Louis Krasner and the Second Viennese School

November 2, 2023

Summer 1985, DH at Tanglewood with Leon Kirchner and Adrienne and Louis Krasner following the premiere (coached by Louis and dedicated by me to him) of my revised String Quartet No. 1 by a fellowship quartet. It was a great honor to work with Kirchner & Louis that summer, and to eagerly take in all the oral history Louis had to offer about Berg, Schoenberg, and Webern.

Louis Krasner was the shortest person in the room, but he undoubtedly cast by far the longest shadow. The summer’s fellowship composers (of which I was one during summer 1985) arrayed themselves easily, thoughtlessly, like bolts of cloth, with the bodily flexibility available only to the young, over, and around sticks of furniture in the living room at Seranak—onetime home of Serge and Natalia Koussevitzky, and by that time, serving as a venue for the Tanglewood Festival. We were gathered for an oral history lesson (one he’d clearly presented before and would present again) from the person who had premiered not only Alban Berg’s, but also Arnold Schoenberg’s monumental violin concertos—a man not only present but literally instrumental in bringing about their existence.

Observing as a child that my parents customarily inscribed the date and place that they had acquired books on the title page, I had long followed suit; so, I knew that the Universal study score of the Berg concerto I was holding had been purchased at Patelson’s (lamented emporium behind Carnegie Hall) on 18 April 1983, after a lesson with Lukas Foss, whose astonishment that I did not yet know the piece (there certainly was a lot that I didn’t know then that I know now—and I have learned the obvious fact that the more you know the less you know) transformed in a beat to wild enthusiasm and joy as he sat down without a score in front of him and played for me at the piano the climactic moment—the hochpunkt at measure 125 of the second movement—singing in his own octave the solo violin part.

Nobody had a cell phone back then, and I don’t think that it would have occurred to any one of us to bring a tape recorder. We were surrounded by history: Leon Kirchner was our teacher; Maurice Abravanel perambulated and dispensed wisdom every afternoon; John Adams listened to our music one afternoon before attending a rehearsal of his brand new Harmonielehre; Bernstein was due in a week or two and would listen to our music and spend the evening in this same room, cross-legged on the floor, talking about Art and the Bomb. Knowing that I was a witness to something important I pulled a ballpoint pen out and began to transcribe Louis’ words; the only paper at hand was my study score, so I wrote on that.

“The Schoenberg concerto is certainly the equal of the Berg,” he began. “Though not as popular, even if it takes a hundred years, it will become the pride of violinists. The Berg, sentimental, with a requiem story, had everything going for it. The Schoenberg, when Stokowski finally programmed it, was rejected twice before being accepted. There was no fee involved; Stoki paid me out of his own pocket.”

“Stoki,” he continued, “was the ‘Glamorous One,’ but he forced the check on me and made the subsequent performances possible of the Berg and Schoenberg concertos in the States. People should know that. Stoki was really the first performance of the Berg in the States—before Koussy. Mitropoulos was one of the greatest proponents of contemporary music. He would sleep for only four hours a night. He got his reward—by dying on the podium at La Scala.”

I looked around. It was plain that we all knew that we were hearing something special. Louis had known Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg. He had been there. “These three men were complicated, but the period in which they lived was the fermentation of world calamity—in a way, we are still in that time. Webern was gentle, humble, frail (like Bartok)—very intense. About Webern all you could see were suspicious, blazing eyes. Devoted to his family—religious, with a family stretching back to the 1500s. I went with Webern from Vienna to Barcelona at a time when Berg died—December of 1936—I was in New York and involved with a new string quartet. I withdrew in order to play the Berg for the ISCM in Barcelona. I dropped everything and went to Vienna. Webern came and was to conduct it but withdrew. No one knew it but him. I said ‘let me go’ to Webern and they said, ‘No! He’s in too emotional a state’.”

“Finally, I went to him and played through it with him. He finally relented. One ticket to Barcelona went through Germany. In Munich we got off the train and he bought me a beer. Back on the train he said, ‘so has anybody harmed you?’ He was so naive. And of course, we talked about it for the rest of the night after we’d gotten to Switzerland.”

At this point, he read a statement of Arnold Schoenberg, which he had translated himself: “We believed with sacrificial readiness in ideals once perceived and we never would/could have left these. Or given them up. Even if one had succeeded in misleading us. One must always think of us as Webern, Schoenberg, and Berg together.”

