Dangerous Melodies: Classical Music in America from the Great War Through the Cold War

Seemingly staid concert halls that were once roiled by ideological battles come into consideration in this probing study of the geopolitics of classical music. Hunter College history professor Rosenberg (How Far the Promised Land) starts with America’s musical hysteria during WWI, including riots against “German” music, purges of German (or German-American) musicians and conductors from orchestras, and bans on Wagner’s operas. The 1930s and ’40s, he notes, saw less jingoism but equally ferocious protests against musicians tied to Germany’s Nazi regime; meanwhile, Americans applauded Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s “Seventh Symphony” in 1942 to signal wartime solidarity with the Soviets. The Cold War saw America weaponize classical music against Soviet communism, in this telling, as orchestras and musicians went abroad to display American cultural achievements, climaxing in pianist Van Cliburn’s triumph at Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958, which won him a ticker tape parade back in New York. Rosenberg smartly frames this history as a battle between a “musical nationalism” that saw classical music as a projection of national diplomacy and influence, and a “musical universalism” that emphasized its power to unite humanity. Rosenberg’s prose can be dry, but classical music aficionados will find much enjoyable lore from a time when the music was at the center of international rivalries. Photos. (Dec.)