Presented By: Slavic Languages & Literatures
Ignatz Waghalter and the Negro Symphony Orchestra (1938-40)
David A. Goldfarb
David Goldfarb, independent scholar and host of "Encounters with Polish and Ukrainian Literature," a YouTube program sponsored by the Polish Cultural Institute in New York, will give a talk coinciding with the Martin Luther King memorial holiday, entitled "Ignatz Waghalter and the Negro Symphony Orchestra (1938-40)." This is a strange and fascinating story. The talk will take place in the Modern Languages Building, Room 3308, from 4:30 to 6:00 PM.
About the Talk
Composer William Grant Still published an essay in 1939, “A Negro Symphony Orchestra,” imagining the possibilities that could be opened by having an all-Black orchestra of national stature that would be an inspiration to Black youth “and to America as a whole,” and would introduce new energy into classical music by involving musicians skilled in jazz. His dream was consonant with the ideas of W.E.B. DuBois, who in “The Souls of Black Folk,” argued that classical music played an essential political role in the “uplift” of the race, and nineteenth-century educator James Monroe Trotter, who saw classical music as a means of demonstrating the right of African Americans to participate in American democracy as “full-fledged citizens.”
There had been a number of African American orchestras by that time, but just such an ensemble with international ambitions had formed in Harlem in 1938 and incorporated officially as “The Negro Symphony Orchestra,” curiously under the baton of conductor and composer Ignatz Waghalter (1881-1949), who found himself in New York after fleeing Nazi Germany. Waghalter came from a Warsaw family of Jewish musicians, klezmorim who played weddings and circuses. He had smuggled himself illegally into Germany as a teenager to study classical music and rose to prominence as the director of the Deutsches Opernhaus in Berlin from 1912-23. He also served as a visiting conductor for major institutions from the National Opera in Riga to the New York State Symphony. In New York he joined forces with leading figures in the Harlem Renaissance including James Weldon Johnson, Judge James S. Watson, orchestra manager Leviticus Lyon and conductor A. Jack Thomas to form “The Negro Symphony Orchestra.” Waghalter composed a choral work with lyrics by Judge Watson called “America, Our Shining Light,” addressing themes of bigotry, racism, anti-immigrant sentiment, and the hope of America. When the orchestra collapsed after the outbreak of World War II, Waghalter was working on a composition specifically for this orchestra, called the “New World Suite.” This presentation will discuss what archives at Yale and in New York reveal about the orchestra and Waghalter’s collaboration with it.
About David A. Goldfarb
David A. Goldfarb is an independent scholar of Polish literature and literary theory, and a literary translator from Polish to English. He produces and hosts the monthly video series “Encounters with Polish and Ukrainian Literature,” supported by the Polish Cultural Institute New York, now entering its sixth year, and is a writer for a documentary film about Polish-Jewish composer Ignatz Waghalter and the Negro Symphony Orchestra in Harlem. His main current translation project is Agata Tuszyńska’s “The Black Handbag” and he has a residency from the Polish Book Institute to work on Tuszyńska’s novel about Bruno Schulz’s fiancée, Józefina Szelińska, in Warsaw this summer. From mid-2010 to the end of 2013, he was Curator of Literature and Humanities Programming at the Polish Cultural Institute in New York, a diplomatic mission of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland. Prior to that he was an Assistant Professor of Slavic Literatures and Comparative Literature at Barnard College, Columbia University.
He holds a doctorate in Comparative Literature from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He has published articles on Bruno Schulz, Zbigniew Herbert, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Mikhail Lermontov, and East European cinema in such journals as “East European Politics and Societies,” “Indiana Slavic Studies,” “Philosophy and Literature,” “Prooftexts,” “The Polish Review,” “Slavic and East European Performance,” and “Jewish Quarterly,” and he has published book chapters on Jozef Wittlin, Witold Gombrowicz, and Nikolai Gogol and Giuseppe Arcimboldo. He has written the introduction and notes for Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilych” and “Other Stories” and Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons” for the Barnes and Noble Classics series, and for the Penguin Classics edition of “The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories” by Bruno Schulz.
About the Talk
Composer William Grant Still published an essay in 1939, “A Negro Symphony Orchestra,” imagining the possibilities that could be opened by having an all-Black orchestra of national stature that would be an inspiration to Black youth “and to America as a whole,” and would introduce new energy into classical music by involving musicians skilled in jazz. His dream was consonant with the ideas of W.E.B. DuBois, who in “The Souls of Black Folk,” argued that classical music played an essential political role in the “uplift” of the race, and nineteenth-century educator James Monroe Trotter, who saw classical music as a means of demonstrating the right of African Americans to participate in American democracy as “full-fledged citizens.”
There had been a number of African American orchestras by that time, but just such an ensemble with international ambitions had formed in Harlem in 1938 and incorporated officially as “The Negro Symphony Orchestra,” curiously under the baton of conductor and composer Ignatz Waghalter (1881-1949), who found himself in New York after fleeing Nazi Germany. Waghalter came from a Warsaw family of Jewish musicians, klezmorim who played weddings and circuses. He had smuggled himself illegally into Germany as a teenager to study classical music and rose to prominence as the director of the Deutsches Opernhaus in Berlin from 1912-23. He also served as a visiting conductor for major institutions from the National Opera in Riga to the New York State Symphony. In New York he joined forces with leading figures in the Harlem Renaissance including James Weldon Johnson, Judge James S. Watson, orchestra manager Leviticus Lyon and conductor A. Jack Thomas to form “The Negro Symphony Orchestra.” Waghalter composed a choral work with lyrics by Judge Watson called “America, Our Shining Light,” addressing themes of bigotry, racism, anti-immigrant sentiment, and the hope of America. When the orchestra collapsed after the outbreak of World War II, Waghalter was working on a composition specifically for this orchestra, called the “New World Suite.” This presentation will discuss what archives at Yale and in New York reveal about the orchestra and Waghalter’s collaboration with it.
About David A. Goldfarb
David A. Goldfarb is an independent scholar of Polish literature and literary theory, and a literary translator from Polish to English. He produces and hosts the monthly video series “Encounters with Polish and Ukrainian Literature,” supported by the Polish Cultural Institute New York, now entering its sixth year, and is a writer for a documentary film about Polish-Jewish composer Ignatz Waghalter and the Negro Symphony Orchestra in Harlem. His main current translation project is Agata Tuszyńska’s “The Black Handbag” and he has a residency from the Polish Book Institute to work on Tuszyńska’s novel about Bruno Schulz’s fiancée, Józefina Szelińska, in Warsaw this summer. From mid-2010 to the end of 2013, he was Curator of Literature and Humanities Programming at the Polish Cultural Institute in New York, a diplomatic mission of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland. Prior to that he was an Assistant Professor of Slavic Literatures and Comparative Literature at Barnard College, Columbia University.
He holds a doctorate in Comparative Literature from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He has published articles on Bruno Schulz, Zbigniew Herbert, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Mikhail Lermontov, and East European cinema in such journals as “East European Politics and Societies,” “Indiana Slavic Studies,” “Philosophy and Literature,” “Prooftexts,” “The Polish Review,” “Slavic and East European Performance,” and “Jewish Quarterly,” and he has published book chapters on Jozef Wittlin, Witold Gombrowicz, and Nikolai Gogol and Giuseppe Arcimboldo. He has written the introduction and notes for Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilych” and “Other Stories” and Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons” for the Barnes and Noble Classics series, and for the Penguin Classics edition of “The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories” by Bruno Schulz.
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