ARTISTS IN EXILE and CLASSICAL MUSIC IN AMERICA: contextualizing the writings of Joseph Horowitz

Joseph Horowitz is perhaps the most prolific chronicler of American classical music history. Since 1976, he has been active as a music critic, orchestral administrator, artistic advisor, consultant and director. But he is neither musicologist nor theorist. As a classical musician in the United States, I had never been exposed to his books, which are considered ‘popular’ rather than ‘academic’ literature on classical music. This post will be a discussion of Horowitz’s books - Classical Music in America (2007) and Artists in Exile (2008) - their themes, implications, and analysis.

Two basic premises from Classical Music in America and Artists in Exile most relevant to my research are, first, that classical music in the United States is a German import. Or as Horowitz writes in his introduction, a “mutant transplant” (Horowitz 2007: XIII). Second, that classical music in America, from its inception, has been a culture of performance and not of creation.

Musical high culture was generated first in the United States not by “homegrown symphonies and operas” or a “foundation of native works by native composers”, but predominantly by Germanic immigrants performing the native composers of their homeland (Horowitz 2007: XIII). Classical music culture in America started with the professional orchestras created in the second half of the nineteenth century, which were led by German conductors and played mostly German repertoire. The notable exception in terms of a non-German conductor was the New York Philharmonic Society, founded and led by conductor Urelli Corelli Hill in 1842, which merged with the New York Symphony in 1928. (The New York Symphony (Symphonic Society) was founded in 1878 by conductor Leopold Damrosch.) The rest - Boston Symphony founded in 1881 and led by George Henschel, the Philadelphia Orchestra founded and led by Fritz Scheel in 1900 and the Chicago Symphony founded in 1891 and led by Theodore Thomas - essentially defined classical music in the US as German music. And while there have been periodic movements against Germanic conductors and composers, for example during and following each of the World Wars, Americans became educated that classical music was, and in some cases still is, music of nineteenth century German composers. Furthermore, that classical music as a culture was led by orchestras - performing institutions - ultimately shaped its form as a performance art, rather than a creative or generative one.

In Artists in Exile, Horowitz focuses on how immigrant artists to the United States in the 1930s-40s influenced the practice of the arts (classical music, ballet, and theater/movies). I would argue, however, that the artists profiled reacted to an existing system, and perpetuated it, rather than really alter it. Horowitz opens Artists in Exile with, “I study certain practitioners of cultural exchange who impacted substantially American practice” (Horowitz 2008: 13). One can argue that in the nineteenth century, when classical music was being established and institutionalized as high art in the United States, it was immigrant artists who impacted and formed an American classical music practice in the Germanic tradition - for example Anton Seidl and Leopold Damrosch in New York and Theodore Thomas in Chicago. They, and others like them, created a classical music culture defined as the performance of Austro-German repertoire, by orchestras consisting mostly of Austro-German musicians. This effort established “the concert orchestra - not, as in Europe, the opera house - [as] the central institution pursuant to a musical high culture” (Horowtiz 2007: 188). They also shared a musical philosophy adherent to the concept of Werkreue, perpetuating the notion of the musical score as a preserved and unchangeable musical object and promoting objectivity over individual interpretation.

While the artists Horowitz discusses in Artists in Exile did contribute greatly to a culture of performance, I would argue their practice was more impacted by existing musical life in America. The one exception was Arturo Toscanini, who Horowitz has written extensively about as a crucial 20th century figure and the first conductor in America to make a career out of conducting exclusively works by dead composers. While discussed in the book, Horowitz makes special note that he does not consider Toscanini one of his “exiled artists” because Toscanini never immigrated, and always identified his homeland as Italy. The performers and composers who were most “successful” in America - Serkin, Weill, Rachmaninoff, Heifetz, Horowitz - succeeded because either their style and repertoire suited American audiences (i.e., Serkin), or they adjusted their practice to suit the American model.

Those who did not adjust were much less successful. Mahler, who greatly anticipated coming to America, was aesthetically questioned for failing to adhere strictly to the score: “he interacted creatively, compositionally, with their scores; he felt no impulse to worship on bended knee” (Horowitz 2007: 190). He was revered as a composer, but not a conductor, and conductors in the United States were those who achieved fame and fortune. Furthermore, the classical music culture builders of the nineteenth century instilled the “penchant for sacralization” and “the concomitant emphasis on textual fidelity”, perhaps for the reason that a certain level of objectivity would counter the claim that “only Germans could understand Beethoven” (Horowitz 2007: 191). Successful conductors in American, from Nikisch and Toscanini to Szell and Reiner - perpetuated these ideals. Those who incorporated contemporary repertoire, or who offered something more akin to interpretation had varying degrees of success. Dmitri Mitropoulos, for example, was a huge proponent of contemporary American and European composers. He had the most success leading the Minneapolis Symphony from 1937-1949, but was never accepted fully in New York or Boston. Likewise, Leopold Stokowski was successful in Philadelphia, an orchestra with a history, since its inception, of more diverse programming. But he was beat out by Toscanini in the age of television and radio. Finally, Serge Koussevitzky’s professional success was limited to Boston, where he led the Boston Symphony from 1924-1949. What Mitropoulos, Stokowski, Koussevitzky share was a belief that “performance was not an end to itself”, which was the opposite of Toscanini’s approach (Horowitz 2007: 323). And in the case of Mitropoulos and Stokowski, like Mahler before them, they were also composers and/or arrangers. While all three (or four, including Mahler) were able to work in the United States, they did not fundamentally change American classical music culture. Thanks to Toscanini, and others, performance was still the end goal, not merely the means.

