Anti-nationalism and the Paradox of Pan “Americanism” in Alberto Ginastera’s Bomarzo
In 1967, within two weeks, Alberto Ginastera witnessed both the success and the censorship of his opera Bomarzo in Washington D.C. and Buenos Aires, respectively. The opera had proved to be too sexual and violent for Argentinian audiences- qualities that had resulted in rave reviews by politicians. After these divided evaluations, it seemed unprecedented that the following, highly anticipated performance in New York was met with indifference. The musical language that Ginastera had honed for years to be accepted as an “American” composer by Pan American standards was dismissed as trying too hard to present multiple avant-garde techniques.
The opposing receptions of the opera indicate the paradox of “American” music that Ginastera aimed to satisfy. That is, the Pan American public represented in Washington sought a Universalist idiom that would represent an American avant-garde but the avant-garde found the parameters of Universalism too highly-regulated. Repression of nationalism in favour of Universalism was meant to steer Latin American music away from communist ties. However, these parameters opposed the freedom from restraint that they wanted to convey. The removal of nationalism from Ginastera’s Bomarzo prevented him from establishing an identity as Argentinian, yet the United States audiences found his music too contrived to suit American music.
Where Carol Hess has identified the qualities of Bomarzo that make it an anti-nationalist work, this paper will analyze the shift in the United States’ reception of Ginastera both before and after the performance in New York in 1968.I will examine the contrasting receptions of the opera through newspaper reviews, and observe the coinciding political relations between Argentina and the United States through policies by the State Department. These relations are not only indicative of the contradictory views of Latin American music by different groups in the United States; the trajectory of the opera’s reception reveals the ironic loss of identity that Pan Americanism created as nationalism was sublimated in favour of Universalism.
Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah: A political statement on the injustices of McCarthyism
McCarthyism was rampant during the 1950s as witch hunts were being conducted throughout America in search of communists. In many cases, proper evidence was irrelevant and people suspected of communism would be required to submit to intense questioning and investigations. The goal was to have the accused publically admit to thoughts or acts of communism.
Although Carlisle Floyd stated he did not intend to explicitly attack McCarthyism, the ideas behind the Second Red Scare are echoed in the opera, Susannah. The protagonist Susannah, without evidence, is wrongfully accused of adultery by men in power. Her entire community turns on her, demanding she give a public confession of her guilt. The similarities between the opera plot and the political scene in America in the 1950s are too congruent to be viewed as coincidence. This is further proven by the fact Floyd states the biblical story of Susannah and the Elders was the basis for the libretto, however, the opera drastically changes from the original story. In the bible, the story concludes with Susannah being found innocent and the prophet Daniel sentencing the men who accused her of adultery to death. The opera, on the other hand, has a tragic ending, which alludes to the faults of the Second Red Scare.
The elements of McCarthyism are undeniable in this opera, which premiered in 1955. Through analysis of the libretto and score as well as research regarding the rationale behind Floyd’s changes in his adaptation of the biblical story, this paper intends to argue the opera was intended as a political reflection of the effects of McCarthyism. Carlisle Floyd, who had to sign a non-communist document to continue teaching at Florida State University, could not openly admit to this as he could have suffered punishment from the government. However, since time has passed since the Second Red Scare, this opera can now be viewed differently. Susannah was intended to expose McCarthyism and shed light on the injustices in this time of American history.
(A)tonality in Copland's Cold War Musical Aesthetics
Cold War studies present many basic dichotomies analogous to the two-part division of the world by the Iron Curtain. Unexceptionally, music was generally separated into two categories based on perceived political affiliation: tonality rooted in tradition as aligned with Communism and the East and serialism as a representation of musical freedom as aligned with democracy and the West. This categorization heavily influenced musical style throughout the Cold War era as composers realized that, despite their intentions, anything they wrote would likely be understood as a political statement or affiliation and that to compose was to actively address the question of politics.
Aaron Copland's Quartet for Piano and Strings (1950) presents an insightful case study on how the Cold War influenced American musical aesthetics. Jennifer DeLapp-Birkett has shown on multiple occasions how the political associations of musical style influenced Copland's choice of the serial method when composing the Piano Quartet. Her examination of the work focuses on the political factors that influenced the music and how Copland was interacting with an oppositional two-part global political state. However, Emily Abrams Ansari has demonstrated that Copland approached politics with an internationalist vision, working towards breaking down this ideological conflict so that nations with differing political views could work together to improve global affairs. This paper will extend both of these readings of Copland's political views and style to demonstrate how the Piano Quartet was Copland's way of demonstrating that tonality and atonality - and thus, Communism and Capitalism - could effectively function together.
This piece, read in this way, is Copland's multi-layered personal propaganda, demonstrating the possibilities and effectiveness of his internationalist views to the world while protecting his career by identifying his political affiliations to America. Such political affiliations are exemplified by his use of the 12-tone method, but made internationalist by turning the 12-tone method into an almost tonal composition. This reading of Copland's musical style explores an alternative way to understand the history and development of Copland's oeuvre based on his musical and political ideals and presents a new way to look at the interaction of music and politics in Cold War America.
