User:Benitoelbonito/Prelim exam (with additional material)

Hello, Committee!

Here is the updated version of my exam response. As you may imagine, I have not been able to fully compile all the information that was relevant, with the result that many of the sections are answered here in writing far less completely than I would have liked; however, I look forward to being able to elaborate on many of my positions during the oral exam. I have tried to go through the material I have provided to make it continuous enough that it can be read as a single coherent piece, though I suspect I was not in all cases completely successful on this point.

I wanted to present my exam response in wiki format both to emphasize my interest in malleable data but also for the practical purpose of giving you all the chance to use the talk page for asking questions and providing commentary.

I will see you all on Monday. -Ben

Introduction

As I indicated in my proposal, my interest is the relationship between politics and aesthetics. I am driven by an interest in leftist political activism, and my concern with this project is with the possibilities for employing art to propose/create more democratic social relations.

First some background, to establish the scene. My thinking proceeds from two crucial theoretical standpoints. The first is an insistence on immanence, particularly in the case of human subjectivity. Drawing from, among others, Marx (for whom the insistence would be on ‘materiality’), Althusser (‘ISAs’), Deleuze and Guattari (‘immanence’ and ‘desire’), Foucault (‘power’), Butler (‘performativity’), and Mark Poster (the ‘digital self’), I place emphasis on the constructed nature of subjectivity. Put simply, this position posits that human subjects do not exist a priori, and rather that they are formed “in process” through the actions and experiences of everyday life. There are a couple of profound consequences for the activist. For one thing, it removes ‘liberation’ as a goal, because the formulation of ‘liberation’ usually depends on the notion of a human subject that is in essence free but has been subjugated (by government, society, morals, or whatever else). This complicates activism a great deal, because rather than attacking the vessels of subjugation (as the Old Left meant to do: to “smash the state”), one must instead resist “from underneath”—by reorganizing the micro-formations of power that create subjects who exist in, lets say, non-democratic states. A constructed nature of subjectivity means that resistance can be done on local levels; it is empowering because democratic social relations can be “found” simply by making them.

The second theoretical standpoint that is important here (related to the first) concerns the importance of formal aspects of discourse (artistic or otherwise). This follows from Marshall McLuhan’s influential media theory (“the medium is the message”) as well as later media theorists such as Mark Poster and Lev Manovich. However, my approach makes these theorists’ work applicable to a larger of discourse than that to which they are usually applied; this follows from my interest in confusing the categories of ‘media’, ‘form’, and ‘content’.

Taken together in combination with my political interests and my own interest in music, these viewpoints prompt me to explore the various ways in which musical media and forms function or can be implemented to function in the construction of subjectivities. Ideally, such analysis could spur the production of aesthetic objects that contribute to a more democratic society.

Topic #1: The Cradle Will Rock

Overview of the play

Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock, composed in 1936 in the midst of the Depression, is a work that argues for the virtues of unionization. Set in “Steeltown, USA”, The Cradle depicts a town dominated by the interests of the local steel industry, owned by Mr. Mister. The plot takes place in a nightcourt, where members of Mr. Mister’s Liberty Committee have been mistakenly arrested for union organizing (they were actually trying to prevent it); also present are a few other characters: Harry Druggist (a former pharmacist who is now a drunk), the Moll (a prostitute), and Larry Foreman (a legitimate union organizer). Most of the action happens in a series of flashbacks that chronicle how members of the liberty committee (representing various arms of society) were corrupted by the Mr. Mister’s influence; a central theme is prostitution, with the literal prostitution of the Moll counterposed with the figurative prostitution of the committee members. A few other scenes also criticize the rich (incarnated here as Mr. Mister’s lazy children, Junior and Sister Mister), demonstrate the financial hardships of everyday life for the poor (the Moll), and lament the oppression of the working person by capital (Ella Hammer, the widow of Joe hammer, who was murdered for organizing). Here is a brief outline of the format of the play:

• Scene 1: The Moll is arrested for “solicitin’”. The Liberty Committee is also arrested, along with Larry Foreman, who is to make a pro-union speech; there is a big union activity tonight.
• Scene 2: Everyone is now in jail; Druggist makes the theme of prostitution explicit by commenting that the charges against the Liberty Committee should be for “habitual prostitution”.
• Scene 3: In a flashback to the years leading up to World War I, we see Reverend Salvation, in the employ of Mr. Mister, first give a sermon arguing for peace (as that would allow the steel industry to keep selling to Germans, among others), but then change his position as it becomes clear that the industry can profit greatly from the war.
• Scene 4: We see the laziness of Junior and Sister Mister; also, Editor Daily (the newspaper editor) is enlisted to smear Larry Foreman.
• Scene 5: Harry Druggist, because he fears losing his pharmacy to Mr. Mister’s bank, is complicit in the murder of two Polish immigrants (an explosion set off at union headquarters); his son Steve, who tries to help the victims, also dies.
• Scene 6: Dauber (a painter) and Yasha (a violinist) grovel for the attention (and financial support) of Mrs. Mister.
• Scene 7: The Moll regales us with her dire financial situation in “The Nickel Under the Foot”; Larry Foreman espouses his position on why the middle class needs to join the unionization effort.
• Scene 8: President Prexy, head of the university, agrees to Mr. Mister’s demand that military training be mandatory for his students.
• Scene 9: Dr. Specialist agrees to say that Joe Hammer (murdered by Mr. Mister’s men for organizing) actually died because he was drunk on the job. Joe’s widow Ella laments to plight of the worker.
• Scene 10: Mr. Mister arrives to free the Liberty Committee; he also offers to free Larry Foreman and to pay him off in exchange for him backing down and joining the Liberty Committee; Foreman declines. Outside, we hear the sounds of celebration as the steel mill has apparently decided to unionize.

