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