Background
Theodore Thomas was born on October 11, 1835 in Germany, the son of the town musician of Esens. When Theodore was 10, the family moved to the United States, settling in New York City.
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Theodore Thomas was born on October 11, 1835 in Germany, the son of the town musician of Esens. When Theodore was 10, the family moved to the United States, settling in New York City.
The family suffered financial hardships, and Theodore was forced to earn money by playing his violin at dances, weddings, theaters, and public amusement halls. His formal musical training was slight. While still a teen-ager, he made a concert trip through the South, billing himself as a prodigy.
In 1854 Thomas joined the New York Philharmonic and also began traveling with famous soloists as a violinist. He found conducting exciting and became dedicated to raising Americans' musical taste. He organized an orchestra which gave its first concert in 1862 in New York City and which later made a series of nationwide tours, playing concerts in most of the major cities.
Thomas's orchestra performed in churches, railroad stations, or whatever hall the town provided. His programs were geared toward educating the public in listening to symphonic music, combining the familiar with the unfamiliar. In addition to conducting his own orchestra, Thomas became alternate conductor of the Brooklyn Philharmonic Society in 1862. Four years later he was made the organization's sole conductor.
In 1873 Thomas was asked to organize and direct the Cincinnati Festival; it proved one of the finest musical events in the nation. He took charge of the concerts for the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876, with unhappy financial results, and the following year became conductor of the New York Philharmonic. He continued his own orchestra, minimizing competition by programming his own concerts in a lighter vein than those of the Philharmonic.
Thomas was invited in 1891 to become conductor of the recently endowed Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He held that post for 14 years.
In 1893 he was appointed director of music for the Chicago World's Fair but resigned when his elaborate program was jeopardized by public apathy and national financial reverses.
He died at Chicago, Illinois on January 4, 1905. His funeral service was held at St. James Episcopal Cathedral in Chicago and he was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
In 1878 Thomas became head of the new College of Music in Cincinnati but resigned the next year when he realized the commercial nature of the enterprise. He returned to New York and to the Philharmonic, leading that orchestra to new artistic heights. In 1885 he conducted the American Opera Company, an insufficiently underwritten venture that failed after one season. Thomas is honored with a memorial monument and garden in Chicago's Grant Park, near Orchestra Hall.
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In addition to conducting his own orchestra, Thomas became alternate conductor of the Brooklyn Philharmonic Society in 1862.
He was a member of the Brooklyn Philharmonic Society.
Quotes from others about the person
Music historian Judith Tick writes: "Theodore Thomas was a legend in his own time, and in 1927 the journalist Charles Edward Russell's biography of Theodore Thomas won the only Pulitzer Prize ever awarded for the biography of a musician. "
Theodore Thomas Theodore Thomas was one of the foremost American orchestral conductors of his time and the original director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
The family suffered financial hardships, and Theodore was forced to earn money by playing his violin at dances, weddings, theaters, and public amusement halls.
In 1885 he conducted the American Opera Company, an insufficiently underwritten venture that failed after one season.
He married as his first wife in 1864 in New York City, Minna L. Rhodes. She was a graduate and later a teacher at Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut. They met at a series of chamber concerts in Farmington, Connecticut. Thomas and Minna had five children: Franz Thomas, Marion Thomas, Herman Thomas, Hector W. Thomas and Mrs. D. N. B. Sturgis.
He married, as his second wife, in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, at the Church of the Ascension on May 7, 1890, Rose Emily Fay, the daughter of Rev. Charles Fay, Harvard College 1829, an Episcopal priest and Emily Hopkins.
She was born in 1853 in Burlington, Vermont and died on April 19, 1929 at Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is buried next to her husband at Mount Auburn Cemetery, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
