Part of the Wagnerism Audiovisual Companion. Most audio samples are by kind permission of Pristine Classical.
A Louis Sullivan "jewel-box bank" in Columbus WI.
p. 109: The Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin, aka the Wedding March, sung in English by the Metropolitan Quartet in 1914.
From the UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive.
Lohengrin's warning to Elsa never to ask his name:
Lauritz Melchior in Erich Leinsdorf's Lohengrin at the Met, 1940 (Pristine).
The Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin figured in ceremonies surrounding the wedding Princess Victoria and Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, in 1858 — the apparent beginning of that music's career as a mainstay of the marital ritual. It is presumably a coincidence that the concert also featured works by Meyerbeer and Mendelssohn, whom Wagner had attacked in his antisemitic pamphlet Jewishness in Music.
p. 126: Brünnhilde's awakening in Act III of Siegfried.
p. 127: William Morris's rendering of Tristram and Iseult, from the Oxford Union frescoes.
Another of the Morris & company's Tristram stained-glass windows, after a design by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
p. 139: Wagner's spectacularly mediocre American Centennial March.
John Philip Sousa's Wagnerization of "The Star-Spangled Banner" in his International Congress Fantasy of 1876.
From the United States Marine Band's recording The Heritage of John Philip Sousa, Vol. 2.
A 1905 recording of the Sousa Band playing "The Entry of the Guests at the Wartburg" from Tannhäuser.
The modern incarnation of Sousa's "President's Own" Marine Band plays his arrangement of the Tannhäuser overture, which, he said, was his most popular piece alongside "The Stars and Stripes Forever."
Carl Schurz, Rutherford B. Hayes's Secretary of the Interior, playing piano at the White House:
p. 141: A souvenir of the Parisfal craze set off by the Met's performance of the opera in 1903 — the Edison Military Band plays the March of the Holy Grail.
From the UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive.
A little over a month after the Met première, the New York Times is reporting that "Parsifal blue is the newest color for spring and summer wear" (Jan. 31, 1904).
p. 142: One of Pinckney Marcius-Simons's "Parsifal" pictures, examined by Theodore Roosevelt.
p. 151: Adler and Sullivan's Golden Doorway at the World's Columbian exposition, which the architects described as Wagnerian in its color scheme:
p. 152: The interiors of Sullivan's "jewel box" banks: the Farmers & Merchants Union Bank, in Columbus, Wisconsin, and the National Farmers’ Bank, in Owatonna, Minnesota.
The bells of Riverside Church in New York City, based on the Grail Temple bells in Parsifal.
For more on the Wagnerian roots of the Rockefeller carillon, see "A Walking Tour of Wagner's New York."
From Percival Price, Bells and Man (Oxford UP, 1983), p. 180.
p. 153: In a performance recorded for the Wagnerism audiobook, tenor Nicholas Phan and pianist Myra Huang perform a bit of "American Music" from Victor Herbert's Miss Dolly Dollars.