Dangerous Melodies

by Jonathan Rosenberg

  Later that night, in a bizarre conclusion to the evening, Hook made his way up to Shapley’s room at the Waldorf in a provocative attempt to wrest an apology from Shapley for allegedly denying him the right to speak at the opening event. After rapping on the door and forcing his way into Shapley’s suite, Hook initiated a nasty confrontation. Shapley somehow managed to maneuver the irate professor outside his room so as to continue the discussion there. But once in the corridor, Shapley and a colleague darted back inside and locked the door, leaving Hook fuming in the hallway.65

  The first full day of the conference was jam-packed with events: a gathering at Carnegie Hall, multiple sessions at the Waldorf, and a large counter-rally headed by Sidney Hook not far from the hotel. Throughout the day, a crowd of demonstrators marched and picketed outside the Waldorf and, earlier, outside Carnegie Hall. The morning keynote session at the concert hall saw a torrent of anti-US rhetoric, as 2,700 listeners heard about the deficiencies of American foreign policy. Shapley considered the fundamental rights Americans enjoyed, though he pointed to the persistence of racial discrimination. He also made clear that certain freedoms were “restricted” in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.66

  A series of panels at the Waldorf considered the East-West conflict by focusing on a range of subjects, including education, religion and ethics, and economics. The writing and publishing panel, which included Shostakovich and Fadeyev, produced fireworks as the panelists encountered robust questioning from some in the five hundred–member audience. Any mention of the Soviet Union resulted in enthusiastic applause, while comments on “American imperialism evoked boos.” Those posing questions seen as anti-Soviet were subjected to catcalls, and the audience responded angrily when embarrassing queries were directed at the Soviet delegates.67 Writer and editor Dwight Macdonald challenged Fadeyev by asking what had happened to many Russian writers. Were they alive or dead? Were they in concentration camps or free? All were alive, Fadeyev snapped.68

  Seated up front with his colleagues, Shostakovich listened to the exchanges. When his name was mentioned and his views solicited about the Soviet government’s censuring creative work, he “drummed the table nervously with his long, thin fingers.” The poet Robert Lowell rose and prefaced his question with a touch of compassion. “My heart goes out to Mr. Shostakovich. I would like to ask him how many writers and musicians have benefited by the criticism of his government?” As the interpreter approached Shostakovich, the musician leapt to his feet and the two whispered to one another. Shostakovich stepped to the microphone and spoke quickly. Defending the regime, he stated (as translated by the interpreter), “Our musical criticism is a reflection of the life and movement of our music. It brings me much good, since it helps me bring my music forward.” The composer had spoken predictably. To those watching, the strain on him was evident.69 The hero of the war years had become the servant of an oppressive regime.

  The day’s most compelling event occurred not at the Waldorf, but at Freedom House on West Fortieth Street, where Hook chaired the counter-rally, which attracted more than three thousand people. Among the throng, many of whom listened via loudspeakers in nearby Bryant Park, was Alexander Kerensky, the famed political leader who had played a critical role in the first phase of the Russian Revolution, before being forced to flee the country.70 Hook explained his reasons for organizing the meeting of the Americans for Intellectual Freedom. His group had gathered to “tell the truth about the state of cultural freedom in our divided world.” Hook compared Soviet communism to Hitlerian fascism: The “color of the intellectual straitjacket ha[d] changed but not its cut.” What most threatened open inquiry was state intrusion in the “lives of the individual thinker and artist.” Training a critical eye on the United States, Hook identified a domestic political culture that was not problem-free, noting the too-frequent censorship of books and “arbitrary actions against liberal and socialist teachers.” But if democratic political processes remained in place, open inquiry would survive, whereas under dictatorship, “cultural terror” was unending.71

  Dmitri Shostakovich

  Others addressed the crowd, including the writer Max Eastman, who recited the names of thirty-three Russian intellectuals who had vanished, the victims of Stalin’s purges. With irony, he identified their so-called crimes: “individualism,” “idealism,” and, worst of all, “human decency.” That was what the American Communists and fellow travelers were trying to bring to America.72 Others spoke movingly, none more so than Oksana Kasenkina, a Soviet teacher of diplomats’ children, who had jumped from the third floor of the Soviet consulate in New York the summer before in a celebrated effort to gain asylum in the United States.

