Category Archives: George William Warren

Independence Day 2021

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As we celebrate Independence Day, I thought everyone might enjoy seeing this sheet music cover of arrangements of two patriotic songs for piano. They are the work of St. Paul’s own George William Warren, our organist and choirmaster from 1848 until 1860 (excepting the ten months that he played at Second Presbyterian).

George William Warren’s arrangement of two patriotic songs (1861)

These arrangements were published in 1861, the year after Warren left St. Paul’s to take the same position at Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn. 1861 was also the first year of the Civil War, and in the image we see a Union soldier boldly displaying the Stars and Stripes. In this period, the United States did not have an official national anthem; “Hail Columbia” and “The Star Spangled Banner” were both popular on patriotic occasions. “Hail Columbia” is still used today as the Vice President’s ceremonial entrance march.

While Warren is the most prolific and best-known 19th century musician and composer to be associated with St. Paul’s, one rarely sees his name today. You will, however, find him in our hymnal, as the composer of “National Hymn,” the melody to which we sing “God of Our Fathers.” Is it coincidental that the accompaniment to “National Hymn” starts with a fanfare reminiscent of the ruffles and flourishes that traditionally precede “Hail Columbia”?[1]

[1] Warren composed “National Hymn” in 1892 as a contribution to the Episcopal hymnal then in preparation. It was first sung by a quartet and large chorus on October 10, 1892 at St. Thomas Church during a Columbian service, celebrating the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in North America. The setting was published in The Churchman that same year, and appeared in The Church Hymnal published in 1894. See “Beginning the Festival: Thanksgiving Services in the Churches” New York Tribune 8 Oct 1892, 1; “St. Thomas’ Church,” New York Herald 10 Oct 1892; “In the Churches: Special Services Appropriate to the Anniversary—Many Out-of-town Visitors” New York Sun 10 Oct 1892; “The Episcopal National Hymn” Buffalo News 24 Dec 1892, 1; “Music,” The Churchman, volume 67, number 7 (18 Feb 1893), 244.

In a 1901 letter, Daniel C. Roberts, the author of “Faith of Our Fathers,” wrote that Warren composed the melody as a member of a two-person committee charged with selecting “a hymn for the centennial celebration of the Constitution.” Could the Rev. Mr. Roberts have misremembered, or been misinformed? No contemporary account mentions a connection to the centennial of the Constitution’s adoption, which had occurred four years earlier, in 1888. Roberts’ letter is transcribed in Louis F. Benson, Studies of Familiar Hymns, Second Series (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1923), 122.

Master Burke Comes to Albany

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Albany had a rich cultural life in the first half of the 19th century, as business from the Erie Canal made the city a hub of commercial and artistic life. I’ve written about some of the famous actors who appeared in the Albany Theatre, and most recently about composer and virtuoso pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s friendship with George William Warren, St. Paul’s organist and choirmaster from 1848 until 1860. But there was another international star whose strong ties to the city of Albany have become obscured by time.

Albany Argus, June 1860

When George William Warren resigned his position at St. Paul’s in 1860, heading for his new position in Brooklyn, his native city could not bid him farewell quietly. A huge “Farewell and Complimentary Concert” was organized in Warren’s honor, to be held June 28, 1860 in conjunction with the dedication of Tweddle Hall, on the northwest corner of State and North Pearl Streets.

A highlight of the event was the Dedication Address, written and recited by William D. Morange. This was an extended verse oration, beginning with a recital of Albany’s early history, and reaching its climax with a description of the city’s glories in the mid-19th century. Among those mentioned, of course, was the night’s honoree:

Here Warren – gifted George, the child of art
The genial artist, with the mammoth heart –
Whose soul all music, when his boyish hand,
Tinkled the triangle in Joe Burke’s band,
Is brimming o’er with jolly music now,
When artist laurels deck his manly brow –
Here Warren lives, whom all the world admires,
Whose very presence pleases and inspires.

William D. Morange, A Poem Delivered at the Complimentary Concert to Geo. Wm. Warren (Albany: Munsell & Rowland, 1860), 13.
Cover of George Wm. Warren’s “Song of the Brook”

Who, I wondered, was Joe Burke? And what this this band in which a youthful Warren performed? We have another clue. In 1865, Warren dedicated his “Song of the Brook: Pastorale for the Piano Forte” with the words “Homage from an old student to Joseph Burke.” We know that Warren had very little formal musical education, so discovering one of his teachers is exciting. But it is far more interesting to find an international star who enriched Albany’s cultural life.

Joseph Burke as Teddy O’Rourke (credit: University of Illinois Theatrical Print Collection)

When Joseph Burke first visited Albany in 1831, the thirteen year old was already an experienced public performer. Master Burke (as he was then styled) had been playing the violin since age 3, and had appeared in theaters in Great Britain and Europe since age 5, acting in roles usually reserved for adults. Born in Ireland, Burke was brought to this country by his parents in 1830. He first appeared in the Albany Theatre on June 20, 1831, acting in two plays and conducting the orchestra in an overture between the plays. During the 1830s, Burke appeared four additional times on the stage of the Albany Theatre, and developed close friendships here.[1]

Master Joseph Burke (credit: Furness Theatrical Images Collection)

Burke acted and played across the United States until 1838, when he abruptly left the stage. We do not know why Burke quit acting, but his impresario father may no longer have been able to market a man of age twenty as a child prodigy. There are also clues that Joseph’s father had lived extravagantly on his son’s income, and may have amassed considerable debt. Certainly, in later life Joseph Burke adamantly refused to discuss his time on the stage.[2] No matter the reason, in 1840 Joseph Burke settled in Albany, and began to study law in the offices of William L. Marcy, the former governor of New York.

While Joseph Burke gave up acting in 1840, he did not give up music. In addition to his law studies, he performed on the violin, conducted and (as we have seen) taught music. Burke was a force in forming and developing the Concordia Society, an amateur orchestra that played four concerts a year in Albany between 1840 and 1844. This, apparently, is the “band” in which George William Warren played. Burke was the orchestra’s leader (that is, concertmaster) for the first season, and also its conductor for the remaining three seasons. He performed solos at each concert, and routinely received rave reviews from local music critics.[3]

Joseph Burke (credit: University of Illinois Theatrical Print Collection)

Although he was admitted to the bar, Burke never practiced law. Instead, in 1844 he decided to further his musical career. He traveled to Belgium, where he studied with the great violinist and composer, Charles Auguste de Bériot. Returning to this country in 1845, Burke intended to give his grand first concert in New York City, but he was convinced to perform it first in Albany by a letter he received signed by forty-three prominent Albanians, the list headed by Thomas W. Olcott, Gideon Hawley, John Van Buren and Thurlow Weed. This distinguished group wrote that they:

“feel that a claim upon you, arising from intimacy and personal friendship formed during your long residence in this city, warrant them in soliciting you to modify your arrangements so far as to make your first appearance before an Albany audience”[4]

Responding to this heartfelt plea, Burke agreed,

“[A]s I admit with pride and pleasure the justice of what you are pleased to call your ‘claim’ upon me I without hesitation accede to your flattering request.”[5]

Burke then set off on a series of successful concert tours across the United States. In 1850, he signed a contract with P.T. Barnum to perform with soprano Jenny Lind on her American tours.[6] Rumor has it that he fell deeply in love with Jenny Lind, but was never able to express his feelings to her. When she married another man, Burke was heart-broken and never married.[7] He lived the rest of his life in New York City, performing and teaching violin, while spending his summers at his farm in Batavia, New York. A highlight of Burke’s career was the United States premier of the Mendelssohn violin concerto, which he performed with the New York Philharmonic on November 24, 1849[8].

Burke’s last concert in Albany was in 1859, but he continued to visit the city regularly. When he died in 1902, the Albany Argus published a lengthy obituary, recalling in detail his connections to the city. And Burke clearly retained an affection for this city and its people. Among his papers was found a “very carefully treasured” copy of that 1845 letter, begging him to perform his first concert following his return to Europe in this city of Albany.[9]

[1] Joseph Burke’s first engagement at the Albany Theatre extended from June into early July 1831. Subsequent appearances were in July 1833, February 1834, December 1836 and October 1837.

[2] The pianist and composer Richard Hoffman, said of his close friend, “After he gave up the stage, which was in the thirties, he could never bear to refer to the time when he was an actor. As soon as he ceased to be a child and to act as a child phenomenon, he had a disgust for the theatre.” “Joseph Burke’s Varied Life,” Sun and New York Press 26 Jan 1902, 32. And in 1879, when Henry P. Phelps wrote Burke, asking for his recollections of his time on the Albany stage, he responded, “There is nothing of any possible interest in the way of personal incident or reminiscence, during my residence in Albany, that I recollect, to furnish you with. Perhaps some of ‘those who still remember me’ may, but I doubt it.” H.P. Phelps, Players of a Century (Albany: Joseph McDonough, 1880), 153-156.

[3] The group’s last concert for which I can find a notice was 7 Feb 1844. There is no further mention in local papers after that date, or any explanation of its fate.

[4] “Mr. Joseph Burke,” Argus 25 Nov 1845, 2.

[5] “Mr. Joseph Burke”.

[6] Native Albanian John Underner, St. Paul’s organist from 1846 until 1847, was Lind’s accompanist on these American tours.

[7] This story of unrequited love is gracefully told in Carl Carmer, “The Irish Wonder and the Swedish Nightingale,” in Dark Trees to the Wind (New York: William Sloane Associates, 1949), 151-165.

[8] A copy of the concert program may be seen at https://archives.nyphil.org/index.php/artifact/e82e06bd-9340-4831-9a29-85c1ea8767df-0.1

[9] “Why He Liked the Tribune,” New York Daily Tribune, 21 Jan 1902, 10.

George Wm. Warren’s “The Andes: Marche di Bravura”

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In 1860, George William Warren resigned as St. Paul’s organist and choirmaster, ending a 13-year association with the church. He accepted a similar position at Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn, where he continued and strengthened his long friendship with artist Frederic E. Church and piano virtuoso and composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk.

