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Home , Douglas Moore, George Antheil, Marc Blitzstein, Quartet (novel), String Quartet (Debussy)

American Masterpieces Americans in Like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Marc Blitzstein and George Antheil were a part of the 1920s “Lost Generation.” Two recent recordings focus on their little-known chamber music.

by James M. Keller

“ ou are all a lost generation,” Generation” conveyed the idea that these remarked to literary Americans abroad were left to chart Y , 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, , 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 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 , who was

78 october 2009 chief acolyte of the new ways of Stravinsky, 1946) and his (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 and , 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 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, , David those, Blitzstein remains largely unknown siastic and persuasive champions of little- Diamond, , , 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 . 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- 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- to seek instruction from Arnold from 1930—which is to say from his changing piece, and the 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 . 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 . Intended by this and to have paid sparse attention for the but inde- beyond the tempo markings. In fact, the pendently produced by and music is impressive, although at five-plus , 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 (a World the 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. The Del Sol String Quartet (also on the Other Minds label). Of all the Bachian in its inspiration and its pensive hews to the original Largo markings, and American composers in Europe, Antheil is character, though in the context of I don’t doubt that this is ultimately to the probably the one who most meshed with Modernist dissonance. piece’s benefit. Still, I wouldn’t have the Lost Generation literary world. After The piece was a failure at Yaddo, and minded a bit if, instead of the solo-piano study with in New York he the succession of three Largos became works, this recording had included an headed off to Berlin (where he crossed notorious in new-music circles. Though alternate reading of the Serenade at the paths with Stravinsky), then to Paris he maintained his enthusiasm, Copland revised tempos. I’ll bet the Del Sol would (1923-27), and then on to before ended up offering a bit of practical advice: have made that sound good, too. moving back to the United States in “Always cajole a listener, never frighten I do find it surprising that the idea of 1933. Though he was born in 1900, only him away. I mean it seriously.” Pollack three slow movements in a row was con- five years before Blitzstein, he went to

80 october 2009 Europe as a fully active composer rather finale—I think the best movement— memories, tend to hold grudges towards than as a student, and the audacity of the again leaping like a hyperactive dream people who do that. In his famous auto- works he produced there—including the into the chamber-musical past. biography Bad Boy of Music, for example, Airplane Sonata, Jazz Sonata, and especially Reviews of the Second Quartet were Antheil writes about a trip he took from Ballet mécanique (an icon of musique not positive. Part of it was Antheil’s own Paris to North Africa just before the premiere concrète)—positioned him as the most fault. He had become a master at manipu- of Ballet mécanique. “Our plan,” he recalls, conspicuous of all the avant-garde lating journalists for the sake of personal “was to have me lost in the Sahara for a Americans abroad. In Paris he seems to publicity, and journalists, with their long month or two, apparently eaten by lions have had rather little to do with the Americans inscribed at “the Boulangerie” (Thomson was an exception, at least for a while), instead spending his time with the likes of Joyce, Pound, and Yeats. George Antheil From his European years date three of in Paris, 1929 the four works the Del Sol plays. His Lithuanian Night, from 1922, is a genial two-movement work that, at three and a half minutes, in no way outstays its welcome. The first movement seems born of the tango salon, while the second is a scurrying and muted Presto that is a quite blatant salute to Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for String Quartet (from 1914). A full Antheil string quartet followed in 1924, and although it was performed, under the title Ungariana, the composer ended up destroying the score. Parts of it may survive in his Quartet No. 1 in One Movement, from 1925-26 (dedicated to Natalie Barney), a deeply dissonant piece of experimental mien that in the course of its fifteen minutes switches constantly from one temperament to another— precisely the sort of thing Blitzstein later bemoaned. Antheil’s Quartet No. 2 (dedicated to , owner of the bookstore Shakespeare & Company) followed in 1927. “Probably this quartet is a parody, but a parody, pray tell, of what?” mused Pitts Sanborn, the critic of the New York World-Telegram, when the work was given in New York the next year. Certainly it encapsulates considerable tart- ness, with the first movement incorporating an extended and highly spiced fugato, the second seeming a sort of Schubertian rumination, the third (Rondino Scherzino) perhaps being a take-off on both Mozart and (oddly) Brahms, and the minuscule

81 or tortured to death by savage Bedouin Antheil had come to believe that the tribes.” The newspapers bit, and the head- questing of the Lost Generation had led lines about a composer thus devoured did up a blind alley; that, much though a com- much to publicize the impending premiere. poser might try to escape them, the norms Antheil continued: of Classicism were so elemental that they would prevail in the end; that individual- I remember very well that the inter- ity of voice did not ultimately count for national press blackballed me for some much. years after 1925 for having died in the Sahara and then not staying dead. …I James M. Keller is Program Annotator of pause here only to warn any prospective the New York Philharmonic and the San publicity seekers, however meritorious Francisco Symphony. His book Chamber their objective, to forever and a day refrain Music: A Listener’s Guide is in preparation from dying with the mere objective of for Oxford University Press. making the front pages. For if you do not really die, you will be amazed by But, oh Antheil! I find him one of the the number of your closest friends who most frustrating of composers, in that his will deeply resent your returning to the early daring and brilliance did not survive world of the living again—especially through his maturity. Already in the after they have copiously and publicly 1930s he turned into a neo-Romantic and slobbered all over the place concerning the new scores he produced seemed in- you, what a great guy you had been, etc., creasingly pointless. He became fascinated ad nauseam. with folksong, he strove to produce “The Great American Symphony,” and he turned Nonetheless Antheil persevered. The Six out a ream of scores for film, radio, and Little Pieces for String Quartet, from television. As the CD’s long and reward- 1931, are presumably musical portraits of ing program essay by Mauro Piccinini puts personalities he encountered in the arts it, “the vigorous rhythmic homophony of colony of Woodstock, New York. Little his Paris works is accordingly replaced by they are, with three of the movement last- the tuneful attractiveness of his neo- ing less than a minute each and the other romantic compositions: his intent to shake three not very much longer. But they cover the world with defiance gives way to a a good deal of Modernist geography, and desire to synthesize America emotionally, the Del Sol makes a compelling case for concentrating more and more on the their viability on concert programs today. expressive powers of music.” I am not aware of any other recording And so we have the String Quartet No. 3 of the Six Little Pieces. The Mondriaan of 1948, a sort of Prokofiev-in-the-Wild- String Quartet has released the other West confection. It’s hard to imagine this Antheil works (on the Etcetera label), but populist potboiler issuing from the same the Del Sol comes off as more engaged pen that had produced the Quartet in One with this repertoire. Indeed, the Other Movement two decades earlier. (A com- Minds CD booklet includes interesting peting release, by the on commentary from the four members of the Naxos label, goes the full ten yards in the Del Sol, in the course of which we trying to make this piece sound like echt learn that in preparing this recording Dvorˇák; but we already have enough they delved into the available sources and Dvorˇák string quartets.) Compared with ended up grappling with a great many the earlier work, the Quartet No. 3 sounds inconsistencies among sketches, revisions, profoundly insignificant. It is probably scores, and parts—some of those variations “better turned out” technically, but it now being diametrically opposed. longer aspires to greatness. Or perhaps

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