Frontier Figures

by Beth E. Levy

  5. James Huneker, “Dvoák's New Symphony: The Second Philharmonic Concert,” Musical Courier, 20 December 1893; reprinted in Dvoák and His World, ed. Michael Beckerman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 160.

  6. William J. Henderson, review in the New York Times, 17 December 1893; cited in Horowitz, “Dvoák and Boston,” 6-7.

  7. William Apthorp, review in the Boston Evening Transcript, 1 January 1894; cited in Horowitz, “Dvoák and Boston,” 8.

  8. Philip Hale, 1910 Program Notes, cited in Horowitz, “Dvoák and Boston,” 16.

  9. Block, “Boston Talks Back,” 10.

  10. Dvoák, “Music in America,” Harper's New Monthly Magazine 90, no. 537 (February 1895), 433; reprinted in Tibbetts, Dvoák in America, 377.

  11. See Michael Beckerman, “In Search of Czechness in Music,” 19th-Century Music 10 (1986-87): 61-73.

  12. Michael Beckerman, “The Master's Little Joke: Antonin Dvoák and the Mask of Nation,” in Dvoák and His World, 134-54. See also John Clapham, “Dvoák and the American Indian,” in Tibbetts, Dvoák in America, 113-22.

  13. Block, “Boston Talks Back,” 11; and Block, “Dvoák, Beach, and American Music,” in A Celebration of American Music: Words and Music in Honor of W. Wiley Hitchcock, ed. Richard Crawford, R. Allen Lott, and Carol Oja (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), 260. See also Block, Amy Beach, Passionate Victorian: The Life and Work of an American Composer, 1867-1944 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

  14. Block, “Dvoák, Beach,” 260. For explication of the changing status of various immigrant groups vis-à-vis whiteness, see Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).

  15. Cited in Lawrence Gilman, Edward MacDowell (New York: John Lane, 1908), 84.

  16. Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” reprinted in Martin Ridge, ed., Frederick Jackson Turner: Wisconsin's Historian of the Frontier (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1986), 26.

  17. Ibid., 27-28.

  18. Kerwin Lee Klein, Frontiers of Historical Imagination: Narrating the European Conquest of Native America, 1890-1990 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), 129.

  19. Ibid., 144-45.

  20. Turner, “The Significance of History” (1891), reprinted in Ridge, Frederick Jackson Turner, 53.

  21. Turner, “Significance of the Frontier,” 27.

  22. Ibid., 47.

  23. Klein, Frontiers of Historical Imagination, 7.

  24. Henry Krehbiel, “Dr. Dvoák ‘s Reception,” New York Daily Tribune, October 1892; reprinted in Beckerman, Dvoák and His World, 157-59.

  25. Richard Taruskin, “‘Nationalism': Colonialism in Disguise?” New York Times, Arts and Leisure, 22 August 1993; reprinted in Taruskin, The Danger of Music and Other Anti-Utopian Essays (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009), 25-29.

  26. Louis Warren, Buffalo Bill's America: William Cody and the Wild West Show (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005); Richard Slotkin, “The White City and the Wild West,” chapter 2 of Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 63-87; Frederick Nolan, The Wild West: History, Myth, and the Making of America (London: Arcturus, 2003); and especially Richard White, “When Frederick Jackson Turner and Buffalo Bill Cody Both Played Chicago in 1893,” in Frontier and Region: Essays in Honor of Martin Ridge, ed. Robert C. Ritchie and Paul Andrew Hutton (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997), 201-12.

  27. See, among others, Robert Rydell, All the World's a Fair: Visions of Empire and American International Expositions, 1876-1916 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984); and Robert Muccigrosso, Celebrating the New World: Chicago's Columbian Exposition of 1893 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1993).

  28. Introduction to the Wild West program of 1899, as cited in Michael Lee Masterson, “Sounds of the Frontier: Music in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Shows” (PhD diss., University of New Mexico, 1990), 56.

  29. Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation, 87.

  30. On the intertwining of the Buffalo Bill of the dime novel and the real William Cody, see Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (New York: Vintage Books, 1957), 113-25.

  31. On Buffalo Bill's veracity, see Warren, Buffalo Bill's America; and Perry Meisel, The Cowboy and the Dandy: Crossing Over from Romanticism to Rock and Roll (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 42-43.

  32. Warren, Buffalo Bill's America, 72-73.

  33. Ibid., 264.

  34. Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation, 278-343. See also Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color.

