When, unlike our upcoming 250th anniversary, a bicentennial mattered to orchestras
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Set us as preferred A century and a half ago, Richard Wagner was running out of cash as he was preparing to stage his four momentous nights of opera known as the “Ring Cycle” when he got a message from the Women’s Centennial Executive Committee in Philadelphia.It offered him a princely $5,000 (around $150,000 today) to write a triumphant 12-minute orchestral score to open the Centennial Exposition in Fairmont Park celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
On May 10, 1876, Theodore Thomas, perhaps America’s most famous conductor at the time (he would go on to head the New York Philharmonic and help found the Chicago Symphony), led the premiere of Wagner’s “Grosse Festmarsch” with a 150-member orchestra, its brass and percussion so impressive that the addition of cannon fire Wagner suggested was not needed.The crowd was said to number well over 100,000.
President Ulysses S.Grant attended and invited Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil to join him along with members of Congress and Supreme Court justices for what remains a unique Declaration of Independence spectacle and debacle.The “Centennial March,” as it came to be known, turned out to be dreck.
Even Wagner, who carelessly tossed it off in a couple of weeks, said the best thing about the score was the fee, which he had demanded to be paid in gold.But what sounds like something AI might come up with if asked to write a pompous march in the style of Wagner began the American obsession with celebrating the Declaration of Independence, the words and deeds of our presidents, our very democracy with the assist of the symphony orchestra and opera.One hundred years later, the country was awash with federal, state, city and philanthropic funding for a music-happy bicentennial of exceptional ambition.
“With millions available in hand and mo...