UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI Date:___________________ I, _________________________________________________________, hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of: in: It is entitled: This work and its defense approved by: Chair: _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ Elgar in Cincinnati: Mysticism, Britishness, and Modernity A thesis submitted to the Division of Research and Advanced Studies of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF MUSIC in the Division of Composition, Musicology, and Theory of the College-Conservatory of Music 2006 by Austin D. Padgett B.M., Samford University, 2004 Committee Chair: bruce d. mcclung, Ph.D. ABSTRACT Edward Elgar visited Cincinnati in 1906 to conduct The Dream of Gerontius at the Cincinnati May Festival, and the criticism surrounding the event was distinct to the circumstances surrounding the performance. The 1906 May Festival was a critical event for the future of the organization: Theodore Thomas, the festival’s founding music director, had recently died, the May Festival Chorus had been disbanded and newly reformed, and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra would appear in the festival for the first time. The May Festival Board contracted Elgar to guarantee a large, ticket-buying audience, but he was hindered from public exposure by his commitment to his publisher, his grief over his father’s death, and the closure to the public of the festival rehearsals. If Elgar’s presence was going to be a promotional device for the May Festival, the critics, who held the only public forum, had to create a sense of importance to surround the composer’s presence. This thesis explores the criticism and reception of Elgar in Cincinnati, examining the themes of mysticism, Britishness, and modernity about the composer and his music and demonstrating their place in the context of Cincinnati’s musical history and Elgar’s biography. Copyright © 2006, Austin D. Padgett ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank my committee members Kenneth Griffiths and Jeonwong Joe for their time and commitment given to this project. I am most grateful to my thesis advisor, bruce mcclung, whose knowledge of Cincinnati and precision in editing made this thesis a joy to work on and an educational experience. I also wish to thank my mother for her support and encouragement throughout the entirety of my life and my wife for her optimism and for watching a tireless puppy while I diligently worked on this project. CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER TWO: MYSTICISM 19 CHAPTER THREE: BRITISHNESS 36 CHAPTER FOUR: MODERNITY 57 CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION 69 BIBLIOGRAPHY 82 APPENDIX: 1906 MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM 88 i LIST OF FIGURES AND EXAMPLES 1.1 Picture of Lawrence Maxwell, Jr. 9 4.1 Excerpt from The Dream of Gerontius, “Jesu Maria” 60 4.2 Excerpt from The Dream of Gerontius, Christ Theme 61 5.1 Picture of the Hotel Sinton 76 5.2 Picture of the Burnet House Hotel 77 ii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION According to the Nielsen Ratings, the portion of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Awards that is televised each year, popularly known as the “Oscars” or the “Oscarcast,” has been gradually losing its annual viewership. To boost pre-show speculation and viewer interest, the Academy has placed new demands and hopes in the event’s emcee, traditionally a comedian, to increase ratings and diversify demographics of viewers. In 2005 Chris Rock, an African-American comedian, “was recruited in an effort to extend the Oscar’s brand to young and minority viewers.”1 However, Rock, whose comedic routine often derides the stereotypical differences between races, was criticized in the press for “mercilessly ridiculing Hollywood” and “crossing the line.”2 This was deemed the sole reason for a drop in total viewership: 43.5 million in 2004 to 42.1 million in 2005. This same tactic was used in 2006 when the Academy chose Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central’s Daily Show, as emcee for the broadcast. When interviewed by The Financial Times, Robert Thompson, a specialist in television and popular culture, said, “Bringing in Jon Stewart is one way to juice it up.”3 While many interpreted the Academy’s choice of emcee as an attempt to reach a new demographic, others in the press anticipated failure, “It remains to be seen whether Stewart will work wonders for 1 Joshua Chaffin, “Stewart Seeks to Boost Oscar Audience,” Financial Times of London, 4 March 2006, 4. 2 The Record (Bergen County, N.J.) 5 March 2006, sec. E, 1. 