Background
George Laurie Osgood was born on April 3, 1844, in Chelsea, Massachussets, the son of John Hamilton Osgood and Adeline (Stevens) Osgood, and a descendant of John Osgood who emigrated to Massachusetts in 1638.
(Poets, painters, sculptors, and composers have ample time...)
Poets, painters, sculptors, and composers have ample time to correct and revise, before exposing their works to public criticism; but for the singer whose voice has been taught in a school not based upon the acknowledged laws of vocal art, and thereby suffered injury, the remedy is diflficult, indeed often impossible. Through such carelessness or ignorance would we might call it by some milder title numberless beautiful voices which should be a joy to their possessor s, already show signs of decay, even before that period when in the natural order of study they may be expected to have reached a vigorous growth. The following pages seek to present, therefore, a logical adaptation and progressive development of those long tr ed principles of the old Italian school, which experience our wisest master in art has shown to be the only reliable method for developing the beauty and strength of the human singing voice. They are based upon the transmitted writings of the celebrated masters Pierfrancesco Tosi, and Giambattista Mancini, and traditions of the school of Bernacchi of Bologna ;and upon several years personal observation and test of these principles as applied in the best Italian and other schools of Europe. With this have beea blended such developments of the modern science of laryngoscopy as are of practical value to the student of vocal art, with engravings illustrating the tongue and other organs of speech in the positions necessary to a distinct articulation and pronunciation of the vowels and important consonants, which can be subjected to the voluntary control of the singer a feature new to vocal Method. I ndeed, the author has felt a special interest in expanding completely the principles of pronunciation and respiration, and upon these two most important, yet, in our day, most neglected branches of the art, has bestowed more than usual attention. He (Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)
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composer conductor musician singer teacher
George Laurie Osgood was born on April 3, 1844, in Chelsea, Massachussets, the son of John Hamilton Osgood and Adeline (Stevens) Osgood, and a descendant of John Osgood who emigrated to Massachusetts in 1638.
As a child George showed an acute sense of pitch, and was given every musical advantage from his earliest years. At Harvard, where he was graduated in 1866, after studying composition and the organ under John Knowles Paine, he directed the college glee club and orchestra for three successive years. After graduation George Osgood went to Germany, where he remained three years studying singing in Berlin under Ferdinand Sieber and Karl August Haupt, the former famous as an exponent of the old Italian tradition, and German song and choral music with Robert Franz. He then went to Italy for three years of further vocal study at Milan under Francesco Lamperti.
After studying George made a successful concert tour in Germany. As a result he was engaged in 1872 by Theodore Thomas for a winter tour of the United States with his orchestra as tenor soloist. For some thirty years thereafter Osgood played a leading part in Boston's musical life. He was very popular as a teacher and brought out a number of successful singers. He also directed an annual series of chamber-music concerts of a high quality, and completely transformed the Boylston Club of Boston, of which he was conductor from 1875 to 1893, from a male chorus into a mixed choral organization of two hundred voices. Under the name of the Boston Singers' Society (1890), he established its reputation for brilliant performance of difficult pieces. He translated the texts of many choral works and songs, and published a Guide in the Art of Singing (1874), which by 1917 had gone through eight editions. He also composed a number of part-songs and anthems and fifty songs, besides editing The Boylston Collection of Choruses. After 1903 he made his home in Europe, first in Geneva, and later, in Godalming, England, where he had a large country estate and where he died.
(Poets, painters, sculptors, and composers have ample time...)
George Osgood was a director of Music of the Boylston Club and the Singers’ Society of Boston.
On April 15, 1868, George Osgood married Jeannette Cabot Farley, by whom he had three children; she died August 24, 1888, and on June 27, 1891, he married June Bright.
