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Wagner in America
On the subject of an "American" Wagner, Klaus Liepmann notes that there had been "many flirtations with the U.S." before the 1880 proposal described. I think the specific link between Wagner and Chicago may be of interest to your readers.
There is an obvious link, of course, in the person of Theodore Thomas, who eventually settled in Chicago and founded the Chicago Symphony. Thomas was both a champion of Wagner's music and a fund raiser for Bayreuth. (Liepmann notes that, for advice in dealing with Wagner's proposal, John Sullivan Dwight directed Dr. Jenkins to Thomas.) Besides that obvious link, there is, among others, the one described by Caroline V. Kerr in her collection of Wagner's letters, entitled The Bayreuth Letters: An episode which should have been humiliating to Wagner's countrymen was the liberal offer made to him by Chicago.
This city wished to celebrate its renascence after the "Great Fire" of 1871 by building a theatre for Wagner, over which he was to assume the personal direction, with the liberty of choosing his own per sonnel.
This offer he was unable to accept, but the confidence in his art, which a city was ready to give, deeply touched him, and more than once, in moments of deepest depression, he referred to this offer, and often gave expression to a lingering regret that he had not taken his art work and his family to a land which held out such hospitable arms to him and his ideas.
It is probably accurate to say that the above mentioned germ of a plan to build a theater to symbolize the city's rebirth culminated in the construction of the Auditorium Theater in 1886. As a replacement for the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, it wouldn't have been a bad choice. since it is a beautiful Adler
------- Richard Wagner--his lost letter found.
and Sullivan building (recently restored) that has perhaps the most marvelous acoustics of any hall in the nation. It served as the home of Thomas' Chicago Sym phony in the orchestra's early years and housed Chicago's opera until 1929. In addition, the Auditorium was the largest permanent indoor theater constructed to that date, seating 4,200 people.
Arthur U. Clifton; Chairman/Founder, Wagner Society of America Chicago, Ill.
When you published my article "Wagner's Proposal to America" in your December is sue. I hoped that the lost letter would some how reappear. Within a week of publication, this hope was fulfilled. A brother of Newell Jenkins, John F. Jenkins, to whom I had sent the article, writes that he has found the letter "at Greenfield [his home], together with a translation ... [and] other letters from Cosima. Siegfried, etc. I did not even know they were here until recently, when I went through the files." No matter how or why, the historical letter is safe in hand on this side of the ocean! I agree with Newell Jenkins, who says, "Were it not for HIGH F IDELITY, this letter might never have been found."
Klaus Liepmann; Cambridge, Mass.
In the concluding paragraph of "Wagner's Proposal to America," Klaus Liepmann poses the question: "Who had such an abiding interest in the Wagner-Jenkins letters that he got hold of them and made them disappear?" A plausible hypothesis (although admittedly one lacking conclusive evidence) is that Cosima Wagner disposed of them. Ac cording to Robert W. Gutman in the ninth footnote to Chapter 9 of Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music, "Wag-net distributed copies of his private edition of Mein Leben to close friends with the understanding that they never discuss the contents of the book. After his death, Cosima recalled these gifts ... most were destroyed. ..." He continues to say that Cosima had also forced deletion of compromising material from the publications of Wagner's letters to Mathilde Wesendonck and from the Uhlig correspondence. This was all in an attempt to "edit her ideal Wagner into paper existence." In light of these facts, it does not seem improbable that Cosima could have at tempted to destroy all evidence of any American flirtations on Wagner's part.
Robert M. Phillips; North Babylon, N.Y.
Since the letter discussed in the article was missing from Newell Jenkins' apartment, Mr. Phillips' hypothesis that Cosima Wagner disposed of it is highly unlikely. But coincidentally, an English translation of that letter that had been in the Boston Public Library was also discovered missing.
Mr. Liepmann now gives us more information on that document: "Dr. Jenkins wrote to John Sullivan Dwight, enclosing a translation of Wagner's letter. In the Boston Public Library I found Jenkins' letter but not the enclosure. Further research revealed that the translation was returned to Dr. Jenkins upon the request of Cosima, who felt that too many people in America were already becoming aware of the immigration project. This is probably the translation mentioned by John Jenkins." Mr. Liepmann adds, "Another German musician who preferred the artistic climate of America to Europe was Hans von Be/ low, who on February 6, 1876, wrote to Cosima from Chicago: 'I do not intend to re-cross the Atlantic. I have found my real fatherland here. ("Wherever I can be of use, that is my Fatherland," as we once read in Goethe's Wanderjahre.) In fact, I consider myself henceforward dead and buried as far as Europe is concerned, and I am now taking the first steps to obtain citizen's rights in this free country.' " Out with the Old? I'm tempted to give Mr. Rosen ["Charles Rosen-Artist, Scholar, or Polymath?", November 1975] a taste of his own rejoinder, "I'm sorry, you're wrong," because I don't agree with his insight: "Listening to con temporary music is largely not an ability to accept the new, but a willingness to renounce the old." One does not renounce tonality to be able to have atonality in the sense that one renounces life to have death.
Tonal and atonal systems are theoretically quite opposed: nevertheless, I believe that man's inability to perceive anything except in nuclear relationships renders atonality subject to the same conceptual fron tiers as tonality. In other words, we hear atonality in tonal terms, not on its own atonal terms, and it would be impossible to do otherwise. Therefore, there is no need to renounce the old for the new. Today's new is merely tomorrow's old.
Jaime Herrera; El Paso, Tex.
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(High Fidelity, Mar. 1976)
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