Dangerous Melodies

by Jonathan Rosenberg

  We are presently engaged in a great struggle for hundreds of millions of people around the world so that the American way of life will prevail over the slavery which totalitarian communism would thrust upon them. Our very existence as free men depends upon our victory . . . Cultural pursuits are the very cornerstone of our civilization . . . The fine arts are the avenues of communication of the emotions . . . and aspirations of our fellow men and can help unite all peoples who believe in freedom.20

  The following year, in July 1955, Abbott Washburn, deputy director of the United States Information Agency (USIA), which had been established in 1953 to encourage positive “attitudes toward the United States,” discussed how America’s cultural exports could help the country meet its global challenges. One of USIA’s biggest obstacles, he said, was that world opinion saw the country as a “materialistic, artistically illiterate society,” a nation of “cultural adolescents.” The task was to show the world’s people that this was not true, since it would be impossible to act as a world leader unless America gained the “respect” of other nations.21 Highlighting a recent orchestral tour, Washburn described the enormous impact “100 men equipped with musical instruments c[ould] have upon a whole nation’s attitudes toward the United States.”22

  One month earlier, Washburn’s boss, USIA Director Theodore C. Streibert, had spoken before a House subcommittee, in support of overseas cultural efforts. The Russians were exporting dancers, musicians, artists, and athletes across the globe, and the United States was not doing enough.23 Funds were essential “to make possible a counterattack.”24

  If the halls of Congress echoed with such assertions, a different perspective reverberated within the classical-music community, which emphasized how classical music could contribute to the construction of a more cooperative and peaceful world. The idea that America could take the lead in such a transformation had emerged in the waning days of World War II, and continued throughout the 1950s. Illustrating this universalistic view, a 1944 Musical Courier editorial contended that after the war, “artistic works, performers and productions” would be sent around the world with remarkable ease, a development that promised to make music a “unifying force.”25

  As the war wound down, Musical America linked the establishment of the United Nations to music’s capacity to reshape relations among the world’s people. The nascent organization provided an opportunity, the journal suggested, for the United States to introduce the world to its “great symphony orchestras,” its folk music, and its gifted composers. Americans must “tell the world about ourselves through our music.” One song or one orchestral performance had the power to create a “rapport between masses of people.”26

  Nor were the music journals alone in asserting that music and international cooperation were entwined. Those tuned to WCBS-Radio in the fall of 1949 who heard host James Fassett speaking during the intermission of a New York Philharmonic broadcast with Carlos Romulo, a leading figure at the United Nations, would have pondered the link between music and peace. After observing that music did not respect “national boundaries,” Fassett asked his guest how music, “by its very universality,” could “be made to become a more potent instrument in promoting” international understanding. Born in the Philippines, Romulo, who was president of the UN General Assembly, said music was the “most universal of the arts in that it communicates . . . directly . . . to the souls of man.” It transcended politics, and was an “ideal instrument” for the promotion of international cooperation.27 A few years later, Otto Harbach, president of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, expressed similar sentiments, calling the nation-to-nation “exchange of musical cultures” essential to “world friendship.”28

  Building on such thinking, observers began to discuss the impact symphony orchestras could have as they displayed their musical wares around the globe, with some suggesting American ensembles could offer a balm to an unsettled world. Speaking just before the New York Philharmonic left the United States to perform at the Edinburgh Festival in 1951, Floyd Blair, the president of the orchestra, explained to Scottish radio listeners that the ensemble arriving in their country in 1951 would serve as “unofficial ambassadors of good will.” They spoke the “language of music,” which everyone could understand. Indeed, “musicians and poets” could “light the way for humanity.”29

  But a different idea—that the symphony orchestra could have a more nationalistic purpose—was not in short supply. Writing to Henry Cabot of the Boston Symphony, Carlton Sprague Smith, chief of the music division of the New York Public Library, described a world in which countless people were being “exposed to anti-American campaigns” that suggest “ours is a nation of philistines and materialists.” The orchestra had the power to shape “public opinion.” In a dangerous world, the United States needed friends, Smith contended, and the symphony orchestra could help America acquire them.30

  Essential to the program of sending orchestras overseas, the Music Advisory Panel, which operated in conjunction with the State Department and the American National Theater and Academy (ANTA), was one of three performing arts panels established in 1954. (The others focused on drama and dance.) Comprising eminent critics, educators, and composers, the panel’s principal duty was to decide upon the “artistic merit of an artist” or ensemble being considered for the overseas program and to decide whether that artist or group genuinely “represented” American “culture and art.”31

  The panel’s members, selected by ANTA for a three-year term, also weighed in on the question of repertoire. If the panel did not support a conductor’s program choices, it directed him to make changes, sometimes suggesting specific compositions members thought preferable.32 The advisory panel insisted that American music would be part of every program offered by a sponsored artist. It also declared that American groups, when possible, should perform music by composers from the country in which they were playing, though that mandate would prove less stringent than the stipulation about performing American music.33

