Mary R. Seney Sheldon was the first female president of the New York Philharmonic

New York Philharmonic

The New York Philharmonic is a symphony orchestra based in New York City in the United States. It is one of the American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five"...

. She is credited with reorganizing the orchestra into a modern institution in 1909. One of her major contributions was the hiring of Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...

.

Childhood

Sheldon was one of nine children, and was born on July 3, 1863. She was the descendant of men who had been actively involved in the early American republic: Joshua Seney

Joshua Seney

Joshua Seney was an American farmer and lawyer from Queen Anne's County, Maryland. He represented the state of Maryland in the Continental Congress, and the second district of Maryland in the House of Representatives....

 represented Maryland

Maryland

Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...

 in the Continental Congress

Continental Congress

The Continental Congress was a convention of delegates called together from the Thirteen Colonies that became the governing body of the United States during the American Revolution....

 and James Nicholson was one of the first commodores in the United States Navy

United States Navy

The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...

. Her grandfather, Robert Seney, was a graduate of Columbia College

Columbia College of Columbia University

Columbia College is the oldest undergraduate college at Columbia University, situated on the university's main campus in Morningside Heights in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1754 by the Church of England as King's College, receiving a Royal Charter from King George II...

 and a Methodist minister who preached in Astoria

Astoria, Queens

Astoria is a neighborhood in the northwestern corner of the borough of Queens in New York City. Located in Community Board 1, Astoria is bounded by the East River and is adjacent to three other Queens neighborhoods: Long Island City, Sunnyside , and Woodside...

 (in present-day Queens

Queens

Queens is the easternmost of the five boroughs of New York City. The largest borough in area and the second-largest in population, it is coextensive with Queens County, an administrative division of New York state, in the United States....

). His son was the well-known banker, philanthropist, and art collector George Ingraham Seney (1826-92), who was educated at Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...

 and New York University

New York University

New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

. George Seney married Phoebe Augusta Moser, of a prominent Brooklyn family, in 1849.

By the time she was a teenager, the Seney family was living at 4 Montague Terrace in "one of the finest houses in Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

," and her father was the president of the Metropolitan Bank in Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

, which was a national institution. Sheldon grew up in a philanthropic family. In 1881, George Seney gave half a million dollars to establish the Methodist Hospital in what is now Park Slope, Brooklyn

Park Slope, Brooklyn

Park Slope is a neighborhood in western Brooklyn, New York City's most populous borough. Park Slope is roughly bounded by Prospect Park West to the east, Fourth Avenue to the west, Flatbush Avenue to the north, and 15th Street to the south, though other definitions are sometimes offered. Generally...

. That same year, he also gave away eighteen-year-old Mary as the bride of George Rumsey Sheldon, a Harvard graduate who had his own banking firm in New York City.

Within three years, as a result of the Panic of 1884

Panic of 1884

The Panic of 1884 was a panic during the Recession of 1882-85. Gold reserves of Europe were depleted and the New York City national banks, with tacit approval of the United States Treasury Department, halted investments in the rest of the United States and called in outstanding loans. A larger...

, the Seney family was forced to sell its home as well as auction off nearly 300 of George Seney’s fine collection of paintings to pay depositors. Despite this setback, Mary’s father still made major charitable contributions to local institutions such as the Industrial Home for Homeless Children, the Eye and Ear Infirmary, the Long Island Historical Society, and the Brooklyn Library. After her father’s death in 1892, Mary continued this philanthropic tradition by personally supervising many of these benefactions.

The New York Philharmonic

In 1908, Mary Sheldon was a forty-five-year-old worldly woman with financial and political experience, when she maneuvered to put Mahler on the Philharmonic’s podium and determined to build “the greatest orchestra America

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 has ever heard.” She had two daughters, kept a yacht at Glen Cove on Long Island

Long Island

Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...

