fortune” and the symbol was in use for thousands of years before it was appropriated by Hitler and the Nazis in Germany. A note was added to the caption of the image showing it on the program cover.