Phi Mu Alpha began with an invitation to a "get-acquainted" reception,
extended by the "Old Boys" to the "New Boys" of Boston's New England Conservatory
early in the fall term of 1898. A spontaneous discussion about forming
a men's music club took place among some of the men who attended the reception
and, there being considerable interest in the idea, a meeting was planned
for the evening of October 6 to further explore the possibilities.
A similar desire for fellowship
among musicians had earlier led Ossian E. Mills, then bursar of the Conservatory
to invite a group of male students to meet informally with him once a week.
It is safe to suppose that some of these men were present at the gathering
on October 6 and that through them, Mills influenced the adoption of high
ideals of brotherhood by Phi Mu Alpha even before its official beginnings.
The minutes of the first
meeting on October 6, 1898 describe the appointment of a "committee on
rules and regulations," which was to prepare a set of bylaws for the new
organization. On October 25, the club's 13 active and one honorary
member (Ossian Mills) accepted from a committee a governing document which
has remained the Fraternity's philosophy of existence to the present day.
In part it read:
"The object of this Fraternity shall be
for the development of the best and truest fraternal spirit; the mutual
welfare and brotherhood of musical students; the advancement o music in
America and a loyalty to the Alma Mater..."
The club also accepted the suggestion of the
newly-elected director of the conservatory (and the Fraternity's second
honorary member), George W. Chadwick, that the group adopt the name of
an organization of which he had been a member during his student days in
Leipzig. SINFONIA was born.
The fledgling society was
a success from its very beginning. The first recorded initiation
of new members took place on November 28, 1898, barely a month after Sinfonia's
founding. Under the leadership of its first president, Frank Leslie
Stone, the Fraternity carried on a busy schedule of social events, presented
recitals, concerts and shows, sponsored a men's glee club, entertained
visiting artists, renovated the chapter rooms set aside for their use by
the Conservatory, and held regular fortnightly meetings, one of the main
features of which was the initiation of new members.
By October o 1899 the club
numbered about fifty men and continued to add members at frequent intervals.
Sinfonia's outstanding success gave rise to thoughts of expansion in the
minds of Founder Mills, President Percy Jewett Burrell, and Treasurer Ralph
Howard Pendleton. To them it seemed that if their club was fulfilling
a need among men at the New England Conservatory, then surely men in other
conservatories in the country could find benefit and pleasure in similar
organizations in their school. Large Greek-letter fraternities flourished
on college campuses, but there was no social-professional brotherhood for
men in music. Why not establish a national Sinfonia for men studying
music in conservatories and music schools coast to coast? The men
of Boston's Sinfonia, however, were by no means of one mind on the question
of expansion; at a meeting on October 1, 1900 to discuss the issue, arguments
pro and con were vigorous and tempers grew hot. But, in the end,
a majority agreed to spend $25.00 from the club's treasury (which then
totaled $34.00!) to send men to New York, Philadelphia, and Washington
in order to present the idea of Sinfonia firsthand to male students of
the leading conservatories. The expedition attracted notice far outside
the student world; mention appeared in leading newspapers, and magazines.
So it was that Pendleton
and Hendy Hall found themselves in Philadelphia and in conference with
men of the old Broad Street Conservatory on October 6, 1900, two years
to the day after Sinfonia's birth in Boston. The Philadelphia students
requested and received admission to Sinfonia as its Beta Chapter.
On November 26, 1900, a group
of twelve at the American Institute of Applied Arts in New York City became
Gamma Chapter; Delta, at Ithaca Conservatory, followed in the last weeks
of January, 1901. To govern the affairs of the now national Fraternity,
a convention of its four chapters was called in Boston on April 16-20,
1901. The assembly saw the sights and attended concerts in Boston,
elected Ossian Mills National President, and set about the business of
fraternity government which has continued ever since. By 1902, Beta
had progressed sufficiently to host the second National Convention.
The Philadelphia Press on April 20, 1902, gave the assembly a particularly
noteworthy account:
"Nearly
forty musical geniuses from different parts of the country will assemble
in this city tomorrow to discuss in a calm, harmonious way, topics pertaining
to their art.
This will be the second
convention of the Sinfonia Fraternity of America, the first organization
which has ever tried to promote and foster a general feeling of fellowship
among makers of melody since the practicability of producing musical sounds
was discovered in the dead past.