  35. Warren, Buffalo Bill's America, 270, 97. Despite similarities between Buffalo Bill's ideology of racial progress and Turner's frontier line, Warren is right to link Cody's views to the older strain of racial theorizing known as Anglo-Saxonism: “Anglo-Saxonism was, of course, a variant of Aryanism, which was itself a theory of westering race history…. In all these myths, the racial energies of white people aged in the East and were renewed through bloody encounters with barbarians in the West.” Warren, Buffalo Bill's America, 316-17. See also Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981).

  36. Warren, Buffalo Bill's America, 332, 357.

  37. Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation, 81-82.

  38. Ibid., 83.

  39. See, for example William T. Hagan, Theodore Roosevelt and Six Friends of the Indian (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997); G. Edward White, The Eastern Establishment and the Western Experience: The West of Frederic Remington, Theodore Roosevelt, and Owen Wister (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989). Elizabeth Bergman Crist discusses Roosevelt's attitudes toward the West in Music for the Common Man: Aaron Copland during the Depression and War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 114-16.

  40. Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation, 86.

  41. See, among others, Robert F. Berkhofer, The White Man's Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978); Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1998); and Deloria, Indians in Unexpected Places (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004).

  42. Recent scholars have confirmed that the labels Native American and Indian each carry traces of colonialism. Indian bears witness to the prejudices of the age of discovery, and Native American not only elides human beings with flora and fauna but also inscribes the assumptions of an externally imposed multiculturalism. Nonetheless, for lack of a better alternative, I will use the two terms more or less interchangeably.

  43. For a brief treatment of these two figures, see my article “‘In the Glory of the Sunset’: Arthur Farwell, Charles Wakefield Cadman, and Indianism in American Music,” repercussions 5, nos. 1-2 (1996): 124-83.

  44. Throughout this book, I use the terms cosmopolitan and provincial in the sense outlined by Richard Crawford in The American Musical Landscape (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993).

  45. Amid the vast literature on the topic, a good place to begin is Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). Of special interest here is that early twentieth-century writers frequently identified Native American tribes as “oriental” immigrants. See Klein, Frontiers of Historical Imagination, 143-44.

  46. Michael Rogin, Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), 47.

  1. THE WA-WAN AND THE WEST

  1. California: A Masque of Music (typescript), Arthur Farwell Collection, Sibley Library, Eastman School of Music, Box 24, Folder 8 (hereafter cited as AFC, 24/8). The Farwell family allowed copyright on the materials in this collection to expire in 2003; I am extremely grateful to them for their generosity in preserving and disseminating
his work.

  2. California, AFC, 24/8.

  3. “Note by Arthur Farwell,” Spanish Songs of Old California (1923), published by Charles F. Lummis.

  4. California, AFC, 24/8.

  5. Arthur Farwell, “Wanderjahre of a Revolutionist” and Other Essays on American Music, ed. Thomas Stoner (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1995), 90-91 (hereafter cited as WJ).

  6. Farwell, “A Letter to American Composers,” 1903; cited in Gilbert Chase's introductory essay, “The Wa-Wan Press: A Chapter in American Enterprise,” in The Wa-Wan Press, 1901-11, ed. Vera Brodsky Lawrence (New York: Arno Press, 1970), ix-xix.

  7. Gilman, “Some American Music,” Harper's Weekly, 7 March 1903. John Tasker Howard echoed Gilman in 1931, ascribing credit to the press for the “awakening of American interest in the folk-song on our soil.” Howard, Our American Music (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1931), 441-42.

  8. From 1901 to 1906, issues appeared twice quarterly; 1907 saw a brief increase to a monthly schedule coupled with a determination to take a more populist tone. After this, the publication schedule was erratic.

  9. Edward Waters, “The Wa-Wan Press: An Adventure in Musical Idealism,” in A Birthday Offering to C[arl] E[ngel], ed. Gustave Reese (New York: G. Schirmer, 1943), 219; WJ, 89.

  10. Farwell, “Introduction,” The Wa-Wan Press 3, no. 19 (1904) (hereafter cited as Wa-Wan, 3/19); reprinted in The Wa-Wan Press, 1901-11, ed. Lawrence (hereafter cited as WWP), 2:153; WJ, 88.

  11. Farwell, “Letter to American Composers,” xvii-xix. See also Farwell, “National Work vs. Nationalism,” The New Music Review (July 1909): 432: “Let me affirm and reiterate that I am not working for an obvious nationalism in music.”