  While the State Department decided where American groups would go, the music advisory panel determined which ensembles would travel overseas, a decision that typically hinged on the quality of the group in question. This often meant leading orchestras, such as those from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Cleveland, were the preferred choices, though others (from Minneapolis, New Orleans, and San Antonio, as well as the National Symphony) also had the opportunity to represent the United States.34 The panel’s internal discussions reveal a variety of fascinating dimensions of the overseas program, some of which changed in its early years. It was initially thought necessary to downplay the US government’s role in cultural programming, highlighting, instead, the role of “private agencies” in supporting overseas activities.35 Within a few years, however, this perspective had shifted, so that by 1957 the music panel thought it desirable to highlight Washington’s role, especially in front of foreign audiences. Going forward, the State Department would describe America’s overseas program as the “President’s Special International Program for Cultural Presentations,” which made it seem the “President himself [was] sending these attractions overseas as a good will gesture.”36

  Another facet of the overseas program that evolved quickly concerned the question of performing behind the Iron Curtain. Some at a 1954 advisory panel meeting worried about the “controlled audiences” in that part of the world, who could “hiss the players off the boards.” But the panel was divided, with composer and Juilliard president William Schuman arguing for an exchange of performers with the Soviets, believing it might help “break the iron curtain.”37 The following year, a report revisited the question, noting that many artists and organizations had been interested in performing in the Soviet Union. According to the report, this was initially thought impossible due to regulations prohibiting it. But since the Geneva conference, a 1955 summit meeting at which American, French, British, and Soviet leaders considered the challenges of the nuclear e
ra, the atmosphere had changed. Within a year, the Boston Symphony Orchestra would become the first American ensemble to visit the Soviet Union.38

  What did not change was the music panel’s sense that American artists traveling overseas had a critical role to play in representing the United States. From the outset, the panel asserted—in gendered language—that each artist going abroad under the program’s sponsorship should be aware of “his non-professional responsibilities as an Ambassador of the American people, and prepare himself well beforehand as to the culture and music of the country to which he is going, as well as the music of his country.”39 Nor were such responsibilities confined to the concert hall, for the artist’s value also depended on interactions offstage, which included meetings with the press, local cultural leaders, and young people. These exchanges could increase the program’s value through personal contacts and positive publicity supplied by the “local press.”40

  Such ideas would propel American ensembles to head overseas during the next several years, and while many groups crossed the ocean, the focus here is on the journeys of three distinguished orchestras from Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. Over the months of August and September 1956, the Boston Symphony headed to Europe as part of the Eisenhower administration’s overseas initiative. A historic six-week tour, the visit would include performances in the Soviet Union, thus making it the first American orchestra to play there.41 Under the leadership of chief conductor Charles Munch and the celebrated Pierre Monteux, the group played twenty-seven concerts in numerous European cities, including Moscow and Leningrad, where the ensemble performed several times. Both participants and observers viewed the concerts behind the Iron Curtain, which received a great deal of American press attention, as a political and cultural breakthrough. As was typical of these trips, ANTA helped organize the complex logistical arrangements necessary for transporting more than a hundred musicians, dozens of spouses, a bevy of administrators, and thousands of pounds of equipment across the Atlantic and Europe. The repertoire was varied; it included several standard orchestral works, and, as was the case on all such trips, one American piece per program. Thus, audiences heard compositions by such Americans as Aaron Copland, Walter Piston, Paul Creston, Samuel Barber, and Howard Hanson.42

  The lion’s share of the trip was funded by the US government from congressionally approved appropriations, though some sponsorship came from American corporations.43 The aims of the journey, especially the Russian segment, were discussed frequently in the American press and in the voluminous correspondence exchanged among those who organized the venture, whether orchestral administrators or government officials. These public and private reflections reveal a mixture, sometimes in the same document, of universalist and hard-boiled nationalist motives. The notion that music could foster transnational cooperation and international stability was articulated in a New York Times editorial, which called the visit “a break in the wall that separates us.” According to the Times, people-to-people contacts inevitably “paved the way for better understanding.” Upon hearing the Boston Symphony, the Russians will comprehend many “things about us that they have not suspected before,” the implication being that Americans were not a nation of primitives.44

  In speaking to the players’ committee of the Boston Symphony, an orchestra administrator claimed that visiting the Soviet Union provided an “opportunity of the greatest importance.” The group could do more for the world in a week than “all the tanks, all the guided missiles, and all the statesmen put together,” he said. Bringing classical music to the Soviet Union provided an “unmatched chance” to speak the “universal language.”45 Similar sentiments appeared in the Boston Globe. As the paper pointed out, armies are used to enforce and diplomats to negotiate. Sometimes, however, force becomes dangerous and a nation wishes to make an impression and prove it is composed of human beings, that it can do “something besides grow wheat, invent . . . gadgets and H-bombs.” Such a nation sometimes wants to show that it can produce men and women with the “power of origination.” And then it calls in the artists.46

