Victor Herbert
Victor Herbert was born in Dublin, Ireland, on February 1, 1859. He received a sound musical training at the Stuttgart Conservatory, following which he studied the cello privately with Bernhard Cossmann in Baden-Baden. For several years after that he played the cello in many German and Austrian orchestras. His bow as a composer took place with two ambitious works, a suite and a concerto, both for cello and orchestra. They were introduced by the Stuttgart Symphony (the composer as soloist) in 1883 and 1885 respectively. After marrying the prima donna, Therese Foerster, in 1886, Herbert came to the United States and played the cello in the Metropolitan Opera orchestra, his wife having been engaged by that company. He soon played the cello in other major American orchestras, besides conducting symphonic concerts, concerts of light music, and performances at important festivals. In 1893 he succeeded Patrick S. Gilmore as bandleader of the famous 22nd Regiment Band, and from 1898 to 1904 he was principal conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony. After 1904 he was the conductor of his own orchestra.
Herbert won world renown as a composer of operettas for which he produced a wealth of melodies that have never lost their charm or fascination for music lovers. His first produced operetta, Prince Ananias, in 1894 was a failure. But one year later came The Wizard of the Nile, the first of a long string of stage successes Herbert was henceforth to enjoy. From then on, until the end of his life, Herbert remained one of Broadway’s most productive and most significant composers. Many of his operettas are now classics of the American musical stage. Among these are: The Fortune Teller (1898), Babes in Toyland (1903), Mlle. Modiste (1905), The Red Mill (1906) and Naughty Marietta (1910). A facile composer with an extraordinary technique at orchestration and harmonization, and a born melodist who had a seemingly inexhaustible reservoir of beautiful tunes, Herbert was a giant figure in American popular music and in the music for the American popular theater. He died of a heart attack in New York City on May 26, 1924.
Victor Herbert produced a considerable amount of concert music—concertos, symphonies, suites, overtures—most of which has passed out of the more serious repertory. A few of these concert works have enough emotional impact and melodic fascination to enjoy a permanent status in the semi-classical repertory. Potpourris from the scores of his most famous operettas—and orchestral transcriptions of individual songs from these productions—are, of course, basic to any pop or semi-classical orchestra repertory. For Herbert’s greatest songs from his operettas are classics, “as pure in outline as the melodies of Schubert and Mozart” according to Deems Taylor.
Al Fresco is mood music which opens the second act of the operetta, It Happened in Nordland (1904). Herbert had previously written and published it as a piano piece, using the pen-name of Frank Roland, in order to test the appeal of this little composition. It did so well in this version that Herbert finally decided to include it in his operetta where it serves to depict a lively carnival scene.
The American Fantasia (1898) is a brilliantly orchestrated and skilfully contrived fantasy made up of favorite American national ballads and songs. It is the composer’s stirring tribute to the country of his adoption. The ballads and songs are heard in the following sequence: “Hail Columbia,” “Swanee River,” “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” “Dixie,” “Columbia the Gem of the Ocean.” This composition comes to an exciting finish with “The Star-Spangled Banner” in a Wagnerian-type orchestration.
The operetta Babes in Toyland, which opened in New York on October 13, 1903, was an extravaganza inspired by the then-recent success on Broadway of The Wizard of Oz. Herbert’s operetta drew its characters from fairy tales, Mother Goose, and other children’s stories, placing these characters in a rapid succession of breath-taking scenes of spectacular beauty. The complicated plot concerned the escape of little Jane and Alan from their miserly uncle to the garden of Contrary Mary. They then come to Toyland where they meet the characters from fairy tales and Mother Goose, and where toys are dominated by the wicked Toymaker whom they finally bring to his destruction. Principal musical numbers from this score include the delightful orchestral march, “March of the Toys,” and the songs “Toyland” and “I Can’t Do the Sum.”
Dagger Dance is one of the most familiar pieces in the semi-classical repertory in the melodic and rhythmic style of American-Indian music. It comes from Herbert’s opera Natoma, whose première took place in Philadelphia on February 25, 1911. This spirited Indian dance music appears in the second act, at a climactic moment in which Natoma, challenged to perform a dagger dance, does so; but during the performance she stabs and kills the villain, Alvarado.
The Fortune Teller whose New York première took place on September 26, 1898, is an operetta that starred Alice Neilsen in the dual role of Musette, a gypsy fortune teller, and Irma, a ballet student. Against a Hungarian setting, the play involves these two girls in love affairs with a Hungarian Hussar and a gypsy musician. Hungarian characters and a Hungarian background allowed Herbert to write music generously spiced with Hungarian and gypsy flavors, music exciting for its sensual appeal. The most famous song from this score is “Gypsy Love Song,” sometimes also known as “Slumber On, My Little Gypsy Sweetheart,” sung by Sandor, the gypsy musician, in tribute to Musette.
Indian Summer: An American Idyll (1919) is a tone picture of Nature which Herbert wrote in two versions, for solo piano, and for orchestra. Twelve years after the composer’s death, Gus Kahn wrote lyrics for its main melody, and for fourteen weeks it was heard on the radio Hit Parade, twice in the Number 1 position.