  12. Wa-Wan, 1/7 (1902); WWP, 1:127.

  13. Wa-Wan, 2/15 (1903); WWP, 2: 64-65.

  14. Farwell, “The Struggle Toward a National Music,” North American Review 186 (1907): 567, 569.

  15. Wa-Wan, 2/15 (1903); WWP, 2:67.

  16. Wa-Wan, 2/15 (1903); WWP, 2:66.

  17. Farwell, “An Affirmation of American Music,” Musical World (January 1903): 11; reprinted in Gilbert Chase, ed., The American Composer Speaks ([Baton Rouge]: Louisiana State University Press, 1966), 88-93.

  18. Evelyn Davis Culbertson, He Heard America Singing: Arthur Farwell, Composer and Crusading Music Educator (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1992), 13-14 (hereafter cited as EDC).

  19. Alice Fletcher, preface to Indian Story and Song from North America (Boston: Smalls Maynard and Company, 1900), vii-ix.

  20. For more information on Fletcher, see Joan Mark, A Stranger in Her Native Land (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1988). Fillmore's work is discussed in James McNutt, “John Comfort Fillmore: A Student of Indian Music Reconsidered,” American Music 2, no.1 (1984): 61-70.

  21. Farwell, “Aspects of Indian Music,” Southern Workman 31 (1902): 212. See also WJ, 77; and Wa-Wan, 1/2 (1901); WWP, 1:23-30.

  22. John Comfort Fillmore, The Harmonic Structure of Indian Music (New York: G. Putnam's Sons, 1899).

  23. Wa-Wan, 1/2 (1901); WWP, 1:23-30.

  24. Farwell, “Aspects of Indian Music,” 216.

  25. Wa-Wan, 3/20 (1904); WWP, 2:154.

  26. Wa-Wan, 1/4 (1902); WWP, 1:76.

  27. According to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, 2 February 1904, “From the Press”: “The original Indian melody is supported with another melody which gives a broad expression of day.” A neatly handwritten copy appears in AFC, 31/6, labeled “Otoe Tribe” but with no text underlay.

  28. Wa-Wan, ¼ (1902); WWP, 1:77.

  29. Wa-Wan, 2/10 (1902); WWP, 1:182.

  30. Fletcher and Gilman as quoted in EDC, 371, 372.

  31. Musical Courier, 24 January 1904; cited in EDC, 370. Benjamin Lambord praised the orchestral “Hurakan” for its “great impressiveness and brilliant color” in Arthur Farwell and W. Dermot Darby, eds., Music in America, vol. 4 of The Art of Music, ed. Daniel Gregory Mason (New York: National Society of Music, 1915), 411.

  32. AFC, 23/15.

  33. See Fletcher, Indian Story and Song, 70-71.

  34. Wa-Wan, 3/19 (1904); WWP, 2:151.

  35. Wa-Wan, 2/12 (1903); WWP, 2:18, 20.

  36. Wa-Wan, 1/7 (1902); WWP, 1:128.

  37. Farwell, “Pioneering for American Music,” Modern Music 12 (1935): 119.

  38. WJ, 90-91. The “Wa-Wan” rubric had its detractors from the beginning, but Far-well felt that “the moment demanded a striking and curiosity-provoking title.” Farwell, “Pioneering for American Music,” 118.

  39. Wa-Wan, 4/25 (1905); WWP, 3:2.

  40. Wa-Wan, 3/17 (1904); WWP, 2:105.

  41. Wa-Wan, 3/17 (1904); WWP, 2:105-6.

  42. A fifth trip was planned for the summer of 1907, at which point Farwell did travel as far west as Evanston, Illinois, but illness prevented him from venturing farther. The publicity for the fourth “western tour” advertised a “TOUR TO CALIFORNIA next summer 1907.” AFC Scrapbook.

  43. “Music for Americans. Arthur Farwell Believes Indian Themes Offer Material,” unsigned article from a Portland newspaper, January 1904, clipping from the AFC Scrapbook.

  44. AFC Scrapbook.

  45. Brochure titled “Western Tour, October 1903-February 1904.” AFC Scrapbook.

  46. For an excellent discussion of Farwell's and Loomis's lecture-recitals, see Michael Pisani, Imagining Native America in Music (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2005), 177-80.

  47. Pisani, Imagining Native America, 364.

  48. AFC, 39/29; reprinted in EDC, 372.

  49. Cadman's brochure is preserved in the AFC Scrapbook, as are a variety of programs and reviews of other Indianist concerts and lecture-recitals.

  50. Cadman to La Flesche, 10 February 1909; cited in Harry D. Perison, “Charles Wakefield Cadman: His Life and Works” (PhD diss., Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, 1978), 83-84.