  Kasenkina’s speech about Soviet life, which an American activist read to the crowd, was her first public message. The teacher described her native land as a place marked by widespread persecution. The Soviet delegates at the Waldorf will claim that all is “perfect in Stalin’s empire.” What they will not discuss is the “great tragedy” that has befallen the “writers, poets, dramatists, composers,” and others whose only crime was that they had been accused of disloyalty to the party. She decried the absence of freedom in the Soviet state, where citizens were “enslaved.” Kasenkina’s message was clear: “We here in America should treasure our freedom.”73

  The rally closed with the remarks of cochairman Counts, who suggested that the most celebrated Soviet delegate in New York, Dmitri Shostakovich, should consider following the path of Miss Kasenkina by fleeing his Soviet masters: “If Shostakovich were free to speak,” he could illuminate the question of intellectual freedom. “We appeal to him to do this and then seek sanctuary in a land that has so often opened its doors to the persecuted.”74

  Throughout that Saturday, opponents of the Waldorf gathering rallied energetically. Beginning in the morning outside Carnegie Hall, around 250 demonstrators booed those entering the auditorium. According to one newspaper, the marchers carried “banners, posters, flags, and placards denouncing communism,” and chanted anti-communist slogans: “Go back to Russia where you belong”; “You’re too red for us.” The declarations plastered on the placards were unambiguous: “YOU CAN’T HAVE CULTURE WITHOUT FREEDOM”; “WE WANT FREEDOM, NOT SLAVERY.” Among those participating were the People’s Committee for Freedom of Religion and the Catholic War Veterans; and once the Carnegie Hall session concluded, the contingent paraded through midtown Manhattan, from the concert hall on the West Side to the Waldorf on the East Side.

  By the early afternoon, more than five hundred picketers were marching outside the hotel; the organizations protesting had expanded to include the Jewish War Veterans, the American Legion, the Gold Star Mothers, and several groups from Soviet-dominated countries. Within an hour the crowd had grown as more than a thousand picketers encircled the Waldorf, while another five thousand watched. Hundreds marched outside the hotel until late in the evening. The marchers promised to return the next morning on the final day of the conference, when the appearance at the Sunday morning session of Russia’s most celebrated delegate would be the main attraction.75

  Before Shostakovich had his say, the moderator of the Sunday panel, music critic Olin Downes, spoke on “The Artist and His Society.” The artist possessed extensive powers for peace, Downes observed, and as a seeker of truth, he was unique in having a way to communicate that no one else commanded. Whether through “sound, words or colors,” the artist could interpret “emotion and aspirations,” and with a distinctive capacity to communicate, he could not be restrained by “geography or politics.” Most strikingly, Downes insisted, continuing to deploy the era’s gendered language, even “[i]ron curtains” could not “stifle his voice.”76

  Turning to the music of Shostakovich and its American reception, Downes recalled the heady days of US-Soviet friendship in the recent war, when there occurred an event that demonstrated the cultural exchange between the two peoples. He addressed the musician directly: “I remember well, Mr. Shostakovich . . . the
enormous anticipation and excitement in America when your Seventh Symphony, which you composed under fire . . . was given its first performance here.” Every conductor, orchestra, and radio company sought that piece. An American radio audience numbering in the millions listened breathlessly. And according to Downes, many thought his wartime compositions (the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, specifically) represented the battle of “our two nations” against Nazism.77

  Strikingly, the critic told the composer what he thought of his wartime works. “Mr. Shostakovich, I must tell you that I . . . did not like all of your Seventh Symphony, nor for that matter all of your Eighth.” Both were “too long,” he declared, and he had assessed them forthrightly. But for now, Downes said, he was finished. It was time to sit and listen.78

