The St. Cecilia Society of Charleston, South Carolina, named for the traditional patron saint of music, was formed in 1766 as a private subscription concert organization.
Although its musical patronage ended in 1820, the St. Cecilia Society continues to flourish today as one of South Carolina's oldest and most exclusive social institutions.
Unlike those northern examples that were founded as public commercial ventures run by professional musicians, however, Charleston's St. Cecilia Society was established as a private organization.
It was incorporated and administered by gentlemen amateurs, who contracted with professional musicians to present an annual series of private concerts.
[2] A wide range of dates, spanning from as early as 1732 to as late as 1784, has been published in various books and articles over the past century, but the year 1762 is most often cited in reference to the society's origin.
From the beginning, the St. Cecilia Society's membership included the most prosperous planters, politicians, lawyers, physicians, and merchants in the South Carolina Lowcountry.
As with other social organizations and political institutions formed in 18th-century South Carolina, the society's early membership consisted entirely of white Protestant men, the majority of whom were members of the Anglican or Episcopal Church.
[4] Following the example of the numerous subscription concert organizations in late 18th-century Britain, the membership of the St. Cecilia Society was (and still is) open only to men.
Like the British subscription concert organizations it emulated, the core of the society's early orchestra was drawn from its membership, and seasoned professionals were hired as its treasury grew.
Professional musicians were usually drawn from the local population or recruited through private channels, but in 1771 the society advertised throughout the American colonies and in London to fill several positions, offering contracts for one to three years.
Over the next two decades, the society enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with the local theater musicians, many of whom traveled northward for the summer months and performed at other concert series.
Young lady amateurs, generally performing on the harpsichord, piano, or harp, occasionally played solo works or appeared in small ensembles or as concerto soloists.
[14] Despite the long distance between Charleston and London, the repertoire of the St. Cecilia concerts (as the society's performances were known) generally kept pace with the musical fashions of contemporary Britain.
Orchestral works opened and closed each of the "acts" or "parts" of the concert, while a varied succession of concertos, pieces for small instrumental ensembles, and vocal selections filled the rest of the bill.
In 1817, the Charleston Theatre Company initiated a touring circuit which disrupted the society's long-standing practice of sharing musicians with the local theater.
After three increasingly meager seasons, the society held its last regular concert in the spring of 1820 and in subsequent years presented a greatly reduced number of balls.
[20] In contrast to this conclusion, however, Nicholas Butler's recent reconstruction of the St. Cecilia Society's concert era demonstrates the existence of a robust and long-term effort in Charleston to replicate Old World models.
On the other hand, to many observers the St. Cecilia Society stood as a symbol of Charleston's rigid insularity and its resistance to a broader democratic philosophy.
Nevertheless, his description of the St. Cecilia Society's concert era has been cited and repeated by numerous authors as the definitive (and only) published first-person account of this early American musical phenomenon.
[25] Outside of musicological circles, Harriott Horry Ravenel's Charleston: The Place and the People (1906) was the first local history text to offer a glimpse into the St. Cecilia Society's past.
Despite having attended the society's balls since the early 1850s, Mrs. Ravenel's assessment of the concert era is based entirely upon Charles Fraser's earlier synopsis.
Between the cessation of its concert patronage in 1820 and the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s, the St. Cecilia Society continued its activities by presenting an annual series of three or four elegant balls.
The economic downturn of the 1930s induced the society to limit its seasonal activities to a single ball, and this pattern has continued to the present day.
[28] As the city's population expanded and more men sought to be included in this prestigious organization, the society established new restrictions on membership in an effort to prevent its events from swelling to an unmanageable size.
For more than a century now, the society has limited its membership to the male descendants of earlier members---a move that has effectively closed the organization to anyone without deep roots in Charleston.
Due to its popular reputation as an "ancient," hyper-exclusive organization, the group frequently is portrayed in the media as an exaggerated romantic synecdoche for the historic "charm" of the city of Charleston.
The modern St. Cecilia Society of Charleston generally eschews public notice, however, as it attempts to preserve its narrowly defined, time-honored cultural traditions.