- physdesc
-
{"format"=>"structured", "physdesc_components"=>[{"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"29.08 linear feet", "unit"=>"linear feet"}, {"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"21 boxes", "unit"=>"containers"}], "supress_display"=>true}
- unitid
-
{"value"=>"JPB 06-68", "type"=>"local_call"}
{"value"=>"20402", "type"=>"local_mss"}
- unitdate
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{"value"=>"1936-1966", "type"=>"inclusive", "normal"=>"1936/1966"}
- date_inclusive_start
-
1936
- date_inclusive_end
-
1966
- keydate
-
1936
- unittitle
-
{"value"=>"George Wehner scores"}
- repository
-
{"value"=>"<span class=\"corpname\">The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.</span> <span class=\"subarea\">Music Division.</span> <div class=\"address\"><span class=\"addressline\">New York, New York</span></div>"}
- abstract
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{"value"=>"The George Wehner Scores consist of original music created by the eccentric, but prolific composer, actor, writer, painter, and spiritualist, George Benjamin Wehner (1890-1970). After achieving some fame as a professional medium during the 1920s, Wehner began to compose prolifically from the mid-1930s up until the time of his death, writing numerous songs, orchestral works, and operas."}
- prefercite
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{"value"=>"<p>George Wehner Scores, JPB 06-68. Music Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.</p>"}
- origination
-
{"value"=>"Wehner, George B", "type"=>"persname"}
- bioghist
-
{"value"=>"<p>As the title of his early autobiography, <span class=\"title\">A Curious Life</span> (1929), indicates, composer, actor, writer, painter, and spiritualist, George Benjamin Wehner (1890-1970) led an extraordinarily varied, yet strangely productive life. Indeed, it is often quite difficult to determine the validity of some of Wehner's own more extravagant assertions about his upbringing and career.</p> <p>Born in Detroit, Michigan on June 30, 1890, George was the son of the sculptor Carl Herman Wehner and Annie Haslett (both of whom Wehner later maintained were descendants of European nobility). Much of his early childhood, however, was spent in Newburgh, New York, in an atmosphere he later recalled as being dominated by his mother's \"lively Bohemian parties,\" in which young George encountered many prominent artists and writers, including naturalist John Burroughs, writer Harrier Beecher Stowe, and actress Sarah Bernhardt, as well as numerous notable opera singers. Wehner's own musical abilities emerged early on, and, by the age of five, he had begun composing and had devised his own notational system.</p> <p>Following the death of his mother in 1904, George and his younger sister, Friederike, were sent to live with their maternal grandmother in suburban Detroit. Allegedly inspired by an immersion into Native American culture forged through his interactions with a nearby encampment of Ojibway Indians, George composed a four-act opera, <span class=\"title\">The Delight of Life</span>. This composition earned him a scholarship to the Michigan Conservatory of Music in 1908, where he studied composition, theory, and piano, and, later, taught harmony and piano classes. Around this same time, Wehner also began to explore more seriously those pronounced psychic abilities he already believed he possessed. He trained with local mediums and began to hold his own séances with friends and neighbors, as well as colleagues from the Conservatory.</p> <p>The chronology of Wehner's activities during the following decade is not entirely clear. At some point, the Conservatory went bankrupt and Wehner was unable to find support to continue his musical training in Europe, as he once had planned, and he eventually stopped teaching at the school. He and his sister found work appearing with Jessie Bonstelle's stock company at the Garrick Theatre in character parts. Wehner was rejected for military service during the First World War, but did wartime work at the Dodge Ordnance War Plant. It was during this period that he began to accept payment for conducting séances, which initially outraged his family, particularly his father.</p> <p>By the early 1920s, Wehner had starting writing popular songs and he left Detroit with a friend for New York City. He soon encountered songwriter Louis Breau, with whom he managed to collaborate on a hit, <span class=\"title\">I Want My Mammy</span> (1921), which was introduced by Eddie Cantor in the revue, <span class=\"title\">The Midnight Rounders</span>. Wehner quickly infiltrated show business circles in New York, struggling as a songwriter and sometime performer, but finding greater success in building up a portfolio of clients for his services as a professional medium. Most notable among these patrons was the actress Minnie Maddern Fiske. He was closely associated with Mrs. Fiske for several months, until the two had a falling out, but he appears to have acted more in the capacity of a spiritual advisor, rather than as a performer with her troupe.</p> <p>After the death of his father in October 1921 and a stint in vaudeville that occupied most of 1922, Wehner spent much of the rest of the decade focused on promoting his reputation as a medium; those efforts culminating in the publication of his autobiography in 1929. Perhaps Wehner's most advantageous connection became the Richard Hudnut family. Wehner had been introduced to the designer, Natacha Rambova, in 1925 by her mother (Hudnut's third wife) and he had begun leading regular weekly séances for them and their friends. He was invited to travel with Rambova and her entourage to Europe in 1926. This trip provided Wehner with numerous opportunities to further his psychic career, but he reached the apex of his fame when he foretold the death of Rambova's estranged husband, Rudolph Valentino, after the film star was hospitalized. He went on to console the grieving Rambova in a series of séances following Valentino's death, in which he enabled Rambova to communicate with the spirit of the late actor. These incidents were widely publicized by Rambova in serial installments in the <span class=\"title\">New York Graphic</span>, which also were published in book form.</p> <p>It was Rambova who introduced Wehner to noted occult writer, Talbot Mundy, and his wife, Dawn Allen, in 1927. Mundy took an extreme interest in Wehner's work, encouraging the publication of, and providing the introduction to, Wehner's volume of memoirs in 1929. Wehner's increasingly erratic behavior, however, soon would alienate Mundy, who later repudiated his belief in Wehner's authenticity as a medium.