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Paul Rosenfeld, whose writings on American modernist composers were once regarded as insightful and prophetic, detected in George Gershwin the Russian Jew “a weakness of spirit, possibly as a consequence of the circumstance that the new world attracted the less stable types.” Rosenfeld (whose own lineage was German Jewish) also wrote of Gershwin: “His compositions drowse one … [Read more...] about The Gershwin Threat/The Gershwin Moment

One of the most controversial acts in the ever controversial life of Dmitri Shostakovich was his tortured decision in 1960 to join the Communist Party – a decision that has variously been portrayed as cowardly, politically pressured, or basically volitional. It is not mentioned in Testimony (1979) – the composer’s influential memoirs, collaboratively written with Solomon … [Read more...] about Why Did Shostakovich Join the Party?

Between 1942 and 1945, the three pre-eminent Russian composers wrote music responding to World War II. These responses differ in fascinating and revealing ways. Both Dmitri Shostakovich and Serge Prokofiev were eyewitnesses to the war; Shostakovich in fact endured the beginning of the siege of Leningrad before being evacuated east along with Prokofiev and other eminent … [Read more...] about Music in Wartime

“People underestimate Stalin’s level of control,” says Solomon Volkov. “I once started to calculate how many people in the arts Stalin controlled personally -- that is, read their writing, listened to their music, attended their performances. And it was close to one thousand. And not in some abstract way. This was an incredible, unprecedented amount of attention to the … [Read more...] about Shostakovich and the State

Back in the 1930s, American radio – that is, American commercial radio, which is all we had – knew that listeners were amenable to paying attention to what they were hearing and nothing else. A long attention span was assumed. Commensurately, the airwaves were full of classical music – a phenomenon I pondered in my most reviled book, Understanding Toscanini (1987). … [Read more...] about Music in Challenging Times — An Opportunity