Donor or Patron

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(b New York, Jan 15, 1922; d Poughkeepsie, NY, Feb 16, 1983). American band enthusiast and philanthropist. After attending Pomona College, Claremont, California (BA 1943), he owned and managed an architectural woodworking firm in Poughkeepsie for over 20 years, and later a chain of bowling alleys. An amateur euphonium player, he amassed an encyclopedic collection of band scores, rivaling that of the US Marine band. In conjunction with Commander Donald Stauffer, director of the US Navy Band, he issued a series of 15 recordings made by the band entitled Heritage of the March. Each of these records presented unavailable marches by an American composer on one side, and a European composer on the other. Hoe then invited many American and European service, community, college, and high school bands to make recordings. He provided most of the music from his own collection, prepared liner notes and biographies, financed the recordings, and distributed them, free of charge, to schools, libraries, and radio stations. The initial ...

(b Vienna, March 13, 1741; d Vienna, Feb 20, 1790). Holy Roman Emperor, Archduke of Austria, first son of Maria Theresa and Francis of Lorraine. As a patron of music and supervisor of the court theatres in Vienna, he helped to shape the city’s operatic life. During the first part of his long reign he shared power with Maria Theresa, but even before her death in 1780 he exercised considerable influence over operatic policy. Especially fond of the young Antonio Salieri, Joseph supported him with commissions and recommendations from 1770 onwards.

In the mid-1770s Joseph dismissed the impresario who was struggling to present Italian opera in the court theatres, and transformed the Burgtheater into a national theatre for the performance of spoken plays in German. In 1778 he organized a troupe of German singers to perform Singspiels there and it was for this troupe that Mozart wrote Die Entführung aus dem Serail...

[Lincoln Edward]

(b Rochester, NY, May 4, 1907; d New York, Jan 5, 1996). American impresario, arts patron, writer, editor, and ballet company director. He was the embodiment of a twentieth-century Renaissance man, blessed not only with many diverse talents and interests but also with the financial resources and connections to realize his visions. His achievements spanned the arts of dance, theater, painting, sculpture, photography, film, and literature, but he is perhaps best known for his decades-long association with choreographer George Balanchine and the school and ballet company they founded together.

He was educated at Harvard, earning Bachelor’s (1929) and Master’s (1930) degrees. Although he first saw Anna Pavlova dance in Boston when he was thirteen, his passion for dance did not take fire until he saw Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Europe. Among Diaghilev’s dancers and choreographers was Balanchine, whom he first met in 1933. Balanchine came to the United States at his invitation, and opened the School of American Ballet in New York City in ...

[Yurgis]

(b 1931; d Boston, May 9, 1978). Lithuanian-American architect. In 1947 he emigrated from Lithuania to New York, where he studied architecture at Cooper Union. He opened the AG Gallery at 925 Madison Avenue in 1960 with fellow Lithuanian Almus Salcius. After meeting La Monte Young, he agreed to let Young and Jackson Mac Low produce a series of concerts at the gallery featuring musicians, artists and poets active in the New York avant garde. It was largely through his exposure to Young and his circle that Maciunas became acquainted with radical art.

In 1961, Maciunas moved to Wiesbaden where, in the following year, he founded the Fluxus movement. In a lecture entitled ‘Neo-Dada in Music, Theater, Poetry and Art’ Maciunas declared himself a ‘concrete artist’ who preferred noise to so-called musical sounds. His Carpenter’s Piano Piece for Nam June Paik no.13, in which the performer nails down the keys of a piano, demonstrates the iconoclastic nature of his work. Maciunas believed in art’s potential to transform society and adamantly objected to its institutionalization. His activities outside of the creative arts included an urban redevelopment project in lower-Manhattan that contributed to the growth of the SoHo art community....

(b c1650; d Paris, March 30, 1706). French musical amateur . The son of a Parisian doctor, Mathieu was inducted into the living of Saint-André-des-Arts, Paris, in 1678. In 1685 he commissioned Alexandre Thierry to improve the church organ; the organist was Claude Rachel de Montalan, Molière’s son-in-law. For several years Mathieu presided over weekly concerts which took place in his presbytry in rue du Cimetière-Saint-André (now rue Suger) and were attended by his parishioners, many of whom belonged to the famous families of the parlement. The spacious room on the first floor contained a chamber organ, a harpsichord by Philippe Denis, viols and violins. According to Jean de Serre de Rieux the only vocal music at the concerts was ‘Latin music composed in Italy by the greatest masters since 1650’ (Les dons des enfans de Latone, 1734). Italian composers represented in Mathieu’s 200-item library were G.B. Bassani, Melani, Lorenzani, G.P. Colonna and Foggia. French vocal music included works by Lully, Du Mont, Robert, M.-A. Charpentier, Nicolas Bernier, André Campra and J.-B. Morin. The library also contained instrumental music by Rebel and ‘Italian symphonies’ which may have included sonatas by Corelli. (M. Le Moël: ‘Un foyer d'italianisme à la fin du XVIIe siècle’, ...

