Theremin album back from grateful dead

'Starting out on another concert tour in the fall, (Paul) Robeson took along with him as "associate artist" (and more! - Pliable) Clara Rockmore, the pert, feisty, attractive second wife of Bob Rockmore, and the world's leading theremin player (an instrument whose tone and dynamics are created by the juxtaposition of the hands in an elctromagnetic field). Clara Rockmore had begun her musical life as a prodigy (as had her pianist sister, Nadia Reisenberg), winning admittance at the unprecendented age of five (Heifetz had been eight) to the conservatory in Petrograd to study violin with the famed Leopold Auer, teacher of Heifetz, Zimablist, and Elman. An injury to her arm forced her, at age nineteen, to give up the violin and turn to a career with the theremin.'

From Paul Robeson by Martin Bauml Duberman (Pan ISBN 0330313851). And right on cue Bridge Records have just released Clara Rockmore's Lost Theremin Album. With the duo of Rockmore and Nadia Reisenberg playing treatments of works by Bach, Ravel, Gershwin, Ponce, Chopin and many more, can you resist this back from the dead album? And as a bonus you get interviews with Rockmore and Robert Moog.

For the full story of the theremin take this path, for new music for the theremin take this one, read about Paul Robeson here, and the Grateful Dead here.
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Multicultural, multimedia, and banned

In 1925 New York bandleader Sam Wooding's all-black jazz revue Chocolate Kiddies toured to Berlin (photo above). Among the audience were composers Ernst Krenek and Kurt Weill. Krenek had studied in Vienna under Frank Schreker, and was married Gustav Mahler's daughter Anna for a short while. His compositions include an opera written to a libretto by the expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka.

Chocolate Kiddies inspired Ernst Krenek (photo below) to write his jazz influenced opera Jonny Spielt Auf (Johnny Strikes Up) which was premiered in Leipzig in January 1927, and opened at the City Opera in Berlin ten months later. Jazz was anathema to the ascendant Nazi party due to its African-American origins, but despite this Jonny Spielt Auf achieved major success with audiences across Europe, and was translated into twelve languages. The Center for Jazz Arts describes the opera as having "jazz-infused harmonies, syncopations, and story-lines; an African-American jazz-artist hero (Jonny); interracial romantic story elements; innovative Expressionist and Bauhaus influenced stage sets; and an unconventional incorporation of modern technology into classical opera, such as telephones, radios, and automobiles."

When Jonny Spielt Auf was performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1928 the plot was altered so that the promiscuous black jazz band leader who gives the opera its title could be played by a white. But then in a bizarre twist the title role was actually sung by a 'blacked-up' white singer. This prompted the early civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson to say: 'We have in this country colored singers who could masterfully sing that role. I need only name Jules Bledsoe and Paul Robeson.'

Ernst Krenek's name was put on the Nazis' blacklist in 1933. He was based in Vienna until 1938 but was expelled after the Anschluss. He lived in the US until his death in 1991, although in the last decade of his life he spent summers at the Arnold Schönberg House in Mödling, near Vienna. The year after his death in Palm Springs Krenek's remains were transferred to an honorary grave in Vienna.

* The 1993 Decca recording of Jonny Spielt Auf, with Lothar Zagrosek conducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, is available through Amazon Germany. There are some brief audio extracts via this link. The slightly more idiomatic Vanguard recording (left) with the Wiener Staatsopernorchester and Lucia Popp is deleted, but is still available from Amazon resellers. Visit the Ernst Krenek Institute website via this link.

Now read more about contemporary music under the Third Reich in Furtwängler and the forgotten new music
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Classical music can help change the world

A reader posted a very interesing comment on my recent article Music can change the world - Indeed, Harry Belafonte, and other pop music icons, have made a difference, and continue to, but what comparable influence have classical musicians had in the last 50 years? ... the last 100 years? - Bodie Pfost.

Now that is a good point. There have been many examples of classical musicians (and composers are excluded from this discussion) making media friendly gestures in support of human rights, but very few examples of musicians actually prepared to lose their freedom, and audience, in pursuit of what they believe in. But among the exceptions is Paul Robeson (pictured here), and his activism is particularly relevant with the controversy over the execution of Saddam Hussein still reverberating around the world, as Robeson founded the American Crusade Against Lynching.

