Sophia Hewitt Ostinelli

Sophia Henriette Emma (Hewitt) Ostinelli
Born Sophia Henreitte Emma Hewitt
May 23, 1799
Manhattan, New York
Died August 31, 1845
Portland, Maine
Occupation Concert pianist and organist
Notable work The only woman ever employed as an organist and accompanist for Boston's Handel and Haydn Society and the second woman ever to perform Beethoven in concert in Boston
Spouse(s) Paul Louis Ostinelli, violinist and conductor
Children Eliza (Ostinelli) Biscaccianti (1824-1896)
Parent(s) James Hewitt (1770-1827) and Eliza (King) Hewitt (1779-1867)

Sophia Hewitt Ostinelli (1799-1845) was an American classical musician who was a child prodigy who later became the only woman ever employed as an organist and accompanist by the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston, Massachusetts. She also became the second musician ever to perform the music of Beethoven in Boston, when she played his Piano Sonata in A-flat, op. 26 on February 28, 1819.[1]

The daughter of composer, conductor and music publisher James Hewitt (1770-1827) who wrote Tammany, Americas first ballad opera[2], she was also the sister of American playwright, poet and songwriter John Hill Hewitt (1801-1890), music publisher John Lang Hewitt (1803-1853), and George Washington Hewitt (1811-1893) a music educator and composer, and the wife of professional violinist Paul Louis Ostinelli.[3]

Formative years

Born in New York County, New York in what is now Manhattan on May 23, 1799 and baptized by the Rev. Benjamin Moore on June 14 of that same year at New York City’s Trinity Episcopal Church[4][5], Sophia Henriette Hewitt was a daughter of James Hewitt (1770-1827), a native of England who became a respected composer, conductor and music publisher in the United States, and Eliza (King) Hewett (1779-1867), a Paris-educated author who was a daughter of a British Army officer.[6][7]

Having studied music with her father from the time she was a very young child, Sophia Hewitt performed before an audience at the City Hotel in New York on April 14, 1807. She was just seven years old when she played a piano sonata in this concert, which was planned and promoted by her father. She then performed again in New York in February and April 1808 and in Boston, Massachusetts on October 2, 1810, during which she played a piano sonata by Ignaz Pleyel.[8]

According to historians Chase and Ammer, sometime around 1812, Sophia Hewitt and her siblings then relocated with their parents to Boston, where her father had accepted positions as the Federal Street Theatre’s music manager and as organist for Trinity Church.[9][10]

Following her 1814 performance of The Storm, a piano concerto by Daniel Steibelt, the music publication Repertory noted: “It is far beyond our ability to do her ample justice … the spontaneous bursts of applause which followed are the best tribute of praise. We never witnessed a performance on the Piano Forte which could compare with it.”[11]

After a brief return sojourn in New York circa 1815 to 1817, during which she performed as a concert pianist for the Euterpian Society and vocalist for New York Oratorios and studied piano with a Mr. Morgan, the harp with a Mr. Ferrand and the organ with George K. Jackson while also providing music instruction for students at a boarding school operated by a Mrs. Brenton, she returned to Boston. On August 28, 1817, she played piano in concert as part of a trio and as a soloist, performing works by Pleyel and Henri Joseph Taskin. In addition, she sang at least one of her father’s compositions, “Rest Thee, Babe.” Later that year, she performed for the Handel and Haydn Society in New York City, and performed three more times in New York in 1818.[12]

That same year (1818), according to Ammer, leaders of the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston recruited Sophia Hewitt to be the society’s organist and accompanist. Initially declining the position, she accepted the job two years later, continuing in that role for another decade. Hewitt was, in fact, "the only woman they ever employed in this capacity, before or since.” Records show that she was paid between $50 and $62.50 per quarter during her tenure with the society. During this same time, Sophia Hewitt also took on the role of organist for Boston’s Catholic Cathedral and Chauncy Place Church.[13]

She also continued to perform in recitals and in concert in Boston, including with that city’s Philharmonic Society throughout the late 1810s and early 1820s. On February 27, 1819, she became the second musician ever to perform the music of Beethoven in Boston when she played his Piano Sonata in A-flat, op. 26. (The first person to play Beethoven’s music in Boston – the violinist Paul Louis Ostinelli – would later become Sophia Hewitt’s husband. Both also performed in concert in Boston on April 13, 1820.) Posting advertisements in the April 1 and 8 editions, the music publication Euterpiad, she increased the number of students taking harp, piano and voice lessons from her.[14]

Family life and continuation of her musical career

On August 25, 1822, Sophia Hewitt wed Paul Louis Ostinelli in Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts.[15] A graduate of the Paris Conservatory, he was a second violinist with the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston in 1817, who reportedly made his debut as a solo violinist in 1818. He also became the first musician to ever perform the music of Beethoven in Boston.[16]

Following her marriage, she and her new husband performed in recitals and concerts across New England, including at a concert dedication of the First Parish Church of Portland’s new organ in Maine. In 1823, she then helped the South Parish Church in Augusta, Maine debut its new English organ. [17]

In 1824, Sophia (Hewitt) Ostinelli and her husband, Louis, welcomed the Boston birth of their daughter, Eliza.[18]

On August 2, 1827, Sophia Hewitt’s ailing father James died in Boston at the age of 57. He was laid to rest at that city’s Christ Church Cemetery.[19][20]