3 Chaffin, Financial Times of London, 4. ABC.”4 To rationalize their opinions, many papers compared Stewart to David Letterman, who hosted the Oscars in 1995 to critical disapproval. Both emcees were New York comedians at the potential “breakthrough point” of their careers, and Letterman and Stewart used a “comedic humor that had not become mainstream.”5 The most important similarity to columnists was that both comedians were Hollywood newcomers, seen as “outsiders poking fun at a crowd of Hollywood insiders on what is regarded as the industry’s biggest celebration.”6 Because the host’s opening monologue is traditionally kept secret and Stewart was kept busy with his obligations to Comedy Central and ABC, the weeks before the 2006 ceremony were filled with speculation about the reach of Stewart’s celebrity; the press continuing to use the model of Letterman as a construction of the absent Stewart and as a predictor of his forthcoming failure. The weight of Stewart’s fame, seen as small in the media, was compared to the task of boosting the ceremony’s sagging ratings, and, in this comparison, the comedian’s power as a celebrity is measured. It is a common occurrence for institutions to rely on famous or notorious personalities to raise money or achieve public appeal, but the popular press utilizes these occasions to open the discussion about the idea of celebrity and its influence on an audience. In Celebrity and Power, P. David Marshall describes celebrities as the “production locale for an elaborate discourse on the individual and individuality.”7 In 4 The Record (Bergen County, N.J.), 5 March 2006, sec. E, 1. 5 Chaffin, Financial Times of London, 4. 6 USA Today, 6 January 2006, sec. E, 1. 7 P. David Marshall, Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 4. 2 this way, celebrity is a constructed, subjective identity, and it is a product to be consumed: The greatness of the celebrity is something that can be shared and, in essence, celebrated loudly and with a touch of vulgar pride. It is the ideal representation of the triumph of the masses. Concomitantly, celebrity is the potential of capitalism, a celebration of new kinds of values and orders, a debunking of the customary divisions of traditional society, for the celebrity him or herself is dependent entirely on the new order.8 This type of construction is nothing new, and the subject of this thesis is a similar occurrence of the celebrity fabrication of Sir Edward Elgar. Many groups claimed interest in Edward Elgar in the first decade of the twentieth century, each of them formulating a different view of the composer by downplaying biographical and compositional elements or others. His career and marriage began with constructive molding from his wife, Caroline Alice Roberts, who came from upper-class society. With Elgar’s cooperation, “she designed a new man,” introducing him to the manners and social atmosphere of the English gentleman.9 Also, the English Musical Renaissance, led by Charles Villiers Stanford and Hubert Parry, desired Elgar to enter their fold. His Roman Catholicism and association with the rural hill-country of England, however, presented an “obvious contradiction” to the protestant, London-based Renaissance.10 They began to reinvent Elgar by encouraging universities to offer him honorary degrees, an important measure of worth for the Renaissance. These degrees were followed by “social honors” and allurements to “London’s clubland.”11 8 Ibid., 6. 9 Diana McVeagh, “Mrs. Edward Elgar,” The Musical Times 125, no. 1692 (Feb. 1984): 76. 10 John Butt, “Roman Catholicism and Being Musically English: Elgar’s Church and Organ Music,” in The Cambridge Companion to Elgar, ed. Daniel Grimley and Julian Rushton (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 106. 3 Outside of England, communities evaluated Elgar using their own criteria, which depended on several factors, including the preferences of the critic, the makeup of the readership, and the artistic climate of the society. Each instance of criticism, reception, and construction, however, must be analyzed in its own circumstances. In German reviews, Aidan Thomson finds that Max Hehemann, a critic for Die Musik, viewed Elgar “at the forefront of a burgeoning national school,” emphasizing the composer’s cultural origins.12 Conversely, Thomson writes that Otto Lessman, editor of the Allgemeine Musik-Zeitung, valued musical aesthetics and the influence that continental music had on Elgar, and he writes that in Lessman’s perspective, “Elgar had joined the European mainstream in writing in a post-Wagnerian, post-Brahmsian, implicitly German idiom.”13 This variety of construction techniques demonstrates the diverse range of ways to imagine Elgar—each for a different audience. The Cincinnati May Festival claimed interest in Elgar by approaching him to appear as guest conductor in the 1906 May Festival—his first professional appearance in the United States. At that time the festival was a biennial event that performed large- scale works in nightly concerts. Rooted in the Saengerfest tradition, the festival thrived on the health of its choral forces. The first festival director was Theodore Thomas, founder of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, who brought his own instrumentalists to accompany the volunteer choir and hired soloists.