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Leo Ornstein: Modernist Dilemmas, Personal Choices
Leo Modernist Dilemmas, Personal Choices traces the meteoric rise and heretofore inexplicable disappearance of the Russian-American, futurist-anarchist, pianist-composer from his arrival in the United States in 1906 through a career that lasted nearly a century. Outliving his admirers and critics by decades Leo Ornstein passed away in 2002 at the age of 108. Frequently compared to Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg, for a time Ornstein enjoyed a kind a celebrity granted few living musicians. And then he turned his back on it all. This first, full-length biographical study draws upon interviews, journals, and letters from a wide circle of Ornstein's friends and acquaintances to track the Ornstein family as it escaped the horrors of the Russian pogroms, and it situates the Russian-Jewish-American musician as he carved out an identity amidst World War I, the flu pandemic, and the Red Scare. While telling Leo Ornstein's story, the book also illuminates the stories of thousands of immigrants with similar harrowing experiences. It also explores the immeasurable impact of his unexpected marriage in 1918 to Pauline Mallet-Prevost, a Park Avenue debutante.
Leo Modernist Dilemmas, Personal Choices finds Ornstein at the center of several networks that included artists John Marin, William Zorach, Leon Kroll, writers and activists Paul Rosenfeld, Waldo Frank, Edmund Wilson, and Clair Reis, the Stieglitz Circle, and a group of English composers known as the Frankfurt Five. Ornstein's story challenges directly the traditional chronology and narrative regarding musical modernism in America and its close relation to the other arts.
Leo Modernist Dilemmas, Personal Choices finds Ornstein at the center of several networks that included artists John Marin, William Zorach, Leon Kroll, writers and activists Paul Rosenfeld, Waldo Frank, Edmund Wilson, and Clair Reis, the Stieglitz Circle, and a group of English composers known as the Frankfurt Five. Ornstein's story challenges directly the traditional chronology and narrative regarding musical modernism in America and its close relation to the other arts.
408 pages, Hardcover
First published December 30, 2007
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July 18, 2023
Leo Ornstein
Leo Ornstein (1893? -- 2002) remains one of the most obscurely fascinating figures in American music. Born in Russia in about 1893, he was a child prodigy who studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. In about 1905, his family fled Russia to escape the pogroms and emigrated to the lower east side of New York City. Ornstein studied music at a predecessor to the Juilliard School of Music and toured Europe in the early 1910s with his teacher, Bertha Fiering Tapper. During this time, Ornstein received a compositional "epiphany" and wrote some wildly dissonant, percussive piano pieces which established his reputation as the "bad boy of American music."
Upon returning to the United States, Ornstein, young and handsome, all of 5'4" with a mane of long black hair, became a charismatic pianist (With the outbreak of WW I, he never again toured Europe.) who played the standard repertoire together with his own and other modernist compositions. Ornstein had a successful career as a concert pianist until 1925. In the interim, he married Pauline-Mallet-Prevost, who was a fellow student at the conservatory, and the daughter of a wealthy family, highly different from Ornstein's own background. The marriage lasted over 60 years.
Suddenly, in 1926, Ornstein abandoned the life of a concert pianist for reasons that remain obscure. He taught at a conservatory in Philadelphia and ultimately opened his own studio. He did no more concertizing and ultimately became forgotten. In the 1950s, the Ornsteins retired from their studio and wandered around the United States, finally settling in a trailer in Brownsville, Texas and then moving to Wisconsin.
Ornstein was "rediscovered" in the 1970s, and was the subject of news features and a number of recordings. During this time, he continued to compose. Pianists Marc Hamelin and Janice Weber are among the artists who have recorded Ornstein's solo piano compositions, from the radical early works to the more conservative, virtually unknown pieces he composed late in life.
It is fortunate that there is a recent thoughtful biography of Ornstein, the man and the musician, "Leo Ornstein:Modernist Dilemmas, Personal Choices" (2007) by the musicologists Michael Broyles and Denise von Glahn. Their work is the product of eight years of research, including interviews with Ornstein's family, and study of his large output of music.
The book proceeds on many levels. It is a study of the composer's childhood in Russia and the immigration of his family to the United States, in company with many Russian Jews. It is also a study, in Ornstein's case, of assimilation and Americanization, and its consequences. We learn a great deal about the United States, up through WW I, and about musical life of the time. Finally, Broyles and von Glahn give an overview of Ornstein's music and detailed descriptions of some major pieces, especially the "Quintette" and the early radical piano works.