Church was in New York City until 1861, but even after his move to the future site of Olana, he traveled frequently to the city and maintained many ties to the city by mail and telegraph[1]. Warren must have profited by Church’s role on powerful funding organizations there.[2] Of Gottschalk, who was also in New York after an extended tour of South America, Warren said that after the move “for a few years I was more intimate with him than ever before.”[3]

Louis Moreau Gottschalk and George Wm. Warren, Saratoga Springs, 1864. The seated man may be pianist Harry Sanderson, with whom they concertized that summer (credit: J. Paul Getty Museum)

Warren’s strengthened ties with both Church and Gottschalk are exemplified in Warren’s composition “The Andes,” honoring Frederic E. Church’s masterpiece “The Heart of the Andes.” Gottschalk then helped Warren to create a stirring two-piano version that the two performed in four concerts in Brooklyn and Manhattan during 1863.

The Heart of the Andes

Following a sketching trip to South America in 1857, Church had begun work on “The Heart of the Andes” in his New York City studio. Working on this massive painting seems to have taken all the artist’s energy. In late 1858, an arts columnist reported, “Mr. Church will have but little leisure to receive visitors at his studio, and desires to be freed from unnecessary interruption.”[4] One visitor, however, seems to have been welcomed: George William Warren remembered, “I was with him many times when he painted the ‘Andes’”.[5]

Frederic E. Church’s “The Heart of the Andes” (credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art)

We do not know when Warren first saw the completed work. It was first displayed during April and May 1859 in Manhattan, and then went on an extended tour of London and the United States,[6] returning to the United States in early 1861. Warren may have seen it in April 1861, when it was displayed in Lowe’s Building at the corner of Court and Joralemon Streets in Brooklyn, a few blocks from Holy Trinity Church, where Warren was organist.[7] Gottschalk’s biographer says that both Warren and Gottschalk viewed the painting at Goupil’s gallery in Manhattan. This must have been in April 1862, the only time in this period that the painting was displayed at Goupil’s.[8]

This display in spring 1862 was to be the painting’s last public appearance for some time. Frederic Church had earlier sold the painting to William Tilden Blodgett for a then astounding figure of $10,000. After the display at Goupil’s, it was delivered to Blodgett, who installed it in a dining room especially designed to show off the work.[9]

George Warren reported a dramatic scene in that dining room at a dinner party he and Gottschalk attended. The event was probably a celebration of the installation of “The Heart of the Andes.” In response to a criticism of American music by an English nobleman, Gottschalk improvised a rousing version of George Root’s “Battle Cry of Freedom.” Warren describes the reaction of the attendees:

I never heard anything like it, and never will again; for Liszt himself could not have appreciated the situation, and Liszt is not Creole-American. The effect was earthquakean almost. These men of art are enthusiastic; and they were frantic. The uproar could have been heard a mile. Gottschalk was almost killed with embraces, – and the gentleman from England had departed.[10]

The Andes: Marche di Bravura

Warren later reported that his enthusiasm for the painting led him to write “some music which is published for the Piano – with an illustration (by him [Church]) in the title.”[11] This is “The Andes: Marche di Bravura, Homage to Church’s Picture, ‘The Heart of the Andes’,” published late in 1863.[12] The cover illustration is included in the catalog of Church’s works, under the title “Andean Snow Peak.”[13]

Like all of Warren’s other published piano pieces, “The Andes” first appeared in print as a work for a single instrument. It is certainly possible that it was composed in that form, but, as we will see, it first performed publicly as a work for two pianos.

Cover to George Wm. Warren’s, “The Andes: Marche di Bravura, Homage to Church’s Picture, ‘The Heart of the Andes'”

We do not know when Warren wrote the piece. He could have composed it as early as 1859, as he watched Church paint. Or, as S. Frederick Starr implies, could it have been written soon after he and Gottschalk viewed the painting at Goupil’s in the spring of 1862?[14] A third timing for the composition is suggested by Robert Offergeld, who describes the work as “polemical” and suggests that it was written as a response to the event in Blodgett’s dining room. Like Gottschalk’s improvisation on “Battle Cry of Freedom,” “[i]t is a spirited march against the Philistines for use as propaganda for the American music party.”[15]

Warren’s composition “The Andes” was first performed publicly in the spring of 1863 at Gottschalk’s Grand Concert in the Brooklyn Academy on March 28, 1863 with Warren and Gottschalk as the duo pianists.[16] That first performance was enthusiastically reviewed in the New York Times: “This [“The Andes”] was most heartily encored, and will by no means damage the already high appreciation in which Mr. Warren is held in Brooklyn.”[17]

But all reviews were not so positive. On its first page, a Boston newspaper printed a review of the March concert signed “Blott,” describing “The Andes” as “a trashy sort of March for two pianos, filled with polka-like reminiscences.”[18]

When the concert was repeated April 7 at Irving Hall in Brooklyn[19], “Blott” again picked up his pen and dipped it in acid. At the Irving Hall concert, Gottschalk, he wrote, “has also played a pack of trash called “March in Homage to Church’s Picture ‘Heart of the Andes’ ” (for two pianos), with the composer, a Mr. Geo. Wm. Warren, who is one of the most clownish of pianists when compared – as of course he had to be – with the polished Gottschalk.”[20]

This critique reminds us of a Troy critic almost a decade earlier who described Warren’s “fanciful and somewhat comic style” of improvisation[21], but “Blott” may have been writing more out of jealousy than impartial musical judgment. “Blott” was the pseudonym of Charles Jerome Hopkins, an aspiring pianist and composer starting a career in Brooklyn at the same time as Warren.[22]

Gottschalk and Warren repeated the piece two additional times that year: on November 7 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music[23] and November 9 at Irving Hall.[24] As far as we know, these four were the only performances of the version for two pianos.

In all advertisements for this two-piano version, Warren is named as the composer. But the fact that Gottschalk played in all four public performances has led some to surmise that Gottschalk had a hand in either the composition of the original work or the creation of the two-piano version. Robert Offergeld makes the most dramatic claim, writing that after Warren composed the piece “Gottschalk promptly made a thunderous two-piano version of it.”[25] Starr is less definite, saying only that Warren composed the two-piano version, “apparently with Gottschalk’s involvement.”[26]

Louis Moreau Gottschalk and George William Warren, Saratoga Springs 1864 (credit: Gottschalk Collection, New York Public Library)

The work for duo pianos was never published and I wonder if it was ever written out in that form. Given both pianists’ skill at improvisation, it seems likely that large parts were improvised in these early performances. I can imagine the two collaborating with only a brief sketch of the work before them, sharing improvisational riffs and playing off of the other’s ideas. If so, each of the four joint performances may have been different, each a joyous and fresh take on Warren’s original sketch.

[1] Gerald L. Carr, “Frederic Edwin Church as a Public Figure,” in Franklin Kelly and Gerald L. Carr, The Early Landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church, 1845 – 1854 (Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum, 1987), 14

[2] “Church was also extremely well connected: his friends included some of the richest and most powerful figures in New York, and he sat on several artistic and philanthropic committees including the founding trustees of Metropolitan Museum.” Caroly Troyen “Washington: Frederic Edwin Church,” Burlington Magazine, January 1990, 70-72, quoted in Bridget Falconer-Salkeld, “Louis Moreau Gottschalk: Evidence for the Dedication of ‘Adieu funèbre’,” American Music, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Fall, 2007), 357.

[3] Octavia Hensel (pseudonym of Mary Alice Ives Seymour), Life and Letters of Louis Moreau Gottschalk (Boston: Oliver Ditson and Company, 1870), 208.

[4] “Fine Arts,” New York Evening Post 15 Nov 1858, 2.

[5] 29 May 1900 letter from Warren to Isabel Charlotte Church. Courtesy of Olana State Historic Site, New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. The full relevant portion reads: “I was with him many times when he painted the ‘Andes’ & my enthusiasm made me venture some music which is published for the Piano – with an illustration (by him) in the title & which I will have mailed to you in a few days. I have many letters from him. Some of the most valuable I had to part with (to autograph seekers) etc, etc. I am sure that the Dudley Warner’s proposed volume will be interesting and most valuable.”

[6] The first classified advertisements appeared in New York Evening Express 29 Apr 1859 page 2 and New York Tribune 29 Apr 1859 page 1. The final insertion (“Will Close This Day”) is New York Tribune 23 May 1859 page 2. Church’s agent, John McClure, had originally intended to display the painting at Lyric Hall [see classified advertisements, New York Tribune 25 Apr 1859 page 2 and 27 Apr 1859 page 2]. But gas lighting there made viewing the painting so difficult that after a single day McClure and Church moved the painting to the Studio Building, where it could be illuminated by a skylight. See Kevin J. Avery, “’The Heart of the Andes’ Exhibited: Frederic E. Church’s Window on the Equatorial World” The American Journal of Art, volume 18, number 1 (Winter, 1986), 52-72. Gerald L. Carr includes a photograph of one of the Studio Building shop-window sign in The Early Landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church, 15.

[7] See advertisements in New York Herald 12 Apr 1861, 17 Apr 1861; New York World 27 Apr 1861, 29 Apr 1861, 30 Apr 1861, 1 May 1861.

[8] S. Frederick Starr, Bamboula!: The Life and Times of Louis Moreau Gottschalk (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 355, citing The New York Times 1 Mar 1863. This reference is clearly an error: there is no mention of the painting having been displayed at Goupil’s in the New York Times for that date or elsewhere during early 1863. There are, on the other hand, frequent references to a display there in late March through early May 1862. See, for instance, “Amusements This Evening,” New York Times 29 Mar 1862 page 7 and 31 Mar 1862, page 4. The “Final Exhibition” of the work was advertised in the New York Tribune 1 May 1862, page 7.

[9] “Paintings,” Springfield Republican (Springfield, Massachusetts), 28 Mar 1863, 2.

[10] Hensel, 208-209. S. Frederick Starr identifies the nobleman and provides important additional context in Bamboula!, 355-356.

[11] 29 May 1900 letter from Warren to Isabel Charlotte Church. Courtesy of Olana State Historic Site, New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.

[12] Warren inscribed Church’s copy on November 12, 1863.