The Irish Rhapsody for orchestra (1892) is one of several concert works in which Herbert honored the country of his birth. This work is built from several familiar Irish ballads found by the composer in Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies, published in 1807. “Believe Me if All These Endearing Young Charms” comes immediately after a harp cadenza. This is followed by a variation of “The Rocky Road to Dublin,” “To Ladies’ Eyes,” “Thamma Hulla,” “Erin, Oh Erin,” and “Rich and Rare Were the Gems She Wore.” An oboe cadenza then serves as the transition to “St. Patrick’s Day.” The rhapsody ends with “Garry Owen” set against “Erin, Oh Erin” in the bass.
Mlle. Modiste, introduced in New York on December 25, 1905, is the operetta in which Fritzi Scheff, once a member of the Metropolitan Opera, became a star of the popular musical theater. This is also the operetta in which she sang the waltz with which, for the rest of her life, she became identified, “Kiss Me Again.” Fritzi Scheff was cast as Fifi, an employee in a Parisian hat shop. Her lowly station precludes her marriage to the man she loves, Capt. Etienne de Bouvray. An American millionaire becomes interested in her, and provides her with the funds to pursue her vocal studies. Fifi then becomes a famous opera star, thereby achieving both the fame and the fortune she needs to gain Capt. Etienne as a husband.
Early in this operetta, Fifi tries to demonstrate her talent as a singer by performing a number called “If I Were On the Stage,” in which she offers various types of songs, including a polonaise, a gavotte, and a waltz. The waltz part was originally intended by Herbert as a caricature of that kind of dreamy, sentimental music and consisted of the melody of “Kiss Me Again” which he had written some time earlier, in 1903. On opening night the audience liked this part of the number so well, and was so noisy in its demonstration, that Herbert decided to feature it separately and prominently in his operetta, had new sentimental lyrics written for it, and called it “Kiss Me Again.” This, of course, is the most celebrated single number from this operetta, but several others are equally appealing, notably one of Herbert’s finest marches, “The Mascot of the Troop,” another waltz called “The Nightingale and the Star,” and a humorous ditty, “I Want What I Want When I Want It.”
The operetta, Naughty Marietta—first New York performance on November 7, 1910—was set in New Orleans in 1780 when that city was under Spanish rule. The noble lady, Marietta (starring the prima donna, Emma Trentini) had come to New Orleans from Naples to avoid an undesirable marriage. There she meets, falls in love with, and after many stirring adventures wins, Captain Dick Warrington. A basic element of this story is a melody—a fragment of which has come to the heroine in a dream. Marietta promises her hand to anybody who could give her the complete song of which this fragment is a part, and it is Dick Warrington, of course, who is successful. This melody is one of Herbert’s best loved, “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life.” Other favorites from Naughty Marietta are “I’m Falling in Love With Someone,” “Italian Street Song,” the serenade “’Neath the Southern Moon,” and the march, “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp.”
Pan Americana (1901) is a composition for orchestra described by Herbert as a “morceau caractéristique.” He wrote it for the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901 (where President McKinley was assassinated). The three sections are in three different popular styles, the first in American-Indian, the second in ragtime, and the third in Cuban or Spanish.
Punchinello and Yesterthoughts (1900) are two evocative tone pictures originally for piano from a suite of pieces describing the natural beauties of scenes near or at Lake Placid, New York. Herbert orchestrated both these numbers.
The Red Mill, which came to New York on September 24, 1906, was an operetta starring the comedy team of Fred Stone and David Montgomery in a play set in Holland. They are two Americans stranded and penniless at an inn called “The Sign of the Red Mill.” When they discover that little Gretchen is in love with Capt. Doris van Damm and refuses to marry the Governor to whom she is designated by her parents, they come to her assistance. After numerous escapades and antics they help her to win her true lover who, as it turns out, is the heir to an immense fortune. The following are its principal musical episodes: the main love duet, “The Isle of Our Dreams,”; “Moonbeams”; and the comedy song, “Every Day Is Ladies’ Day for Me.”
The Suite of Serenades, for orchestra (1924) was written for the same Paul Whiteman concert of American music at Aeolian Hall on February 12, 1924 in which Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue was introduced. This is a four movement suite which represented Herbert’s only attempt to write directly for a jazz orchestra, and parts of it are characterized by jazz scoring and syncopations. Herbert wrote a second version of this suite for symphony orchestra. In the four movements the composer skilfully simulates four national styles. The first is Spanish, the second Chinese, the third Cuban, and the fourth Oriental.
Another familiar orchestral suite by Herbert is the Suite Romantique (1901). Herbert’s vein for sentimental melody is here generously tapped. The four movements are mood pictures named as follows: “Visions,” “Aubade” (a beautiful solo for the cellos), “Triomphe d’amour” (a glowing love duet), and “Fête nuptiale.”
The Woodland Fancies, for orchestra (1901) also consist of four evocative and pictorial mood pictures, this time inspired by the Adirondack mountains where Herbert maintained a summer home and which he dearly loved. Here the four movements are entitled: “Morning in the Mountains,” “Forest Nymphs,” “Twilight,” and “Autumn Frolics.”
There are individual songs from several other Herbert operettas that are part of the semi-classical repertory in orchestral transcriptions. Among these are: “The Angelus” and the title song from Sweethearts (1913); “I Love Thee, I Adore Thee” which recurs throughout The Serenade (1897); “A Kiss in the Dark” from Orange Blossoms (1922); “Star Light, Star Bright,” a delightful waltz from The Wizard of the Nile (1895); and “Thine Alone” from the Irish operetta, Eileen (1917).