Dangerous Melodies: Classical Music in America from the Great War through the Cold War

by Jonathan Rosenberg

Overview

A Juilliard-trained musician and professor of history explores the fascinating entanglement of classical music with American foreign relations.

Dangerous Melodies vividly evokes a time when classical music stood at the center of twentieth-century American life, occupying a prominent place in the nation’s culture and politics. The work of renowned conductors, instrumentalists, and singers—and the activities of orchestras and opera companies—were intertwined with momentous international events, especially the two world wars and the long Cold War.

Jonathan Rosenberg exposes the politics behind classical music, showing how German musicians were dismissed or imprisoned during World War I, while numerous German compositions were swept from American auditoriums. He writes of the accompanying impassioned protests, some of which verged on riots, by soldiers and ordinary citizens. Yet, during World War II, those same compositions were no longer part of the political discussion, while Russian music, especially Shostakovich’s, was used as a tool to strengthen the US-Soviet alliance. During the Cold War, accusations of communism were leveled against members of the American music community, while the State Department sent symphony orchestras to play around the world, even performing behind the Iron Curtain.

Rich with a stunning array of composers and musicians, including Karl Muck, Arturo Toscanini, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Kirsten Flagstad, Aaron Copland, Van Cliburn, and Leonard Bernstein, Dangerous Melodies delves into the volatile intersection of classical music and world politics to reveal a tumultuous history of twentieth-century America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393608427
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	12/10/2019
Pages:	512
Sales rank:	412,028
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.80(d)

About the Author

Jonathan Rosenberg, professor of twentieth-century US history at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, is author of Dangerous Melodies: Classical Music in America from the Great War through the Cold War; How Far the Promised Land?: World Affairs and the American Civil Rights Movement from the First World War to Vietnam; and co-author of Kennedy, Johnson, and the Quest for Justice: The Civil Rights Tapes. He lives in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

Part I Terrorized by the Kaiser

Chapter 1 "We Must Hate the Germans": Tormented by Wagner and Strauss 3

Chapter 2 "It Would Be a Gross Mistake to Play Patriotic Airs": Locking Up the Maestros 44

Chapter 3 "There Is No Visible Relationship between a Wagner Opera and a Submarine": from Manhattan Riots to Wagner's Piano 86

Part II Hitler's Specter

Chapter 4 "I Want to Teach a Lesson to Those Ill-Bred Nazis": Toscanini, Furtwängler, and Hitler 127

Chapter 5 "Let Us Conquer Darkness with the Burning Light of Art": Shostakovich and Toscanini Confront the Dictators 170

Chapter 6 "I Come Here as a Musician": Furtwängler, Gieseking, Flagstad, Karajan-and Hitler's Ghost 210

Part III Confronting Communism

Chapter 7 "The Obedient Instrument of the State": Shostakovich and Copland in the Age of McCarthy 277

Chapter 8 "Khrushchev Wouldn't Know a B-flat if He Heard One": Symphony Orchestras Fight the Cold War 320

Coda: "The Baton Is Mightier than the Sword": Berliners, Ohioans, and Chinese Communists 359

Acknowledgments 381

Notes 387

Credits 463

Index 465

Editorial Reviews

09/23/2019

Seemingly staid concert halls that were once roiled by ideological battles come into consideration in this probing study of the geopolitics of classical music. Hunter College history professor Rosenberg (How Far the Promised Land) starts with America’s musical hysteria during WWI, including riots against “German” music, purges of German (or German-American) musicians and conductors from orchestras, and bans on Wagner’s operas. The 1930s and ’40s, he notes, saw less jingoism but equally ferocious protests against musicians tied to Germany’s Nazi regime; meanwhile, Americans applauded Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s “Seventh Symphony” in 1942 to signal wartime solidarity with the Soviets. The Cold War saw America weaponize classical music against Soviet communism, in this telling, as orchestras and musicians went abroad to display American cultural achievements, climaxing in pianist Van Cliburn’s triumph at Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958, which won him a ticker tape parade back in New York. Rosenberg smartly frames this history as a battle between a “musical nationalism” that saw classical music as a projection of national diplomacy and influence, and a “musical universalism” that emphasized its power to unite humanity. Rosenberg’s prose can be dry, but classical music aficionados will find much enjoyable lore from a time when the music was at the center of international rivalries. Photos. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

Riveting and eye opening, Dangerous Melodies tells the story of a long period in American history when classical music played an intensely dramatic role in how US citizens viewed world events, often fearing for their very safety if certain performances were to take place. Thoroughly researched and well written, the book offers both scholar and general reader invaluable information through gripping stories of intrigue, heroism, and villainy.

