by Alex Ross
Prokofiev is said: For some of these accounts, see Robinson, Sergei Prokofiev, p. xvi; Meyer, Dimitri Chostakovitch, pp. 306–307; Alfred Schnittke, “On Prokofiev,” in A Schnittke Reader, ed. Alexander Ivashkin, trans. John Goodliffe (Indiana UP, 2002), p. 63.
“Comrade Zakharov”: Werth, Musical Uproar in Moscow, p. 62.
“I envy him”: EWS, p. 260.
forty-two works: Order No. 17 of the Chief Directorate for Inspection of Programs and Repertory of the Committee for Artistic Affairs of the U.S.S.R. Soviet of Ministers Moscow, Feb. 14, 1948. Translation courtesy of Laurel Fay.
insincerity was obvious: EWS, p. 235; and Werth, Musical Uproar in Moscow, pp. 95–96.
“unwittingly”: NMS, p. 1065.
“I am prepared”: Robinson, Sergei Prokofiev, p. 458.
chilling coincidence: Simon Morrison’s communication to author. Morrison has assembled evidence showing that Prokofiev was in reasonably good health in February 1948, contrary to the claim in his letter.
“All the resolutions”: NMS, p. 1063.
“conspiracy of silence”: LFS, p. 161.
thrust into his hands: EWS, p. 335; and LFS, pp. 320–21 n. 70.
“I read like the most”: EWS, p. 335.
“O Lord, if only”: Christopher Barnes, Boris Pasternak: A Literary Biography, Volume 2: 1928–1960 (Cambridge UP, 1998), p. 252.
“The violin played semiquavers”: EWS, p. 245.
“Thank you”: See EWS, pp. 212–14; Ardov, Memories of Shostakovich, pp. 69–73; and LFS, p. 172.
“You supported me”: Maximenkov, “Stalin and Shostakovich,” p. 55.
breathe again: Nelly Kravetz, “A New Insight into the Tenth Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich,” in Bartlett, Shostakovich in Context, p. 170.
“most successful”: NSM, p. 545.
“ultimate Stalinist film”: Peter Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society from the Revolution to the Death of Stalin (Tauris, 2001), p. 232.
burst into tears: LFS, p. 175.
“an extraordinarily good opera”: See Lion Feuchtwanger, Moskau 1937: Ein Reisebericht für meine Freunde (Aufbau, 1993), p. 48.
Pathétique: Compare bars 221ff. of Tchaikovsky’s third movement with Shostakovich’s finale after bar 204.
Sabinina: EWS, p. 336.
Prokofiev’s body: Monsaingeon, Sviatoslav Richter, p. 4; Rostislav Dubinsky, Stormy Applause: Making Music in a Worker’s State (Hill and Wang, 1989), pp. 34–44; Ardov, Memories of Shostakovich, p. 92; Michel Dorigné, Serge Prokofiev (Fayard, 1994), pp. 712–13; Georges Bartoli, The Death of Stalin (Praeger, 1975), p. 162; and Schnittke, “On Prokofiev,” pp. 65–66.
“I wish you”: “Prokofiev’s Correspondence with Stravinsky and Shostakovich,” trans. Natalia Rodriguez and Malcolm Hamrick Brown, in Slavonic and Western Music: Essays for Gerald Abraham, ed. Malcolm Hamrick Brown and Roland J. Wiley (UMI Research Press), p. 285. See also Rostropovich’s interview with Manashir Yakubov, in Brown, Shostakovich Casebook, p. 147, for Shostakovich’s admiration for the Sinfonia Concertante.
8: Music for All
“I was driven”: ASSI, p. 502. For the Ford car, see Schoenberg to W. D. Dunham, Nov. 2, 1934, ASC.
“IF HITLER”: Meyer Weisgal, …So Far: An Autobiography (Random House, 1971), p. 116.
“highbrow” and “lowbrow”: James Hoopes, Van Wyck Brooks: In Search of American Culture (University of Massachusetts Press, 1977), pp. 99–100.
ninety-five million people: Report of Mr. Hopkins, April 4, 1938, Correspondence of Harry L. Hewes, 1936–40, FMP.
