Joseph Horowitz writes in Moral Fire: “If the Met’s screaming Wagnerites standing on chairs (in the 1890s) are unthinkable today, it is partly because we mistrust high feeling. Our children avidly specialize in vicarious forms of electronic interpersonal diversion. Our laptops and televisions ensnare us in a surrogate world that shuns all but facile passions; only Jon Stewart and Bill Maher share moments of moral outrage disguised as comedy.”

Arguing that the past can prove instructive and inspirational, Horowitz revisits four astonishing personalities—Henry Higginson, Laura Langford, Henry Krehbiel and Charles Ives—whose missionary work in the realm of culture signaled a belief in the fundamental decency of civilized human nature, in the universality of moral values, and in progress toward a kingdom of peace and love.

About the Author

Joseph Horowitz is the author of Classical Music in America, Artists in Exile, (UC Press), Understanding Toscanini, and Wagner Nights. Previously a New York Times music critic, then Executive Director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic, he is currently Artistic Director of DC's Post-Classical Ensemble.

List of Illustrations
Introduction

Prologue: Screaming Wagnerites and America’s Fin de Siècle
Music and moral passion—Revisionist portraiture—Framing “fin de siècle”

1. Henry Higginson: High Culture, High Finance, and Useful Citizenship
Civil War service—A second home in Vienna—Announcing the Boston Symphony Orchestra—John Sullivan Dwight and musical uplift—Building Symphony Hall—Choosing a conductor—“Masculine” business versus “feminine” art—Karl Muck and the Great War

2. Henry Krehbiel: The German-American Transaction
Race and the World’s Columbian Exposition—The making of a music critic—Anton Seidl and Wagnerism made wholesome—Antonín Dvorák and “Negro melodies”—An activist “American school of criticism”—“Salome” and Mahler debacles—German-Americans and the Great War—Art as uplift

3. Laura Holloway Langford: Servitude, Disquiet, and “The History of Womankind”
“The Ladies of the White House”—A tangled past—From theosophy to Wagnerism—Musical missionary work—“Earnest, manly women”—Reforming the Shakers—A life in limbo

4. Charles Ives: Gentility and Rebellion
Charles and Harmony—A life saga—The business of life insurance—Transcendentalism in music—The symphonic ideal—Stream of consciousness—Ives’s “nervous complex”—The residual Progressive Summation: Defining an American Fin de Siècle
Boston decadents—A fin-de-siècle template—Mark Twain and hybridity—“Social control” and “sacralization”—World War I poisons Romantic uplift

Notes
Index

Reviews

“A thoroughly engrossing read, a journey to an impassioned time rich in ideas, idealism, and hope for the future.”
— Symphony Now

“Horowitz's prose in "Moral Fire" is graceful and lucid, and his splendid musical analysis of such works as the "Concord" sonata and Ives's evocation of Henry David Thoreau's "silence of the night" are sure to send readers scurrying back to scores and recordings to revisit the works he discusses.”
— Wall Street Journal

“Rich in historical detail, Moral Fire is highly rewarding to musicians and historians, bringing a new understanding to the mis-understood Gilded Age.”
— American Record Guide

“Essential reading for anyone who wants to grasp the distinctive early history of the BSO or the cultural roots of modern-day Boston.”
— Boston Globe

“Today they are all but forgotten, yet Henry Higginson, Henry Krehbiel and Laura Langford were three American figures of astounding accomplishment. . . . Horowtiz’s book rightly reminds us of the achievements of these major fin-de-siecle protagonists.”
— Classical Music Magazine

“Horowitz offers here four profiles of turn-of-the-century figures important to the US musical landscape. . . . [He] makes excellent cases for the importance of his subjects, and for a reexamination of turn-of-the-century high culture in the US. . . . Recommended.”
— Choice

“The most recent of Joseph Horowitz's commanding studies of American musical life concentrates on four figures from the turn of the twentieth century whose characters exemplify in distinctive ways the moral fire of his title.”
— Times Literary Supplement (TLS)

“Fascinating history.”
— Bloomington Herald-Times

"Thoughtful and nuanced. . . . We owe a debt of gratitude to Horowitz."
— The Wagner Journal

“Horowitz offers a revisionist view of the era—not as a philistine, materialistic ‘Gilded Age’ but as a time when right-minded individuals felt that they could and should improve the lot of their fellow humans.”
— Opera News

"Horowitz’s study of the Gilded Age makes one hope that, in 2114, historians will look back at the turn of the twenty-first century and find that we have kindled a moral fire of our own."
— Journal of the Society for American Music

"Joseph Horowitz's absorbing study of four key figures in the history of classical orchestral music in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America is consistently fascinating, thought-provoking, and rewarding. This book should be of great interest to anyone who loves music and cares about its place in, and meaning to, society."

—Mark Volpe, Managing Director, Boston Symphony Orchestra

“Moral Fire is not only a wonderfully readable book, but also a welcome work of scholarship by one of our most astute and discriminating students, critics, and champions of the classical music tradition in America. This book will be welcomed not only by those interested in the history of music in America, but also by cultural historians and American Studies specialists for its perceptive insights into U.S. culture—and cultural aspiration—at the dawn of the twentieth century.”

—Paul S. Boyer, General Editor, The Oxford Encyclopedia of American History

“In this vivid, empathetic book, renowned scholar Joseph Horowitz further develops his case that to understand American intellectual and cultural history, one must understand Americans’ deep engagement with music in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Despite their different backgrounds and mindsets, the four figures profiled in Moral Fire all reveal the impulses and contradictions of Gilded Age culture through their involvement with music. Higginson, Langford, Krehbiel, and Ives were all intensely romantic yet devoted to moralism and uplift, democratic in spirit and agenda yet refined and sophisticated, Victorian yet modern. Moral Fire helps readers understand why the much-misunderstood Gilded Age in reality ranks as an especially creative and formative period in American thought and culture.”

—Alan Lessoff, editor, Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

About the Book

About the Author

Table of Contents

Reviews