[13] “Andean Snow Peak,” #729 in Gerald L. Carr, Frederic Edwin Church: Catalogue Raisonné of Works of Art at Olana State Historic Site (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 507.

[14] Starr, 355.

[15] Robert Offergeld, liner notes for The Wind Demon, Ivan Davis, piano, New World Records compact disc 80257-2, 9-10.

[16] The 28 Mar 1863 concert at the Brooklyn Academy was advertised in New York Herald 27 Mar 1863 and 28 Mar 1863; announced New York World 28 Mar 1863; previewed in Brooklyn Daily Eagle 28 Mar 1863; reviewed New York Times 30 Mar 1863, Brooklyn Daily Eagle 30 Mar1863.

[17] “Amusements,” New York Times, 30 Mar 1863. In another slight aimed at Warren, “Blott” also remarked that during this concert Gottschalk “was recalled after every piece excepting the ‘Heart of the Andes.’”

[18] “Letter from Our New York Art Correspondent,” Boston Evening Transcript 3 Apr 1863.

[19] The 7 Apr 1863 concert in Irving Hall, Manhattan “First Grand Concert Third Series of Mr. L. M. Gottschalk” was  previewed in Brooklyn Daily Eagle 3 Apr 1863; advertised New York Herald 2, 3, 5, 6 Apr 1863, New York World 6, 7 Apr 1863; announced New York World 7 Apr 1863; reviewed New York World 10 Apr 1863

A broadside for the concert is reproduced in Thomas Nelson, George Wm. Warren: Bridging the Sacred and Secular in Nineteenth-Century American Music (Albany: Albany Institute of History & Art, 2010), 25. The bottom of the broadside mentions the next concert: “Gottschalk’s Second Grand Concert” on 9 Apr 1863.

The New York World 10 Apr 1863 review specifically mentions Warren and Gottschalk performing “The Andes.” It also refers to a repeat of the concert “last night” (9 Apr, “Second Grand Concert”), but it is not clear if the march was performed again at that concert. “The Andes” is not mentioned in reviews of “Third Grand Concert” 11 Apr 1863 [New York Evening Press 11 Apr 1863, New York Tribune 11 Apr 1863, New York World 11 Apr 1863, New York World 13 Apr 1863]

[20] “From Our N.Y. Musical Correspondent,” Boston Evening Transcript 14 Apr 1863, 1.

[21] Letter to the editor, signed “Philomel,” Musical World, volume 10, number 9 (28 Oct 1854), 102.

[22] “Blott” is identified in correspondence (signed “Jacques”) published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle 22 Apr 1863. Hopkins advertised a concert of his own on 19 May 1863 in the 14, 15, 16 and 19 May 1863 issues of Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Hopkins gave 21 and 24 Oct concerts with Gottschalk, advertised in Brooklyn Daily Eagle 10 and 21 Oct 1863.

[23] The 7 Nov 1863 concert in the Brooklyn Academy of Music was advertised in Brooklyn Daily Eagle 3 Nov 1863, 5 Nov 1863, 6 Nov 1863 and 7 Nov 1863; previewed in Brooklyn Daily Eagle 6 Nov 1863; announced New York Tribune 6 Nov 1863; reviewed Brooklyn Daily Eagle 9 Nov 1863.

[24] A broadside for the 9 Nov 1863 concert in Irving Hall, Manhattan (“Grand Gottschalk Concert for the Benefit of the Rose Hill Ladies’ Soldiers Relief Association.” is reproduced in Thomas Nelson, George Wm. Warren: Bridging the Sacred and Secular in Nineteenth-Century American Music (Albany: Albany Institute of History & Art, 2010), 25.

[25] Offergeld, 10.

[26] Starr, 355.

Crotchets and Quavers

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George William Warren

When the Albany Morning Express announced George William Warren’s marriage in September 1858, the newspaper mentioned neither his profession, nor his position as St. Paul’s organist and choirmaster. The only identification given is a nickname, “Seven Octave.” Apparently, this was identification enough for their readers, but it means nothing to us. The standard concert grand piano in the mid-nineteenth century had a span of seven octaves. But why would the newspaper identify Warren in such a way?[1]

This question was answered when I chanced on a weekly column published between 1856 and 1858 in the Albany Morning Times. Titled “Crotchets and Quavers,” the column covers Albany music and artistic scene in a lively, gossipy style. And each column is signed “Seven Octave.”

Isabella Hinckley (credit: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution)

Even without the Morning Express identification, there could be little doubt that George William Warren is the author of “Crotchets and Quavers.” He himself is frequently mentioned, including his concerts, organ exhibitions and the piano juries on which he sat. There is frequent mention of organs and church music, particularly at St. Paul’s and Second Presbyterian, the two churches in which Warren played in this period. And many of the posts relate to Warren’s closest friends: Erastus Dow Palmer, Frederic Edwin Church and Louis Moreau Gottschalk. Seven Octave also frequently updates Albanians on the European operatic careers of Warren’s former soloists at St. Paul’s: Lucy Grant Eastcott (now styled Madame Escott), Henry Squires and Isabella Hinckley.

Rock of Ages by George William Warren

And Warren himself confirms that he used the pen name. After moving to Brooklyn in 1860, Warren began writing dispatches signed “Jem Baggs” in the “Musical Correspondence” column of Dwight’s Journal of Music. In the last of these dispatches, he wrote, “We have written many indifferent gossiping musical letters in our day, and were last known in your paper as Jem Baggs. We like our first name better, and with your permission will hereafter be again a Seven Octave.”[2] Although Warren seems to have intended to continue with his old pen name, this is the last reference to Seven Octave that I can find in Dwight’s Journal.

The scholar S. Frederick Starr found several of these “Crotchets and Quavers” columns pasted (without identification of its source) into a scrapbook belonging to Warren’s friend Louis Moreau Gottschalk. In his Gottschalk biography, Starr mentions four items from the column, all matching those in the Albany Morning Times issue of 24 May 1856.[3] Starr assumed that Gottschalk was the author of the column primarily because Gottschalk later published five compositions under the name Seven Octaves (note the plural). It seems likely that Gottschalk borrowed the pseudonym from Warren. This must be what Gottschalk meant when he wrote in November 1864 that he was “composing five new contraband pieces that are to be published under the aegis of a borrowed paternity.”[4]

“Crotchets and Quavers” is particularly interesting because it was written during an eventful period in George William Warren’s life: his departure from St. Paul’s after eight years as organist and choirmaster, his year at Second Presbyterian, and his return to St. Paul’s. Items in these columns clarify Warren’s reasons for these changes, as well as giving us a detailed look at artistic life in Albany in the period.

For a taste of the content, here a sample of items from “Crotchets and Quavers” for May 24, 1856. Sections quoted by S. Frederick Starr are in bold. Over the next few months, I will post excerpts from all the “Crotchets and Quavers” columns I have located, with notes on their significance for our understanding of both George William Warren and of life in Albany in the 1850s.

Madame Escotte (Mrs. Eastcott that used to be) is singing Verdi’s Traviata in English, at Drury Lane, London.

Speaking of Madame La Grange reminds us that her concert with Gottschalk in this city was a great success in every way. A large and brilliant looking audience graced the occasion and it was decidedly the most elegant musical affair we have ever had in this city. Madame La Grange looked, sang, and was dressed superbly, and displayed wonders of vocalization, such as we never beard, even from Jenny Lind or Madame Sontag. Gottschalk played as only he can play, on two admirable Grands, one of which (the Cecilian) was particularly delightful and seemed to suit him to perfection. The audience were very enthusiastic and the illustrious artistes were rewarded with rapturous applause and beautiful flowers. but [sic] we will not particularize, as we expect a fine critique from the Albany correspondent of the Musical Review, who signs himself Allegro.

The Buckley’s sang well and the Theatre was crowded at their performances. Their burlesques are very funny and the music of them is very enjoyable. Mr. Percival has an admirable voice and Frederick Buckley’s violin playing was a great deal too good for the audiences, who had not the manners to listen to that part of the entertainment which pleased good taste.

We are happy to know that Mr. Cherbuliez, the splendid Basso at St. Peter’s, is receiving many pupils both in singing and French, and he is giving great satisfaction as a teacher. Gottschalk, who lived in Paris for ten years, says his accent is admirable, and we are right glad to have such a musician, linguist and excellent gentlemen to live with us.

Miss Hinkley is going to Italy in about a year, where a thorough course of study will make her one of the great singers for the future.

When people build such high structures as the bank building in Broadway, why do they not put some little finish to the side walls, which in this case show almost as much as the fronts. This is a great fault in our city buildings, which a little paint might very much improve.

The Delevan House improvements are nearly completed, and when we say that it will be the most beautiful [sic] arranged and tastefully ornamented hotel in America, we hardly do it justice.

Domestic musical news is scarce. LaGrange and Gottschalk have come and gone, but the memory of that superb concert will be meat and drink to some folks for a long time.

Boardman, Gray & Co. are making a grand piano, which we soon hope to hear.

Miss Sullivan, the principal Soprano at the cathedral, has an excellent voice, which she uses with much Skill. By the way — the new Trombone stop in Carmody’s Organ is very fine and adds much to the power of the instrument.

Speaking of organs, the one in St. Paul’s Church is miserably out of order, and that bothers – Seven Octave

[1] “Matrimonial Items,” Albany Morning Express 17 Sep 1858, 3.

[2] “Musical Correspondence,” Dwight’s Journal of Music, volume 23 (17 Oct 1863), 119-120.

[3] S. Frederick Starr, Bamboula! (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 234-235.

[4] Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Notes of a Pianist, ed. Jeanne Behrend (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006), 230. The entry is dated 1 Nov 1864.

George William Warren’s friendship with “the highly gifted Gottschalk”

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George William Warren

At St. Paul’s, we remember George William Warren as our organist and choirmaster for 13 years, and certainly as our best known church musician during the 19th century. But during his years as an active musician in Albany (1843 – 1860), George William Warren was busy and creative on a wide scale outside the church: he organized concerts, participated in trials of new organs around the region, published many compositions, both religious and secular, taught private music lessons, organized singing classes and launched the careers of several opera singers, including Lucy Eastcott, Henry Squires and Isabella Hinckley.

