Book Description
In Balkan Fascination, ethnomusicologist Mirjana Lausevic, a native of the Balkans, investigates why so many Americans actively participate in specific Balkan cultural practices to which they have no family or ethnic connection. Going beyond traditional interpretations, she challenges the notion that participation in Balkan culture in North America is merely a specialized offshoot of the 1960s American folk music scene. Instead, her exploration of the relationship between the stark sounds and lively dances of the Balkan region and the Americans who love them reveals that Balkan dance and music has much deeper roots in America's ideas about itself, its place in the world, and the place of the world's cultures in the melting pot.
Book Description
It was the most chaotic era in the history of American entertainment, possibly its most dynamic, and in some ways its least understood. In a stunningly brief time, as the Jazz Age roared to a close, the art of the silent film became extinct, thrown over in favor of the unknown, virtually untested medium of talking pictures. Leading the way was a brand new American art form: the movie musical. Taking off like a shot from day one, this new genre instantly became the a quintessential form of American entertainment. Here for the first time is the story of this fabulous, forgotten age when the movies learned to sing and dance. Chronicling the early musical film years from 1926 to 1934, A Song in the Dark offers a fascinating look at these innovative films, the product of much of the major experimentation that went on during the development of sound technology. Illuminating the entire evolution of this new sound medium, Richard Barrios shows how Hollywood, seeking to outdo Broadway and vaudeville, recruited both the famous and the unknown, the newest stars and the has-beens, the geniuses and the hustlers. The results were unlike anything the world had seen or heard: backstage yarns, all-star revues, grandiose operettas, outlandish hybrids--some wonderful, many innovative, a few ghastly. He recalls, for example, such monumental films as the 1927 hit The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson, the first feature film to include both talk and song. Corney, hokey, and repellently manipulative, it was by most accounts, even by 1927 standards, a poor film. Yet, showcasing the spectacular and extremely popular Jolson, it created a new dimension of intensity that silent films could not duplicate, playing to over one million people per week across the country only three weeks after its release. He discusses such memorable releases as The Broadway Melody (winner of the Academy Award for best film in 1929), the first true musical film that established movie musicals as potent and viable entertainment. Barrios goes on the offer in-depth discussions of innovative films such as The Desert Song, and On With the Show!, the first all-color talkie, as well as the more mature musicals of the 1930s including the Warner Brothers' "backstage" musicals of 1933-34 that started with 42nd Street and the Gold Diggers films. And, of course, he talks about the famed Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire collaborations, such as Flying Down to Rio, which, with their sophisticated style and technique, established them as the premier film musical team. Throughout, Barrios highlights the careers of the original great musical stars like Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Busby Berkeley, and Maurice Chevalier, and presents the films of newcomers such as Jeanette MacDonald, Bing Crosby, and Ruby Keeler. The fickle public rushed to see these stars--talking and singing and dancing across the screen--then suddenly turned away. It took the Depression to bring back musicals, bigger and brassier than ever. The triumphs, disasters, and offscreen intrigue are all here in a fascinating story told with a blend of scholarly research, engaging writing, and cogent criticism. With more than fifty photos, extensive annotations, and a discography, A Song in the Dark memorably recovers this vital and unique film heritage.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting and encyclopedic work on the early talkie musical.......2007-05-01
I don't know of any other book that does such a thorough job covering the history of the American musical film from the years 1926-1934 as this book does. It starts out shattering the myth that Warner Brothers invested in the Vitaphone sound system because it was near bankruptcy. Instead, Sam Warner saw the potential for sound in films and literally dragged his brothers kicking and screaming to the sound revolution. The book talks about Warners' first experiments that led up to the first hit picture with sound - "The Jazz Singer", and the untimely death of Sam Warner one day before the film's New York City premiere. The surviving Warners saw the potential after the money started rolling in, but they didn't have Sam's vision of how to make a success out of talking pictures. Thus, Warner Bros. was literally a Vitaphone train without a conductor.
