Methuen Memorial Music Hall
| Methuen Memorial Music Hall | |||
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| National Register of Historic Places | |||
 The Methuen Memorial Music Hall |
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| location | 192 Broadway, Methuen (Massachusetts) , Massachusetts | ||
| Coordinates | 42 ° 43 '29.5 " N , 71 ° 11' 6.6" W | ||
| Built | 1909 | ||
| architect | Henry Vaughan | ||
| NRHP number | 78000462 | ||
| The NRHP added | December 14, 1978 | ||
The Methuen Memorial Music Hall (MMMH) is a concert hall in Methuen , in the American state of Massachusetts . The building was completed in 1909. It houses an organ made in the 19th century (called "The Great Organ" ; German: "The Great Organ" ), which was originally owned by the Boston Music Hall .
prehistory
The homeless organ
The trigger for the construction of the Methuen Memorial Music Hall was the founding of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1881 or the fact that the stage in the Boston Music Hall was insufficient for this orchestra as long as the organ built there in 1863 remained there.
Jabez Baxter Upham, President of the Boston Music Hall Association, had traveled to Europe in the 1850s to find a suitable company to build this instrument, and had finally signed a contract with Eberhard Friedrich Walcker in Ludwigsburg . In 1863 the organ, one of the largest instruments in the USA and at the same time the first concert organ in the country, was inaugurated. It had been shipped from Rotterdam to Boston on the Dutch ship Presto and had finally cost around $ 60,000 after originally estimated at a maximum of $ 25,000.
In 1884, to Uphams outrage, it was dismantled and sold to William O. Grover for only $ 5,000. Grover intended to hand the organ over to the New England Conservatory of Music , but died before he could carry out that plan. In 1897 the stored organ was auctioned. Edward Francis Searles from Methuen won the bid for $ 1,500, prompting Upham to create an inauguration speech for a new home for the organ. However, he died in 1902, long before the building was completed.
Edward Francis Searles
Edward Francis Searles was born in Methuen in 1841, lost his father at an early age and had to start his professional life early. Still, he managed to take piano lessons, and eventually he was able to make a living from teaching piano. In addition, I trained in organ playing in Boston and studied architecture at the Boston Art School. For a while he worked for the interior designer Paul and Company in Boston before moving to Herter Brothers in New York, whose predecessor company also provided the prospectus for the Boston organ. Searles proved himself, for example, in furnishing the Vanderbilt residence in New York and thus laid the foundation for his wealth. In 1881 he met Mary Frances Sherwood Hopkins , the widow of the railway tycoon Mark Hopkins , on a combined spa and business trip . In 1887 the couple married. Mary Searles died four years later, leaving her husband a fortune. He now owned more than $ 21 million and owned land and buildings in New York, San Francisco , Great Barrington, and Methuen. This allowed him to start building what would later become known as the Methuen Memorial Music Hall in 1899 and to have the organ transported to its new location by rail. There it was stored in a special building until the hall was completed in 1909. From 1905 to 1909 the organ was rebuilt and partly changed by the Methuen Organ Company. It was no longer played in public during Searles' lifetime.
Methuen Memorial Music Hall
The construction
The contract to design the building on the banks of the Spicket , then called Serlo Organ Hall , went to Henry Vaughan . He had already made a name for himself as a church builder and had already worked for Searles several times. For example, Searles commissioned him to build Pine Lodge Mansion , Stillwater Manor in Salem, Stanton Harcourt Castle in Windham (New Hampshire) , Dream House on Block Island and the Mary F. Searles Science Building, Bowdoin College in Brunswick (Maine) , plus schools and churches. In total, he worked at the Methuen Memorial Music Hall for ten years.
The exterior of the building is relatively simple, apart from the Italian-style campanile and the baroque volutes on the gable. The interior is in the English Baroque style and is based on the work of Christopher Wren , especially on his design of St. Stephen's Church in Walbrook .
The plan of the building is a Latin cross , the walls are very thick and soundproofed by cavities and weatherproof. The organ was given its place in the pulpit. With a height of about 65 feet, a width of the ship of 40 and a width at the height of the wings of 70 feet and a length of more than 100 feet, the structure has a volume of over 300,000 cubic feet and a reverberation time of around four seconds.
The floor of the hall is covered with marble slabs in brownish and gray tones. The walls are clad in oak to a height of about ten feet. The design of the ceiling with its plaster stucco work cites classic motifs. A sculpture of the aurora goes back to Searles' predilection for the aurora by Guido Reni in the Palazzo Pallavicini Rospigliosi in Rome . He had the marble copy made by Carlo Nicoli with the permission of the Italian government . It was completed in 1897 and shows, in addition to Aurora, the chariot of the sun god Apollo, which is pulled by four horses, as well as seven dancing horae and a cherub , which symbolizes the morning star.
After Searle's death
After Searles died in 1920, the organ and hall were first owned by his private secretary Arthur Thomas Walker; after his death in 1927, his niece Ina Cecil McEachran inherited the ensemble. In 1930 Lillian Wightman Andrew bought the hall and organ. From 1931 Ernest Martin Skinner organized concerts in the hall. During this time, greats like Marcel Dupré , Lynwood Farnam and Edward Power Biggs played the organ. Skinner founded the Ernest M. Skinner and Son Company in 1936 and took over the Methuen Organ Company factory building that was attached to the concert hall. In the course of the Second World War there were losses and in 1943 the hall and workshop were sold. In the same year, the wooden factory building burned down, but without damaging the neighboring concert hall. In 1946 the Methuen Memorial Music Hall, Inc. was founded with the aim of using and maintaining the hall as a cultural center. Some changes were made to the organ in 1947, as well as in 1970. The organ is still in use today and is considered one of the best instruments of its kind in the USA.
The Methuen Memorial Music Hall has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1978 .
organ
The Walcker organ mentioned above today has 84 stops on four manuals and a pedal. The instrument has an electro-pneumatic action . The original game table from Walcker is available, but not connected. Instead, the organ is operated from a mobile console from the Methuen Organ Company . following disposition :
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Pairing :
- Normal coupling: I / II, III / II, IV / II, III / I, IV / I, I / P, II / P, III / P, IV / P
- Sub-octave coupling: III / III, IV / IV, III / I, IV / I
- Super octave coupling: III / III, IV / IV, III / I, IV / I, III / P, IV / P
- Playing aids : Sforzando, 16 general combinations plus 8 for each of the five sub-works on 32 levels,
- Remarks
- ↑ 10 2 ⁄ 3 ′ + 8 '+ 4 4 ⁄ 7 ′ + 3 1 ⁄ 5 ′
W = register from Walcker
S = register from Skinner
A / K = register from Andover / Killinger
M = register from Methuen Organ Company
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ cf. Sampson, Edward J .: Methuen Memorial Music Hall History ( Memento of the original from March 9, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at mmmh.org (accessed on August 9, 2009)
