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chapter four The Centennial City Sousa had promised Benjamin Swallow that he would leave Washington for two years, prove himself financially, and return to marry Emma May. Choosing a career in music may never have been the safest way to achieve this goal, but by 1876 Sousa was a well-trained journeyman capable of finding work in a theater orchestra, traveling show, or publishing firm. By the end of the decade he would succeed in all three types of jobs, and this success would come in a city that offered unique opportunities for a young musician. The International Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures, and Products of the Soil and Mine was organized to celebrate the centennial of American independence . While the national birthday may have provided an excuse for the fair, it was hardly its underlying purpose. The preceding decades had revealed massive fissures in the democratic experiment, and despite having extracted its price in blood, the Civil War had failed to cauterize the nation’s wounds: the panic of 1873 continued to slow the economy, violent clashes with labor were becoming more frequent, Reconstruction’s collapse was both obvious and imminent, the struggle for women’s suffrage threatened to undermine gender roles, and the question of just what to do with the continent’s original inhabitants was swiftly coming to a head. These stresses, of course, would not be on view at the centennial celebrations . No fair could thrive by dwelling on national challenges, and it was easy enough to relegate African, Native, and female Americans to their prescribed roles in minstrel shows, savage displays, and needlework demonstrations. The exhibition would instead showcase national order and unity, its very organization demonstrating the ability to raise funds, manage labor, and counter resistance. The materials of mechanical, industrial, and agricultural innovation would expose a people at work, not a nation at war. In short, the centennial exhibition that took place along the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia in the summer of 1876 was an opportunity for a socially, economically, 68 part ii. the professional and politically reeling country to demonstrate to both itself and the world that the great democracy’s national industry was organized for future gain and not distracted by ongoing challenges or past tragedies. The elderly Sousa would explain that following his tours with Nobles and Morgan, he “decided to go to Philadelphia and see the Centennial. It was a big event in the life of any young American and I believe the first event of its kind that the country had ever had.” The centennial exhibition was, indeed, the first of America’s world fairs, and funds were quickly raised through private donations, stock sales, local appropriations, and federal loans. About 450 acres were set aside in West Fairmount Park, and a design competition was established. In the end, more than two hundred structures—most of them temporary—were erected. Both weather and advertising caused shifts in attendance over the exhibition’s six-month run, but in the end well over eight million visitors—fully one-fifth of the country’s population—reaffirmed Sousa’s claim that this was an important event for many Americans.1 Once at the centennial, visitors were treated to evidence of America’s scientific progress ranging from the Bell telephone to the Otis elevator. All eyes were especially drawn to the Corliss engine in the aptly named Machinery Hall. This behemoth of steel and iron caused the visiting Walt Whitman to gaze for fully half an hour and marvel at man’s greatest technological achievement. Within the Main Exhibition Hall this focus on craftsmanship and innovation extended even to music. Visitors were asked to appreciate the mechanical improvements made by Steinway, Chickering, and Knabe, companies routinely praised for their “fidelity and taste in workmanship,” “excellence in materials employed,” and other “practical improvements” to the keyboard. Because so much of the exhibition was designed to showcase American unity through displays of industrial success, it is no surprise that the physical materials of music were prominently featured in sound (the thirteen Centennial Chimes in Machinery Hall), wood (an ornately carved keyboard case in the Women’s Pavilion), metal (the multiple displays of hardware used in piano construction), and mechanics (the Schmoele electromagnetic orchestrion in Agriculture Hall).2 Such displays of mechanical innovation in music were well matched to the fair’s goals, but there was also a need to prove the country’s progress in the art’s other sciences: composition and performance. This task fell...

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