The only satisfactory choirs are the mixed choirs of men and women.  Upon them has devolved the cultivation of artistic choral music in our public concert-rooms.  As we know such choirs now, they are of comparatively recent origin, and it is a singular commentary upon the way in which musical history is written, that the fact should have so long been overlooked that the credit of organizing the first belongs to the United States.  A little reflection will show this fact, which seems somewhat startling at first blush, to be entirely natural.  Large singing societies are of necessity made up of amateurs, and the want of professional musicians in America compelled the people to enlist amateurs at a time when in Europe choral activity rested on the church, theatre, and institute choristers, who were practically professionals.

[Sidenote:  Origin of amateur singing societies.]

[Sidenote:  The German record.]

[Sidenote:  American priority.]

[Sidenote:  The American record.]

As the hitherto accepted record stands, the first amateur singing society was the Singakademie of Berlin, which Carl Friedrich Fasch, accompanist to the royal flautist, Frederick the Great, called into existence in 1791.  A few dates will show how slow the other cities of musical Germany were in following Berlin’s example.  In 1818 there were only ten amateur choirs in all Germany.  Leipsic organized one in 1800, Stettin in 1800, Muenster in 1804, Dresden in 1807, Potsdam in 1814, Bremen in 1815, Chemnitz in 1817, Schwaebisch-Hall in 1817, and Innsbruck in 1818.  The Berlin Singakademie is still in existence, but so also is the Stoughton Musical Society in Stoughton, Mass., which was founded on November 7, 1786.  Mr. Charles C. Perkins, historian of the Handel and Haydn Society, whose foundation was coincident with the sixth society in Germany (Bremen, 1815), enumerates the following predecessors of that venerable organization:  the Stoughton Musical Society, 1786; Independent Musical Society, “established at Boston in the same year, which gave a concert at King’s Chapel in 1788, and took part there in commemorating the death of Washington (December 14, 1799) on his first succeeding birthday;” the Franklin, 1804; the Salem, 1806; Massachusetts Musical, 1807; Lock Hospital, 1812, and the Norfolk Musical, the date of whose foundation is not given by Mr. Perkins.

[Sidenote:  Choirs in the West.]

When the Bremen Singakademie was organized there were already choirs in the United States as far west as Cincinnati.  In that city they were merely church choirs at first, but within a few years they had combined into a large body and were giving concerts at which some of the choruses of Handel and Haydn were sung.  That their performances, as well as those of the New England societies, were cruder than those of their European rivals may well be believed, but with this I have nothing to do.  I am simply seeking to establish the priority of the United States in amateur choral culture.  The number of American cities in which oratorios are performed annually is now about fifty.