Putting the paper down, Krasner continued in his own words, “Schoenberg had great reservations about Webern as he had been taken in by the Nazis. In 1938, just before the war, I got back to the US from Vienna; I was told that Schoenberg was looking for me. Schoenberg had written an effusive dedication to Webern and I lied when asked whether Webern had been taken in by the Nazis. Steuerman and Schoenberg knew I was lying, but I am glad that I lied…. The terrible torment one can suffer in such a situation—the political situation was terrible, the Fascists wanted to overthrow (putsch) the Socialists. The city of Vienna (Socialists) supported Webern-s music. These Socialists were not Communists. And all his friends—Jews, Gentiles alike—were still there. His daughters’ husbands were both high-ranking Nazis…. Think of the suffering of this sensitive man being torn between the supporters of his music and his family.”

“I saw Webern several times after that and once I was playing the Schoenberg concerto and the 4 o’clock broadcast where the prime minister announced the German invasion of Austria and Austria’s capitulation. He said, ‘Get out as fast as you can!’ and I barely escaped.”

“After the war, I went back to Schoenberg’s house in Vienna and heard about Webern’s life during the war. I was told about the self-torture and guilt he went through. He saw that it wasn’t like that Munich restaurant at all. In ’37, the Vienna Philharmonic was already [filled with] undercover Nazis. Klemperer programmed Berg and many refused to play. The concert with Klemperer came off because Rosé came and played concertmaster. As soon as it was over they left the stage, leaving me, Klemperer, and Rosé alone on stage. Webern was in this position during the war.”

“Right after the Anschluss these men came with their armbands to rehearsals. All this Webern witnessed. Schoenberg’s son told me this—and his guilt (he hadn’t done anything) was terrible. When the Russians came into the city, Webern fled to Salzburg. Webern stepped out to light a cigarette during curfew and was shot…. Schoenberg’s son said that it was ‘suicide by a third hand.’ I see in that, for Webern, it was his redemption—when he was able to die by a bullet from the other side, he was freed.”

“Webern did not go to Barcelona, Scherchen did. In London Webern did a very good job with me on the BBC who gave him as much rehearsal time as he needed. The three of them didn’t have a jealousy—I wish there were a better word—but when I got Schoenberg’s concerto he said, ‘This is no Berg concerto; this is much more difficult!’ I asked Webern when he would write a violin concerto but he didn’t get to it. I found a letter six years ago from Webern to me where he suggested beginning a solo violin sonata (which I had suggested). Part of my strength with these men was that I was not filled with awe and trepidation of them. I was too stupid to know better. So I said to Webern will you write me a solo piece?”

“So, somewhere in Webern’s papers there may exist a solo sonata.”

Six Beats for Blitzstein

July 21, 2016

Marc Blitzstein, American composer (1905-1964)

Marc Blitzstein’s music is not exactly an obsession of mine, but I do find the musical DNA of which it is composed indispensable. Strands of that DNA — strict adherence to economy of means, a passion for combining words and music, the belief that music can promote social justice, an abhorrence of pretension — are woven contrapuntally, inextricably, into the music that I compose, and have been, nearly from the start. Here are six Blitzstein beats.

One

Bltzstein’s music is powered by the ironic marriage of opposites. A fierce advocate of the poor and disenfranchised, he was born in Philadelphia in 1905 to affluent parents. Determined to write music popular with Regular Joes, he studied composition and piano at the Curtis Institute. Then he went on to Berlin to study with Arnold Schoenberg and to Paris where he worked with Nadia Boulanger. He began as a modernist, but he turned populist in the 1930s, shortly before he (an openly gay communist) married novelist Eva Goldbeck. Three Portuguese sailors in Martinique beat him to death in 1964 after a sexual encounter. In 1937, he entered Broadway history when the Works Progress Administration shut down The Cradle Will Rock — an opera presented as a musical. As the story goes, director Orson Welles and producer John Houseman walked the musicians, cast and audience from the Maxine Elliott Theater to the nearby Venice Theater, where — in order to evade union restrictions — they performed the piece from the audience, with Blitzstein (not a union member) accompanying from an upright piano onstage.

To some, Blitzstein’s signature gambit of destabilizing tonality by throwing a suspended fourth in the bass was crude. But, like a beat cop’s billy club to the ribs, it got things moving. Minus Blitzstein’s example and inspiration, Leonard Bernstein might have been a very different, possibly lesser, composer.

