Polar Opposites

 

As fair-haired as light? 

Or as dark as a raven?

Brighter than flax?

Or solemn as dusk?

These are family questions of personal style,
fashion, and even genetics
that have no definitive answer.

Today I present
two musical families,
each as opposite as magnetic poles.
Both are professional entertainers,
but one family is positively bright as sunshine
and the other as negatively somber as a thundercloud.

Their salt and pepper contrast is purely accidental,
a coincidence of two different photography studios.
Yet each appealed to a concert style that fit their family.

The first family ensemble is quite large with mother and father presiding over nine talented children—four girls and five boys. They are dressed in matching folk-style costumes with the mother and daughters in Germanic dirndl dresses and father and sons in knee pants and satin vests. 

The youngest is a boy about age 5 who stands center holding a triangle. He has twitched his head just as the photographer clicked the camera shutter. Two slightly older sisters play drums while the oldest girl and another younger sister hold violins. Two brothers on the left look enough alike to be twins. One plays cello and the other a piston valve cornet. On the right the tallest boy, perhaps the oldest child, holds a flute made of blackwood with an ivory headstock. His younger brother in front has a viola, slightly larger than his sisters' violins. At the back is mother with a double bass and a slightly sour or even annoyed expression. Next to her is her husband but he has no instrument, maybe because he is the conductor of his family orchestra.

Their names and date is unknown, but the location of their photo is not. They are in Amsterdam,  capital of the Netherlands. The photographer was P. D. van Rhÿn of Damrak 42 and Utrechtschestraat 47. {The first address is now a chip shop named "Mannekin Pis" (oddly a landmark of Brussels, Belgium) famous for its Dutch fried potatoes, and the second address is now an luxury shoe shop.}  

This cabinet card photo with its wide landscape format is undated but is similar to American and European photographs from around 1890-1900. The family's costumes resemble a Tyrolean fashion like those of folk groups from Bavaria, Austrian, or Switzerland, but they could be Dutch too. I think they likely played a larger assortment of instruments and sang too. 

 * * *

My second family orchestra is a group of seven siblings, I think, as there is no one who looks old enough to be a parent of the others. The youngest is a girl about age 6-7 seated in front with a small banjo and a wooden xylophone. Her three older sisters have similar dark hair with long curls let free rather than styled tied atop their head. On the right, one sister, possibly the oldest at over 18, has a mandolin; the next in center holds a piccolo; and the third, seated right, has a violin. The brothers are older, early twenties maybe? They play cello, pocket cornet, and a button concertina. 

They are an eclectic mix made darker because of the men's formal tail coats and sash and the women's long dark gowns. It resembles a "concert party" fashion that was popular in the early 20th century for performances at private society events rather than on a music hall stage. I think they are actually more colorful that they appear, as the sepia tone photo does not really favor their costumes.

Like the group from Amsterdam, the name and date of this ensemble is unknown, but their location is. The photographer was Cooper & Sons of Blackpool, England with a studio on The Promenade, the seaside resort's celebrated boardwalk avenue between Blackpool's North and South Piers. The back of this cabinet card has an fanciful illustration of a young woman, looking like a Grecian goddess, arranging a large wooden camera. I was only able to find a few references to the photographer, Mr. H. Cooper, who with his sons ran a studio in Blackpool from around 1904 to about 1910 before moving on to another town. But they only advertised an address at The Promenade in 1904 and not later. So that seems to narrow down a time for this family orchestra who very likely were performing at a theater on The Promenade. 

Like many of the anonymous photos in my collection there is little more history about these two musical families that I can add. Yet hidden in their respective bright and dark photos are little details of their lives that we can still deduce. That they were professional entertainers is easy to presume as these are not casual snapshots but formal studio photographs of people posing in stage costumes to promote their ensembles. And clearly each family must have had a talented bunch of kids to have learned how to play so many musical instruments. A family band's performance might be as little as a 15 minute turn on a theater stage, or at most, an hour or two long concert at a wine garden or private soiree. Their repertoire was likely not new original music but popular tunes familiar to their audiences. Any act had to sell tickets if it was going to be successful.

But now picture how a large family of seven or eleven entertainers might travel in the 1890s or 1900s. Each troupe surely required numerous trunks and suitcases for their regular clothes and their stage outfits too. Even more cases were needed for their instruments. 

No doubt the mother was responsible for keeping her brood clean, dressed, healthy and well fed when out on the road. She was also in charge of lost drum sticks and gender appropriate dressing rooms. How she managed laundry is another question. 

It was surely the father who managed the show business work, corresponding with theater agents, booking train and ship tickets, and arranging hotel accommodation. And he likely did  all the porter duties, too, lugging the children's cases around. Since most family bands got their start from a father's musical skills, it was he who created their concert programs, arranged parts, and taught his offspring how to play their instruments. 

But how did the children get a proper education? Or even find time to just play outside and make new friends? Those are the questions I wish I could answer. All that's left is to use our imagination.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where every family smiles for the camera.