Horowitz’s second significant claim in Artists in Exile was that the United States welcomed immigrant performers but no immigrant composers. He wrote, “in the course of the twentieth century it became obvious that American classical music was peculiarly dedicated to a culture of performance that welcomed illustrious immigrant conductors, pianists, and violinists, and ignored illustrious immigrant composers” (Horowitz 2008: 19). It is true that the American culture of performance established in the nineteenth century naturally favored those “exiled artists” who could actively perform. Even Stravinsky, when he arrived in the United States, performed in his New York debut, and was hired to be a soloist for his own piano concerto when it was performed. In Europe, composers usually also performed instrumentally and/or conducted (Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Liszt, Beethoven), while in the United States, musicians and conductors did not compose. Some immigrant composers certainly did not anticipated raging success in the New World - Schoenberg, Bartok, even Stravinsky to some degree. Others - Korngold, Weill, Dvorak, Varese, and Hindemith - achieved moderate success. Schoenberg became a significant teacher at UCLA, Hindemith at Yale. Stravinsky had a largely-publicized debut 1925 but his settling on the west coast did not amount to acceptance as a Hollywood composer.

Putting the “degree of success” arguments aside, I would propose that European composers were ignored nearly to the same degree that American composers were in the mid-twentieth century, and their acceptance was contingent on the conductors and the orchestra. Stokowski, Mitropoulos, and Koussevitzky programmed both American and European contemporary compositions regularly. They did not favor the same group of composers, or the same compositional styles, but they did vary their repertoire choices. For them, playing newer works was already part of their performance practice, and part of the performance culture of the orchestras they led, Philadelphia and Boston in particular. Stokowski championed the compositions by Varese, an ultra-modern by American standards at the time. Koussevitzky premiered many of Copland’s works, as well as “tirelessly promoted” Americans Samuel Barber, Howard Hanson, Roy Harris, Edward Burlingame Hill, Walter Piston, and William Schuman (Horowitz 2008: 191). And while American composers ignored, or tried to ignore, many European composers on American soil, so too did European composers ignore American composers nearly entirely, preferring jazz (Horowitz 2007: 461).

Finally, Horowitz insists, in both texts, that American classical music is a culture of performance rather than creation. In practice, as has been discussed, this emphasizes the work of musicians and conductors over that of composers in classical music, and it supports the narrowing of performed symphonic repertoire by idealizing objectivity in interpretation and fidelity to the written score. The ‘culture of performance’ has come, in American classical music culture, to mean performance of “core repertoire”, not necessarily performance as a creative act. For example, the Russian virtuosos Rachmaninoff, Heifetz and Horowitz changed their musical practice when they came to the United States. After Rachmaninoff came to the US in 1918, he knew that he could not support his family through composition alone. He limited his composing, and focused mainly on performing his own and older piano repertoire. When Heifetz and Horowitz were working in Russia, they played newer compositions, as well as their own arrangements and transcriptions. Once they arrived in the US, they committed to a rigorous recital schedule and a much more limited (and older) repertoire. In Artists in Exile, Horowitz writes, “in all repertoire, it was never the composer but always a restless performer’s art that riveted the ear” (Horowitz 2008: 201). But I have to ask myself, is this due to classical music in America being a culture of performance, or rather, a great performer playing well-accepted repertoire to an attuned audience?

In concluding, I could not help but self-analyze as I read Artists in Exile. While I am not in exile, by any means, I am an immigrant artist. I am living in a place, Finland, that is culturally different from where I grew up and received most of my education. Reflecting on myself, I do not believe Horowitz’s proposal: that immigrant artists have power as agents to fundamentally impact musical culture. Classical music in America, based on its founding aesthetics and ideals, and perpetuated over time, promoted a certain kind of artistic practice and those artists or immigrant artists who were ‘successful’ in the United States were able to adjust to it, and perpetuate it, (i.e., Korngold, Weill, Horowitz, Heifetz) and those who were not, could not (i.e., Stravinsky). In examining my own artistic practice, I certainly came to Sweden, and to then to Finland, with a set of ideals about my own playing based on what I understood as necessary to be successful (i.e., win an orchestra job) in the United States. And with certainty, I can say now that those ideals are very different than those of classical music culture here. For example, here there is a greater emphasis on soloist playing, on creativity in artistic practice and on individual interpretation. Even for ‘orchestral players’. There is a greater emphasis on contemporary repertoire, in solo, chamber and orchestral performance cultures. And finally, there are practical and economic aspects to classical music culture here - musicians expect always to be paid for their work, and outside of classical music culture, I feel more likely to identified as an artist rather than a hobbyist. But all of my observations, and my reflection of self, have to do with a combination of personality, background, education and not only nationality.