RACIAL EQUALITY AND THE CULTURAL COLD WAR: THE EUROPEAN TOURS OF OPERA SINGERS LEONTYNE PRICE AND MARIAN ANDERSON
In its effort to undermine the Soviet Union’s claims to cultural supremacy during the Cold War, the CIA founded the Congress of Cultural Freedom (CCF) funding various cultural tours in the arts and music. Some of these tours involved African American opera singers Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price. The American government sent these singers on recital and opera tours of Europe, reasoning their presence countered America’s image of suppressed race, exported the message of success and accomplishment were possible within the United States, and elevated the country’s image of high culture to the same level as Europe’s.
From the 1930’s through the 1970’s, racism tarnished the positive image of democracy in the United States. By examining State Department archives, interviews, and concert and opera reviews, this paper will examine how the American government used African American opera singers to respond to their image of racism and the civil rights movement both abroad and in the United States. I will study the career development, repertoire choices, and audience reception of Price and Anderson to explain how they were used to depict a sense of racial harmony and African-American success to counter America’s image of racism. While many advocates of African-American equality were battling against the racial system in the United States, the European-American representation of Anderson and Price supported an image free from racial suppression.
Both artists’ social class and chosen musical styles made it possible for the predominately Caucasian American and European audiences to accept them as ambassadors of opera. The European tours of Anderson and Price were important because as African-Americans they proved that racism in America was not as bad as the Soviet Union claimed. The tours served this purpose and displayed how the singers adapted their images and musical choices in order to survive as people of colour in the predominantly white operatic world. However, Anderson and Price understood the power of their public role as ambassadors and used the tours to advance both themselves and other African-Americans in classical music.
COLD WAR MUSIC EDUCATION: THE TANGLEWOOD SYMPOSIUM AND THE ROLE OF MUSIC IN SCHOOLS IN 1960S AMERICA
In the summer of 1967, the Music Educators National Conference co-sponsored a symposium in Tanglewood, MA, with the express goal of defining the place of music in the American education system and recommending changes to policy and practice. While the place of music as cultural diplomacy was widely established by this point, the place of music in the school curriculum was more precarious; education at the time was heavily emphasizing math and literacy skills, as well as science and technology as ways for America to compete on the global scale. The Tanglewood Symposium, as it has come to be called, produced a document, the Tanglewood Declaration, in which contributors called for music to be placed at the heart of the school curriculum. This document is also credited with establishing a basis for future philosophical work in music education.
Music education occupied a precarious space in the school curriculum in the 1960s. The onset of the Cold War had revealed perceived inadequacies in the public school system: inadequacies that were producing students ill-prepared to compete in an increasingly technological world. Other subjects found a place in the curriculum due to their perceived importance to national security, but the music education profession found itself looking for new ways to justify music’s place in schools.
The Tanglewood Symposium was likely a reaction to a number of factors: for example, the treatment of music education as superfluous, the felt need to compete in a global, technological world, and the Yale Seminar of 1963, a government attempt to address music’s role in the curriculum. This analysis of the Tanglewood Declaration will look at the document through the lens of Cold War policies and attitudes regarding education, and compare the recommendations within with those proposed at the earlier Yale Seminar, to which no music educators were invited.
American Reactions to the Remnants of Nazism: the Case of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra’s 1955 American Tour
In 1955 the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra travelled to the United States for its first American tour. This trip caused controversy in America because the conductor and some members of the orchestra were former Nazis who were exonerated during the American process of denazification. Denazification was the American attempt — in Austria and Germany — to determine who was guilty of association with the Nazis during the period of National Socialism, and to remove them from positions of power and influence. Denazification had ended by 1955, and though West Germany had its own independent government it was still considered an occupied zone. This meant that the United States State Department had to give its approval in order for the orchestra to travel, even though the West German government subsidized the 1955 Berlin Philharmonic tour. The fact that this tour was given approval by the State Department means that to some degree the American government supported it. Therefore, any opposition to the tour by American citizens would be, by extension, resistance to the United States government.
This paper will examine the different ways that Americans reacted to the presence of the Berlin Philharmonic directly, through boycotting and picketing the concerts, and indirectly, attempting to have the tour and concerts cancelled through political means, prior to and during the American tour. Scholarship focusing on the American reception of former Nazi artists that travelled to America during the Cold War is scarce. Few scholars have approached the primary sources (newspapers, government documents, etc.) available from the period with the intention to understand how Americans reacted to the presence of these artists in their country. My conclusions drawn from the analysis of these sources will show that although the American government’s support for the tour made opposition at the grassroots level ineffectual, American citizens did have varied feelings about the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra’s tour and that they did attempt to express them.