, and opened her home in the Murray Hill

Murray Hill, Manhattan

Murray Hill is a Midtown Manhattan neighborhood in New York City, USA. Around 1987 many real estate promoters of the neighborhood and newer residents described the boundaries as within East 34th Street, East 42nd Street, Madison Avenue, and the East River; in 1999, Frank P...

 section of Manhattan’s east side for frequent musicales. Sheldon had watched her husband, a high-level Republican Party

Republican Party (United States)

The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

 official, help put Charles Evans Hughes

Charles Evans Hughes

Charles Evans Hughes, Sr. was an American statesman, lawyer and Republican politician from New York. He served as the 36th Governor of New York , Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States , United States Secretary of State , a judge on the Court of International Justice , and...

 in the governor’s mansion in Albany

Albany, New York

Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York's Capital District. Roughly north of New York City, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River...

 in 1906 and Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...

 and William Howard Taft

William Howard Taft

William Howard Taft was the 27th President of the United States and later the tenth Chief Justice of the United States...

 in the White House

White House

The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...

 in 1904 and 1908.

Her colleagues in the endeavor to reorganize the New York Philharmonic

New York Philharmonic

The New York Philharmonic is a symphony orchestra based in New York City in the United States. It is one of the American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five"...

 were sixty-year-old Ruth Draper

Ruth Draper

Ruth Draper was an American actress, dramatist and noted diseuse who specialized in character-driven monologues.-Early life and family:...

, the daughter of the publisher of the New York Sun

New York Sun

The New York Sun was a weekday daily newspaper published in New York City from 2002 to 2008. When it debuted on April 16, 2002, adopting the name, motto, and masthead of an otherwise unrelated earlier New York paper, The Sun , it became the first general-interest broadsheet newspaper to be started...

and the widow of a prominent professor of clinical medicine at Columbia, Dr. William Draper

William Draper

William Draper may refer to:*William F. Draper , U.S. Representative from Massachusetts*William Franklin Draper , American painter*William G. Draper , U.S. Air Force officer and aide to President Dwight D. Eisenhower...

, who had also been a gifted musician; and Nelson S. Spencer, a fifty-two-year-old pioneer in the artificial silk industry and a public-interest lawyer who had been counsel for Governor Hughes in 1907. Two younger men rounded out the core of Mrs. Sheldon’s group: Henry Lane Eno

Henry Lane Eno

Henry Lane Eno was born in New York City on July 8, 1871; he died at Montacute House, Somerset, on September 28, 1928. A member of the Eno real estate and banking family, he was the son of Henry Clay Eno and his wife Cornelia, the daughter of George W...

, at thirty-seven years of age president of the Fifth Avenue Building Co. but far better known in cultural and intellectual circles as a psychologist, poet, and author (his verse play Baglioni was published in 1905); and the European-trained pianist and composer Ernest H. Schelling, age thirty-two, “a connoisseur of books, prints and objects of art”, whose wife, Lucy How Draper, had been one of the signatories of the original 1903 plan.

Supporting Mrs. Sheldon's reorganization efforts were sustaining members of the Guarantors’ Committee who made three-year financial pledges. These included wealthy men like John D. Rockefeller

John D. Rockefeller

John Davison Rockefeller was an American oil industrialist, investor, and philanthropist. He was the founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry and was the first great U.S. business trust. Rockefeller revolutionized the petroleum industry and defined the structure of...

, J. Pierpont Morgan, Joseph Pulitzer

Joseph Pulitzer

Joseph Pulitzer April 10, 1847 – October 29, 1911), born Politzer József, was a Hungarian-American newspaper publisher of the St. Louis Post Dispatch and the New York World. Pulitzer introduced the techniques of "new journalism" to the newspapers he acquired in the 1880s and became a leading...

, August Belmont, Jr.

August Belmont, Jr.

August Belmont, Jr. was an American financier, the builder of New York's Belmont Park racetrack, and a major owner/breeder of thoroughbred racehorses.-Early life:...

, and Thomas Fortune Ryan

Thomas Fortune Ryan

Thomas Fortune Ryan was a U.S. tobacco and transport magnate. Part of his fortune paid for the construction of the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Richmond, Virginia.-Early days:...

, but also some formidable women. Harriet (Mrs. Charles Beatty) Alexander and Mary (Mrs. Edward H.) Harriman, both prominent hostesses and philanthropists in their own right, served as Philharmonic Guarantors and, in spite of Walter Damrosch’s comments about rich ladies, also as directors of the Symphony Society (so did Henry Lane Eno).

