{"id":3142,"date":"2024-08-08T23:36:18","date_gmt":"2024-08-09T03:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=3142"},"modified":"2024-08-08T23:36:21","modified_gmt":"2024-08-09T03:36:21","slug":"mahler-new-york-and-cultural-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2024\/08\/mahler-new-york-and-cultural-memory.html","title":{"rendered":"Mahler, New York, and Cultural Memory"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cIt is always instructive to read European newspapers on American affairs. It gives us the much needed opportunity to see ourselves as others see us \u2013 with their eyes shut. . .  Do we not all reek with malodorous lucre? Are we not a nation of tradesmen?\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus W. J. Henderson, in the New York Sun<\/em> (March 8, 1908), on the arrival of Gustav Mahler in New York to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera. Henderson \u2013 for half a century, a great name in music journalism — was commenting on exaggerated Viennese accounts of Mahler\u2019s financial terms of engagement at the Met. He added:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe coming of the new interpreter of German operas was awaited with interest and received with pleasure, but there was no public excitement. The stock market was not affected.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Henderson was merely correct. New York critics knew far more about musical Vienna than Vienna \u2013 including Mahler himself \u2013 knew of musical New York. When Mahler reported \u201cabsolute incompetence\u201d at the Met, he did not realize that Heinrich Conried, the impresario who hired him, was a clownish successor to the Met regimes of Anton Seidl and Maurice Grau, during which New York boasted ensembles of German and Italian vocal artists that no European house could match. And when Mahler called his New York Philharmonic \u201ca real American orchestra \u2013 talented and phlegmatic,\u201d he had no idea what he was talking about. The premiere American orchestra was the Boston Symphony, whose conductors had already included Arthur Nikisch. Mahler\u2019s Philharmonic was a shaky aggregation, a pathetic sequel to the concert orchestra Seidl had led. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My novel The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(also published in German as\u00a0Die<\/em>\u00a0Mahlers in New<\/em>\u00a0York<\/em>) attempts to set the record straight. The most recent (full-page) German review, in the\u00a0Frankfurter Rundschau<\/em>, calls it \u201can important addition to the European Mahler literature. In contrast to Mahler, Joseph Horowitz paints an extremely positive picture of the American musical scene.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, I would not be at all surprised if my revisionist take on Mahler in America more impacts abroad, where cultural history doubtless retains some degree of vigor. In the US, the institutional history of classical music in America has never excited much interest among scholars. Even our orchestras and opera companies \u2013 including the Met, the New York Philharmonic, and the Boston Symphony \u2013 show little awareness of their own past achievements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am reminded that the current Sesquicentenary of Charles Ives is, at this moment, more celebrated in Europe than in the US. Fifty years ago, when Ives turned 100, Leonard Bernstein and Michael Tilson Thomas were prominent celebrants, and a major Ives Centenary conference was mounted by H. Wiley Hitchcock and Vivian Perlis. Nothing like that is transpiring in 2024 \u2013 excepting four\u00a0Ives festivals initiated via the NEH\u00a0Music Unwound\u00a0consortium<\/strong><\/a> which I am fortunate to direct.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My next NPR \u201cMore than Music\u201d featur<\/strong><\/a>e, scheduled for August 22, will exlore the musical odyssey (rather than the marital travails) of Leonard Bernstein. Even Bernstein is little remembered; young American musicians don\u2019t know his name. And Bernstein himself was increasingly alienated by what had become of the America in which he had once placed enthralled hopes. The baritone Thomas Hampson, who sang with Bernstein as much as anyone did, comments on my upcoming broadcast:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cI think we [in the US] are in this phase, we are in this time, when things of worth and value that we treasure are easily forgotten, and not learned from. There seems to be this maniacal preoccupation with forward and future, and in the business world steady growth and steady profit. And you kind of have to wonder where the common good sits, and where the collective good sits. And the arts \u2013 they\u2019re about the pursuit of happiness in our beautiful Declaration of Independence, they\u2019re about the contented life, about the realization of being human. I think we are in dangerous times for people seeking enrichment to live. That may sound glorious and grand — but I\u2019m a student of Leonard Bernstein. I don\u2019t think anyone should doubt for a second the weight<\/em> on Lennie\u2019s soul. And I think to understand Lennie\u2019s reaction in the sixties to all of that would be terribly illuminating for people today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt is always instructive to read European newspapers on American affairs. It gives us the much needed opportunity to see ourselves as others see us \u2013 with their eyes shut. . .  Do we not all reek with malodorous lucre? Are we not a nation of tradesmen?\u201d? Thus W. J. Henderson, in the New York Sun (March 8, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3142","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-OG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3142"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3161,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3142\/revisions\/3161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}