Dangerous Melodies

by Jonathan Rosenberg

  Broadening his diatribe, Copland indicted those who would force Americans to think in “neat little categories,” which were not just confined to overseas matters: “blacks and whites, East and West, Communism and the Profit System.” Such binary thinking had long plagued humanity, Copland asserted. Past dichotomies had been resolved and it was essential, he said, to resolve our current difficulties. All citizens, artists and nonartists, had a duty to demand a “peaceful solution” to the world’s problems.92

  Noting that he had lived through two world wars, Copland considered the Cold War’s implications for the artist, claiming it was nearly “worse for art than the real thing.” The contemporary conflict, marked by “fear and anxiety,” harmed the artist because it stunted creativity. The Cold War was created by those who had “lost faith,” he said, by those determined to stir up “fears and hatreds that can only breed destruction.” Art could not flourish in such a world, and creating “a symphony or a novel” or a painting today demanded “real faith.”93

  The United States had behaved in an unfriendly way toward the Soviet Union, Copland remarked, especially when Soviet musicians faced roadblocks when attempting to perform in America. He suggested the Soviets’ intolerance toward music from the West, which he attributed to American actions, had made cultural exchange difficult, and had undermined relations between the two countries. Looking back a few years, Copland noted, our erstwhile allies knew little about current American music, and he observed that by discouraging musical exchange with the United States, the Soviet Union was culturally “impoverishing itself.” Turning to the future, the composer said it was essential to pursue amicable relations in the cultural sphere, which could serve as a “first step” toward resuming friendly relations in the political sphere. Copland concluded in a major key, claiming the presence of Shostakovich demonstrated that the Soviets wished to enhance the prospect for peace. Improving relations in the arts “symbolize[d] what should be taking place on the plane of international politics.”94

  That evening, more than eighteen thousand people flooded into Madison Square Garden for a raucous conclusion to the conference. The streets of New York were filled with booing picketers, who yelled at those entering the arena, while the “peace” crowd yelled right back. Hundreds of police officers struggled to maintain order, as the demonstrators, a mix of Catholic and Jewish groups, along with war veterans and those from other organizations, kept up the din, their protests serving as a climax to three days of well-organized activity. After a delay, the rally began with a radio operator’s voice, in a dramatization, trying unsuccessfully to reach London, Brazil, Rome, Calcutta, Mexico City, and other capital cities, all places from which the State Department had banned would-be delegates. Actor Sam Wanamaker introduced the attending delegates to the crowd, which roared wildly as a Polish delegate and two Soviet delegates lifted their fists in the air, giving the Communist salute.95

  The highlight that evening was Shostakovich’s solo piano performance of the second movement of his Fifth Symphony, which he played before a “hushed” crowd. With the instrument resting on a platform in the center of the Garden, and the arena darkened except for four spotlights shining directly upon the composer, considerable drama attended his rendition of the five-minute excerpt. Upon concluding his brief offering, Shostakovich received a standing ovation. While several music critics rated the performance as mediocre, none could doubt that this musical moment was the highlight of the final day of the meeting and even the entire weekend.96

  With the conference at an end, plans had been made to showcase the delegates, especially those from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, in what was billed as a national “peace” tour that would visit more than a dozen US cities over a two-week period. But the State Department had seen enough, and issued notes to the various delegations, stating it was time to leave the country. There would be no trips to Newark, Philadelphia, Chicago, or any other scheduled cities.97 Appeals to Secretary of State Acheson failed, leading the conference representatives to claim that America had shut the door on cultural exchange.98

  In Newark, a “peace rally” was held, though as one paper noted, it went on without the “star attraction—Dmitri Shostakovich.” With thousands in attendance at the Mosque Theater, the house lights were dimmed as a spotlight “shone on an empty piano.”99 In New Haven, Yale had agreed to host an appearance by Shostakovich but now rescinded its offer. And history professor John Marsalka, who had helped arrange the event, was soon fired. According to Yale’s president Charles Seymour, the institution saw “no educational value in opening the university halls to such a meeting.”100