  When it was his turn to speak, Shostakovich offered an address of more than five thousand words, surely penned by those in the party apparatus back in Moscow who were entrusted with such tasks. Focusing on music and politics—and no boundary separated one from the other—Shostakovich deployed unyielding language as he charged the United States with nefarious actions in world affairs. As his interpreter read the speech, the composer’s restrained demeanor contrasted sharply with the acidulous character of his words.79 Communicating to nearly a thousand attendees, Shostakovich said it was his duty to tell American progressives the truth about Soviet culture and the arts. This was essential to counter the lies spread about “socialism by enemies of democracy.” He hoped those in the arts might learn about the “ideals” embraced by Soviet musicians in their struggle for “peace, progress and democracy.”80

  Referring to the United States, Shostakovich declared that those seeking “world domination” were attempting to revive “the theory and practice of fascism” and were energetically “arming themselves.” He excoriated the United States for its bellicosity and imperial ambitions, as it sought to perfect “new . . . weapons for mass destruction. . . . They build military bases thousands of miles from their frontiers.” And they jettisoned the “obligations and treaties” intended to enhance the prospect for peace. Blaming American leaders for the coming armed conflict, he asserted that they trafficked in “lies and slander” so as to prepare the public for the shift from the “so-called cold war to outright aggression.”81 Thus, a man who had spent his professional life immersed in the inner world of musical composition had become an analyst of world politics, arguing that international instability was a consequence of American mendacity and militarism.

  Shostakovich also ruminated on musical matters, though political concerns permeated those thoughts, as well. Discussing the Communist perspective on music, he claimed that art was marked by either a realistic or a formalistic ideology, with realism resting on a “harmonious truthful and optimistic concept of the world,” whereas formalistic music, lacking “the love of the people,” was “anti-democratic.” The musician’s task was to make music a “force in the service of progressive mankind.”82

  He did not neglect his own music and the challenges he had faced, his failings included. Nor was he reticent about identifying the deficiencies of other Russian musicians, some of whom had fallen afoul of Soviet authorities. About his own work, the composer told the crowd, if he had achieved some success, it was because he had established “intimate contact with the life of my people.” But there were times, he acknowledged, especially in his postwar compositions, when things had gone awry. “I lost my contact with the people.” Confessing his shortcomings, he observed that his work had resonated only with a small group of “sophisticated musicians,” and had failed to connect with the “masses.” The composer praised those in the government who had condemned him and others, claiming the central committee’s denunciation of “formalism” had resulted from the people’s demands. Having learned from his errors, he was now on the correct path. “My search for a great theme . . . for more perfect . . . musical language” would be expressed in future pieces.83

  The composer also evaluated the work of others whose creative impulses had strayed. He described the malefactions of Prokofiev, claiming it was understood that after returning to his “native land” from abroad in 1933, “valuable tendencies” became clear in his work, though it was also the case that some of Prokofiev’s recent compositions were creatively unsuccessful. Acknowledging the perspicacity of Soviet authorities, Shostakovich declared he was certain that Prokofiev would “find great creative success” along the path prescribed by those in Moscow tasked with directing Soviet artistic life.84 If Prokofiev had strayed, governmental guidance had brought him back into the fold, illustrating the party’s salutary role in Soviet musical life.

  But Shostakovich was less tolerant of those whose creative sins were more serious—of those whose transgressions were beyond purification. He was scathing in discussing Igor Stravinsky, who had left Russia in 1914 and had lived since 1939 in the United States, where he had become an American citizen. About Stravinsky, who was part of a community of European émigrés in Hollywood (and who had refused Olin Downes’s invitation to sign a preconference telegram welcoming Shostakovich to America), Shostakovich claimed he had abandoned the “traditions of the Russian” school, “betrayed his native land,” and cut himself off from “his people by joining the camp of reactionary modern musicians.” He vilified Stravinsky for his “moral barrenness,” which rendered his compositions meaningless.85

