Marc Blitzstein: His Life, His Work, His World

by Howard Pollack

A composer and lyricist of enormous innovation and influence, Marc Blitzstein remains one of the most versatile and fascinating figures in the history of American music, his creative output running the gamut from films scores and Broadway operas to art songs and chamber pieces. A prominent leftist and social maverick, Blitzstein constantly pushed the boundaries of convention in mid-century America in both his work and his life.

Award-winning music historian Howard Pollack's new biography covers Blitzstein's life in full, from his childhood in Philadelphia to his violent death in Martinique at age 58. The author describes how this student of contemporary luminaries Nadia Boulanger and Arnold Schoenberg became swept up in the stormy political atmosphere of the 1920s and 1930s and throughout his career walked the fine line between his formal training and his populist principles. Indeed, Blitzstein developed a unique sound that drew on everything contemporary, from the high modernism of Stravinsky and Hindemith to jazz and Broadway show tunes. Pollack captures the astonishing breadth of Blitzstein's work--from provocative operas like The Cradle Will Rock , No for an Answer , and Regina , to the wartime Airborne Symphony composed during his years in service, to lesser known ballets, film scores, and stage works. A courageous artist, Blitzstein translated Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera during the
heyday of McCarthyism and the red scare, and turned it into an off-Broadway sensation, its "Mack the Knife" becoming one of the era's biggest hits.

Beautifully written, drawing on new interviews with friends and family of the composer, and making extensive use of new archival and secondary sources, Marc Blitzstein presents the most complete biography of this important American artist.

Genres: Biography, Music, Nonfiction

648 pages, Hardcover

First published August 3, 2012

About the author

Howard Pollack is John and Rebecca Moores Professor of Music at the University of Houston, where he has taught since 1987.

Reviews

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can understand readers rating this book highly, but that was not my experience. To love this book, the reader needs a scholarly background in music and/or theater. This is an impressive exploration of Blitzstein's work, but not an effective portrayal of the man. The person gets lost in an overload of detail in a book which is more than 300,000 words long (and in very small type) with sixty pages of notes (which I did not explore).

The problem is that there are hundreds of characters, almost all with birth and death dates, and what reads like every review written about each of Blitzstein's works. The reviews had a surprising impact for me, because they disagree almost all the time. It's impossible to discern whether a work was good or not, and diminished my respect for reviews (even though I am now writing one).

I read this biography because of he impact "Threepenny Opera" had on me when I saw it while in high school. I have seen many productions of it since then. It was interesting to read the genesis of this production. But I am unfamiliar with the rest of Blitzstein's output, and did not get much out of reading about them.

There is a useful takeaway at the end of the book. Blitzstein's work did not fall into an easy category. He combined the genres of musicals and opera in a way which seems to have been unprecedented. The creativity is impressive, but the story is also sad because Blitzstein seems to be a composer and the writer of librettos who was gifted but rarely appreciated, and he worked so hard.

The book is a who's who of opera, music, musicals and theater. Leonard Bernstein was a close friend who is mentioned very often, though here to his personality does not come through. Other major references are to Orson Welles, Roger Sessions, Virgin Thomson and Nadia Boulanger. It's fascinating to see who ends up remembered and who has been forgotten. I knew of many of the people mentioned, but had no clue about even more of the others. How did their stature disappear?

The book has a personal impact on me since I grew up on the edge of the theater world. I knew the children of many of the people mentioned, went to school with one of them for six years, and was startled to see multiple references to the music teacher in my elementary school. (What was a Juilliard graduate teacher doing teaching people as young as we were?). I also participated in an selective student orchestra performing a work by Wallingford Riegger who is mentioned several times.

The other personal reference was to the 1950's issues with communism, especially concerning the House Unamerican Activities Committee, a painful memory which current politics has revived. Blitzstein endured all this with impressive aplomb, the first time I have encountered someone not deeply damaged by the witch hunts.

I'm basically pleased that I read this, but disappointed that I still don't have much of a sense of who Blitzstein was. If you are a reader who also lacks the background in music and opera as I do, the way to read this is to simply skip the lengthy descriptions of musical and stage works and focus on the rest of the narrative.

[Samuel Whelpley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marc Blitzstein está citado en el relato que da título al volumen de Música para camaleones de Truman Capote. Una cita breve, y una conversación sobre su muerte.
Este trabajo nos acerca a la de vida de Blitzstein, su infancia en Filadelfia en una familia judía adinerada, su talento de niño prodigio, sus estudios con Schonberg y Nadia Boulanger, la influencia que ejerció el teatro de Bertolt Brecht y sus intentos de adaptarlo al Music Hall americano. También su homosexualidad, las dificultades que tuvo por sus simpatías comunistas y finalmente su asesinato en Martinica.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great Blitzstein reference.