“The great mass of people”: Marc Blitzstein, “Coming—the Mass Audience!,” Modern Music 13:4 (May–June 1936), pp. 23 and 25.
ten million: Donald C. Meyer, “The NBC Symphony Orchestra” (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Davis, 1994), p. 157.
twenty million records: Joseph Horowitz, Understanding Toscanini: A Social History of American Concert Life (University of California Press, 1994), p. 277.
film of Don Juan: Donald Crafton, The Talkies: American Cinema’s Transition to Sound, 1926–1931 (University of California Press, 1999), pp. 72–82.
government takeover: See Hugh Richard Slotten, Radio and Television Regulation: Broadcast Technology in the United States, 1920–1960 ( Johns Hopkins UP, 2000), pp. 1–67.
“radio music box”: Looking Ahead: The Papers of David Sarnoff (McGraw-Hill, 1968), pp. 31–33. For more on Sarnoff, see Carl Dreher, Sarnoff: An American Success (Quadrangle, 1977); and Evan I. Schwartz, The Last Lone Inventor: A Tale of Genius, Deceit, and the Birth of Television (HarperCollins, 2002).
“I regard radio”: Schwartz, Last Lone Inventor, p. 66.
Ohio State…Lotte Lehmann See broadcasts of Oct. 1 and 2, as reported in Time, Oct. 3, 1938.
“Toscanini’s Hep Cats”: Donald C. Meyer, “Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra: High, Middle, and Low Culture, 1937–1954,” in Perspectives on American Music, 1900–1950, ed. Michael Saffle (Garland, 2000), p. 306.
“Wagner, Beethoven, Bach”: “The Messenger Boy,” New York Times, March 7, 1938.
six native works: Horowitz, Understanding Toscanini, p. 133.
“Dee next Beethoven”: HPAC, p. 122.
85 premieres: H. Earle Johnson, Symphony Hall, Boston (Little, Brown, 1950), p. 163.
would not be renewed: Horowitz, Understanding Toscanini, p. 176; Virgil Thomson, Music Reviewed, 1940–1954 (Vintage, 1967), p. 111; and Meyer, “The NBC Symphony Orchestra,” pp. 242–44.
“It is highly doubtful”: Theodor W. Adorno, in Essays on Music, ed. Richard Leppert, trans. Susan H. Gillespie (University of California Press, 2002), p. 268.
Ott & Pfaffle’s: “Early Dallas Hotels,” free pages. history.rootsweb.com/~jwheat/adairtoc.html (accessed Dec. 1, 2003).
Jesse James: ACVP, p. 3. A possible problem with this tale is that Frank James worked in Dallas only from about 1885 on, after his criminal career had ended.
“simply drab”: ACR, p. xix.
“When we were finally”: ACVP, p. 130. For more on the relationship between Gershwin and Copland, see Carol J. Oja, “Gershwin and American Modernists of the 1920s,” Musical Quarterly 78:4 (Winter 1994), pp. 656–58.
Swedish Ballet: Copland, in ACVP, p 44. For other events attended, see ACVP, p. 91; “My First Trip Abroad,” ACLC; and Gail Levin and Judith Tick, Copland’s America: ACultural Perspective (Watson-Guptill, 2000), pp. 136–77. For Joyce and Le Boeuf, see ACVP, p. 75.
hearing Copland bang out: Aaron Copland, Copland on Music (Doubleday, 1960), p. 74; Léonie Rosenstiel, Nadia Boulanger: A Life in Music (Norton, 1982), p. 162.
“The day of the neglected”: “America’s Young Men of Promise,” in Copland, Copland on Music, p. 151.
“filthy bunch of Juilliard Jews”: Olivia Mattis, “Edgard Varèse’s ‘Progressive’ Nationalism: Amériques Meets Américanisme,” in Edgard Varèse: Die Befreiung des Klangs, ed. Helge de la Motte-Haber (Wolke, 1992), p. 169.
