Dangerous Melodies

by Jonathan Rosenberg

  7. “Voice of the People,” Chicago Tribune, September 13, 1939. Note original editorial, “The War Is in Europe,” Ibid., September 7, 1939.

  8. “Chicago Sees No Change in Plans because of the European Situation,” Musical Courier (September 15, 1939): 3. On Kreisler, see “First Big Name of Recital Season Will Be Fritz Kreisler,” Chicago Tribune, September 17, 1939. “ ‘Eroica’ Is Billed as a Major Item of 1st Concerts,” Chicago Tribune, October 8, 1939.

  9. “Gala Opera Series in San Francisco Opens Auspiciously,” Musical Courier (November 1, 1939): 3. Note “ ‘Walküre’ Tonight, Opens Full Week of Season,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 17, 1939; “The Opera,” Ibid., October 18, 1939.

  10. “Ormandy Declares Strict Neutrality,” Musical America (October 10, 1939): 18.

  11. “Words on Music,” Bridgeport (CT) Post, September 17, 1939. Note “Boston Proceeds Calmly with Plans,” Musical Courier (September 15, 1939): 17; and “War May Affect the Boston Symphony,” Musical America (September 1939): 3.

  12. “N.Y. Philharmonic Season Unaltered,” Musical Courier (September 15, 1939): 7; and “Barbirolli to Give Many Novelties,” Musical America (September 1939): 3.

  13. “Metropolitan Will Carry Out Schedule,” Musical Courier (September 15, 1939): 26.

  14. Ibid. Note “The Season at the Metropolitan,” Musical America (October 10, 1939): 16.

  15. “Musicology Congress Held in New York,” Musical America (September 1939): 3, 15; “1st U.S. Congress of Musicologists Stresses New Role of the Americas,” Musical Courier (October 1, 1939): 3, 7; “Congress of Music Opens Despite War,” New York Times, September 12, 1939.

  16. Ibid., 7.

  17. “The New Outlook of Musical Scholarship in America,” Musical America (September 1939): 12.

  18. “Keep Music and Politics Apart, Critic Urges,” Chicago Tribune, June 29, 1941. Note “Music and Politics,” Boston Evening Transcript, September 30, 1939. Before America went to war, such views were widespread.

  19. “Heard in Rochester,” Musical America (April 10, 1940): 8; “Visits Baltimore,” Ibid.; “Bostonians Welcome Week of Opera,” Ibid.; “Metropolitan Closes Series in Philadelphia,” Ibid., 17.

  20. “War and Music,” Washington News, September 23, 1939.

  21. Ad in Chicago Tribune, June 7, 1940.

  22. “Hitler Sees Self as Wagner Hero, Symphony Fans Told,” Cleveland News, September 18, 1939.

  23. “If You Like It, It’s Music, Critic Says,” Cleveland News, September 19, 1939.

  24. “Strauss Tone Poem on First Orchestral Program,” Cleveland Press, September 23, 1939. Wagner piece was Polonia, an obscure work written “in prayer for the liberation of Poland.”

  25. “Dr. Karl Muck, Famed Musician, Dies in Stuttgart,” New York World-Telegram, March 4, 1940; “Dr. Karl Muck— Martyr or Spy?,” Milwaukee Journal, March 18, 1940; “Noted Musician Dies at German Home,” Pasadena Star-News, March 4, 1940; “Karl Muck, Alien but Not Enemy,” Christian Century (Chicago), March 20, 1940.

  26. “Karl Muck, Former Head of Boston Symphony,” Boston Post, March 4, 1940.

  27. “Dr. Karl Muck: His Death Recalls Problems of the Artist in Time of War,” New York Times, March 10, 1940.

  28. “Karl Muck, Former Head of Boston Symphony,” Boston Transcript, March 4, 1940. Note “Muck, 80, Awarded Plaque by Hitler,” New York Post, October 23, 1939; “Who’s News Today?,” New York Sun, October 25, 1939.

  29. “Culled from the Mail Pouch,” New York Times, March 10, 1940. Note the laudatory contribution from the Boston Symphony’s publicity director during the Muck era.

  30. “Metropolitan Will Continue Original Language Policy,” Musical Courier (December 11, 1941): 4. On the decision (including Johnson’s view) not to alter its wartime repertoire, see Board Minutes, December 11, 1941, Board Minutes of Metropolitan Opera Association, 1941–1945, Metropolitan Opera Archives, Lincoln Center, New York City (hereafter MOA).

  31. “Contralto Wins Ovation in Her Chicago Debut,” Chicago Tribune, December 13, 1941.

  32. Note Virgil Thomson’s column, “A Happy Return?,” New York Herald Tribune, January 20, 1946, which marked the opera’s return. The Met’s board minutes are silent on the decision. Board Minutes, December 11, 1941, MOA.

