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• Dedicated 1927
• Sculptor: Edmond T. Quinn
• Medium & size: Bronze bust, over lifesize.
• Location: Central Park Mall, across from the Bandstand, near Beethoven.

In the early twentieth century, many of America’s catchiest tunes were by Victor Herbert. Born in Ireland and trained in Germany, Herbert was recruited in 1886 for the Metropolitan Opera. There he played first cello while his wife, a soprano, sang principal roles. Starting in 1894, Herbert wrote some forty operettas – many of which are still performed. If you don’t know Babes in Toyland, you must never have spent a Christmas season in America.

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Herbert was eager to adopt new technology for distributing music. Back in the early nineteenth century, if you wanted to hear Beethoven, you had to attend a live performance. In the 1890s, soon after Herbert came to America, the first player pianos hit the market.

By 1900, Thomas Edison’s phonograph was becoming popular. Herbert, who knew Edison, was one of the first to record orchestral music for the phonograph.

He was also one of the first to compose music for moving pictures. For Fall of a Nation, released in 1916 as the sequel to Birth of a Nation, Herbert wrote the first original symphonic score for a feature-length film.

For Herbert and his fellow composers, there was a down side to all these new ways to distribute music. Through the nineteenth century, piano playing was a popular form of home entertainment. Composers made much of their income from the sale of sheet music. But who needs sheet music, if a machine will play music for you?

The copyright law of the time made no provision for the sale of such mechanical reproductions. If a publisher put music on a player-piano roll or a phonograph record, he didn’t have to pay the composer a cent. Herbert was among the first to argue in the Supreme Court and before Congress that composers should rightfully be paid for such use of their music. The copyright law of 1909 granted protection to works that were published with a notice of copyright.

In 1914, Herbert was the prime mover behind the creation of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. Representing some of the most prominent composers of New York’s Tin Pan Alley, ASCAP lobbied for the right of composers to collect royalties if their work was performed in public.

The bust of Victor Herbert faces the bandshell in Central Park, where for decades he conducted the Twenty-Second Regiment Band. The bust was commissioned by ASCAP, and some of New York’s most famous musicians attended the dedication: Irving Berlin, Sigmund Romberg, Eddie Cantor, and Arthur Hammerstein.

More

• In 1899, Herbert wrote a score for an operetta of Cyrano de Bergerac, which had premiered as a drama in 1897. Alas, I haven’t found any recordings of it.

• In New York City, Edmond Quinn also created two sculptures of actor Edward Booth (Gramercy Park and the Hall of Fame of Great Americans) and one of John Quincy Adams (also in the Hall of Fame).
• For information on early sculptures in Central Park, see my Central Park: The Early Years.
• In Getting More Enjoyment from Sculpture You Love, I demonstrate a method for looking at sculptures in detail, in depth, and on your own. Learn to enjoy your favorite sculptures more, and find new favorites. Available on Amazon in print and Kindle formats. More here.
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