Learn about the
of the Lampasas County Chamber Music Festival
Music has played an essential role in the life of Lampasas for over a century and a half. In the late 1800s and early 1900s Lampasas had five different opera houses, three important music schools, two music stores, seven orchestras, more than a dozen bands, countless smaller groups of musicians and numerous clubs , like the Mozart Club and the Harmony Club, devoted to the performance and discussion of serious music. Virtually every gathering of any kind - social, political or religious - included a musical performance. Most women and a significant number of men could play a musical instrument and sing.
For Lampasas, which was trying to get past its history as a rough frontier town with gun fights in the streets, music represented civilization and culture. W.T. Campbell, the newly-arrived editor of the Lampasas Leader newspaper, saw the change occurring and understood the important role music played in it. In the May 11, 1889, edition of the paper he observed that visitors to Lampasas
“are charmed with the hospitable treatment accorded them and find the society here composed of well-bred, educated, intelligent, courteous people. There is a great deal of musical talent here, and very enjoyable concerts are given and thoroughly enjoyed.”
Two of the Lampasas orchestras were composed entirely of women The Lampasas Mendelsshon Lady Orchestra, made up of married women in the community, and the Yvonette Orchestra, made up of unmarried women. The Yvonette Orchestra, constantly losing members to matrimony, had trouble keeping its ranks filled and disbanded after only a few years. The Mendelssohn Lady Orchestra, with a more stable membership, provided music for public events in Lampasas for almost 15 years. In an April 29, 1899, article describing their performance at the annual Firemen’s Day Parade and Picnic, the Lampasas Leader declared the Mendelssohn Lady Orchestra to be “the pride of Lampasas.” Members of the Mendelssohn Lady Orchestra described in that article can be seen in the photo below at the 1899 Firemen’s Day Picnic in Hancock Park posing with members of the Sulphur City Band, which also provided music at that event.
The Lampasas Chamber Music Festival has given two concerts in the large, magnificently restored second floor courtroom in the Lampasas County Courthouse. In so doing it continues a tradition that stretches back over a hundred years when concerts were routinely given in the Courthouse. For example, the Lampasas Leader reported that the De Moss Concert Orchestra, “the Lyric Bards of America” which had provided music for the great Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893 would give a concert in the Lampasas Courthouse the night of February 3, 1902. Another concert was given in the Courthouse a month later on March 3 in which Eugene E. Davis, the musical director at Baylor University, directed his wife, a soprano, Miss Dorothy Frew, “a pianist of national reputation” and Mr. Carl Meiners, “the Dutch violinist whose ability is pre-eminently the best in the state.” The LCCMF is proud to restore that musical tradition to the Courthouse and to the entire Lampasas community.