Bruce Cockburn's Reception in the Context of the Late Cold War
In the early part of 1983, the Canadian folk-rock singer Bruce Cockburn was sent by Oxfam to refugee camps in southern Mexico and Nicaragua. The point of this trip was to visit refugee camps and cities affected by the revolution and to report his findings to his audience. In the 1980s, Nicaragua was in the midst of a civil war. Two groups were fighting for power, the right-wing militia groups (the Contras) supported by the USA government through the CIA and the left-wing revolutionary government (the Sandinistas) supported by the Cuban government and military. Caught in the middle of this battle were hundreds of thousands of civilians who were forced to either fight or flee their homes. Bruce Cockburn was heavily affected by the living conditions he witnessed in Latin America. Some songs he wrote such as “Nicaragua,” “Dust and Diesel,” and “Santiago Dawn” depict the lives and struggles of the Latin American people. Other songs have a more political overtone—Some are angry, such as “If I Had A Rocket Launcher”; other songs like “Call It Democracy” and “People See Right Through You” point the finger at those in charge. This paper investigates the reception of these songs in Canada in the context of the last decade of the Cold War. The reception of Cockburn’s music can be seen to illustrate broader trends in Canadian views of American politics and issues related to poverty and social justice.
During the Cold War, the United States Information Agency (USIA) used the music of Charles Ives as cultural propaganda. Amongst casual readers with general background knowledge of the USIA’s aims and activities, this statement might, at most, raise eyebrows or cause momentary pause. The USIA co-opted the cultural products of many prominent American artists to engage the Soviet Union in a global “war of ideas.” That the agency would use Ives’ music—which, by the onset of the Cold War, had both already begun to accumulate public prestige in the United States and etch out a niche for itself in the western music canon—should not be difficult to accept. However, to readers familiar with Ives’ biography, and particularly his political writings and compositions from 1900-20, this statement would appear quite suspicious.
Indeed, as I will argue with this paper, it was only after the burgeoning revisionist reconception of Ives’ persona and compositional ethos that began in 1954, that his music could be seen as viable American propaganda by the USIA. Stirred by Sidney and Henry Cowell’s biography of Ives published in that year, Charles Ives and His Music (the first of its kind), the discourse on Ives gradually shifted from examining his ethnographic concerns and radical political ideas of direct democracy, to typecasting him—through exaggeration of his relationship with Transcendentalism—as a bastion of rugged American individualism, freedom, and artistic autonomy. By invoking Pierre Bourdieu’s ideas on capital, I hope to further account for Ives’ co-optation by the USIA by likening the increase of his music’s prestige and popularity to an increase in its cultural capital.
In addition to contributing to the rich field of scholarship debunking this sterile conception of Ives as an autonomous artist, it is my hope that this paper will also stimulate more research on the political use and reception of Ives’ music during the Cold War—an area in Ives scholarship that is, most curiously, hitherto not well explored—and speak more broadly to the implications of revisionism in the Cold War.
A SOUNDTRACK TO COLD WAR SENTIMENTS: MUSICAL APPROPRIATION AND REPRESENTATION IN STANLEY KUBRICK’S FILMS
The later films of Stanley Kubrick’s oeuvre explore a wide range of themes that resonated with their Cold War audiences and sparked ongoing debates for film critics and scholars. When collectively considered as a critical commentary on Cold War society one finds a continuing engagement with the anxiety, isolation, and nostalgia that were a palpable facet of America’s collective consciousness during the 1960s and 1970s. While there has been much discussion of Cold War sentiments in Kubrick’s films, these themes have yet to be approached through the aural elements of these movies.
Music, in particular, communicates and represents these themes through its juxtaposition with visual elements. Kubrick’s films famously feature previously written music that is creatively repurposed to enhance the film’s overall aesthetic. His film soundtracks challenge idealist notions of the autonomous musical work and demonstrate a comprehensive awareness of the historical and cultural subtext that are inextricable from pieces he appropriates.
While Kubrick is primarily celebrated as a masterful and meticulous cinematographer, his use of music is an essential component of his films and represents an underexplored area of study. Auteur theory, which developed during the 1950s and 1960s, relates the role of directors to that of an author and presents the film as an expression of their individual genius. I argue that Kubrick’s use of music is an important factor in his legacy as an auteur and warrants critical examination as the interlocutor between director and audience.
This paper will explore how Kubrick engages with the structure of feeling in Cold War American society through his use of previously composed music in five films: Dr. Strangelove (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Shining (1980), and Full Metal Jacket (1987). It will demonstrate the vital role music plays in augmenting plot narratives by representing the psychosocial development of his characters, and how the soundtrack contributes to both optimistic and pessimistic commentaries on Cold War society. Moreover, it will demonstrate that Stanley Kubrick’s manipulations of music and other art forms are important contributors to his continued renown as an auteur.
Music Programming as American Cold War Radio Propaganda: A Question of Ideology.
