Musician
Centurion, 1891–1896
Born 30 November 1834 in Kassel, Hessen Kassel, Germany
Died 6 January 1896 in New York (Manhattan), New York
Buried Woodlawn Cemetery
, Bronx, New York
Proposed by Robert H. Robertson and Gustav Edward Kissel
Elected 2 May 1891 at age fifty-six
Archivist’s Note: Father of Herman O. Mosenthal
Seconder of:
Century Memorial
The requiem of Joseph Mosenthal, one of the best-known and most accomplished musicians in New York, is sounding as these lines are written,
“The music when soft voices die,
That vibrates in the memory.”
He died in the very practice of the art to which he had devoted his life, and while superintending a rehearsal of an organization which he had brought to the highest pitch of musical excellence—The Mendelssohn Glee Club. For over forty years he has occupied his familiar chair in the orchestra of the Philharmonic Society, from which he was never missed, so that he seemed as stable and enduring as the society itself. He was an excellent conductor and organist, as well as an accomplished musical author, and is entitled to the gratitude of the music-loving public as one of the small band of musical missionaries, including William Mason, Theodore Thomas, Bergmann, Matzka, and Bergner, who first transplanted chamber music successfully to New York. We all remember him here as one of the gentlest and most genial of our members, in full accord with the spirit of our lighter as well as our more serious life, and with a character that was typical of the beautiful art of which he was such an accomplished exponent.
Henry E. Howland
1896 Century Association Yearbook