Sophia Hewitt performed at another concert for the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston on April 20, 1828. By 1830, however, her abilities began receiving criticism by at least one member of the society who felt that her prior music education did not rise to the level of the organization’s new training standards. As a result, she was removed from her position as the society’s organist and accompanist. Despite this setback, she continued to operate her own musical academy in Boston, teaching harp, piano and voice to her students; she also continued to perform in concerts and recitals in and beyond Boston, participating in brief tours of Maine and Canada at various times.[21]

By 1833, she had separated from her husband, according to Ammer, who notes that Sophia Hewitt “announced her return to [Portland, Maine; via an advertisement the Eastern Argus] and her willingness to give piano and voice lessons at her residence at B. C. Attwood’s Congress Street”[22]:

Whether she then returned to the Boston area or remained in Maine is not known, but on August 5, 1834, she appeared in Boston in a benefit for Mr. Walton, the last concert of hers on record. One writer maintains that Sophia moved to Portland because of marital difficulties, became organist at the First Parish Church there, and also taught to support herself and her daughter. Indeed, the penultimate record of Sophia dates from May 1845, when the First Parish Church paid Mme Ostinelli $31.25 as organist…. The only other record of Sophia is of her death, which occurred in Portland in 1846, when she was forty-six.

Sophia (Hewitt) Ostinelli’s brother John Hill Hewitt (1801-1890) also had a distinguished career in the arts, becoming a respected American playwright, poet and songwriter while their brothers, James Lang Hewitt (1800-1853) and George Washington Hewitt (1811-1893) became, respectively, a music publisher and a music educator and composer.[23] James was married to the poet, Mary E. Hewitt.

Meanwhile, Sophia Hewitt’s daughter, Eliza, went on to become a singer. According to Ammer, a Boston patron provided her with enough money to travel to Europe to pursue her education. Sailing with her father for Naples, Italy on November 26, 1843, “she studied under several well-known teachers, and in 1847, a year after her mother’s death, she married an Italian cellist, Count Alessandro Biscaccianti”[24]:

Her American debut took place on December 8, 1847, at New York’s Astor Place Opera House, as Amina in La Sonnambula. In May 1847 she sang in Boston with the Handel and Haydn Society in two concerts, and she soon became an established favorite, appearing with a number of groups from 1848 to 1850. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow described her as ‘a fine little woman of genius.’”

In 1849 and 1851, Eliza (Ostinelli) Biscaccianti then “appeared as a soloist with the Boston Musical Fund Society, performing arias by Verdi, Bellini, and Donizetti. In 1852 she was in San Francisco, where she received glowing reviews and is said to have raised the staggering total of $1 million various charities. The following year she was in Lima, Peru….” By the time of her death in 1896, however, “she died impoverished at the age of seventy-two at the Rossini Foundation Home for Musicians in Paris.”[25]

Death and interment

Sophia Henriette Emma (Hewitt) Ostinelli died on August 31, 1845 in Portland, Maine.[26][27]

She was laid to rest in Tomb 48, Section A at the Eastern Cemetery in Portland, Cumberland County, Maine.[28][29]

References

  1. ↑ Ammer, Christine. Unsung: A History of Women in American Music. Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 2001, pp. 16-28, pp. 62-63.
  2. ↑ Ammer, Unsung: A History of Women in American Music.
  3. ↑ Chase, Gilbert. America’s Music, from the Pilgrims to the Present. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987, p. 106.
  4. ↑ ”Sophia Henrietta Emma Hewitt Ostinelli.” Find A Grave: Retrieved online, June 14, 2018.
  5. ↑ Jordan, Jr., William B., ed. Burial Records 1717-1962 of the Eastern Cemetery, Portland, Maine (Sophia Hewitt Ostinelli). Berwyn Heights, Maryland, 1987.
  6. ↑ Ammer, Unsung: A History of Women in American Music.
  7. ↑ Chase, America’s Music, from the Pilgrims to the Present.
  8. ↑ Ammer, Unsung: A History of Women in American Music.
  9. ↑ Ammer, Unsung: A History of Women in American Music.
  10. ↑ Chase, America’s Music, from the Pilgrims to the Present.
  11. ↑ Ammer, Unsung: A History of Women in American Music.
  12. ↑ Ammer, Unsung: A History of Women in American Music.
  13. ↑ Ammer, Unsung: A History of Women in American Music.
  14. ↑ Ammer, Unsung: A History of Women in American Music.
  15. ↑ Sophia Henrietta Emma Hewitt Ostinelli, Find A Grave.
  16. ↑ Ammer, Unsung: A History of Women in American Music.
  17. ↑ Ammer, Unsung: A History of Women in American Music.
  18. ↑ Ammer, Unsung: A History of Women in American Music.
  19. ↑ Ammer, Unsung: A History of Women in American Music.
  20. ↑ ”James Hewitt.” Find A Grave: Retrieved online June 12, 2018.
  21. ↑ Ammer, Unsung: A History of Women in American Music.
  22. ↑ Ammer, Unsung: A History of Women in American Music.
  23. ↑ Chase, America’s Music, from the Pilgrims to the Present.
  24. ↑ Ammer, Unsung: A History of Women in American Music.
  25. ↑ Ammer, Unsung: A History of Women in American Music.
  26. ↑ Chase, America’s Music, from the Pilgrims to the Present.
  27. ↑ Ammer, Unsung: A History of Women in American Music.
  28. ↑ Jordan, Jr., Burial Records 1717-1962 of the Eastern Cemetery, Portland, Maine.
  29. ↑ Sophia Henrietta Emma Hewitt Ostinelli, Find A Grave.

External resources

See also

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