Mark the Music: The Life and Work of Marc Blitzstein [Paperback]

Eric Gordon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 19, 2000

The recently released Tim Robbins film Cradle Will Rock reawakened worldwide audiences to composer Marc Blitzstein's runaway Broadway hit of 1937, and to the exciting times he lived in. Blitzstein went on to write Regina (based on Lillian Hellman's "The Little Foxes"), the definitive translation of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's Threepenny Opera, and an enormous amount of other music based squarely in American and Broadway traditions. Mark the Music is an engaging biography of this larger-than-life composer that reads like a novel. Practically every page features an illuminating and revealing pen portrait of the most important creative personalities in American cultureOrson Welles, John Houseman, Ernest Hemingway, Paul Robeson, Sean O'Casey, Agnes de Mille, Lotte Lenya, Melvyn Douglas, Shirley Both, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Earl Robinson, Rudolf Bing, and many more. A vibrant journey through mid-20th century America comes to life through the eyes and experience of Marc Blitzstein. The issues that marked Blitzstein's daycensorship, repression, warare all with us today. This is a story of passion, defiance, glory and tragedy, and ultimately of faith in democratic American values expressed through the arts.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Historian Gordon presents a thorough account of the life and works of the composer best known for his American stage adaptation of Bertold Brecht's The Threepenny Opera. In his own compositions, not well received in their own time and not often performed today, Blitzstein expressed his preoccupation with the political and social issues of his day. His operas of the 1930s (for example, The Cradle Will Rock and No for an Answer ) are statements of his commitment to the labor movement and to left-wing causes, and all of his later works contain bold social commentary. Gordon gives exhaustive synopses of the plots of Blitzstein's operas and theater pieces and discusses his life at length, especially his personal relationships and his homosexuality. The result is a detailed picture of a composer who used his music as a vehicle for propaganda long before the political protest music of the 1960s and '70s. A list of Blitzstein's compositions is included. Photographs not seen by PW.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Blitzstein has suffered years of unjust neglect, but lately his star has been on the ascendant, and this excellent biography will further boost his reputation. A socially conscious composer who strove to write serious yet accessible classical music for the American masses, Blitzstein produced an oeuvre that overall is uneven, though his greatest success, The Cradle Will Rock , is a landmark work in populist American musical theater. Historian Gordon has written an extraordinarily detailed and well-researched account of Blitzstein's life and achievements. The book is an invaluable socio-musical document as well, particularly in chronicling the activities of New York-based artists and literati during the Depression era. Gordon's style is crisp and compelling throughout. Highly recommended.
- Lar ry Lipkis, Moravian Coll., Bethlehem, Pa.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 644 pages
• Publisher: iUniverse (June 19, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0595092489
• ISBN-13: 978-0595092482
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,483,925 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great book about a remarkable American composer, August 12, 2000

By 

e george kassner (New York, NY, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mark the Music: The Life and Work of Marc Blitzstein (Paperback)

The name of Marc Blitstein -- an extrordinarily talented and nearly forgotten 20th cnetury American composer -- resurfaced last year when Tim Robbins' film "Cradle Will Rock" lovingly resurrected the New York cultural scene during the Depression. The film builds to the glorious moment in 1937 when Orson Welles, John Housman and a bunch of courageous performers (all of whom risked forfeiting their W.P.A. paychecks and rejoining the breadlines) defied the Government's lockout and marched 20 blocks to a hastily rented theater for the opening performance of Blitzstein's delightful agitprop musical. The film doesn't tell us much about Blitstein, who comes across a driven, somewhat strange songwriter who recently lost his wife. Eric Gordon's remarkable biography fills in the blamks.

Marc Blitstein was a superbly trained classical composer whose serious music is largely forgotten (the only instrumental work available on CD via Amazon.com is his 1931 piano concerto; the CD his magnificent opera "Regina," based on Lillian Hellman's play "The Little Foxes," is not to be found; his agitprop opera, "No For an Answer," which was first performed in 1939, has never been releaded on CD; his "Airborne Symphony" largely written while on duty in the Army Air Force." has also unavailable.)