L. Michael Griffel

Jonathan Rosenberg’s important book provides a panoramic yet fascinatingly detailed—and often surprising—view of the political role played, willingly or otherwise, by classical music and musicians in the United States through much of the twentieth century. Highly recommended for anyone who cares about the intersection of art and politics.

Harvey Sachs

Authoritative….not only valuable and fair-minded history but an unceasingly engaging series of tales.

Tim Page - Washington Post

Backed up by meticulous scholarship, Dangerous Melodies is clearly motivated by a great love for music; throughout this tribute to its emotional power, the author poses insightful and disturbing questions about the political uses that can be made of humanity’s deep need for artistic communication.

Eugene Drucker

Rosenberg masterfully tells these stories.

Booklist

A riveting and illuminating book.

Lloyd Schwartz - Wall Street Journal

Jonathan Rosenberg provides a richly textured portrait of how classical music, with its concentration of German and Russian repertoire and performers, could fixate American communities and give rise to sentiments across the political spectrum, from knee-jerk nationalism to subtle reflection. The result is an engrossing story that illuminates an earlier era while serving as a cautionary tale for our own.

James M. Keller

Rosenberg masterfully tells these stories.

Booklist

★ 2019-09-11
For half a century, classical music reflected America's identity on the world stage.

In a thoroughly researched and engrossing history, Rosenberg (Twentieth Century U.S. History/Hunter Coll. and CUNY Graduate Center; How Far the Promised Land?: World Affairs and the Civil Rights Movement From the First World War to Vietnam, 2005, etc.) reveals the surprising connection between classical music and world politics from the early 1900s until the end of the Cold War. During these years, classical music became imbued "with political and ideological meaning" that helped Americans "decide what was worth fighting for and why. It helped to illuminate the meaning of democracy, freedom, and patriotism" as well as "tyranny and oppression." Because music seemed so potent a force, debate raged over which music and which performers should be heard in concert halls: Musical nationalists believed that certain composers, performers, or conductors could contaminate the nation and should be banned; musical universalists held that music transcended politics and "could speak to the hopes and dreams of all humanity." The two positions became violently opposed during World War I, when "uncontrolled xenophobia and hypernationalism" focused on Germans. Concerts and contracts were canceled, two acclaimed maestros were imprisoned, and "The Star-Spangled Banner" became a requisite part of an orchestra's repertoire. Americans, Rosenberg writes, "came to see Germans as demonic, whether they were fighting on a European battlefield or directing symphony orchestras." By the next war, however, universalists prevailed, and the idea of "enemy music" disappeared, replaced by "the notion that classical music, German compositions included, could help vanquish malevolent regimes." As Boston Symphony conductor Serge Koussevitsky put it, "of all the arts, music is the most powerful medium against evil." That sentiment continued during the Cold War, when the American government sent symphony orchestras and performers throughout the world "to display the fruits of liberal democracy to friend and foe." Among the stars of that effort was New York Philharmonic conductor Leonard Bernstein, who believed that classical music "might play a part in building a more compassionate and cooperative world."

A richly detailed and freshly illuminating musical/political history.

Kirkus Reviews

11/01/2019

The subject of this book might at first seem obscure, even acknowledging that classical music once played a far more prominent role in American cultural life than it does today. Imagine the selection of a conductor exciting nationwide comment, as it did in 1949 when the Chicago Symphony Orchestra offered a position to Wilhelm Furtwängler. Yet it's remarkable how much Rosenberg's (history, Hunter Coll.; How Far the Promised Land?) detailed study applies to current events and cultural discourse. His examination turns on the tension between nationalism and universalism, without ever declaring in favor of either. Instead, Rosenberg, a Juilliard-trained musician, highlights how global events and international politics impact aspects of cultural life that seem far removed from such concerns. The author convincingly argues that art, and discourse around art, does not take place in a vacuum—and that the tension he describes will never be truly settled. VERDICT A clear-eyed and perspicacious work for classical music scholars and fans and anyone interested in the intersection of politics and culture.—Genevieve Williams, Pacific Lutheran Univ. Lib., Tacoma

Library Journal

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