The Frankfurter Museums-Gesellschaft is a cultural association in Frankfurt, Hesse, Germany, which is responsible for the Frankfurt museum concerts. It manages the Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester, which is both the municipal orchestra of Frankfurt and the orchestra of the Oper Frankfurt. Concerts take place in the Alte Oper concert hall. The orchestra is regarded as an important German symphony orchestra.
The organisation was founded in 1808, called Museum and responsible initially for literature, arts and music in Frankfurt, and for the museums.
Founding
In 1808, Frankfurt citizens founded the Museum, a society for the "care of the muses" and the promotion of the fine arts: literature, arts and music. Among the founders were the librarian of the Prince-primate Karl Theodor Anton Maria von Dalberg, , the chief building officer Clemens Wenzeslaus Coudray and Baumeister . The statutes of the society limited the number of members to 150. Since its foundation, the society has also had symphonic music performed in its events known as the Großes Museum. For this purpose, the orchestra of the Frankfurt Comoedienhaus was engaged, the later opera orchestra. Frankfurt's musical life took a great upswing after the Napoleonic Wars. In 1817, Louis Spohr took over the direction of the orchestra, and in the same year the pastor and historian became chairman of the museum society. From 1821 to 1848 Carl Guhr conducted the orchestra. When he died in July of the revolutionary year 1848, the Museum Society decided to appoint its own director of the music class. This was the first time the municipal orchestra had two conductors: Kapellmeister of the theatre became Louis Schindelmeisser, while Franz Messer, who had been director of the since 1837, now also conducted the museum concerts. Until 1924, the municipal orchestra retained two artistic directors, one for the theatre and one for the concerts.
The museum concerts in the Saalbau
After 1848 the Museums-Gesellschaft focused more and more on music, although it continued to organise lectures with speakers such as Felix Dahn, Alfred Brehm and Richard von Helmholtz until 1886. From 1832 to 1860, the museum concerts took place in the Great Dining Hall of the Hotel Weidenbusch in Steinweg, which had room for 1000 visitors. In 1851, the Städel took over the important painting collections.
In 1860, Carl Müller took over the direction of the Museum Concerts, who succeeded Messer as conductor of the Cäcilienchor Frankfurt. In 1861, the concerts of the society were moved to the newly built hall building in Junghofstraße and thus made accessible to the general public. The Saalbau, a work of the Frankfurt architect Rudolf Heinrich Burnitz, had a concert hall with 1800 seats and a small hall for lectures and chamber concerts, plus the necessary ancillary rooms, as well as a banquet hall in the bridge building over Junghofstraße. The large hall measured 42 by 24 metres, was 14 metres high and had excellent acoustics. It was opened on 18 November 1861 with a performance of Haydn's Die Schöpfung. For eight decades, until its destruction in 1944, it remained the centre of Frankfurt concert life.
In addition to the orchestral concerts, the chamber music series was launched in 1870, in which Johannes Brahms appeared several times as a pianist and premiered some of his works. From 1887 Richard Strauss frequently conducted the museum concerts. His symphonic poems Also sprach Zarathustra (1896) and Ein Heldenleben (1899) were premiered here. He conducted the European premiere, after the world premiere in New York, of his Symphonia domestica in 1904.
In 1891 Carl Müller retired. When his successor was elected, the personal union with the Cäcilienverein, which had become a tradition, was broken for the first time. Gustav Kogel took over the museum concerts, while August Grüters, recommended by Johannes Brahms, became director of the Cäcilienchor. Kogel modernised the programme of the museum concerts, which now included works by contemporary and foreign composers such as Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, and Dvořák. Only one soloist was invited per concert evening, the orchestral works were now in the foreground.
In 1903, Kogel took his leave. The museum chose Siegmund von Hausegger as his successor, but he moved to Munich in 1906. The museum concerts experienced a heyday between 1907 and 1920 under the direction of Willem Mengelberg. From 1915 to 1922 the composer Paul Hindemith was the concertmaster at the first desk.