Marc Blitzstein and Samuel Barlow – Music And The Theatre – WNYC Concert Orchestra – Macklin Marrow, conductor – February 20, 1941
American music of the WPA period this weekend. Music for the Theatre as represented by composers Samuel Barlow and Marc Blitzstein, and performed by Marc Blitzstein at the piano as well as the WNYC Concert Orchestra conducted by Macklin Marrow and broadcast on February 20, 1941.
The broadcast opens with the WNYC Concert Orchestra under Macklin Marrow performing Barlow’s Mon ami Pierrot, incidental music for the play by Sasha Guitry. The rest of the program is dedicated to the music of Marc Blitzstein who acts as accompanist to various singers from the original cast of “No For An Answer”. The program ends with the Chorus from No For An Answer, which unfortunately fades out when the program runs overtime.
Still, enough to give you a taste of what contemporary music was up to during the WPA period of the 1930s and early 1940s.
Marc Blitzstein, after studying composition at the Curtis Institute of Music, went to Europe to continue his studies in Berlin with Arnold Schoenberg (with whom he did not get on), and in Paris with Nadia Boulanger (with whom he did). Despite his later political beliefs, he was, in the early years of his career, a self-proclaimed and unrepentant artistic snob, who firmly believed that true art was only for the intellectual elite. He was vociferous in denouncing composers—in particular Respighi, Ravel, and Kurt Weill—who, he felt, debased their standards to reach a wider public.
His works of this period, mostly pianistic vehicles such as the Piano Sonata (1927) and the Piano Concerto (Blitzen) are typical of the Boulanger-influenced products of American modernism — strongly rhythmic (though not influenced by jazz) and described by himself as “wild, dissonant and percussive.” These early works were far removed from the Schoenberg style.
The dramatic premiere of the pro-union The Cradle Will Rock took place at the Venice Theater on June 16, 1937. The cast had been locked out of the Maxine Elliott Theatre by the Works Progress Administration, the government agency which had originally funded the production, so the cast and musicians walked with the audience to the nearby Venice. There, without costumes or sets, they performed the work concert-style, actors and musicians alike, sitting among the audience (to evade union restrictions on their performance) with Blitzstein narrating from the piano. In 1939, Leonard Bernstein led a revival of the play at Harvard, narrating from the piano just as Blitzstein had done. Blitzstein attended the performance, after which he and Bernstein became close friends; Bernstein would later say that Blitzstein’s contribution to the American musical theatre was “incalculable”. The 1999 film Cradle Will Rock was based on this event, though heavily embellished. In the film, Blitzstein (played by Hank Azaria) is portrayed as gaining inspiration through ghostly appearances by his idol Brecht and his late anorexic wife.
In 1958, Blitzstein was subpoenaed to appear before the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). Appearing first in a closed session, Blitzstein admitted his membership in the Communist Party (ending in 1949) and, challenging the right of HUAC to question him at all, refused to name names or cooperate any further. He was recalled for a further public session, but after a day sitting anxiously in a waiting room he was not called to testify.
During a visit to Martinique in 1964, at the age of 58, Marc Blitzstein was murdered by three sailors he had picked up in a bar, one of whom he was said to have propositioned. He is buried at Chelten Hills Cemetery in Philadelphia.
In 1935 Samuel Barlow became the first American composer to have an opera presented at the Opéra-Comique in Paris; the opera house staged his one-act work Mon Ami Pierrot. The opera was based on the life of Jean-Baptiste Lully and used a French-language libretto by Sacha Guitry. The opera was well received, and he was awarded the prestigious Légion d’honneur for his achievement. His compositional style was conservative for his day, and he once stated that he wrote “tunes that wouldn’t shock Papa Brahms.” He frequently explored new performance techniques and practices in his music.
Barlow lived much of his life in New York City, where he promoted classical music in various civic and professional organizations for several decades. He was the first chairman of the New York City Community Chorus. He was also a regular contributor to the journal Modern Music, published by the American League of Composers. In the 1950s he served as the President of the board of the American Opera Society.
Modern American music during the late 1930s and early 1940s, with Marc Blitzstein and Samuel Barlow. Press Play and give a listen.
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