  33. Alice Yang Murray, ed., What Did the Internment of Japanese Americans Mean? (New York: Bedford, 2000), 3–20. Two-thirds of those incarcerated were American citizens.

  34. On the situation in Chicago, see Ronald L. Davis, Opera in Chicago (New York: Appleton, 1966), 363, 368. See website.

  35. In Michaela Hoenicke Moore, Know Your Enemy: The American Debate on Nazism, 1933–1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 139. Moore writes that polls indicated “most Americans did not think that they were again fighting the Huns of World War I,” 138.

  36. Archibald MacLeish, Basic Policy Directive, “The Nature of the Enemy,” October 5, 1942, Office of War Information (OWI), RG 208, Entry 6A, Box 1, National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives II, College Park, MD. On the distinction between the German government and the German people, see OWI Intelligence Report, “American Estimates of the Enemy,” September 2, 1942, box 53, Archibald MacLeish Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  37. Susan A. Brewer, Why America Fights: Patriotism and War Propaganda from the Philippines to Iraq (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 106–7. On the government’s perspective on conveying to Americans the nature of the German enemy, see Moore, chs. 5–6.

  38. See his letter to the editor, “Alien Tongue Press Upheld,” New York Times, April 21, 1942; and “Hatred Held Dangerous,” written by the same person to the Times, June 12, 1942.

  39. “Two Significant Appeals: For Music and to Our Musicians,” Musical America (January 25, 1942): 16.

  40. “Finale of Symphony Today to Feature Popular Works,” Washington Post, March 29, 1942.

  41. “Army Musical Groups Planned,” Los Angeles Times, January 18, 1942.

  42. “Musicians Here Oppose Ban on All Axis Music,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 6, 1942.

  43. “Erika Mann Protests,” New York Times, February 15, 1942. Mann, an actress and daughter of novelist Thomas Mann, left Germany for the United States in 1937.

  44. “Music by the Enemy,” Good Housekeeping (June 1942): 16. Note “Memo to the Reichskulturkammer,” Good Housekeeping (March 1943): 16.

  45. “Advance, Music, to be Recognized,” Chicago Tribune, July 19, 1942. Note “Wartime Trends in Music: German Opera Still Performed; 1917–18 Bans Held Unlikely,” Newsweek (January 5, 1942): 53.

  46. “No Hymns of Hate Ruffle Sanity of Art,” Musical Forecast (January 1942): 13.

  47. On the Met’s performances of Wagner and the enthusiasm created, see website.

  48. “The Metropolitan Season,” Musical America (March 25, 1943): 16. Note letter to Edward Johnson, the Met’s general manager. Charlotte Hammer to Johnson, April 4, 1942, folder H (1941–1942), Edward Johnson Correspondence, 1941–42, MOA.

  49. “Orchestra Repertoires,” Musical America (July 1944): 6. The data used for the article are from the 1943–44 season.

  50. On the opera, see website.

  51. “Plea for Meistersinger,” New York Times, February 2, 1941. Note letter to Edward Johnson expressing similar sentiments. Elaine Jerome to Johnson, October 15, 1941, folder J (1941–1942), Edward Johnson Correspondence, 1941–42, MOA.

  52. “The Metropolitan Season,” Musical America (March 10, 1942): 16.

  53. “Meistersinger and a Sorry Mistake,” Musical America (December 25, 1942): 7.

  54. “Nation’s Symphonic Diet Subject of Survey,” Musical America (May 1943): 22; and “Requests from Our Sevicemen,” New York Times, June 17, 1945.

  55. “Political Music,” Boston Transcript, December 30, 1939; in Musician: “Wagner’s Political Polemics,” September 1940, 155; and “Our Contemporaries,” June 1941, 103. At Brooklyn’s Church of the Holy Trinity, the Reverend Wi
lliam Howard Melish delivered a sermon on “Hitler and Wagner: The Perversion of an Art.” “ ‘Debauching’ Wagner Charged to Hitler,” New York Times, September 16, 1940. Note “Wagner No Aryan?,” Time (February 3, 1941): 45.

  56. “Hitler and Wagner,” Common Sense (November 1939): 3–6. Part two of Viereck’s analysis: “Hitler and Wagner,” Common Sense (December 1939): 20–22.

  57. On European artists who came to the United States, note Joseph Horowitz’s highly engaging Artists in Exile: How Refugees from Twentieth-Century War and Revolution Transformed the Performing Arts (New York: Harper Collins, 2008), esp. 398–405.

  58. “In Defense of Wagner,” Common Sense (January 1940): 11–14.

  59. Ibid. On Wagner, see Jacob Katz, The Darker Side of Genius: Richard Wagner’s Anti-Semitism (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1986); M. Owen Lee, Wagner: The Terrible Man and His Truthful Art (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999); Bryan Magee, The Tristan Chord: Wagner and Philosophy (New York: Henry Holt, 2000); and Bryan Magee, Aspects of Wagner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968).

