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Music in America's Cold War Diplomacy
By Danielle Fosler-Lussier UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Copyright © 2015 The Regents of the University of California
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-520-95978-1
CHAPTER 1
Classical Music and the Mediation of Prestige
From the early days of the U.S. government's Cultural Presentations program, many of the musicians who were sent abroad played classical music—an American offshoot of a European tradition. The emphasis on classical music was not intended to be exclusive: State Department officials and the ACA recognized the danger of focusing on any one kind of music. Still, ANTA's Music Advisory Panel comprised members chosen for their eminence in American art music circles, including Virgil Thomson, composer and critic; Howard Hanson, composer and director of the Eastman School of Music; William Schuman, composer and director of the Juilliard School; Milton Katims, violist and orchestral conductor; and Alfred Frankenstein, music critic. The panelists typically tried to be fair in evaluating projects, but on the basis of their personal preferences they steered musicians away from popular music. In 1955, for instance, the panel agreed that "show tunes and folk music should be discouraged, as there are no standards by which to judge 'light music' except 'charm,' and charm is hard to judge, and is not international in its acceptance."
The prominence of classical music in the program was also a strategic choice. Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Andrew H. Berding told the ACA in 1958 that the pressure of Soviet propaganda demanded a response that favored elite culture. As Berding explained it, the Soviets claimed "that only a nation that is a cultured nation is a mature nation; only a nation that is a mature nation can make the decisions that are now called for in the world of today." Presenting the "highest" forms of the arts could help the United States: "we have to show through our actions that the United States is a highly-cultured nation with real achievements in the arts, education, literature, etc. and make that manifest to other peoples."
The usefulness of art music as a means for American diplomacy was not guaranteed, however. First, this musical tradition was not American in origin but European. Many of the most famous American performers were born in Europe (Rudolf Serkin, Isaac Stern, Eugene Ormandy), and many American composers were born in Europe or trained in Europe by European teachers (Kurt Weill, Aaron Copland). Robert Schnitzer, who coordinated U.S. cultural presentations through ANTA, called Leonard Bernstein "the answer to our prayers as an American born and trained conductor." It was difficult for the United States to offer art music without drawing accusations that the music was not truly American. Furthermore, European classical music was not universally liked or even universally familiar. Not surprisingly, this music was known mainly to elite, mostly European-educated, minorities, their numbers constituting a small fraction of the people who might be reached through other means. Although American art music had occasionally impressed listeners elsewhere in the world, relatively little of it was known outside America's borders.
Nevertheless, classical music played a vital role in establishing the power relationships that made the Cultural Presentations program effective. The program's staff consciously chose elite members of society and opinion leaders as target audiences for musical diplomacy. According to Glenn Wolfe and Roy Larsen, who led a review of the Cultural Presentations program from 1961 to 1962, "audiences of this kind, wherever they can be gathered together, offer benefits in fulfilling the purpose of the program far greater than their size would indicate." Despite the limited appeal of art music, it could attract members of this educated segment of the world's population. Even the newest, most difficult music was useful in this regard. Evaluations by the posts and the State Department reveal that—just as in Europe and the United States—performances of avant-garde art music were extremely important to a small number of influential people.
Crucially, the European tradition of classical music was imbued with social prestige—and its prestige was more widely recognized than the numbers of listeners would suggest. Comparatively few listeners worldwide were intimately familiar with classical music, but many more knew of its existence, and they associated it with Europe and high social class. Thus, the sending of classical music amounted to a gesture: it was not only the music that mattered but also the knowledge of its significance. One could make even more refined judgments among types of art music, distinguishing between the newest music in the most "advanced" avant-garde styles and more widely accepted styles. Nicolas Slonimsky, a Music Panel member who had traveled to the Soviet Union to evaluate possibilities for cultural programming, remarked in 1970 that "countries are offended when less advanced composers, such as Barber and Copland, are offered to them." Classical music and its avant-garde offshoot were part of a symbolic system in which the association with European elite culture was important to the value of the music. The very act of providing music that required listening expertise was meant to indicate a social judgment about its recipients. This music was evidence that the United States deemed these listeners worthy of a sophisticated cultural experience and estimated that they were equipped to enjoy it.