Not least among the women of the Guarantors was Minnie Carl (Mrs. Samuel) Untermyer, the daughter of a German political refugee and the wife of the prominent attorney. Their town house at 2 East 54th Street

54th Street (Manhattan)

54th Street is a two-mile-long, one-way street traveling west to east across Midtown Manhattan.-West Side Highway:*The route begins at the West Side Highway . Opposite the intersection is the New York Passenger Ship Terminal and the Hudson River...

 was open to a wide variety of artists, musicians, and statesmen. Untermyer was a delegate to the National Democratic Party

Democratic Party (United States)

The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

 conventions in 1904 and 1908 yet when it came to musical matters, political affiliations were set aside. He had served as legal counsel for Damrosch, Sheldon, and others who proposed the takeover of the Philharmonic in 1903. With Mahler in the city, Sheldon now worked with Minnie Untermyer, Ruth Draper

Ruth Draper

Ruth Draper was an American actress, dramatist and noted diseuse who specialized in character-driven monologues.-Early life and family:...

, and others to resurrect the 1903 plan. Their Committee for the two Festival Concerts, which evolved into the Philharmonic Guarantors’ Committee, drew up a circular letter in April 1908 that declared:

We feel that a man of Mr. Mahler’s eminence who has entered so wholly into the spirit of training a really fine orchestra for this City, will have trained the men to such a degree of perfection, that, if in the future, another conductor should have to be considered, this orchestra already formed, shall be of such a standard of excellence as to appeal to other eminent conductors should the moment arise to engage them. Mr. Mahler sees the promise of the very best in orchestral development in this country and it only rests with us to determine whether we will support the best.

Two and a half years later, in November 1910, the Musical Courier confirmed Mary Sheldon’s vision. “A woman, forceful as well as tender, with a consuming love of art and a deep love for humanity, has, by the aid of a few friends and her own determination, provided New York with a great orchestra, a thing that never existed until this new combination took matters in hand. Like almost every one who does something extraordinary for the world, this woman, outside of her immediate circle of friends and acquaintances, has not received the appreciation due her. Mrs. George R. Sheldon . . . is the lady who has wrought this marvel, and it is high time the American musical public was convinced of the fact.”

On May 28, 1912, Mary R. Seney Sheldon became the first woman elected president of the New York Philharmonic, a position not to be held by a woman again for nearly seven decades. She died after a long illness on June 16, 1913, a month shy of her fiftieth birthday, Mahler’s age when he died just two years before. As late as May 22, she hosted in her home what was to be the last meeting of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors before her death. The minutes of their first gathering after her death, in an unusually long tribute, express “the great affection and regard in which she was held by all its members” recording “her untiring services to the Society and the cause of music and . . . the immeasurable loss which the Society and the individual members of the Board will suffer in their deprivation of her presence and of her activities.”

Sheldon worked both behind the scenes and in the public eye nearly 100 years ago to strengthen the New York Philharmonic financially and artistically. Through her efforts, the sum of $300,000 (equal to $3.4 million today) was raised to support the orchestra at the very moment that Mahler assumed its musical leadership. The confluence of these two achievements was pivotal in the history of the orchestra, setting a new standard of excellence for the future. Mahler’s music as interpreted by the New York Philharmonic on their historic CD collection carries Sheldon’s legacy into the 21st century.

Critics

“This agitation seems to have been started by two or three restless women with no occupation and more money than they seem to know what to do with,” charged an angry Walter Damrosch in the pages of The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

in August 1908. He then dismissed Mrs. George R. Sheldon and the nascent Philharmonic Guarantors’ Committee with the opinion, “There are people to whom music is only food for nervous excitement and each successive Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

an celebrity visiting this country a toy to play with.” Damrosch was responding to an interview Mrs. Sheldon gave to the Times correspondent in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, in which she announced that Mahler would conduct a symphony orchestra in New York for the 1909-10 season.

Mrs. Sheldon had spent the spring of 1908 engaging Mahler for two festival concerts at Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....

 that coming winter. In April she told The New York Times, “Mr. Mahler’s influence has been deeply felt at the Metropolitan Opera

Metropolitan Opera

The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...