This is not a bad record for a young man – Warren was only 32 years old when he left Albany – who has been described as a “self-taught musician.”[1] You might think that Warren was something of a big fish in a small pond, isolated from the larger currents of musical and artistic life in the United States. But it is mistake to think of mid-19th century Albany as an artistic backwater, or of Warren as isolated. This city was the home of or host to several major artists, with frequent connections to the larger artistic world, particularly in New York City. Musicians and artists frequently visited here from New York, and news arrived daily in newspapers and journals carried on Hudson steamers and the railroad. George William Warren was part of that busy exchange.

Erastus Dow Palmer (credit: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution)

During his years in Albany, Warren developed close friendships with two nationally known figures. In Albany, he met sculptor Erastus Dow Palmer. Palmer’s daughter remembered that Warren was “an intimate friend and frequent guest in our house.”[2] In an 1884 letter of introduction, Palmer wrote “Mr. Warren has been and is one of my dearest friends for thirty years.”[3] And Warren’s 1857 composition “Song of the Robin” was “[d]edicated to his distinguished friend, E.D. Palmer of Albany.”

 

 

 

 

Frederic Edwin Church (credit: Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, Allen County Public Library)

By the mid-1850s, Warren had also become close to New York City artist Frederic Edwin Church[4], then at the peak of his career as a landscape painter.[5] In a lively correspondence in 1856 – 1857, Church addressed one of his letters to “My dear friend Warren,” and another “To my amiable George.”[6] And Warren’s 1857 composition “Cobweb Tarantella” was “[d]edicated to his eminent friend, Frederick E. Church of New York.”

Louis Moreau Gottschalk (credit: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution)

This creative trio of American artists expanded in October 1855 when Louis Moreau Gottschalk, the internationally known piano virtuoso and composer, arrived for a concert in Albany. Palmer and Warren both attended the concert[7], and Warren subsequently provided Church with a letter of introduction to Gottschalk.[8] An “enduring close friendship”[9] developed among the artists, enhancing the creative efforts of all four.

 

George William Warren met Gottschalk two days before the concert, when the two met in private. In a contribution to a local newspaper, signed only with his initials, Warren described his initial reaction:

Gottschalk’s Concert – For the first time I have heard Gottschalk! He was so kind as to play for me on Saturday morning for more than an hour but I can but attempt to describe the effect he produces. I can only say that the great expectations I have formed of his wonder[f]ul ability were more than twice realized. All the extravagant praises which we have seen of his European triumphs are no ideal words, and he comes up to them all, and sets adjectives in despair.

Let every music student, and, in fact, why will not every person who owns a piano, go to his Concert this evening, and hear what a glorious instrument it becomes under the matchless fingers of this greatest of players yet heard in this country? Yes! You may have heard [Maurice] Strakosch, and [Marie] Jaell and [William] Mason, but there is something in Gottschalk which places him at the head of this most brilliant art; and what we say does not make us like Strakosch, Jaell or Mason the less, only the highly gifted Gottschalk the more.

Go then, one and all, and see if this is not the truth.

G.W.W.[10]

Years later, Warren described the effect of that first hearing, and of the power of Gottschalk’s  personality:

Gottschalk came to Albany (where I was then living) in October, 1855. I then heard him for the first time, and succumbed at once. It was love at first sight, – love for the man, his genius, his most extraordinary playing, and the utter (inner) simplicity of character, which I discovered at a glance; although many, who were never willing to do him justice, saw only the outside man in evening dress, decorated with medals, and doing his utmost to please a promiscuous audience. They knew not Gottschalk in private life, at the piano (he was always there), with a few warm friends listening, — the tender-hearted, sensitive artist and loyal friend, ready with extended arm to help any poor struggling wight of the key-board, — ready with a good word and resistless smile to reward the efforts of his confrères of the profession.[11]

And, writing under the pseudonym “Jem Baggs”[12], Warren described Gottschalk’s effect on him:

[Gottschalk] is decidedly the musical Lion of the present. There is something in Gottschalk which pleases me beyond all the pianists I have heard. He has all the technical execution to absolute perfection and more besides, which is just Gottschalk and nothing else. In his inspired moments he sends an electricity through his hearers, indescribable to such as myself who cannot write half I feel or think, but which is irresistible to all; but why attempt what I cannot do, for I am not able to write of him as could wish or he deserves.[13]

The friendship among these four continued for Warren’s remaining years in Albany, although, of necessity, much of Warren’s contact with Church and Gottschalk was by letter.[14] From Warren’s correspondence with Church, however, we know that he visited Church in New York City, and on one occasion was planning a joint trip there with Palmer.[15]

Despite both Warren’s and Gottschalk’s description of an intimate personal and professional friendship, two Gottschalk scholars describe the two as an odd couple. Gottschalk’s biographer, S. Frederick Starr, argues that Gottschalk and Warren represent divergent strands in American Music. In contrast to Gottschalk, who represented an emotional, unrestrained, aesthetic new type of music,

Warren stood in the same solid Yankee tradition as Lowell Mason, even to the point of editing a major Protestant hymnal, Warren’s Hymns and Tunes. Yet while he and Gottschalk stood on opposite sides of many fault lines running through American life, Warren was drawn at once to the composer from New Orleans.[16]

The same theme is struck by Robert Offergeld:

One of the more amusing aspects of the lifelong friendship between Gottschalk and Warren is that Gottschalk, the flagrantly antipuritanical young virtuoso, seldom failed to enchant the most respectable people. Socially Gottschalk was unreservedly liked (doubtless to the extreme irritation of Dwight[17]), by numbers of proper Bostonians, including Mason, the Chickerings, Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, the F.G. Hills, the James Thomas Field. But Gottschalk seemed specially attractive also to the officially most respectable of all musicians – those who composed nineteenth-century America’s hymns, and in the 1850s they were the largest, the most successful, and by far the most solvent composing fraternity in the Western World.[18]

But I think Starr and Offergeld do not fully appreciate George William Warren’s own strain of emotion and enthusiasm. They seem not to be aware that by 1855, Warren had published at least 17 popular pieces including eight lively dance numbers: three schottisches, two polkas, two waltzes, two tarantellas, and a redowa.[19]

Even his religious works could not be described as sober or restrained. A contemporary reviewer opined, “I cannot concede that the style of music usually performed in this church [St Paul’s, Albany] is that of legitimate church music. A great portion of it is of Mr. Warren’s own composition, and is, in most instances, very nicely wedded to the words: yet I am more reminded of the concert room by it than of the church.”[20]

The anonymous reviewer Philomel in describing the celebration of a new Hook organ at St. Paul’s Church, Troy, wrote, “Mr. Geo. Wm. Warren organist of St Paul’s Albany next extemporised in his usual fanciful and somewhat comic style.”[21]

When Warren objected light-heartedly to this characterization, Philomel explained that he intended no disrespect, that he was merely describing Warren’s “off-hand, dashing, sprightly, operatic, and in view of his unmistakably volatile temperament, occasionally comic style. Indeed a man cannot break away from the general current of his thoughts, and Mr. Warren’s musical expressions are the natural outbursts of a heart, (to all outward appearance at least) free from care, and overflowing in its excess of joy.”[22]

All of this sounds very similar to the descriptions of the emotion-driven improvisations that were at the heart of Gottschalk’s compositions.[23] Warren certainly wrote sober, four-square hymn tunes; if he is remembered at all today, it is for “National Hymn,” the tune to which the hymn “God of Our Fathers” is usually sung. But the George William Warren of the late 1850s was far closer to the spirit of Moreau Gottschalk than that of Lowell Mason. No wonder that Gottschalk told his student and friend, Mary Alice Ives Seymour, “Warren’s sympathy for me is perfect – he understands every phase of my nature.”[24]

Louis Moreau Gottschalk and George William Warren, Saratoga Springs 1864 (credit: Gottschalk Collection, New York Public Library)

The intimacy and compatibility of these friends is best exemplified by their collaboration on Warren’s composition “The Andes,” for which Gottschalk helped produce a two-piano version that was the hit of New York concert halls in the spring of 1863. In my next post, I will turn to this work, an homage to “Heart of the Andes,” painted by their mutual friend, Frederic E. Church.

[1] So described in an obituary for G.W. Warren’s son, Richard Henry Warren, cited in Bridget Falconer-Salkeld, “Louis Moreau Gottschalk: Evidence for the Dedication of ‘Adieu funèbre’,” American Music, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Fall, 2007), 357.

The claim in Warren’s obituary that his “musical education was received at Racine College, Wis.” is surely mistaken. Racine College was founded in 1852, at least four years after Warren says he began his career as a professional musician. “Dr. George W. Warren Dies from Apoplexy,” New York Times, 17 Mar 1902. Warren received an honorary Doctor of Music degree from Racine College in 1883. “Religious News and Comment,” The Brooklyn Union 4 Aug 1883.

[2] Letter of Frances Palmer, Frances Palmer Gavit Papers, Albany Institute of History and Art, quoted in Falconer-Salkeld, 357.

[3] E. D. Palmer’s 21 Apr 1884 letter of introduction for Warren to John Quincy Adams Ward, quoted in J. Carson Webster, Erastus D. Palmer (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1983), 312.

[4] Church did not move to The Farm (later the site of Olana) until 1861. Olana Partnership, “Frederic Church and Olana Timeline,” https://www.olana.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/SLDP-Timeline-Susan-Turner.pdf accessed 6 Jul 2020.

[5] Falconer-Salkeld, 356.

[6] Four letters from Church to Warren, dated Apr 1856 – Jun 1857, quoted at length in Falconer-Salkeld, 359-360.

[7] A month after the concert, Gottschalk sent Warren “my regards to our eminent, amiable, and sympathetic friend, Palmer.” 10 Nov 1855 letter from Gottschalk to Warren, transcribed in Octavia Hensel (pseudonym of Mary Alice Ives Seymour), Life and Letters of Louis Moreau Gottschalk (Boston: Oliver Ditson and Company, 1870), 71-72.

