American Masterpieces Chamber Music Americans in Paris Like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, composers Marc Blitzstein and George Antheil were a part of the 1920s “Lost Generation.” Two recent Del Sol Quartet recordings focus on their little-known chamber music. by James M. Keller “ ou are all a lost generation,” Generation” conveyed the idea that these Gertrude Stein remarked to literary Americans abroad were left to chart Y Ernest Hemingway, who then their own paths without the compasses of turned around and used that sentence as the preceding generation, since the values an epigraph to close his 1926 novel The and expectations that had shaped their Sun Also Rises. upbringings—the rules that governed Later, in his posthumously published their lives—had changed fundamentally memoir, A Moveable Feast, Hemingway through the Great War’s horror. elaborated that Stein had not invented the We are less likely to find the term Lost locution “Lost Generation” but rather merely Generation applied to the American expa- adopted it after a garage proprietor had triate composers of that decade. In fact, used the words to scold an employee who young composers were also very likely to showed insufficient enthusiasm in repairing flee the United States for Europe during the ignition in her Model-T Ford. Not the 1920s and early ’30s, to the extent that withstanding its grease-stained origins, one-way tickets on transatlantic steamers the phrase lingered in the language as a seem to feature in the biographies of most descriptor for the brigade of American art- American composers who came of age at ists who spent time in Europe during the that moment. Perhaps they appeared less 1920s, most prominently in Paris. It is lost than their literary counterparts. The particularly applied to writers—Heming- writers, after all, were heading to Europe to way, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, John follow their muses directly, not to enroll in Dos Passos, and their ilk—who, having creative-writing seminars. The composers, made it through the World War I years, on the other hand, were mostly going to found the City of Light to be financially study, to sip at the trough of the Great affordable, intellectually stimulating, and European Musical Tradition as transmitted far enough from home that oats could be through the enlightenment of an up-to- sown wildly without long-lasting effect. the-minute teacher. For Americans that Some suggested that the appellation “Lost usually meant Nadia Boulanger, who was 78 october 2009 chief acolyte of the new ways of Stravinsky, 1946) and his opera Regina (premiered for decades. In fact, its revival became and who in 1921 welcomed into her studio in 1949) made a mark in their time, and possible only after the score was unearthed both Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson, his 1952 translation and adaptation of in 1980 in a collection of Boulanger’s two of the first in a succession of fledgling Brecht and Weill’s The Threepenny Opera papers housed at Harvard. American composers that would soon earned great acclaim. But apart from The Del Sol is among the most enthu- include Roy Harris, Elliott Carter, David those, Blitzstein remains largely unknown siastic and persuasive champions of little- Diamond, Douglas Moore, Walter Piston, to today’s music-lovers. In fact, he may be known American repertoire, and it brings Louise Talma, Elie Siegmeister…the list more famous for his death than for his its accustomed skill and dedication to this goes on and on. Of course many of them life: while prowling for a gay encounter in work. Howard Pollack’s excellent program had a grand time in France, but so long as the tough harborside bars in Martinique notes describe the opening movement as they were in Boulanger’s studio they fol- he was brutally attacked by three sailors propulsive, but the Del Sol also invests a lowed a strict regimen of instruction that, and died of the injuries thus sustained. large measure of delicacy in its interpreta- it really does seem, kept them from getting A new recording by the Del Sol String tion; even at full volume, the group conveys quite as lost as the writers often did. Quartet (on the Other Minds label), titled a tip-toeing quality in the movement. A One of the young composers who First Life, gives a much-deserved airing to wry Allegretto follows that would make a passed through “the Boulangerie” in those Blitzstein’s music for string quartet. That fine accompaniment to a Charlie Chaplin early years was Marc Blitzstein, though tiny chapter in his catalogue comprises scene and that, in the sparseness of its his time there was brief. In late October only two pieces, and so the “complete string material and its parodistic references to 1926 he wrote to a friend: “I have started