William Wallace Gilchrist
1846 — 1916
William Wallace Gilchrist was an American composer and a major figure in nineteenth century music of Philadelphia. He founded the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia in 1874.
Adapted from the Wikipedia article on William W. Gilchrist.
From the period sources
William Wallace Gilchrist, born in Jersey City in 1846, was a significant American composer and conductor, whose career was largely centered in Philadelphia. He received his musical education from H. A. Clarke at the University of Pennsylvania, who, according to Famous Composers and Their Works (1891), was Gilchrist’s “only teacher.” After a year teaching in Cincinnati, Gilchrist returned to Philadelphia in 1873, serving for four years as choirmaster at St. Clement’s Church, and from 1877, as organist and choirmaster of Christ Church, Germantown, as noted in A Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (1900). He also taught at the Philadelphia Musical Academy from 1882.
Gilchrist was a prolific composer, particularly of choral works, and a conductor of several choral societies, including the Philadelphia Festival Chorus and the Mendelssohn Club, as detailed in the Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians (1889). His compositions frequently garnered recognition; he won a Cincinnati Festival prize in 1882 for his setting of the 46th Psalm, and in 1880, he took all three prizes offered by the New York Mendelssohn Glee Club for men’s part-songs, including “Autumn Dreaming,” according to Famous Composers and Their Works (1891). This same source suggests his musical “manner… leans toward Mendelssohn.” He was also the conductor of the “Symphony Society of Philadelphia” formed in 1893 by “cultivated amateurs,” which served as a forerunner to the Philadelphia Orchestra, as reported in Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians (American Supplement) (1922). The New Encyclopedia of Music and Musicians (1924) further highlights his role as founder and conductor of the Mendelssohn Club in Philadelphia from 1874, and notes his style was “marked by a union of technical dexterity and fine imagination.”