On October 12, 1959, the Philharmonic returned to the United States, arriving in Washington, DC, where the orchestra played a concert attended by US-government officials and the ambassadors representing the countries in which the orchestra had recently performed. Before the concert, Bernstein offered an amusing, if revealing, remark to Washington reporters, noting that the Russians were “almost wild in their enthusiasm for music.” As for why this was so, the conductor offered one possible explanation: “You can’t go to jail for liking Beethoven’s Fifth.”118
While in Washington, Bernstein spoke at a National Press Club luncheon, his words evincing the idealism that characterized much of the trip. Such a journey was much less expensive than the cost of weapons, he observed. “If military strength is a nation’s right arm, culture is its left arm, closer to the heart.” In calling for additional government funding for cultural exchange, Bernstein spoke about the power of music, which allowed people to make deep contact with one another. Music is “uncluttered with conceptual notions, no words are involved. You can always touch people with music.” Bernstein then linked this notion to the challenge of the US-Soviet relationship: “You can’t argue with a G-sharp. Khrushchev wouldn’t know a B-flat if he heard one.” He was hopeful, he told the press, that the orchestra had contributed to that “international contact” everyone was talking about.119
After their brief stop in Washington, the orchestra returned to New York, where it was honored by Mayor Robert Wagner and where Bernstein received the Key to the City. The mayor saluted David Keiser, the orchestra’s president, for bringing “part of our nation’s finest cultural achievement to a world audience” and for contributing to “international understanding.”120
Less than two weeks later, on October 25, Americans had the opportunity to savor the excitement of the trip, when WCBS-TV broadcast Bernstein’s September lecture-performance in an hour-long documentary. The film was directed by Richard Leacock, who would become one of the leading documentary filmmakers of his time. The national broadcast was sponsored by the Ford Motor Company and there was an enormous amount of advance publicity in the nation’s newspapers; and after the televised special, columnists showered praise on Bernstein for his multiple roles: musician, teacher, and—not least—ambassador. A columnist for New York’s Daily News described Bernstein as so “fervent in his evangelism” that he had become “a veritable Billy Graham of the music world.” Readers of the Philadelphia Bulletin learned that two men working at a newsstand in a subway station were heard discussing the Bernstein program they had just watched, though one thought the conductor was “a big ham.” According to the Bulletin’s columnist, the fact that two men in a subway station were discussing a television program on classical music demonstrated that Bernstein was “a Pied Piper of the glories of high-brow music.” As the story noted, in speaking about the tour, Bernstein had called it “a political mission” and said it was remarkable “to find how close a rapport can develop between the U.S. and Russia through music.”121
In addition to the musical and political analysis Bernstein delivered in Moscow that September, which millions of Americans watched the following month, a powerful part of the televised documentary was “A Message for Americans,” a short segment of the program hosted by Joseph N. Welch, an attorney and actor. While the Boston lawyer had become well-known for some recent acting credits, he had played a memorable real-life role during a gloomy time several years earlier, during the McCarthy hearings, when he had famously demanded of Senator Joseph McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”122 (Welch’s celebrity status as an actor, not his role during the McCarthy years, led to his participation in the New York Philharmonic documentary.)123
As the first half of the CBS documentary ended with Bernstein completing his discussion of Copland and Shostakovich, a short “intermission” segment began with Welch, on location in Philadelphia, striding purposefully toward Independence Hall and then stopping to speak before the Liberty Bell. “This is where it all started,” he said, “our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution.” The lawyer offered excerpts from the quasi-sacred language of 1776, which surely resonated with American viewers who had just watched the first half of a politically charged cultural program filmed in Moscow, the capital city of America’s greatest foe. Among the hallowed fragments the lawyer intoned for the American audience were these: “We hold these truths to be self-evident”; “All men are created equal”; and finally, “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In a solemn voice, Welch told the American people, “In all the history of man, there are no ideas more noble than these, and few more beautifully written.”124 Millions across the country surely embraced such sentiments.