Blitzstein was raised in Philadelphia, the son of Russian Jewish immagrants. His family was comfortably middle class (they operated a bank that served the immigrant community) but never lost touch with their socialist roots. Marc was a prodigy who scratched out a living during the 1920's from lecturing and writing on the new music. (Some of his reviews trashing some of his far better remembered contemporaries such as Aaron Copland, Virgil Thompson and Kurt Weill made me wonder about his critical judgement.) He became swept up in the social ferment of the 1930's and tried his hand writing inspiring songs for the masses. He was captivated by the Soviet social experiment and saw it as the only chance to achieve social justice for the common man. He joined the Communist Party in the mid-30's and closely hewed to the oscillations of the Party line. (Although his enthusiastic fellow traveling earned him FBI surveillance throught the J. Edgar Hoover era and a 4-page entry in "Red Channels" -- he was hassled very little by HUAC and Joe McCarthy. Blitzstein testiified before HUAC on 1949; he freely admitted Party membership but refused to name names. He quit the Party in 1949 over the Soviet Party's campaign against "formalism," which he considered an invasion of his artistic freedom. One delicious tidbit unearthed by Gordon is that the US Air Force orchestra peformed Blitzstein's choral "Airborne Symphony." which was composed while he was a dues-paying member of the Communist Party, at the 50th anniversary celebration of the Wright Brother's first flight. )

Blitztein -- along with Aaron Copland and Virgil Tmompson -- is in the pantheon of America's homosexual composers. Gordon's book thooroughly explores this aspect of his life, which includes a trooubled marriage to a neurotic young woman writer who died of anorexia nervosa at 31, with remarkable sensitivity and insight. (Blitzstein's obsessive pursuit of macho sex partners led to his death at 59; while vacationing in Martinique he was beaten by 3 young sailors he picked up while cruising waterfront dives and died of internal bleeding.) Blitzstein's homosexuallity provides some hilarious touches (his wartime experiences in London before the era of don't ask/don't tell are worth the price of the book).

Despite a valiant try, Blitzstein never made it on Broadway. During the 1940's and 50's he literally knew everybody worth knowing in the world of American theater -- Lenny Bernstein was a close friend -- and it seemed that he was on the edge of glorious success. Alas, it never happened. He was a much better composer and lyricist than librettist (Bertstein stole one of his melodies for "Maria" in "West Side Story"). Both of his lavishlly produced 1950's musicals --"Rueben Rueben" died a horrible death in Boston and "Juno," based on O'Casey's "Juno and the Paycock," closed after a short run -- have disappeared without a trace. Ironically, his only success was off-Broadway: his briliant adaptation of the Brecht/Weill masterpiece "Der Driegroschenoper" ("The Threepenny Opera"), which ran for 6 years at the Theatre de Lys. Royalties from the casr album and the single "Mack the Knife" constitute the vast bulk of Bitstein's estate.

Blitzstein's greatest ambition was to become America's premier operatic composer. Alas, this too was not to be. is first true opera, "Regina," has has several regional productions but has not been produced in New York since 1960. He devoted the last 4 years of his life to an opera about Sacco and Vanzetti, which had been commisioned by the Ford Foundation and optioned by the Metropolitan Opera. He got bogged down in research for this project -- he wanted every detail to absolutely right -- and it is doubtful that he would have ever completed this magnum opus. Late in life he rediscovered his Jewish roots while on an extended visit to Isreal and completed one of two short operas based on the stories of Barnard Malamud; "Idiots Come First" has been praised as his finest oeratic work but, alas, is not available on CD.

Marc Blitzstein was a remarkable man. And this meticuolously researched and beautifully written book thoroughly captures the man and his facinating times. I highly recommend it.