Background

Marc Blitzstein’s musical training, like most American composers of his generation, was based around the modernist aesthetic that developed primarily out of the music of Schoenberg and Stravinsky and their students. In the 1920s, he studied in Europe with Nadia Boulanger and for a short time with Schoenberg himself. His musical output from this period was, not surprisingly, fully in a chromatic, atonal mode.

His musical style, however, changed along with his political commitment. The latter can be seen to be driven somewhat by two factors: first, his marriage to (and love for, despite having generally homosexual interests) Eva Goldbeck, the Marxist novelist; and second, his involvement with the Composers’ Collective, a group loosely connected to the Communist Party that sought to develop music for the purposes of leftist struggle.

Though the Collective had the best of intentions, in the end it failed; it dissolved in 1936. However, Blitzstein emerged from the Collective with a new musical style that rejected his old modernism in favor of a more popularly directed approach. After Goldbeck died in 1936, Blitzstein wrote The Cradle Will Rock in a mere two months.

Blitzstein had some trouble arranging for the work to be staged, but eventually it found a home under the auspices of the Federal Theater Project, where it was to be staged by a young Orson Welles. Part of the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration (WPA), the Federal Theater Project was a government-funded initiative that hired people all over the country to create theatrical productions. The project came under fire from conservative politicians, however, when it became involved in the production of several left-promoting plays. This fact, combined with an actual strike on the part of steelworkers near the date of the premiere of The Cradle, prompted the government to cancel the production at the last minute, going so far as to deploy armed guards to prevent anyone from entering the theater.

But 18,000 people had bought tickets in advance of the production, and so a full crowd showed up on opening night. Rather than just accept the cancellation Welles, Blitzstein, and their cohorts instead managed to rent another venue that very night (some 20 blocks away), and they notified the crowd outside and marched them to the new theater. They were informed that the actors wouldn’t be able to go on stage (due, ironically, to union contracts), nor could the orchestra play; and of course, all of Welles’ elaborate sets and staging would have to be scrapped. So, Blitzstein was prepared to play the entire work at the piano and sing all the parts himself. Yet, when he began to play, many of the actors, who were in the audience, got up and sang their parts from their seats. The result was by all accounts extraordinary.

This renegade production ran for ten days before the actors had to go back to their jobs in the Federal Theater Project; Welles and John Houseman, who had been fired for insubordination, then formed the Mercury Theater, which staged the work for a longer run starting in December 1937; though they could have at that point employed a full staging with costumes, sets, and orchestra, they opted instead to use the same minimalist production as they had been forced to use in the premiere.

Reception among musicians

Reception amongst musicians was, for the most part, positive (at least in terms of public statements). By far work’s greatest champion was Virgil Thomson. Having attended several rehearsals and consulted the score, he preemptively declared in his column on theater (as Modern Music was to be published before the premiere of The Cradle), “The libretto (Blitzstein’s own) is dramatically effective and verbally bright, the musical declamation is the season’s best by far, and the orchestral accompaniment is of a rare finesse. … I predict a genuine success.” In the same column few issues later, Thomson still held high praise for the work (“After six months … it’s musical quality hasn’t worn thin.”), though he was willing at that point to offer a few words of criticism:

It’s weak ending is still a weak ending. I’ve a low-down suspicion, however, that the hokum of that ending may be responsible partly for the financial success. Than ending-on-a-hopeful-note is very close to a fairy-tale, to a sort of (dear Marc, forgive me the wise-crack) opium for the people which makes the social bitterness parts hurt less.

Most convincingly, in his 1971 book, American Music Since 1910, Thomson would reckon The Cradle as one of three works from the period “to break new stage ground”, along with Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and of course Thomson’s own Four Saints.

Aaron Copland, too, admired the work, though in a rather more tempered way than Thomson. In his review of a fresh printing of some of the Cradle songs, he predicts disappointment for a listener who hasn’t seen the production: “It was never intended to stand on its own feet. It is an integral part of the play, where it is enormously effective.” Copland is particularly impressed with the way Blitzstein “turns the ordinary, banal musical language of the day into a pungent and laconic commentary on human frailty and injustice.”

In his 1941 treatise Our New Music, Copland would opine that the form of The Cradle was “nothing new”—“mostly a reversion to a pre-Wagnerian kind of opera”. He was impressed, however, with the works’ design: “One of the most striking characteristics of The Cradle is the extent to which every moment in the piece seems controlled.” But even if Copland wasn’t as effusive in his admiration of the piece as Thomson, it seems he tended to look upon it as an important step: noting the lack of an indigenous American operatic tradition, Copland suggested that Blitzstein and Virgil Thomson “seem to have set us on our way toward having our own kind of operatic piece.”

Lehman Engel, who was to be the conductor in the original orchestrated version and who later had a long, successful career in musical theater, commented in that, “from the inside, however, the music has a subtle complexity … The simplicity seems to be indicating where the music is going and what is going to happen—but not quite. It announces its intention to be banal, but this avowal is only flirtatious.” And of course Leonard Bernstein, who would perform the work in 1947-8 with the New York Symphony Orchestra, also voiced his support for the work.

However taken some musicians might have been with The Cradle, others seemed to prefer to ignore it. In the November 1937 issue of Modern Music (the next one published after Virgil Thomson offered his advance praise), Elliot Carter was the author of the journal’s “In the Theatre” column; yet, he doesn’t mention The Cradle at all. To be fair, it had been several months; furthermore, he does mention the Mercury Theater’s production of Julius Ceasar, for which Blitzstein had written some incidental music and a couple of songs, and is complimentary of the music in that case. And Roger Sessions, in an article titled “To Revitalize Opera” a few months later, again fails to mention The Cradle, though perhaps that snub is more related to Sessions’ analysis of the works’ genre (music theater as opposed to opera).