Underlying any consideration of Leo Ornstein is the question why he abruptly abandoned his concert career in the mid-1920s for a life of obscurity. The authors offer a variety of answers, including Ornstein's aversion to risk-taking, and his desire for a peaceful mainstream life in America. They are critical of his marriage to Mallet-Prevost, for wanting to keep Ornstein to herself and to hinder the development of his career - a decision in which Ornstein at the least obviously acquiesced. It remains unclear to me whether the authors' criticism of Mallet-Prevost is well-founded.
The authors take a similar approach to the change in Ornstein's music from its early anarchy to its latter approach which Ornstein described as "expressivist". Ornstein became disenchanted with the development of modern music which he characterised as over-intellectualized, experimental and formalist. His own music, in contrast, was emotive and spontaneous, wearing its heart on its sleeve. The authors are somewhat critical of Ornstein's technical skills as a composer and his difficulty in handling complex forms. They also raise questions, as they do in considering Ornstein's life, about the composer's abandonment of his Jewish-Russian roots, including his relative lack of contact with his family after he became successful, his desire to be mainstreamed into America, his isolation from other composers and intellectuals following the end of his career as a performer, and his aversion to risk-taking as factors that contributed to his obscurity.
Following my reading of this book, I listened to the Naxos recording of Ornstein's piano music by Janice Weber with renewed interest and appreciation. Broyles and von Glahn have written a meditative, troubling biography of a composer who deserves to be remembered and, more generally, of the changes and challenges faced by Jewish immigrants to the United States early in the 20th Century.
Robin Friedman
Leo Ornstein (1893? -- 2002) remains one of the most obscurely fascinating figures in American music. Born in Russia in about 1893, he was a child prodigy who studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. In about 1905, his family fled Russia to escape the pogroms and emigrated to the lower east side of New York City. Ornstein studied music at a predecessor to the Juilliard School of Music and toured Europe in the early 1910s with his teacher, Bertha Fiering Tapper. During this time, Ornstein received a compositional "epiphany" and wrote some wildly dissonant, percussive piano pieces which established his reputation as the "bad boy of American music."
Upon returning to the United States, Ornstein, young and handsome, all of 5'4" with a mane of long black hair, became a charismatic pianist (With the outbreak of WW I, he never again toured Europe.) who played the standard repertoire together with his own and other modernist compositions. Ornstein had a successful career as a concert pianist until 1925. In the interim, he married Pauline-Mallet-Prevost, who was a fellow student at the conservatory, and the daughter of a wealthy family, highly different from Ornstein's own background. The marriage lasted over 60 years.
Suddenly, in 1926, Ornstein abandoned the life of a concert pianist for reasons that remain obscure. He taught at a conservatory in Philadelphia and ultimately opened his own studio. He did no more concertizing and ultimately became forgotten. In the 1950s, the Ornsteins retired from their studio and wandered around the United States, finally settling in a trailer in Brownsville, Texas and then moving to Wisconsin.
Ornstein was "rediscovered" in the 1970s, and was the subject of news features and a number of recordings. During this time, he continued to compose. Pianists Marc Hamelin and Janice Weber are among the artists who have recorded Ornstein's solo piano compositions, from the radical early works to the more conservative, virtually unknown pieces he composed late in life.
It is fortunate that there is a recent thoughtful biography of Ornstein, the man and the musician, "Leo Ornstein:Modernist Dilemmas, Personal Choices" (2007) by the musicologists Michael Broyles and Denise von Glahn. Their work is the product of eight years of research, including interviews with Ornstein's family, and study of his large output of music.
The book proceeds on many levels. It is a study of the composer's childhood in Russia and the immigration of his family to the United States, in company with many Russian Jews. It is also a study, in Ornstein's case, of assimilation and Americanization, and its consequences. We learn a great deal about the United States, up through WW I, and about musical life of the time. Finally, Broyles and von Glahn give an overview of Ornstein's music and detailed descriptions of some major pieces, especially the "Quintette" and the early radical piano works.
Underlying any consideration of Leo Ornstein is the question why he abruptly abandoned his concert career in the mid-1920s for a life of obscurity. The authors offer a variety of answers, including Ornstein's aversion to risk-taking, and his desire for a peaceful mainstream life in America. They are critical of his marriage to Mallet-Prevost, for wanting to keep Ornstein to herself and to hinder the development of his career - a decision in which Ornstein at the least obviously acquiesced. It remains unclear to me whether the authors' criticism of Mallet-Prevost is well-founded.