  Elsewhere, people voiced concerns about the “peace” tour. After a Chicago visit had been announced, the Illinois American Legion weighed in, claiming the Russian composer and his fellow delegates had engaged in a propaganda mission. The group opposed the post-conference tour, as did the Cook County Legion commander: “If this meeting is a replica” of the New York gathering, no Americans would patronize it.101

  Whatever Chicagoans thought, a meeting was held, although no Russian delegates attended because Shostakovich and his brethren had left the United States a few days earlier.102 Indeed, on April 3, with a bundle of phonograph records in his arms, Shostakovich, along with the rest of the Russian contingent, headed to the airport. The departing Soviet delegates said little to the press. “We have hotels in Moscow just as good as the Waldorf,” one asserted, “but not as tall.” Asked to comment on the conference, Alexander Fadeyev, who had shown no reluctance to speak his mind, was brief: “We have already expressed ourselves completely.” Shostakovich was no more expansive. “I am glad to be returning home.”103

  Several weeks later, the composer’s views on the trip began to trickle out in reports first appearing in the Soviet Union, and then picked up by the American press. According to Shostakovich, American leaders feared Russian culture. “Yes, the rulers of Washington fear also our literature, our music, our speeches on peace,” which could be explained by the fact that they realize “truth in any form hinders them from organizing diversions against peace.”104

  Reflecting uncharitably on American concertgoing habits, Shostakovich described a Carnegie Hall concert he had attended while in New York, given by the New York Philharmonic under Leopold Stokowski. The Russian praised concertmaster John Corigliano’s performance of the Sibelius Violin Concerto and the suite from the ballet Gayane by Khachaturian, even if he found the response of the New York audience curious in that it included “shrill whistling,” which he learned was a “sign of the highest approval.” A piece by the American Virgil Thomson, “Wheat Field at Noon,” was not to the Russian’s liking because, Shostakovich claimed, it was constructed on the twelve-tone system, rendering it “void of artistic content.” The audience seemed to concur. Indeed, the piece met with strong disapproval from listeners, who made an odd “buzzing” sound, which, Shostakovich noted, was how Americans expressed displeasure.105

  As for the setting, the Russian was unimpressed by Carnegie Hall, which he thought big and lacking in beauty. The composer was surprised that audience members kept their hats and coats on, or held them in their laps, despite the fact that a checkroom was available. “When I saw this sight I recalled our concert halls. . . . I always feel a certain excitement when I enter a concert hall,” he said. And even during the war, when the halls were unheated, “I never permitted myself to walk in wearing a coat. So when I entered Carnegie Hall, the sight of the audience wearing or holding its wraps made an impression on me that was most unpleasant.”106

  Nor did New York City impress Shostakovich. Though acknowledging his assessment was “cursory,” the musician noted that the “city overwhelms one by its bigness, its noise and the feverish pace of its life. People dash about as if in a state of frenzy; everybody is rushing somewhere.” Equally dismaying, the architecture lacked “any striving toward beauty and proportion of forms.” While there were some fine buildings, one could not properly see t
hem due to their “great height. It is impossible to find a convenient spot from which to view them unless you climb to the roof of some skyscraper that is still higher, and that is what we actually did.” Shostakovich considered the impact of standing atop the Empire State Building, though inevitably, he offered a restrained assessment, recalling the “interesting sound” one heard from the structure’s 102nd floor, “a sort of drawn-out rumble . . . which reaches up . . . from the streets and squares.”107

  Concerning the cultural climate, American readers would not have found Shostakovich’s observations flattering, though they might have found them disingenuous. “I wanted to buy a few records of Stravinsky’s music,” he reported, which was rather extraordinary, given how he had just excoriated his fellow Russian for his music and his politics. Despite his best efforts, he could not find one record store on Broadway where the salesmen knew the name Stravinsky, though they seemed to know everything there was to know about jazz, including details “on the most intimate facts of the [musicians’] personal lives.”108 Shostakovich implied that jazz was an inferior art form, whereas knowledge of classical music—even the music of someone Shostakovich denigrated—was beyond the musical scope of the average American. Equally disdainful of American literature, the composer registered shock at the American practice of printing great works of fiction in “thin booklets in which, of all the amazing wealth of ideas and sentiments, only the love scenes are left in.” To buttress this dubious point, which appeared in a Soviet journal, he noted that Anna Karenina had been “reduced to thirty-two pages and supplied with a colorful pornographic cover.”109 In the end, the Soviet Union’s most celebrated composer depicted the Americans as a thoroughly unsophisticated lot.110