  The orchestra gave two concerts in Leningrad and three in Moscow, which were attended by various Soviet luminaries, including musicians, composers, and officials from the Ministry of Culture. The reaction to the Bostonians’ music-making was extraordinary. Even the most sophisticated listeners marveled at the orchestra’s remarkable sonority, the virtuosity of its principal players, and the brilliance of its ensemble playing. Writing about the performances, Russian composer Dmitri Kabalevsky observed that the orchestra had achieved “such a level of craftsmanship that technical difficulties . . . ceased to exist . . . and all the attention is switched to the resolution of artistic problems.” According to the esteemed musician, the performance of Beethoven’s Eroica revealed the “herald of great humanistic ideas, the singer of beauty and freedom.”47 Soviet conductor Alexander Gauk praised the orchestra for its “melodious sound” and the “purity of its intonation.” He then considered the tour’s political ramifications. The Boston concerts convinced listeners that the “language of musical art, coming from the heart, is accessible to millions” and helps to fortify “friendly connections between peoples.”48

  Outside the concert halls of Moscow and Leningrad, the encounters between Russians and Americans were striking for their warmth and innocence. Residents of the two Russian cities displayed enormous interest in the United States, a country about whose values and customs they had heard much but knew little. In conversations on street corners and shops, the Americans were inundated with questions about life in the United States. The man on the street—and the questioners were typically male—was described as friendly, curious, polite, and “apparently intelligent.” Russians wondered about the American economy: What was the price of a car? How much did skilled workers earn? What about American education? The idea that students chose their own educational paths puzzled the average Russian. American television also intrigued them. How big were the screens? Upon learning that most American homes would soon have color televisions, the Russians were astonished. Such “sidewalk interviews” were a feature of the visit.49

  The American musicians had especially close contact with their opposite numbers in Moscow and Leningrad, encounters which, while often focusing on music, sometimes turned to other subjects, particularly the US standard of living. A Boston timpanist was asked what kind of car he drove, what his home life was like, and whether he was a millionaire. The Russians envied the quality of the Americans’ instruments, and looked longingly at the trombones, bassoons, and trumpets that made it easier for the Bostonians to perform with greater facility and a richer tone than their counterparts. But the Russian players spoke not just about reeds and kettledrums. Boston’s principal flutist said she talked for hours about America. The queries kept coming, she said, not because people were assessing the accuracy of what they had been told, but because there was a “yearning for more facts to fill a void.”50

  The Boston Symphony performances in the Soviet Union were a milestone in the history of American cultural diplomacy. Optimism abounded about what had been achieved, both for the United States and for people throughout the world. Many hoped the visit pointed toward the continued flow of American culture overseas, which, it was thought, would have a beneficial effect on international relations. The glow from the European trip (the orchestra had performed across the continent) was reflected in the words of symphony officials, journalists, and even the American president. Writing on behalf of the Friends of the Symphony, a group of leading BSO subscribers and supporters, Cyrus Durgin of the Boston Globe considered the orchestra’s “extraordinary mission of good will,” especially in the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. He quoted the governor of Massachusetts, who told the orchestra that “the force of culture was infinitely stronger in binding people together than any other element.” Moreover, Durgin observed, the members of the orchestra had represented all the American people.51 Such idealistic sentiments were widely sha
red in the American press, as in one Rhode Island newspaper that claimed the language the musicians spoke with their “instruments [was] universal. It is the language of the soul and the emotions.” Such an opportunity to communicate with the Soviet people “strengthens our ties as humans and weakens our mutual distrust.”52

  Once the tour was over, even the president shared his thoughts. Writing to Henry Cabot, chairman of the orchestra’s trustees, Eisenhower remarked that the ensemble’s talents had advanced the “cause of international understanding.” He spoke about the importance of artistic exchange, which he called an effective method of strengthening “world friendship.” But then the president’s idealism veered off in a different direction, as he extolled the virtues of the free enterprise system, pointing out that the ensemble’s journey (which he neglected to mention had significant government funding) had unfolded in “typical American fashion, with the sponsorship and devoted support of private citizens.” Framing American outreach in this way suggested the United States was driven less by the hope of promoting international cooperation than by the goal of advancing its global agenda. Eisenhower sought to accomplish this by highlighting an idea he saw as distinctively American—private enterprise—which was anathema to officials behind the Iron Curtain.53

  In 1958, another esteemed American ensemble, the Philadelphia Orchestra, traveled to the Soviet Union under the auspices of the US government.54 Looking toward the trip’s aims, Eugene Ormandy, whose association with the orchestra began in 1936, inclined toward the universalism musicians typically applied to the symphonic journeys. Shortly before the group headed overseas, the conductor reflected on President Eisenhower’s commitment to cultural exchange, underscoring the importance of meeting people on “non-political levels,” which allowed “understanding” to emerge. He and his musicians were going abroad “not as professional diplomats, but as Americans meeting other people,” whether “in the streets, the museums, their homes, and, of course, the concert halls.” He hoped the trip would show Europeans across the continent that the American people were not “warmongers.” Part of the ensemble’s goal was to expose Europe to American compositions, he said, to counter the sense that “art in America is mechanized—something from the production line like the Ford or the Cadillac.”55