This starts the reader through a three year journey of all the major studios groping to see what does and doesn't work, their many flops, and their few artistic triumphs. What got the studios through the early days was the novelty of sound attracting audiences regardless of the quality of the film, and the author does a good job of being thorough without being dry. His descriptions of some of the early sound musicals, some of the strange decisions that were made, and the early technical obstacles and their solutions are outright hilarious. The author describes how all of the bad products and bad decisions eventually cause audiences to have had their fill of musicals by 1931. Then he describes how "42nd Street" revives the genre, the lessons that were learned, and how the musical was ultimately reborn as a popular artform.
You can read this book all the way through, but more than likely you'll have to read it more than once to get everything out of it since it is densely packed with information about individual films as well as overall trends. I highly recommend it if you are interested in the early talkie musical and its history.
Simply Wonderful.......2004-03-04
When I picked up "A Song in the Dark" I was curious to see how someone could make a book about pre-42nd Street musicals. Most histories of the Hollywood musical start with 42nd Street and consign the earlier films to a dark, unknowable, unwatchable past.
Barrios made this era come to life. He writes in an engaging, witty style that is a pleasure to read. He never takes a superior tone to his material, and he makes the reader want to track down and see some of these films. (He also makes it clear that some are best avoided.)
"A Song in the Dark" greatly deepened my understanding of the Hollywood musical, and I strongly recommend it.
Easily the best book on early musical film.......2002-01-02
As the author of a popular website on the history of stage and screen musicals, I have read countless books on the musical film, and none can match what Barrios has done here. He approaches the mostly forgotten early sound era with genuine affection and a remarkable facility for detailed research. He also (thank heaven) writes with a delightfully readable style, avoiding the dry academic language that often makes studies of Hollywood's early sound era downright boring. Barrios includes a great selection of rare photos too. No other book on this subject is nearly as informative or enjoyable -- for those who are interested in early screen musicals, I cannot recommend this book too highly!
Easily the best book on early musical film.......2002-01-02
I have read countless books on the history of musical film, and none can match what Barrios has done here. He approaches the subject with genuine affection and a remarkable facility for detailed research. He also (thank heaven) writes with a delightfully readable style, avoiding the dry academic language that often makes studies of Hollywood's early sound era downright boring. No other book on this subject is nearly as informative or enjoyable -- for those who are interested in early screen musicals, I cannot recommend this book too highly!
Easily the best book on early musical film.......2002-01-02
As the author of Musicals101.com, I have read countless books on the history of musical film, and none can match what Barrios has done here. He approaches the subject with genuine affection and a remarkable facility for detailed research. He also (thank heaven) writes with a delightfully readable style, avoiding the dry academic language that often makes studies of Hollywood's early sound era downright boring. No other book on this subject is nearly as informative or enjoyable -- for those who are interested in early screen musicals, I cannot recommend this book too highly!