</p> <p>By the early 1930s, Wehner appears to have abandoned \"spiritual mediumship\" as a profession and turned to writing fiction, as well as painting, as a career alternative. He exhibited his watercolors at galleries in New York City during the mid-1930s, alongside the work of close friends, Margrete Overbeck (who, as a high school student, had designed the official Denver city flag) and Katherine Winterburn. Wehner also began to compose music quite prolifically, turning out orchestral pieces, ballet scores and other works for the stage. Among his performed compositions from this period were songs used in concerts by Ernestine Schumann-Heink and Maria Maximovitch; ballets for Katya Sergava and Alexis Rotov; and symphonic pieces put on by the WNYC Concert Orchestra and the New York City Symphony Orchestra in 1940 and 1941.</p> <p>Throughout the 1940s, Wehner maintained a feverish work pace. He also began to regularly attend the Cantonese Theatre of New York. Classical Chinese theater and music would have a profound influence on his later works for the stage, such as the opera, <span class=\"title\">The Mark of Kings</span> (1961). Wehner began to work on an epic novel, <span class=\"title\">The Bridge of Fire</span>, which apparently never was published. His financial situation was eased considerably in his later years when Winterburn left the composer a bequest of money after her death. In 1949, Wehner purchased a former rooming house at 69 Cranberry Street in Brooklyn Heights, where he would live and work for the next twenty years.</p> <p>Wehner's musical output became even more prodigious. During the last two decades of his life, he composed the music and wrote the librettos for fourteen operas. Several of these works, including <span class=\"title\">The Amiable Beast</span>, <span class=\"title\">So Sings the Bell</span>, and <span class=\"title\">The Wild Swan</span> were presented by the Heights Opera Company, under the direction of George O'Farrell, in concerts at parks throughout New York during the summer of 1961. In 1964, the same company produced <span class=\"title\">Into the Silence</span> at the New York World's Fair, in addition to a Central Park performance. The following year, the Amato Opera Theater staged the American premiere of <span class=\"title\">Three Days After</span>. Wehner also created new ballet scores later in life. <span class=\"title\">The Cockfight</span> (1959), with a scenario by Romana Kryzanowska, was performed at a workshop that featured her son, Paul Mejia, then a student at the School of American Ballet.</p> <p>Wehner continued to compose nearly up until the time of his death. He had begun work on a new opera, inspired by Hiroshige's <span class=\"title\">The Fifty-Three Stages of the Tokaido</span>, and had completed the first act before being taken seriously ill. Wehner passed away at Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn on January 12, 1970.</p>"}
- scopecontent
-
{"value"=>"<p>The George Wehner Scores consist of original music composed by this eccentric, but prolific artist. Wehner appears to have adopted various pseudonyms (for example, \"Leo\" and \"George Leighton\") or used different forms of his name (including George Haslett-Wehner) for some of his earlier compositions. Most of the dated materials are from the mid-1930s and the early 1960s. Although undated, one of the earliest scores in the collection most likely is the manuscript score for <span class=\"title\">Summer Shower</span>, a work dedicated to Ethel Kennedy, who was a fellow teacher at the Michigan Conservatory of Music. Other early works represented in the collection are the song, <span class=\"title\">The Sacred Hour</span> (1936, dedicated to Ernestine Schumann-Heink), an untitled orchestral piece for strings (1937), and a ballet, <span class=\"title\">The Phoenix</span> (1937, written for Katya Sergava). The greatest strength of the collection, however, lies in its extensive, but incomplete, selection of the full and/or piano scores for many of Wehner's later operas.</p> <p>While the collection contains a few probable holograph manuscripts, the majority of the manuscript scores most likely were the work of a copyist. Extant photocopy versions of many of the scores were generated from these ink manuscripts using a blueprint process. Many of the individual works include opus numbers; these numbers have been indicated in the container list whenever possible.</p> <p>Aside from a few synopses included with some of the ballet and opera scores, the collection does not contain any examples of Wehner's writings. Also of note is a copy of ten pages of handwritten, uncredited biographical notes on Wehner's life and friends. Comprised almost exclusively of scores, this collection will be of most interest to those researchers who wish to investigate Wehner's music. The collection, however, may provide some additional opportunities for the study of small-scale opera productions in New York City or Brooklyn's cultural life during the post World War II period.</p>"}
{"value"=>"<p class='list-head'>The George Wehner scores are arranged in two series:</p>\n<ul class='arrangement series-descriptions'>\n<li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mus/20402#c609349'>Series I. Scores, and</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1936-1966</div>\n<div class='series-extent'>16 boxes</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>The Scores series contains original music scores, which have been arranged alphabetically by title, within three major groupings: Ballets/Operas, Chamber/Orchestral Works, and Songs/Vocal Works. Also filed at the end of this series is a folder containing biographical notes on Wehner by an unidentified source.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mus/20402#c609488'>Series II: Oversized Materials, and</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1936 - 1959</div>\n<div class='series-extent'>5 boxes</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>The Oversized Materials series consists of larger format scores arranged alphabetically by title. Although the bulk of this series consists of Wehner's later dramatic works, some orchestral pieces will be found here as well.</p></div></li></ul>\n", "type"=>"arrangement"}
- arrangement
-
{"value"=>"<p> <ul> <li>Series I: Scores, 1936-1966 and undated</li> <li>Series II: Oversized Materials, 1936-1959 and undated</li></ul></p>", "supress_display"=>true}
- userestrict
-
{"value"=>"<p>For permission to publish, contact the Chief, Music Division.</p>"}
- processinfo
-
{"value"=>"<p>Processed by Helice Koffler; Machine-readable finding aid created by Helice Koffler.</p>"}
- extent_statement
-
29.08 linear feet (21 boxes)
- date_start
-
1936
- date_end
-
1966