{"id":2094,"date":"2021-09-06T22:40:38","date_gmt":"2021-09-07T02:40:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=2094"},"modified":"2021-09-08T01:02:51","modified_gmt":"2021-09-08T05:02:51","slug":"copland-and-joe-mccarthy-on-npr-a-surreal-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2021\/09\/copland-and-joe-mccarthy-on-npr-a-surreal-experience.html","title":{"rendered":"Copland and Joe McCarthy on NPR \u2013 a &#8220;Surreal Experience&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Excerpt from \u201cAaron Copland: American Populist&quot;\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0kAXmbCHCY8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAaron Copland and the Spirit of Labor Day\u201d \u2013 the radio documentary I was delighted to produce for the enterprising NPR newsmagazine \u201c1A\u201d \u2013 is archived\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/the1a.org\/segments\/aaron-copland-and-the-spirit-of-labor-day\/\">here.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I received a wonderfully bristling response from Steve Robinson, who for more than a decade ran WFMT\/Chicago when it was (by far) the best classical-music radio station in the US. Steve writes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe Copland program was entertaining, informative and, if I can use a word that fell out of favor in public radio decades ago, educational.&nbsp; Listening to this one-hour special on a nationally syndicated news program was a surreal experience and took me back to my early days in public radio (late &#8217;60&#8217;s&#8230;) when stations weren&#8217;t afraid to air documentary programs about classical music that were challenging and thought provoking.&nbsp;I had thought those days were gone forever.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I share Steve\u2019s admiration for Rupert Allman, who produces \u201c1A\u201d and proposed that the complex \u2013 and timely, and controversial \u2013 Copland odyssey be allocated a full 50-minute slot.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The show narrates in considerable detail Copland\u2019s adventures on the political left \u2013 and the price he paid: a 1953 interrogation by Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn, which we re-enacted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was expertly partnered by Peter Bogdanoff, with whom I have created six documentary films \u2013 including \u201cAaron Copland: American Populist\u201d \u2013 that Naxos will release in November in tandem with my new book&nbsp;<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/josephhorowitz.com\/content.asp?elemento_id=68\"><em>Dvorak\u2019s Prophecy and the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music<\/em>.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here\u2019s a listener\u2019s guide to the radio show:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>PART ONE:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1:40: \u201cInto the Streets May First,\u201d Copland\u2019s prize-winning 1934 workers\u2019 song (a possible radio premiere)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>4:30: Copland\u2019s advice to \u201cparticipants in revolutionary activity\u201d interested in producing \u201ca good mass song\u201d as \u201ca powerful weapon in the class struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>5:33: Copland addresses a Communist picnic in Minnesota, talking to farmers as \u201cone Red to another.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>8:00: Backlash: the Red Scare and \u201ca resulting climate of fear and intolerance, of division and polarization, of futility of dialogue and informed discussion\u201d \u2013 all \u201cpertinent today.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>PART TWO:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>14:05: Copland\u2019s Piano Variations (1930) \u2013 a modernist \u201cwake-up call,\u201d a \u201cnew American sound\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>16:00: In Mexico, Copland finds himself \u201ca little envious\u201d of artists and musicians who inform the fate and identity of a nation, versus \u201cworking in a vacuum\u201d in the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>17:25: In search of \u201cnew musical audiences,\u201d Copland fashions a style \u201cfor both us and them\u201d \u2013 and takes it to Hollywood, where Erich Korngold\u2019s musical upholsteries sound Viennese.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>20:35: A trial run for Hollywood \u2013 Copland composes his best film score, today the most important Copland score we don\u2019t know:&nbsp;<em>The City<\/em>&nbsp;(1939). It embodies a new American sound for the cinema \u2013 and also a manifesto on the left, propaganda for an activist government. We audition four excerpts, narrated and conducted by Angel Gil-Ordonez with&nbsp;<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.postclassical.com\">PostClassical Ensemble.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>PART THREE:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>34:07: Historian Joseph McCartin on the collision courses charted by Copland and McCarthy<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>35:50: Copland\u2019s interrogation by Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn. Asked if he has ever been a \u201cCommunist sympathizer,\u201d or has attended \u201ca Communist meeting of any kind,\u201d he wriggles as best he can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>40:15: Closing a circle, abandoning the \u201cnew audience\u201d he once courted, Copland laboriously fashions a valedictory Piano Fantasy (1957) returning to the dissonant idiom of the Piano Variations he composed nearly three decades before. With commentary by pianist Benjamin Pasternack, who ultimately finds Copland the man inscrutable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>43:48: The Copland story as a parable about the fate of the artist in American culture and society \u2013 a \u201csynthetic populist,\u201d he\u2019s both \u201ciconic and marginal,\u201d residing \u201cboth inside and outside the American experience.\u201d I tell an eyewitness story about Copland being disrespected by the New York Philharmonic (1980) and contrast that with the manner in which Benjamin Britten was esteemed in Great Britain. Notwithstanding Copland\u2019s influence and celebrity, his aspiration that he and his fellow American composers might shape the cultural affairs of a nation \u2013 as Carlos Chavez and Diego Rivera could in Mexico \u2013 remained unrealized.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My parting shot (48:40): America\u2019s artists have been allotted \u201can insufficient role.\u201d My forthcoming&nbsp;<strong><em>Dvorak\u2019s Prophecy and the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music<\/em><\/strong>&nbsp;argues a failure to identify a \u201cusable past.\u201d \u201cWe absolutely need to connect with our past. In general, as Americans, we have short memories. And right now if we cannot claim and refresh a common cultural inheritance, we\u2019ll be in trouble as a nation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cAaron Copland and the Spirit of Labor Day\u201d \u2013 the radio documentary I was delighted to produce for the enterprising NPR newsmagazine \u201c1A\u201d \u2013 is archived\u00a0here. I received a wonderfully bristling response from Steve Robinson, who for more than a decade ran WFMT\/Chicago when it was (by far) the best classical-music radio station in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2094","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-xM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2094"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2100,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2094\/revisions\/2100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}