“commando unit”: Virgil Thomson, Virgil Thomson (Dutton, 1985), p. 254.
“It began, I suppose”: Aaron Copland, “Jazz Structure and Influence,” in ACR, p. 84.
Pollack observes: HPAC, pp. 129–30.
“harsh and solemn”: Paul Rosenfeld, Discoveries of a Music Critic (Vienna House, 1972), p. 334.
$6.93: HPAC, p. 90.
“I might force myself”: Diary of 1927, ACLC.
“How does one deepen”: Diary, Christmas Day 1930, ACLC.
without indoor plumbing: David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (Oxford UP, 1999), p. 16. On populism, see Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American History (Cornell UP, 1998).
“open mind”: Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (Verso, 1997), p. 4.
“Communism is”: Ibid., p. 129.
Denning argues: Ibid., p. 10.
“Don’t worry”: Joshua Kunitz, “Stairway That Leads Nowhere,”
New Masses, May 5, 1936, p. 21.
“Based not on my words”: Andrew Hemingway, Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement, 1926–1956 (Yale UP, 2002), p. 105.
“foremost revolutionary”: Hanns Eisler, A Rebel in Music: Selected Writings, ed. Manfred Grabs (International Publishers, 1978), p. 15.
“dealers in narcotics”: Ibid., p. 115.
“the modern composer”: Ibid., p. 112.
“dissonant counterpoint”: Charles Seeger, “Manual of Dissonant Counterpoint,” in Studies in Musicology II, 1929–1979, ed. Ann M. Pescatello (University of California Press, 1994), pp. 163–228. On Crawford, see Joseph N. Straus, The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger (Cambridge UP, 1995); David Nicholls, American Experimental Music, 1890–1940 (Cambridge UP, 1990); and Judith Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer’s Search for American Music (Oxford UP, 1997).
“combination of simplicity”: Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger, p. 254.
“can’t compose symphonies”: Ibid., p. 200.
“first great individualist”: Margaret Brenman-Gibson, Clifford Odets, American Playwright: The Years from 1906 to 1940 (Atheneum, 1981), p. 171.
“the corruption of legal systems”: ACVP, p. 234.
Clurman plausibly heard: Harold Clurman to Copland, Oct. 25, 1947, ACLC.
“from ivory tower”: Ibid., p. 223.
“We learned to know”: Sept. 1934 letter to Israel Citkowitz, ACLC.
“At last I have found”: Sept. 5, 1932, letter to the Koussevitzkys, ACLC.
José Vasconcelos: David Craven, Art and Revolution in Latin America, 1910–1990 (Yale UP, 2002), pp. 25–32.
El Salón and Variations: Michael Tilson Thomas, lecture/recital at Zankel Hall, Nov. 19, 2003. Compare the music at 6 in Piano Variations, and also bar 10 of the Coda.
“rural peasants”: Elizabeth Crist, Music for the Common Man: Aaron Copland During the Depression and War (Oxford UP, 2005), p. 59.
“workers’ music”: ACVP, p. 224.
“Shake the midtown towers”: “Into the Streets May First,” New Masses, May 1, 1934, pp. 16–17.
balalaikas and mandolins: Ashley Pettis, “Second Workers’ Music Olympiad,” New Masses, May 22, 1934, pp. 28–29. ACVP, p. 226, implies that the entire eight-hundred-strong complement of choruses performed the piece, but according to Pettis they were not able to come together to rehearse.
advised David Diamond: HPAC, p. 190. 275 “plain unpretentious person”: Charles Seeger, “Grass Roots for American Composers,” Modern Music 16:3 (March–April 1939), p. 148.
“Those young people”: Aaron Copland, “A Note on Young Composers,” in ACR, p. 216.
Walter Noble Burns: HPAC, pp. 316–17; Walter Noble Burns, The Saga of Billy the Kid (University of New Mexico Press, 1999).