Reception in the press

The mainstream press for the most part ate it up; but of course, they were initially less concerned with the works’ aesthetic qualities and more with the hullabaloo surrounding its premiere. Though news of the premiere ran in all the New York newspapers, not one publication reviewed it until it was put on “officially” by the Mercury Theater in December 1937. (Time did manage a one-line apparaisal in their coverage of the premiere: “In his ingenious mélange of recitative and revue-patter songs, suites, chorales, arias, Silly Symphony bits and lullaby music, Blitzstein exhibited the extraordinary technical control that made Arnold Schönberg regard him as his most talented U. S. pupil.”)

However, once the December production was on, the major papers offered their reviews, which were for the most part positive. The New York Times suggested, “if ‘The Cradle Will Rock’ is intended to arouse the rabble by malicious caricature and battle-line thunder it may be temperately reported as a stirring success. It is also the most versatile artistic triumph of the politically insurgent theatre.” And of course, the Daily Worker wholly approved. Time went so far as to name it one of the “Best Plays in Manhattan.”

Of course, there was dissent from this point of view, most famously from George Jean Nathan writing in Scribner’s, who bombastically dismissed the whole production “as being little more than the kind of thing Cole Porter might have written if, God forbid, he had gone to Columbia instead of Yale.”

Reception through history

Though I don’t have time to elaborate on this now, the coverage of revivals of The Cradle has tended to draw out reviewers who are interested in co-opting Blitzstein for their own interests; this was particularly evident in the 1960s, when the US was again experiencing a (somewhat) serious debate on the merits of leftism/socialism.

Blitzstein's own view of the work

The most glaring difference between Blitzstein’s own view of The Cradle and how it was understood by others concerns its intended audience. For Blitzstein, it was a work aimed solidly at the middle class. He believed that the lower class already knew how they stood in relation to capitalists and didn’t need any help becoming radicalized; rather, it was middle class people who were missing out on the reality of a situation in which they were treated no better than the lower class, and thus it was they that needed a push. In an interview published in the Daily Worker, Blitzstein was clear:

Unions…are used as a symbol of something in the way of a solution for the plight of the middleclass. … The middleclass must sooner or later see that there can be allegiance only to the future, not the past; that the only sound loyalty is the concept of work, and to a principle which makes honest work at least true, good and beautiful.

This intention is reflected in The Cradle in a couple of ways. For one thing, the union-organizing “hero”, Larry Foreman is not just a worker; he's a foreman. And in Scene 7 (audio) he tells Moll that he’s part of another, pro-union committee, and that “We’re all midlle class, we all got property.” Furthermore, Harry Druggist, the ex-sellout who functions as kind of narrator, is one of the most sympathetic characters in the play; he, too, as the former owner of his own small pharmacy (Mr. Mister had it torn down, apparently) is middle-class.

And yet, for the most part, reviewers of the work continued to describe it as an opera for workers: consider Brooks Atkinson’s review in the New York Times: “Written with extraordinary versatility and played with enormous gusto, it is the best thing militant labor has put into a theatre yet. … At last the comrades of the insurgent theatre can feel sure that they have a fully awakened artist on their side.” Of course, at least part of this must be due to the sensation that the work caused at its premiere, which seemed to prompt an even stronger polarized reception.

Techniques

Form

Fluid starting/stopping of music

One of the techniques that Copland was impressed with was that “the musical sections, instead of being formally set with definite beginnings and endings, seem to start and finish casually, so that one is rarely conscious of where the music begins and the dialogue leaves off, or vice versa.” This has the effect of allowing the music to switch between a variety of roles without having to stop the action to reconfigure itself (as would be the case in a strictly number-based opera, for instance). One of my favorite examples is Scene 6, discussed in more detail below.

Though Copland dismissed the form of The Cradle as “mostly a reversion to a pre-Wagnerian kind of opera”, other reviewers saw the aforementioned fluidity as contributing to a novel formal organization. Paul Rosenfeld, for instance, marveled at the “continuity of the form”; another reviewer described the work as “formless”.

The ending: musico-dramatic polyphony

However one describes the form for the bulk of The Cradle, the ending manages to tie it all together. While Larry Foreman considers Mr. Mister’s offer to buy him out, the Liberty Committee (as a chorus) pleads with him in the background to accept; Harry Druggist, on the other hand, advocates rejecting the offer. All the while, the Moll begins a reprise of The Nickel Under the Foot. Blitzstein seemed to be most proud of this last flourish, as he felt the juxtaposition between Nickel and the conversation between Foreman and Mr. Mister exposed “what was ostensibly a friendly conversation” as “a scene of venal and unsavory corruption”. Thus, by juggling five separate positions (Foreman, Mr. Mister, the Liberty Committee, Druggist, and the Moll), Blitzstein demonstrates both musically and textually the interplay between their roles; this kind of dramatic fugue functions to summarize the whole set of social relations of Steeltown.

Pastiche of styles

As John Houseman recalled in the introduction to his the PBS broadcast of his 1983 revival, Blitzstein described the work as “a labor opera composed in a style that falls somewhere between realism, romance, Vaudeville, comic strip, Gilbert & Sullivan, Brecht, and agitprop”. Two song styles in particular are relevant here: the “popular song” style of the Tin Pan Alley composers and the “mass-song” style developed during the Composers’ Collective years for the purposes of political agitation.

Popular song

Blitzstein’s relationship with popular song is a complicated one. Judging from “Croon Spoon” (audio – score) in Scene 4, you would think that Blitzstein (in a Frankfurt School-like mode) fully despises the genre as whole. The song is song by Junior and Sister Mister, Mr. Mister’s children who are lounging about lazily in the sun. The accompaniment (chromatic passing tones, blue notes, rhythms), harmony (chains of applied dominants for one thing), and form (a modified 32-bar song form) are fully suggestive of the Tin Pan Alley style. The words, meanwhile, satirize the genre of “feel good” songs and suggest that the function at the behest of capital: the bridge goes, “Oh the crooner’s life is a blessed one, he makes the population happy.” (In fact, my ears detect a possible reference to “Summertime” from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess here: the melody start at scale degree 5 in the minor mode, then proceeds downward, leaping from flat scale degree 3 to the tonic; to top it off, the phrase ends with a blue-note—the flatted fifth falling to scale degree 4 at “popu-LA-tion” just as so many singers perform the end of the chorus in “Summertime.” Hardly conclusive evidence, to be sure, but the lyrical invocation of an idyllic summerscape—“crooning in the Juneday sun”—combined with the fact that Porgy premiered in 1935, a year before Blitzstein wrote The Cradle.)