  51. Wa-Wan, 2/12 (1903); WWP, 2:18.

  52. Wa-Wan, 1/4 (1902); WWP, 1:76-77. Wa-Wan, 3/17 (1904); WWP, 2:106.

  53. Pisani, Imagining Native America, 7.

  54. Wa-Wan, 1/7 (1902); WWP, 1:128.

  55. Publicity brochure for “Two Lecture Recitals. II. The Wa-Wan Ceremony of the Omahas.” Loose insert to AFC Scrapbook.

  56. Ibid.

  57. Alice Fletcher, Study of Omaha Indian Music, published in the Archaeological and Ethnological Papers of Harvard's Peabody Museum, 1893.

  58. See Pisani, Imagining Native America, 179, 266, 278.

  59. Edgar Lee Kirk, “Toward American Music: A Study of the Life and Music of Arthur George Farwell” (PhD diss., Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, 1958), 201.

  60. Wa-Wan, 5/37 (1906); WWP, 3:229.

  61. Ibid.

  62. “Indian Melody Starts New Cult—Art Society, Charmed by Music of the Tepees, Favors Original Song—Science Corners Tunes,” Pittsburgh Gazette, April 1905. AFC Scrapbook.

  63. Stoner clarifies this matter in WJ, 123. The other war dance (in compound meter with a key signature of C major) was conceived slightly later, in 1905, but it is now simply called “Navajo War Dance.” It was published in the Wa-Wan Press (vol. 4, no. 28) as part of the collection From Mesa and Plain, before being revised for republication by G. Schirmer in 1912. My analysis of “Navajo War Dance no. 2” is based on John Kirkpatrick's 1947 edition (Music Press).

  64. The provenance of the original Navajo material is uncertain. Farwell justified his use of parallel fourths by stating that “I have heard the Navajos sing this dance in 4ths” (EDC, 384), and if this is the case, then he must have either witnessed a live performance or listened to a wax cylinder in Lummis's or Fletcher's collections.

  65. Lambord in Farwell and Darby, Music in America, 4:412.

  66. David Ewen, American Composers Today (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1949), 92.

  67. Farwell to Arnold Schwab, 3 February 1951; cited in EDC, 393.

  68. Three Indian Songs was published by G. Schirmer in 1912; EDC sugg
ests a publication date of 1908, but I have not found supporting evidence for this.

  69. Farwell made choral arrangements of “The Old Man's Love Song” and “Song of the Ghost Dance” for the Laurel Songbook in 1901. His first four choruses were intended for conductor John Finley Williamson at Westminster Choir College and were published in 1937. Two others were stymied by disagreements between Farwell and Carl Fischer, and they remain unpublished. See EDC, 387-91.

  70. Arthur Farwell to Sara Farwell, 5 May 1946; cited in EDC, 390.

  71. Fletcher, The Hako: A Pawnee Ceremony (1904); reprinted as The Hako: Song, Pipe, and Unity in a Pawnee Calumet Ceremony (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 20; see also Helen Myers's introduction to The Hako (reprint edition), 6-7.

  72. Farwell to Arthur Cohn, 17 October 1935, AFC, 35/30.

  73. Ibid.

  74. Fletcher, The Hako, 101-2. Ron Erickson, preface to The Hako (San Francisco: Er-ickson Editions, 1997). See also EDC, 377-82.

  75. Wa-Wan, 5/37 (1906); WWP, 3:226.

  2. WESTERN DEMOCRACY, WESTERN LANDSCAPES, WESTERN MUSIC

  1. Charles Lummis, “New Mexican Folk-Songs,” Cosmopolitan, October 1892, 720. John Koegel, “Mexican-American Music in Nineteenth-Century Southern California: The Lummis Wax Cylinder Collection at the Southwest Museum, Los Angeles,” PhD diss., Clare-mont Graduate School, 1994.

  2. Lummis lived at Isleta Pueblo from 1888 to 1892, recuperating from a paralytic stroke brought on by overwork. This was some three and a half years after his “Tramp Across the Continent,” a cross-country walk from Ohio to Los Angeles, during which he sent dispatches to newspapers back East.

  3. Martin Padget, “Travel, Exoticism, and the Writing of Region: Charles Fletcher Lummis and the ‘Creation’ of the Southwest,” Journal of the Southwest 37, no. 3 (1995): 431-32.

  4. Lummis, “Catching Our Archaeology Alive,” Out West 22, no. 1 (January 1905): 35-47.

  5. After an initial rebuff, Farwell met with the president of the American Archaeological Institute, Thomas Day Seymour, a professor of classics at Yale. Lummis approved, writing to Farwell that although Seymour was an “Easterner,” he could still be “converted” to their cause. Lummis to Farwell, 16 May 1904, AFC, 39/60.