The Bohemians, New York Musicians’ Club

The Bohemians, New York Musicians’ Club is a history of the New York Bohemians, a private club of professional musicians founded in 1907, by Henry Edward Krehbiel, the chief music critic of the New York Tribune. Krehbiel was himself a member of the club and one of its leading non performing members, and the book is essentially an insider’s history of an organization that played a notable role in American musical life during its first decades.

The Bohemians was founded by a group of professional musicians, including conductors, composers, performers, and music journalists, who wanted a private social space where members of the musical profession could gather informally outside the more public spaces of the concert hall and the opera house. The club’s name was a deliberate echo of the famous Parisian artistic bohemia of the previous century and was meant to suggest a similar mixing of professional seriousness with informal sociability. The membership included many of the most famous musicians who lived in or visited New York during the period, since membership was extended to visiting artists during their American engagements.

The book records the founding of the club, the establishment of its early traditions, the major events of its first years, and biographical sketches of its principal members. Krehbiel writes from personal knowledge throughout. He had been present at most of the events he describes and had known nearly all of the members personally. The book includes considerable anecdotal material about famous musical figures of the early twentieth century, including informal portraits of conductors and composers who appeared in the club’s rooms during their New York visits. Some of this material has not appeared in the more formal published biographies of these figures and gives the book its particular value as a source for early twentieth century musical history.

The book is short, perhaps two hundred pages, and works best read by readers already interested in early twentieth century American musical life. For readers wanting more on Krehbiel himself or on the musical world he inhabited, this is a useful supplementary text. It pairs naturally with his opera guides and with his more substantial studies of Wagner and of African American folk music.