The satirization of “Croon Spoon” is reprised later in the same scene with “Honolulu” (audio – score). In this case, Mr. Mister decides to send Junior to Hawaii in order to get him out of the way so that he doesn't get involved in any unionization activities. (Interestingly, a parallel figure, the businessman’s son who out of boredom becomes pro-union, figures prominently in Blitzstein’s opera from 1940, No for an Answer.) Whereas “Croon Spoon” featured richly chromatic harmonic content, “Honolulu” is almost entirely based on two (relatively) consonant chords, I and V⁷, with the occasional ii⁷ to dramatize a half-cadence—it makes Dylan look like Schoenberg.

Blitzstein also wrote harshly of popular song, arguing that among other things it was, harmonically speaking, “slavishly European”. Despite this stated opinion, and although his use of the popular style is clearly for the satirization of the wealthy in the above cases, it cannot be said that Blitzstein was unequivically opposed to the popular song style. While he had previously used it to similar satiric effect in “Send for the Militia” (score), a song for the revue Parade from the previous year, he had also recently written two rather touching songs in the popular style, the straightforward minor-key rhumba “The Way You Are” (score), and “Stay in My Arms” (score), apparently written for his wife, the ailing Eva Goldbeck who would soon die.

Mass-song style

Carol J. Oja’s excellent article “Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock and Mass-Song Style of the 1930s” provides an excellent account of how the mass-song style developed during the Composers’ Collective years influenced Blitzstein’s writing. She traces in detail how the song “Joe Worker” (audio – score) morphed from previous incarnations to its current form in The Cradle, and argues that the stylistic changes Blitzstein made to the song to make it so effective as a show-stopper are precisely those that were featured in the mass-songs of the early 1930s. But “Joe Worker” is a success in spite of the genre: the form of the mass-song as advocated by the Composers’ Collective is perhaps the very quintessence of their failure; glancing through the Worker’s Songbook, one is for the most part greeted with angular melodic lines and harshly dissonant harmonies, if not overly complicated rhythms.

References to Classical music

The most obvious reference to Classical music is of course the (explicitly stated) fact in Scene 6 that Mrs. Mister has had the horn on her Pierce Arrow tuned to the motive from Beethoven’s Egmont Overture. As if this wouldn’t satirize the appropriation of art by bourgeois interests well enough: it is particularly relevant that it is Egmont, as the plot of that play is centered around a heroic stand for independence and freedom. In this scene, Mrs. Mister basks in the fawning attention of Dauber the painter and Yascha the violinist, each of whom want her money. The Egmont theme is presented explicitly in the piano accompaniment, a rare moment where the music steps into the action to be comprehended by the characters.

However, in the middle of this scene comes the much celebrated savage attack on bourgeois art culture, the short duet “Art for Art’s Sake”. The melody throughout the song hovers on B; a look at the accompaniment reveals that the chords (which begin on an A major 9th - click here for a reduction of the progression) “slide” upward, non-functionally, and arrive at a chord composed of E# (in the bass), G#, D# and B: you guessed it, an enharmonic spelling of the Tristan chord. This is clever on so many levels, I can’t begin to explain. First, there’s the non-functional sliding of the entire progression; second there’s the obvious association between Wagnerian aesthetics and bourgeois culture’s devastation of art, the topic of the lyrics; and finally there is the fact that immediately following this last chord, the Egmont motive sounds again (the F-minor chord sharing two tones in common with the Tristan chord), which pointedly references the connection between Beethoven’s music (“revolutionary” amongst many on the left at the time) with Wagner’s.

That Blitzstein would include such a reference is indicative of his intention to make this work for the middle class. It is a reference that cannot be intended for general appreciation. But understanding the message of the scene in no way depends on catching this rather subtle reference; for those audience members who did catch it, however (one imagines only a composer or two), it speaks on their level: you might say it speaks in the vernacular of Classical music.

Medium

Some of the most significant features of The Cradle Will Rock are the formal aspects of its medium. The most obvious of these is, of course, Blitzstein’s decision to use, rather than trained opera singers, stage actors that sing. This decision goes hand in hand with Blitzstein’s approach to text and its setting: Blitzstein purposefully strove to give his libretto a natural, vernacular feel, both so that it would be more real but also so that it would better connect with the public. Blitzstein also chose to use generic elements in The Cradle: the steel company is owned by “Mr. Mister,” the union organizer is “Larry Foreman”, and so on. The play is set in “Steeltown, USA”. By choosing to use generic characters and a generic setting, Blitzstein aimed to make the play as universal as possible, but also didactically clear. Similarly, the plot is generic in the sense that there are few features that mark it as being set in any too specific a time or place; except for a few references to “Ku Kluxers” and Black Legions, topicality is avoided.

Implication of the audience

In the original staging, the audience was to become implicated in the action in several ways. Scene 3 (audio) recounts how the church, represented here by Reverend Salvation, was used for the political purposes of Mr. Mister’s steel industry with regards to World War I. The scene is organized in three parts, each representing one year from 1915-1917. In each, we see Mrs. Mister paying the Reverend with instructions as to the content of his sermon: at first (1915), he is enlisted by Mrs. Mister to preach a message of pacifism, as the steel industry is still interested in selling to the Germans; by the last (1917), however, as the industry is primed to make huge profits from gun manufacture, etc., Mrs. Mister prompts him to agitate for war. In each section, after receiving his directive, the Reverend then delivers a sermon: whereas the first sermon begins, “Thou shalt not kill,” the last concludes by noting, “Of course it’s peace we’re for; this is war to end all war.” Reverend Salvation’s pulpit, however is placed in such a way so that he delivers his sermons not to other characters on stage, but rather directly to the audience, implicating them as a part of his congregation, and thus part of a public susceptible to the rhetorical manipulations of power. Blitzstein’s lyrics for this last sermon, consequently, make light of this rhetoric by listing, in increasing levels of ridiculousness, the slogans of the warmongers:

The Lusitania’s an unpaid debt. Remember Troy, remember Lafayette. Remember the Alamo! Remember our womanhood! Remember those innocent unborn babies! … Make the world safe for democracy, make the world safe for liberty! Make the world safe for steel and the Mister family!

