By Paul Hobe
Music teachers are amazing. From elementary school to the most professional orchestral conductors, they are teaching. Most school district’s music departments will have some sort of concert or “band in the round” by which various band levels beginning say, at “fifth grade band” and each additional grade level band through high school concert or symphonic band gets to show their stuff. A director of a community or church choir hands out a new piece for performance. Through the hands or baton of a talented director the rough assemblage of voices, instruments, notes, words, rhythms, accompanists all come together to produce something good.
Born in Germany, Emil Rinkendorf, age nine, came to America with his family to Buffalo and then to Milwaukee where he studied music. An early career in performance and directing eventually led Rinkendorf in 1883 to Canton, Ohio, to conduct the Grand Army of the Republic band and orchestra. This association with the Grand Army of the Republic Band made him a close friend with William McKinley, that band eventually becoming called “McKinley’s Own.” Rinkendorf took the Grand Army Band to both nomination conventions and to both of McKinley’s inaugurations. He also took the band to the Industrial Exposition in Tacoma, Washington in 1891. That trip inspired the march “Across the Rockies.” “Across the Rockies” will be on the program of the reenactment concert on July 4, 2026 at Silver Park. Other trips included to New Orleans, Boston, and the Chicago World’s Fair. As president, McKinley offered Reinkendorf appointment as director of the United States Marine Corps Band (previously led by John Phillips Sousa) but he refused preferring to stay with the Grand Army Band in Canton Ohio. In his obituary it states that he did get to direct the Marine Band in his own march “Across the Rockies” about 1938.
Rinkendorf then appears as a director of the Modern Woodman Band, 1909-1910, which combines with the Alliance City Band about 1911.
While war raged in Europe Emil Rinkendorf became director of the Alliance City Band in 1917, beginning an association that would last until 1940. His reputation as a “builder of bands” must have justified his salary of $2,000 for 2018. Concerts were well attended with over 2,500 attending at the new bandstand at Kiwanis Park. Concerts in Alliance and many other area sites were “packed” by crowds. Weekly concerts were available for area band concert players.
The reader may get an idea of the Alliance City Band’s activities by looking at the eight pages of band activities during the Reinkendorf era in a “Band of Music.” Of note for this blog is that he directed the first concert by the Alliance City Band in Silver Park in June 1926 and then another concert a week after on July 4, 1926, exactly one-hundred years before the reenactment concert this coming Fourth of July.
“Rinkie” as he was known was well-liked and respected by his “boys.” Ed Trott who appears in the 1923 photo of the band with the cape uniforms was my math teacher and just a few years later as a colleague and friend very often would bring up his memories of the Rinkendorf years. An obituary story remembers that Mr. Rinkendorf was no “task master” as a director. “He had an especial faculty for conveying his desires at practice sessions and it seldom that the band was stopped for verbal instructions.”
The 1938 record describes a very active year for the Alliance City Band. It describes new uniforms, parades, concerts at various venues such as the high school lawn and Silver Park. The band includes old timers as well as youth in the band. It is not indicated who conducts the band in 1938 but is probably Dr. W. H. Hodgson of Mount Union college who “has been conducting in his (Rinkendorf’s) absence.”
In 1939 Rinkendorf “has come back from Florida to conduct the band.” 1939 concerts include Silver Park, South Liberty School, Earley’s Hill Park, Memorial Hall, and Public Square.
Interestingly, in 1939, an article in The Review states that John C. Haines, one of the founders of the Alliance City Band, is alive and well in Detroit at the age of 97. He still has “keen eyesight that allows him to read music as he plays his favorite cello.”
On February 25 the band had a concert to honor Rinkendorf, “the first concert he has not planned altogether or partially.” Some of the men have played in the band for forty years. Emil Rinkendorf died early the next morning at his son Paul’s home in Massillon, thus ending twenty-three years of leading quality music in Alliance.