Two

One rainy November 1980 day Karlos Moser, then head of the opera program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where I was an undergraduate music major, and I were working through some songs that I had contributed to a revue he was concocting. My introduction to Marc’s music had come when Karlos cast my older brother Kevin as Ben Hubbard in his production of Blitzstein’s Regina during the late 70s. Karlos mentioned in passing that the State Historical Society possessed the Blitzstein papers. Thrilled, I had sprinted across the street to the archives, filled out a request to see them, and was astonished to be granted immediate access. Within thirty minutes, I held in my hands a Photostat of the manuscript of Blitzstein’s fair copy of the first page of Cradle. I was 17.

Odd it was, only a year later, to find myself a student of Ned Rorem’s at the Curtis Institute, composing and practicing on the same pianos Marc once did, passing his graduation portrait (along with everyone else’s — Leonard Bernstein, Ralph Berkowitz, Gian Carlo Menotti, Samuel Barber, Lukas Foss, and on and on) on my way each week to my piano lesson. Odder yet to have landed there in part because of a letter from his friend Bernstein to my mother, telling her I was “the real thing,” and encouraging her to send me to Juilliard (that’s another story) to study with another of Marc’s close friends, David Diamond.

John Houseman tells the story of opening night of The Cradle Will Rock.

Three

John Houseman’s production of Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock at the Fairbanks opened on 30 July 1983. I was there, seated in the first row. I still weighed about 160, sported a Blitzstein-esque moustache, and was still a student at Curtis. Before the performance, Houseman took the stage to tell the story of the night the show opened — Blitzstein at the piano, Orson Welles dashing around the theater, playing multiple characters, everyone afire with the moment. Ordinarily too abashed to importune, I threw myself at Houseman afterwards. “You captured lightning in a bottle, didn’t you?” I enthused. “Yes, my boy,” he drawled in his Professor Kingsfield voice, “I’m acutely aware of that.” I laughed. He was disarmed. “You look like Blitzstein,” he remarked. I flushed with pleasure. He frowned. “He ended badly.” I waited. Beat. “Yes, I know,” I said, “I’m a composer.” He thrust his chin upwards theatrically as though searching for answers among the klieg lights: “Dear God,” he said, exploding the G, extending the O into a melisma, and plucking the final D like a pizzicato. “What does one do with a composer?” I laughed again, shook his hand vigorously, and thanked him for his time. “Not at all,” he said. “Good luck.” He stared at me, hard, for three long beats. “You’ll need it.”

Four

Summer 1985. Saranac, Serge Koussevitzky’s home overlooking the Berkshires across the highway from the Tanglewood grounds. Late one evening, after hearing me improvise at the piano in Marc’s style and a discussion about Blitzstein’s music, Bernstein asked me to have a go at completing Sacco and Vanzetti, the unfinished opera for the Met found in the trunk of Marc’s car after he died. I told him I’d love to have a try, but couldn’t afford to do it for no fee. A few days later, at Bernstein’s behest, Jacob Druckman approached me on the back patio and put a little money on the table for the project on behalf of the New York Philharmonic, for whom he was then serving as composer in residence.

My instinct was that, as I did when offered by Ellis Freedman and Sylvia Goldstein a job as Aaron Copland’s final amanuensis, I should refuse it. I told Druckman that I felt that if I wanted to establish myself as a composer, then I needed to be known for my own music, not for what I had done for others’. He said that I had a point, and was impressed enough by the professionalism with which I handled the situation to speak to his wife Muriel about a ballet commission.

Having my hands on Blitzstein’s sketches was just too inviting an invitation to refuse. After spending a few days with them, I concluded that the most responsible thing to do was to leave the thing alone-they were just too fragmentary, too raw. The finished score would require the creation of too much original material to make it coherent. That May, Eric Gordon helped me to find the manuscript of Marc’s Piano Sonata, which hadn’t been performed publicly since the 20s so that I could program it on the concert series I was putting on in Philadelphia and New York.

Five

During spring 1990, I was fortunate enough to work on my first major opera Shining Brow with Bernstein. As Bernstein once did for Blitzstein with Trouble in Tahiti,I did for Lenny: I would play and sing the scene from Brow that I was working on. He’d amble over to the bench, push me to the side, and start playing off of my manuscript, squinting, sort of wheeze-singing as he briskly double-checked parts he wanted to speak to.