In a Scene 7 speech (audio), the audience reprises its role as mass of people receiving direction, only this time the speech is coming from the union organizer, Larry Foreman. However, Foreman doesn’t address the audience alone; rather, he addresses them along with characters onstage; in this way, the audience is prompted to identify with those same characters: middle-class people who Foreman (and Blitzstein) is trying to encourage to join forces with the working class.

One other example of audience implication from the original staging is worth pointing out, though it is apparently not due to Blitzstein, but rather to the lighting technician, Abe Feder. Scene 5 (audio: 1-2-3-4) features the downfall of the pharmacist Harry Druggist. One of Mr. Mister’s men approaches him in his drugstore and explains that there will shortly be an explosion at the union headquarters across the street; Druggist is to testify that he saw Gus and Sadie Polock, Polish immigrants who frequent his shop, commit the crime. Despite the protests of his son, Druggist agrees because he fears losing his shop to Mr. Mister’s bank. After a touching love duet between the immigrant couple, they walk out of the store and are killed in the explosion; Druggist’s son, trying to save them, dies also. It is in this moment, after the dramatic murder of innocent characters, that Feder was to turn his spotlight on the audience as though it were a searchlight; as a result, the audience is dramatically interpellated (in the Althusserian sense) as subjects into a militant working class.

But as we know, the original staging of The Cradle Will Rock was scrapped when the WPA canceled the original production; not only were the sets and costumes gone, but, as the workers were not allowed on stage because of their own union regulations, so was the blocking. However, in my reading, the considerable success of the renegade production (and the recreations of its circumstances thereafter) can be attributed at least partly to the way in which the new “limited” production served to implicate the audience in a different way. Consider the rhetoric: Olive Stanton’s rise from somewhere in the audience to “take over” her part from Blitzstein; the genuine surprise (the first time around) on Blitzstein’s part that someone else was singing with him; and Feder having to then search her out with the single spotlight. Surely this surprise, as each actor rose from her seat to sing her part, served to amplify the “objectivity” of the production by reducing or even eliminating the separation between the dramatic action and the real world. Rather than the play creating a rich virtual world in the manner of the Wagnerian Gesamtkustwerk or the 3D landscapes of virtual reality that immersed the audience, in this case the play seemed to emanate from within the audience; you might say the audience immersed the play. Put another way (and to relate this mode of performance to interactive art), The Cradle, thanks to its improvised staging, benefited from the suggestion of audience participation (even if it was ultimately only an illusion).

Analysis—possibilities for future technique

This part of the exam was by far the hardest for me, for a couple of reasons. First, I don’t tend to think about “theater” too much as a tactic for activism. More problematically, to be honest (and I hate saying such things), I’m not sure that I have that much to criticize about The Cradle Will Rock.

To be sure, there are problems in The Cradle; problems with gender (e.g. Sister Mister seems obsessed with getting a “dream man”), for instance, and race (though she’d settle for “one big Zulu”). But these are not integral to Blitzstein’s approach, I think (or even more than minor plot points). His project was to address middle-class people by engaging in vernacular language and musical styles; on each point, I think he largely succeeds. He set out to do so in a way that was both accessible to a general public and “interesting” musically (in a traditional sense), and I think he succeeds on this point as well. And it would be a perfectly routine postmodern critique to hammer The Cradle for an insistence on a linear narrative, except the narrative isn’t linear or even a narrative at all; the plot, with its systematic series of flashbacks, is more an essay than a narrative. I find its interaction with the audience effective; the form sustains interest and is quite moving at parts; and its politics are clear but not obnoxiously didactic.

Had you asked me about the Worker’s Songbook, I would have told you that I think it stands as a crowning achievement of a failed ideology. Published in 1934, when Communist Party dicta was such that popular and folk musics were to be rejected (the Composers’ Collective, while not an official organization in the Party, had close ties to it and were certainly influenced by its positions on such matters) its songs are for the most part written in a dissonant style that makes general performance nearly impossible. The only concession to untrained musicians seems to be in the use clear, bombastic textures and relatively simple rhythms.

The Cradle, however, avoids such problems, and as a result is a singularly exceptional success. Maybe its just the amount of time that I’ve spent with it, but I really can’t muster any damning critique. In fact several of the scenes are so topical today that they could be presented with little translation, particularly Scene 3, which details Reverend Salvation’s role in advocating for war as a result of Mr. Mister’s economic interests; its not at all hard to imagine an updated litany of rhetoric shouted by a chorus today (the fact that the lyrical possibilities for “weapons of mass destruction” and “uranium-rich yellow cake” are somewhat dubious notwithstanding).

To answer the question, then, of how progressive theater today could learn from the example of The Cradle, I would say follow these principles: be scathing but funny; be bold. Address a general audience both by engaging them on their terms (in the case of The Cradle, vernacular language and music) and by producing material that works on multiple levels (as in the case of the Tristan chord). Yet, don't be afraid to use those better aspects of “trained” art-making that are useful to you; some “complicated” things, like the musico-dramatic polyphony at the end, can also be devastatingly direct.