[8] A digital copy of Church’s 24 Apr 1856 letter thanking Warren for writing “a note of introduction to Mr. Gottschalk” is available at New York Public Library Digital Collections https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/be606a96-8ea9-19e1-e040-e00a18066e03 accessed 9 Jul 2020.

Church probably met Gottschalk when he attended a Gottschalk concert in New York City later that winter. S. Frederick Starr, Bamboula!: The Life and Times of Louis Moreau Gottschalk (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 215.

[9] Falconer-Salkeld, 356.

[10] “City News,” Albany Evening Journal, 22 Oct 1855, page 2.

[11] 20 Apr 1870 letter from Warren to Octavia Hensel, transcribed in Hensel, 208.

[12] I find five “Jem Baggs” posts in the “Musical Correspondence” column of Dwight’s Journal of Music, all but one datelined Brooklyn: I Dec 1860, 285-286, dated 14 Nov; 19 Jan 1861, 343, dated 14 Jan 1861; 27 Jul 1861, 134-135, dated 22 Jul; 7 Sep 1861, 181-182, “Aurora, Cayuga Lake, N.Y.”, dated 26 Aug; 22 Feb 1862, 374, dated 18 Feb.

Thomas Nelson identifies “Jem Baggs” as a Warren pseudonym. Thomas Nelson, George Wm. Warren: Bridging the Sacred and Secular in Nineteenth-Century American Music (Albany: Albany Institute of History & Art, 2010), 22-24.

[13] “Musical Correspondence,” Dwight’s Journal of Music, 22 Feb 1862, 374. Dateline: Brooklyn, 18 Feb.

[14] Falconer-Salkeld, 357.

[15] Each of the four letters from Church to Warren, dated Apr 1856 – Jun 1857 (and quoted at length in Falconer-Salkeld, 359-360) mentions planned visits by Palmer and Warren to New York City. Warren also mentions having been “with him [Church] many times when he painted the ‘Andes’,” which would have been at Church’s New York City studio in 1858 or early 1859. [Letter from Warren to Church’s daughter Isabel Charlotte Church in the Olana State Historic Site Archives, quoted in Thomas Nelson, George Wm. Warren: Bridging the Sacred and Secular in Nineteenth-Century American Music, 26.]

[16] Starr, 215.

[17] John Sullivan Dwight, editor of Dwight’s Journal of Music, and a venomous critic of Gottschalk and his music.

[18] Robert Offergeld, liner notes for The Wind Demon, Ivan Davis, piano, New World Records compact disc 80257-2, 8.

[19] Nelson, 36-37.

[20] Musical World and Times, New York, volume vii, number 161(?) (3 Dec 1853), 107.

[21] “The World of Music,” Musical World, volume 10, number 9 (28 Oct 1854), 102.

[22] “Musical Correspondence, “Musical World, volume 10, number 17 (23 Dec 1854), 206. For a later description of Warren’s skill at improvisation, see “New York’s Church Organists. Some of the Great Musicians Who Direct the Choirs in This City” New York Herald, issue 110 (20 Apr 1890), 25.

[23] Starr, 233-234.

[24] Hensel, 207.

The Albany Theatre Becomes the Home of St. Paul’s Church

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As we saw in our earlier post, the first period for the Albany Theatre ended with Henry W. Preston’s surrender of the lease to the Albany Theatre Association on April 1, 1839. Fifteen managers in almost as many years had staged the best of drama with some of the finest actors of the time, but none was able to consistently make money for the investors. The Association chose to sell, and found an unusual purchaser. Just as had happened with the Green Street Theatre earlier in the century, the Albany Theatre was sold to a church, St. Paul’s Episcopal.

St. Paul’s, Ferry Street

In February 1839, St. Paul’s was a dozen years old, but like the theater, had never been able to find financial security. Founded in 1827, the congregation had moved two years later into their new building on South Ferry Street. In this period, Albany was growing rapidly as a result of the completion of the Erie Canal. Trade on the canal brought in many new residents, and the South End was the area of most rapid growth. St. Paul’s was something of an experiment: the hope was that the new congregation could attract St. Peter’s parishioners who had moved to the South End, but also draw residents of the area who were unchurched. This plan would only work if those attracted were able to support the church by purchasing a pew and paying an additional annual pew rent. At that time, this was the most common way of supporting a church.

Diagram of Ferry Street Church, showing pew appraisals

The new church building was quite expensive, and the vestry went deep into debt, assuming that they would be able to pay the principal and interest as new members purchased pews. But the expected influx of new residents did not occur, and those newcomers who did join were not able to purchase pews. St. Paul’s found itself on the underpopulated edge of the city, with pews not paid for, and unable to pay its creditors. The congregation struggled for several years, but the crisis came in January 1839, when a court ordered them to sell the building in order to pay the creditors.

We do not know if St. Paul’s vestry had another option, but we do wonder why they chose a new site only three short blocks from St. Peter’s Church, the other Episcopal Church in the city of Albany. In the same January 24 vestry meeting at which the decision was made to sell the Ferry Street building, the vestry also agreed to obtain a right of refusal for purchase of the theater. And they took the first steps toward modifying the theater by hiring Henry Rector “to draw plans and estimate expenses of alterations necessary to convert the Theatre into a Church.” A month later, the vestry closed the sale on the theater, and approved plans by Rector to convert the building for use as a church.[i]

And so St. Paul’s moved from one Philip Hooker-designed building (the Ferry Street church) to another (the Albany Theatre). This was doubly appropriate, because Hooker’s parents had been among the earliest communicants of St. Paul’s.[ii]

At the sale of the building, the Albany Theatre Association turned over all the original stock certificates to St. Paul’s. The association also provided the congregation (for reasons that are not clear) with a “Schedule containing a list of Scenery &c in the Theatre belonging to the proprietors.”

Booklet documenting sale of Albany Theatre stock to St. Paul’s Church

With sale of the Ferry Street building in July, St. Paul’s had no place to meet. The congregation of St. Peter’s invited the homeless congregation to join with them during the interim, and the two congregations met together for the next eight months, with the two rectors, William Ingraham Kip and Horatio Potter, sharing clerical responsibilities. This was the second time the congregations had share ministers. The first was 1832, when St. Paul’s rector, William Linn Keese, also served St. Peter’s, when it was between rectors.

Trinity Church (image credit: Albany Group Archive)

But the entire congregation did not leave the South End. In a major split, a number of St. Paul’s families, including those of several vestry members, chose to stay in the South End and continue faithful to the original purpose. They formed a new congregation, to be known as Trinity Church. The new congregation was not strong or wealthy in its early years, but by 1848 they were able to build a handsome building on what is now Trinity Place, where they remained until they closed in about 1980.[iii]

As to the modifications necessary, Dr. Kip remembered later that “there was nothing left of the original edifice, but the four walls and roof.”[iv] The extent of the modifications is confirmed by a 14-page proposal in our archive (probably the Henry Rector plan), with detailed description of the modifications, beginning with the statement:

To accomplish the object intended, it will be necessary first to remove all the floors, partitions, boxes, seats & etc. in the interior of said building; leaving the whole area enclosed by the exterior walls from the cellar to the [word illegible] of the principal tie beams in one unencumbered space and then proceed to the construction of the walls, partitions, floors, galleries, seats, pulpit, chancel, ceilings and rooms for sextons & etc. as shown by the annexed plans.

Given the congregation’s financial condition, there were limits to what could be done. They were not able, for instance, to afford stained glass for the windows, and had to settle for “common ground glass.”[v]

St. Paul’s was, however, able to afford a new organ, replacing the instrument sold with the Ferry Street building. Negotiations began in early 1839, and by May of that year, the New York City musical instrument dealer Firth and Hall had agreed to liberal financing. This instrument, designed and built by Thomas Robjohn, under contract with Firth and Hall, was installed in September 1840.[vi]

The women of the parish also raised money to purchase communion chalices and paten that are still in use at St. Paul’s.[vii]

One of the chalices purchased in 1839

The extensive renovations took longer than expected. The congregation initially expected to be in the new building by November 1839[viii], but the renovations were not completed until February of the next year.

The remodeled building was consecrated by Benjamin Treadwell Onderdonk, Bishop of New York. The event had originally been scheduled for February 21, but “in consequence of the state of the roads” the bishop was not able to reach the city, and it was postponed until February 22.

A newspaper account of the consecration describes the renovated building:

We have heard but one opinion of the interior of this spacious edifice. Without pretension to architectural display, the effect is nevertheless admirable – and the arrangement and rich but chaste finish, well adapted to the sacred uses to which the building is now appropriated.[ix]

This account concludes with the reminder that the sale of pews would begin the next day. St. Paul’s continued to fund itself by the sale and rental of pews, and would for the next 80 years. It was not until 1927 that St. Paul’s did away with pew rents, despite a growing consensus in the denomination that pledged contributions were a much better option for supporting a congregation.

Pew Deed to William M. Gregory, dated 1 Jun 1854

While the choice of a theater so close to St. Peter’s seems odd, the vestry’s selection was a happy one, because the congregation flourished on South Pearl Street. Despite the closeness to St. Peter’s, the building’s location was an advantage. In the 1830’s, Pearl Street was one of the most prestigious residential areas of the city, and many neighbors became members of the new congregation. Barent P. Staats, a member of the 1827 vestry, described the situation in 1839 forcefully: “it [the church] was discovered shortly after the present [i.e., present rector, William Ingraham Kip] came to be hopelessly wrecked and it was absolutely necessary to take a new position & in reality to begin a new enterprise.”[x] Indeed it was a new enterprise. Rather than attempting to attract newcomers, as did those who broke off to form Trinity Church, St. Paul’s was now situated to attract Albany’s better class. As J. Livingston Reese, St. Paul’s rector 25 years later wrote: “It is most probable that this change of location saved the parish from ultimate extinguishment, and brought it where it could reach a larger and more influential part of the population.”[xi]

1858 receipt from the Albany Insurance Company on St. Paul’s South Pearl Street building

A later rector said:

I do not think it too much to say, that it was while St. Paul’s congregation worshipped in the edifice on South Pearl street, that it attained its greatest influence and distinction. This was practically during the long and brilliant rectorship of the Rev. Dr. William Ingraham Kip, who became rector in 1827 [actually 1837] and remained at the head of the parish until 1853.[xii]

Wm. Ingraham Kip at St. Paul’s altar (from an 1847 portrait by William Tolman Carlton)

Kip left St. Paul’s in 1853 to become missionary bishop of California. He was succeeded by two very strong leaders: Thomas A. Starkey (later Bishop of Newark, New Jersey) and William Rudder (subsequently long-term rector of St. Stephen’s, Philadelphia). Kip and Rudder were particularly known for their dynamic preaching, which attracted many new members.[xiii] Starkey was known for his pastoral skills, and for his interest in social outreach, including the creation of St. Paul’s Church Home for Women.