  60. “Wagner: Clue to Hitler,” New York Times Magazine (February 25, 1940): 97.

  61. Ibid. See website.

  62. “Dr. Rodzinski’s Remarks from the Stage at Severance Hall before Conducting Wagner’s ‘Rule Britannia,’ ” April 16, 1942, Archives Reference file, Music and Nazism and Politics, Cleveland Orchestra Archives, Severance Hall, Cleveland, Ohio (hereafter COA).

  63. “Wagner, Man and Artist, and the Nazi Ideology: A Myth Exploded,” Musical America (November 25, 1944): 5. “Mephisto” rejected claims that Wagner set the stage for Nazism. “Mephisto’s Musings,” Musical America (March 25, 1944): 9.

  64. “Opera, War, and Wagner,” Etude (October 1942): 657–58.

  65. “Background Music for Mein Kampf,” Saturday Review (January 20, 1945): 5–9.

  66. “Pictures Music as a Force Against Evil, Destruction,” New Brunswick Home News, March 17, 1943.

  67. “Two Significant Appeals: For Music and to Our Musicians,” Musical America (January 25, 1942): 16.

  68. The first opera broadcast came from Chicago in 1919 and the first symphonic broadcast featured the Boston Symphony in 1926. See Timothy Taylor, “The Role of Opera in the Rise of Radio in the United States,” in Music and the Broadcast Experience: Performance, Production, and Audiences, Christina Baade and James Deaville, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 69–87; Richard Crawford, America’s Musical Life: A History (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), 586; Joseph Horowitz, Understanding Toscanini: A Social History of American Concert Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 139, 152–55.

  69. “Arturo Toscanini Will Conduct NBC Symphony in Brilliant Premiere of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony,” June 19, 1942, Clipping file, Shostakovich, Music Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (NYPLPA). Note “Symphony,” New Yorker (July 18, 1942): 9.

  70. “Soviet’s Best Bet,” Time (February 16, 1942): 82. The Soviet premiere was on March 5, 1942, in Kuybishev, a performance broadcast in the Soviet Union and abroad; the Moscow premiere occurred on March 29. Premiered overseas in June 1942, in London, first in a BBC broadcast performance, and a week later in concert. Laurel E. Fay, Shostakovich: A Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 130–32.

  71. “Shostakovich, Composer, Explains His Symphony of Plain Man in War,” New York Times, February 9, 1942. Note “Shostakovich—a Major Voice of the Soviets,” Ibid., April 5, 1942.

  72. “Arturo Toscanini Will Conduct NBC Symphony in Brilliant Premiere of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony,” June 19, 1942, Clipping file, Shostakovich, NYPLPA. On the music’s trip from the Soviet Union to the United States, see “Asides of the Concert and Opera Worlds,” New York Times, June 21, 1942.

  73. “Arturo Toscanini Will Conduct NBC Symphony in Brilliant Premiere of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony,” June 19, 1942, Clipping file, Shostakovich, NYPLPA.

  74. “Stating the Case for Slavonic Culture,” New York Times, June 21, 1942.

  75. Ibid.

  76. Quoted in Horowitz, Understanding Toscanini, 174–75. The two men would serve as co-conductors during the next two seasons.

  77. Toscanini to Stokowsi, June 20, 1942, Letters of Arturo Toscanini, Harvey Sachs, ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 385–86.

  78. For Toscanini’s second letter to Stokowski, written on June 25, see Letters of Arturo Toscanini, 386.

  79. In March, the piece had been performed in three Russian cities: Kuibyshev, Moscow, and Leningrad. The Sunday afternoon broadcast was heard live in the United States; a recording of the performance was rebroadcast later that night in Central and South America, and in the West Indies. The following Wednesday, the recorded Toscanini performance was broadcast across Europe, including in Russia and Germany. “Shostakovich’s War Symphony Cheered Here under Toscanini,” New York Herald Tribune, July 20, 1942.

  80. “Shostakovich Outlines Aim of 7th Symphony,” New York Herald Tribune, July 19, 1942.

  81. Note “Shostakovich and the Guns,” Time (July 20, 1942): 53–54.

  82. “Shostakovich Seventh Symphony,” July 19, 1942. Clipping file, Shostakovich, NYPLPA. This is a script for the radio broadcast.

  83. Ibid.

  84. Ibid.

  85. “Shostakovich Has U.S. Premiere,” New York Times, July 20, 1942.

  86. The London broadcast performance of June 22 might have been heard in the United States on the BBC.

  87. “Shostakovich,” Life (August 3, 1942): 35–36.

