{"id":14594,"date":"2023-10-16T13:07:17","date_gmt":"2023-10-16T17:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/?p=14594"},"modified":"2023-10-19T16:50:43","modified_gmt":"2023-10-19T20:50:43","slug":"rachmaninoff-versus-the-mummers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2023\/10\/rachmaninoff-versus-the-mummers\/","title":{"rendered":"Rachmaninoff Versus The Mummers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It was 1952 and Philadelphians were searching for a new identity. Democrats had taken City Hall and urban renewal dollars were poised to pour in from Washington. Gimbel Brothers Department Store at 10th and Market Streets had sponsored a \u201cBetter Philadelphia Exhibition\u201c and now, with the betterment begun, executives wanted to celebrate the new and improved city in a triptych of murals over a bank of store elevators. They invited a stable of artists to propose paintings of lasting civic and cultural value.

Morris Berd\u2019s Industrial Philadelphia<\/em> \u2013 the Workshop of the World<\/em> and Harry Gricevics\u2019 visionary Philadelphia of Tomorrow<\/em> breezed through the review process. But when the committee saw Alfred Bendiner\u2019s study of exuberant, twirling and colorful strutting on a Broad Street, they grew uncomfortable. Although the committee liked Bendiner\u2019s style, the mummers weren\u2019t dignified enough, or so they told the artist. If you want the commission, find a more appropriate subject, they told him.

Bendiner hadn\u2019t anticipated that his confident, circuslike renderings of average Philadelphians, mocking and mimicking on New Year\u2019s Day might fail to fit some unspoken agenda. But the committee\u2019s inclination toward white-collar Philadelphia \u2013 the starchier the better \u2013 was now obvious. They didn\u2019t want sequins and feathers. Perhaps top hat and tails would do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Academy of Music. Southwest corner of Broad and Locust Streets, December 28, 1916. Charles P. Mills, Photographer. (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This shift pose no real problem for Bendiner. For years, his sketches of Igor Stravinsky, Jascha Heifetz, Marian Anderson, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and others had accompanied reviews of performances in The<\/em> Evening Bulletin,<\/em> and he had just come out with his first book, Music to My Eyes<\/em>, a collection of 51 caricatures of performers on stage at the Academy of Music. Bendiner had dedicated the book to Rachmaninoff, whose memorable Philadelphia premiere of his Piano Concerto No. 3 Bendiner sketched in December 1939. \u201cRachmaninoff rode his own meddlesome musical steed in a fashion that held his audience spellbound,\u201c wrote one reviewer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in his revision for the Gimbel\u2019s commission, Bendiner threw a subtle, silent curve. He replaced the profile of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the medallion over the Academy\u2019s proscenium arch with that of his wife, Betty. Call it artistic license. Call it sleight-of-hand. Bendiner introduced onto the the staid Academy and the walls of Gimbel\u2019s Department Store, a little Mummeresque mockery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Philadelphia Orchestra, Academy of Music, oil painting by Alfred Bendiner, 1952. At the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

All three paintings were removed before the Gimbels flagship store<\/a> at 9th<\/sup> and Market Streets was demolished as part of the city\u2019s continued renewal. (Decades later, its site remains undeveloped.) The Bendiner eventually followed the Orchestra to the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts at Broad and Spruce Streets \u2013 again at home by an elevator. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

+ + + <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adapted from \u201cHow the Orchestra Beat the Mummers\u201d published in The Philadelphia Almanac and Citizens’ Manual for 1994<\/em> (The Library Company of Philadelphia, 1993), page 127. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was 1952 and Philadelphians were searching for a new identity. Democrats had taken City Hall and urban renewal dollars were poised to pour in from Washington. Gimbel Brothers Department Store at 10th and Market Streets had sponsored a \u201cBetter Philadelphia Exhibition\u201c and now, with the betterment begun, executives wanted to celebrate the new and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}