Topic #2: Easy-Access Online Interactive Music

It is tempting to base an aesthetic around Charles Seeger’s instructions for his workers in the Resettlement Administration:

The main question … should not be “is it good music?” but “what is the music good for?” And if it bids fair to weld the community into more resourceful and democratic action for a better life for themselves, their neighbors and the human race, then it must be conceded to be 'good for' that.

This because I see the crux of my interest as being in the successful construction of more democratic social relations via art. And this, of course, relies on a notion of constructed subjectivity. My argument goes further, I think, than Mark Poster’s in Information Please; whereas Poster argues for a notion of constructed "digital self", I want to propose that the subject-forming consequences of new media extend outside the digital realm. (Not that I am insisting on a unitary subject!) The central issue here is the relationship between the political and the aesthetic.

I view politics and aesthetics to be realms that are semi-autonomous from each other. That is, each is in essence dependent on the other, but each also has a limited degree of freedom with which it pursues its own interests. In my conception, there is fundamentally no difference between interests of the artist and the interests of the activist. If social relations are viewed aesthetically, then the activist is an artist whose medium is human society; if art is viewed politically, then the artist is an activist that argues for a certain aesthetic ideology. However, in practical terms, because the aesthetic realm and the political one have their own discursive formations, we might allow for different approaches on the parts of artists and activists couched in terms of specialty: certainly the artist often has to convince other artists of the value of her work before the larger public.

Aesthetic success, then, may be measured in terms of a work’s measure the discourse of art, but ultimately it can still be traced to its effect on social relations.

I am also cautious with the recognition that corporate interests have been successful thus far in co-opting media for their own interests, and could very well do it again. But still I have high hopes for interactive media: it strikes me that, on a fundamental level, interactive media contribute to the formation of subjects that are aware of their own agency; even if interactivity were used for the purposes of a kind of Foucauldian disciplining—training subjects to act in certain ways—I think that at the very least there is a higher degree of consciousness that the person is participating in her own subject formation.

The art of the future, then, will critically engage human activity and offer collaborative production schemes; but this doesn’t mean that old forms will die, nor does it mean that they should die. For instance, my favorite television show, The Wire, is a serialized, hyper-detailed, and narratively complex rendering of American urban life. It is as quintessentially “old” media as you can get: straight video that echoes the Victorian novel (it has frequently been compared to Dickens). Much like The Cradle Will Rock, The Wire works to expose the complexity of relations that drive the seemingly unstoppable social problems of contemporary urban life (poverty, addiction, corruption, and so on). And yet, this show could only have come into its own, I think, after the development of Internet and interactive media allowed television to come into its own (echoing McLuhan on this point).

An aside

I have struggled somewhat with Mark Hansen’s work (as well as the Wegenstein), not only because it is difficult, but because I am trying to figure out how the sense of embodiment in new media that he develops in New Philosophy for New Media would apply to music. The issue is that he is working from the point of view of the digital image; his argument is that 'virtual' worlds are experienced in the body (rather than virtual reality "leaving the body behind". But fundamentally, his argument rests on the fact that virtual worlds communicated via image are still based in the 3-dimensionality of physical space. Musical space, on the other hand, does not usually have this connection.

But perhaps there is also the issue my lack of clarity on how theories of the body fit in with my own. My understanding of the body as a target of theorization has always been that it was a way of talking about humans without having to deal with the subject. But I want to deal with the subject. SO.

Literature

Coactive

• Coactive

This is my favorite new find, not because it’s music is particularly innovative in terms of its sonic material (sample-based club grooves), but rather because the incredibly well-designed interface makes complicated formal arrangements of that material possible. The entire interface is graphic and rather intuitive, though there is a help function that explains things textually if you need it. What is innovative here is that you can easily “cue” certain samples in the mix and the program even provides a simple transition from the current mix to the new one (basically just a glorified reverse cymbal, but still). The piece gives you a setup for a musical piece with five formal sections, each with its own set of samples (though some samples are used in more than one section); only samples from the same section can be played at the same time. Thus at any given point you can change the samples that are playing in the current section or move to a different section and choose a new set of samples.

Nominally, it seems as though you are supposed to proceed through the different sections in order, but there is nothing that forces you to do so. What is exciting about piece to me is that, since the interface is so easy to use and the cuing system so effective, Coactive yields the possibility of creating complicated and dramatic formal shifts, which are easily manipulated by the user toward the arrangement of larger-scale formal structures.

Noah Vawter’s Ambient Addition and 3dmusic

• Noah Vawter's page
• 3dmusic

I was initially quite critical of Braunarts’ 3dmusic, but I have recently come around somewhat to its project, thanks in large part to the discovery of Noah Vawter’s work (in an off-line setting) along similar lines. Let me explain:

Noah Vawter describes Ambient Addition (which was the basis for his Master’s Thesis at MIT) as “a Walkman with binaural microphones. A tiny Digital Signal Processing (DSP) chip analyzes the microphone's sound and superimposes a layer of harmony and rhythm on top of the listener's world.” An interesting enough idea, but I was disappointed when I heard it “in action”. (Of course I didn’t actually have access to the machine itself; the site provides a Quicktime movie with Ambient Addition-produced sound on top of video footage.)

But some text from his site got me thinking:

In the new context, some surprising behaviors take place. Listeners tend to play with objects around them, sing to themselves, and wander toward tempting sound sources. With Ambient Addition, I'm hoping to make people think twice about the sounds they initiate as well as loosen up some inhibitions.

What better way to convince people that they are capable of changing the world (“What better way of constructing subjects as agents”) than to highlight the fact that they are, in fact, having a direct effect on the world all the time?

Which brings me to 3dmusic. This project places the user in a 3D virtual world, which is navigable with the arrow keys. Further, many of the objects in the world are manipulable, by placing the mouse cursor on them (on their 2D projected image) and dragging; in this way, you can throw balls, rotate wheels, knock over columns, etc.; hidden in the world are four special objects that you have to “collect”, which basically means clicking the “collect” button when you’ve got your cursor on the object. Nothing much happens in this virtual world (there are no other characters, for instance), but instead what you get is a constant ambient musical soundtrack that, when you manipulate the objects, reacts with corresponding gestures. Spending some time in the world reveals that there are little “puzzles”, things that happen when you complete some tasks, although there is never any given motivation for doing so.

