List of Illustrations Introduction Prologue: Screaming Wagnerites and America’s Fin de Siècle Music and moral passion—Revisionist portraiture—Framing “fin de siècle” 1. Henry Higginson: High Culture, High Finance, and Useful Citizenship Civil War service—A second home in Vienna—Announcing the Boston Symphony Orchestra—John Sullivan Dwight and musical uplift—Building Symphony Hall—Choosing a conductor—“Masculine” business versus “feminine” art—Karl Muck and the Great War 2. Henry Krehbiel: The German-American Transaction Race and the World’s Columbian Exposition—The making of a music critic—Anton Seidl and Wagnerism made wholesome—Antonín Dvo ák and “Negro melodies”—An activist “American school of criticism”—“Salome” and Mahler debacles—German-Americans and the Great War—Art as uplift 3. Laura Holloway Langford: Servitude, Disquiet, and “The History of Womankind” “The Ladies of the White House”—A tangled past—From theosophy to Wagnerism—Musical missionary work—“Earnest, manly women”—Reforming the Shakers—A life in limbo 4. Charles Ives: Gentility and Rebellion Charles and Harmony—A life saga—The business of life insurance—Transcendentalism in music—The symphonic ideal—Stream of consciousness—Ives’s “nervous complex”—The residual Progressive Summation: Defining an American Fin de Siècle Boston decadents—A fin-de-siècle template—Mark Twain and hybridity—“Social control” and “sacralization”—World War I poisons Romantic uplift Notes Index