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DRIFTING 77 |
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was spirited out the back door and through the fence, from which a number of rails had been removed; thence through various back alleys to the Monongahela House.
About this time a new Jardine organ of twenty-six stops was installed in Trinity Church.
Henry Kleber, a professional musician of Pittsburgh, who has already been mentioned as a possible teacher of Stephen Foster in his boyhood, was the hero of a cause cBbbre in this same year. He was fined $100 and costs for attacking with a cow-hide one Augustus Schaad, who had criticised him in a newspaper in connection with the concert of a Mme. Bornstein. Kleber had appeared as an "assisting artist" at the concert,and Schaad complained of his "presumptious appearance" and his "self-admiration." The two met on the street shortly after this, and Schaad fled from the altercation which ensued, locking himself up in a near-by office. When he ventured forth again, the battle was renewed by Kleber's brother. The affair occupied columns in the various papers of the city for many days. The rival editors hurled denunciations at each other, after the style of the times, and indignant partisans of both sides wrote letters to the editors.
At Masonic Hall, in 1852, a concert was given by William Vincent Wallace, "Composer to the Imperial and Royal Theatres of London and Vienna." He played the violin and also appeared in piano duets with his wife, "Fraulein Helen Stopel." The favorite form of composition in those days seems to have been the "Grand Variation." Among the melodies selected by Wallace for elaboration at his Pittsburgh concert was "O Susanna."
A "Mendelssohn Quintette Club" was organized about 1850, and gave concerts for many seasons, their programs consisting of the works of Mozart, Schubert, Cherubini, Beethoven, and other masters, indicating a high degree of musical development on the part of both performers and audience. |
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