Book Description
In 1919, the world stood at the threshold of the Jazz Age. The man who had ushered it there, however, lay murdered--and would soon plunge from international fame to historical obscurity. It was a fate few would have predicted for James Reese Europe; he was then at the pinnacle of his career as a composer, conductor, and organizer in the black community, with the promise of even greater heights to come. "People don't realize yet today what we lost when we lost Jim Europe," said pianist Eubie Blake. "He was the savior of Negro musicians...in a class with Booker T. Washington and Martin Luther King." In A Life in Ragtime, Reid Badger brilliantly captures the fascinating life of James Reese Europe, tracing a critical chapter in the emergence of jazz through one man's remarkable odyssey. After an early start in Washington, Europe found his fame in New York, the entertainment capital of turn-of-the-century America. In the decade before the First World War, he emerged as an acknowledged leader in African-American musical theater, both as a conductor and an astonishingly prolific composer. Badger reveals a man of tremendous depths and ambitions, constantly aspiring to win recognition for black musicians and wider acceptance for their music. He toiled constantly, working on benefit concerts, joining hands with W.E.B. Du Bois, and helping to found a black music school--all the while winning commercial and critical success with his chosen art. In 1910, he helped create the Clef Club, making it the premiere African-American musical organization in the country during his presidency. Every year from 1912 to 1914, Europe led the Clef Club orchestra in triumphant concerts at Carnegie Hall, winning new respectability and popularity for ragtime. He went on to a tremendously successful collaboration with Vernon and Irene Castle, the international stars who made social dancing a world-wide rage. Along the way, Europe helped to revolutionize American music--and Badger provides fascinating details of his innovations and wide influence. In World War I, the musical pioneer won new fame as the first African-American officer to lead men into combat in that conflict--but he was best known as band leader for the all-black 15th Infantry Regiment. As the "Hellfighters" of the 15th racked up successes on the battlefield, Europe's band took France by storm with the new sounds of jazz. In 1919, the soldiers returned to New York in triumph, and Europe was the toast of the city. Then, just a few months later, he was dead--stabbed to death by a drummer in his own orchestra. From humble beginnings to tragic end, the story of Jim Europe comes alive in Reid Badger's account. Weaving in the wider story of our changing culture, music, and racial conflict, Badger deftly captures the turbulent, promising age of ragtime, and the drama of a triumphant life cut short.
Customer Reviews:
Jim Europe, The Founder of the International Jazz Movement.......2000-02-23
In a true sense of the word pioneer James Reese Europe, brought the only true American Art form to continental europe in the early part of the twentieth century. Reid Badger has captured the essence of a time in history that brought jazz and the cultural attitudes of black America to the international scene.
The very detailed text is a wonderful read, that gives you a sense of the push and pull of being an American Black living in the early 1900's. The book reads as if it were an adventure tale with all the action one could wish for.
The author has done a wonderful job of putting together facts and photos in a fast moving easy to understand academic work. His understanding of the contribution that Europe made to the growth of Jazz is clear and compeling. The details of the stature of the man that was Jim Europe reveals his human and sometimes non perfect personality.
Of particular interest to all should be his tenure as the Band Master of the famous 369th Infantry "Hell-Fighters" band during WWI in Europe.
This a must read for any student of jazz or military history and all who read about contributions to African-American society.
Book Description
Many jazz fans and critics--and even some jazz musicians--contend that white players have contributed little of substance to the music; that even, with every white musician removed from the canon, the history and nature of jazz would remain unchanged. Now, with Lost Chords, musician-historian Richard M. Sudhalter challenges this narrow view, with a book that pays definitive tribute to a generation of white jazz players, many unjustly forgotten--while never scanting the role of the great black pioneers. Eagerly awaited by the jazz community, this monumental volume offers an exhaustively documented, vividly narrated history of white jazz contribution in the vital years 1915 to 1945. Beginning in New Orleans, Sudhalter takes the reader on a fascinating multicultural odyssey through the hot jazz gestation centers of Chicago and New York, Indiana and Texas, examining such bands such as the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, the Original Memphis Five, and the Casa Loma Orchestra. Readers will find luminous accounts of many key soloists, including Bix Beiderbecke, Benny Goodman, Jack Teagarden, Red Norvo, Bud Freeman, the Dorsey Brothers, Bunny Berigan, Pee Wee Russell, and Artie Shaw, among others. Sudhalter revives the once-great reputations of these and many other major jazzmen, pleading their cases persuasively and eloquently, without ever descending to polemic. Along the way, he gives due credit to Louis Armstrong, Lester Young, Duke Ellington, Coleman Hawkins, and countless other major black figures. Destined to become a basic reference book on the subject, Lost Chords is a ground-breaking book that should significantly alter perceptions about jazz and its players, reminding readers of this great music's multicultural origins.