For three days these musical
geniuses, who hail from Boston, Chicago, Ithaca, and New York and other
parts of the Union are to enjoy one another's society. In that time
they will talk of various phases of modern music, discuss the compositions
of the old masters, transact business of the fraternity, hold a banquet
and visit the various points of interest in Philadelphia, and they propose
doing it in a matter which musicians of old times would have believed impossible.
In the musical discussions particularly, it is said, the spirit of antagonism
proverbially rampant among artists of the profession will be absent.
Tradition, in this respect, has been overcome by the Sinfonia."
The club which resulted from
the efforts of those young men under the leadership of Brother Mills grew
into the largest professional music fraternity in the United States.
Although our brothers had high hopes for the future of their fledgling
Fraternity, never in their wildest dreams did they foresee the extent to
which Phi Mu Alpha would eventually grow. The National Fraternity
which formed around four chapters in April of 1901 in Boston grew to over
three hundred strong in the early sixties and today boasts of over 200
active chapters.
What has really happened
since 1898? How did the Fraternity grow to its present size?
What were the values and traditions of our founders, and how have they
evolved into what we now know as Sinfonia?
The delegates, gathered at
the first convention in Boston in 1901, stood on the threshold of the twentieth
century - a time which was to see the most rapid and dramatic changes in
the history of the world. Those men attempted to project into this
century an idea which would revolutionize American music - an idea which
emphasized the harmony and welfare of music students over the dominant
condition of competitiveness which our founders saw. They hoped to
raise American music and American musicians to a point of equality with
their European counterparts. They envisioned a brotherhood which
they hoped would go forth from the conservatories to pervade society itself
and bring us ever closer to the final harmony of all mankind. They
sought not only to build better musicians, but better men and a better
country.
Those must have truly been
exciting times. Already the last quarter of the nineteenth century
had brought about major changes in American lifestyles, and it was difficult
to keep up with the profess of technological and social advancements from
day to day. America was beginning to assert itself in the arena of
world affairs, trying furiously to cast off the role of the culturally
"backward" colonies and be counted among the ranking nations of the glove.
That American musicians should want to be part of this movement as well
stands to reason.
In those days, even American
audiences and conservatories would recognize a musician only if he had
a background of European instruction. The foremost masters were Europeans.
No matter what a man's ability, he could realistically expect no advancement
without the proper European "pedigree." One can easily imagine the
effect this type of atmosphere could have on a young musician eager to
make his start in the world. This served to intensify the competition
among talented American musicians for the few positions available to them
and to foster in them a deep insecurity and an unavoidable sense of inferiority
to the Europeans, regardless of their own abilities. The unfairness
of the situation gnawed at them. To be disregarded by their countrymen
for the same reasons was almost unbearable. If America was willing
to assert itself on a level of equality with the rest of the world, could
not American musicians do the same? This was one of the driving forces
behind the creation of a National Sinfonia.
Our founders saw in Sinfonia
a rallying point, a mutually supportive atmosphere for American musicians,
a means to end the destructive competition which only served to hold them
back. They foresaw a time when American musicians would compete,
not against one another, but against the European stigma which kept them
from a place of equality. Our founders felt that when American musicians
began to be mutually supportive, each urging the other to the heights of
his art, then and only then could American music take its rightful place
alongside the European tradition. The founders of our Fraternity
took great pride in being a primary force in that movement.
The rapid rate of growth
which followed grew out of this atmosphere, as the young musicians of the
country's conservatories eagerly sought to overcome their perceived inferiority.
By its twenty-fifth year, the Fraternity had grown to twenty five chapters.
It doubled in the five years that followed. It was in this period
that Sinfonia experienced its "Golden Age," when labors of influential
and selfless leaders such as Ossian Mills, Percy Jewett Burrell, Peter
Dykema and Thomas E. Dewey brought forth a National Sinfonia which earned
the respect of students and educators alike and truly became a force in
American music.
Sinfonia managed to grow
and flourish in the early teens under the leadership of Burrell, a man
imbued with the spirit of Ossian Mills and determined to nurture the seeds
which Mills had carefully planted in Sinfonia. National president
from 1907-1914, Brother Burrell gave selflessly of his time and effort
to build Sinfonia into a proud and strong fraternity with an earnest commitment
to the values embodied in the purposes of Sinfonia and a demand for quality
which gained Phi Mu Alpha the respect of its peers.