Robeson is best known as an actor and singer, and for his powerful bass-baritone voice which reached down to C below the bass clef. He was acclaimed for his playing of Othello in Shakespeare's play, and his celebrated concert performances helped achieve a wide audience for Negro spirituals.

He was also a political activist. He campaigned for the rights of Asian and Black Americans, and as part of this founded the American Crusade Against Lynching. In 1948, Robeson was active in the presidential campaign to elect Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace, and went on the campaign trail among ethnic minorities in the southern states. His political vews resulted in NBC cancelling his scheduled appearance on former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s television program, Today with Mrs. Roosevelt, in 1950.

In 1950, after he refused to sign an affidavit that he was not a Communist, the U.S. government took away Robeson's passport. When Robeson and his lawyers asked officials at the U.S. State Department why it was "detrimental to the interests of the United States Government" for him to travel abroad, they were told that "his frequent criticism of the treatment of blacks in the United States should not be aired in foreign countries". The travel ban ended in 1958 when a U.S. Supreme Court test case ruled that the Secretary of State had no right to deny a passport, or require any citizen to sign an affidavit, because of his or her political beliefs

As I described in a recent article Robeson was president of the English Pete Seeger Committee, of which Benjamin Britten was also a member. This committee sponsored Seeger's visit to the UK in 1961 while the singer was awaiting sentencing for contempt of Congress. The photograph here shows Seeger testifying to the House on Un-American Activities Committee in 1955. Robeson's support for the Soviet Union was controversial. He took part in pro-Soviet rallies to combat fascism and anti-semitism in the early 1940s, sung in the USSR in 1949, and was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize in 1952, and continued his support for the USSR after clear evidence of the Soviet regimes anti-semitism emerged.

Robeson, who died in 1976, was a fearless and committed campaigner for human rights. Even if some of his later activism was naive and misguided, he can truly be said to be a classical musican who showed that music can help change the world.

Now for more on classical music and ethnic diversity read BBC Proms - a multicultural society?
Pete Seeger photo credit New York Post Corp. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Benjamin Britten – We Shall Overcome

There are four anniversaries today, and three of them are of important events connected by a fascinating thread. November 22nd is remembered by many for the assassination of John F Kennedy in Dallas in 1963, while on a happier note Benjamin Britten was born in Lowestoft on this day in 1913, and quite appropriately today is also the name day of Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of musicians. The connection between these three anniversaries also involves folk singer, political activist and pioneering conservationist, Pete Seeger. Here is the little known story.

In his Inaugural Address on January 20th 1961 President Kennedy vigorously defended the principle of liberty with these words: - Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world. Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

Despite this powerful rhetoric liberty was still under serious threat in the early days of the Kennedy administration. Prior to 1961 Pete Seeger had been investigated for sedition by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, harassed by the FBI and CIA, blacklisted, picketed, and stoned by conservative groups. In March 1961 Seeger (right) was convicted of contempt of Congress following his 1955 appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in New York. After his conviction, and before his successful appeal, Seeger obtained the court’s permission to tour England in the autumn of 1961.

In the two years since his last visit to England Seeger had developed a large following, and an audience of four thousand turned out at London’s Royal Albert Hall, which is best know today as the home of the BBC Promenade Concerts. The concert in 1961 was promoted by the English “Pete Seeger Committee” which had been formed to support the embattled musician; Paul Robeson was president, the great ballad singer Ewan MacColl was chairman, and the sponsors were Doris Lessing, Sean O’Casey and Benjamin Britten.

With acknowledgements to David Dunaway’s excellent biography of Pete Seeger (Da Capo ISBN 0306803992).

* This Path brings together Britten and J.F. Kennedy, but another one tells the story of how Britten felt unable to compose a memorial to the slain President - see Music does not exist in a vacuum.

* Eagle eyed readers will have noted I have only mentioned three of today’s four anniversaries. The fourth one is mere trivia – November 22nd is also my birthday.

For more on pluralism in the world of music take An Overgrown Path to BBC Proms - a multicultural society?
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included for "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk