Reginald De Koven

Reginald De Koven in 1904

Henry Louis Reginald De Koven (April 3, 1859 – January 16, 1920) was an American music critic and prolific composer, particularly of comic operas.

Biography

De Koven was born in Middletown, Connecticut, and moved to Europe in 1870, where he received the majority of his education. He graduated from St John's College of Oxford University in England in 1879. He undertook various musical studies at Stuttgart with Speidel and with Lebert and Pruckner. He studied composition at Frankfurt with Dr. Hauff, and after staying there for six months moved on to Florence, Italy, where he studied singing with Vanuccini. Study in operatic composition followed, first with Richard Genée, in Vienna, and then with Léo Delibes, in Paris.

De Koven returned to the U.S. in 1882 to live in Chicago, Illinois, and later lived in New York. He was able to find scope for his wide musical knowledge as a critic with Chicago's Evening Post, Harper's Weekly and New York World. Many of his songs became popular, especially "Oh Promise Me", with words by Clement Scott, which was one of the biggest song successes of its time and remains a wedding standard.

Between 1887 and 1913, De Koven composed 20 light operas, in addition to hundreds of songs, orchestral works, sonatas and ballets. While Victor Herbert's operettas were heavily influencedy by those of continental operetta composers, De Koven's works were patterned after Gilbert and Sullivan.^[1] His greatest success was Robin Hood, which premiered in Chicago in 1890 but was performed all across the country.^[2] It played in New York at the Knickerbocker Theatre and in London, in 1891, and at New York's Garden Theatre in 1892. His other operettas included The Fencing Master (1892, Casino Theatre, New York); The Algerian (1893, Garden Theatre, New York); Rob Roy, first produced in Detroit, Michigan, 1894;^[3] The Mandarin, produced in Cleveland, Ohio in 1896; The Highwayman (1897, Herald Square Theatre, New York)^[4] and Maid Marian (1901 Garden Theatre, New York). Harry B. Smith wrote the libretti for many of his comic operas.

From 1902 to 1904, De Koven conducted the Washington, D.C. symphony. His wife, Anna de Koven, was a well-known socialite, novelist and amateur historian who published her works under the name "Mrs. Reginald de Koven." The music press doubted that De Koven could compose serious operas. His opera The Canterbury Pilgrims (with a libretto by poet and dramatist Percy MacKaye) premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 1917.^[5] He composed a second opera, Rip Van Winkle (also with a libretto by MacKaye) prior to his death but was unable to see it performed in 1920 in Chicago.

One obituary read: he proved that "the American stage was not dependent upon foreign composers."^[6]

Works

Cover of "Rip Van Winkle" opera by Reginald De Koven, 1919

Opera

• Reginald De Koven, Percy MacKaye (1916). The Canterbury Pilgrims: An Opera. The Macmillan company. http://books.google.com/books?id=A1qzAAAAIAAJ&pg=PP14&dq=Percy+MacKaye&lr=. 
• Reginald De Koven, Percy MacKaye (1919). Rip Van Winkle: Folk-opera in Three Acts. G. Schirmer. http://books.google.com/books?id=8AURAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Percy+MacKaye&lr=. 

Other compositions

• Prelude in G minor

Notes

External links

This article is based on a text from the Etude magazine, prior to 1923, that is in the public domain.

• Reginald de Koven at the IBDB database
• Reginald De Koven at the Songwriters Hall of Fame
• Free scores by Reginald De Koven in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• Free scores by Reginald De Koven at the International Music Score Library Project
• Sheet Music for "Oh promise me", G. Schirmer, Inc., 1889.
• Reginald De Koven sheet music from the Frances G. Spencer American Popular Sheet Music Collection at Baylor University