“Okay, baby,” he’d begin. “Try this.” He would “put over” a few bars of what I had written and veer off in a new direction, improvising an entirely different line reading. Then he’d stop, suck on his plastic cigarette holder, quickly page to a different part of the sketch, find something, and say, “Or you could have used this from before, like this.” He’d play a few bars.

“No, that wouldn’t work,” he’d think out loud. I’d improvise a different line reading. “No, no, you can’t do that!” he would laugh, “Marc did that in No for an Answer! Do you know that one?” He’d noodle a few bars. “No, that was Tender Land. Ugh. God.” (Laughter.)

During Wright’s Act 1, scene one pitch to his future mistress, I quoted the “New York, New York” rising fourths motive that he had first used in Trouble in Tahiti, and then in On the Town, on the word, “suburbia,” “Nice lift,” he said, “very Straussian. But you follow it up with stuff that sounds like Ned’s little Frank O’Hara opera. Did I steal that from him for Tahiti or did he steal that from me? I can’t remember. I know you’re talking about theft by putting stolen music in his mouth, but you should come up with something else there.”

At some point, I pointed out that I had been modeling the character of Wright musically on him, and the relationship between Wright and Sullivan on him and Blitzstein. He got it: “That’s 'Maria'. No, it’s the orchestral play-in to the first scene of Marc’s Regina,” he mused aloud. “Well, yes, I stole it from Marc.” Silence. “But he stole it from Aaron!” (Generous, warm laughter.)

It still felt, a few years later, at the family’s Dakota apartment (the day Brow received its workshop run-through after Bernstein’s death), as though he slouched in the low chair in the den, sipping a scotch, pulling on his plastic cigarette holder, growling one of the last things he said to me: “Play and sing that part again, baby—the part that sounds like Marc.”

Daron and David Diamond in the music room at Yaddo a few days before Diamond's death in June 2005. (Photo: Gilda Lyons)

Six

“Before I forget, I want to tell you that Marc used to like to sit over there,” said David Diamond, squeezing my hand and pointing at a spot far down the lawn near the rose garden. We were sitting on one of the pews in the Yaddo Music Room. Life-sized full body portraits of the Trask children loomed over us like gravestones. The June 2005 air was lively. Late afternoon light streamed through the leaded windows.

Elaina Richardson had asked me to curate a recital of music by composers who had worked at Yaddo. Michael Boriskin and his Music from Copland House players performed. I wanted to honor David, with whom I had studied, so I programmed his early Flute Quartet. I also suggested that he be invited and, to everyone’s astonishment, he agreed to come. He told me that he had wanted to visit Yaddo once more. I looked at David: his impeccably tailored gray serge sit hung loosely over his diminished frame. His blue shirt’s collar was crisp. There was a large New Zealand-shaped liver spot on his scalp over his right eye. What remained of his hair was colorless. His skin was papery and luminous. His rheumy eyes brimmed with tears. A few days later, on 13 June, he died.

That day, however, David’s observation was piercingly clear: “Marc cared,” he whispered urgently. “When he composed Regina here, he could sing and play every note. He knew words. You remember I told you once that he rewrote the entire libretto for Lenny’s Tahiti without needing to change a note of the music?” (When David reminisced, the facts could sometimes be sketchy, but the point was always clear.)

In May 2007, I sat before the upright piano in the Acosta Nichols Tower studio, the one at which Marc had written Regina, writing with trepidation the title Amelia over what would become the first page of over four hundred pages of piano sketch of my breakthrough opera about flight and rebirth. A bird flew in through the open door and flew frightened circles high above me in the white cone of the ceiling. I got up and spoke quietly to the bird, “You’ll be okay, friend. Everything will be fine. The door is open. Fly through it.” As though on cue, the bird swooped down and glided back out through the door to safety in the surrounding forest.

It was the spirit of Yaddo, yes; but it was also the spirit of Blitzstein.

Coda

Here is an aria from my Filmopera Orson Rehearsed in which Orson Welles recalls the night that Blitzstein performed The Cradle Will Rock from the piano at the Fairbanks Theater. The role of Welles is sung by Robert Frankenberry. Roger Zahab conducts the Fifth House Ensemble in a production I directed at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago in 2019 and released in March 2021 on the Naxos label. Discover more here.

This essay was originally published in the Huffington Post under the title "Obsessed: Marc Blitzstein" on 14 May 2012. Click here to read it there.