CHAPTER 16 | CLASSICAL MUSIC IN THE POSTWAR YEARS 389
hall’s prevailing formula combined edifi cation (through the classics) with vir-
tuoso performance and the notion that art could be glamorous as well as dig-
nifi ed. To change that formula would risk alienating the audience. Was it still
reasonable to expect the concert hall to do justice to the classical sphere as it now
existed in the United States? And if not, what alternatives might be found? These
were some of the questions classical musicians in the United States grappled
with after the war.ÉMIGRÉ COMPOSERS, THE ACADEMY, AND THE
CONCERT HALLThe rise of fascism had compelled a number of European musicians to emi-
grate to the United States. Some composers, such as Erich Wolfgang Korngold in
Hollywood and Kurt Weill on Broadway, embraced their new home’s musical cul-
ture and found their own place within it. Others, such as Arnold Schoenberg and
Béla Bartók, did their best to continue their work with no sign that their new sur-
roundings had any infl uence on their musical style. Schoenberg, at UCLA, and
Paul Hindemith, at Yale, joined the ranks of German and Austrian academics
who transformed the music departments of American universities in the postwar
years. Whether or not they consciously attempted to do so, these émigré musicians
had a profound effect on classical music in the United States.
Perhaps the most infl uential musical émigré was the Russian composer
Igor Stravinsky, well established as a leading modernist long before arriving in
the United States in 1939. As early as the 1920s American composers had been
emulating Stravinsky, many of them—most notably Aaron Copland—through
the infl uence of Nadia Boulanger’s tutelage at the Conservatoire Américain at
Fontainebleau, in France. Stravinsky was not particularly enthusiastic about
American culture in general. One aspect did capture his imagination, though,
and had done so long before he came to the United States: African American
music, especially ragtime and jazz. That music’s infl uence is apparent in his Ebony
Concerto (1946), written for the clarinetist Woody Herman and his big band. Mix-
ing blue notes with dissonant harmonies, and Harmon mutes and growls with
spiky modernist rhythms, the Ebony Concerto, especially as recorded by Herman’s
band, sounds like a cubist portrait of American jazz.
With Stravinsky and other leading European composers now
living on American soil, the United States no longer seemed
a provincial outpost of European music making. Homegrown
classical performers such as conductor-composer Leonard Bern-
stein also contributed to the country’s new musical stature. And
a growing number of professional schools were now serving the
classical sphere, from conservatories to college and university
music departments that expanded their programs as military vet-
erans returned to civilian life.
Performances are the main things musicians have to sell, and
the classical sphere’s primary marketplace has long been the con-
cert hall: the infrastructure of orchestra and recital halls, opera
houses, and the local, regional, and national agencies that recruit
their customers. But in the postwar years the academy, while still
tied to the work of the concert hall, diversifi ed into subdisciplinesK Igor Stravinsky (1882–
1971) in his studio in Los
Angeles.172028_16_386-411_r3_sd.indd 389 23/01/13 10:55 AM