The Plow That Broke the Plains: An Application of Functional Americanism in Music A dissertation presented to the faculty of the College of Fine Arts of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy Jason M. Hartz November 2010 © 2010 Jason M. Hartz. All Rights Reserved 2 This dissertation titled The Plow That Broke the Plains: An Application of Functional Americanism in Music by JASON M. HARTZ has been approved for the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and the College of Fine Arts by Dora J. Wilson Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts Charles A. McWeeny Dean, College of Fine Arts 3 ABSTRACT HARTZ, JASON M., Ph.D., November 2010, Interdisciplinary Arts The Plow That Broke the Plains: An Application of Functional Americanism in Music Director of Dissertation: Dora J. Wilson This dissertation explores the nature of American musical identity in the score from the 1936 documentary film The Plow That Broke the Plains, directed by Pare Lorentz, scored by Virgil Thomson, and created under the auspices of the New Deal‘s Resettlement Administration. While the score offers a study in modernist music and compositional musical Americanism, other approaches may be more suited to positioning this New Deal cultural artifact within its historical context, thus revealing its cultural sources and social intentions. In the spirit of contemporary musicology, this project proposes a new category through which to undertake such studies: functional Americanism. Functional Americanism evaluates American identity in music through the function or utility of music operating in an American setting or for an American purpose. Using this approach to engage with The Plow, this study draws from social history, cultural studies, and musicology in order to understand The Plow within its historical moment as an articulator of American identity. Approved: ____________________________________________________________ Dora J. Wilson Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts 4 DEDICATION This work is dedicated to my family and friends. I cannot image completing this without your love, support, inspiration, and patience. I must single out my partner, Carissa Massey, for her unswerving faith in me. Lastly, I dedicate this work to those who labor in the arts to bring about positive social change, a beauty far more precious than others. 5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work owes its completion to the support and guidance of many individuals and groups. I must first acknowledge my academic advisor and chair of my dissertation committee, Dr. Dora Wilson. Your guidance, insight, advice, and professionalism have been invaluable throughout this process. I would also like to recognize and thank the other members of my dissertation committee, Dr. Richard Wetzel, Dr. William Condee, and Dr. Michael Gillespie. More broadly, there are over thirty-two years‘ worth of family, friends, mentors, and teachers who early on instilled passions for both learning and the arts and more recently helped to shape these into an academic career. I can‘t name you all, but I must highlight some of the most important. Thank you Mom and Dad, Suzanne and Maurice Hartz, for giving me such a wonderful start, for attending everything I ever participated in, and for being patient with me over the past seven years. Thank you, Jeff, for always giving me superlative, principled examples for living. You three, along with those departed, are the best family a person ever hope to have. Thank you to my in-laws, Walt, Shelly, and Kirk for your amazing love and support (and your attic). Thank you to my first friends in Westmoreland and to those I picked up along the way. Thank you to Janet Prater (and your cabin). I must acknowledge my Wayne County teachers and coaches, like Tommy Thompson, Jack Sanders, Paul Martin, and James Ritter, for caring so much while working with so few resources. Thank you to my college professors for your support and for introducing me to this path and mentoring me through it, especially Dr. Art Dyck, Dr. Michael Mihalyo, and Dr. Gary Kappel at Bethany College, Dr. Vicki Strayer and Dr. 6 David Castleberry at Marshall University, and Dr. Virginia Gorlinski and Dr. Allyn Reilly at Ohio University. Thank you to the churches where I sang in Huntington and Athens for nurturing my creative and spiritual sides. Thank you to librarians everywhere. Thank you to my colleagues over the past four years at Trine University, Defiance College, Jackson Community College, and Adrian College. Your support has been crucial as I attempted to balance real world and career responsibilities with my dissertation. And thank you Trine University for financial support in presenting portions of this dissertation to the Great Lakes Chapter of the College Music Society, and thank you to Adrian College for granting me a faculty and college community forum for presenting portions of this dissertation. Finally, thank you, Carissa Massey. There is nothing I can type here that would do your support justice or express my love for you. 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT .........................................................................................................................3 DEDICATION .....................................................................................................................4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................................5 LIST OF FIGURES .............................................................................................................9 INTRODUCTION: APPROACHING THE PLOW THAT BROKE THE PLAINS ........12 Our Especial Gift ...................................................................................................16 Positioning in a Shifting Discipline and Society ...................................................19 Re-visioning American Music History: A Plurality of Answers or Nothing More Than Feelings .........................................................................................................25 CHAPTER ONE: MUSICAL AMERICANISMS AND ATTITUDES ...........................29 A Tale of Pale Copies ............................................................................................29 Limitations of Conceptual Americanisms .............................................................41 Limitations of Compositional Americanism ..........................................................49 ―What, then constitutes distinctively American music?‖ ......................................58 CHAPTER TWO: WHICH PLOW BROKE THE PLAINS?: CONTEXT, CREATION, AND IMPLICATIONS OF CONTENT ............................................................................61 Politics and Content ...............................................................................................67 Approaches and Endings........................................................................................74 CHAPTER THREE: THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN: FROM PRELUDE THROUGH ―HOMESTEADER‖ ......................................................................................90 Before the Prologue: Title Card Image ..................................................................96 8 Prologue ...............................................................................................................107 CHAPTER FOUR: PENNILESS AND BEWILDERED: FROM ―WARNING‖ TO THE EPILOGUE ......................................................................................................................140 ―Dust Storm‖ ........................................................................................................177 Epilogue ...............................................................................................................191 CONCLUSION: THOMSON, THE PLOW, AND FUNCTIONAL AMERICANISM .203 Pinning Down Thomson ......................................................................................206 Musical Meaning and Functional Americanism ..................................................211 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................213 9 LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 2-1: Unpacking the trailer at the migrant camp ..................................................... 68 Figure 2-2: The tragic parade approaches a migrant camp ............................................... 69 Figure 2-3: Getting gas before entering the desert at night .............................................. 71 Figure 2-4: The ending of version two ............................................................................. 76 Figure 2-5: Version One‘s ending..................................................................................... 79 Figure 2-6: A variation on the non-Epilogue ending ........................................................ 80 Figure 3-1: The opening image: Wagon Train ................................................................. 97 Figure 3-2: The Prologue and beginning of Version Three .............................................. 99 Figure 3-3: The extremely overloaded Joad vehicle – the Ford-Steinbeck version of the Dust Bowl migrant‘s vehicle .......................................................................................... 103 Figure 3-4: Leaving the farm for the last time in Lorentz‘s version of a Dust Bowl migrant‘s vehicle ............................................................................................................. 104 Figure 3-5: A Farm Security Administration