John Sullivan Dwight

John Sullivan Dwight

John Sullivan Dwight (born May 13, 1813 in Boston , Massachusetts , † September 5, 1893 ibid) was an American music critic , Unitarian clergyman and transcendentalist . After initially working as a preacher, the reform-minded Dwight turned away from the Church and became a member of the socially utopian Brook Farm . He became famous for his Dwight's Journal of Music , one of the most influential music magazines in the United States in the 19th century. In addition to the Journal , Dwight has written for other newspapers and books on musical subjects.

Childhood and youth

John Sullivan Dwight was born in 1813 as the first child of John (1773-1852) and Mary Dwight († 1876) in Boston . His father came from the long-established Dwights family and had studied theology , but then turned away from Calvinism and worked as a doctor in Boston after further studies. In 1812 he married Mary Corey, a woman interested in literature, with whom he had two daughters and two sons.

As a child, John Sullivan Dwight attended elementary school and later the Boston Latin School . He became interested in music at the age of fifteen and learned to play the piano and the flute. In 1829 John Sullivan Dwight began his studies at Harvard College , where he was a member of the Pierian Sodality (now the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra ). After completing his studies in July 1832, Dwight worked as a teacher in Northborough for three months and introduced music as a subject at the school. He began a second course in September 1832 at Harvard Divinity School , but interrupted it between October 1833 and August 1834 and was a tutor for the children of Harm Jan Huidekoper during this time . In August 1836, Dwight finished his second degree and began working as a minister .

Activity as a clergyman

As a minister, Dwight alternated between different congregations, often staying only a few Sundays. Dwight preached in East Lexington between June 1837 and early 1839, but was absent for much of the time. In addition to his work as a preacher, Dwight began to write literary reviews, such as Charles Dickens ' Oliver Twist or in the Unitarian newspaper The Christian Examiner . At the same time Dwight translated a large part of Goethe's poems and about half of Schiller's poems from German into English for his friend George Ripley's series Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature . Through his friendship with Ripley, Dwight came into contact with other leading transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson , Theodore Parker and Elizabeth P. Peabody .

In May 1840, John Sullivan Dwight was called to serve as a pastor in the Northampton Ward. The local population was strictly Calvinist , Dwight's theological views were controversial, and prior to his appointment there had been long debates about his suitability as a pastor. During his time as pastor, Dwight arranged regular meetings with the parishioner where religious subjects were openly discussed. The idea for these meetings came from Dwight's predecessor, Karl Follen , who was also a Unitarian. In March 1841, Dwight left Northampton. Despite an annual salary of US $ 600  (equivalent to around 15,100 euros today) and a secure job, his job no longer gave him pleasure, so he turned away from the church.

Brook Farm

Brook Farm School Building

In 1841 George Ripley founded Brook Farm , a socially utopian community in which the transcendentalists' reform ideas were to be realized. Dwight shared Ripley's motives and aspirations and became a member of the community. One of Brook Farm's main sources of income was the school where Dwight taught music and Latin . In addition, he organized the musical life of the community, which increasingly aroused the interest of other members through his commitment. It was at Brook Farm that Dwight became interested in the symphonic works of Ludwig van Beethoven , whose music for Dwight was at the center of a number of interrelated aesthetic and social theories. Dwight established his reputation and music in the United States through his publications on the German composer.

After a fire in 1846, the community was reorganized and the weekly magazine The Harbinger was founded. Dwight wrote a lot for her, including literature reviews, music reviews, and rarely his own poetry. In addition, he acted together with Ripley as editor of the paper in which they propagated the ideas of Charles Fourier . With his reviews in Harbinger, Dwight wanted to improve the musical taste and knowledge of his compatriots, which is why he continued to work for them after the magazine moved to New York in October 1847.

Journalistic activities

Brook Farm went bankrupt in 1847 due to high debt, poor profitability and dispute between residents. Several of the former farmers moved to Boston and rented a jointly managed house on the High Street . This was done for cost reasons, but also to keep the community together. After about a year this connection also broke. During this time Dwight wrote as a freelancer for several newspapers on musical topics, such as the composers of classical and contemporary music. He has articles in the Daily Chronotype and the Daily Advertiser . Harbinger was hired in early 1849, and Dwight then took on duties as editor of the Daily Chronotype . In 1850 and 1851 Dwight wrote monthly for Sartairis Magazine from Philadelphia , the first half of 1851 he was music editor of the Boston Commonwealth . On February 12, 1851, John Sullivan Dwight married the singer Mary Bullard. She had frequented Brook Farm and, like Dwight, was an active member of the Boston Union of Associationists . The marriage had been planned earlier, but had been postponed for several years due to Dwight's uncertain future and financial problems.

Dwight's Journal of Music

Front cover of the first issue of Dwight's Journal of Music

In 1851 Dwight had plans for his own magazine both as a publisher and editor, the content of which would be entirely dedicated to music and the related arts. He received financial support for this project from the Harvard Musical Association and on April 10, 1852, the first edition of Dwight's Journal of Music: A Paper of Art and Literature appeared . The first articles were about the construction of the Boston Music Hall , New York's musical life and Jenny Lind . Dwight also translated works by European writers for the magazine, including a series of articles on Frédéric Chopin written by Franz Liszt . Although Dwight could not pay much, other authors contributed articles, such as John Knowles Paine and Alexander Wheelock Thayer . Besides Dwight, Thayer, who initially posted his articles from New York, wrote most for the Journal . For years he then led his own column, parts of which were later printed as a book.

Dwight was very successful with his journal ; the magazine was one of the most influential musical publications in the United States in the 19th century. Dwight was always careful to set high literary and musical standards in his magazine, which resulted in few readers and latent financial problems. From April 1859 the company Oliver Ditson & Co. became editor of the Journal , Dwight remained editor. He received a low wage for his work, but the income was regular and the change gave him the opportunity to concentrate fully on the content of the magazine.

Europe trip

In early July 1860, Dwight went on a trip to Europe to study the music there. The task of editor of Dwight's Journal of Music took over the young journalist Henry Ware during his absence, with Dwight sending him regular editorial correspondence. The first break in his trip was in Great Britain , where he only stayed briefly. He then stayed in France for seventeen days and traveled on to German territory via Switzerland . On October 7th he received news of the death of his wife in Frankfurt am Main , who had already died on September 6th in Boston. After deliberation, Dwight continued his journey, traveling via Bonn to Berlin and staying there for four months. In the spring of 1861 he traveled to Rome via Leipzig , Vienna and Venice . After three weeks he traveled from there by steamship to Marseille , from where it went on to Paris and later London . From Great Britain Dwight wanted to sail back to Boston on the Great Eastern , but the ship got into a heavy storm off Ireland and reached the coast with difficulty. Dwight later published a lengthy article in the Journal about this experience . In November 1861, Oliver Ditson & Co. wrote that the Journal suffered from Dwight's absence and that he should return; He arrived in Boston at the end of November.

Late years

In Boston, Dwight continued to work for his journal , and he also translated many German song texts into English. From April 1864, Dwight's Journal of Music appeared fortnightly instead of weekly, and the price of an annual subscription rose from one to two US dollars. This happened during the American Civil War , in which art lost its importance. In 1878 Oliver Ditson & Co. wanted to make the paper more suitable for the masses and thus more profitable. However, Dwight was strictly against it and therefore switched to Houghton, Osgood & Co. The magazine was restructured, the look was changed, new authors were hired. Due to a lack of income, however, they had to be fired again the next year, so that Dwight wrote a large part of the journal himself again. In July 1880, Dwight's longtime friend George Ripley died. Dwight received $ 6,000 for his magazine through a benefit concert in December 1880.

In the first half of 1881 advertising and subscriber income decreased dramatically, forcing Dwight to discontinue the magazine with the September 3, 1881 issue. In his farewell article, Dwight wrote of the lack of demand for a high-quality music magazine because daily newspapers provided the masses with simple reviews. Other magazines and musicians expressed sympathy for Dwight and his work, and they regretted the end of the journal .

After Dwight's Journal of Music closed , Dwight wrote several books and essays on the musical life of Boston and continued to serve as president of the Harvard Musical Association . For the 1890 edition of Webster's Dictionary he acted as editor for musical terms. For Dwight's 80th birthday on May 13, 1893, the Harvard Musical Association organized a grand birthday party attended by many of his friends. After a brief illness, John Sullivan Dwight died on September 5, 1893 in Boston.

Fonts (selection)

• Address Delivered Before the Harvard Musical Association. August 25th, 1841 , Boston 1841
• A Lecture on Association in its Connection with Education; Two Lectures Delivered Before the New England Fourier Society, in Boston, February 29th and March 7th, 1844; Association, in its Connection with Education and Religion , Boston: BH Greene 1844
• Our Dark Age in Music , in: The Atlantic Monthly , Vol. 50, No. 302, December 1882, pp. 813-823
• with Charles C. Perkins , History of the Handel and Haydn Society , of Boston, Massachusetts , Volume 1, Boston 1893 ( digitized version )

literature

• E. Douglas Bomberger: Brainard's Biographies of American Musicians. Greenwood Press, Westport 1999. ( Google Books )
• Betty E. Chmaj: Fry versus Dwight: American Music's Debate over Nationality . In: American Music 3: 1, 1985. pp. 63-84.
• George Willis Cooke : John Sullivan Dwight, Brook-farmer, Editor, and Critic of Music: A Biography . Small, Maynard & Co., Boston 1898. ( Internet Archive )
• Mary Wallace Davidson: John Sullivan Dwight and the Harvard Musical Association Orchestra: A Help or a Hindrance? In: John Spizer (Ed.): American Orchestras in the Nineteenth Century . Chicago University Press, Chicago 2012. pp. 247-268, ISBN 9780226769769 .
• Sterling F. Delano: The Harbinger and New England Transcendentalism: A Portrait of Associationism in America . Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Rutherford NJ 1983, ISBN 083863138X .
• Benjamin Woodbridge Dwight: The History of the Descendants of John Dwight, of Dedham, Mass. JF Trow & Son, New York 1874. ( Internet Archive )
• Ora Frishberg Saloman: Beethoven's Symphonies and JS Dwight: The Birth of American Musical Criticism . Northeastern University Press, Boston 1995, ISBN 1555532160 .
• J. Wesley Thomas: John Sullivan Dwight: A Translator of German Romanticism . In: American Literature 21: 4, 1950. pp. 427-441.
• Edward N. Waters: John Sullivan Dwight, First American Critic of Music . In: The Musical Quarterly 21: 1, 1935. pp. 69-88.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Between 1700 and 1900 members of the family often held high positions in society.
2. ^ Benjamin Woodbridge Dwight: The history of the descendants of John Dwight, of Dedham, Mass. Pp. 1012-1013.
3. ↑ George Willis Cooke: John Sullivan Dwight, Brook-farmer, editor, and critic of music: a biography . Pp. 3-11.
4. ↑ George Willis Cooke: John Sullivan Dwight, Brook-farmer, editor, and critic of music: a biography . Pp. 17-20.
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e} David M. Robinson: John Sullivan Dwight. (No longer available online.) Unitarian Universalist Association, archived from the original on July 3, 2013 ; Retrieved August 5, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
6. ↑ George Willis Cooke: John Sullivan Dwight, Brook-farmer, editor, and critic of music: a biography . Pp. 31-32.
7. ↑ George Willis Cooke: John Sullivan Dwight, Brook-farmer, editor, and critic of music: a biography . P. 40.
8. ↑ George Willis Cooke: John Sullivan Dwight, Brook-farmer, editor, and critic of music: a biography . Pp. 32, 46-47.
9. ↑ George Willis Cooke: John Sullivan Dwight, Brook-farmer, editor, and critic of music: a biography . Pp. 48-49.
10. ↑ George Willis Cooke: John Sullivan Dwight, Brook-farmer, editor, and critic of music: a biography . Pp. 54, 61, 64.
11. ↑ George Willis Cooke: John Sullivan Dwight, Brook-farmer, editor, and critic of music: a biography . P. 107.
12. ↑ George Willis Cooke: John Sullivan Dwight, Brook-farmer, editor, and critic of music: a biography . Pp. 108-109.
13. ↑ George Willis Cooke: John Sullivan Dwight, Brook-farmer, editor, and critic of music: a biography . Pp. 129, 134-135, 141, 143-145.
14. ↑ George Willis Cooke: John Sullivan Dwight, Brook-farmer, editor, and critic of music: a biography . Pp. 146-147, 150, 153-155.
15. ^ E. Douglas Bomberger: Brainard's Biographies of American Musicians. P. 83.
16. ↑ George Willis Cooke: John Sullivan Dwight, Brook-farmer, editor, and critic of music: a biography . Pp. 157, 160-161.
17. ↑ George Willis Cooke: John Sullivan Dwight, Brook-farmer, editor, and critic of music: a biography . P. 168.
18. ↑ George Willis Cooke: John Sullivan Dwight, Brook-farmer, editor, and critic of music: a biography . Pp. 180-185.
19. ↑ George Willis Cooke: John Sullivan Dwight, Brook-farmer, editor, and critic of music: a biography . Pp. 189, 196, 200-202, 205, 282.
20. ↑ George Willis Cooke: John Sullivan Dwight, Brook-farmer, editor, and critic of music: a biography . Pp. 207-208.
21. ↑ George Willis Cooke: John Sullivan Dwight, Brook-farmer, editor, and critic of music: a biography . Pp. 282, 289, 294-295.

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on August 19, 2013 .