GERMAN MUSIC. The earliest reference to music among Texas German immigrants dates from 1834, when the elder Robert Justus Klebergqv imported a piano and music books to Harrisburg. In 1837 Mary Austin Holleyqv enjoyed the informal singing of some Germans on a boat trip between Galveston and Houston. Two years later German musical soirées were held at Kessler's Arcade in Houston, and in 1840 Emil Heerbrugger gave recitals on violin, horn, and guitar, with piano accompaniment, at the Capitol.
With colonization by the Adelsvereinqv after 1844, German music began to flourish in Texas, and German musicians became more influential, even in the centers where the population was not primarily German. Johann N. S. Mengerqv was active in San Antonio as a piano teacher in 1847, and Franz Xavier Heilig became a music teacher for the city's public schools in 1853, to be joined later by Christoph Plagge and Henry Grossmann. Likewise Joseph Petmecky, and later Udo Rhodius, J. Messner, and William Besserer taught in Austin, and other Germans taught in Houston, Galveston, Dallas, and other cities. About 1879 Julius Weiss, from Saxony, went to Texarkana, where he taught a young student named Scott Joplin,qv destined to become "King of Ragtime."
Singing was among the earliest leisure activities, first with informal groups in Galveston, Houston, and New Braunfels in the mid-1840s, and then with formal male singing societies, including the San Antonio Männergesang-Verein (1847), New Braunfels Germania (1850), Austin Männerchor (1852), and Houston Männer-Gesangverein. In 1853 the societies held a Sängerfest (singers' festival) in New Braunfels and formed the Texas State Sängerbundqv (singers' league). The German singing societies ultimately became the prime promoters of serious music in Texas before World War I.qv
Other leagues served their respective locales: the Hill Country,qv Gillespie County, Guadalupe Valley, and South Texas. Singing societies existed at one time or another in roughly ninety Texas communities. The oldest surviving singing society is the Beethoven Männerchor (San Antonio), founded in August 1865. Mixed choruses were begun outside of church settings: the New Braunfels Concordia (1860), San Antonio Mendelssohn (1872), Houston Philharmonic Society (1872), and Austin Musical Union (1888), for instance. These often signaled increased participation by non-German Texans and wider musical education throughout the community.
Opera arrived early in Texas in one form or another; Emil Heerbrugger's 1840 Houston recitals contained overtures and potpourris of popular operatic airs. Musical immigrants brought opera scores and selections with them from Europe and often sang them around the family piano. Frederic Law Olmstedqv heard excerpts from Mozart's Don Giovanni during a social gathering in Sisterdale in 1854, and operatic choruses were standard repertoire for singing societies before the Civil War.qv Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz (or extensive portions of it) was reputedly staged by the Casino Clubqv in San Antonio in the late 1850s. Dallas saw a complete local production of Friedrich von Flotow's Martha with piano accompaniment in 1868 and again, with orchestra, in 1875. San Antonio opened its Grand Opera House in 1886 with Gaetano Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia, performed by the Emma Abbott Opera Company, and later witnessed Richard Wagner's Lohengrin in the same theater. The final state Sängerfest (1916) before World War I included extensive selections from Wagner's Die Meistersinger, which was not performed whole in Texas until 1974.
Musical instruments among the Germans in early Texas were often of high quality: Heinrich Backofen, son of a prominent Darmstadt clarinet maker, brought "a whole chest" of instruments with him to Bettina in 1847. A piano trio consisting of the violinist Listich, cellist Scheliche and pianist C. D. Adolph Douaiqv was active in San Antonio and New Braunfels in 1852-53. Bands ranged from a single fiddler playing for dances in the 1840s to full concert ensembles by the 1880s and were often connected with the conductor's teaching activities, either in school or private studio. The German band tradition survives today in the American Legionqv bands of Seguin and New Braunfels, as well as the Beethoven Concert Band of San Antonio. In the 1870s the Germans were responsible for the first symphony orchestrasqv in Texas.
The Texas German population included a number of composers. Gottfried Joseph Petmecky (New Braunfels), Adolph Douai (San Antonio), Simon Menger (San Antonio), and C. Wilke (La Grange) all wrote works for male chorus in the 1850s. The last also composed and arranged the music for Texas Fahrten, a song pageant written by Friedrich Hermann Seele.qv Adolph Fuchsqv wrote and composed several songs in the 1840s and later. Menger wrote a few piano pieces, as did Gabriel Katzenberger and John M. Steinfeldtqv in the 1880s and 1890s. W. C. A. Thielepapeqv of San Antonio left twenty-seven compositions dated from 1840 to 1899, and conductors Carl Venth and Arthur Claassenqqv were already noted composers when they arrived in Texas during the decade before World War I. Texas maintained its German music heritage into the twenty-first century. Numerous festivals, including Wurstfestqv in New Braunfels, Oktoberfest in Fredericksburg, and Maifest in Brenham, paid homage to German music and dance.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Theodore Albrecht, German Singing Societies in Texas (Ph.D. dissertation, North Texas State University, 1975). Theodore Albrecht, "Heinrich Backofen, Sohn: Musical Instrument Maker of Darmstadt and Bettina," The Clarinet, May 1976. Theodore Albrecht, "The Music Libraries of the German Singing Societies in Texas, 1850-1855," Notes: The Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association 31 (March 1975). Ottilie Fuchs Goeth, Was Grossmutter erzählt (San Antonio: Passing Show Printing, 1915; trans. Irma Goeth Guenther as Memoirs of a Texas Pioneer Grandmother, Austin, 1969; rpt., Burnet, Texas: Eakin Press, 1982). Oscar Haas, A Chronological History of the Singers of German Song in Texas (New Braunfels, Texas, 1948). Hermann Seele, Travels in Texas, trans. Theodore Gish (Austin: Nortex, 1985). Lota M. Spell, Music in Texas (Austin, 1936; rpt., New York: AMS, 1973).
Theodore Albrecht