As the United States and the Soviet Union settled into the Cold War at the end of World War II, Western journalists and broadcasters faced the ethical dilemma of preserving and presenting objective and truthful content unaffected by the State Department sponsored propaganda that coexisted alongside their broadcasts. Domestic Soviet radio programming, focused primarily on educating and informing its populace, relegated entertainment to the sidelines, presenting an opportunity that the West was quick to capitalize on in the form of Western music, particularly jazz and rock and roll in addition to the unbiased reporting of world news censored by the Communist controlled media. American radio gained a significant following throughout the Soviet Union despite efforts to jam these audio invaders. Edward R. Murrow is quoted as saying: "To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful. (Cull 2015, pg. 189)" In his book, Cold War on the Airwaves, Nicholas Schlosser (2015) reports that as broadcasters became more aware of Communist oppression throughout Eastern Europe and Soviet Russia, their definition of objectivity in their broadcasts evolved to include anti Communist political sentiments. The appearance of objectivity was crucial to legitimize American broadcasts of anti-Communist propaganda while the commitment to unbiased content helped defeat the perception that these broadcasts contained any propaganda at all. This paper will consider the role that objectivity played in the programming of music on radio by the Voice of America (VOA) and how this content, while seeming objective, played a crucial role in American propaganda efforts. Looking for changes in playlists, featured artists or genres and other programming initiatives, this study seeks to inform the reader on this under-represented aspect regarding the role that American music played during the Cold War. Other areas of this research will look into influence from government agencies as well as the Music Advisory Panel, the United States Information Agency and the VOA. Finally, a brief examination of radio infrastructure will help the reader appreciate how music programming for radio became a critical tool in the use of cultural diplomacy and propaganda.
This is from Mack: Where Do I Put This Piece? Tetris, “Korobeiniki,” and Soviet Game Scoring at the End of the Cold War
Released near the end of the Cold War, Tetris (1984) was the Soviet Union’s first entertainment export to cross the Iron Curtain, and multiple versions — most notably the 1989 Nintendo Game Boy one — of the video game became popular across multiple generations of gamers worldwide. It was also the first game to present Soviet elements in a more positive light, such as the inclusion of "Korobeiniki," known thereafter as the "Tetris music," among other Russian musical selections (2015: Plank-Blasko). The soundtrack for Tetris is not only a form of cultural quotation, but also a musical activity enacted by multiple agencies, including the designer, programmer, composer, and every gamer who ever plays the game.
In this paper, I argue that “Korobeiniki” and the game score for Tetris were crucial factors in the acceptance of the game’s Soviet cultural references in the United States and other countries outside of the Soviet Union. “Game scoring,” or the act of composing music for and through gaming, is distinct from other scoring activities. Unlike other musical scoring activities, game scoring depends on — in fact, it arguably is — software programming. Moreover, game scores are unique in that they must allow for an unprecedented level of musical flexibility, given the high degree of user interactivity the video game medium enables and encourages. As such, game scoring necessarily constitutes an at least partially aleatoric (any composition involving chance operations and/or improvisation) compositional activity, the final score being determined as much through gameplay as traditional composition. In game scores for Tetris, for example, “Korobeiniki” competes with sound effects for voice channels on the Game Boy, or, alternatively, may not sound at all, if the player selects another background track.
Game scoring is a significantly different form of musical-cultural quotation than, say, the inclusion of “Korobeiniki” in a film score. Despite the unique attributes of game scoring, however, very little is written about it as a unique compositional activity. The proposed paper is intended to at least begin the process of addressing this lacuna in scholarship. An analysis of the game score for Tetris will help elucidate the cultural perception of the Soviet Union near the end of the Cold War, contribute to research on game scoring as a distinct musical practice, and reveal how game scorers adapt existing pieces to an interactive setting.
In a state so culturally monolithic as the Soviet Union, it only seems natural for people disillusioned with official narratives to seek out alternative discourses. In their attempt to weaponize culture both abroad and at home, the Soviet Union created an official version of culture meant to highlight the virtue of the Soviet worker. However, rather than ensuring orthodoxy, the lack of any alternative alternative led many Russians to create other cultural narratives, largely based on supposedly ‘decadent’ Western cultural forms. Chief among those Western cultural forms was popular music.
The consumption of Western popular music occurred largely through radio broadcasts from Western Europe and bootleg recordings. Music was particularly important for the Soviet youth subculture known as the Stiliagi—literally ‘style hunters’—who sought to express themselves in a manner different to dominant Soviet cultural forms. First appearing in the early 1950s, they listened to jazz and early rock and roll and were marked by their flamboyant styles of dress and outlandish dancing—at least according to Soviet standards.
While subcultural style always serves as an articulation of difference from a cultural mainstream, in a society as culturally proscribed and repressive as that of the Soviet Union, it takes on a distinctly political dimension. This is borne out in the way that making and selling bootleg records was punishable by incarceration. However, in examining the words of Soviet citizens who grew up in this period, it is clear that music was instrumental in offering an alternative to the official cultural narrative. Even an instrumental big band piece could offer a vision of a different way of being. Subcultural style in this context was not just about articulating a personal identity, but also became subversive.
The subversive nature of these cultural activities are reflected in the official responses to them. Many bootleggers were jailed; official state youth groups were used to counter the Stiliagi, and the official press derided them at every turn. By looking at youth culture in a repressive regime as well as that regime’s response to it, a picture begins to emerge of the role of seemingly apolitical popular culture in subverting the Soviet system.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAnti-nationalism and the Paradox of Pan “Americanism” in Alberto Ginastera’s Bomarzo
ReplyDeleteIn 1967, within two weeks, Alberto Ginastera witnessed both the success and the censorship of his opera Bomarzo in Washington D.C. and Buenos Aires, respectively. The opera had proved to be too sexual and violent for Argentinian audiences- qualities that had resulted in rave reviews by politicians. After these divided evaluations, it seemed unprecedented that the following, highly anticipated performance in New York was met with indifference. The musical language that Ginastera had honed for years to be accepted as an “American” composer by Pan American standards was dismissed as trying too hard to present multiple avant-garde techniques.