But Welch was not finished. He turned to constitution-making, allowing American viewers to see where Madison, Franklin, and Washington had labored as they drafted the Constitution, an achievement they had accomplished, Welch emphasized, by taking time from their private lives. It is imperative to ask, he declared, “How much time am I giving out of my personal life so that this free nation [might] maintain its freedom? Are you prepared, as they were,” Welch asked, “to give some of that personal time and energy to that end?” The founders’ willingness to devote a “portion of their personal lives” to their country was what made them distinctive, Welch asserted. But the work was not complete. “It is waiting for you and me in every home and schoolroom and courthouse and voting booth in America.” And finally, the Boston lawyer told millions of CBS viewers what really mattered was for all Americans to meet “the task of this century” as the founders’ generation had met theirs.125
The camera then shifted from Welch in Philadelphia back to Bernstein in Moscow, where he began to conduct the opening movement of the Shostakovich Seventh, as American television viewers watched from home. After half an hour, the movement, superbly played, came to an end. Americans saw the Russian audience applaud vigorously. The documentary’s narrator told viewers they would shortly see Boris Pasternak, whose appearance at the New Yorkers’ evening concert on September 11 had been incorporated into the film. The American television audience then saw Pasternak embracing Bernstein in the conductor’s dressing room, as Bernstein’s words (which opened this chapter) were heard. “What a thrilling world this could be, if only we knew we would never again have to indulge the brutal sin of war-making,” he said. “Instead of wasting our energies in hostility and our wealth on weaponry, we could send art to the moon, exalt our Pasternaks instead of isolating them. We could feed and house and clothe everyone . . . harness the sun’s energy, learn a few languages; talk, travel, grow, and love.” Bernstein was hopeful that his orchestra’s “musical mission” had contributed to that “eventual state of affairs.” The bond between the American conductor and the Russian writer, cemented on September 11 and witnessed by millions across America on October 25, provided an illustration of international cooperation. A series of scenic images of Moscow concluded the CBS documentary.126
Leonard Bernstein’s diplomacy was unconventional. It did not resemble the ambassadorial meetings or high-level negotiations one associates with the work of traditional diplomats. Instead, Bernstein “conducted” diplomacy in the world’s concert halls. In examining Bernstein’s overseas activities, along with the foreign labors of the Boston Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra, one perceives a deeply held conviction that art could have a salutary effect on politics. And if Bernstein was an idealist, he was also an iconoclast, who did not shrink from expressing sentiments that lay outside the political mainstream. In an era when the size and scope of the national security state were expanding, Bernstein advocated peace and cooperation, and spoke repeatedly about finding a pathway to international understanding. To accomplish this, he used the power of music to embolden listeners to vanquish the forces that had produced antagonism across the world.
Thinking about Leonard Bernstein’s work overseas leads one to reflect upon this
era of international music-making and to wonder about the extent to which the aims of American cultural diplomacy were realized. Government officials hoped the tours of American orchestras would help persuade people around the world that the United States—and equally important, liberal capitalism—was capable of nurturing and sustaining artistic achievement on the highest level. The ideological competition that was central to the Cold War, along with the increase in Soviet cultural initiatives, convinced policy makers that it was crucial to expose the world’s people to America’s cultural accomplishments, lest they doubt the superiority of the American political and economic system.
At the time, most foreign observers would have viewed the United States as a society of enormous material wealth and acknowledged that liberal capitalism had made possible the production of a vast quantity of goods. What was less clear to those outside the United States was that American capitalism and, more to the point, the American people, had a soul. The orchestral tours allowed America to reveal its artistic soul to the world. That soul could be perceived in the artistry of America’s extraordinary musicians, in the vibrancy of its music, and in the willingness of Americans to support magnificent cultural institutions like symphony orchestras. Policy makers hoped people across the world, after attending an orchestral concert, would recognize that the military and economic imperative was not all there was to American society—that Americans could do more than make a bomb or a buck.
It is difficult to know whether the world came to view America in a more appealing light, though there is evidence to suggest that some believed the orchestral tours were constructive. When Juilliard president William Schuman, a member of the Music Advisory Panel, asked in October 1959 whether sending American “cultural achievements” abroad was doing enough to present the “non-commercial aspects of our society,” Anatole Heller, a European impresario who was a key figure in organizing the tours, responded with certainty. Though not unbiased, Heller told the panel that, since the project started, there were now “very few” Europeans who thought of Americans as people whose only skill was in building “refrigerators and cars. People now know that America has the very best orchestras in the world.”127 According to Heller, America’s diplomatic instruments were succeeding.
There was likely some truth in that, for those who heard America’s symphonic ambassadors—whether critics, musicians, government officials, or ordinary concertgoers—were profoundly impressed and deeply moved. The common thread that runs through their reaction to the concerts was clear. They had never heard orchestral performances of such sonic brilliance and transcendent beauty. American symphonic concerts were extraordinary events, and it would not be surprising if some listeners, or even many, left the world’s concert halls with a new-found appreciation for the United States, a land many thought culturally barren. But when one asks whether the deployment of American culture overseas provided concrete gains for the United States, the answer is far from clear. Such things are not easy to measure. In the end, it is difficult to say whether America’s position on the world stage was enhanced by its accomplishments on the concert stage.
If one cannot ascertain whether those who heard a blazing performance by the New Yorkers, the Philadelphians, or the Bostonians left the concert hall more committed than before to the West’s triumph in the Cold War, one can say that the orchestral tours of the 1950s did not lead to the realization of the humane goals Bernstein and others had articulated. However noble, the dream that nations would begin to pursue policies that fostered international cooperation was not realized. This is not to diminish the importance of such aspirations, nor to suggest that people should have stopped trying to achieve them. But the capacity of classical music to influence the character of international relations was slight.