  • • •

  With the end of the conference, much ink was spilled evaluating the event, as leading publications and ordinary people assessed the gathering.111 According to Newsweek, “peace” was “a fighting word” at the Waldorf, and while everyone favored the idea, it did not mean the same thing in Russian and English. As for Shostakovich, who had stirred up an “artistic storm,” Newsweek portrayed him as a feeble figure, a man “nervously bowing and bobbing in response” to the great ovation he received.112 Time characterized Shostakovich as a “shy, stiff-shouldered man,” who was “painfully ill at ease.” He resembled “a small boy after a commencement speech,” cringing visibly from the flashbulbs.113 And Life called the conference a “comic opera” permeated by “Communist propaganda.”114

  Writing to the Philadelphia Inquirer, a reader asserted it was crucial for Americans to distinguish “propaganda . . . from the truth.” It was essential to bear in mind that while visiting the United States, a Russian subject was “still a Red in every sense of the word.”115 Another Philadelphian, writing to the New York Times, supported the post-conference decision to stop Shostakovich from appearing at Yale. The Communists hated free speech, he wrote, believing, instead, in the “complete subjection of their adherents to orders from Moscow.” As for dealing with the Soviets, he declared, “When a man approaches us with pious phrases, and we know that he means to stick a knife in our back . . . we may properly answer him, not according to his words, but according to his record.”116

  The occasional dissenting opinion suggested the Waldorf conference was not as pernicious as many claimed. A New York Times reader, dismayed by Yale’s cancellation of Shostakovich’s visit, wondered if the “Yale bulldog . . . [had] lost its mind.” Alumnus Edmond Thomas asserted that the United States could not condemn Soviet censorship “when our own government and one of our greatest institutions of learning deliberately block[ed] the expression of alien ideas.”117 Another defender of the Waldorf affair, Helen Kaufmann of New York, perceived a desire for “brotherhood” and a longing to “bring warmth to the cold war [and] peace to the world.”118

  The most memorable letter to appear on Shostakovich and the conference came from a fellow Russian, Juri Jelagin, who had immigrated to the United States and was now the Houston Symphony’s assistant concertmaster. Published in the New York press on the day Shostakovich appeared on the fine arts panel, Jelagin’s words (at times, addressed directly to the composer) considered the place of Shostakovich in Russian cultural life. He also ruminated upon the fate of Shostakovich at the hands of Soviet authorities, while implicitly comparing artistic life in the two countries. Jelagin spoke of the indignities Shostakovich had endured at the hands of Russian officials, pointing to the way a “group of ignorant, ruthless people” had tried to control the creative output of the country’s best composers. The Kremlin had leaned on Shostakovich harder than on any other composer, Jelagin claimed, and now, in the United States, he is compelled once again “to condone lies and condemn the truth.”119

  For the first time in his life, Jelagin said, he could listen to any music he wished, much of which had been banned in the Soviet Union. To Shostakovich, whose life and work he linked to the cause of human freedom, Jelagin declared, “What a great thing it would be for world culture if you were given full freedom to create, if you could find a way to tear yourself loose from the satanic clutches in which your great gift will soon be strangled.”120