When I first considered this project some months ago, I could see everything wrong with it. Perhaps most noticeable was the fact that the “musical language” is that of high Modernist Classical music: sustained dissonant harmonies with occasional, arhythmic, even more dissonant flourishes; I pissed off my roommates one evening in what must have sounded like (not seeing that the sound was connected to visual action) a Pierre Boulez record skipping for a couple of hours. Another problem is that the graphics are terrible (3D-rendering circa 1994) and the navigation interface, while simple, is fairly annoying. And finally, from the standpoint of a musician, it seemed to reduce music to a (repetitive and obnoxious) background noise that wasn’t fun to listen to and didn’t seem very controllable.

After thinking about Ambient Addition, however, I've revised my position on 3dmusic. Lev Manovich notes in a discussion about the now-manipulable non-interactive media, “The user invest in the illusion preciesly because she is given control over it,” and such control is still lacking here, due largely to the interface. Nonetheless I found myself at some point striving to fight through the interface so that I could toss around object after object, just to listen to the sounds that were produced. By tying musical gesture directly to action, the entire piece works to make you conscious of the direct effect you have on sound that is produced (even if that sound is in a rather esoteric mode).

soundtoys.net

• SoundToys

I have just recently discovered SoundToys.net, so I don’t have a rigorous report on its contents yet, but I have seen a couple pieces there that intrigue me. The first is obviously Coactive, discussed above. There are also at least a couple that create interactive music that isn’t based on the manipulation of samples; rather, a web interface allows real-time user input to a server that does the synthesizing work, which is then streamed to the user. Unfortunately, the examples I saw seemed to be interested in an experimental algorithmic music that yielded neither a pleasing listening experience nor a clear sense of interactivity, but I was excited to see this setup up and running, as I can imagine all kinds of multi-user collaborative interactive musics that could be made in this way.

Pâte à Son

• Pâte à Son

This piece is one of the more enjoyable soundtoys that I’ve found, due largely to its interface. The samples are pleasant and varied, if not overly interesting, but what is truly engaging is how program determines what sound is to be produced. A cartoon-ish machine is represented which spits out colored blobs in a stream onto a grid. A never-ending stream of “parts” scrolls by, which you can arrange on the grid to either simply direct to flow of these blobs or to at the same time have them create sound on a little “instrument”. The instruments are meant to re-create real-world acoustic ones (think remediation in the Bolter-Grusin sense): there’s one in which the blobs passing through pluck strings, another where the blobs cause a flute to play, others that are percussive, and so on. You can also control the pitch content somewhat with sliders that lets you specify (roughly) the degree of chromaticism and the tonic. And you can rearrange the grid as the machine plays, letting you therefore manipulate the music in process; because the machine spits the blobs out in a regular stream, what usually results is a “groove”—a somewhat repetitive, rhythmically complex kind of polyphonic vamp which (I think) is pleasant to listen to.

There is room for improvement with Pâte à Son (the website promises a new version soon); particularly, I would like a little more transparency with regards to how pitch is controlled (all the control settings are indicated by symbols, and there are a couple that I still can’t figure out) in order to feel like I had better control over the output. However, the experience on the whole is a good one.

Topic #3: Composition

Title: Superconductors

• click here for the score in PDF format

Note: instructions for the score are located at the end of the PDF

Commentary

First, let me comment on how I encountered the prompt. The stipulations given by the exam forced me to approach the project in a slightly different way than I would in the example given in the proposal. First is the matter of instrumentation. Part of my consideration in describing the project as a “chamber symphony” was due to conditions afforded by a larger numbers of instruments: for one thing, more instruments means more sound and a more complex texture (probably), which in turn gives the music something to “fall back on”; additionally, having different timbres from different kinds of instruments would enable a more varied polyphony, so that single parts could be understood and appreciated individually by the participants. Second is the manner of time. I had conceived the work as being somewhat longer, because I think that the relationship between amateur conductor and performer that I am trying to cultivate will become richer and more valuable as it is allowed time to develop. (Third, a spurious comment: not the harmonic material I would have chosen on my own, but not painful either.)

For the record, I am not complaining! I’m just pointing out that the conditions of this exam undercut somewhat some features of the project that are potentially important. However, I should note that I judge that the prompt given also alleviates some problems that are present in the original conception. Foremost is the matter of keeping time. A large group with many conductors makes it extremely difficult to establish something so mundane as a “beat” without resorting to methods such as implementing an independent part that marks out time, or an über-conductor who does the same. Two pianists, however, can easily coordinate a basic beat between them. This, in turn, allows for a higher degree of rhythmic complexity. Another welcome feature is a corollary to lack of textual complexity mentioned above: whereas two pianists can certainly generate complex textures, they can also easily “thin out” the music, something that strikes me as far less likely with a large group.

As far as how I think the performance will go, I will be upfront about a couple of reservations. First, I wonder if I should have made stronger moves towards establishing a formal shape to the movement (through tighter control of register, for example). It seems possible that the result may disappoint (and I’m sort of using you all as caricatures here, forgive me) “Scott” and “Steve”, who spend a great deal of their time actively manipulating musical form, even it is judged to be interesting by “Tim”. (I suppose “Louise” might be somewhere in between.) Second, I realize that something which is conceptually fairly straightforward—marking out a rhythmic pattern over a pitch-class set, for example—is not necessarily so in practice; and thus I wonder if, as is my wont, I’ve not asked more from performers for something that should be “easy” (in this case “minimum rehearsal” is specified) than what is normally deemed appropriate. So, I worry that “Scott” and “Steve” will have a difficult time mediating between a score that is complicated enough to interpret even if its basic principles are simple, and that this may take away both from their experience, but also from the sense of participation for the conductors.

