Representative women of New England/Mrs. L. E. Orth
MRS. L. E. ORTH was born in Milford, N.H., July 6, 1858. Her father, James Blood, was descended from Peter Blood, who was one of the first settlers of Dunstable, Mass. Her mother, Emeline Wheeler Blood, was the daughter of Major James Wheeler, of Hollis, N.H., whose ancestors were English, and his wife, Dorcas Mooar, daughter of Jacob Mooar, who was of Scottish descent.
In 1775 Jacob Mooar, Mrs. Orth's great-grandfather, was sixteen years of age; and, when the bell of the Hollis meeting-house was rung to call the minute-men to arms, he was hoeing in his grandfather Nevin's field, three miles away. Hearing the bell, he dropped h's hoe upon the nearest boulder, and ran to answer the summons. The boulder upon which his hoe rested was a few years ago removed to the centre of Hollis, and now stands on the green near the old meeting-house from whose belfry the summons rang. Jacob Mooar fought in the battle of bennington.
Mrs. Emeline W. Blood was the leading soprano in the village choir, and always took a prominent part in the local musical conventions. The daughter, Lizzie, inherited musical tendencies from her mother, and began the study of the piano at the age of ten. Later, when living in Springfield, Mass., she continued her studies under Professor F. Zuchtmann, at that time the foremost musician in Central Massachusetts. Her musical talent showed such promise that, urged by her advisers, she planned t« go to Germany for study in June, 1877. On a visit to friends in Boston in February of that year she met the pianist, John Orth, who but two years before had returned with much eclat from five years' study in Germany with the foremost masters of that time—Kullak, Liszt, Deppe, Lebert, and Pruckner—in piano playing, and Kiel, Paisst, Weitzmann, and P. Scharwenka in theory.
Coming to Boston to live in May, 1877, loi" five years she studied the piano with Mr. Orth. During the latter part of this period she taught large classes of i)ui)ils, and made many successful public appearances in concerts and recitals. She also studied harmony with the late Charles L. Capen.
In May, 1883, she was married to John Orth, her teacher. One of the happiest experiences of her wedding trip abroad was a stay of three weeks in Weimar, made memorable by many delightful afternoons in the salon of Liszt, who with his wonderful and never to be forgotten graciousness welcomed back his former pupil.
Here Mrs. Orth met many aspiring students who have since become world famous, among them Alexander Siloti, Alfretl Reisenauer, and Arthur Friedheim. Arthur Bird, the American com])oser, was one of the " Lisztianer." The beautiful Mary F. Scott-Siddons, the English actress, was of the coterie, with her son, Henry A'aller, the pianist. While in Stuttgart Mr. and Mrs. Orth went with friends of the sculptor Donsdorf to see his statue of Bach, just then completed and ready to be taken to Eisenach, the great master's birthplace, where in the following year it was unveiled. The genial sculptor later .sent to Mrs. Orth in Boston a cast from the small model of the Bach statue, dcnibtless the only one in this country. Donsdorf also sent a cast of his large medallion heail of Robert Schumann, which forms part of the pedestal of the Beethoven monument at Bonn. At that time the sculptor had made but one other cast, which he had presented to Madame Clara Schumann.
From her marriage, in May, 1883, until May, 1895, Mrs. Orth's musical activity was confined to teaching her own and other children. While she had always extemporized on the piano with freedom, she had never thought seriously of composition; but in May, 1895, without warning, forethought, or effort, the inner musical life began to express itself in this form. At first Mrs. Orth's compositions were for the piano alone, and were naturally the outcome of her intimate knowledge of the musical needs of children. To the writing of music for children many seem to think themselves "called," but indeed few are by nature chosen. Such music must^be naively simple, well defined in rhythm, and as spontaneous as a child itself. To write music of this type without triteness requires nothing less than a rare sort of genius. Accomplished musicians, men famed for their work in larger forms, have tried this and failed. Indeed, it may be questioned if any but a woman, a mother full of the child spirit, can adequately, lovingly, and sympathetically give musical expression to that which appeals to the child heart. Mrs. Orth's work has clearly shown her to be one of the chosen few.
Perhaps the most original of all piano works for children is her "Mother Goose Songs without Words," Op. 5. This volume contains seventy little piano pieces in the exact rhythm of the Mother Goose rhymes, which are printed on the opposite pages, each number a tone miniature, grave or gay, quiet or sparkling, according to the story portrayed. The success of this musical volume and her delight in writing it prompted Mrs. Orth later to the composition of "Mother Goose's Jubilee," an opera for children, in three acts, which was performed with the greatest success at the Tremont Theatre, Boston, for a week in the spring of 1901. In the opera the tribe of Mother Goose assembles to celebrate her jubilee. The company is received by Mother Goose and Jack, her son, at her cottage in the wood, identified as the House that Jack Built. The characters speak, as they naturally would, the language of Mother Goose, the entire libretto, a unique feature, being based upon her rhymes and jingles. In its published form this opera, her Opus 12, a volume of sixty songs, is the largest collection of its kind in print. To group together sixty short songs without suspicion of monotony is in itself an achievement.
Mrs. Orth subsequently composed the music for a comic opera, entitled "The Song of the Sea-shell," which ran for a week in one of the Boston theatres in April, 1903. While so much of Mrs. Orth's work has been devoted to music for children, her Opus 25 and Opus 26 reveal her melodic gift in serious songs of a higher type. Among her other published compositions may be mentioned the following: Op. 1, Four Character Sketches in F, for piano; 0]). 2, Six Recreation Pieces, for piano; Op. 6, "The Merry-go-round," eighteen piano pieces; Op. 7, "Daffodils," three piano duets; Op. 10, Ten Tone Pictures for the Piano; Op. 11, Twelve Miniatures for the Piano; Op. 15, "On the White Keys," an introduction to the piano; Op. 19, Festival Minuet; Op. 21, "Ten Little Fingers," ten piano pieces; Op. 23, "What Little Hands can do," ten piano pieces; Op. 28, Songs for Sleepy-time, twenty-four children's songs.