Strong, George Templeton

George Templeton Strong – Symphony No. 2 in G minor “Sintram: the Struggle of Man(kind) against Evil Powers” op. 50 for orchestra (60’)

Sintram: Der Kampf des Menschen gegen die bösen Mächte”

(26 May 1856, New York City, United States – 27 June 1948, Geneva, Switzerland)

Ziemlich langsam – Rasch p.1
Langsam p.63
Die drei entsetzlichen Gefährten: Tod, Teufel und Irrsinn (Sehr lebhaft) p.85
Kampf und Sieg (Rasch – feierlich) p. 147

Composed: 1887-1888, orchestrated 1889, dedicated to Edward MacDowell
First Performances: [partial hearing in Brooklyn under Seidl, 1892] Full premiere on 4 March 1893, New York City, USA
Philharmonic Society of New York, Anton Seidl, conductor
Published: Verlag von Franz Jost / Leipzig, 1894 in full orchestral score
First Recording: 1999, Moscow Symphony Orchestra, Adriano, conductor
Naxos 8.559018

Student Years
(George) Templeton Strong was born on May 26, 1856 at 74 East 21st Street, New York City (renumbered as 113 E. 21st in 1867). His parents were George Templeton Strong (1820-1875), a successful lawyer, and Ellen Caroline Strong (1825-1891) née Ruggles, a pianist and singer who had traveled widely in Europe. His father was an amateur organist, served as President of the New York Philharmonic Society (1870-1874), and was the Founding President of the New York Church Music Society. His maternal grandfather, Samuel B. Ruggles, was the leading American authority on canal building, contributing to the Erie and Panama Canal projects.

Templeton Strong’s mother taught him to play the piano, and he also studied the violin, viola, cello, and oboe. His parents, who thoroughly enjoyed the New York music scene, often took their three boys to operas, concerts, and recitals, but his father’s music taste favored the conservative and classical. Templeton was allowed to attend orchestral rehearsals of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra as teenager. Defying his father’s preference that he join the family profession (their law firm of Cadwalader, Wickersham, and Taft is still the oldest in New York City), Templeton chose to focus on studying music professionally. Following a brief estrangement from his father, Templeton moved to Leipzig in 1879, studied at the Leipzig Conservatory under conservative composers Richard Hoffman and Salomon Jadassohn. He took French horn lessons from Fr. Ad. Gumpert and played the viola professionally in the Gewandhaus zu Leipzig Orchestra. 

He met Liszt in 1881 due to the long friendship between his mother Ellen and Liszt’s companion Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein (begun in 1847). Strong began to gravitate toward the work of Liszt, Wagner, and the new German school, in contraSt to the music he had studied and composed at Leipzig. Two years later, Liszt accepted the dedication of Strong’s Undine, op. 14 after hearing the composer (and interrupting him to play from the score) in Weimar. …

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