In some instances the compliment was taken in exactly those symbolic terms. When the Merce Cunningham Dance Company visited Latin America in August and September 1968 with a program of avant-garde music and dance, audience members expressed opinions ranging from "Marvelous!" to "Terrible!" In Caracas, Venezuela, some walked out on the performances. Nonetheless, the English-language Daily Journal, published in Caracas, reported that the Cunningham group was satisfied. According to this article, the dancers thought that "the Venezuelan audiences understood them better than all the others, were more sophisticated in their reactions and were more sympathetic to experimental and modern techniques—than the audiences in the great capitals of Mexico City, Rio and Buenos Aires." The article's author understood the compliment as elevating Caracas within the order of cities, but his words also reflect a humble willingness to take the Cunningham dancers' opinion as definitive: "We are proud that the Caracas audiences struck them as their best." By making a claim that Venezuelan audiences understood music in the most difficult and up-to-date styles, the music critic asserted Venezuela's place in a hierarchy of respect.
In the postcolonial world, many people had contact with European culture through education, the press, colonial institutions, or other means. For them, classical music had special prestige, its latest incarnation as avant-garde "new music" especially so. If Venezuelans understood this music, and the American performers acknowledged their understanding, then Venezuelans could consider themselves participants in this prestige music: they mattered in the world this music represented. Christopher Small has noted that classical music "can often function as a vehicle for the social aspirations of upwardly mobile people—'This is who I am,' which can easily slip over into 'This is who I want to be,' and even, 'This is who I want to be seen as being.'" It is apparent in this Venezuelan case that this aspiration could be mobilized not only on an individual scale but also on an international scale: wanting one's city and one's country to be taken seriously as part of a global music scene.
In this way classical music could offer a special sense of belonging to an elite musical community. International communication about cultural presentations typically included either expressions of joy over the implied compliment of receiving American musical performances or expressions of regret—even anger—if a country found itself neglected musically. Because news of American, Soviet, and Chinese cultural presentations was frequently printed in newspapers and discussed over the radio, citizens of potential host countries were well aware if they were being passed over. The desire to make populations feel "included" was especially pressing in Eastern Europe, where the aim of U.S. information programs was to keep citizens informed and "to let them know they are not forgotten." When the Polish press reported that the Boston Symphony Orchestra had appeared in Moscow and Prague but omitted Warsaw, the U.S. ambassador to Poland requested an appearance by the Cleveland Orchestra to remedy hurt feelings. Emotions and beliefs about belonging were not merely ancillary to the program of offering music abroad. They were an essential part of the project.
Here we might borrow a term from anthropology, considering musicians' tours under the Cultural Presentations program as a form of "gift economy." The circulation of gifts delineates social relationships, including power relations. The recipient of a gift can incur particular obligations or a lowering of social status, and even gifts that appear to be free can be given in self-interest. A "gift" in this sense is far from altruistic: the giver expects reciprocity, and the recipient's obligation can be weighty and lasting. The ephemeral nature of a musical performance makes it an unusual form of gift for consideration in these terms. As Annette Weiner has pointed out, however, some possessions can be given away and yet kept at the same time: these gifts "are imbued with the intrinsic and ineffable identities of their owners." The vast geographical distances between givers and recipients and the fact that they were not personally acquainted also differentiate this situation from the typical gift economy, yet the gift of classical music defined social and power relationships among nations much as a gift might link neighbors. These relationships were not unilateral. The receivers had significant power to determine the value of the gift and even to make demands on the United States as giver.
A closer look at the relationships between givers and receivers will help us see more clearly how classical music carried prestige. The social value of any kind of music is not a given, static quantity; rather, it is assigned by the people who use that music and subject to change as their ideas about the music develop. We see in the situations described below that even as host countries demanded that the State Department send them prestigious music, the public's opinion about that very music had to be actively cultivated through many media if the music was to be well received. Musical sounds did not travel unencumbered to new places. They were always accompanied by explanations, associations, and histories. Although these stories were usually treated as introductory or accompanying material distinct from "the music," they played an essential part in bringing the music across to others—that is, in mediating it. I use the term mediated in an expanded sense that includes not only the transmission of music via recording or broadcast technologies but also the ways in which writing, social interaction, and other forms of intervention influence listeners' attitudes toward what they hear. If, for example, a listener thinks well of a performance but reads in the newspaper the next morning that the local critic found the performance lacking, the news may color the listener's memory of the performance, reshaping the listener's experience in retrospect.