While profound rewards can be derived from performing and listening to Mozart or Beethoven or Brahms, the notion that such an experience might contribute to a less bellicose foreign policy or a more tranquil world proved a futile aim. Less than two months after the Boston Symphony’s memorable visit to the Soviet Union in 1956, Soviet troops invaded Hungary, killing thousands. And Leonard Bernstein’s incandescent interpretation of a Shostakovich symphony before an audience of Soviet music lovers in 1959 did not stop Soviet leaders from erecting the Berlin Wall two years later, or from placing nuclear missiles in Cuba one year after that. Neither did the symphonic concerts Americans offered to thousands of Asians, which were rapturously received, preclude the United States from continuing to support a brutal regime in Saigon in the 1950s, nor stop Washington from introducing thousands of American troops into the region in the next decade to fight a bloody war.128 For all its wondrous properties, classical music could do little to alter the contours of international politics or drain the ill will among competing nations and clashing systems.129
It is difficult, then, not to conclude this chapter on a discordant note. As one considers the ideas, aims, and rhetoric of American policy makers during these years and studies the implementation of symphonic diplomacy, one cannot help but feel uneasy about the way US-government officials manipulated art to advance the national interest of the United States. For while policy makers occasionally spoke about music’s power to promote cooperation and understanding, their objectives were far less enlightened. In battling a resolute enemy, US officials were determined to prevail, and they were prepared to use almost any weapon they could to do so, including music.
Music of great beauty was performed throughout the world in these years and American orchestras exposed thousands of people to unforgettable aesthetic experiences. But as US policy makers sought to win the East-West struggle, they refashioned violins and trumpets, transforming them into yet another type of Cold War weaponry. To be sure, these diplomatic instruments toppled no buildings and caused no bloodshed. But there was something unsavory about a policy that marshaled the country’s most esteemed musical institutions and deployed them overseas to participate in a fearsome and destructive conflict that was responsible for spreading so much misery across the world.
CODA
“The Baton Is Mightier than the Sword”
Berliners, Ohioans, and Chinese Communists
“MUSIC IS THE ‘UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE,’ ” the brochure declared. “We DO talk without words.” While its author, Shibley Boyes, pianist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, admitted it was a “hackneyed . . . phrase,” the ninety-six-page publication captured the spirit of a successful trip, which saw the orchestra travel to Western Europe, Yugoslavia, Turkey, Cypress, Israel, Iran, and India, under the direction of Zubin Mehta, its gifted conductor. In reflecting on the 1967 journey, the commemorative tour book offered the uplifting if naive observation that the group had “friends in many countries, and found them all just like ourselves,” a hopeful sentiment unlikely to withstand careful scrutiny. As this evocative volume made clear, the twenty-thousand-mile jaunt was not unlike the orchestral adventures of the previous decade, in which bands of gifted American musicians left the United States on a “journey of Goodwill—with Music as our Medium.”1
The 1960s and 1970s saw many such trips, as the life of the American orchestra continued to intersect with developments around the world. As before, those of a universalist bent were convinced the tours offered a chance to enhance the prospect for global understanding, while those of a more nationalist inclination believed the skillful use of America’s “diplomatic instruments” could fortify the country’s international position. As these symphonic odysseys suggest, classical music remained entangled in America’s relations with the wider world, underscoring the music’s crucial place in the nation’s political life.
In September 1960, Leonard Bernstein and his ensemble traveled to the divided city of Berlin, which, for many years, had served as the focal point of the US-Soviet competition. There, the New Yorkers would give two concerts at the annual Berlin Festival and offer a lecture-performance for German students, which was taped and shown on American television several weeks
later.
The trip was sponsored by the Ford Motor Company. Henry Ford II, the firm’s president, asserted that the tour was an “opportunity to aid the courageous people of West Berlin in ideological battle with Communist East Germany.” Sounding more like a foreign policy pundit than a corporate titan, Ford remarked that the United States should do everything possible to maintain the “ideological gains” already achieved.2 In the Philharmonic’s June press release, acting director of the United States Information Agency, Abbott Washburn, said the visit would demonstrate America’s “support” in a vital part of the world.3
Behind the scenes, correspondence among Ford officials, the US government, and the Philharmonic made clear that the trip’s goal was to advance America’s diplomatic objectives. To this end, policy makers hoped the orchestra would allow one of the two concerts they were to give to be taped and broadcast across Germany.4 As a USIA official wrote to the orchestra’s managing director, the aim was to keep Europeans cognizant of America’s “high cultural values.”5
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