The opposing receptions of the opera indicate the paradox of “American” music that Ginastera aimed to satisfy. That is, the Pan American public represented in Washington sought a Universalist idiom that would represent an American avant-garde but the avant-garde found the parameters of Universalism too highly-regulated. Repression of nationalism in favour of Universalism was meant to steer Latin American music away from communist ties. However, these parameters opposed the freedom from restraint that they wanted to convey. The removal of nationalism from Ginastera’s Bomarzo prevented him from establishing an identity as Argentinian, yet the United States audiences found his music too contrived to suit American music.
Where Carol Hess has identified the qualities of Bomarzo that make it an anti-nationalist work, this paper will analyze the shift in the United States’ reception of Ginastera both before and after the performance in New York in 1968.I will examine the contrasting receptions of the opera through newspaper reviews, and observe the coinciding political relations between Argentina and the United States through policies by the State Department. These relations are not only indicative of the contradictory views of Latin American music by different groups in the United States; the trajectory of the opera’s reception reveals the ironic loss of identity that Pan Americanism created as nationalism was sublimated in favour of Universalism.
Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah:
ReplyDeleteA political statement on the injustices of McCarthyism
McCarthyism was rampant during the 1950s as witch hunts were being conducted throughout America in search of communists. In many cases, proper evidence was irrelevant and people suspected of communism would be required to submit to intense questioning and investigations. The goal was to have the accused publically admit to thoughts or acts of communism.
Although Carlisle Floyd stated he did not intend to explicitly attack McCarthyism, the ideas behind the Second Red Scare are echoed in the opera, Susannah. The protagonist Susannah, without evidence, is wrongfully accused of adultery by men in power. Her entire community turns on her, demanding she give a public confession of her guilt. The similarities between the opera plot and the political scene in America in the 1950s are too congruent to be viewed as coincidence. This is further proven by the fact Floyd states the biblical story of Susannah and the Elders was the basis for the libretto, however, the opera drastically changes from the original story. In the bible, the story concludes with Susannah being found innocent and the prophet Daniel sentencing the men who accused her of adultery to death. The opera, on the other hand, has a tragic ending, which alludes to the faults of the Second Red Scare.
The elements of McCarthyism are undeniable in this opera, which premiered in 1955. Through analysis of the libretto and score as well as research regarding the rationale behind Floyd’s changes in his adaptation of the biblical story, this paper intends to argue the opera was intended as a political reflection of the effects of McCarthyism. Carlisle Floyd, who had to sign a non-communist document to continue teaching at Florida State University, could not openly admit to this as he could have suffered punishment from the government. However, since time has passed since the Second Red Scare, this opera can now be viewed differently. Susannah was intended to expose McCarthyism and shed light on the injustices in this time of American history.
(A)tonality in Copland's Cold War Musical Aesthetics
ReplyDeleteCold War studies present many basic dichotomies analogous to the two-part division of the world by the Iron Curtain. Unexceptionally, music was generally separated into two categories based on perceived political affiliation: tonality rooted in tradition as aligned with Communism and the East and serialism as a representation of musical freedom as aligned with democracy and the West. This categorization heavily influenced musical style throughout the Cold War era as composers realized that, despite their intentions, anything they wrote would likely be understood as a political statement or affiliation and that to compose was to actively address the question of politics.
Aaron Copland's Quartet for Piano and Strings (1950) presents an insightful case study on how the Cold War influenced American musical aesthetics. Jennifer DeLapp-Birkett has shown on multiple occasions how the political associations of musical style influenced Copland's choice of the serial method when composing the Piano Quartet. Her examination of the work focuses on the political factors that influenced the music and how Copland was interacting with an oppositional two-part global political state. However, Emily Abrams Ansari has demonstrated that Copland approached politics with an internationalist vision, working towards breaking down this ideological conflict so that nations with differing political views could work together to improve global affairs. This paper will extend both of these readings of Copland's political views and style to demonstrate how the Piano Quartet was Copland's way of demonstrating that tonality and atonality - and thus, Communism and Capitalism - could effectively function together.
This piece, read in this way, is Copland's multi-layered personal propaganda, demonstrating the possibilities and effectiveness of his internationalist views to the world while protecting his career by identifying his political affiliations to America. Such political affiliations are exemplified by his use of the 12-tone method, but made internationalist by turning the 12-tone method into an almost tonal composition. This reading of Copland's musical style explores an alternative way to understand the history and development of Copland's oeuvre based on his musical and political ideals and presents a new way to look at the interaction of music and politics in Cold War America.