Thomas A. Starkey

During these years, the new Robjohn organ was presided over by a series of remarkable musicians: William L. Reston[xiv], Oliver J. Shaw[xv], John Underner[xvi], and William M. Daniell[xvii].

In a letter to the editor of the Albany Evening Journal, an Albanian signing himself “A Listener” provided this review of one of St. Paul’s services in its first year on Pearl Street:

I last evening had the pleasure of attending services in St. Paul’s Church, and I confess myself highly pleased with the whole service. Mr. Kip gave us a very highly finished sermon, at the same time calculated to carry conviction to the conscience of every individual. His was was “the second coming of our Lord to judge the world,” and the solemnity of the scene was heightened by the impressive manner of the speaker.

The organ (which by the way is one of the finest I ever listened to), was handled in an admirable manner by Mr. Shaw, a gentleman who stands deservedly high as an organist. The rich full chords, the perfect harmony, the ease and grace of the movement, spoke the master of the instrument. On the whole, the prospects of the church are flattering as could be wished, and the congregation are highly favored with the privilege of such religious instruction.[xviii]

This series culminated with George William Warren[xix], St. Paul’s most illustrious organist and choirmaster of the nineteenth century.

Rock of Ages by George William Warren

We have very few descriptions of the building’s interior in this period. One is most unflattering:

To the Wardens & Vestry of St. Paul’s
Church, Albany —
Gentlemen, —

When I purchased the pew in your Church, I was assured that a window would be opened at the north end of it. At present on a cloudy day or when an assemblage of darkly dressed persons are in front of us, you might as well attempt to read in a coal-hole. The pew will no longer answer us and I therefore return your deed on which I have paid my first instalment. You will probably be of my opinion that some portion of it may be & ought to be refunded to me.

Remaining Gentlemen

Your obt. Servant

Charles Smyth[xx]
Albany 8th January
1842

We also have a brief description from one of the choirboys in George William Warren’s short-lived boy choir. Writing more than fifty years later, Charles M. Nickerson remembered that the boys sat in the organ loft, with the organ to their right and the quartet choir on the other side.

When the sermon began, it was our wont to draw the curtain that hung over the front of the organ gallery and then slip out one by one by the door behind the organ into the Sunday School room, there to regale ourselves on candy and peanuts and enjoy general conversation until a signal from the choirmaster [George William Warren] called us back for the offertory hymn. This was in the old St. Paul’s the one time theatre on South Pearl St. The Sunday School room in the rear of the organ loft had no doubt served as the lobby or bar of the theatre.[xxi]

George William Warren

The “organ loft and and north room” are again mentioned in vestry minutes in 1858, when major renovations were made “fitting up and arranging the organ loft and north room with carpets, gas, painting, gilding and decorating for the convenience of the musical director and the choir” as part of the May 1857 negotiations to rehire George William Warren for his final three years at St. Paul’s. These expenses contributed to the church’s budget shortfall, requiring the next year a plea from the vestry for pew-owners to increase their pew rental.

By 1860, the advantages of the Pearl Street location had faded. The neighborhood had changed from largely residential to commercial. The vestry determined to look elsewhere in the city and sold the Pearl Street building.

William Rudder, rector at that time later remembered:

The old church had served its purpose, and its day of fullest usefulness was gone. The part of the city in which it was situated had completely changed its character within a few years. The church had become hemmed in by places of business, and by other surroundings of a very undesirable character; and the congregation was drifting away, and more and more each year, to the more desirable western portions of the city. Under these circumstances the vestry determined to build a new church edifice to meet the new conditions of the case, and one more worthy of the position and ability of the parish.[xxii]

William Rudder

In October 1862 the building was sold for $14,000 to Hugh J. Hastings, who a yer later leased it to theater architect John M. Trimble.[xxiii] In our next segment, we will follow the building’s history as Trimble makes the church once more a theater: the Academy of Music.

[i] Joel Munsell, The Annals of Albany, Series 2, Volume 3 (Albany: Joel Munsell, 1871), 338-339.

[ii] Samuel Hooker (1746-1832) and Rachel Hinds Hooker became communicants of St. Paul’s in July and August 1830 respectively. The couple moved to Utica, New York in 1832.

[iii] Joel Munsell, The Annals of Albany, Series 2, Volume 3 (Albany: Joel Munsell, 1871), 337-394.

[iv] John Edward Rawlinson, “William Ingraham Kip: Tradition, Conflict and Transition” (Ph.D. dissertation, Graduate Theological Union, 1982), 18, quoting a 9 Apr 1852 letter from Kip to Thomas N. Stanford, partner in the publishing firm of Stanford & Swords.

[v] Rawlinson, 18.

[vi] Albany Argus 4 Sep 1840. Correspondence and the bill of sale are held in the archives of St. Paul’s Church.

[vii] Rawlinson, 18, quoting a 29 Oct 1839 letter from Kip to Mr. Sherman.

[viii] Parochial report for St. Paul’s, Albany in Journal of the Proceedings of the Fifty-fifth Convention of the Diocese of New York: Held in St. Paul’s Chapel in the City of New-York on Thursday, October 3d and Friday, Oct. 4th, A.D. 1839 (New York: Printed for the Convention), 1839, 67. A vestryman, Simeon DeWitt Bloodgood, had also hoped that the congregation would be in the new building by fall (Bloodgood’s 30 Mar 1839 letter to Harmanus Bleecker, transcribed in Harriet Langdon Pruyn Rice, Harmanus Bleecker: An Albany Dutchman 1779-1849 (Albany: William Boyd, 1924), 187-188).

[ix] Albany Argus, 25 Feb 1840.

[x] St. Paul’s vestry minutes, volume 2, 77.

[xi] “Historical Sketch of St. Paul’s Parish: From a Sermon of the Rector,” in The Semi-centennial Services of St. Paul’s Church, Albany, N.Y. 1877 (Albany: The Argus Company, 1877), 13.

[xii] William Prall, “The Past, Present and Future: A Sermon Preached January 26th, 1902 in Commemoration of the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the Founding of the Parish of St. Paul’s, Albany, N.Y.,” 4.

[xiii] Brooks, “Sermon delivered by the Reverend Roelif Hasbrouck Brooks on Sunday morning, November 17th, 1907, in commemoration of the Eightieth Anniversary of the Founding of St. Paul’s Parish in the City of Albany,” printed in St. Paul’s Year Book for 1907, pages 7-8.

[xiv] St. Paul’s organist 1839-1840. Born about 1811 in England. Organist at St. John’s Church, Kirkheaton, West Yorkshire. Teacher at the Albany Female Academy.

[xv] St. Paul’s organist intermittently between 1840 and 1847. Born about 1817 in Providence, Rhode Island, son of noted composer Oliver Shaw. Active there and in Bangor Maine. Music teacher, performer and composer of popular music in Albany 1841-1852 or later. Moved Utica where he was again active as performer and teacher until his death in 1861

[xvi] St. Paul’s organist 1846-1847. Born 1829 in Albany, member of a prestigious musical family. Composer, accompanist to Jenny Lind on her United States tour. Died 1904.

[xvii] St. Paul’s organist and choirmaster 1847-1848. Born 1811 in England, educated at the Royal College of Music, accomplished horn player as well as organist. Died 24 Aug 1892 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

[xviii] Albany Evening Journal, 21 Dec 1840. City directories from 1858 – 1860 show a number of wholesale and retail groceries in the block. One neighbor “of a very undesirable character” was the Empire House on the corner on South Pearl and Beaver, with 42 guest rooms that seem to have been particularly favored by actors, and a “lager beer saloon” on the first floor.

[xix] St. Paul’s organist and choirmaster 1848-1856 and 1857-1860.

[xx] Charles Smyth (1783-1844) was a St. Paul’s vestryman for a single year (1835), possibly serving out another’s unexpired term. He had earlier served for ten years on St. Peter’s vestry. Smyth was in business in Albany with James Byrne, doing business as Byrne & Smyth, “vendue and commission business” as early as 1803. Later he was in partnership with James Wood (as Wood & Smyth), dissolved 1814. In 1818 (seven years before completion of the Erie Canal), he was assuring transportation of goods to the upper Great Lakes (Detroit and Sandusky) “by the most faithful and experienced teamsters” for no more than $4.50 per hundred-weight. Later he was involved in shipping, both in steam-boats on the Hudson River, and on the Erie Canal.

[xxi] Charles M. Nickerson, “St. Paul’s Choir of Fifty Years Ago” pages 25-26 of St. Paul’s Year Book for 1907. Is Nickerson perhaps referring to the second floor saloon, or the third floor area for refreshments mentioned in Hooker’s description of the theater?

[xxii] “Sermon of the Rev. William Rudder, D.D.,” in The Semi-centennial Services of St. Paul’s Church, Albany, N.Y. 1877 (Albany: The Argus Company, 1877), 35-36.

[xxiii] “An Academy of Music,” Albany Morning Express 13 Oct 1863. “Fire This Morning,” Albany Evening Journal 29 Jan 1868.  H.P. Phelps (in The Players of a Century. Albany: Joseph McDonough, 1880, pages 329-330) reports that Hastings sold the building to Trimble for $5,000 cash and a mortgage of $10,000. This cannot be correct. When the building was destroyed in 1868, Hastings was still the owner, with Trimble’s widow holding a ten year lease, with a right to purchase in five years.