 House this winter and we have to thank Mr. [Heinrich] Conried

Heinrich Conried

Heinrich Conried was a theatrical manager and director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.-Biography:...

 for bringing him over. While he is here it would be a pity if he should not have a chance to conduct purely orchestral music with an orchestra of his own. Since the idea first came to me I have talked it over with many of my friends, and all of them have been extremely enthusiastic.” By the time Mrs. Sheldon spoke to the press again that summer, she had already been to Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

 to solicit advice from Richard Strauss

Richard Strauss

Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...

 and Felix Mottl

Felix Mottl

Felix Josef von Mottl was an Austrian conductor and composer. He was regarded as one of the most brilliant conductors of his day. He composed three operas, of which Agnes Bernauer was the most successful, as well as a string quartet and numerous songs and other music...

 about improving the orchestra and, according to the Times, had “already raised a large subscription fund.”

What peeved Damrosch, however, was not Mrs. Sheldon’s interest in Mahler. It was her claim that “New York orchestras at present are not worthy” and her determination “to go ahead and form another” that would be “the greatest orchestra America has ever heard.” Damrosch was no doubt aggravated to read Mrs. Sheldon’s account of a meeting in May with Richard Arnold, revealing that the thought of a third symphony orchestra in New York had made the Philharmonic Society nervous. According to Sheldon, Arnold reportedly said: “There is not room for another orchestra in New York; let’s put the two organizations together and let Mahler conduct our orchestra.”

If the story is true, Mrs. Sheldon must have been delighted at Arnold’s capitulation to a plan she and several other wealthy New Yorkers (along with Walter Damrosch) had put forward as early as 1903 and which the orchestra—taking exception to the idea of giving up control of the organization’s finances—rejected. On the other hand, it is possible that Mrs. Sheldon had just executed a clever political maneuver to pressure the Philharmonic to come around to her point of view. Offering the Philharmonic to Mahler in 1909–10 came as a surprise to Times, which was under the impression that the Orchestra had committed to Wassily Safonoff. Mrs. Sheldon took the opportunity of this Times interview to clearly restate the Guarantors’ prerequisites:

It would be necessary to make many changes in the organization. The strings, I think, could scarcely be improved, but some of the other parts would have to be reinforced. Then a certain number of our board would have to be placed on the Philharmonic board. . . . [As Strauss and Mottl suggested,] it would be best to plan the season of our orchestra to last thirty weeks, and that is another arrangement which must be made with the Philharmonic, as their present season lasts only sixteen. . . . I shall see Mr. Arnold immediately upon my return. It would be a great help to start with the Philharmonic as a nucleus.

That winter the rumor mill abounded with reports of the potential rehabilitation of the Philharmonic. Mrs. Sheldon was coy with the press; on December 9, 1908, the New York Sun wrote that she was “not quite ready to give out” details. Two days later, in a letter to the editor of the Times, Mrs. Sheldon revealed what, on the surface, seemed to be a fundamental shift in her thinking since April: “So far as we can see there is nothing ‘hysterical’ about this plan, but a plain and commonsense attempt to save something that is very well worth saving, and benefiting thereby the musical life of New York. Nor is it, I may say, an attempt to form an orchestra for the benefit of any one conductor.” The phoenix of the 1903 plan was rising from the ashes!

By February of the following year, Mrs. Sheldon’s proposed restructuring had indeed been accepted, paving the way for Mahler’s engagement with the Philharmonic beginning in the autumn of 1909. The historic reorganization plan was signed by Mary and George Sheldon, Ruth Dana Draper, Henry Lane Eno, Ernest H. Schelling, and Nelson S. Spencer. Walter Damrosch’s characterization of the Guarantors as “two or three restless women with no occupation and more money than they seem to know what to do with,” as well as Loudon Charlton’s remark that Mahler’s subsequent troubles with the Guarantors were the result of “too many women,” obscure the intelligence, business acumen, political savvy, and cultural sophistication of these women and men.

External links

• http://nyphil.org/mahler/mahler.html - Please visit for Information pertaining to Mahler and Mary Seney Sheldon