RACIAL EQUALITY AND THE CULTURAL COLD WAR:
ReplyDeleteTHE EUROPEAN TOURS OF OPERA SINGERS LEONTYNE PRICE AND MARIAN ANDERSON
In its effort to undermine the Soviet Union’s claims to cultural supremacy during the Cold War, the CIA founded the Congress of Cultural Freedom (CCF) funding various cultural tours in the arts and music. Some of these tours involved African American opera singers Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price. The American government sent these singers on recital and opera tours of Europe, reasoning their presence countered America’s image of suppressed race, exported the message of success and accomplishment were possible within the United States, and elevated the country’s image of high culture to the same level as Europe’s.
From the 1930’s through the 1970’s, racism tarnished the positive image of democracy in the United States. By examining State Department archives, interviews, and concert and opera reviews, this paper will examine how the American government used African American opera singers to respond to their image of racism and the civil rights movement both abroad and in the United States. I will study the career development, repertoire choices, and audience reception of Price and Anderson to explain how they were used to depict a sense of racial harmony and African-American success to counter America’s image of racism. While many advocates of African-American equality were battling against the racial system in the United States, the European-American representation of Anderson and Price supported an image free from racial suppression.
Both artists’ social class and chosen musical styles made it possible for the predominately Caucasian American and European audiences to accept them as ambassadors of opera. The European tours of Anderson and Price were important because as African-Americans they proved that racism in America was not as bad as the Soviet Union claimed. The tours served this purpose and displayed how the singers adapted their images and musical choices in order to survive as people of colour in the predominantly white operatic world. However, Anderson and Price understood the power of their public role as ambassadors and used the tours to advance both themselves and other African-Americans in classical music.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteCOLD WAR MUSIC EDUCATION: THE TANGLEWOOD SYMPOSIUM AND THE ROLE OF MUSIC IN SCHOOLS IN 1960S AMERICA
ReplyDeleteIn the summer of 1967, the Music Educators National Conference co-sponsored a symposium in Tanglewood, MA, with the express goal of defining the place of music in the American education system and recommending changes to policy and practice. While the place of music as cultural diplomacy was widely established by this point, the place of music in the school curriculum was more precarious; education at the time was heavily emphasizing math and literacy skills, as well as science and technology as ways for America to compete on the global scale. The Tanglewood Symposium, as it has come to be called, produced a document, the Tanglewood Declaration, in which contributors called for music to be placed at the heart of the school curriculum. This document is also credited with establishing a basis for future philosophical work in music education.
Music education occupied a precarious space in the school curriculum in the 1960s. The onset of the Cold War had revealed perceived inadequacies in the public school system: inadequacies that were producing students ill-prepared to compete in an increasingly technological world. Other subjects found a place in the curriculum due to their perceived importance to national security, but the music education profession found itself looking for new ways to justify music’s place in schools.
The Tanglewood Symposium was likely a reaction to a number of factors: for example, the treatment of music education as superfluous, the felt need to compete in a global, technological world, and the Yale Seminar of 1963, a government attempt to address music’s role in the curriculum. This analysis of the Tanglewood Declaration will look at the document through the lens of Cold War policies and attitudes regarding education, and compare the recommendations within with those proposed at the earlier Yale Seminar, to which no music educators were invited.
American Reactions to the Remnants of Nazism: the Case of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra’s 1955 American Tour
ReplyDeleteIn 1955 the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra travelled to the United States for its first American tour. This trip caused controversy in America because the conductor and some members of the orchestra were former Nazis who were exonerated during the American process of denazification. Denazification was the American attempt — in Austria and Germany — to determine who was guilty of association with the Nazis during the period of National Socialism, and to remove them from positions of power and influence. Denazification had ended by 1955, and though West Germany had its own independent government it was still considered an occupied zone. This meant that the United States State Department had to give its approval in order for the orchestra to travel, even though the West German government subsidized the 1955 Berlin Philharmonic tour. The fact that this tour was given approval by the State Department means that to some degree the American government supported it. Therefore, any opposition to the tour by American citizens would be, by extension, resistance to the United States government.
This paper will examine the different ways that Americans reacted to the presence of the Berlin Philharmonic directly, through boycotting and picketing the concerts, and indirectly, attempting to have the tour and concerts cancelled through political means, prior to and during the American tour. Scholarship focusing on the American reception of former Nazi artists that travelled to America during the Cold War is scarce. Few scholars have approached the primary sources (newspapers, government documents, etc.) available from the period with the intention to understand how Americans reacted to the presence of these artists in their country. My conclusions drawn from the analysis of these sources will show that although the American government’s support for the tour made opposition at the grassroots level ineffectual, American citizens did have varied feelings about the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra’s tour and that they did attempt to express them.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteBruce Cockburn's Reception in the Context of the Late Cold War
ReplyDeleteIn the early part of 1983, the Canadian folk-rock singer Bruce Cockburn was sent by Oxfam to refugee camps in southern Mexico and Nicaragua. The point of this trip was to visit refugee camps and cities affected by the revolution and to report his findings to his audience. In the 1980s, Nicaragua was in the midst of a civil war. Two groups were fighting for power, the right-wing militia groups (the Contras) supported by the USA government through the CIA and the left-wing revolutionary government (the Sandinistas) supported by the Cuban government and military. Caught in the middle of this battle were hundreds of thousands of civilians who were forced to either fight or flee their homes.