A concert by musicians from the United States was usually presented as a straightforward gift, an opportunity for unmediated, face-to-face contact. Nevertheless, assertions of quality, explanations of historical value, compliments to the hosts as listeners, and countless other verbal qualifications surrounded the music and shaped perceptions of its value. In selecting music to send, State Department officials carefully weighed the quality of the music and its prestige, but listeners abroad determined these factors more conclusively, and their assessments were conveyed back to the State Department as reports of success or failure that then influenced the next round of choices.
QUALITY AND VALUE
Nowhere was the assessment of music's quality more stringent than in Japan. Japanese critics—quite a few of them European expatriates but some native-born—were fiercely skeptical of American performers. Japanese audiences demanded not only elite Western classical music but also impeccable performances by the most famous musicians America could offer. At one point competing music festivals in Osaka and Tokyo each sought to bring a top American symphony orchestra to Japan. The U.S. embassy sent a terse telegram to the secretary of state detailing the scrutiny with which American orchestras were judged:
Japanese regard Philadelphia only slightly below Boston but with New York definitely one of three great American orchestras. Possibility Boston visit widely known, and anything other than Philadelphia would be pronounced anti-climax. If Boston fails [to] come, Osaka festival management will be most unhappy. Without consulting them, embassy predicts they would happily settle for Philadelphia. Rather [than] Cleveland or Chicago, however, predict festival would go back to Belgian orchestra they have on string. Japanese do not consider Cleveland or Chicago as top orchestras. New Orleans definitely not acceptable.
Sending anything less than the best—that is, the best as perceived by the discerning Japanese audience—would compromise the effectiveness of the Cultural Presentations program. When the Little Orchestra Society, an accomplished chamber ensemble that revived neglected classical works, came to Japan from New York, Japanese critics who had never heard of the ensemble were unimpressed. The embassy reported, "Our experience with the Little Orchestra Society this past spring confirms our views that reputation is at least as important as quality. The Little Orchestra tour was unsuccessful simply because the sophisticated Tokyo critics were not prepared to accept the Little Orchestra as one of the world's major symphony orchestras. I was not surprised."
The Japanese press called the Cold War competition between the Soviet Union and the United States a "cultural battle," with the Americans falling behind the Soviets in the number and quality of attractions presented. The Soviet Union routinely sent its most famous artists to Japan, and the Japanese public could compare the quality of American dancers with the Bolshoi Ballet, American actors with the Moscow Art Theatre, as well as with the most renowned European performers. Under these conditions it was not difficult for Japanese concert organizers to place the embassy and the State Department under duress: if the wrong attraction was sent, the State Department would lose the respect of the elite Japanese concertgoers it was courting. Classical music was not the only kind of music that could be regarded as "top" quality—a jazz performance by a famous artist such as Louis Armstrong or Dizzy Gillespie could also qualify—but the positive association between classical music and high social status wielded special power. This association was not sufficient to rescue a little-known group, as in the case of the Little Orchestra Society, but considerations of genre remained a factor in foreign publics' assessment of the music they received.
Even in places where Western music was not widely preferred, audiences took careful note of the quality and prestige of the music they were offered. In Ethiopia, as in Japan, competition from Soviet and Chinese cultural presentations made it seem urgent that the United States send first-rate artists. The embassy in Addis Ababa firmly rejected the proposed visit of a collegiate theater ensemble, citing the inevitable comparisons with Soviet artists. The prestige tours of the New York Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra to Europe and the USSR in 1955 and 1956 had received worldwide press: people in the developing world asked for comparable treatment. The American embassy in Lima, Peru, received complaints "that the top U.S. performers are sent to Europe and other areas and the lesser known ones to Latin America." The embassy in Baghdad reported similar comments from the public. Because embassy staff served as mediators of information to and from the State Department, they were privy to complaints and requests from locals, and they developed a sensitivity to feelings of neglect among the populations where they served. Many of the staff also had a personal interest in hearing good music. As a result of all these factors, the State Department routinely received lobbying messages from its embassies all over the world, asking for more "top groups."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Music in America's Cold War Diplomacy by Danielle Fosler-Lussier. Copyright © 2015 The Regents of the University of California. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS.
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