However, I should say that I am excited about the prospect of getting to test this thing out. I’m convinced enough of the proficiency of the pianists as well as the interest of the conductors to believe that I will probably never have had as sympathetic a reading as this one.

What will people get out of it? I am imagining that the most profound experience would be had by Tim, as he is (as far as I know), not usually involved directly in music making. Louise, on the other hand, has much closer contact with musicians and so I imagine her experience may be somewhat more tempered. But, it is my hope that both finish the experience with a sense that: their actions made a direct contribution to the sound that was produced; that they were able to use this control to push the music in directions that they wanted it to go; and that they found at least some satisfaction from the result (though of course, thinking to yourself, “Damn, I wish I’d done this instead!” is also a cool result). For the pianists, who make music all the time, this fact alone will probably not be that exciting; but, I hope that experience of coordinating with musically untrained participants proves to be novel, or even fun. (I recognize that the question asked my what I “expect” will happen and I’ve slid over to the more wishy-washy “hope”; but modesty prevents me from predicting grandeur, and I certainly don’t want to foretell doom. So, I welcome you to use the wiki to edit my wording more appropriately!)

Finally, the question of aesthetic success. I will admit that this has been a point of frustration for me as I’ve developed this project with Steve (not due to Steve, mind you). How does one know if a performance of The Cradle Will Rock is successful? Either one likes it, one sees that other people like it, or one can see positive consequences that result from the performance. In the case of Superconductors, I will know if I (not a participant) like it (in a “just listening” sense); I may see positive reactions from the participants or receive positive feedback; or, if I get negative responses, I certainly could determine that these are a product of a narrow, problematic aesthetic and could feel good about having challenged them (I somehow doubt, for instance, that Schenker would be overly enthused about the performance).

External links and media

Blitzstein

From The Cradle Will Rock:

• Scene 3
  • “Hard Times” (Reverend Salvation’s sermon) (audio)
• Scene 4
  • “Croon Spoon” (audio – score)
  • “Honolulu” (audio – score)
• Scene 5
  • 5.1: Drugstore (audio)
  • 5.2: “Summer Weather” (audio)
  • 5.3: Drugstore (II) (audio)
  • 5.4: “Love Duet” (Gus and Sadie Polock) (audio)
• Scene 6
  • 6.1: “Don’t Let Me Keep You” (audio)
  • 6.2: “Ask Us Again” (audio)
  • 6.3: “Art for Art’s Sake” (audio – score – chord progression)
• Scene 7
  • 7.1: “The Nickel Under Your Foot” (audio)
  • 7.2: Which of You Guys? (audio)
  • 7.3: “The Cradle Will Rock” (audio)
  • 7.4: “The Cradle Will Rock (Speech)” (audio)
• Scene 9
  • “Joe Worker” (audio – score)

Other work by Blitzstein:

• “The Way You Are” (1935) (score)
• “Stay in My Arms” (1935) (score)
• “Send in the Militia” from Parade (1935) (score)
• “Orpheus (Lucius’ Song)” from Orson Welles’ production of Julius Caesar (1937)

Superconductors

• score

Works used

• Atkinson, Brooks. “The Play: Marc Blitzstein’s ‘The Cradle Will Rock’ Officially Opens at the Mercury Theatre.” The New York Times (6 Dec. 1937).
• Blitzstein, Marc. “Popular Music—An Invasion: 1923-1933.” Modern Music X no. 2 (1933): 96-102.
• —. “Music Manifesto.” New Masses XIX (23 June 1936): 28.
• —. “The Case for Modern Music: III. Technique and Temper.” New Masses XX no. 5 (28 July 1936): 28.
• —. “Lines on ‘The Cradle’.” The New York Times (2 Jan. 1938): X2.
• —. “Author of ‘The Cradle’ Discusses Broadway Hit.” Daily Worker (3 Jan. 1938): 7.
• —. “On Writing Music for the Theatre.” Modern Music XV no. 2 (Jan.-Feb. 1938): 85.
• —. “On Mahagonny.” The Score: A Music Magazine 23 (July 1958): 11-14.
• Brant, H. “Marc Blitzstein.” Modern Music XXIII no. 3 (1946): 170.
• Carter, Elliot. “In the Theatre.” Modern Music XV no. 1 (Nov.-Dec. 1937): 50.
• Copland, Aaron. Our New Music. New York: Wittlesey House, 1941.
• —. “Scores and Records.” Modern Music XV no. 3 (Mar.-Apr. 1938).
• Dietz, Robert J.; E. T. S. “Marc Blitzstein and the ‘Agit-Prop’ Theatre of the 1930’s.” Anuario Interamericano de Investigacion Musical vol. 6 (1970): 57.
• Engel, Lehman. The American Musical Theater (Revised Edition). New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1975.
• Gordon, Eric A. Mark the Music: The Life and Work of Marc Blitzstein. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989.
• Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001.
• Oja, Carol J. “Marc Blitzstein’s ‘The Cradle Will Rock’ and Mass-Song Style of the 1930s.” The Musical Quarterly Vol. 73, no. 4 (1989): 445-475.
• Rosenfeld, Paul. “The Newest American Composers.” Modern Music XV no. 3 (March-Apr 1938): 153-9.
• Sessions, Roger. “To Revitalize Opera.” Modern Music XV no. 3 (Mar.-Apr. 1938): 145.
• Thomson, Virgil. American Music Since 1910. NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971.
• —. “In the Theatre.” Modern Music XIV no. 4 (May-June 1937): 233.
• —. “In the Theatre.” Modern Music XV no. 2 (Jan.-Feb. 1938): 133.
• Trumbull, Eric Winship. “Realization: The Workers' Musical of the Popular Front—Part I—1936-1937.” Musicals of the American Workers’ Theatre Movement—1928-1941. University of Maryland Dissertation, 1991.