Bruce Cockburn was heavily affected by the living conditions he witnessed in Latin America. Some songs he wrote such as “Nicaragua,” “Dust and Diesel,” and “Santiago Dawn” depict the lives and struggles of the Latin American people. Other songs have a more political overtone—Some are angry, such as “If I Had A Rocket Launcher”; other songs like “Call It Democracy” and “People See Right Through You” point the finger at those in charge. This paper investigates the reception of these songs in Canada in the context of the last decade of the Cold War. The reception of Cockburn’s music can be seen to illustrate broader trends in Canadian views of American politics and issues related to poverty and social justice.
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ReplyDeleteCharles Ives, Cold War Revisionism, and the USIA
ReplyDeleteDuring the Cold War, the United States Information Agency (USIA) used the music of Charles Ives as cultural propaganda. Amongst casual readers with general background knowledge of the USIA’s aims and activities, this statement might, at most, raise eyebrows or cause momentary pause. The USIA co-opted the cultural products of many prominent American artists to engage the Soviet Union in a global “war of ideas.” That the agency would use Ives’ music—which, by the onset of the Cold War, had both already begun to accumulate public prestige in the United States and etch out a niche for itself in the western music canon—should not be difficult to accept. However, to readers familiar with Ives’ biography, and particularly his political writings and compositions from 1900-20, this statement would appear quite suspicious.
Indeed, as I will argue with this paper, it was only after the burgeoning revisionist reconception of Ives’ persona and compositional ethos that began in 1954, that his music could be seen as viable American propaganda by the USIA. Stirred by Sidney and Henry Cowell’s biography of Ives published in that year, Charles Ives and His Music (the first of its kind), the discourse on Ives gradually shifted from examining his ethnographic concerns and radical political ideas of direct democracy, to typecasting him—through exaggeration of his relationship with Transcendentalism—as a bastion of rugged American individualism, freedom, and artistic autonomy. By invoking Pierre Bourdieu’s ideas on capital, I hope to further account for Ives’ co-optation by the USIA by likening the increase of his music’s prestige and popularity to an increase in its cultural capital.
In addition to contributing to the rich field of scholarship debunking this sterile conception of Ives as an autonomous artist, it is my hope that this paper will also stimulate more research on the political use and reception of Ives’ music during the Cold War—an area in Ives scholarship that is, most curiously, hitherto not well explored—and speak more broadly to the implications of revisionism in the Cold War.
A SOUNDTRACK TO COLD WAR SENTIMENTS:
ReplyDeleteMUSICAL APPROPRIATION AND REPRESENTATION IN STANLEY KUBRICK’S FILMS
The later films of Stanley Kubrick’s oeuvre explore a wide range of themes that resonated with their Cold War audiences and sparked ongoing debates for film critics and scholars. When collectively considered as a critical commentary on Cold War society one finds a continuing engagement with the anxiety, isolation, and nostalgia that were a palpable facet of America’s collective consciousness during the 1960s and 1970s. While there has been much discussion of Cold War sentiments in Kubrick’s films, these themes have yet to be approached through the aural elements of these movies.
Music, in particular, communicates and represents these themes through its juxtaposition with visual elements. Kubrick’s films famously feature previously written music that is creatively repurposed to enhance the film’s overall aesthetic. His film soundtracks challenge idealist notions of the autonomous musical work and demonstrate a comprehensive awareness of the historical and cultural subtext that are inextricable from pieces he appropriates.
While Kubrick is primarily celebrated as a masterful and meticulous cinematographer, his use of music is an essential component of his films and represents an underexplored area of study. Auteur theory, which developed during the 1950s and 1960s, relates the role of directors to that of an author and presents the film as an expression of their individual genius. I argue that Kubrick’s use of music is an important factor in his legacy as an auteur and warrants critical examination as the interlocutor between director and audience.
This paper will explore how Kubrick engages with the structure of feeling in Cold War American society through his use of previously composed music in five films: Dr. Strangelove (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Shining (1980), and Full Metal Jacket (1987). It will demonstrate the vital role music plays in augmenting plot narratives by representing the psychosocial development of his characters, and how the soundtrack contributes to both optimistic and pessimistic commentaries on Cold War society. Moreover, it will demonstrate that Stanley Kubrick’s manipulations of music and other art forms are important contributors to his continued renown as an auteur.
Stephen Bright
ReplyDeleteMusic Programming as American Cold War Radio Propaganda:
A Question of Ideology.
As the United States and the Soviet Union settled into the Cold War at the end of World War II, Western journalists and broadcasters faced the ethical dilemma of preserving and presenting objective and truthful content unaffected by the State Department sponsored propaganda that coexisted alongside their broadcasts. Domestic Soviet radio programming, focused primarily on educating and informing its populace, relegated entertainment to the sidelines, presenting an opportunity that the West was quick to capitalize on in the form of Western music, particularly jazz and rock and roll in addition to the unbiased reporting of world news censored by the Communist controlled media. American radio gained a significant following throughout the Soviet Union despite efforts to jam these audio invaders. Edward R. Murrow is quoted as saying: "To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful. (Cull 2015, pg. 189)" In his book, Cold War on the Airwaves, Nicholas Schlosser (2015) reports that as broadcasters became more aware of Communist oppression throughout Eastern Europe and Soviet Russia, their definition of objectivity in their broadcasts evolved to include anti Communist political sentiments.