George Wm. Warren’s “fanciful and somewhat comic style”

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In an earlier post, we mentioned a characterization of George William Warren’s performance on the organ: “Mr. Geo. Wm. Warren organist of St Paul’s Albany next extemporised in his usual fanciful and somewhat comic style.” This assessment was contained in a review of a concert celebrating a new Hook organ at St Paul’s Church in Troy, New York. The letter, signed only “Philomel,” was published on page 102 of the October 28, 1854 issue of  Musical World.

George William Warren

George William Warren

But we have recently found that there is more to this story. Warren responded the same month in a letter  to the Musical World’s editor published in the December 2, 1854  of the journal (page 166).  After describing  the European opera career of former St. Paul’s soloist Henry Squires, Warren reacted with good humor to Philomel’s characterization, and suggested why the reviewer might have found his performance comical:

One thing more and I am done. Your correspondent “Philomel” writes from Troy about the Organ exhibition at St Paul’s, and dubs me a Comic Organist; and as it is not so desirable to have that reputation, as some other, will you allow me to justify myself in the Musical World. When I played that evening it was a prima volta and in a certain passage when I used the CC pedal expecting that I had drawn the register “pedals and choir” lo! it was “pedals and great” and nothing out but “trumpet” which of course snarled astonishingly; as I was in for it, I proceeded up the scale and finally got out of the scrape. I explained this to Mr. Philomel who was in the Organ loft; but it is a very good joke and if he has said it, of course I am a Comic Organist and if Christy will get an organ to use at his concerts, maybe he will give me an engagement. Again I would say to you, how much I am charmed with your paper and I wish it was a dally instead of a weekly: and if I can be of use to it in any way command.

As Warren prepared to show off his footwork, he pulled the wrong coupler, and instead of bringing a pleasant mixture of sounds to the instrument’s pedals, he brought only a blaring trumpet. When he played the lowest note on the pedal board, the audience heard a loud, nasty blast. By moving up the pedals, the ugly effect was reduced, and Warren was able to continue. This, then, was Warren’s guess as to what Philomel found fanciful and comic.

The “Christy” from whom Warren jokingly suggests he might receive an engagement, was Edwin Pearce Christy, entertainer and producer, whose minstrels shows included an early version of vaudeville.

But this jovial conversation was not over!  In the December 23, 1854 issue of Musical World (page 206), Philomel replied to Warren’s explanation of his error in registration, and expresses affectionate regard for the young organist’s energetic style and character:

I regret that any remark of mine should cause even that degree of uneasiness in Mr. George Wm. Warren’s mind sufficient to call for a “comical” letter. Mr. Warren is, incontestably, a wit; and I do not desire, either by accident or design, to incur the consequences of his ridicule. Lest, however, he should deem the last observation more “comical” than true, I beg to state, that my remark “Mr. Warren extemporised in his usual fanciful and somewhat comic style” referred not to the mistake in the pedal playing, for this is common enough, and I did not notice it; but simply to his off-hand, dashing, sprightly, operatic, and in view of his unmistakably volatile temperament, occasionally comic style. Indeed a man cannot break away from the general current of his thoughts, and Mr. Warren’s musical expressions are the natural outbursts of a heart, (to all outward appearance at least) free from care, and overflowing in its excess of joy.

 

George Wm. Warren at Albany’s Second Presbyterian Church

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In previous posts, we have outlined George William Warren’s engagements as St. Paul’s organist and choirmaster, showing from contemporary sources that he was at St. Paul’s from late 1848 until August 1, 1860, the “nearly thirteen years” at St. Paul’s that he mentions in his letter of resignation[i].

During this period, we know that Warren left St. Paul’s during late 1856 and some part of 1857 when he was organist and choirmaster at Albany’s Second Presbyterian Church. Until recently, however, it has not been possible to say exactly how long he was there. Our only source of this information that he had gone to Second Presbyterian was a November 1856 article in a Boston music journal,[ii] which does not tell us exactly when he left St. Paul’s, or when he returned.

Second Presbyterian Church (source: Albany Group archive)

Second Presbyterian Church (source: Albany Group archive)

The chronology is now provided by a May 1857 article in the Albany Morning Express which announces Warren’s departure from Second Presbyterian: “St. Paul’s Church has finally effected another engagement with George William Warren, who, until last October had been their organist for eight years.”[iii] This would mean that Warren left St. Paul’s in October 1856 and returned (as we know from his letter of resignation[iv]) effective August 1, 1857.

This period of a bit less than one year at Second Presbyterian is confirmed by an August 26, 1857 article about the gift of a silver goblet to “Mr. George William Warren, on retiring from the Second Presbyterian Church as organist, to resume his previous position at St. Paul’s.”[v] The article transcribes a letter, dated August 26, 1857, from the choir of Second Presbyterian to Warren, in which they thank him for his “instruction and direction as leader of the music in Second Presbyterian Church for one year.”[vi]

This allows us to construct a chronology of Warren’s activities during 1856 and 1857. In an April 1856 advertisement Warren identifies himself as “Organist and Musical Director at St. Paul’s Church (eight years)”.[vii] But sometime during the summer of 1856, Warren decided to leave St. Paul’s.

John Tweddle

John Tweddle

In September, according to St. Paul’s vestry minutes, “George W. Warren account for services as Organist & amounting to $698.77 was present and referred to Messrs. [Edward E.] Kendrick [, John] Tweddle & [Benjamin C.] Raymond with power & authority to adjust the same.”[viii] Almost $700 was a great deal of money in 1856, perhaps very close to a full year’s salary. Had Warren not been paid for some time? It seems likely, but we have no evidence.

Whatever the cause, Warren left St. Paul’s during the month of October 1856, and settled into his new job at the church often called “Mr. Sprague’s Church,” in reference to its eminent minister, William Buell Sprague. We first hear of him in his role at the exhibition of a new organ at First Congregational Church in Albany.

Front, 1856 Organ Exhibition Program (Albany Public Library Pruyn Collection)

Front, 1856 Organ Exhibition Program (Albany Public Library Pruyn Collection)

Reverse, 1856 Organ Exhibition Program (Albany Public Library Pruyn Collection)

Reverse, 1856 Organ Exhibition Program (Albany Public Library Pruyn Collection)

The program for a December 12, 1856 Organ Exhibition, celebrating the installation of a new William A. Johnson organ at First Congregational lists among the organists who played that day George William Warren, “organist of the Second Presbyterian Church.” Warren performed twice, first demonstrating the new instrument’s use in religious music, and then playing a set of extemporaneous improvisations titled “Extempore Fantasie, a la Orchestra.” We assume this was similar to the “Prelude in Organ Style concluding with an extempore Fantasio a l’Orchestre” that he performed in June the previous year at the exhibition of a new organ at Troy’s Park Presbyterian Church.[ix] We can hope that the audience that day was entertained by Warren. An 1854 review says that he “extemporised in his usual fanciful and somewhat comic style” at the exhibition of the new organ at St. Paul’s Church, Troy, New York in October of that year.[x]

First Congregational Church and its minister, Ray Palmer (Albany Public Library Pruyn Collection)

First Congregational Church and its minister, Ray Palmer (Albany Public Library Pruyn Collection)

A major change for Warren at Second Presbyterian was the type of choir. At St. Paul’s, Warren had conducted and composed for a quartet choir, four professional soloists, many of whom (including Lucy Eastcott, Henry Squires and Isabella Hinckley) went on to operatic careers. Second Presbyterian, on the other hand, had a chorus choir, a larger group primarily composed of amateurs.

During his year at Second Presbyterian, Warren continued his relationship with St. Paul’s and its choir. In January 1857, his Second Annual Concert for the Poor included Isabella Hinckley and Master Willie [William James] Gourlay, St. Paul’s former soprano and treble soloists[xi]. And the next month, Warren, “assisted by the choir-boys of St. Paul’s,” provided music for service at Grace Church to test improvements to its organ by an anonymous donor. This Festival Service also included St. Paul’s “Old Choir” (probably members of the former quartet choir) consisting of Miss [Isabella] Hinckley, Miss [Elizabeth M.] Atwood and Mr. [Stephen W.] Whitney.[xii]

George William Warren

George William Warren

We have only a few clues as to why Warren chose to return to St. Paul’s. He was a member of the congregation, and Mary Eliza Pease, whom he would marry at St. Paul’s in September 1858, was also a communicant. But as the Albany Morning Express suggested in May[xiii], St. Paul’s vestry must have made him an offer impossible to refuse.

The Albany Morning Express article mentions two elements in that offer: “The organ is to be entirely rebuilt at a cost of $1,200. The choir seats will be arranged for a “chorus,” and every plan of Mr. Warren’s which can advance true music will be fully carried out.”[xiv]

Cover, 1857 subscription to rebuild St. Paul’s organ

The offer’s first element had already been arranged on May 23,1857, when the wardens and vestry asked for donations. The first page of the subscription booklet reads:

The undersigned agree to pay to the Vestry of St. Paul’s Church Albany the sums set opposite their names for the purpose of repairing the organ in said church, said repairs to be made under the direction of Geo. W. Warren and the amount of the expense for the same to be $1200. “

Wardens and vestry signed on the first two pages, pledging more than one-half of the total. The remainder was given by members of the congregation, and the rebuilding by William A. Johnson was under way by early August 1857.

1857 subscription to rebuild St. Paul’s organ, page 1

The second element in St. Paul’s offering is significant: Warren was planning to replace St. Paul’s quartet choir with a chorus like Second Presbyterian’s. In a letter to Second Presbyterian’s choir, responding to their letter of thanks to him, Warren explains what he learned there:

Your hearty wishes for my future success takes away much of the sadness in parting from you as organist. Still I shall never forget the enjoyment of last year’s choir practice, which, thanks to your kind attention , was to me a period of great profit and pleasure; for it was my first experience in chorus choir training, and the good success that has marked our united efforts, will always convince me of the vast superiority of chorus and congregational effects in church service to the “quartette” arrangement now so popular in many churches. (Still, a change in the right direction is surely taking place, and this awakening interest for true church music is one of the good signs of the times.)[xv]

It is important to remember that, although George William Warren had been a church musician for thirteen years, he had very little formal training, and was not yet thirty years old. Clearly, the year’s experience at Second Presbyterian was an important step in his education.

