The People’s Critic

New York City at the close of the 19th century thrilled to an early heyday in the erratic history of American classical music. The presiding conductor, Anton Seidl, was a charismatic protégé of Richard Wagner. More than leading American premieres of five Wagner operas at the Metropolitan (and espousing performances of the composer in English), he ultimately presided over a nationwide Wagnerism movement: an arts wildfire. Conducting the New York Philharmonic, he premiered the New World Symphony of Antonín Dvořák, with whom he met daily at Fleischman’s Cafe near Union Square. As director of the National Conservatory of Music, Dvořák in 1893 prophesied that “Negro melodies” would anchor a “great and noble school” of American music. His Black assistant Harry Burleigh would play a pivotal role in turning spirituals into art songs. Seidl, meanwhile, led American Composers’ Concerts. The creation of an American concert idiom, of an American canon, was the presiding priority. The culture of performance that came after World War I, hypnotized by foreign-born conductors and virtuosos, would be a sharp departure.