Customer Reviews:
A superb commentary by a gifted writer.......2005-11-14
This is the finest book about jazz that I have ever read. I own many of the records that the author dissects, as well as having seen several of these great jazz artists perform, and I find his judgment perceptive and unerring. But this is far more than just a book about jazz music. What makes these musicians tick, how did they happen to assemble together for a recording session, how did the record business impact their selection of pieces to perform? The author draws on a variety of academic disciplinces, including art, psychology, economics, and social history, to put his subjects in perspective. Most important, he is a fine storyteller who empathizes with the people he writes about. While many reviews focus on his overall thesis about race in jazz, this is but one theme he articulates, and it serves more as an organizing structure for the book than as its sole message.
Nothing is more American than jazz!.......2005-10-27
First of all, Dick Sudhalter is a gifted writer. He crafts his narratives like a well constructed solo or composition. Second, this book tells us about early white jazz musicians and correctly describes the interplay between vital African American innovations and the contributions of Caucasian jazzmen. Sudhalter in no way diminishes the seminal contributions of African American jazzmen. He simply talks about the contributions of other artists, and does a masterful job of helping us to see the interplay between musicians who have given us this wonderfully entertaining music. I thought I knew a fair amount about the history of jazz. After reading this book, I know more. Nothing is more American than Jazz music (just my opinion), and the more you understand it, the more you know about the USA in the 20's and 30's. I keep re-reading parts of this book because there's so much here.
Just the facts.......2003-02-15
While a brilliant documentary, Burns' "Jazz" also reinforced the notion that jazz is exclusively an African-American artform. Fortunately, "Lost Chords" does much to blow away that misperception. While never belittling or downplaying the role of those African-American giants in jazz, this book does an outstanding job of profiling all of the individuals and bands who received short shrift from Burns: Steve Brown, who pretty much invented jazz bass playing; the Jean Goldkette Orchestra; Miff Mole; Frank Trumbauer; and may more. And he does so in a way that is both interesting to the casual fan (with anecdotes and such) and the hardened muso (excerpts of scores abound). A scholarly tome, this is a worthy addition for any jazz fan's library. I look forward to Volume II.
More than you have any right to hope for..........2001-03-03
Not a mere antidote to political correctness in jazz criticism; Lost Chords is a prewar cultural history, a lesson in music structure, a history of woodwind instruments, a guide to innovations in guitar tuning, AND MORE. It shows the musicians as human beings with all their failings, humor, drives, hard work, and talent. I especially loved the account of the bass sax --- an instrument that looks like it could double as a moonshine still --- and its usefulness in the early days of sound recording. Sudhalter admonishes us to listen to the music and to make up your own mind. Exactly right. A good place to start is Robert Parker's Bix Beiderbecke Great Original Performances 1924-1930 (available on Amazon) If you have ever heard an early 78 rpm record, you will be astonished at Parker's sound restoration.
My father is in this book.......2000-02-22
In the chapter "bix and his friends", my father, charles bud dant was included. My father wrote transcriptions of stardust in 1927 and he worked with Hoagy C. at Indiana university. I have his cornet; he just died at 92. He was the last surviving member of this clan and elite club. He will be missed and his contribution to jazz is recorded for all time.
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Settling Scores: German Music, Denazification, and the Americans, 1945-1953
David Monod
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
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Different Drummers: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany
ASIN: 0807829447
Release Date: 2005-05-04 |
Book Description
Classical music was central to German national identity in the early twentieth century. The preeminence of composers such as Bach and Beethoven and artists such as conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler and pianist Walter Gieseking was cited by the Nazis as justification for German expansionism and as evidence of Aryan superiority. In the minds of many Americans, further German aggression could be prevented only if the population's faith in its moral and cultural superiority was shattered. In Settling Scores, David Monod examines the attempted "denazification" of the German music world by the Music Control Branch of the Information Control Division of Military Government.
The occupying American forces barred from the stage and concert hall all former Nazi Party members and even anyone deemed to display an "authoritarian personality." They also imported new European and American music. These actions, however, divided American officials and outraged German audiences and performers. Nonetheless, Monod argues, the long-term effects were greater than has been previously recognized, as German government officials regained local control and voluntarily limited their involvement in artistic life while promoting "new" (anti-Nazi) music.