Scottsboro Boys: See Beth E. Levy, “From Orient to Occident: Aaron Copland and the Sagas of the Prairie,” in Aaron Copland and His World, ed. Carol J. Oja and Judith Tick (Princeton UP, 2005), pp. 307–49. In 1967 Copland renamed the piece Prairie Journal.
“Roosevelt was willing”: Richard D. McKinzie, The New Deal for Artists (Princeton UP, 1973), p. x. See also Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin (Norton, 1971), p. 407.
“responsibility toward art”: Allida M. Black, ed., Courage in a Dangerous World: The Political Writings of Eleanor Roosevelt (Columbia UP, 1999), p. 26.
“Gospel Train”: Allan Keiler, Marian Anderson: A Singer’s Journey (University of Illinois Press, 2002), p. 165.
funding for WPA, FMP: George Foster, Record of the Operation and Accomplishments of the Federal Music Project, June 1943, FMP.
quantities for FMP: Report on FMP, March 17, 1939, Hearings on H.J. Res. 83, Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, 76th Cong., 1st sess., Congressional Record, pp. 113–14. For more on the FMP, see Kenneth J. Bindas, All of This Music Belongs to the Nation: The WPA’s Federal Music Project and American Society (University of Tennessee Press, 1995).
“When the arts flourished”: Eleanor Roosevelt, My Day, Nov. 1, 1939.
“social revolution”: George Biddle, An American Artist’s Story (Little, Brown, 1939), p. 268. For Biddle’s background, see Hemingway, Artists on the Left, p. 60.
“despondent theme”: “Public Buildings May Get New Deal Art; Roosevelt Favors Murals Instead of Scrolls,” New York Times, April 26, 1934.
“both slavery”: McKinzie, New Deal for Artists, p. 31.
“Through the program”: Feb. 1, 1937, release, Correspondence of Harry L. Hewes, project supervisor, with the division liaison officer of the Division of Professional and Service Projects, July 1936–Dec. 1939, box 29: 1936–1937, entry 815, FMP.
“This was opera”: Quoted in Hewes’s memo of Aug. 20, 1936, box 29, as above.
“sissy stuff”: New York Evening Journal, Nov. 30, 1936, box 29, as above.
“For the first time”: Dean Richardson to Nikolai Sokoloff, April 8, 1938, Monthly Narrative Reports, box 5: MI–RI 1938, entry 805, FMP.
“The highlight”: Report of the Federal Music Teaching Project of Oklahoma, May 1 to 31, 1938, Monthly Narrative Reports, box 5: MI–RI 1938, entry 805, FMP.
“A technic has been perfected”: Oct. 6, 1936, press release on Composers’ Forum-Laboratories, Correspondence of Harry L. Hewes with the division liaison officer of the Division of Professional and Service Projects, July 1936–Dec. 1939, box 29: 1936–1937, entry 815, FMP.
“a very great virile music”: Transcript dated Oct. 30, 1935, NYC Composers’ Forum, bo 1 General, F1-Y, Composers’ Forum Records, FMP.
“hewed by hand”: “Log Cabin Composer,” Time, Nov. 11, 1935.
“If I had pitchers”: Nicolas Slonimsky, “Roy Harris: The Story of an Oklahoma Composer Who Was Born in a Log Cabin on Lincoln’s Birthday,” in A Celebration of American Music: Words and Music in Honor of H. Wiley Hitchcock, ed. Richard Crawford, R. Allen Lott, and Carol J. Oja (University of Michigan Press, 1990), p. 314.
“the conception of art”: “Is This the Time and Place?,” speech delivered Oct. 8, 1935, Records of the Federal Theatre Project, Library of Congress. For more on Flanagan, see her memoir Arena (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1940).
“Franco-Russian pretty music”: Eric A. Gordon, Mark the Music: The Life and Work of Marc Blitzstein (St. Martin’s, 1989), p. 28.
“little more than drivel”: Ibid., p. 41.
