Easy! Theodore Thomas founded his own orchestra in 1862 in New York and toured regularly beginning in 1869 - primarily in the summers, but not exclusively in that season. In addition to New York, they regularly toured to (among other locations) Boston, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Chicago, Cincinnati (it opened the inaugural Cincinnati May Festival with the then 108-member orchestra in the spring of 1873) and continued tour until its eventual dissolution in 1888. I have a program from their (touring) performance on November 3 in Worcester, MA in 1869; in one day they offered a matinee and an evening performance, each in two parts - each concert scheduled for a three-hour time block! And NO overlap or repeated repo between the two concerts; you had to come to BOTH if you wanted to hear all the scheduled Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, Meyerbeer, Strauss, Auber, Verdi, Weber, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Litolff, etc etc etc!
So, John -- I hope that counts! And now: sorry to have to have this be my last word on the subject (at least for this evening) but my own orchestra beckons; rehearsal this evening.... Best, Les Les Marsden Founding Music Director and Conductor, The Mariposa Symphony Orchestra Music and Mariposa? Ahhhhh, Paradise!!! http://arts-mariposa.org/symphony.html http://www.geocities.com/~jbenz/lesbio.html ----- Original Message ----- From: John Howell To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, May 28, 2007 4:58 PM Subject: Re: [Finale] very OT: Orchestras by Howell At 1:24 PM -0700 5/28/07, Mariposa Symphony Orchestra wrote: >Oh, John (Howell) -- you wily arbitrator, you! > >I have absolutely no disagreement with your logic, rationalizations >or concepts. It all makes sense to me; I'll even hide raised >eyebrows resulting from the omission of touring orchestras (even >those in existence for many years with extensive concert schedules) >but easily concur with excluding festival groups. You know, you have a point regarding touring orchestras, if there were such, and I believe Andrew mentioned one which did visit Buffalo on tour. I'm familiar with touring military/concert bands, of course--Sousa, Gilmore, and the others enumerated by Harold Hill in "76 Trombones"--and the touring jazz big bands of the '30s and '40s. And there was clearly a time of touring choruses, from the Soviet Don Cossacks to Robert Shaw, Norman Luboff, and others, including Fred Waring on the non-classical side. But I'm honestly not aware of any specific touring orchestras, assuming we can agree that such an orchestra played repertoire typical of a fixed-location orchestra. One thing about touring music, however, is that it tends to be a single program (or opera, or Broadway musical, or Minstrel or Vaudeville show) that tours, or in some cases more than one program but still separate, complete programs (as Chanticleer does). And of course the personnel of a touring orchestra may well change from one tour to the next. Still, if such an orchestra were to tour under the same conductor for continuity, and changed repertoire for subsequent tours, it would certainly have to be recognized as a bone fide orchestra, just not one associated with a specific town, city or state. OK, you win that one!! Now, name me one or more such orchestras!!! John -- John & Susie Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