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- Drawing on America
- Believe Half of What You Read
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New World Symphonies: How American Culture Changed European Music
Jack Sullivan
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0300072317 |
Amazon.com
The subtitle of this book gives its theme: How American Culture Changed European Music. Beginning with the touchstone New World symphony of Dvorák (which author Jack Sullivan believes celebrates the African American and Native American strains in American music), Sullivan, a professor of English at Rider College, takes readers on a tour of music history right up to the present day. His study centers on the American writers, poets, and styles that have influenced the Old World, using such examples as the impact of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, of Walt Whitman on Ralph Vaughan Williams, and of Edgar Allan Poe on a host of composers. Sullivan also takes up Frederick Delius's stay in Florida and Edgar Varèse's love affair with America and even includes the careers of expatriates such as Erich Korngold and Kurt Weill. The book ends with a long consideration of the effects of jazz, which Sullivan views as the American classical music.
Sullivan has done his homework very well, and most of the expected names and relationships are here. Yet his highly opinionated tone and habit of compartmentalizing and strictly categorizing the music (atonalists and serialists are "bad," as are British musical-theater composers) can limit the scope of his arguments. There is no doubt, for instance, that jazz has had an influence on European music, but can one really say, as Sullivan does, that it has changed that music? Did Vaughan Williams's love for the poems of Whitman alter his music any more than his love for John Bunyan did? Did Poe's "The Bells" redirect Rachmaninoff in ways the composer never suspected? What we have here is a book that is an interesting elaboration of an idea perhaps better confined to an evening around the fire with friends. --Patrick J. Smith
Book Description
This groundbreaking book shows for the first time the profound and transformative influence of American literature, music, and mythology on European music. Acknowledging the impact of European tradition on American composers, Jack Sullivan contends that, beginning in the nineteenth century, an even more powerful musical current flowed from the New World to the Old.
Customer Reviews:
Drawing on America.......2001-12-07
The influence of American culture on European composers has been extensive, shaping the course of music history. Author Jack Sullivan, a faculty member of Rider University in New Jersey (of which the famed Westminster Choir College is a part), has traced this connection in an illuminating book which should give Americans pause when considering their own cultural history. Though Sullivan's point of view is one of exploring how Europeans drew on American sources, what becomes increasingly clear to the astute reader is the lack of enthusiasm Americans had and continue to have for their own creative history.
In a first chapter, which is alone worth the price of the book, he traces the route of African-American sorrow songs from the Black experience back to Europe through Dvorák and Delius to Debussy and to the Afro-British composer Samuel Coleridge Taylor, who was considered by most Americans to be the greatest composer alive a century ago.
We learn that many of the ideas of W. E. B. DuBois grew from Dvorák's defenses of his assertion that the basis of American music should be Black Spirituals. The Czech composer's letter to the New York Herald were often quoted by DuBois (sometimes credited, sometimes not) and are here quoted by Sullivan.
We also learn the impact on Delius of hearing songs from the African-American shanty towns in Florida's orange plantations as they drifted on the air to the porch of his house. Simple though it is, the photograph of the house where Delius lived in Florida carries with it a sense of the space in which he could hear songs from afar.
Other chapters elucidate the effect on European composers of Poe, Whitman, the landscape, cities, and jazz and pop music. Sullivan's research is strong, his ability to connect disparate facts is engaging, and his writing is clear and lucid. Wonderful anecdotes occur throughout the book.
For anyone who (like Sullivan) writes program notes or is interested in the roots of much 20th century European music, this book is a must. I found it difficult to put down and refer to it often as I write articles and reviews.
Paul Somers
Editor
Classical New Jersey Society Journal
classicnj@home.com
Believe Half of What You Read.......2000-07-26
The book purportedly tells the story of classical music in America, how Old World traditions were transformed and revitalized, and how concert music came to interact with popular trends. I flipped to the chapter on film music, and to his credit the author makes some very defensible claims for the genre, at it's best, as being the equivalent of incidental music written for plays, or even singspiel music composed by Purcell, Telemann, Mozart and others. (Opera would be a little more of a stretch, since the film composer cannot ordinarily manipulate the "libretto" -- in this case, the screenplay -- where he would be able to, in the case of the genuine article.)