  Reflecting on Shostakovich’s visit, others pondered the relationship between art and world politics. In the Washington Post, columnist Marquis Childs said it was clear that the Russians, by sending a delegation that included Shostakovich, had placed enormous importance on the gathering. The Soviets’ aim was to stop the United States from continuing its program to restore Western Europe’s “strength and independence,” while the United States hoped to prevent the Soviets from dominating Europe and Asia.121 Fear was spreading like a “plague” across the world, Childs wrote, which one saw “etched in the thin, taut face of Shostakovich.” Noting that the composer had written extraordinary music, Childs reminded readers that Soviet politicians had at times claimed there was “political heresy” in his compositions. And it seemed Shostakovich believed he had betrayed a cause. This was apparent “in his face—in the tense, turned down mouth, in the restless movements of his thin artist’s hands. . . . Here was a man who lived under the shadow of fear.”122

  In the New York Herald Tribune, anti-Communist columnist Rodney Gilbert claimed the Waldorf affair was replete with “misrepresentations, shams, and pretenses.” The hotel was filled with “Communists,” “notorious fellow travelers,” and many who foolishly believed they were helping to advance the quest for peace. Nearly every speaker held the United States solely responsible for the Cold War. As for Shostakovich, were he living in America, Gilbert said, he could compose whatever he wished. But in the Soviet Union, he was a “cultural slave.” One imagined that Shostakovich’s appearance in the United States “as a trained seal” had caused him considerable pain.123

  In Commentary, NYU philosophy professor William Barrett likened Shostakovich’s visage to that of an unhappy and immature boy who seemed “sickly” and “nervous.” But Barrett suggested the musician was not entirely worthy of sympathy; he saw nothing in Shostakovich that pointed to “a soul in torment.” Indeed, the composer’s record reflected a man with “a very pliant backbone.”124

  Most telling, Barrett claimed, was the absence of questions Shostakovich faced, which revealed the meeting’s lack of integrity. (As I have shown, Shostakovich did face pointed questions.) If anyone should have faced questioning, Barrett contended, it was Shostakovich. Given the myriad controversial ideas the composer had articulated, there was much to ask. What did it mean, for example, to allow politicians to make pronouncements on an artist’s creative life? The attendees never posed the question, Barrett asserted. Moreover, Shostakovich had attacked the music of Stravinsky, Hindemith, and Schoenberg, all now living in the United States. Why were they not invited to New York to defend themselves? This was symptomatic of the entire undertaking, Barrett averred.125

  In the pages of Partisan Review, Irving Howe contended that those attending the Waldorf meeting were “bound together by the Russian myth
.”126 A leading figure in New York intellectual life, Howe wondered who Shostakovich was and what he represented. After surveying his “ritualistic” words and his diatribe about musical “formalism,” Howe asked, was he “a pathetic little man,” who was uncomfortable, or “did we think him pathetic because we expected him to be so?” Had he written his speech himself or been forced to deliver it? We chose to imagine he was a victim, but perhaps he had become “calloused by the alternate privileges and rebukes of the Stalin regime.” One could not answer such questions, Howe admitted, “for in the Waldorf too the Iron Curtain hung.”127

  The most extensive consideration of Shostakovich’s American odyssey was penned by Nicolas Nabokov, who had confronted the composer at the Waldorf. In June 1950, Nabokov made Shostakovich the centerpiece of a speech he delivered in Berlin at the opening meeting of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, an international anti-Communist organization established that year, which Nabokov soon would come to direct, and which the Central Intelligence Agency subsidized, a fact not revealed until 1966.128 In October 1950, Nabokov’s Berlin speech was published in Allegro, the monthly organ of the New York musicians’ union.

  Nabokov described the composer’s experience in New York, where he had gone after being “washed, ironed out and sent” to “represent his oppressors,” having been taken from “the clothes hamper” like a “piece of dirty laundry.” He was moved by Shostakovich’s “nervous hands [and] his pale twitching face,” noting he felt both “compassion and sadness.” According to Nabokov, totalitarianism compelled an artist to express opinions he did not believe, and Shostakovich’s thoughts about music had clearly been stifled by the regime. After all, Nabokov observed, the composer had shopped for recordings of Stravinsky’s music while in New York and attended a chamber music concert of Bartók’s compositions.129 Nabokov emphasized the horrific conditions creative people endured under Stalin, declaring, the artist must become “the obedient instrument of the state” or “disappear into silence, oblivion and death.”130