By the spring of 1857, St. Paul’s terminated its contract with Albert H. Wood and the quartet choir effective 20 Apr 1857[xvi], and a month later George William Warren again offered his services to St. Paul’s[xvii]. But even before Warren resumed his duties at St. Paul’s on August 1, 1857[xviii], he made it clear what he learned at Dr. Sprague’s Church. In the classified section of the Albany Evening Journal for June 15, 1857, Warren advertised for “Ladies and Gentlemen with fine voices and fair musical abilities.” Clearly, “St. Paul’s New Choir” was to a be chorus choir.

Albany Evening Journal 15 Jun 1857

Albany Evening Journal 15 Jun 1857

The following year, we have evidence from St. Paul’s vestry minutes that rebuilding the organ and moving the choir chairs were not the only expenses necessary to bring George Wm. Warren back to St. Paul’s.

Edward E. Kendrick

Edward E. Kendrick

In May 1858, church treasurer Edward E. Kendrick reported a $680 shortfall in the church budget, consisting in large part of expenses related to Warren and choir, including “fitting up and arranging the organ loft and north room with carpets, gas, painting, gilding and decorating for the convenience of the musical director and the choir, and the salary of the organist increased from $850 to $1100.”[xix]

[i] Warren’s letter of 24 Apr 1860 is transcribed in the St. Paul’s vestry minutes of 4 May 1860

[ii] Dwight’s Journal of Music 15 Nov 1856, page 53.

[iii] “Local and Miscellaneous,” Albany Morning Express 30 May 1857.

[iv] Warren’s letter of 24 Apr 1860 is transcribed in the St. Paul’s vestry minutes of 4 May 1860

[v] “Musical Compliment,” Albany Evening Journal, 7 Sep 1857.

[vi] “Musical Compliment”.

[vii] Albany Evening Journal 7 Apr 1856, page 53

[viii] St. Paul’s vestry minutes for 6 September 1856

[ix] Troy Daily Whig 14 Jun 1855.

[x] Musical World, 28 Oct 1854, page 102.

[xi] Albany Evening Journal 22 Jan 1857.

[xii] Albany Evening Journal, 21 Feb 1857.

[xiii] “Local and Miscellaneous”.

[xiv] “Local and Miscellaneous”.

[xv] “Musical Compliment”.

[xvi] St. Paul’s vestry minutes. 17 Apr 1857.

[xvii] St. Paul’s vestry minutes. 26 May 1857.

[xviii] Warren’s letter of 24 Apr 1860 is transcribed in the St. Paul’s vestry minutes of 4 May 1860

[xix] St. Paul’s vestry minutes. 22 May 1858.

George William Warren at St. Paul’s — Part 3, 1857-1860

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George William Warren

George William Warren

As we saw in an earlier post, George William Warren resigned as St. Paul’s organist and choirmaster sometime in the fall of 1856. At that point, he had been at St. Paul’s since 1848, other than (perhaps) ten months in 1852 — 1853 when he had been in business with Richard H. Pease at the Temple of Fancy. During the fall and winter of 1856 – 1857, Warren probably served as organist at the Second Presbyterian church, but the only evidence we have for that is the article cited in the previous post.

Albany Evening Journal 20 Jan 1857

Albany Evening Journal 20 Jan 1857

He was certainly busy that winter with the second Concert for the Poor, which again featured Isabella Hinckley and William Gourlay of St. Paul’s. That spring, Warren organized a farewell concert for Isabella Hinckley, raising funds so that she could  begin her operatic career in Europe. For information on Isabella’s brilliant career and her untimely death, see Don Rittner’s post. Isabella Hinckley’s funeral was conducted by our rector, William Rudder, at St. Paul’s , in whose choir “her extraordinary musical talent first attracted attention”.

Warren’s position at Second Presbyterian may not have lasted long. Already in February of 1857, Warren was performing with St. Paul’s boy choir in a service at Grace Church. By the spring of 1857, St. Paul’s terminated its contract with Albert H. Wood and the quartet choir, and a month later George William Warren again offered his services to St. Paul’s. Warren resumed his duties at St. Paul’s on August 1, 1857.

Even before his term officially began, Warren advertised to fill vacancies in the St. Paul’s choir.

Albany Evening Journal 15 Jun 1857

Albany Evening Journal 15 Jun 1857

Advertisements for boy choir vacancies also start at this time and continue for the next few years, including this from January 1858 “None need apply except those with good voices, gentlemanly manners and under 13 years of age.” Could this have been a reference to the horseplay mentioned by Charles M. Nickerson, who sang with the boy choir in this period?

Worshippers afflicted with nerves are sometimes heard to complain of the restlessness of the boys in the chancel, especially during the sermon, but choirmasters nowadays certainly maintain a stricter discipline than their predecessors of the time of which I write thought necessary. When the sermon began, it was our wont to draw the curtain that hung over the front of the organ gallery and then slip out one by one through the door behind the organ into the Sunday School room, there to regale ourselves on candy and peanuts and enjoy general conversation until a signal from the choirmaster called us back for the offertory hymn. This was in the old Saint Paul’s, the one time theatre on South Pearl St. The Sunday School room in the rear of the organ loft had no doubt served as the lobby or bar of the theatre. Strange, as it may seem, our way of passing the time during the sermon was winked at alike by rector and choirmaster as long as we kept reasonably still. But it being a physical impossibility for a dozen boys to be in a room by themselves for half an hour and not become exhuberantly (sic) active, the inevitable happened. When the noise we made penetrated to the Church and even to the pulpit, the decree went forth that we must remain in our seats during the sermon, which we thought rather hard lines.

Bishop Horatio Potter

Bishop Horatio Potter

When Bishop Horatio Potter made his annual visit to St. Paul’s in May 1858, the choir sang the canticles Cantata Domino and Deus Misereatur from a service setting from St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. “The first of these, as rendered by the choir, with the organ accompaniment of Mr. Warren, exceeds anything in church service we have ever heard.” The reporter was equally impressed that nine of the choir were confirmed by Bishop Potter that day.

We do not know the conditions under which Warren returned to St. Paul’s, but it seems that he had been granted a raise in salary and improvements in the organ and in choir facilities. Four months after his return, the church organ, a three-manual instrument built in 1840 by Thomas Robjohn in a contract with Firth & Hall, was rebuilt by the firm of William A. Johnson. And in May 1858 the church treasurer, E.E. Kendrick, announced a $680 budget shortfall consisting in large part of expenses related to Warren and the choir, including: “fitting up and arranging the organ loft and north room with carpets, gas, painting, gilding and decorating for the convenience of the musical director and the choir, and the salary of the organist increased from $850 to $1100.”

Warren’s personal life also saw a major transition at this time. On September 16, 1858 he was married to Mary Eliza Pease at St. Paul’s. Mary Eliza was also a member of the congregation, and the daughter of Warren’s former business partner, Richard H. Pease.

That same month, a reviewer gave a mixed assessment of Warren’s work at St. Paul’s:

He has one of the best organs in the city, which he handles with much skill in the lighter style of music, which no doubt gives delight to admiring friends, but your correspondent would like to see it changed to a style more adapted to the church and to the organ. The choir, comprising several good voices, sing the musical compositions of Mr. Warren very well, but it would be to the advantage of all concerned, if more prominence were given to other church compositions of established merit. Miss C[arrie] Ross, the leading soprano, is quite a treasure to the choir…

Miss Ross was later to marry James Mason Sayles, composer of “Star of the Evening.”

As we have seen, Warren submitted his resignation to St. Paul’s vestry in April 1860, “to take effect the first of August ensuing, which time terminates the third year of my present engagement with you.” We can now see that the “nearly thirteen years … devoted to the musical interests of St. Paul’s” consisted of the period from 1848 until 1860, broken briefly only during parts of 1852-1853 and again in 1856-1857. The young man’s concern for the good opinion of St. Paul’s vestry is evident in his statement “It has always been my willing duty to try to please you; if I have not always succeeded, the cause has been something else than lack of desire on my part.” Warren was only thirty-years old, and had played at St. Paul’s since he was barely out of his teens. The vestry responded affectionately with three resolutions:

The following resolutions in answer thereto were unanimously adopted and a copy ordered transmitted to Mr. Warren.

Resolved, that we have heard with regret the communication of Mr. Geo. Wm. Warren announcing his determination to leave this City and resign his position as Organist and Musical Director of this Church, a determination which leaves a void in the musical portion of the service of our Church and inflicts a loss on those who appreciate and enjoy excellence in church music.

Resolved, that in view of the long connection of Mr. Warren with the Choir of St. Paul’s extending over a period of thirteen years, we cannot allow the occasion of separation to pass without expressing the satisfaction which his services have given during the whole of that period.

Resolved, that we tender to Mr. Warren our best wishes for his prosperity and his success in his new home and that we warmly commend him as a Gentleman whose moral character, professional ability and industry entitle him to abundant reward.

 

A Merry Greeting on Christmas Day!

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On this Christmas morning, a greeting from the only carol written for St. Paul’s Church, Albany. “A Christmas Carol”  was “written for the children of St. Paul’s Church” in 1856 by George William Warren, our organist and choirmaster from 1848 until 1860 and sets verse by our rector, Thomas A. Starkey.

Thomas A. Starkey

Thomas A. Starkey

Geo. Wm. Warren's A Christmas Carol

Geo. Wm. Warren’s A Christmas Carol

Starkey’s words also appear on a song sheet published separately.

Christmas Carol Song Sheet (courtesy Library of Congress)

Christmas Carol Song Sheet (courtesy Library of Congress)

Thirty years later, the song was still sung in Albany. Huybertie Pruyn Hamlin, in her memoir An Albany Girlhood, refers to it as “our favorite carol” in the 1880’s. Writing fifty years later, she still recalled the frosted bells on the cover and the last line of the first verse: “to young and old, to sad and gay, a merry greeting on Christmas Day!”