However, despite these commonsensical claims and pleas for critical tolerance, the author doesn't seem to know very much about his subject matter. He's got the "sense" right, but his facts are all wrong. I read maybe a dozen pages and, over the course, found at least four factual errors. He claims that Erich Wolfgang Korngold quotes thematic material from his score to the "Sea Wolf" in the slow movement of his String Quartet No. 2 (when, in reality, it is the Quartet No. 3); he claims the same composer's Symphony in F#, while reminiscent of his film music, is comprised solely of original material (when, in fact, the melody of the slow movement was lifted from his score for "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex;" and the finale uses a motif associated with the Maria Ouspenskaya character in "Kings Row" -- something I have never seen mentioned by any annotator); and that Dimitri Tiomkin wrote the score for Alfred Hitchcock's "Spellbound" (it was actually Miklos Rozsa, who won an Oscar!). On top of it, I suspected his claim that Victor Herbert wrote the score for D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation" was equally false, but THAT I had to double-check. The score is mostly a hodgepodge of pre-existing classics, like "Ride of the Valkyries," anyway. As it turns out, I was right -- it was written by Karl Breil. In any case, it's not my job to research these things. You'd think Yale University Press would hire a fact-checker.
Breil aside, I could have written the chapter off the top of my head, virtually complete, right down to the historical dates, and not made so many errors. I don't know if it was sloppy note-taking or faulty memory, but the book never should have gone to publication in this state. What if someone comes across this thing in a university library somewhere and takes it as fact? We'll have all these theses on film music that reiterate the heinous error that Dimitri Tiomkin wrote "Spellbound!"
For a good general survey of American music, you might try Wilfred Meller's now-classic "Music in a Newfound Land," or even H. Wiley Hitchcock's "Music in the United States." However, film music is a weak link in both studies. For that, I would refer you to "Film Score: the Art and Craft of Movie Music," by Tony Thomas. Thomas highlights most of the major composers, and many of them contribute in their own words. It's an interesting read, and you learn a lot about the unique challenges faced by the composer in Hollywood.
Book Description
The cultural Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West was without precedent. At the outset of this original and wide-ranging historical survey, David Caute establishes the nature of the extraordinary cultural competition set up post-1945 between Moscow, New York, London and Paris, with the most intimate frontier war staged in the city of Berlin. Using sources in four languages, the author of The Fellow-Travellers and The Great Fear explores the cultural Cold War as it rapidly penetrated theatre, film, classical music, popular music, ballet, painting and sculpture, as well as propaganda by exhibition. Major figures central to Cold War conflict in the theatre include Brecht, Miller, Sartre, Camus, Havel, Ionesco, Stoppard and Konstantin Simonov, whose inflammatory play, The Russian Question, occupies a chapter of its own based on original archival research. Leading film directors involved included Eisenstein, Romm, Chiarueli, Aleksandrov, Kazan, Tarkovsky and Wajda. In the field of music, the Soviet Union in the Zhdanov era vigorously condemned 'modernism', 'formalism', and the avant-garde. A chapter is devoted to the intriguing case of Dmitri Shostakovich, and the disputed authenticity of his 'autobiography' Testimony. Meanwhile in the West the Congress for Cultural Freedom was sponsoring the modernist composers most vehemently condemned by Soviet music critics; Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Hindemith among them. Despite constant attempts at repression, the Soviet Party was unable to check the appeal of jazz on the Voice of America, then rock music, to young Russians. Visits to the West by the Bolshoi and Kirov ballet companines, the pride of the USSR, were fraught with threats of cancellation and the danger of defection. Considering the case of Rudolf Nureyev, Caute pours cold water on overheated speculations about KGB plots to injure him and other defecting dancers. Turning to painting, where socialist realism prevailed in Russia, and the impressionist heritage was condemned, Caute explores the paradox