A few weeks ago I read that in 1951 Richard Rovere and Arthur Schlesinger wrote that the Pacific had (at that time) "long been" the Republican ocean and the Atlantic the Democratic one.
I'm sure that whatever validity that statement might hold, it would include a lot of complexity. But Democratic voters included many European immigrants, whereas the anti-European and particularly the Anglophobic Americans probably included a lot of rural midwestern Republicans; Republican devotion to trade would have pointed some of its interests to Asia; it had been under Republicans McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt that the US conquered the Philippines, and TR had negotiated with Japan to secure the Philippines; McKinley and TR were also the architects of the "Open Door" policy in China; the Republican "isolationists" of the early Cold War were eager supporters of Chiang and of MacArthur....
Ok, so, what it ties to in my mind is a connection between "the foreign policy Establishment" ("the Wise Men") of the 1950s and '60s and the golden age of classical music in the United States. I've always found it useful to think of Bernstein's primary audience as Acheson's friends' families. Somewhere in the early Cold War seems to me to be when the American public began to associate Democratic Party politics with highbrow culture. And "highbrow" of course meant "European," at least until the late 1960s, but probably even until now.
What I'd really, really like is some good solid research/information about how the classical music (compositions, performances, whatever) of that era related to the foreign policy Establishment. The comment about oceans just triggered that. But heck, I'm practically just free associating, so if you can find some connections or some big problems with mine, I'd like to know about them!
Britten's War Requiem could be an example, as it was evidently embraced by the anti-war crowd of the Vietnam era. Attending a performance of it at that time, or perhaps even just listening to a recording, could've been a political statement. Of course Rzewski wore his Northeastern intellectual politics on his sleeve, with compositions like Variations on The People United Will Never Be Defeated, and (the other one).
Things change of course. At some point Asian influences on classical music became mainstream - gamelan, Takemitsu, Ravi Shankar (who recorded popular albums with classical musicians). In this case I don't see the political/cultural parallels: listening to Nonesuch's gamelan recording probably correlated negatively with support for the Vietnam war. By the late '60s, everything was changing, but perhaps it's not all that different; perhaps the Republican stance on Asia was to make it American (Protestant Christian, capitalist, like Chiang) rather than to allow it to influence us, whereas the openness to European culture could easily be extended to the East and the "global south."
I don't know. I'm just tossing this around for parallels. I'm interested in understanding the connections between the classical music culture (not only composers and performers but the entire audience and especially the people who paid the bills) and its social and political context.
I'm sure that whatever validity that statement might hold, it would include a lot of complexity. But Democratic voters included many European immigrants, whereas the anti-European and particularly the Anglophobic Americans probably included a lot of rural midwestern Republicans; Republican devotion to trade would have pointed some of its interests to Asia; it had been under Republicans McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt that the US conquered the Philippines, and TR had negotiated with Japan to secure the Philippines; McKinley and TR were also the architects of the "Open Door" policy in China; the Republican "isolationists" of the early Cold War were eager supporters of Chiang and of MacArthur....
Ok, so, what it ties to in my mind is a connection between "the foreign policy Establishment" ("the Wise Men") of the 1950s and '60s and the golden age of classical music in the United States. I've always found it useful to think of Bernstein's primary audience as Acheson's friends' families. Somewhere in the early Cold War seems to me to be when the American public began to associate Democratic Party politics with highbrow culture. And "highbrow" of course meant "European," at least until the late 1960s, but probably even until now.
What I'd really, really like is some good solid research/information about how the classical music (compositions, performances, whatever) of that era related to the foreign policy Establishment. The comment about oceans just triggered that. But heck, I'm practically just free associating, so if you can find some connections or some big problems with mine, I'd like to know about them!
Britten's War Requiem could be an example, as it was evidently embraced by the anti-war crowd of the Vietnam era. Attending a performance of it at that time, or perhaps even just listening to a recording, could've been a political statement. Of course Rzewski wore his Northeastern intellectual politics on his sleeve, with compositions like Variations on The People United Will Never Be Defeated, and (the other one).
Things change of course. At some point Asian influences on classical music became mainstream - gamelan, Takemitsu, Ravi Shankar (who recorded popular albums with classical musicians). In this case I don't see the political/cultural parallels: listening to Nonesuch's gamelan recording probably correlated negatively with support for the Vietnam war. By the late '60s, everything was changing, but perhaps it's not all that different; perhaps the Republican stance on Asia was to make it American (Protestant Christian, capitalist, like Chiang) rather than to allow it to influence us, whereas the openness to European culture could easily be extended to the East and the "global south."
I don't know. I'm just tossing this around for parallels. I'm interested in understanding the connections between the classical music culture (not only composers and performers but the entire audience and especially the people who paid the bills) and its social and political context.