  In the wake of this incendiary performance, most of Shostakovich’s audience was surely convinced that the Soviet state had played a constructive role in the country’s artistic life, and many likely believed that he appreciated the “guidance” the government had supplied. But as soon as the interpreter had completed his remarks, the composer was confronted with a brief but stern interrogation. Rising to question Shostakovich was another composer: Nicolas Nabokov (a cousin of writer Vladimir Nabokov). Recalling the exchange years later, Nabokov said he was aware that his questions would make Shostakovich uncomfortable, and “that his reply” would reveal that Shostakovich was not a “free agent.”86 (Whether Nabokov was himself a free agent is touched on below.)

  Nabokov got right to the point. “I am a composer,” he said. “I would like to embarrass Mr. Shostakovich by asking him the following two questions: Is Mr. Shostakovich personally in accord with the bilious attacks upon the work of such composers as Hindemith, Schoenberg and Stravinsky, which have . . . appeared in the Soviet press throughout the last year?” Nabokov then asked whether Shostakovich agreed with the central committee’s critical perspective on nearly all Western music of the past twenty years. Noting that the panel supposedly embraced the idea that “peace [could be] achieved by free cultural exchange,” Nabokov demanded to know whether, when “one country completely eschewed from its repertoire practically all” recently produced Western music, it was a suitable “prerequisite” for free exchange.87

  Responding through an interpreter, Shostakovich spoke while staring at the floor. “I am in accord with the critical remarks addressed to Hindemith and Stravinsky and Schoenberg.” Concerning the central committee’s alleged critique of Western music, he said such criticism was directed not against Western music as such, but against “individual negative phenomena” in that music. With respect to the charge that recent Western music had been banned in the Soviet Union, Shostakovich rejected the notion. The “best works of Western composers” would always find a place on Soviet concert programs.88 Some forty years later, playwright Arthur Miller recalled witnessing Shostakovich’s ordeal that morning: The “memory of Shostakovich . . . still haunts my mind when I think of that day—what a masquerade it all was!” Miller reflected on the composer’s torment: “God knows what he was thinking . . . what urge to cry out and what self-control to suppress his outcry lest he lend comfort to America and her new belligerence toward his country, the very one that was making his life a hell.”89

  However hellish it was for Shostakovich to convey sentiments he had not written and almost certainly did not believe, perhaps he d
erived some strength from knowing he was not the only composer who would speak on the gathering’s final day. Joining him onstage was another creative force, the distinguished American musician Aaron Copland, whose address to the group also reflected the extent to which music had become entwined with Cold War politics.

  The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Copland was born in Brooklyn in 1900, began composition lessons as a teenager, and continued his studies in France in the 1920s, where he worked with the distinguished pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. Beyond exposing him to a wide range of music, the French musician introduced Copland to composers like Stravinsky, Milhaud, Poulenc, Roussel, Ravel, and even the elderly Saint-Saëns. Boulanger’s influence was profound, a sentiment Copland conveyed in a letter to his teacher many years later: “I shall count our meeting the most important of my musical life.”90

  Aaron Copland

  Upon returning to the United States in 1924, Copland began the task of building a career as a composer, and during the interwar years, his reputation developed rapidly. By the 1930s, he had become one of the country’s most respected and successful composers and, at the same time, committed himself to left-wing causes, which would later imperil his career. By the time Copland was asked to speak at the Waldorf in 1949, he was arguably the most celebrated composer in the country. His address, “The Effect of the Cold War on the Artist in the United States,” was delivered as part of Shostakovich’s panel.

  Copland began by declaring that he alone had written the words he was about to speak. “Nobody told me what to say.” He asserted that “Communism and the countries that have Communist regimes are facts,” which had to be dealt with. But he was not at the conference for that reason. “I am here,” he explained, “as a democratic American artist, with no political affiliations.” What interested him were American policies and their effect on American artists. Copland then leveled a charge against his country’s policy makers, which was consonant with what had been heard throughout the conference. He believed the current policies of the US government, if “pursued,” would lead to another world war.91