Berlioz’s Harold in Italy and Theodore Thomas

Throughout his career, Theodore Thomas introduced hundreds of works to the American public as a conductor and music director of his own Theodore Thomas Orchestra, the New York and Brooklyn philharmonics and ultimately the Chicago Orchestra, which he founded in 1891. In fact, the first orchestral concert under his own direction — given on May 13, 1862, in New York’s Irving Hall — opened with the United States premiere of Wagner’s Overture to The Flying Dutchman.

Barely a year later on May 9, 1863, Thomas — then only 27 years old — was back in Irving Hall, making his second “annual appeal to the good taste and intelligence of the community,” according to the New York Times. “The interest of the occasion was centered of course on the Harold symphony, played for the first time in America [and he] engaged an orchestra of 80 players for the just interpretation of the symphony.” 

“It is not easy to express a liking for Berlioz’s muse — so strangely does it oscillate between the extremes of raving eccentricity and of colossal, but entirely inconsequential magnificence,” continued the reviewer in the Times. “Berlioz has supplied the school of the ‘future’ with the few ideas of which it can boast, and this work of ‘Harold’ contains the materials for a dozen Liszts and Wagners. . . . Mr. Thomas conducted the orchestra with consummate ability, and Mr. Edward Mollenhauer* played the viola with marked effect. . . . We are only sorry that the Harold Symphony cannot be repeated.”

In the spring of 1867, Thomas took “a short vacation for the first time in his life, [spending] about two months in Europe, hearing everything he could in that brief time and impressing the highest standards of orchestral, quartette, and solo violin performances on his mind, in order that he might hereby improve his work at home," according to his widow Rose Fay in the Memoirs of Theodore Thomas. During his two-month sojourn, he kept a diary describing the performances he heard and the people he met. “May 8, Paris. . . . Spent a delightful hour with Berlioz, in which we talked over all his larger compositions. It seems he had heard already that I played his music, and, as I was leaving, he asked me if there was anything of his that I would like which I didn’t already have in my library. I told him yes, there was one thing that I wanted very much, and that was his great Requiem Mass. Hearing this, Berlioz went to the music case, took down his own copy of the score and inscribed it . . . and presented it to me."

Following Thomas’ death in 1905, Rose Fay donated a number of his presentation scores — including the copy of Berlioz’s Requiem — to the Newberry Library. Above, the title page shows the composer’s inscription: “á Monsieur Thomas, en souvenir de l’auteur reconnaissant, H. Berlioz” (to Mr. Thomas in remembrance of the grateful author, H. Berlioz). At the bottom, Rose added, “This copy is Berlioz’s own copy of this work, which he took from the shelf in his study in Paris and presented to Theodore Thomas in 1867. Autographed. R.F.T.”

During the Chicago Orchestra’s first season, Thomas programmed Harold in Italy for the fourteenth subscription week on March 11 and 12, 1892. August Junker, the Orchestra’s charter principal viola, was soloist. Since then, the work has been performed by CSO principal violas Franz Esser and Clarence Evans, along with guest soloists Nobuko Imai, Kim Kashkashian, Michael Ouzounian, Lawrence Power and Pinchas Zukerman. Harold in Italy also was a signature piece of Milton Preves, who performed it with the Orchestra on dozens of occasions during his nearly six-decade tenure, most of those years as principal viola.

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*German American violinist and composer Edward Mollenhauer (1827–1914) was a student of Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst and Ludwig Spohr. Following a short concert career in Germany, he moved to London to join his older brother Friedrich in Louis-Antoine Jullien’s orchestra. After that ensemble toured the United States in 1853, Edward and Friedrich remained in New York to perform and teach, and both later frequently performed as soloists with the New York Philharmonic. Also a composer, Edward composed operas, symphonies, numerous solo works for the violin, and songs.

Special thanks to Alison Hinderliter, Lloyd Lewis Curator of Modern Manuscripts and Archives at the Newberry Library

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