of Picasso's membership of the French Communist Party. Re-assessing the extent of covert CIA patronage of abstract expressionism (Pollock, De Kooning), Caute finds that the CIA's role has been much exaggerated, likewise the dominance of the New York School. Caute challenges some recent, one-dimensional, American accounts of 'Cold War culture', which ignore not only the Soviet performance but virtually any cultural activity outside the USA. The West presented its cultural avant-garde as evidence of liberty, even through monochrome canvases and dodecaphonic music appealed only to a minority audience. Soviet artistic standards and teaching levels were exceptionally high, but the fear of freedom and innovation virtually guaranteed the moral defeat which accelerated the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Customer Reviews:
Valuable primer on Cold War cultural history..........2007-08-16
David Caute has done a superb job providing a tour d'horizon of Russian-American cultural relations during the Cold War (with some discussion of British, French, and German episodes). The best chapter is the discussion of Rudolf Nureyev's defection in Paris, which gives the book its title, but it is equally valuable for chapters on Sartre, Camus, Ionesco, Brecht, Shostakovich, Picasso, Stravinsky, Paul Robeson, Benny Goodmanm, The Beatles--you name it, almost anyone who was anyone in the last half of the 20th century comes under discussion. Strangely missing is Vladimir Vysotsky, which is why I can't give a fifth star. Vysotsky, the Bob Dylan of Russia, the Pushkin of the 60s & 70s, was an authentic Russian phenomenon--yet, in the context of the Cold War, perhaps representative of some deeper connection to the West than any of the issues of Encounter or Problems of Communism discussed by Caute. That is, the popular culture--whether Jazz or Rock or even American films (later TV shows such as Dynasty)--spoke to Russians in a way that the highbrow efforts of the Congress for Cultural Freedom or surrogate broadcasters were unable to do.
THIS is the history of Cold War!.......2004-09-23
The premise of the book is simple: in no other period in history were there two systems claiming the same civilizational and cultural background (Western Judeo-Christian tradition) but at the same time set to fight each other to death. The means, strategies, individual battles and aims of that struggle are all put before you in this book in a way that has no equal.
One day, when time allows us to look at post-WW2 times from greater distance, I think we will realize that if one wants to understand that period, one should not look at the official political history - but rather at this subliminal 'popular' history. Forget Reykyavik summit or even Cuban Missiles Crisis. The history was made in the Nixon-Khrushchev kitchen debate or in Nureyev's leap to freedom (he was the dancer who defected in the title of the book). David Caute gives you a peek preview of what historians will write about the times we lived in.
He has no qualms about claiming victory - the West won and was always set to win. It was only a question of when the facade on the Potemkin village called USSR will come down.
He has a very broad range, going from ballet through exhibitions to sporting events. If you want to read about the reception of Waiting for Godot in London and Paris, it's there.
He knows lots of details. Example: I personally come from a smallish city in what used to be Czechoslovakia (Liberec, about 100.000 pop.). Caute knows that Vaclav Havel was there during the Soviet invasion in 1968. This is something that only Lokalpatrioten (such as myself) are aware of. Needless to say, I was impressed. These little details and stories make it really interesting.
He does not mind getting mad at his own, so to speak. Like, he ends his book with a strong and witty polemic against the various Kremlin Studies/Cold War Studies/Soviet Studies and other pseudosciences in which wackos and useful idiots inhabit parallel universes where Stalin is a hero and Kennedy a villain. That last chapter alone is worth the money.
Finally, let me add another personal testimony: having lived on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain as a youth, I often struggled to put all the pieces together to make sense of what was going on. Caute supplied them all and the whole picture emerged. Reading the book, I would slap my forehead thinking 'So, THAT's how it happened!'. Every such moment freed me some more from the lies I was spoonfed as a kid and I am really grateful to Caute for that.
