{"id":521,"date":"2014-03-04T23:16:14","date_gmt":"2014-03-05T04:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=521"},"modified":"2014-03-04T23:16:14","modified_gmt":"2014-03-05T04:16:14","slug":"wagner-at-coney-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2014\/03\/wagner-at-coney-island.html","title":{"rendered":"Wagner at Coney Island"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"230px-RichardWagner\"<\/a>
\nIn the 1890s, when Wagnerism was at its height, Wagner\u2019s American disciple Anton Seidl (1850-1898) would lead concerts fourteen<\/em> times a week at Coney Island. He mainly conducted Wagner. The concerts, at the seaside Brighton Beach Music Pavilion (capacity 3,000), included children\u2019s programs and the Seidl Society children\u2019s chorus. Seidl himself composed a work for the children, \u201cGood Night,\u201d the manuscript of which resides at the Seidl Archives at Columbia University.<\/p>\n

\u201cGood Night\u201d received its first performance since 1898 a few weeks ago as part of \u201cScenes from Childhood,\u201d a concert presented by PostClassical Ensemble<\/a> (I\u2019m the Executive Director) at DC\u2019s Dumbarton Church. The chorus was Washington National Cathedral Choir of Boys and Girls (Michael McCarthy, conductor), conducted on this occasion by PCE Music Director Angel Gil-Ordonez. It sounded like http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/PCE-Seidl_2.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/p>\n

The story of the Seidl Society is one of the strangest and most stirring in the history of classical music in America. It was a singular Brooklyn women\u2019s club, founded by Laura Langford. In summer, the Society presented Seidl and his orchestra at Brighton Beach. In winter, the Society\u2019s Seidl concerts at the Brooklyn Academy of Music were more numerous than those of the New York Philharmonic, also conducted by Seidl, across the river. Propagating Wagner as a spiritual therapy, the Society hosted working women and African-American orphans, presented lectures on social and spiritual betterment, reserved special railroad cars so unescorted women could attend the Brighton Beach concerts; its goal — aborted by Seidl\u2019s death — was a Brooklyn Bayreuth. <\/p>\n

Seidl had aspirations to compose, and was working on a Hiawatha opera when he died. Though he produced numerous transcriptions for orchestra, he left only a single composition of note: \u201cGood Night,\u201d composed and premiered in 1895. I discovered the score when researching my book Wagner Nights: An American History<\/a> at Columbia University\u2019s Seidl Archive. (I\u2019ve also written about Seidl and Langford in Moral Fire:<\/a> Musical Portraits from America\u2019s Fin-de-Siecle). The text, a poem by Edna Dean Proctor, reads: <\/p>\n

Good-night! Good-night! The morn will light
\nThe east before the dawn,
\nAnd stars arise to gem the skies
\nWhen these have westward gone.
\nGood-night! And sweet be thy repose
\nThrough all their shining way,
\nTill darkness goes, and bird and rose,
\nWith rapture greet the day, —
\nGood-night! <\/p>\n

\u201cGood Night\u201d was last performed on May 2, 1898 — the Seidl Society\u2019s memorial concert for Anton Seidl. Emil Fischer, a much-loved bass in his final American performance, sang Wotan\u2019s Farwell. The program also included the Dream Music from Humperdinck\u2019s Hansel und Gretel, Liszt\u2019s Les preludes and Concerto pathetique (arranged for piano and orchestra), and, to close, Siegfried\u2019s Funeral Music, for which the audience was asked to stand. Langford rose to explain that, as Fischer was sailing for Europe that very day, Wotan\u2019s Farewell would be repositioned near the beginning of the evening. This short speech effectively ended Laura Langford\u2019s public career. A Seidl monument at Brighton Beach was advocated by the Eagle; none was erected. The Seidl Society ceased to exist. <\/p>\n

For the PostClassical Ensemble performance, the piano accompaniment for \u201cGood Night\u201d was transcribed (and performed) for solo harp by Jacqueline Pollauf. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the 1890s, when Wagnerism was at its height, Wagner\u2019s American disciple Anton Seidl (1850-1898) would lead concerts fourteen times a week at Coney Island. He mainly conducted Wagner. The concerts, at the seaside Brighton Beach Music Pavilion (capacity 3,000), included children\u2019s programs and the Seidl Society children\u2019s chorus. Seidl himself composed a work for […]<\/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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-521","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-8p","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521","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=521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}