The appearance of objectivity was crucial to legitimize American broadcasts of anti-Communist propaganda while the commitment to unbiased content helped defeat the perception that these broadcasts contained any propaganda at all. This paper will consider the role that objectivity played in the programming of music on radio by the Voice of America (VOA) and how this content, while seeming objective, played a crucial role in American propaganda efforts. Looking for changes in playlists, featured artists or genres and other programming initiatives, this study seeks to inform the reader on this under-represented aspect regarding the role that American music played during the Cold War. Other areas of this research will look into influence from government agencies as well as the Music Advisory Panel, the United States Information Agency and the VOA. Finally, a brief examination of radio infrastructure will help the reader appreciate how music programming for radio became a critical tool in the use of cultural diplomacy and propaganda.
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ReplyDeleteThis is from Mack:
ReplyDeleteWhere Do I Put This Piece? Tetris, “Korobeiniki,” and Soviet Game Scoring at the End of the Cold War
Released near the end of the Cold War, Tetris (1984) was the Soviet Union’s first entertainment export to cross the Iron Curtain, and multiple versions — most notably the 1989 Nintendo Game Boy one — of the video game became popular across multiple generations of gamers worldwide. It was also the first game to present Soviet elements in a more positive light, such as the inclusion of "Korobeiniki," known thereafter as the "Tetris music," among other Russian musical selections (2015: Plank-Blasko). The soundtrack for Tetris is not only a form of cultural quotation, but also a musical activity enacted by multiple agencies, including the designer, programmer, composer, and every gamer who ever plays the game.
In this paper, I argue that “Korobeiniki” and the game score for Tetris were crucial factors in the acceptance of the game’s Soviet cultural references in the United States and other countries outside of the Soviet Union. “Game scoring,” or the act of composing music for and through gaming, is distinct from other scoring activities. Unlike other musical scoring activities, game scoring depends on — in fact, it arguably is — software programming. Moreover, game scores are unique in that they must allow for an unprecedented level of musical flexibility, given the high degree of user interactivity the video game medium enables and encourages. As such, game scoring necessarily constitutes an at least partially aleatoric (any composition involving chance operations and/or improvisation) compositional activity, the final score being determined as much through gameplay as traditional composition. In game scores for Tetris, for example, “Korobeiniki” competes with sound effects for voice channels on the Game Boy, or, alternatively, may not sound at all, if the player selects another background track.
Game scoring is a significantly different form of musical-cultural quotation than, say, the inclusion of “Korobeiniki” in a film score. Despite the unique attributes of game scoring, however, very little is written about it as a unique compositional activity. The proposed paper is intended to at least begin the process of addressing this lacuna in scholarship. An analysis of the game score for Tetris will help elucidate the cultural perception of the Soviet Union near the end of the Cold War, contribute to research on game scoring as a distinct musical practice, and reveal how game scorers adapt existing pieces to an interactive setting.
In a state so culturally monolithic as the Soviet Union, it only seems natural for people disillusioned with official narratives to seek out alternative discourses. In their attempt to weaponize culture both abroad and at home, the Soviet Union created an official version of culture meant to highlight the virtue of the Soviet worker. However, rather than ensuring orthodoxy, the lack of any alternative alternative led many Russians to create other cultural narratives, largely based on supposedly ‘decadent’ Western cultural forms. Chief among those Western cultural forms was popular music.
ReplyDeleteThe consumption of Western popular music occurred largely through radio broadcasts from Western Europe and bootleg recordings. Music was particularly important for the Soviet youth subculture known as the Stiliagi—literally ‘style hunters’—who sought to express themselves in a manner different to dominant Soviet cultural forms. First appearing in the early 1950s, they listened to jazz and early rock and roll and were marked by their flamboyant styles of dress and outlandish dancing—at least according to Soviet standards.
While subcultural style always serves as an articulation of difference from a cultural mainstream, in a society as culturally proscribed and repressive as that of the Soviet Union, it takes on a distinctly political dimension. This is borne out in the way that making and selling bootleg records was punishable by incarceration. However, in examining the words of Soviet citizens who grew up in this period, it is clear that music was instrumental in offering an alternative to the official cultural narrative. Even an instrumental big band piece could offer a vision of a different way of being. Subcultural style in this context was not just about articulating a personal identity, but also became subversive.
The subversive nature of these cultural activities are reflected in the official responses to them. Many bootleggers were jailed; official state youth groups were used to counter the Stiliagi, and the official press derided them at every turn. By looking at youth culture in a repressive regime as well as that regime’s response to it, a picture begins to emerge of the role of seemingly apolitical popular culture in subverting the Soviet system.
Title: "Back in the U.S.S.R--Popular Music and Counter Culture in the Soviet Union"
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