An Excellent Book with the Wrong Title.......2004-01-26
In most respects this is a very good book. It is wide-ranging, and extremely well-written. It is also well organized around different aspects of culture-stage and screen, music, including ballet, and the visual arts--so that if one is, for example, interested in ballet but not in the lengthy descriptions of the treatment of US soldiers in Stalin-era Soviet films about the Second World War or of the plot of a Sartre anti-American play, it is easy to skip these without loss. The author can be forgiven for excluding literature from this volume, which is already very long, and I for one look forward to his promised book on this.
Interesting though it is, however, it is not the book one expects from its title. In the first place there is remarkably little about the organized activities of Western Governments to promote the image of Western culture. Some of this was undercover CIA support of magazines, congresses and festivals-one learns only at the end of the book that the reason for the neglect is that the author considers that this aspect of the cultural war has been overstressed. But the promotion abroad of national cultures by organizations such as the British Council, and their French and American equivalents deserves much more attention; in particular the concern with the American cultural image abroad, especially in Western Europe, was a cold war matter since this image might affect the electoral strength of the large Communist parties of France and Italy, and this in turn influenced President Kennedy's introduction of high cultural activities into the White House, and President Johnson's founding of the National Endowment for the Arts.
Second, much of the book has little to do with the Cold War. The sections on the stage and especially on film demonstrate the cultural effects of the Cold War best, although even here it is not clear what the plays of Ionesco and Beckett have to do with Cold War culture. But music and art are neither tools of propaganda nor competitive sports, and the well-known capacity of Soviet institutions for talent spotting and training, whether of athletes, musicians, or dancers enriched the world's supply of performers without amounting to a "struggle for supremacy." More interesting is the Soviet suppression of atonal music and nonrealist art. This is very well described in the book, but it preceded the Cold War by decades, reflecting at first mainly Stalin's personal tastes. But it is to be expected that artistic originality and creativity will be often associated with political and social iconoclasm. In the West, this led creative geniuses like Picasso and Brecht to be attracted by communism, with the amusing consequence that communist parties found themselves trying to exploit their fame while rejecting their work. In the Soviet Union, the clash between artistic innovation and the constraints of a totalitarian regime led inevitably to eventual links with political dissidence. The defections of performing artists, however, were mostly inspired by private ambitions rather than political motivations. Cold Warriors seized on both of these to demonstrate the weaknesses of Soviet society but they were not themselves products of the Cold War.
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European Music and Musicians in New York City, 1840-1900 (Eastman Studies in Music)
Manufacturer: University of Rochester Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1580462030 |
Book Description
The musical scene in mid-nineteenth century New York City, contrary to common belief, was exceptionally vibrant. Thanks to several opera companies, no fewer than two orchestras, public chamber music and solo concerts, and numerous choirs, New Yorkers were regularly exposed to "new" music of Verdi, Meyerbeer, Schumann, Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner. In European Music and Musicians in New York City, 1840-1900, the first thorough exploration of musical life in New York City during this period, editor John Graziano and a number of other distinguished essayists assert that the richness of the artistic life of the city, particularly at this time, has been vastly underrated and undervalued. This marvelous new collection of essays, with topics ranging from military bands and immigrant impresarios to visits from operatic diva Adelina Patti, establishes that this musical scene was one of quantity and quality, lively and multifaceted -- in many ways equal to the scene in the largest of the Old World's Cities. CONTRIBUTORS: ADRIENNE FRIED BLOCK, CHRISTOPHER BRUHN, RAOUL F. CAMUS, FRANK J. CIPOLLA, JOHN GRAZIANO, RUTH HENDERSON, JOHN KOEGEL, R. ALLEN LOTT, RENA C. MUELLER, HILARY PORISS, KATHERINE K. PRESTON, NANCY B. REICH, ORA FRISHBERG SALOMAN, WAYNE SHIRLEY John Graziano is professor of music, The City College and Graduate Center, CUNY, and co-director of the Music in Gotham research project.
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