The authors take a similar approach to the change in Ornstein's music from its early anarchy to its latter approach which Ornstein described as "expressivist". Ornstein became disenchanted with the development of modern music which he characterised as over-intellectualized, experimental and formalist. His own music, in contrast, was emotive and spontaneous, wearing its heart on its sleeve. The authors are somewhat critical of Ornstein's technical skills as a composer and his difficulty in handling complex forms. They also raise questions, as they do in considering Ornstein's life, about the composer's abandonment of his Jewish-Russian roots, including his relative lack of contact with his family after he became successful, his desire to be mainstreamed into America, his isolation from other composers and intellectuals following the end of his career as a performer, and his aversion to risk-taking as factors that contributed to his obscurity.
Following my reading of this book, I listened to the Naxos recording of Ornstein's piano music by Janice Weber with renewed interest and appreciation. Broyles and von Glahn have written a meditative, troubling biography of a composer who deserves to be remembered and, more generally, of the changes and challenges faced by Jewish immigrants to the United States early in the 20th Century.
Robin Friedman
June 8, 2022
Chances are you've never heard of Leo Ornstein, so this isn't so much a review as it as a strong, strong suggestion that you go find some of his music and listen to it alone somewhere, preferably.
Ornstein is my immediate rejoinder to folks who say they don't like classical music or that classical music is (shudder!) "boring". Whatever, fool! Go sample some Ornstein and then get back to me. I can shamelessly recommend to you to start with "Suicide in an Airplane". Or the Fourth Piano Sonata (the Weber recording). Or the Piano Quintet. You'll be a changed motherfucker.
This is the first book-length biography of the enigmatic Ornstein. The guy lived to be 108, dying in 2002, so he lived through the entire 20th century! Born in a Jewish family in the Pale (Now part of Ukraine), Ornstein emigrated to America in the early 20th century and quickly became the ultramodernist/futurist wunderkind of classical music in the period before World War I. His savage dissonances tempered by his virtuoso skills made him into a most singular and unusual composer and performer. Eschewing theory throughout his life and claiming repeatedly to his fawners and admirers that music was meant to be 'intuitive', he basically stopped performing widely by 1918 and within a decade was almost completely forgotten. A revival in the 70s and 80s sputtered and stopped, but over the last 20 years there's been a vast rediscovery of his music thanks to pianists like Marc-Andre Hamelin and others.
This biography is quite good, especially the early bits when Ornstein was at the height of his fame. Things tend to slack off once he withdrew from performing, but there are good bits on what he was doing in the 50-year interim and some nice sections on his family life and composition. There are lengthy sections on his rediscovery as well and early LP recordings, shamefully the first recordings made of his work and that only in the 70s!
For the Ornstein obsessive: you might find the focus on specific works, especially the Quintet, a little trying. Works such as the magnificent 4th Sonata and others are barely mentioned, that one a particular crime since it perfectly bridges out-there Ornstein and the more expressive, lyrical works after 1920.
Ornstein is my immediate rejoinder to folks who say they don't like classical music or that classical music is (shudder!) "boring". Whatever, fool! Go sample some Ornstein and then get back to me. I can shamelessly recommend to you to start with "Suicide in an Airplane". Or the Fourth Piano Sonata (the Weber recording). Or the Piano Quintet. You'll be a changed motherfucker.
This is the first book-length biography of the enigmatic Ornstein. The guy lived to be 108, dying in 2002, so he lived through the entire 20th century! Born in a Jewish family in the Pale (Now part of Ukraine), Ornstein emigrated to America in the early 20th century and quickly became the ultramodernist/futurist wunderkind of classical music in the period before World War I. His savage dissonances tempered by his virtuoso skills made him into a most singular and unusual composer and performer. Eschewing theory throughout his life and claiming repeatedly to his fawners and admirers that music was meant to be 'intuitive', he basically stopped performing widely by 1918 and within a decade was almost completely forgotten. A revival in the 70s and 80s sputtered and stopped, but over the last 20 years there's been a vast rediscovery of his music thanks to pianists like Marc-Andre Hamelin and others.
This biography is quite good, especially the early bits when Ornstein was at the height of his fame. Things tend to slack off once he withdrew from performing, but there are good bits on what he was doing in the 50-year interim and some nice sections on his family life and composition. There are lengthy sections on his rediscovery as well and early LP recordings, shamefully the first recordings made of his work and that only in the 70s!
For the Ornstein obsessive: you might find the focus on specific works, especially the Quintet, a little trying. Works such as the magnificent 4th Sonata and others are barely mentioned, that one a particular crime since it perfectly bridges out-there Ornstein and the more expressive, lyrical works after 1920.
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