Update: Um. No, dearie. There's nothing "McCarthyite" about saying Marc Blitzstein was a Communist, he was very publicly a member of the Communist Party from the 1930s. He was a true believer who, among other things, liked to browbeat other composers who he held were not sufficiently Stalinist era socialist realist enough. Try reading Mark the Music, Eric Gordon's fine but disillusioning biography of him. He was a real jerk.
"It seems to me that to organize on the basis of feeding people or righting social injustice and all that is very valuable. But to rally people around the idea of modernism, modernity, or something is simply silly. I mean, I don't know what kind of a cause that is, to be up to date. I think it ultimately leads to fashion and snobbery and I'm against it." Jack Levine: January 3, 1915 – November 8, 2010 LEVEL BILLIONAIRES OUT OF EXISTENCE
Sunday, November 20, 2016
It's So Easy That Even A Communist Could Figure It Out - Marc Blitzstein - The Cradle Will Rock - The Freedom of the Press
Update: Um. No, dearie. There's nothing "McCarthyite" about saying Marc Blitzstein was a Communist, he was very publicly a member of the Communist Party from the 1930s. He was a true believer who, among other things, liked to browbeat other composers who he held were not sufficiently Stalinist era socialist realist enough. Try reading Mark the Music, Eric Gordon's fine but disillusioning biography of him. He was a real jerk.
Hell, I don't know much about modern composers, and I knew Blitzstein was a card-carrying Commie.
ReplyDeleteI still like the recording of "The Airborne Symphony" I have, with Orson Welles narrating. It has its clunky moments, but over all, it works; especially the litany of the cities. "Call the names....call the names....call the names....."