(b South Danvers [now in Peabody], MA, Feb 18, 1795; d London, UK, Nov 4, 1869). American philanthropist, active in England. From 1807 he worked in retail stores and dry-goods businesses in New England, Baltimore (with branches in New York and Philadelphia), and Great Britain. After living in Baltimore for twenty-two years (1815–37), he settled in London, establishing the firm of George Peabody & Co. (1843–64), which specialized in foreign exchange and American securities. His business prospered, and he spent most of his fortune in philanthropy; his gifts enabled several institutes, libraries, lyceums, and museums to be established in the United States during the 1850s and 1860s, and he was also a major benefactor of the poor by financing housing in London. On visits to the USA he promoted public education in the southern states, made substantial gifts to museums at Harvard and Yale universities, and founded the Peabody Institute (Peabody, Massachussetts) and the Peabody Academy of Science (Salem, Massachussetts). In Baltimore, he gave $1,400,000 to establish the Peabody Institute in ...

(b Rosmead, Co. Westmeath, Ireland, Jan 14, 1834; d London, May 2, 1897). British civil administrator, music patron and composer. He had a distinguished career in the Colonial Office during which his posts included Governor of Prince Edward Island (1866), Governor of Western Australia (1874–7, 1880–83, 1890–95) and Governor of South Australia (1883–9). In his 20 years of vice-regal representation he acquired a popular reputation among musical and literary circles. He was patron of numerous societies including the Perth Musical Union (1882), Adelaide Quartet Club until 1886, and the Melbourne Metropolitan Liedertafel in 1883, besides lending his active support to numerous composers including Heuzenroeder, Julius Herz and Marshall-Hall, whose appointment to the Ormond Chair of Music at Melbourne University (1870) was largely due to Robinson’s influence with Sir Charles Hallé and the London selection committee.

Unlike that of his predecessors, Robinson’s influence on public concert-giving and musical taste in Australia stemmed from a personal commitment to music rather than social prestige. Having written partsongs and pieces for military band in London under the pseudonym ‘Owen Hope’, he composed several successful songs in Australia including ...

[Montagu, John ]

(b Lackham, Wilts., Nov 3, 1718; d London, April 30, 1792). English statesman and amateur musician . He followed a naval career, served as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1748–51 and 1771–82 and significantly reorganized the administration of the navy; he became embroiled in political conflict as a spokesman for George III, especially during the prosecution of John Wilkes and the American War. After his first period in office, Sandwich turned his energies to the performance of ‘ancient’ music which under his leadership was redefined from music of the 16th century to that two or more decades old. In this he was supported by his secretary, the amateur musician Joah Bates, who was an avid Handelian. While he was patron to the violinist Giardini, Sandwich's main early pursuit was the founding in 1761 of the aristocratic Catch Club, where professional singers performed catches, madrigals and glees, both ancient and modern. In the same period he held regular performances of Handel's oratorios, odes and masques at his estate, Hinchingbrooke, near Huntingdon, and at the parish church in Leicester. Thomas Greatorex, who joined Sandwich's household after a chance meeting in Leicester, assisted at these concerts in ...

(b New York, Jan 26, 1820; d New York, July 21, 1875). American lawyer, musical amateur and diarist , father of George Templeton Strong. He played the piano and the organ as a child and later attended Columbia College; he was admitted to the bar in 1841. In 1869 he founded the New York Church Music Association, which offered public concerts of religious music. He was also an original subscriber of the Philharmonic Symphony Society of New York (founded 1842), of which he was president from 1870 to 1874.

Strong’s diary, with over four million words, confirms him as one of the most comprehensive and important 19th-century commentators on New York life. Along with accounts of personal, local and world affairs, it contains observations on hundreds of musical performances, including orchestral and choral concerts, opera, solo recitals, services at Trinity Church and chamber music. It also describes Strong’s role as an organizer. A conservative idealist, he fought unsuccessfully to excise the music of such composers as Berlioz, Liszt, Robert Schumann and Wagner from Philharmonic programmes in the name of (as he said) ‘fine and great music’. The diary offers a colourful mode of expression, an insider’s view of the politics and economics of musical institutions, and a detailed account of a city’s musical culture....

(b Frankfurt, May 6, 1687; d Frankfurt, April 10, 1769). German amateur musician. He was a member of an old Frankfurt family of prosperous tradespeople. As a student he travelled in the company of his elder brother Zacharias Conrad to Lübeck and then from Hamburg to England where they recorded their impressions of musical performances. Johann Friedrich, the more musical of the two, spent two further years studying in Strasbourg and after graduating in law in 1714 travelled through Switzerland to Italy to gain experience of operatic and concert life there. In Venice, at the S Angelo theatre, he witnessed a performance of L.A. Predieri’s Lucio Papirio during which Vivaldi, who was acting as musical director and leader of the orchestra, played an astonishing cadenza where he ascended so high that, his fingers came, in Uffenbach’s words, ‘within a straw’s breadth of the bridge’. Later in 1715 he went to Paris to receive instruction in lute playing from Gallot; he returned two years later to settle in Frankfurt, where he keenly supported the Frauenstein musical society concerts then directed by Telemann....