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The Chicago Symphony Orchestra family joins the classical music world in mourning the loss of Christopher Rouse. He died on September 21, 2019, at the age of seventy at a hospice center in Towson, Maryland.
Christopher Rouse (Getty photo)
Music by the Pulitzer Prize–winning composer has been performed by the Orchestra on numerous occasions, and a complete list is below.
March 1, 2, and 3, 1984, Orchestra Hall
ROUSE The Infernal Machine
Leonard Slatkin, conductor
April 28, 29, and 30, 1994, Orchestra Hall
ROUSE Symphony No. 1
David Zinman, conductor
June 29, 1995, Ravinia Festival
ROUSE Phaethon
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor
July 18, 1996, Ravinia Festival
ROUSE Symphony No. 2
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor
August 12, 1999, Ravinia Festival
ROUSE Envoi
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor
May 17, 18, 19, and 22, 2001, Orchestra Hall
ROUSE Clarinet Concerto
Larry Combs, clarinet
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor
The Clarinet Concerto was commissioned by the Hanson Institute for American Music of the Eastman School of Music (University of Rochester) and for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and its principal clarinet, Larry Combs. The concerto was dedicated to Augusta Read Thomas, the Orchestra’s composer-in-residence from 1997 until 2006.
April 20, 21, 22, 23, and 25, 2006, Orchestra Hall
ROUSE Rapture
David Zinman, conductor
December 20, 21, and 22, 2012, Orchestra Hall
ROUSE Heimdall’s Trumpet
Christopher Martin, trumpet
Jaap van Zweden, conductor
Heimdall’s Trumpet was commissioned for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra by the Edward F. Schmidt Family Commissioning Fund.
Numerous tributes have been posted on Chicago Classical Review, The Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, and Classic FM, among many others.
Christopher Rouse’s final work—his Symphony no. 6—will receive its world premiere on October 18, 2019, with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Louis Langrée will conduct.
Enlist: On Which Side of the Window are
You?, Laura Brey, U.S., 1917
The recruitment poster at right, from the Pritzker Military Museum & Library collections, shows a civilian man looking out a window as soldiers march to service.
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Boston Globe, March 26, 1918
For a Boston Symphony Orchestra performance in Providence on October 30, 1917, several Rhode Island ladies’ clubs had contacted orchestra manager Charles Ellis, requesting the addition of The Star-Spangled Banner to the concert. After consulting with BSO founder Henry Higginson, Ellis decided not to change the program. Unaware of the request, music director Karl Muck—born in Germany but naturalized as a Swiss citizen—after the concert was accused in the press of working for the German cause and eventually arrested on March 25, 1918. He also was imprisoned at Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia until August 1919, when he and his wife were deported. The article is here.
Ernst and Lina Kunwald, December 8, 1917 (National Archives and Records Administration)
Music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra since 1912, Ernst Kunwald continued to express pride in his Austrian heritage during the war. He led The Star-Spangled Banner before one concert but only after expressing to the orchestra and the mostly German audience that his sympathies were with his homeland. Kunwald was arrested by the U.S. Marshals Service on December 8, 1917, and released the following day, whereupon he resigned his post as conductor. One month later, he was interned under the Alien Enemies Act at Fort Oglethorpe and was deported soon thereafter.
Theodore Thomas and Frederick Stock
At the invitation of founder and first music director Theodore Thomas, Frederick Stock came to the U.S. in 1895 to join the Orchestra as assistant principal viola. He applied for his first U.S. citizenship papers four days after his arrival, but inadvertently neglected to complete the process. He was promoted to assistant conductor in 1899, and shortly after Thomas’s unexpected death on January 4, 1905, the board of trustees soon elected Frederick Stock as the Orchestra’s second music director on April 11.
Columbia Graphophone Company 1917 recording
Stock’s arrangement of The Star-Spangled Banner
In 1916, on the eve of U.S. involvement in the war, President Woodrow Wilson ordered The Star-Spangled Banner to be played at military and other notable events. Stock made his own orchestration of the Banner along with America (My Country ’Tis of Thee) and recorded both with the Orchestra for the Columbia Graphophone Company on May 28, 1917.
Stock’s fingerprints (FBI Case Files, National Archives)
When the trustees encouraged Stock to finalize his citizenship—to deflect concerns over his German heritage—he discovered that his 1895 application was invalid and needed to start the process a second time. But first, Stock had to submit a Registration Affidavit of Alien Enemy, complete with fingerprints, on February 7, 1918.
With his citizenship status incomplete and the country at war, on August 17, 1918, Frederick Stock made the decision to resign, asserting his loyalty to the U.S. “I do not hesitate to classify myself as American, because all who know me are aware that at heart, in thought and in spirit, as well as in action and deed, I am American, just as willing as any patriot to give my last drop of blood and my last penny for the land of my adoption and of my affections.” Stock’s handwritten letter and a transcript are here.
The trustees of the Orchestral Association reluctantly accepted Stock’s resignation on October 1, 1918. Acknowledging that he had changed the language at rehearsals to English in 1914 and had programmed countless works by American composers, the board expressed its hope that the separation would be temporary, and it would soon be their “joy to welcome to our conductor’s stand Citizen Stock.” The transcript of the board meeting minutes is here.