Sinfonia continued to flourish
in the 1920's under the dynamic leadership of Wisconsin's Peter W. Dykema,
later of COlumbia University, a man of great energies and foresight whose
effect on American music education is felt to this day. The Fraternity
once again stressed quality in its programs, a quality which was reflected
in a series of exemplary publications written by a young first year law
student at the University of Michigan, Thomas E. Dewey, who at the time
was equally well known for what Casey Lutton termed a "fine baritone voice."
Dewey insisted on quality
as national historian, often returning articles to their authors with instructions
to improve them. His efforts resulted in a feeling of pride throughout
the Fraternity which helped to power Sinfonia's rapid growth. Dewey
later transformed those same standards and values into an outstanding political
career which carried him to the governorship of New York and just short
of the Presidency of the United States in 1948.
After American's victory
in World War II, the idea of our inferiority became a thing of the past.
The insecurity which had given Sinfonia its urgency before the wars had
vanished. The draft in wartime had made it virtually impossible to
maintain anything other than a shell of Sinfonia, since many schools could
claim fewer than ten male students enrolled. With the introduction
of the GI bill came a massive influx of men into the nation's music programs
after the war. The size problems suddenly vanished, and now chapters
boomed almost faster than anyone could keep track. Due to this rapid
change in the membership, maintaining the same type of quality and continuity
in our programs became very difficult. Rather than a natural, orderly
expansion, Sinfonia was now faced with a membership boom for which the
Fraternity was not well prepared.
The increased numbers brought
about the appearance of health, but along with that perception came a complacency
toward the values of the Fraternity which had seemed to urgent before the
wars. The values which had been so intently championed by the idealists
of the early years seemed somewhat hollow and perhaps a little naive to
the men who ere fresh from the experiences of war. They wanted to
enjoy life, to make up for lost time. The Fraternity became larger
through a desire for fellowship and renewing old acquaintances, but the
intense commitment to its values which had been prevalent in the early
days seemed to subside in favor of more social and professional interest.
Extremely rapid expansion
coupled with the difficulties and expenses of communicating with the entire
membership and keeping records updated posed some rather large problems.
To save money, publications were streamlined. It was impossible to
putout the type of yearbook which had been the standard of the pre-war
era. The heritage of excellence which was common knowledge to our
early brothers was lost in the rush of expansion, and hence our knowledge
of Sinfonia's early years is now limited and somewhat vague. The
writings and commentaries which made up the bulk of our history were no
longer published on a regular basis, and as a result their message became
less and less familiar to our members. Along with that loss, and
the intense commitment which the writings had helped to foster, went the
national prestige which the Fraternity had enjoyed in the '20s and '30s.
This was not a drastic process, but rather a slow decline which has progressed
slowly over the ensuing years. When the scorn of established institutions
which characterized the '60s hit Phi Mu Alpha, we were hard pressed to
preserve the vestiges of national prominence which remained. The
question of quality had been replaced by the more vital question of survival
itself. The financial woes of the '70s only served to make matters
worse, and the financial predicament carried through to the '80s.
Sinfonia has now stabilized its financial situation and with a retrospective
self-examination, we are looking toward the future with confidence.
A rebirth of Sinfonia is
at hand with a new commitment to the original values held by our founders
and early leaders. The early brothers left a truly great legacy of
wisdom and inspiration through the publications of the time. Current
publications are re-establishing the tradition of printing the messages
and ideas of our revered forefathers. The values which made Sinfonia
great then are abiding and can be just as useful now as they were nearly
100 years ago. What made Sinfonia so prominent in its "Golden Age"?
There were three overriding forces: intense commitment to the values of
the Fraternity; a belief in the need for a vital and quality-organized
national organization in addition to strong individual chapters; and a
serious attempt to live the vows taken at initiation. As our early
brothers expressed so well in 1928, at the memorial service for Ossian
Mills:
"To all of us humans the future is a closed
book, except that we know it as a continuation of the present, just as
the present flows out of the past. We, therefore, can speak of the
Sinfonia of the future only in terms of what has been."
All of us know the past.
But what of our future? The future course of Sinfonia rests on the
actions we take now, in the present. The success which Phi Mu Alpha
Sinfonia will enjoy in the future depends upon a firm foundation laid in
the present. Why should we not fulfill the promise of Sinfonia, and
lead the way in music in America, and fraternity in music? All that
stands in our path toward accomplishing those goals is our own commitment
and effort.