The Erasure of the Arts
This week’s The American Purpose carries another of my essays on the erasure of the arts from the American experience – how it happened...
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josephirvinghorowi
Dec 8, 20205 min read
FDR, Radio, and What’s Wrong Today
“I can recall walking eastward on the Chicago Midway on a summer evening. . . . Under [the elms] drivers had pulled over, parking bumper...
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josephirvinghorowi
Dec 7, 20205 min read
The Pandemic and the Arts: A “Climate of Fear” and “Radical Upheaval”
The current American Scholar includes my 8,000-word essay on the impact of the pandemic on the arts in the US. It seems to me a terribly...
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josephirvinghorowi
Oct 15, 20202 min read
Bernard Herrmann’s “Whitman” — A Subversive Yet Inspirational Entertainment
In 1944, Bernard Herrmann collaborated with the producer Norman Corwin on “Whitman,” a half-hour dramatic presentation invoking America’s...
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josephirvinghorowi
Sep 14, 20204 min read
Dvorak and the American Experience of Race — An Antidote to “Checkbox Diversity”
“I know there has been a lot of discussion about how we can make a difference by programing one African-American composition per...
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josephirvinghorowi
Sep 12, 20204 min read
On “Wagnerism” by Alex Ross
In this weekend’s “Wall Street Journal” I review Alex Ross’s important new book “Wagnerism.” I write in part: Great works of art are so...
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josephirvinghorowi
Sep 11, 20204 min read
“Porgy” and Race — continued
Conrad L. Osborne, whose incisive critical scalpel cuts through present-day distractions and obfuscations with magnificent precision, has...
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josephirvinghorowi
Sep 5, 20205 min read
The Artist and the State: Mexico and “Engineers of the Soul”
Advocating a more “civilized” United States – and simultaneously fighting a cultural Cold War — John F. Kennedy implausibly proclaimed...
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josephirvinghorowi
Aug 23, 20203 min read
“Redes” Lives! — The Iconic Film of the Mexican Revolution and what it says to us
In his most important speech about the place of culture in the national experience, delivered at Amherst College mere weeks before his...
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josephirvinghorowi
Jul 14, 20208 min read
The Arts in America — Is the Pandemic a Perfect Storm?
In 1987, my Understanding Toscanini was the most discussed, most reviled book about classical music to have appeared in recent memory....
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josephirvinghorowi
Jul 12, 20204 min read
Porgy and the White Police
Lawrence Tibbett sings Porgy (1935) Though a prominent British reviewer of what became the hit Met production of Porgy and Bess called...
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josephirvinghorowi
Jul 5, 20202 min read
The New Deal, the Arts, and Race — and Today
FDR’s New Deal included the Works Progress Administration, which generously supported the arts in unprecedented ways. Employing writers,...
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josephirvinghorowi
Jun 12, 20205 min read
Porgy Takes a Knee — “Porgy and Bess” and the American Experience of Race
“It’s interesting that Gershwin chose as his protagonist a person who’s on his knees. ‘Taking a knee’ has never been more relevant.”...
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josephirvinghorowi
May 31, 20203 min read
The Gershwin Threat/The Gershwin Moment
Paul Rosenfeld, whose writings on American modernist composers were once regarded as insightful and prophetic, detected in George...
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josephirvinghorowi
May 19, 20205 min read
Why Did Shostakovich Join the Party?
One of the most controversial acts in the ever controversial life of Dmitri Shostakovich was his tortured decision in 1960 to join the...
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josephirvinghorowi
May 10, 20205 min read
Music in Wartime
Between 1942 and 1945, the three pre-eminent Russian composers wrote music responding to World War II. These responses differ in...
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josephirvinghorowi
May 3, 20202 min read
Shostakovich and the State
“People underestimate Stalin’s level of control,” says Solomon Volkov. “I once started to calculate how many people in the arts Stalin...
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josephirvinghorowi
Apr 19, 20203 min read
Music in Challenging Times — An Opportunity
Back in the 1930s, American radio – that is, American commercial radio, which is all we had – knew that listeners were amenable to paying...
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josephirvinghorowi
Apr 12, 20202 min read
Furtwangler, Shostakovich, Toscanini: Music in Adverse Times
Wilhelm Furtwangler Dmitri Shostakovich Arturo Toscanini A new podcast, produced by The American Interest (TAI), translates my article on...
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josephirvinghorowi
Apr 6, 20201 min read
Music and Healing: An Armenian Odyssey
The healing properties of music is suddenly an inescapable topic. Serendipitously, the last concert given by PostClassical Ensemble...
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