Life and Times of William Christopher O'Hare

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  • Home
  • Washington, D.C.
    • Formative Years
    • DC Family >
      • Early Ancestors
      • Paternal Grandparents
      • Ancestral Home: Linden Grove
      • Parents
      • Siblings
  • Shreveport
    • City Background & O'Hare Activities
    • Music Director >
      • Grand Opera House
      • Choral Societies
      • Community Productions
      • Churches
    • Music Teacher
    • Composer--Before Levee Revels
    • Composer-- Levee Revels and after
    • Changes & Problems at the Opera House
  • Marriage & Sons
    • Lottie Slater
    • Wm. Crockett O'Hare
    • Vincent Slater O'Hare
  • NYC
    • Arrival & Background
    • Arranger >
      • Rags & Other Instrumentals
      • Pop/Patriotic Songs 1901-1908
      • Pop/Patriotic Songs, 1909-1931
      • Medleys
      • Misc. Shows, 1902-1905
      • Misc. Shows, 1906-1909
      • Misc. Shows, 1910-1914
      • Hippodrome Background & O'Hare's First Tunes
      • Hippodrome Shows
      • Vocal Arrangements, Secular and Sacred
      • Misc. Arrangements
      • An Orchestrator's Prank
    • Composer >
      • Instrumentals, 1901-1902
      • Instrumentals, 1903-1909
      • Early NY Songs
      • Sacred Music/Organist
      • Silent Films
      • Misc Compositions, 1905-1914
      • Misc Compositions, 1917-1934
    • Letter to the Editor
  • Death
  • Blog
  • Contact Me

Miscellaneous Arrangements

Witmark and Hinds, Hayden & Eldredge Saxophone Arrangements

O'Hare's collections of saxophone quartets (Witmark 1913-1914) and saxophone solos (Hinds, Hayden & Eldredge 1915) further demonstrate his versatility. Although I haven't seen copies of the Witmark quartets, the Hinds, Hayden & Eldredge collection offers a wide assortment of saxophone solos with piano accompaniments, arranged in separate volumes for Bb and Eb saxes. For example, O'Hare includes selections ranging from "Sally in Our Alley," "Comin' Through the Rye," "Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms," and "Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes" to Wagner's"The Bridal Chorus" from Lohengrin, Gounod's "Flower Song" from Faust, and Schumann's "Traumerei" from Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood).
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Operetta/Opera Arrangements (Witmark and Oliver Ditson, 1913-1917)

As far back as 1889, O'Hare had orchestrated a selection of tunes from Said Pasha in advance of the romantic opera's arrival in Shreveport. Although no opera selections have been found among O'Hare's work during his early New York years, he  turned his hand to opera again during the 1910s for Witmark and Oliver Ditson.  Ditson selections formed a portion of the Concert Edition for Orchestra, targeted at school and other non-professional orchestras.
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Victor Boehnlein Arrangements (Oliver Ditson and Belwin, 1923)
Throughout the 1920s, O'Hare completed an assortment of other orchestra arrangements for Oliver Ditson such as Bert R. Anthony's Zorina; intermezzo orientale (1921), Arthur Traves Granfield's Chant d'Amour (1925; pseudonym of Edward Ignatius O'Connor, Detroit piano/violin teacher and composer), and Lily Strickland's Me an' Mah Pardner (1926).
During 1923, O'Hare completed several arrangements of pieces by Victor Gregory Boehnlein (1871-1924) , who over the years is listed in census records as "musician," "Musician Theater" and Musician--supplies musicians."  By 1923, Boehnlein had achieved at least moderate success as a composer of theater and silent film music.

El Kahira and The Boogie Man's Patrol appeared following several of O'Hare compositions published in the same Ditson series. 
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The generic-named silent film arrangements were published by Belwin following the publication of the majority of O'Hare's film compositions in the Ditson's Music for Photoplay series. 
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Victor Gregory Boehnlein; photo from Find-a-Grave Memorial with permission of Mary Rose Van Fleet, Boehnlein's grand-daughter.
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The Classmates (J. Fischer & Bro., 1924)

With a title suggesting use by young school musicians, O'Hare completed another saxophone collection in 1924, this one in collaboration with John Wiegand.  Wiegand had completed similar violin and piano work for J. Fischer & Bro., such as Modern Recital Pieces (1915), marketed as a book of "unusual value to teachers."  With Weigand probably completing the violin and piano portion again, O'Hare arranged the saxophone parts.
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Latest Located Orchestrations (Oliver Ditson, 1934)

On February 6, 1934, a few months before O'Hare's sixty-seventh birthday, the Library of Congress registered Oliver Ditson's copyrights on his orchestrations of Franz Schubert's The Lord is My Shepherd (Psalm 23), George Henschel's Morning Hymn, and Giovanni Pergolesi's Glory to God in the Highest.

YouTube recordings linked to below provide an idea of the original music that O'Hare arranged for orchestra.
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Listen to Schubert's Twenty-Third Psalm recorded in 2016

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Listen to Henschel's Morning Hymn performed by tenor Gervase Elwes
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Listen to Pergolesi's Glory to God in the Highest performed by the St.Patrick's Cathedral choir, NYC 

Background image, top of page: Cover detail from O'Hare's Hinds, Hayden & Eldridge The Most Popular Saxophone Solos
                                                                    2018  copyright on research content,  Sue Attalla