“write a piece”: Ibid., p. 113. For good readings of The Cradle Will Rock, see Geoffrey Block, Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical from “Show Boat” to Sondheim (Oxford UP, 1997); and Raymond Knapp, The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity (Princeton UP, 2005).
feared outbreaks of violence: Frank Brady, Citizen Welles: A Biography of Orson Welles (Scribner, 1989), p. 114; Gordon, Mark the Music, pp. 140–41.
“You can’t imagine”: Barbara Leaming, Orson Welles: A Biography (Limelight, 1995), p. 130.
“It don’t sound wicked”: Anthony Tommasini, Virgil Thomson: Composer on the Aisle (Norton, 1997), pp. 276–77.
violently percussive: Thomson, Virgil Thomson, p. 264. For “ysterical,” see Denning, Cultural Front, p. 369. See also Brooks Atkinson, “WPA Journalism,” New York Times, July 25, 1936.
hostile judicial rulings: In May 1936, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled the Resettlement Administration unconstitutional. See “Jersey Housing Halted,” New York Times, May 19, 1936.
“The water comes”: Pare Lorentz, “The River,” in The New Deal: A Documentary History, ed. William E. Leuchtenburg (University of South Carolina Press, 1968), pp. 131 and 135.
“The German Führer”: Tommasini, Virgil Thomson, p. 288.
five men: Thomson, Virgil Thomson, p. 254.
“The luxury-trade”: “In the Theatre,” Modern Music 15:2 ( Jan.–Feb. 1938), p. 114.
Toscanini was listening: Barbara B. Heyman, Samuel Barber: The Composer and His Music (Oxford UP, 1992), p. 122. See also p. 539n. 4.
“grotesque harlequin
ade”: R. D. Darrell, “Sights and Sounds,” New Masses, April 27, 1937.
“‘authentic,’ dull”: “From the Mail Pouch,” New York Times, Nov. 13, 1938.
absolute sincerity: Heyman, Samuel Barber, p. 174.
“essential innerlich notwendig ”: Nov. 1932 letter, in The Correspondence of Roger Sessions, ed. Andrea Olmstead (Northeastern UP, 1992), p. 191.
“the socialist idea”: David Drew, Kurt Weill: A Handbook (University of California Press, 1987), p. 295.
“I don’t give a damn”: David Farneth, Elmar Juchem, and Dave Stein, eds., Kurt Weill: A Life in Pictures and Documents (Overlook, 2000), p. 196.
“open-air spirit”: Richard Crawford, America’s Musical Life: A History (Norton, 2001), p. 680. The resemblance to Rodeo was noted by Harold Clurman in a June 24, 1943, letter in ACLC, box 251: “dance by Agnes de Mille à la Rodeo.”
“one more link”: “Theatre Project Faces an Inquiry,” New York Times, July 27, 1938.
American Federation of Musicians: See “Teachers Fear Socialization of Music by WPA,” New York Herald Tribune, April 17, 1936.
“encouraging art”: McKinzie, New Deal for Artists, p. 186.
“a new art”: David Gelernter, 1939: The Lost World of the Fair (Free Press, 1995), p. 167.
“Mr. Copland Here”: Robert A. Simon, “Mr. Copland Here, There, and at the Fair,” New Yorker, June 3, 1939, pp. 69–71.
“Hollywood is an extraordinary”: ACVP, p. 298.
“Paradise and hell”: Fünf Elegien, No. 4.
“The man who insists”: Aaron Copland, “Second Thoughts on Hollywood,” in ACR, p. 111.
mad for music: For a good commentary on Hollywood’s movies about classical composers and musicians, see John C. Tibbetts, Composers in the Movies: Studies in Musical Biography (Yale UP, 2005).
Boris Morros: See Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—the Stalin Era (Random House, 1999), pp. 118–25; and Boris Morros, My Ten Years as a Counterspy (Viking, 1959).
“What that awful music”: Gore Vidal, Point to Point Navigation (Doubleday, 2006), p. 107.
“loathing of the present”: Royal S. Brown, Overtones and Undertones: Reading Film Music (University of California Press, 1994), p. 71.