quartets” are paired with several of his popular and overblown styles, suggests studying composition with Nadia solo-piano works (played adeptly by Sarah Virgil Thomson. A vigorous Presto possibile Boulanger, an incredible Spartan woman; Cahill) to eke out the CD. As repertoire (again shades of Thomson) serves as an her musicianship is limitless, she is entirely goes, the quartets are certainly under- interlude on the way to the finale, a broad charming, and she likes me.” Little more exposed. The first is called “Quartet for Largo that is affecting in its introspective, than three months later he moved on to Strings: Italian,” and although it dates chordal character. It’s far from a life- Berlin to seek instruction from Arnold from 1930—which is to say from his changing piece, and the composer himself Schoenberg—also a brief experience and, post-Boulanger peiod—Blitzstein sent a apparently did not consider it an important according to Blitzstein, one fraught with copy of the score to Boulanger, who pro- work, Boulanger’s benediction notwith- “a series of wrangles and frustrations.” nounced the piece “wholly admirable” standing. Nonetheless, Blitzstein did go into the and pledged to try to have it programmed More impressive is Blitzstein’s Serenade record books as the only American to study in Paris, an event that did not come to for String Quartet, from 1932, a work that with both Boulanger and Schoenberg, pass. Instead the piece was premiered by Copland helped usher to its public pre- figures regarded as aesthetic polar opposites. miere at Yaddo in upstate New York. This By the fall of 1928 Blitzstein, just 23 quartet would become a cause célèbre, an years old, had returned to the United object of critical scorn because each of its States. Not until the following decade three movements is plotted at the glacial would he seize his niche in history, with tempo of Largo. Reviewers seemed to the fabled 1937 premiere of the play- become universally blinded (or deafened) with-music The Cradle Will Rock. Intended by this and to have paid sparse attention for the Federal Theatre Project but inde- beyond the tempo markings. In fact, the pendently produced by Orson Welles and music is impressive, although at five-plus John Houseman, this brave work was minutes each the three movements do effectively suppressed by the government offer a consistent mood rather than an on its opening night at the theater where obviously variegated one. Still, they are it was to have played, but managed to move, hardly identical. In the Del Sol’s interpre- with its audience, to a new venue some tation the opening Largo is tortured and twenty blocks distant for an ad hoc rendition anguished, wearing its dissonance heavily. that became the stuff of theater legend. The second, in contrast, has a more sus- Blitzstein’s Airborne Symphony (a World the Philadelphia Society for Contemporary tained tone of hymnic elegy, and its sound War II piece, though not premiered until Music in 1931 and after that went unheard is very different from what surrounds it, 79 Blitzstein in Dubrovnik, circa 1932 sidered so untenable among forward- thinking listeners in 1932. (Probably they were unaware that Haydn done pretty much the same thing—though with eight movements—in his Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross, back in 1787.) The hallowed vessels of musical structure were being smashed right and left about then, and I must say that I feel Blitzstein did his smashing with considerable elegance. He ended up taking a philosophical stance on the whole matter, indeed one that may underrate his achievement, as we see in a comment he made two decades later: I once wrote a “Serenade for String Quartet.” The three movements were marked “Largo, largo, largo,” and I came in for a lot of ribbing from colleagues and critics. It was an honest attempt at making music, however. It seemed to me that the modern spirit in music had reached a point where the “spectre of boredom” became the guiding devil of composers: pieces were short, so the lis- teners wouldn’t get bored; not only short, they changed their pace and manner and harmony and melody-styles every few bars. This piece wouldn’t, I maintained; and fell into the same trap, only in reverse. I wrote a long piece that didn’t change. Cc since the instruments play throughout the suggests that this advice may have been n 2005 the Del Sol issued a recording movement with mutes on (at least so it the reason for Blitzstein’s changing the of—again—the complete works for sounds). The final Largo is more inherently movement headings at some later date to Istring quartet by another of the Lost contrapuntal in its process than the earlier Allegro Moderato, Larghetto, and Andante Generation composers, George Antheil movements had been, seeming almost Maestoso.