  88. Time cover, July 20, 1942, and “Shostakovich and the Guns,” 53–54. The Time cover and possibly the story were reprinted as part of the program for the July 19 concert. Note “Premiere of the Year,” Newsweek (July 27, 1942): 66.

  89. “Shostakovich’s War Symphony Cheered Here under Toscanini,” New York Herald Tribune, July 20, 1942.

  90. No title visible, New York World-Telegram and Sun, July 20, 1942, Clipping file, Shostakovich, NYPLPA.

  91. “Shostakovich’s Seventh,” New Republic (August 3, 1942): 144.

  92. “Music,” Nation (August 15, 1932): 138.

  93. “Shostakovich 7th Has U.S. Premiere,” New York Times, July 20, 1942.

  94. Ibid. Note another Downes critique: “Second View of a Symphony,” New York Times, July 26, 1942. On the work’s critics, see “Mephisto’s Musings,” Musical America (August 1942): 9. For Koussevitzky’s critique of the critics, see “Shostakovich Upheld,” New York Times, August 2, 1942.

  95. “Shostakovich’s 7th Symphony on NBC at 3:15 P.M.,” Chicago Tribune, July 19, 1942; “Current Music News,” Ibid.; “Shostakovich Work Has U.S. Premiere,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 20, 1942.

  96. “Shostakovich Strikes High Note of Week,” Los Angeles Times, July 26, 1942.

  97. “Programs of the Week,” Los Angeles Times, July 19, 1942; “Screen,” Ibid., July 21, 1942. Note “Hollywood Pays Tribute to Shostakovich with Recital,” Ibid., July 20, 1942.

  98. “ ‘Front Page’ Music,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 20, 1942. Note the Washington Post’s coverage: “Shostakovich Work to Be Heard,” July 19, 1942; “War Symphony Acclaimed,” July 20, 1942.

  99. “Allied Aid to Russia Is Stressed in Benefit Concert at Tanglewood,” Musical Courier (September 1942): 13. Shostakovich cabled Koussevitzky to express his gratitude for the decision to perform the work. “Shostakovich 7th Given First Concert Performance Tonight,” New York Daily Worker, August 14, 1942.

  100. “New England Receives a Message from Russia and Understands It,” PM, August 16, 1942, Clipping file, Shostakovich, NYPLPA.

  101. Trampler in Herbert Kupferberg, Tanglewood (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976), 95, 98.

  102. “New England Receives a Message from Russia and Understands It,” PM, August 16, 1942, Clipping file, Shostakovich, NYPLPA.

  103. “Symphony Written during Nazi Attack Heard at Tanglewood,” Worcester Telegram, August 15, 1942.

/>   104. “New England Receives a Message from Russia and Understands It,” PM, August 16, 1942, Clipping file, Shostakovich, NYPLPA.

  105. “Shostakovich Battle Symphony Wins Ovation at Tanglewood,” Daily Worker, August 16, 1942.

  106. “Give Their Parrot a Lesson in Patriotism,” Chicago Tribune, August 21, 1942. From the Tribune, see “Chicago Orchestra to Play Shostakovich’s 7th Symphony,” Chicago Tribune, August 16, 1942; “New Symphony Stirs Guests at Ravinia Concert,” August 23, 1942; and “Society Enjoys Night of Music to Aid Russians,” Ibid.

  107. “Shostakovich Seventh Opens New Symphony Season,” Boston Herald, October 10, 1942. Note “Boston Symphony Season Opens,” Christian Science Monitor, October 10, 1942.

  108. “Hails Symphony of Shostakovich,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 15, 1942. Note “The Seventh Symphony,” a Plain Dealer editorial on the work, in Ibid.

  109. “Stokowski and Philharmonic to Give Concert for Army,” Los Angeles Times, September 23, 1942; “A Musical Event of Prime Importance,” Ibid., September 27, 1942.

  110. “Shostakovich Concert Musical Event of Year,” Los Angeles Times, October 10, 1942. Note “Shostakovich Program May Set Precedent,” Ibid., October 11, 1942.

  111. “Soldiers Hear Shostakovich,” Los Angeles Times, October 12, 1942. U.S. readers learned of the desert performance from Life. “Shostakovich’s Seventh,” Life (November 9, 1942): 99–100; and “Music: Tank Corps,” Time (October 26, 1942): 50–51.

  112. Website for the New York reviews.

  113. Reprinted on October 15, 1942 (newspaper unidentified), Clipping file, Shostakovich, NYPLPA.

  114. “Shostakovich and Sonya,” Newsweek (August 16, 1943): 79–80.

  115. “The Symphonist of Russia’s Travail,” New York Times, February 7, 1943.

  116. Benjamin L. Alpers, Dictators, Democracy, and American Public Culture: Envisioning the Totalitarian Enemy, 1920s–1950s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), ch. 8.