Eric DeLamarter
Chicago composer Eric DeLamarter, was hired as assistant conductor and led the first concerts of the 1918-19 season. DeLamarter also served as organist at Fourth Presbyterian Church from 1914 and as the first conductor of the Grant Park Music Festival beginning in 1935.
Chicago Daily News, February 20, 1919
At the trustees’ meeting on February 14, 1919, Orchestra manager Frederick Wessels reported that Stock “had complied with all the requirements of the law,” having filed the necessary papers on February 7; ninety days later, his citizenship would be complete. The executive committee met five days later and unanimously resolved that Stock should resume his music directorship the following week.
February 28, 1919
On February 28, 1919, “as Mr. Stock came through the door . . . cheers sounded in the upper tiers, and the audience rose to utter its gladness that he was back at the post.” That evening’s program began with The Star-Spangled Banner and concluded with the world premiere of Stock’s new March and Hymn to Democracy, “conceived,” according to the composer, “in the spirit of our day, a spirit, indeed, of world-wide turbulence and strife, but also a spirit imbued with unending hope and implicit faith in the ultimate regeneration of humanity.”
Linda Wolfe at the Frederick Stock School
Linda Wolfe, Stock’s great-granddaughter, added: “Most of Frederick Stock’s adult life had been with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra—ten years as a violist and thirteen as music director—when he was classified as an alien enemy. He was forced to temporarily step down from the podium, and I cannot imagine his anguish and heartache. However, Stock’s devotion to the ensemble and the city did not waver during this dark time, as he spent his exile developing plans for the Civic Orchestra, the series of children’s concerts, and the youth auditions, all endeavors that continue to thrive today.”
Wolfe is pictured here at the Frederick Stock School in Chicago’s Edison Park neighborhood. Opened in 1955, Stock School is a Chicago Public School early childhood center for students between the ages of three and five, providing a model program for children with and without disabilities.
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A Time for Reflection—A Message of Peace—a companion exhibit curated by the Rosenthal Archives of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in collaboration with the Pritzker Military Museum & Library—will be on display in Symphony Center’s first-floor rotunda from October 2 through November 18, and the content also will be presented on CSO Sounds & Stories and the From the Archives blog.
This article also appears here. For event listings, please visit cso.org/armistice.
This exhibit is presented with the generous support of COL (IL) Jennifer N. Pritzker, IL ARNG (Retired), Founder and Chair, Pritzker Military Museum & Library, through the Pritzker Military Foundation.
Additional thanks to Shawn Sheehy and Jenna Harmon, along with the Arts Club of Chicago, Newberry Library, Poetry Foundation, and Ravinia Festival Association.
Gina DiBello
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra recently announced Riccardo Muti‘s appointment of Gina DiBello to the Orchestra’s first violin section. She previously had served as principal second violin of the Minnesota Orchestra and as section first violin with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, following studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music and The Juilliard School in New York.
Joseph DiBello (©Todd Rosenberg Photography)
Gina is a Chicago native and has a deep connection to the Orchestra, as she also is the daughter of CSO bass Joseph DiBello (and Lyric Opera of Chicago violin Bonita DiBello), marking only the second father-daughter combination in our history.
Joseph originally studied the bass but initially pursued a career as a pharmacist. He later resumed his musical studies and from 1969 until 1973, he served as principal bass of Philadelphia Lyric Opera and the Delaware Symphony Orchestra. In 1973, he was appointed to the bass section of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, and in 1976 Sir Georg Solti invited him to join the bass section of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Lynne Turner (©Todd Rosenberg Photography)
Lynne Turner—currently in her fifty-first season as second harp—also is a CSO legacy, as she is the daughter of former CSO violin Sol Turner (1905–1979). At the age of twenty-one, Lynne was appointed in 1962 by then-music director Fritz Reiner, following her studies with Alberto Salvi in Chicago and with Pierre Jamet at the Paris Conservatory.
Sol Turner
Joseph Vito
But we also have to mention the father-daughter combination of Joseph Vito (1887–1970) and Geraldine Vito Weicher (1915–2006). Joseph served as principal harp from 1927 until 1957, and Geraldine was second harp from 1940 until 1957. However, during that time the position of second harp was hired only on an as-needed basis and was not a fully rostered position until the beginning of the 1957-58 season.
Joseph began his career as a harpist at the age of nine, and at twenty, debuted with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under Emil Paur. He regularly performed with both the San Francisco and Cincinnati symphony orchestras before Frederick Stock hired him as principal harp for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1927.
Geraldine Vito Weicher
Geraldine studied with her father, and she was a member of the Civic Orchestra from 1935 until 1938. She was also married to John Weicher (1904–1969), who spent forty-six years with the Orchestra from 1923 until 1969, serving as concertmaster, assistant concertmaster, principal second violin, personnel manager, and conductor of the Civic Orchestra.
Fathers and sons? Sisters? Brothers? Stay tuned . . .
from the archives 